142 | Am I Ready for CFO Services? With Charles Leikauf

I think that's the piece of advice that is lacking in all of the gurus that are, like, you've got to add fractional CFO or advisory services, because, number one, people don't know necessarily, like, what they can provide. That's advisory. Right. Nor do they have the background or the knowledge yet, but they're trying to, like, force this thing to happen. So I think that's a great course of action, and that's what I recommend, too. Like, before you start selling it, like, use one of your current clients as a test client and let them know that you're going to be doing this and ask them if it's okay. And, like, you're just putting in hours learning to their benefit. But, like, if that's what it takes, that's what you've got to do. Hey, and welcome to the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast. I'm Serena Shoup. I am a CPA and mom of three, and I'm running a virtual bookkeeping business mostly from my home. You're in the right place if you're a bookkeeper accountant or an accounting student, and you know that your purpose is bigger than sitting in a cubicle. If you're ready to learn some actionable tips and strategies to help you start and grow a bookkeeping or accounting business, I hope you stick around. Welcome back to the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast. Today I have a special guest on. His name is Charles Lecoff, and we are going to just dive right in and have him introduce himself. So would you like to introduce yourself? And welcome.

Hey, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you having me on here. So my name is Charles Lykoff. I own a fractional CFO business and then another company called Profit Surge group. And since 2017, I've been offering fractional CFO services, and it's what got me out of work in a corporate, you know, W2CFO job. And for about the last year or so, I've been helping accountants, bookkeepers, and other fractional CFO people install fractional CFO services in their business and grow them. So it's been a fantastic time. Thank you so much for having me on today.

Yeah, awesome. I'm so, so excited to have you. Fractional CFO/Controller Services are always a big hot topic in our industry. We have lots of gurus out there saying that you have to add this to your business. And so let's jam on this, please.

Happy to.

Yeah. So I know I've heard the story because we met before this podcast recording, but give Our audience, a little background on how you. How you ended up landing here.

It's a really funny story. I got here by accident, really. Back in 2017, I worked a corporate job. I worked for a really large company called Siemens. And so I worked in a manufacturing capacity, oil and gas, trying to make them more profitable, restructuring. And so I had a really good job, did really well, was, you know, working myself to death. But I. I was kind of inkling for. Want an inkling for entrepreneurship, But I didn't really know how to get there, what to do. I dabbled in a million other things. And one day, my fiance, now. Now wife at the time, saw some lady post in a Facebook group asking for, like, a budget and a forecast. And this, you know, she's. She's in the Internet marketing world. And so she was like, charles, it would be really helpful if you could talk to this lady. Maybe you can help her. Maybe this will be the business thing that you've been thinking about. And I'm over here like, look, hold on. Don't you know who I am? I'm so amazing. Like, you know, it's gonna be a waste of my time. Just, you know, ego, ego out the door, thinking, like, it's not going to be applicable and it's not going to be worth my time. Right. I was mistaken. But we'll get to why that mentality was wrong. And so after, like, four days in a row, my wife bugged me. Like, this lady asked for help. Just send her a message on Facebook. And I was like, no, I don't want to, or I'm too busy. And I was like, fine, whatever. I'll. I'll talk to her. And so I sit down and I. I had sent her a couple messages, and she's looking for a budget or forecast and whatnot. And I get her on a zoom call, and I agree to take the call. Really just make my wife happy. I don't think it's going to be useful. I don't think it's going to be worth my time again, like a younger, more arrogant version of me. And I sit down and I go through what her problems are, how can I help her, what she needs. And at the end of the call, she's like, all right, well, what is working with you look like? And at the time, I think of the most ridiculous thing that I can think of, because it's going to take me, like, four hours a month to do what I told her I would do. And so I say, okay, well, looking. Working with me looks like 7, $500 a month for the next three months, you know, paid today, knowing that she's going to go, oh, okay, whoops. And then just, you know, get off the phone and I can go back to being me. And here's where I was wrong. And she goes, oh, that's fine. How do I pay you? And so my, my brain's like, oh, shoot, I should have sold her a lot more money than that. It was my first thought. It was, oh, I, I done goofed. The very next thought is, is how do I take her credit card? Like, do I just write it down? And how do I process her credit card? And where do I go? Do, do I need to make a stripe account? Right? Are they going to let me run a 20 something thousand dollars transaction today? So I wrote down her credit card on like a, you know, Friday afternoon and I figured out how to charge it by Monday, and by Monday, when I charged it while I was at walls at work because I still had a full time job. I get home, my wife bought me a bunch of balloons, like, congratulations, like, now you're a fractional cfo. And I was like, oh, thank you. And so that's what started this journey. And believe it or not, that's what started this whole fractional c ho journey. I'm still friends with that same client today. It's 2024 of recording this. And so that's how I got started. So I like to call myself the Accidental Fractional cfo.

I feel like a lot of people, especially if they've started their business, they kind of have landed into that too. Like, I think a lot of accountants and bookkeepers, like, at least if they're listening to this podcast, you have the entrepreneurial itch. And like, I was kind of the same way too. I was like, I wanted to start a business and it never really occurred to me to start an accounting business, even though that's my background. You know what I mean? It's like that's not entrepreneurial. Like, for some reason I had this in my mind, that's like, it's got to be something different. It has to be like a product business or something, which is crazy, right? And I'm sure someone else out there resonates with this, but if you already have the skill, why not capitalize on that?

Yeah, I don't know why I saw that earlier. That whole year I bought all these entrepreneurship books and I was going to try like drop shipping or, you know, other e commerce things. And I owned like a little digital made Business for a while that was like remote. Like I tried all these other things. Meanwhile, I have a fancy degree and an insane amount of experience in a really highly specialized field that's well compensated. Why not just use that? I don't know why it didn't occur to me. It's. It, it, it's really silly now that I think about it.

Yeah. And all those other business models are so much more work.

Yeah. As someone who's tried those other things and some done well and some not so well. Yeah. This is a lot easier.

Yeah. Okay. So that was 2017. That's around when I started my business too accidentally to just do some freelancing for small businesses as well. More on like that controller accounting level. But so now you have a fractional CFO firm. Do you have a team of other CFOs that work for you or what does that look like?

Sure. So I'll tell you what life looks like today. And when I look at the fractional CFO business, seems pretty light. All it's. It's me and one other fractional CFO like person. At my level, we have some 1099s, be it a video editor and a funnel guy and you know, some bookkeeping staff that's like overseas. But as far as like, you know, full time. Hey, you know, we're, we're almost like together in this business every day. It's just one other person. So the headcount's pretty light.

And do you offer bookkeeping as part of the package of CFO services? I feel like this is a question that comes up a lot like how do you structure that?

So I, we kind of talked a little bit about this before the call of like bookkeeping fractional cfo, like, how's it work? I can kind of break down what we do if that'll be helpful.

Yeah, for sure. I think it would.

So we didn't actually do bookkeeping until recently. Again, first part was the arrogance part of like, I'm too good for this. I'm not going to get into QuickBooks, blah, blah, blah. That's wrong. There's a, there's a ton of value you create by you doing the numbers because then you know they're good. When you help make decisions. I usually never see a correct balance sheet when it's somebody else's. I'm sure a lot of your clients can relate to that. Is like, oh, this is really bad. I need to fix everything. So that was the first part. And the second part is, is there was a large part of recurring revenue that I was missing out on. And so we wanted to add in bookkeeping, but it's not exactly what I'm the best at. It's not really like a super use for my time, like dollars per hour. And so we started to bring in staff members from overseas to take care of that work at a reduce cost. So we brought that in house just a couple months ago, but prior to that is 100% fractional CFO again. Until about last year, it was just me and we. We brought on Sarah. She'll probably listen to this. She's fantastic. But I did that because I only had so much time, and I don't really want to work, you know, between like, 20, 25 hours a week doing this. And so, realistically, no matter how good you are at your services, that that puts you out of cap. So I had to figure out the things a different way. But I'm assuming kind of like you and. And a lot of people who might be listening. I didn't want to work 100 hours a week in this business.

Right?

Like, I. I can go back and get a corporate finance job if I.

Want to do that and not have the. That, like, looming burden of being the entrepreneur, business owner. Right. Like, there has to be a payoff. And for most of us, it's like the extra time we get back.

The extra time. The extra time with my family, you know, the last time we spoke, like, I was skiing. It seems like you're snowboarding every other day when I. When I peep around on Instagram.

Well, I. I grabbed a lot of videos and I just. You reuse them. That's. That's the trick there. But I do try to go almost every weekend.

I mean, that's. That's awesome. So what, like a fractional CFO offer looks like it's a little bit different for everyone because you have the skills that you're good at, the skills that you like to do, and then the skills your client needs, and there might be overlap in between those, or there might not be. And so if I'm sitting with someone down and saying, how do we figure out what is your fractional CFO offer? Those are the things that we look at. So maybe you're someone like me or like you who's got a lot of corporate experience and can make some really complicated operating models. Right. Maybe that's something on the higher end of the spectrum of fees and. Or complexity. Maybe it's someone who's just done bookkeeping and, you know, learned a little bit about a budget and forecast, but really cares about the business owner and wants to be like, hey, are you seeing that your marketing doubled but your revenue didn't change? And so maybe that's on like the lower end of complexity with like a budget and a forecast. That's the first thing is we figure out like what can you sell?

Yeah.

So for me, I do what I call profit optimization. And when I speak to, I do practitional CFO work for e commerce companies and when I speak to the person on the sales call, I don't, in the beginning or even in my marketing, I don't mention fractional CFO or accounting or bookkeeping. It's. I can increase your profit margin by 50% in 30 days. How I do that is fractional CFO work, budget, working capital optimization, inventory management, like all, all this stuff. And so I learned that from a good buddy of mine because he calls it chocolate covered vegetables. They buy the chocolate which is the profit margin that they they're trying to get or the problem they're trying to solve, but they're really eating the asparagus, which is fractional C services, budget forecast, working capital management, inventory management, those sorts of things. So I do an eight week optimization. It's one price. And during that I uncover. Hmm. It looks like your books aren't very good, huh? We could actually do that for you for XYZ dollars. Okay. We did this short term optimization. It looks like you need a loan. Okay, well if we can take care of the paperwork for you for a fee or you can do it yourself. Hey, you need maybe a, you know, an ongoing fractional CBO services instead of this one time optimization. Well, that'll be this. And so we get in there and get the business owner the most amount of value they can as fast as we can because they care about saving money, getting out of admin work and putting dollars in their pocket. So I pull the biggest levers as soon as I can inside of those eight weeks. And then I worry about do I get bookkeeping or ongoing fractional CBO services or a loan brokered or a partnership program or like a shipping optimization. So that's kind of how it works is I sell one time thing that pushes into recurring things, be it any of those. It's a little bit different, but it really works for the style of work that I like to do. And to me that's the most important part is you run your business a certain way. I imagine there's certain types of work you like to do, certain parts of work that you do and certain parts of work that you refuse to do no matter what. And so I like to only do the things I'm really passionate about and either outsource or not do the other things. And it's done really well for me. Does that kind of make sense?

That makes a lot of sense. And I was going to ask you too, is like, how others can get that level of confidence. And it sounds to me like you have that level of confidence because you're so passionate about offering those things. So if you're listening and you're like, well, I don't know how to do those things or that's not what lights me up, then yeah, you're going to have a lot of difficulty having the confidence behind selling it.

Yeah, that, that makes a ton of sense. I think you have a really good point. Like, I was the CFO of a middle market e commerce company, so like, I can come in and do all.

This fun stuff, you know, the levers to pull and you know the pain points of those businesses.

Right. And so if I didn't, let's, let's think about this. If I'm a bookkeeper who wants to be more involved in the business, offer some more advice, you probably have a, a group of clients. They're all in one niche. So do you, do you have like a niche that you like to serve in your bookkeeping business?

Yeah, my niche is online business, mostly course creators, coaches and consultants. Some agencies, yeah.

Okay, so that, that's awesome. You probably know, again, we're going to forget you have a bunch of really like, good corporate experience. You probably have seen multiple things work across your portfolio of clients. So you have an idea of what's working and what's not working. Maybe not from an operational perspective. You do because you, you also own your own online, you know, course and community. But even as a bookkeeper, you probably see, hey, this guy doubled his marketing and you know, revenue went up 2x. This guy doubled his marketing and revenue went up 10% h. I wonder what the first guy's doing. Maybe, maybe I asked him like, did you hire a new firm or do you have a new agency? Oh, that sounds cool. I have another client. Maybe I can put them in touch. And so in the beginning, learn as much about you can, as much as you can about your clients, what's working for them and just get really curious because if you're not confident selling something, you should never sell someone something that like, isn't going to be ROI positive for them. That's called being skeezy. We don't like that. But get really curious and then invest in your education, be it, you know, Khan Academy or YouTube or a program like yours. Right. Anything that they can get more knowledge and start really simple with, like, hey, maybe I can help you build a budget. Maybe I can help you roll out profit first, if that's your thing. Maybe I can help you roll out a forecast and start small. But if you get really curious in a specific niche with a bunch of clients, you're going to know more than that client about the financial operations because you speak to 25 of them. So if you were, like, brand new and want to inspire some confidence instead of just going out there and selling something tomorrow, I would really just focus on learning, to be honest.

Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think that's the piece of advice that is lacking in all of the gurus that are like, you've got to add fractional CFO or advisory services, because, number one, people don't know necessarily, like, what they can provide. That's advisory. Right. Nor do they have the background or the knowledge yet. But they're trying to, like, force this thing to happen. So I think that's a great course of action. And that's what I recommend, too. Like, before you start selling it, like, use one of your current clients as a test client and let them know that you're going to be doing this and ask them if it's okay. And, like, you're just putting in hours learning to their benefit. But, like, if that's what it takes, that's what you've got to do.

You know, I. I love that. And you're getting paid to learn, which is cool. But if you're like a normal bookkeeper accountant. Right. Usually we tend to stray away from the extroverted type as a whole going out there. And if you come and you join, you say, charles, how do I grow my business? And I go, oh, you gotta be a fractional CFO tomorrow. And you're like, well, I learned how to use QuickBooks yesterday. Oh, that's probably not gonna work. Yeah, and that's fine. You know, there's other ways that you can kind of grow your financial services firm. But fractional CFO is something to do and to learn and, like, more value to create. It's not like a sticker you can just slap on and be like, oh, it's fixed. I'm a fractional cfo. That's one instance. But you also don't have to have 25 years of experience running a, you know, a Fortune 50 company to be a fractional CFO either. And so I see from the other side of like, people are like, I've been a bookkeeper for 15 years and they probably are doing a lot of fractional CFO services for free already, but they're afraid to call themselves a fractional cfo. So I'd also caution against the other extreme of that, which I like if I'm poking around in the, like, Facebook groups in our, in our niche. There's also people on that completely other side of like, I don't have four master's degrees. I can't be a practitional cfo, I think.

Yeah. Or I don't have a CPA license or I don't have this. And yeah, they do have the knowledge, but they just haven't really structured it as an offer that helps you, you know, sell it better. And they're doing things so ad hoc that it's like second nature to them. They're like, oh, telling the client, did you know this about your Whatever. Right. So, yeah, I see that. I see that as well too. And it makes me sad.

It's funny. I don't have a master's degree, I don't have a cpa. I have a lot of real world, like high level experience, but that's from like time and energy. I'm invested and I'm like, I'm lucky. Kind of like you have a good corporate background. But if I didn't, I would just focus on learning like how I can make an impact. And your advice of just take a client for free, figure out if you can help them. That's awesome. That's really cool. I, I really like that. I think that's like, when I start talking to people who are not there yet, I think that's going to be my first piece of advice to them.

Yeah. Especially like if they're already working with clients on a bookkeeping or a month end level. Like, take one of those clients, create a first pass at a budget for them and then be like, hey, would you like to use this like in the United. And if, and if it works for them and they get a win, like they're gonna, they're, they're gonna help promote you, like as long as you've done the work right.

Yeah. If you do a good job, people will come. People will come. Just like how referrals work. If you crush it for someone, they're gonna be more than happy to send you other people.

Yeah. Absolutely. Now that kind of leads us into the conversation of like getting these clients and kind of selling them. And when we met before, you were like, yeah, I use Facebook ads. And I way, like, that's not how you're getting your clients. So talk us through that. I was very skeptical, but yeah, wow.

Oh, okay.

So prove me wrong.

I'll pull my ad account right now. But one of the things that's kind of interesting depends upon, like, where you're at in your journey. And what I mean by that is if you have 15 or 20 bookkeeping clients, your first source isn't to go to find new people. It's to get your current client on the phone and say, hey, I'm taking people through this program. I'm making them more efficient. Or I'm rolling this out. How, you know, how can I, how can I help you? How can I help grow your business? And here's an idea of what it will look like. So, like that's, that's going to be your first source, right? Take. That's free money. Your, your second source, your community, Facebook groups, LinkedIn, LinkedIn groups, right? People you have an affiliation to. There's LinkedIn automation that works pretty well when you have your messaging, right? When you don't, you're just spamming. People don't do that. But for me, what's worked the best after a certain size is Facebook ads. Because at this point, I want to limit the time that I spent in like manual outreach, be it on LinkedIn or in Facebook groups, which those. I mean, you heard my story. That's what got me started. Like, there's money there. I'd rather just run an ad and have calls on my calendar. Just show up and be like, hi, I'm Charles, than anything. It's also a lot more set up like you're, you're in the online space. So, you know, like video ad to VSL to application to call. Same thing you do for any other info product works for this. It's just doing it right out of the gate is probably not the best way to go. So that's probably why you were skeptical. But how, how it works for us today is since I've been working with just E commerce clients, they have a certain set of vernacular, certain words that are big to them. So I don't say, hey, I am a fractional CFO for E commerce people. You know, if you, if you look at my ad, it's econ profit group. You can go to my website, look at my vsl, copy it you know, if you're listening to this, like go for it. You should. It's my first line of my copy is attention Shopify owners. Over $1 million a year. Is your bank account balance the same but revenue going up? Or you know, is revenue going up but your bank account balance lower every month? And so what they don't realize what that's from is I have to pre buy my inventory three months ahead of advance. It's got to get on a boat in China to come over to here. So my bank account balance is going to go down while my revenue is going up. Okay, that's, that's the pain point that I have in, in like E Commerce speak, not accountant speak.

Right.

And so that's been our best set of ads is just calling out problems and saying, hey, if I could solve that for you, would it be worth the conversation? And then I just, you know, run them to a page and it talks about my experience and some of the things we do. Again, I'm not mentioning fractional cfo, it's can I increase your profit margin by X, Y, Z in this time period? And then I get them on the phone, I learn about their business and at the end of it they can choose to be a part of the program or not.

Yeah, because that level of messaging does require you to have an intimate knowledge of your a niche, the language they use and all of that. So yeah, Facebook ads are only going to especially such a high ticket, high touch personal financial thing. But because you're targeting just the pain point, you're not saying like I'm an accountant, I'm going to need access to all your bank account, all the things like that's not your approach then, then it works. But the reason I was skeptical is because I do, I do see bookkeepers trying to sell their services through ads. And I like, I wonder, like, because it's such an intimate relationship, people already know that a bookkeeper is an intimate relationship. They're, they're not going to be going to someone they don't, they're not familiar with or wasn't referred to them. But because you're just targeting the pain point operationally, it's not indicating that you're going to need access to any of their financial information yet or any of you do that on the call.

I mean, by the end of an engagement, I'm almost their therapist at this point.

Yes.

But outside of that, because I've run Facebook ads for other bookkeepers and fractional cfo and I can tell you what doesn't work is if you, you'll see some ads if you're scrolling through the feed, fractional CFO for under a thousand dollars a month. And like, I'm sure you've seen the bookkeeping guy who the beginning of the ad is. Do you like being kicked in the balls?

Oh, yes, that's my favorite.

I can, I can do your bookkeeping for $47 a month. I don't know how the heck he does that, but grabs attention. Yeah, yeah. I don't, I don't know if he's making money, but that. The ads, crushing it. But the ads that I've run for bookkeepers who don't want to really narrow in on a specific problem on a pain point and show that they really understand deeply the business. Those have not been good ad campaigns. You know, those have. I've thrown $1,000 at it, not got a single phone call. Right. And so I think on average right now we're getting a call for like a booked appointment for about $66 a piece. If you're in this world, you know, anything under 150 is like free money. And most of the people I get on are doing above a hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue, which that's kind of my like or for E commerce, their margins are pretty small. It's like right when they can like afford what we're doing. So if you're doing that, that works and it crushes it. But if you don't have that messaging dialed down, it's really hard because you don't, like with Facebook ads, you're just posting a message out there. You don't have the iterative feedback loop. You and I are talking. So if I say something now, if I say something crazy, you're going to be like, charles, what the hell are you talking about? You're giving me a weird face. Right? So I don't have that feedback loop. Same thing with, like, if you're sending people Facebook messages or reels or an Instagram or even live networking, you have that feedback loop so you don't have to have your messaging dialed in. And so it's a lot easier. So it's only really gonna work when you're at a certain stage and you have an offer kind of dialed down. If you don't have all that systematized, one to one is gonna be a heck a lot easier to get this going. And that's, that's also how I started doing it.

Yeah. And that's how you got that messaging dialed in. So it's like a necessary step, right?

Yeah.

Because you, you saw what resonated with people immediately. Like when you started saying like, I, you know, I can reduce your overhead by 50% or whatever. The thing was that you said, increase your margins by 50% or something. Right. Like, you probably saw someone's eyes light up and you're like, that's the thing.

Yeah. And. And so it also, like, I've had lots of those conversations and I. One of my fractional CFO clients was a small PE firm. They own 11 small e commerce companies. And I got them on the phone and their main problem was, is they were hemorrhaging cash. After buying these companies, they're like, we don't. We don't know what's going on. Right. And they were more of like the sales entrepreneur guys, like, let's raise some money and buy some e commerce companies and yay, we'll be rich. That's not the case. But. And so when I was finding out that I like to work with people who are like, in the, like, who are losing money every month, that's when I was like, oh, okay. These people know those words mean enough, and they have enough pain to want to sign up today. But they're also, like, in tune with profit margins. Cause if you get someone small, they don't care about the profit margins. They care like, can I pay my rent this month?

Yeah.

And so, yeah, you're. You're right. That's how I got that. That messaging is lots of smaller interactions over time, but once you get there, it gets a lot easier.

Yeah. So one of the other things that you just said was that you like to work with people that are losing money. And I can just imagine the listener being like, well, how do you even sell to someone if they don't have the money to pay you? Like, how does this work?

I'll give you. I'll give you an example. So we signed on a client recently. They're losing between 40 and $60,000 a month over the last call it six months.

And they're losing that in cash or like they have actual losses.

Oh, no. Actual losses, like net income negative.

All right.

They're doing between 10 and $15 million a year. I won't say exactly what. And they come in the call, and my first thing is like, hey, what. What brought you here? You know, why are you here? And they're like, well, you talked a lot about getting me to profitable, and I'm not profitable. And I don't understand why when you're Selling fractional CBO services. They're not required. Right. It's extra bookkeeping for tax purposes is required. I'm sure a lot of your clients get the, hey, I gotta do my taxes. Can you do that once a year cleanup kind of deal? Cool. Do that. I'll see you in, you know, 11 months when I need to get this done for next year. And then maybe, you know, if you have accountants on, like, you know, do my tax return, but you never hear from them. So compliance services are required to some degree. I mean, they're. They're really not. Like, you cannot go with them, but for the most part, like, they are. So if, you know, you need them and you're required to have them, otherwise, Mr. IRS will like, take your house away in 10 years if you don't pay your taxes. They're required now. Fractional CFO services are not. The IRS isn't going to take you to jail if you don't have a better budget or forecast. So what's going to make the business owner to agree to give me, you know, $8,000 a month, especially when they don't have it? Yeah, well, they. They always have it. And what I mean by that is, like, they have credit available or cash or whatever, or they can move some things around, but they have a pain point that is like, hey, I need this fixed today. Let me go get someone who's an expert in this thing to fix it. And so they're. My ability to sign them on is significantly higher. Their ability to do what I tell them to do is way higher. So it's a much more like fulfilling kind of engagement because every week they're like, oh, I did this, this, and this. What do I need to do next week? And to me, that feels really good. I don't know if you've ever had a client you give it advice to and they just don't do it. Yeah, it feels icky.

Yeah.

And so also, if I can save you. So this recent client, we're going to. We're going to save them around one and a half million dollars a year with all the things that we're doing. And so if I can do that, not only do I get to upsell the mother services coming on, but they're going to be really, really happy at the end of the engagement, and they're going to tell all their friends. And usually when they're losing lots of money, there's something really easy to fix. They just can't see it because they're. They're too Close to it. Whereas I'm just a stranger that comes in is like why are you spending money on that? And maybe the answer is, well, because we always have or so and so told me I needed to or you know, maybe that's important. Right. It's a lot easier when there's a pain point. You can do a lot better of a job. You're significantly more higher valued. Because if you're, if things are fine financially, why would you hire me unless you have a really aggressive goal? Why? What's going to make you punk down $8,000 a month to, to join my program?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean I don't, I don't know why you would unless you have a really aggressive goal of growing or like you, you think you need to have one. So that's what I found happen.

All my business buddies told me I needed to do to hire this coach.

I mean that's awesome. I don't get a lot of that because it's probably not what I put in my marketing. But that's, that's what I found. That's like, that's like my niche. Right. Maybe you know, yours could be people who are high growth like or people in a certain area. But mine is E commerce companies who are losing money come to me and that's like what I'm best at.

Yeah, that's super helpful because I do get that question a lot. I have bookkeepers that even just the bookkeeping side of things where they're like this client can't even afford to pay me. Like how am I supposed to sell my services? And it's like, well they either one aren't making enough to, to really pay anybody and they need to learn how to do it themselves for a little bit. Or you could really, you could get in there and show them where they're losing money. And even though that's more of like an advisory service, it's just a matter of like reading the financials and saying, well you're spending 50% of your margin on staff or whatever. Right. And give them the information and let them work with it. But yeah, you can't care more than your business owner either.

Yeah. And so when you think of the second idea of like okay, they have, they have money to afford somebody even if they're losing money and I can't sell them bookkeeping, think about it like this. What are they missing out on by not having good financials? I bet you it's a whole lot more than they're losing every month. So then you have you have an ethical obligation to sell that person.

Yeah.

You know, if they're, if they're losing out on money by not having real books, if they have no idea where their money's going, you have a role as the expert to sell that person. And you may think net income's negative, they can't do it. But really, if you know that you can help somebody and get them better to where they are, like you, you almost have an obligation to say, hey, I can help you. Like, this is good for you. You should do this. Because that negative number will be a lot smaller in a short amount of time. Even just providing clarity, forget advisory services. Even if you never touch that, if you don't measure it, you can't manage it. And like, your finances are your most important thing.

Yeah. I think us bookkeepers and accountants, like, kind of discount that, like, because it comes so easily to us. Like, well, why aren't they already doing that? Like, why aren't they already looking at their financials or whatever? But I mean, it could be as simple as, like they just haven't separated their business bank account from their personal or something. Right. They're still, still intermingling, so they really have no visibility. And just a simple. Don't discount those simple fixes. Right.

Yeah. Think about the liability it opens up to. You have those co mingled. You know, what if someone gets hurt at your business or one of your employees is something silly? Right. Like having them co mingle. That could put your house on the line. And that's a simple thing. Is, Is your bookkeeper being like, hey, don't, don't be silly over here. What are you doing? But I think because, because you do this every day and your, your, you know, your clients, people, listeners, do this every day. Kind of like in the beginning of my story, I have this skill that can really help people, but I didn't know it was valuable until I was like really shown that. And so I think a lot of times people discount themselves of, I'm just a bookkeeper. I'm just an accountant. I'm just a numbers guy. There's the, there's like the. I hate this vernacular, but it's like I'm the being counter vernacular. Like, yeah, yeah, we can help change your life and we're a portion of that. Like, do I get on the phone? Do I make sales for clients? No. And am I going to be the guy that runs their Facebook ads or, you know, is going to make their next key higher or anything like that? No, but like, if I Give them clarity to make better decisions. They can run their business better than me, but not without good numbers.

Right? Awesome. Okay, so I think we kind of covered the most of what I had on my list. So if someone is like, okay, I'm sold. Like, I know I have the skills to be doing this, and I'm ready to implement this in my business. Where is the best place that you recommend they do that? Like, how do they connect with you? Do you have a program?

Sure. Happy to talk about that. So what you can do is you can go to profit surge group.com pr o fit surge group.com or check us out on Instagram. It's just profit Search group or search my name. Charles. Like off. Go ahead, reach out to us and we can see if we can help. You know, if you feel like you have the skills and you just need some polish of like, what is my offer? Or how do I price my offer, how do I sell it, how do I. How do I do the marketing? We help with all of those things. And really I'm just showing you what works for me.

Yeah.

And so again, that's dependent upon what size of business you are. You know, if you don't want to go that route, go the route we talked about earlier, which is get more involved with your clients. You know, maybe do an engagement or two for free. You know, whether someone, you know, like, gives us a call or not. Like, if you have the ability to serve people at a higher level, even if you don't know how to yet, you should try and do it because it's a lot more fulfilling. Again, my opinion, but B, a lot more value to your clients. And C, your time to reward ratio is a whole lot better. And so those are the two paths that I would recommend to take. I know you help people with one of your programs as well. You know, you, like, you should definitely look into that. But realistically, you know, not. Not to. To play the cliche of the guru who said you need to install fractional CFO services that we talked about earlier. But if you can do it, I mean, it. It's changed my life. So, like, I would highly recommend it. However, whatever path you take, like, you should give it a shot.

Yeah, yeah. With that caveat of, like, having the skill already. Right. It's not like the problem is the way. The reason I'm making fun of the gurus is because they're not caveating it with that. Like, that you already have the skills or the knowledge and you should be capitalizing on it. They're just saying bookkeeping is a commodity and it's becoming obsolete, and AI is going to take your job. It's like all these fear tactics. So now there's bookie, nurse that are like, oh, no, I need to learn this extra skill. And it doesn't need to be that complicated.

Yeah, that's. That's manipulation to me. It's not fair, and that's not the way to go. Like, you should learn the skills. And to be honest, if you try and sell something, you're gonna. That you don't know how to do, you don't have to have 100% figured out, but if you don't have, like, at least 50% figured out and you're willing to figure out the rest, your client's gonna know and it's gonna suck and they're gonna be pissed and they're gonna tell their friends and you're gonna feel terrible. It's gonna be not fun experience.

Right?

So I wouldn't recommend that. I don't know why people would teach that. It doesn't. I don't know. That doesn't make sense to me, to be honest.

It doesn't to me either, and it's unfortunate, but here we are. All right, so we're going to link all of your information in the show notes so you guys can click those links and connect with Charles. And where is the best place for people to connect with you if they're like, hey, I really enjoyed this episode, and thank you for sharing your knowledge. Is that Instagram?

Yeah, just Profit Surge group on Instagram. You'll. You'll see my face right there. Send me a message. It's me, not a salesperson or anyone else. I answer all the messages myself.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. And if you enjoyed this episode, please do reach out to Charles and let him know. And we'll talk to you guys next week.

Hey. Hey. Thank you.

Thank you to everyone who helps make this podcast possible. Content and interviews are produced by me, Serena Shu. Our intro and outro music is written and performed by my brother, Ian Gilliam. Editing is also by Ian, using his awesome sound engineering skills along with descript software. Hosting and publishing is by Buzzsprout. And you can check out the show notes for links to all of these amazing resources and resources mentioned in the episode. Be ambitious.