Fractional CFO Charles Leikauf Interview with James Donovan

Charles, so great to see you again. Thank you so much for joining. For those who don't know who you are, do you mind giving a quick intro who you are, where you're from, who you help, a little bit about your business?

Perfect. James, thanks. Appreciate it. Super happy to be here. So my name is Charles Lykoff. I've been a fractional CFO since 2017. And also for the last couple years, I've been helping people who are accountants, bookkeepers, kind of help the market and sell themselves as fractional CFO and kind of grow up, practice online instead of going the old brick and mortar way. So we help people move into the new fractional CFO model. That's. That's what profit surge does.

Awesome. Charles, we originally got connected, I believe, I'm not mistaken, from our outreach campaign to you on LinkedIn. I don't think you came through our ad on Facebook. I think we reached out to you on LinkedIn. Um, and then we actually got talking and it was a great conversation about everything you're doing to help fractional CFOs and what we're doing on our side of things. But for those who. Who are unfamiliar with what you do, like, where do you step in and help with fractional CFOs or those in that space? Because I know you mentioned you have that background. So, you know, you crushed it as a fractional CFO in the past and you're killing it now working with them. But for those who don't really know what to do or how you can help them, like, what areas do you cover?

That makes perfect sense. Yeah, I think it was LinkedIn that you found us on. Right. And then I was like, what's this guy doing? I want to talk to him. So that was really helpful. You guys crushed it over there. So what we do is usually people are not super confident in what they offer. Right. What is fractional cfo? What is advisory? It feels like everybody's talking about it. Not that many people are offering it. And the people who are offering it, they don't really have a good productized offer. It's not really scalable. They don't feel super confident in that. So we do is we help you build a really good fractional CFO offer. Right. What does that entail? What are the deliverables? How are you helping? What are the results that you're getting for clients? Are you picking a niche? What is that? Is that a good niche? Is that the wrong niche? So we tie all that together and we build that with You. And then we show you how to kind of, you know, kind of get in front of people, how to sell it. Right? Selling required compliance services, kind of easy. Eventually, if you don't pay your taxes, bad things happen. Getting your books done is a prerequisite to that. So it's more of, like, accepted, right? No one has a proverbial gun to your head that's saying you have to buy fractional CFO services or you're going to get liens against your house or your properties, your bank accounts or garnishments or whatever it may be. And so that's a little bit harder to sell. So you need to have a really good offer that you're confident in that you know how to sell. And so we help you build that. Quickest, quickest way to explain it.

Amazing. We speak with a lot of people, and those who are listening, they may be asking the same question, like, what is fractional CFO services? We speak to so many firms, we have a lot of clients offering fractional CFO services. Not everyone's doing the exact same thing. There's a lot of gray area involved. So what's your definition of a fractional cfo, and what do they offer their clients?

So the first thing to say is, like, there's no fractional CFO police. And what I mean by that is, if your offer is slightly different than somebody else, it doesn't mean that you have to do what everyone else is doing. And if you do something different, doesn't mean it's wrong. Now, that being said, there's like a. There's like a. Like a pathway that's generally accepted and is usually what people are looking for, even if they can't figure out what it's called. Usually you're looking at, like, a budget, a forecast, some working capital management, some kind of cash flow management help projecting whatever it may be. And what you're looking for is providing that next level of clarity or insight to the business owner. I almost think of it like this. I'm like a professional money therapist. Sometimes when you combine all those things together, those are the generally accepted services that are offered as a fractional cfo. And then you kind of splinter out to all the things that make you unique. But those core are usually what's accepted and what's done. What makes your offer unique is all the other stuff that you add that other people don't do.

Okay, amazing. That may sound a little overwhelming for someone who's, you know, looking to become a fractional CFO right out of the gate. What would you say are like the first two things to focus on to start getting those wheels turning and get away from the day to day compliance work that truthfully you're not gonna get paid a pile of money for switch over. No, come, come to the good side here, fractional CFO work and start making, you know, a few thousand dollars a month as a retainer. But how does someone get started with that? Like what's two actionable items they could take today listening to this.

So two actionable items is first, you probably already have clients that are asking you for this help. Get in front of them, figure out what their problems are. 90% of business owners problems are they don't understand their numbers, they don't know how much the money they're going to make next month and they don't know how to manage cash. Right. They just look at their bank account and go, oh, I got money or I don't got money. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to go to your current clients, going to figure out what is the very first problem, most important financial problem that they have and then you're going to see if you can help them solve it. Usually it's hey, you don't know how much you're going to take home this month, next month or three months from now. Let's kind of do the math together to see how much you're going to take home. Simply that could be just a budget or forecast or cash flow management. That's the baby step in to do infractional cfo. And oftentimes people are already doing that work and they're not getting paid for it.

Okay, so now the next question, the fun stuff, what does someone charge for this? What are we going to get paid to solve these problems?

So the bigger problem that you solve, the more you're going to get paid. For example, if I'm solving a problem that saves a business owner, 1, 2, 3, 4, $5,000 a month, that's nice, but it's not going to be life changing money for me. So I'll tell you an example and this is an example for me. You don't have to start here, but recently there was a client that came to us in January. Again, I still do fractional CFO work. He lost $952,000 last year. We changed around, gave him a budget, gave him a forecast, negotiating his shipping spend. In quarter one, he made $568,000. So he went from losing, you know, 950 last year to positive 500 in the first quarter. We had to do a ton of work. Granted, what we charge is kind of upmarket, and so maybe it's kind of on the nose, nosebleeds on the end. And that was, you know, $10,000 plus a month. And so your average fractional CFO, let's call it 1500 to $5,000 a month for about four to 10 hours a month worth of work. That's your kind of sweet spot. When you charge too much, they feel like they own you. When you charge too little, you're either not moving the needle enough for them or you're not valuing your time enough. So the 2 to $5,000 mark is probably the sweet spot that I would say is most people can charge there. Get enough value to the business owner and it's still worth their time.

That's awesome. That's. That's some great advice. What, what do you say to firms who are a little bit more along on this journey already they have a handful of clients and there's that fear of, I can only take on, you know, two to three more people that I'm at my absolute cap. What does that look like?

So usually people are at their cap for a couple different reasons, right? Usually it's. They don't have. They have too many deliverables for what they're charging, right? You should have a margin of a take home. You should be taking home at least 50% of your revenue, even if you're a larger firm. And by larger, you know, I mean, like, you know, you have 5, 10, 15, 20 employees, right? We're not talking 500 employees. If you're not taking home 50% of that money, there there's an issue. So you probably have. If you have a capacity issue, the first thing is pricing, right? You probably have a pricing issue. If you don't have a pricing issue, your next function is you have a delivery issue. You don't have something that's scalable. You need to have something that's scalable. If you, as the firm owner are not making above $500 an hour in your productive time in the firm, you have structured your offers incorrectly. And so a lot of people say, oh, I can only take on one or two more clients, or I'm currently swamped now, but I only, you know, take home 150 a year. You got to look at how you structure what you're delivered because you don't have it structured right. And with a few quick changes, you can double your revenue. And not really actually work a whole lot more. You just got to change the way you're doing it.

That makes sense. Essentially the 8020 rule, right? Absolutely.

Like.

What are your strategies on helping clients go out and find new clients? Like, we have a handful of different ways through LinkedIn, paid ads on Facebook, local service ads on Google. What are some things? Maybe those who are listening, again, quick wins they can implement. If they do, if they implement it and they stay consistent, they should have no problem getting a new client come through the door.

Okay, so all the methods you mentioned work. They all crush it a little bit different for each person. You know that if someone's just kind of starting out and they don't have a big budget, what I recommend is the organic route. And so it takes a little bit more manual effort, but one is going into Facebook groups and solving problems for other people. Now, I'm not saying be spammy. I'm not saying, hey, I'm a. I'm a bookkeeper, I'm an accountant. I can solve your problem. It's, hey, I'm in a. You know, for me, it's an e commerce group. And here's the. The five biggest things of how we, you know, saved a guy $833,000 this year on shipping. Here's what we did. And when people message you, I would reach out to them individually. So go out and provide a lot of value. You can do the same thing on Instagram. You want to provide a lot of value to your specific niche. Talking in the language of the problems those people have. And then when they follow you, I want you to DM every single one of them. Just try and get them on the phone. That's the easiest, fastest way. It's manual. But if you can't add on another two or three clients a month doing that, there's something wrong in the process, and it doesn't really cost you anything but time.

Yeah, awesome. Yeah, it's a very quick and dirty way to just get in front of people and ultimately just have a conversation. I think too many people forget just the human side of things. You're a business owner trying to do business with another human. It's that simple. Just have the conversation, see where it goes. But I like the lead with value a lot. We. We've been telling a lot of our clients as well, and we've been doing it for a while. It's just post articles on LinkedIn, leave with a ton of value there. Even if people don't read it, who cares? Because if they Check out your profile. They see you as a thought leader with all these different articles. And behind the scenes, it's amazing. For your SEO and organic ranking, if you just continuously put in these keywords for actional CFO and tax planning and, you know, saving piles of money, like that's going to help you so much more when someone is going to Google and searching for you. So is there, is there anything you tell clients who are coming in who are a little shy about getting themselves out there in front of a new audience? Going to your existing clients, sure that, you know, there could be challenges. You already touched on what that looks like. But going to someone new, how do you speak to their confidence to help build them up in that arena?

So doing anything new is scary, right? Putting yourself out on the Internet. When I first got in this world, I was terrified of putting myself on the Internet. Like, I know you go to my Instagram and you see all the videos of me and whatever, and I'm sure you get bombed by my ads 24 7. But, like, the first time I got on the Internet, I was terrified. And I heard. I heard someone say this. I don't remember who. And it really resonated with me. And what they told me is when you first put yourself out there, it's going to be bad. Your quality is not going to be good. Your content's not gonna be good. Maybe they don't have a fancy kind of, you know, sue kind of setup like I do. You're not gonna have the lights, you know, the cool banners like you do. They're not gonna have any of that stuff. My message, your messaging is going to be whack. And someone's gonna look at and be like, Charles here, this guy's annoying. They're just. They're just gonna scroll. That's okay. No, because it's gonna be bad, but nobody's gonna pay attention. By the time you do it enough to get good, that's when people are gonna pay attention. And so you need to get in those reps to get good. And so it's going to be bad, it's going to suck, it's going to be awkward, you're going to say the wrong things. But by the time you get good at saying the right things, by the time you communicate the marketing, the message of your market, then people are going to start to pay attention, right? And then it's going to matter. So it's just to get started. And you don't have to be like 100% perfect at it all the Time. You just have to be a little bit more willing to do it than you're not willing. Right. Someone once told me this. I went to their event and they were like, you just got to be 50, 51% willing to do it. Like, you're not. I'm all in. I'm, I'm like going to crush it tomorrow. Like, nobody works like that. I get, I get made two of those days a month. The rest of the day is like, I'm on 85%, but I'm still here. And so just be a little bit more willing than you're not and then realize when you start, things are going to be bad. But that's okay because no one's going to see it anyhow.

That's awesome. Yeah, just, just do the thing you need to. You're gonna be at zero before you get to one. I mean, whatever cliche you want to say, right? But it's like, yeah, you, you are going to suck when you first do it, but who cares because you're better than the person who's not doing it.

And you can, you can have a small audience, like 500 or 1,000 followers on Instagram and you, you can pull like hundreds of thousands of dollars a year out of that audience. At a really small audience. It doesn't take a lot of followers, like one to one providing high value services. You don't need a hundred thousand people to follow you to, you know, reach all of your financial goals.

Well, it's interesting you say that because I saw a picture the other day, Alex Hermosi posted about, you know, a 200 person follower and a following. And he was like, it was him on stage in front of 200 people. And it was the perspective shift of this is what 200 followers looks like. And there's a lot of faces there seeing your message. So, yeah, if you're getting in front of a couple hundred people, like, you don't need that one million, a hundred thousand followers, like, get the right message in front of a handful of people. You're going to get clients, you're going to be able to provide value to them. So that's awesome. Is there anything else you wanted to share for those who are listening about getting into the space, what it would be like working with you or how they can get in touch with you?

Sure. So you can work with us in a couple different ways. A, we have a, we have a school community if you want to kind of dip your toe in. So that's option A. Option B is if you Want one on one help with me, my team and you really want to add on fractional CFO services, learn how to sell and get from more people. All you got to do is go to profitsearchgroup.com call, right? So that's privatesearchgroup.com call or just reach out to me on Instagram, send me a DM Charles, like off profit search group. You can reach out to me in either one. The biggest thing is you're never going to be ready. Today's never going to be a good time. It's never going to be like a great time to have a kid. It's never going to be a great time to grow your business. Right. It's always going to be challenging. But if you wait till next year, that's a year away that you have to wait to get to your dreams. So reach out today if it's a good fit or together if not, also fine. We'll get you a game plan where you want to go. Our goal is just to help people grow. Kind of like your goal, right? And so that's what I would do if I was like, hmm, I wonder if this is for me. Just have a call with my team.

I love that. That's so simple and it's so true. It's never gonna be the perfect time to do anything. Just jump in the water and do it. See, see if you can make, if you can take any action with it. Charles, thank you so much for hopping on and joining, sharing all that insight. This was awesome for everyone listening, please reach out to Charles. His team's awesome at what they do. They'll be able to put you on the right path. Start bringing in more of those higher ticket CFO clients. Thank you so much.

Thanks, man.