2105 – How a Fractional CFO Can Revolutionize Your Business Operations with Abunden’s Karl Maier

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1:05with us right now it's carl meyer carl you are a fractional cfo and business advisor and you are the founder of abundant now you're found on the web at abundant.com a-b-u-n-d-e-n.com but carl it's great to have you great to be here looking forward to it josh yeah well give us an overview of the work you do and who you serve? I'd love to help companies that are trying to kind of scale up. Typically, they can be a million to, you know, sometimes they're over 10 million and they're trying to get to that next level, you know, million to 10 million, 10 million to 100 million, whatever it might be. And I come at it from a kind of CFO background.

1:48I've been full-time CFO a couple times, you know nine years doing that and then basically fractional cfo for over a decade now and so seen a lot of things help companies with some couple particular areas or kind of specialties or you know growth by acquisition and then building out the organic growth the kind of just i'm selling more so i need the systems i need the financials i need the funding i need everything to keep growing. So there's your quick overview. Yeah. All right. So we're going to do something kind of fun here. Let's imagine that you're giving a presentation and the title of the presentation is scaling up.

2:30Don't just look to your CMO, bring in a great CFO. Go. I love it. I love it. That's a great one. That's actually the presentation. I really want to see. Yeah. And so many companies do. So I was helping Diego. Diego had been in business for 15 years, grown the company, millions of dollars of revenue. But man, he's working himself to death. He was just, you know, working so hard. And he had, including part-timers, like 70 people. And good company, health screening. But he didn't know how to keep going. He was really frustrated. And that's when, you know, I started working with him and helped him with, you know, the process, the systems to delegate, the processes to keep track of things, how to have meetings, all this boring stuff that you don't really want to do.

3:23And then we put financial systems, better financial reporting. We put systems to keep track of what the sales process was, how to train managers, all sorts of fun stuff. So all those things allowed him to have more time to focus on the vision of the company. It allowed him to take care of himself, lose some weight, feel less stress, his back felt better. So those are some of the things, you know, it's all those things that take so much time and distract you from really guiding the business. So that's how a great CFO can supplement your CMO. Yeah. You talked about systems a bit. Do you mind maybe going a little bit more detail of what that means when we think about, you know, is it just, you know, Obviously, we're not talking about just running QuickBooks a little bit better, but that's a part of it.

4:24Do you mind maybe kind of exploring that a little bit so we can start? And who I'm thinking about is our friend that's listening that may not have these systems in place, and they don't realize that by simply bringing in an expert who can help them establish a lot of these things is really going to mean, and I think you described this well, a life upgrade, not just a business upgrade. And I can just share from personal experience, Carl, your lips to God's ears. I mean, this stuff really matters when we think about all of the things that, you know, contribute to a business's success. The psychology and well-being and leadership capacity and ability of the leader to lead is tantamount to this.

5:11Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Couldn't agree more. the you know bringing you know when you start a company you've got to sell something you got to deliver the product collect the money that's great if you've got email maybe a spreadsheet man you've got probably all you really really need but like you say QuickBooks starts to come in handy keep track of what I owe people what people owe me and running that effectively is fantastic later you start you know it gets beyond just you selling now all of a sudden you've got one or two or a few people selling. Now we need a little CRM. So we got to, you know, can keep track, organized.

5:50Are these people following the sales process? You know, then, you know, we've got, you know, marketing systems so that we're doing outreach. And, you know, are we posting to, you know, our social media? Are we doing email campaigns? All those are systems. and then we've got operational systems that come in too and nowadays you know there's so many so many amazing low-cost tools that can help you you know keep track your operation whether that's people or its products you know either way whether it's you know inventory and managing your inventory there's a lot of things to keep track of as you grow your business is more complicated There's an entrepreneur that I really respect.

6:34He grew and sold his company for hundreds of millions of dollars. And his saying was, every time your company doubles in size, everything breaks. Wow. Would you mind saying that again, just to make sure that someone heard that correctly? And go ahead and explain just a bit more about that principle, because I absolutely have heard that. Like, you know, you think that rabbit could, we're, listen, you know, we're in that game. I know exactly what you're talking about because, you know, we're in the business of what I do. I facilitate introductions for sales and partnerships and that's good, but I got to be honest, we break systems sometimes.

7:18And we've had a number of clients over the years that have said, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. I can't handle any more business. You know, now we're having all this internal strife and problems. And, you know, they're finding out, you know, scalability that I think you've been talking about is not just the operational support, right? You know, fulfillment. And that's a big part of it. But there are other things that can break. And I would love your take on this. Absolutely. Absolutely. So one way to think about it, you know, is your kids are growing, you know, when they they get a few years older, two years go by, all of a sudden, you know, their clothes don't fit.

7:58So you outgrow your systems in the same way. You know, if you've been getting, you know, 10 orders a day and you every time you get an order, you tell, you know, Susie or Johnny, hey, we got a new order. All of a sudden, you know, we've grown now we're taking 20 or 30 orders a day. And you say, oh, well, we just didn't need another Susie. Well, wait, now I told Susie one, but I didn't tell Susie two. And so something got missed and an order blew up and then we lost a customer. And so, you know, without even getting to the computer systems, just the manual systems have a limit. And you can outgrow those systems, whether it's an accounting system, you know, it's a way of keeping track of your sales.

8:41It's a way of, you know, whatever, you know, quality, however you do your quality assurance for your customers. So when you double, you know, you've got to account for how your processes change. Yeah. And, you know, and other things, I mean, I know this is kind of getting off the reservation a little bit in terms of your zone of genius. But, you know, culture, too, you know, again, from a culture perspective, hopefully you've landed, you've locked down that stuff early, like you've planned with the end in mind, and you've already said culture. But I'm thinking about how just the dynamics of the company changes, particularly when you're expanding with people.

9:21And, you know, when a company expands its workforce, there is likely contributions from a CFO related to that. Have you been involved in those conversations, like when they're, you know, having to build a whole new department or double or triple the size of a department or, you know, you know, again, just all of these people issues have financial considerations, both imminently and, you know, as we project that are, you know, a little bit more long term. Absolutely. I mean, when you've got a handful of people, you can sit around the table to talk to everybody. You've got a one-on-one relationship as a founder.

10:05Really straightforward. You can keep the culture under control. yeah next thing you know you got 25 people you don't talk to them all every day you know and then if you grow beyond that man your manager may not even talk to all their people on you know every day i had a client i was working with and the the one of the managers was in our management meeting and one day kind of pulled me aside and said hey you know i've got a real problem with our production line that's a light assembly and the supervisors are giving me all kinds of grief and you know what do I do about this and you know so I actually gave them kind of some tips on how to do one-on-ones and it took a couple months to get kind of settled and you know then all of a sudden that manager it was like three four months later comes up to me he's like you wouldn't believe that group you know they were arguing with me they were arguing with the supervisors were arguing with their staff.

11:02Now they're bringing me suggestions. It's like a whole new person. I thought we were going to have to fire them and hire a more expensive, higher level person. So yes, you can absolutely affect your culture. And as a CFO, I've got financial, also some self-management experience as well. But the CFO can kind of give you perspective on, And, you know, I've been through this kind of rapid growth time and time and time again of the last three decades. So I can give you a kind of hint what you're going to see in six months or a year from now that, you know, may not be obvious to somebody just hasn't been through it as much.

11:43So that's that's the thought. Yeah. Carl, let's talk a little bit about who, like to our friend that's listening, what might be the indicators that they are ready to bring in a fractional CFO? A couple things come to mind. One is the financial complexity of running your business. Once you get, certainly you're hitting kind of five and$10 million milestones, those are usually good indications you need some more financial support. A lot of times it's your bank that's going to kind of nudge you and say, hey, we're not getting the kind of reporting we need to keep growing your line of credit. But, you know, other times it's going to be, you know, we're spending, you know, my margin, you know, we're working really hard, but I'm not getting the money to the bottom line that I expect.

12:41And so the CFO can kind of say, hey, maybe we're, you know, we're getting a little loose on spending here. CFO can put in some financial, some lightweight financial controls that are appropriate for a small business. We're not talking, you know, Fortune 500 General Motors kind of stuff. But, you know, how to put things in that are lightweight, prevent fraud, encourage, you know, appropriate spending. So those are things that a CFO can do. So those are maybe some tips, things to kind of watch out for. Yeah. Okay. So Abundant, at your website, do you mind maybe sharing to our friend that's listening?

13:22I want a couple of paths, right? One, obviously, would be resources so they can kind of learn more about this topic, maybe learn a little bit more about what it's like to bring in a fractional CFO and or work with you in other areas that you're able to help with. And then, of course, we'll just talk about that first. And then in a follow-up question, we'll talk about people reaching out directly and what that might look like. Right. You know, so, I mean, recently I had a company reach out to me. They've been growing. Things are going well, but they're trying to buy a new piece of property to continue their expansion.

14:00And they're talking to the bank and the bank's like, you know, I don't understand, you know, your financials don't tell me the story that can allow me to give you that loan. And so, my role is to come in, understand your financials, and present it in a way that makes sense to a banker. There can be a lot of reasons for that. One company, another company I've been working with, they've been working on expanding geographically, and they've invested a lot of their cash flow in those expansions, adding new locations. and for the banker who's looking at the financial they see low profits they say how are you going to possibly you know repay the loans and so for me i'm looking at it and saying well i can help identify these are really investments you know for tax it's great to have the write-off those are expenses so we pay less taxes but for the banker we need to help paint the story and write that down the way they understand.

15:04So those are a couple of financing type instances that might be helpful. Perfect, perfect. And if someone's listening, they're like, listen, I'm already shopping around. In fact, I'm listening to this podcast episode because they were searching for you or searching for Fractional CFO. This podcast came up. Now they've been listening. Now they've gotten to know you. And they'd love to talk about maybe potentially, you know, what an engagement might look like or how you might be able to help them personally, given their unique situation. Right. And every situation is unique. Now, I've, you know, in the lower middle market, you know, no two businesses are the same.

15:45So in my experience, and so even the same, practically the same company, just the personality of the owners is so important. So, you know, everything is, you know, I've got tools to bring to make sure you get good accounting, We reduce your fraud risk, all those types of things. But it's always going to be, you know, a custom. To a certain degree, we're going to bring a custom solution that fits your budget, your situation, your problems. So that, you know, that's what it's about. So it's just a discussion. Just a discussion. Excellent. Abundant.com. That's A-B-U-N-D-E-N.com. You can click the white button there.

16:28It says book a free growth funding call right now. Probably going to want to look at a few things, resources you have on your website. You've got a webinar. You've got a quiz that you can take. And also information like if you're looking for funding, then there's some good resources there. And obviously, a conversation may be appropriate as well. So, again, Carl Meyer, fractional CFO, founder of Abundant. Great, great, great, great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure, Josh.

17:25Every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders, asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies.

18:09Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.