Episode 249: Empowering Financial Professionals (w/Fractional CFO Charles Leikauf)

Knowing just all the people I've coached and gone through and helped them offer is whatever you're thinking, it should be higher and it should be an amount that you will feel uncomfortable asking for. This is kind of backwards, but my first, like, fractional CFO client I didn't even want. I worked for a large company and I was like, oh, this is going to be wasting my time. These small businesses don't have any money. Whatever. So I get on the phone, I tell her a price that I think is ridiculous. 22, $23,000. And she goes, OK.

Welcome to the Media Books Podcast, the only place on the Internet where creative accounting isn't a bad thing. Owning a virtual firm today means having a professional and modern online presence. And in this podcast, we talk about how to do just that. My name is Kristin Corey and I'm the owner of MediaBooks, a media agency that provides creativity exclusive exclusively to accounting firms. And if you're an accounting firm owner, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Media Books Podcast. Today I have with me Charles Lykoff. He is a corporate finance guy turned accidental fractional cfo. He found a way to escape his corporate CFO job when he turned his finance skills into a business. That business allowed him to have time, location of his choice, and financial freedom. When he's not serving his fractional CFO clients, he is growing the Profit Surge group where he helps accountants and bookkeepers. Just like you grow your firm while allowing you to work less so you can have the same time, location and financial freedom that him and his family enjoy and have been enjoying since 2017. Outside of that, he is always traveling and spending time with his family, his dog, and mostly enjoys being at the beach and in the mountains. So thank you so much for joining me today, Charles.

Hey, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, yeah. So I. Whenever I talk about subjects that I feel like maybe are new or I haven't talked about in a while, I like to kind of start with definitions so we can all make sure that we're on the same page. So in your mind, how do you define CFO services? What does that include?

Oh, gosh. All right. So super, super technical. Right, Right into the.

Right into the tech stuff. Yeah.

So when I think of fractional CFO services, these are really interesting to me because, I mean, like, there's no, like, finance police, like, no one's going to come take you to jail. You didn't offer this One service, you're not doing it the way that some guy on the Internet, including me, said. So short answer is it's whatever you want it to be. Long answer is, typically the role a fractional CFO provides is for business that can't afford maybe a full time CFO trickling down some or maybe not all, but some of those things to a smaller business. And so like what that actually looks like are things that are providing them with more advice on how to make better decisions, increasing their profitability, increasing their cash flow. Now what do you do to get there? That's things like a budget, you know, forecast, working capital management, maybe some lending, maybe it's helping them with their pricing. You can get super advanced into like mergers and acquisitions or you can just be kind of basic and be like budget and forecast. So the answer is it depends, but there's no real one answer. And I think people really, they get lost in that because there's so many things they could do and they think they got to be this, you know, old guy with six master's degrees who runs a really large company to be a fractional cfo. And like that's really not the case. So I hope that made sense.

Yeah, no, no, it does. And I think when you look kind of the accounting industry as a whole, there's like accountants and bookkeepers and CPAs. We have all these titles and people have very strong opinions on what they are called, what jobs fall under each category, which, I mean, to each their own. Not necessarily going to get into that debate, but when it comes to CFO services, is this something that you feel like every accountant can offer or bookkeeper, depending on how you.

Gosh, everyone like ever. Can they? Yes. Like, like, like, like do you need.

To have a CPA or like should book keepers can even offer.

Oh, okay, yeah. So there's no certifications required. Technically, there's no college degree required. Now should you be able to do a couple things? Absolutely. Should you be able to understand and read financial statements 100%. Now, you know, you also don't have to be a CPA or have a master's in finance and have 20 years of experience. But if you want to offer a fractional CFO services, what it really looks like is can you provide some sort of financial advice, not investment advice, but like financial advice to change this guy's business around and, or gals. And so like the lowest version of that is if you say you're a bookkeeper and you're like, I want to offer fractional CFO services. Okay, well, can you look at your client and go, huh, your marketing budget doubled, but you're not bringing in any more revenue? What's with that? Right. You don't have to answer for that, but if you can just call that out and on a couple different topics, like, you can provide a level of advice. Now, if you're just doing being as basic as that, or are you going to charge $15,000 a month for that? Probably not, but like that's where you start. And so should everyone do it? I mean, I, I think so because like it's, it's changed my life. Is it for everyone? No, but like the bar to get into is a lot lower than you think. And it's just, it's a lot easier to get into. You're just helping people solve the financial problems in their business and whichever ones you choose to solve, like, that's up to you.

Yeah, yeah. And, and I think if you consider, you know, CPAs the revered title that we all like. Oh, they're the, they're supposed to be like the fancy ones in the industry and but here's the thing. If you're just starting off, let's say you just took like an online bookkeeper course and you're just starting your experience, you know, maybe not day one, you're ready to offer those services, but over time you're probably exposed to more financial reports and situations. Especially if you niche down then a business owner is. And so, yeah, you may be able to notice things that not the everyday business owner notices just because they've only really seen typically maybe their own financial reports.

Yeah, you, you have an excellent point. If you've seen 15 of the same clients and that's why, like try and push people towards the niche thing. Well, you know what good looks like. You've probably also interacted with a business owner. So you've got one client who's crushing it. You can be like, hey, well are you doing that's been able to grow your business so quickly they'll tell you and you can go to your next client and be like, hey, one of my clients is doing this. This is awesome. You should check this out. And you don't have to be the authority because you're the financial expert. They know that you're not going to operate their business better than they are. But you have inside information and you know, you have a real like access to help people. Half the reason why I do such a good job serving my e commerce clients is because I've seen people who have like 50k a month stores and people who have, you know, $10 million month stores. So I know it's working for them and, like, what problems they encounter. And I learned that from like, like you said, not seeing one, but like seeing like 50 or 60. I know what to do, and that's just from the vast amount of experience. So after you got a couple years of bookkeeping and like, you want to get curious and dive into the numbers, like, this is definitely something you can do.

Yeah.

Did you learn how we use QuickBooks yesterday? You probably got some time to put underneath your belt.

Yeah, yeah, most definitely. And so tell me about the services that you offer. Are you approaching, like your CFO support services to accountants and bookkeepers? Do your services have to do more with marketing the firm as a CFO firm or a fractional CFO firm, or do you help them set up processes to provide fractional CFO services?

Okay, so if we think about it, like, we kind of do it all. And what I mean by that is like, there's really four things you gotta have to have a really good fractional CFO firm and maybe install that in your company is you gotta have a really good fractional CFO offer. Like your clients. There's four things that you can do. It's like what you know how to do. Right. Which you like to do, because those are not the same thing. I'm sure there's things that you know how to do that you hate. So. And then there's what your client needs and then what your client wants. And like, they're not the financial experts, so their needs and wants are different things. And so we help you create a really good, powerful fractional CFO offer. We teach you how to market it and get clients, like on your calendar so you can sell them, set offer. We teach you actually how to sell those people, and then we show you how to be more profitable on all the clients that you have. So, like, that's what we do. Now, am I going to show you how to read an income statement? No, I'm not going to do that. But if I'm going to give you everything else that you need to grow your fractional CFO firm, I try and solve that problem outside of the technicals. Can I teach that stuff? Sure. But I'm trying to do something different and fun. I already live in Excel the other 20 hours of my week, not trying to do it again. So I hope that made kind of sense in what we do here.

Yeah, yeah, no, that does. And I mean Kind of just from start to finish, if you want to offer this new service, offering you have the technical skills, how do you actually implement it? Totally makes sense. And I think when you kind of consider that process. Points of friction. A lot of accountants have fear around overselling themselves with CFO services. You mentioned you help with selling. Do you have situations where maybe you feel like clients were asking you for support beyond what you could provide? How do you respond to those sorts of requests?

Well, so, I mean, it's funny, I start laughing because the answer is absolutely, you know, maybe if not from like a financially technical perspective. I used to work for two really large companies, so like, anything small business asks me for is not complicated, but maybe something I haven't done before. And so usually I just say yes. And it's nine times out of ten something I can figure out or pay to learn to figure out or something I can approach with like a skill set that I already have. When it comes to people who are really trying to offer fractional cfo, like their confidence gets in their way.

Yeah.

And like, that's a really big thing. Sometimes they get asked like, to do things they're not willing to do. And so number one is like to have really good boundaries. Right. Like, I don't do tax stuff in my own personal firm. I'm not a tax guy, don't know anything about taxes. Can I, can I show you how to sell a high dollar tax plan? Sure. Can I show you how to do it? No, I don't. And so like, that's a firm boundary of like, I'm not going to cross it, I don't want to cross it, and like, that's totally okay. And so if you're going to offer fractional CBO services, you might have your own boundaries and that's all right. So I like to think of it as like, I've got like a little box of the things I offer and in those, like, I'm, I'm the best at doing those things. Now if you ask me about stuff outside of those, usually my answer is a very confident I don't know. And that's fine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's just such a big pain point is that there's sort of this open ended, you know, bookkeeping, we do this, this, this every month. Taxes, we do this. If I don't know the answer, I go to the IRS or I go to, you know, publications with CFO services with it being open ended and kind of, I guess seeing some of the problems that you could Be facing it sounds intimidating, but I think having some answers in your back pocket is probably a good way to just build that confidence from the start. So I guess if people do ask you for services and say, you know, no, I don't do that. Well, let me back up. For example, you know, we do web design services. We specialize in Squarespace. A lot of people are on WordPress as opposed for. If I just said, no, we don't do WordPress and left it at that, it would kind of be like a downer. It wouldn't really, I feel like, be a good way to end the conversation or be a selling point. So I say, you know, no, we do not offer WordPress services, but here's why I offer Squarespace services, and this is why it's actually better for you. And I list the reasons. So with something like CFO services and realizing that there's all these sort of possibilities of, you know, questions and situations, do you have any, like, back pocket things that you go to where it's like, no, like, we don't offer those sort of services. But, like, do you have alternatives or do you have, like, other people that you partner with maybe that you kind of, like, refer people to that can kind of give you confidence when those things do come up?

Okay, that makes sense. So I have a ton of referral partners. Yeah, right. That's. That's really smart. I like your Squarespace thing. Like, I agree, like, Squarespace is the best place. Yeah, like, you're also. It could be like, hey, I also sell, like, navigation over to Squarespace. Come, come over here. Um, so see, there we go. Um, I'm sure you let them know that. And so, for example, right. I don't do taxes. I refer out a ton of tax work. And like, some of the people in my program, I refer them out tax work. Here you go. I don't do it. Enjoy the free client. Have fun. Another thing is there's a couple things that maybe I'm not like, the expert at, and that's totally fine. And so one of them is I, again, e Commerce clients. I'm not like a FedEx shipping expert. And we have clients who spend millions of dollars a year on FedEx. Well, my buddy owns a company that is all ex FedEx pricing analysts, and they negotiate your shipping down. So like, I may say, wow, your shipping is way too high. You're at, you know, 40% of of your revenue shipping. It should be about 20. Can I. Do I understand FedEx matrix pricing? No, I don't at all cool. Go to this firm, and I'm going to get paid to send you to this firm, and they're going to do the work for you, and you're going to be happy because they're already pre vetted.

Yeah.

And so sometimes saying I don't know or I don't do that, like, can be a complete sentence, but sometimes it's, I'm confident I can't do that for you. However, these people over here can, and I'm going to get paid to send you to them. And at that point, I look like a trusted resource. I'm not just an accountant or just bookkeeper, because I can solve all of your problems. And so that's why, like, being around a long time, you can kind of know, here's the five or six problems I solve, and then here's someone else that can solve them. Your client's happy. They got. They got the answer right. They got connected to someone who's trusted. So sometimes you get to play that trusted advisor role. And like, that's. That's really fun.

Yeah. And I, I mean, we talked about kind of starting out and how over time you build just your experience and knowing what to look for. Likewise, you also build your confidence. I mean, when I first started selling web design services and marketing services, I would be asked questions that were very, very basic. But just because I hadn't encountered situations or had built answers, I didn't know how to really respond. And so, you know, over time, I think you build that confidence. And one day I just realized, like, oh, like, it's another sales call. I don't necessarily have to prepare like I did, you know, X years ago. Um, and. And it kind of just happens. Was there a point where you felt like, okay, I. I have this. The sales and the confidence down. How. How is this a month? Or.

I mean, I wish it'd be sick. This is kind of backwards. But my first, like, fractional CFO client, I didn't even want, like, I. I got here by accident. So I had the confidence on the first call. Yeah, that's because I was, you know, my. My wife. Fiance at the time. Wife was like, oh, talk to this lady. She needs a budget. She's in a Facebook group. And meanwhile, I have, like, okay, you know, I own like, a large. Not. I own. I work for a large company. And I was like, oh, this is gonna be waste of my time. These small businesses don't have any money, whatever. So I get on the phone, I tell her a price that I think is ridiculous. Which is seven, $500 times, you know, three paid today. And so that's what, like 22, $23,000. And she goes, okay, well, all right, I gotta figure out how to charge a credit card. Let me go get a stripe account over the weekend and do all that. And so, like my first one that I had, I'd sign on with confidence because I didn't want it. But now that I started, now I was like, oh, this is a thing. Now I do want it. I, like, kind of lost all my confidence because I was, like, hungry for it again. And so I had to rebuild that. And so, like, long answer to your story is, is like, you get that by A, talking to people who've done it before, B, doing it a lot of times. And so that's why, like, if someone works with us, I can just tell you what to say and, like, tell you how to go through the sales process. And then that's going to give you like your first, like, baseline level of confidence. The other one after that. I wish I could tell you there's a cheat code. You just have to do it more and more and more. And I'm sure now you know everything about websites, period. And you can log on like, yep, I can fix that. It'll be this sign up now and it's like, easy. Whereas your first one, you're probably like, what do I sell? What do I do if they say this? And so I'm sure there's like a big difference. And so it's just time and experience and working with someone who's done it before. Those are like, that's the fastest way to get there.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that's the thing is there's so many accountants that you guys are used to selling your bookkeeping and advisory server, well, your services. When it comes to like those fractional cfo, it sounds so intimidating. But honestly, I think like everything else, you're not even going to realize the confidence that you built once you really get into it. Like so many remote workers, I am picky when it comes to my tech. I want a simple user interface, something that integrates with all the apps I'm already using. And I don't want to be nickel and dimed for every feature. I have run campaigns for plenty of accounting firms and use nearly every app under the sun. But for the past four years, I have been using Flodesk at MediaBooks. Flodesk offers a minimalistic user interface that does not cut back on any features with workflows, automations, email Campaigns and advanced analytics, all for one price. I have no plans on switching anytime soon. And if you want to check out Flodesk, you can get 50% off for your first year by simply clicking the link in the show notes. So I, I do want to kind of shift focus right now and talk more about showcasing your CFO services on your website. At Mania Books, we specialize in web design. And a big conversation or a big topic that you usually wouldn't think is just like the specifically your services page, how to show what services you provide. How do you recommend showcasing fractional CFO services to someone that's had like, an accounting or bookkeeping website for, you know, five, ten years?

Okay, if I were someone looking to put like, CFO services on my website, right? Like, say they work with you and they're like, oh, well, I gotta, I gotta get this put on my website. I do this. Now what I would do is I would make sure that you say you do fractional CFO services, but I would also, like, mention about the pain points because usually to me, at least for most of my clients on the CFO side, they don't really care about CFO this or that. Like, they just want advice, they want handholding, and they want, like, a solution. So if I were to like, mention CFO services, I would put it on my website and then I would say, like, hey, are these the things you're struggling with? Like, for mine, is it, you know, is your revenue going up but your bank account balance going down? You know, are you struggling with managing your cash flow? Do you have a hard time making payroll but, you know, have a couple hundred thousand dollars going in and out of your account every month, like, whatever the vernacular is for, like, the people you serve, I would put that up, up at, like, right under CFO services. And then I mentioned we can fix that by, you know, budget or forecast or this or this or that. And I always just trying to, like, get them to book some sort of call so they can speak to you. Because if they're the business owner, they don't know all that stuff.

Yeah.

So they don't, they don't know the solution. Maybe there's no other problem. And I'm a big fan of speaking to the problem. Is that always going to be the optimal spot and where it is on their website? You probably know more than me, but I'm a big fan of, like, have it there, have the problems that they might have. Talk a little bit about the solution and encourage them to learn more information, whether it's a contact form or a book or call. Like, my whole goal is just to speak to people and see if I can help. So, like, that's what I would do if I'm putting it on a website. I'm sure you have lots of thoughts on that.

Yeah, no, I mean, that's, I think kind of the point where people get stuck is their services page. They think, okay, I'll name the package and then I'll list everything it includes. And I'll list a hundred things because that looks better. And I'll put a form and then we're good. But no, like, you have to talk about, like, no, what's, what's the problem that they're actually facing and. Well, pain point versus problem. Let me actually ask you because I think everyone maybe has like a little bit of a different take, but how do you define a pain point?

Oh, you're trying to get me to delineate pain point versus problem right now. Can you tell me what the difference is, please?

A pain point is something that people are willing to pay for. A problem is something that they're willing to just kind of work through themselves.

Oh, okay.

That's how I would define it.

All right, all right. You gotta be careful, the vernacular here. So for my CFO services, like, the main thing I do, it's 9,800 bucks and it's for one month. And then I push them into like a recurring, you know, $5,000 a month. It's usually how someone works with me if they want me to, you know, optimize their e commerce business. And so if I'm thinking about it, all the things I mention are way more expensive than what they're going to pay me to fix. So if I, like, was to offer to, I don't know, come up with really cool product titles on your website. Like, I'm, you know, I'm just making up stuff. Or, you know, come up with a really cool name for your skincare product in your e commerce site. Like, maybe that won't move the needle here. Like, I, I only try. And same with bookkeeping. It's helpful. It's required for taxes. But it's not like no one's going to take you to bookkeeping jail if you, you know, don't do it. Same thing with fractional cfo. Like, you got to file your taxes. You don't need to become a, you know, bifractional CFO Services. So I like to think about what is like the most painful thing that's costing them money. Time, headaches. What's keeping them up at night? Like, I got a client. He, I signed him on like a week or two ago. He's doing like $280,000 a month. Well, last month he was doing there. The month prior to that, he was doing $50,000 a month. So he's growing really fast. And he just wrote his first $100,000 inventory check ever. Can you imagine if you've never written a check for $100,000 on something that might not sell? How terrified you would be.

Double checking the zero is like, okay.

Yeah. I'm sure if you notice in the ach, you like, read the, read the routing number six times. It's funny, I did that when I, when I bought my house. I was like, is this the right routing number? Let me read it again. Do you. But all of that to say is not knowing if he was going to have enough inventory to get to his, his goal $350,000 a month, or if he was not going to ever sell it at all. And he had no idea was a massive pain point. And I was like, well, we fixed that in our $5,000 a month plan. If we could fix that for you, would this be worth it? He was like, absolutely. All right. And the card number is like, yeah, easiest, easiest process ever. And so I like to think of what is the most painful, annoying thing that they hate. If I can just solve two or three of those, they're going to be super happy and they're going to want to sign on.

Yeah.

So I like, I just think of what's. What, like sucks the most for them. And then I like, back up from there. Like, what do I, what do I solve? So that, like, to me, that's, that's like, what I think of is like, what, what, like, makes their stomach churn, like, what's really painful? And just focus on that.

Yeah. And I think you kind of brought up an interesting point. You also asked, like, you can ask like, what sucks right now about, about your bookkeeping? What sucks about your accounting right now? And just, I mean, my gosh, just ask them because if anything, they're going to be like, oh, like, they're not just. They didn't just hop on the call and give me their pre scripted spiel. They're actually tailoring their answers to what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I, I mean, in any sort of sales process, the first 60% of it just means asking questions.

Yeah.

You know, like, what's your revenue at? What are your costs at what Was your net income, you know, what was your operating income? What was your gross profit last month? Last three months last year. You know, to guarantee you no business owner knows, 90% of those, you know, time.

They'll look it up, maybe. And, like, it's great, too, because then you get the other person talking, and you can kind of like, talk to yourself and calm yourself down. And, like, well, like, that's what I did is like, in the beginning when I. All my sales calls, I was like, okay, I have 50 questions that I'm going to work through, and I'm just going to have them talking the entire time. And, yeah, I mean, it did two things. It helped calm me down and slow the pace of the consultation down, but it also, like, people like talking about themselves, so they got to talk about their business and their plan and the things that are working and not working. And by the end, they feel like they just vented to me for, you know, 30 minutes, an hour, and they're like, this went great when I only said I only like questions. Like, I didn't do too much. And every once in a while, I'd be like, oh, I can fix that. And it was, you know, I think that's a really undervalued tool. Just ask a lot of. That's what I'm doing on this podcast. I'm not talking that much. I'm just asking a lot of questions.

So, yeah, it's funny, from all the sales training we teach, it's always like, you know, whoever asks questions is in control of the conversation. And, you know, over here, I'm like, I have my inner monologue of, like, I'm not asking enough questions. It's like, this isn't a sales call. Like, it's ingrained in me. So you're. You're so right in. In that, like, if you just ask questions, you can find out and, like, maybe you can help them. Maybe they're terrible and you don't want to work with them. Let's find out.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I just. I suddenly, like, my mind went to, like, it's like, when you're dating or like, my. My husband's also my first boyfriend, so I haven't done that much dating. But, like, it's when your friend brings. I know where very decisive. It's like when your friend brings a new guy over, and you're like, okay, I'm gonna see if this guy has what it takes. And so you're like, I'm gonna ask all the questions and be super probing and like, you know, tell me about your life and what are your intentions?

What are your intentions with my daughter?

Yeah. What are you. I want to know everything about you and just show that you're interested and I think show that you really care. And I mean, I think that's just general sales advice, you know, whether you're selling CFO services or tax or web design. But I do want to make sure I have enough time for this question as well. You brought up pricing. So Charles and I have talked in the past. This isn't our first meeting, but I actually liked your take on pricing, whether you should include pricing on your website. Can you share that with us, please? Do you. Do you feel like prices should be listed on your services pages?

I don't remember what I said, but my overall feelings on pricing is not to be on your website. Personally. How do I like this? I don't like shoppers. I like buyers. I want to talk to people who want to buy stuff who have problems. And so if I put them on my website, they might be like, oh, wow, this is too cheap, I need something better. Or wow, this is too expensive. And like they're the business owner, they don't know anything about finance, so they don't know if the pricing's good or bad. What I'm doing for that, if it's worth it, if it's not. So I, I do everything to try and entice them in and also, like, it builds some curiosity and it gets in the book a call with me. And so my whole goal is how do I get them to book a call so I can get them, you know, ask them the questions to get them to sign on. So personally I don't really believe on posting pricing you can do it. I just, I personally don't. Maybe if there's like commoditized things you do, maybe you can. But I'm a big fan, especially for something custom like for CFO services is leave it off. And if you want to push away people who like, maybe don't have money, I'd be like, hey, this is for people who have businesses above a certain size or something like that. I would actually focus on pushing away more of the wrong people than anything. Really?

Yeah. You mentioned. Let me see if I can jog in my. You mentioned part of the reason I liked your answer was because it played into knowing your niche and you talked about e commerce businesses and how, you know, pricing for them is going to be very different than pricing for maybe a service based business.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, all right. This is making, making sense.

No, no, I thought that was really, really good. Just because, I mean, whether you should include your prices on your website or not, I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. There's going to be a situation for everyone. For example, I for the last three years included prices on our website, frankly, because I was like, if you can't afford this price, don't talk to me. I'm in Japan, I have to wake up at 4:30 to meet with you. I just can't like that. And I was like, that was enough reason for me just to have prices on the website. But now that we're back, you actually changed my mind and so now we don't have prices.

But anyways, I was like, tell me how it's performing.

Yeah, I know. I was like, you know, let's test this out, let's do something different. And that's the other thing. Like whatever you put on your website, it's not permanent. You can change it. You can change your strategy and like figure out, you know, what does and doesn't work. But back to kind of like whether you should include your prices. You know the story that you told, it had a lot to do with just knowing your niche. How do you feel like those two play into each other, knowing your niche and listing your prices on your website?

Sure. So there's like I mostly serve e commerce clients and because of that like they spend a couple thousand dollars a day on Facebook. So like my $9,800 thing, like that's nothing to them. But if you serve more than one niche, if you serve different groups, like you might have different prices for different groups or different things. And it can really like push some people away by having them on and like it might not be for like what you want to go after. So like good example is the, the kid who, who signed on recently, like he's not at a $15,000 a month thing. Like he's on a $5,000 a month thing, but it's his second month ever. Am I doing it from a similar amount of stuff than the bigger guy? Yeah, but he gets a little bit more time and a little bit more of this. And so I don't want to push any in away any of the wrong people. Kind of like what you did, you, you were trying to push away anyone who wasn't super qualified. Cuz let's be real, waking up 4am is hard.

Yeah, I just like, sorry, I value sleep more. I'm sorry.

I mean, don't be sorry. Like, that's, that's excellent. Um, so it's really like dependent upon like if you're talking to more than one person or you don't have a niche, like I also wouldn't put it on there because they have way different needs, way different wants, way different price points. The revenue is going to be different. And here's the other challenging thing is people do like, oh, like revenue based pricing. If you serve more than one niche, they have different, like EBIT margins.

Yeah.

You know, so like good example. My clients are between 10 and 20% and so I know the pricing for them. If you get someone in who is a software company at 50% EBIT margins, well, that guy can afford way more. And so like maybe the pricing would be higher for him because I don't want to leave some money on the table either. So really, like, it really just depends. And so especially when you're talking to more than one group, then you're, you know, unless you have something that's like commoditized.

Yeah.

Like putting your pricing out there also makes it kind of challenging. So yeah, that, that also like can make it rough depending upon each, like kind of niche you're going after. And if you do multiple.

Yeah, yeah. And kind of my last question in regards to pricing, how do you recommend someone that's, you know about to just start offering CFO fractional CFO services? How do you recommend they price? Is it like a percentage of profit or.

Yeah, so here's, here's what I recommend. My first, my first thought, like I have a whole pricing training, so my brain was like, okay, do pricing training. But really what I, what I would like to say is knowing just all the people I've coached and gone through and helped them offer is whatever you're thinking, it should be higher and it should be amount that you will feel uncomfortable asking for. And that won't apply to maybe 1% of the people listening, but everybody else is going to apply to them.

Yeah.

And so when I think of pricing, if you're charging for CFO services, it should be a minimum of fifteen hundred dollars a month. Like this isn't commodity service. Like it should be at least 1500 bucks a month. The most it can be is up to you. We've got people who charge 30,000amonth and we've got people who have, you know, a bunch of 1500amonth clients. I think about it like this. The most I can charge is the amount of value that I create. The least I can charge is the cost to get someone else to do it plus a margin of 30 or 60%. If it's less than that, I'm subsidizing either someone else's job on my team or I won't ever be able to get someone else to do it. Now, where you fall between value and cost plus margin is how much they can afford. And you know, that's like the perfect pricing. So if I were to price someone, it would be thinking about all those three things together and also amount that you're not going to be like, wow, I hate doing this kind of work for this amount of money. Like, you should be smiling at the end of the month. When you look at your revenue and you look at how many hours you clocked, if you're not, you're not doing fractional CFO the right way. This is like the most highly leveraged dollar per hour thing that you can do.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's a big confidence booster, actually. Like saying charge what you're worth is not actually helpful. But saying no charge, like between these two, you know, here are your boundaries. These are percentages that actually gives people, I think, a justification and being like, no, okay, this is, this is where I'm at. And so, yeah, that's, that's awesome. Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Charles, for joining me. I want to do a quick little shout out to first. Your. Your Instagra is super active on there. Instagram.com backslash profitsurge group and also his website, profitsurge group.com backslash call if you want to learn more about his CFO. Fractional CFO. Would you say mentoring services or support?

We have a coaching program.

Okay, okay. Coaching services. I will have both of those links in the show notes. But again, thank you so much, Charles and yeah, look forward to staying in touch.

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

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