Fractional CFO Secrets: How to Scale Your Business Like a Pro

Rick, what's up? It's great to have you.

Hey, what's happening, Charles? What's going on, man?

So I have a great guest today. I have Rick Sanchez. He is the owner of Robin Consulting Group. So you are fractional cfo. I know you've been a full time cfo. We've worked together a little bit. Tell me a little bit about like your business and what you do.

Yeah. So started this business, you know, two years ago after stepping away from corporate America, had been a full time cfo. Kind of climbed the corporate ladder really as an analyst into FP&A, into a manager. Did a little bit of sales dabbling as a revenue manager and then ultimately got to that CFO role. Got tired of it, stepped down, and then really wanted to explore kind of building a business for myself. Right. Holding, holding on to all that equity. So really kind of stepping from there. I launched Robin Consulting with this new buzzword that was going around, LinkedIn, social media markets, where I was like, what is a fractional cfo? What does that even mean? And it really kind of boils down to this financial consulting with a sexier title kind of tied into it. Right. So if you're a small to medium sized business, the word fractional cfo, it just, it just makes so much sense. Right. Because the value that we bring to the table is only a fraction of the cost of what you would hire a full time CFO to be. So kind of with my background, I married the two ideas together and kind of the value that we offer over here at Robin Consulting and is not really specifically the accounting and bookkeeping that we're always talking about. Charles. It's really more of the analytics behind driving financial performance based on the operating decisions that CEOs and CMOs and CTOs really, really need from that right hand person of the cfo. So that's kind of where the idea came to life where maybe I can put together a package that details a lot of analytics, a lot of financial modeling so that my clients can really estimate what the cash flow is going to be at the end of each month. I know that was a lot, but I just kind of wanted to get an idea out there that it's like it's so much more than just modeling and analytics. Right. There's a lot more that kind of goes into it. So we can handle a bevy of things over here at Robin Consulting, but that's majority of the gist.

Okay, gotcha. And so what, what made you want to go from corporate to working for Yourself, like, that's. That's a big jump. Like, usually people, you hit the pinnacle. I got the CFO job. I have fat salary and benefits and trust and status. And then when you start working for yourself, you kind of start all over again. Like, what made you decide to do that?

I think the word is equity. But to round that into simpler terms, I'm watching paychecks go out, obviously, as you know, the CFO being directly responsible for the accounting and finances of the organization. I saw where the money was going. I saw the poor use of it. I saw the mismanaged funds, and a good bit of it was just kind of like, you know what? I could probably do this for myself a hell of a lot better. So it's. It's. It's really two parts. One, the equity and two, betting on myself at the end of the day to. To make the jump kind of into consulting, which had. I don't know why. I don't know why. You know, at the young age of 22, graduating college, I always told myself I wanted to be a consultant. So I kind of just jumped right in cold feet and made the best of it. So two years ago, and no looking back now.

Okay. Like, yeah, it's funny. I ended up doing kind of the same thing. This is probably a thought process that you had is, man, I made these guys this kind of money this year. Why don't I get to make that for myself?

Yeah.

Like, you see all the numbers, and you're like, huh, I made this guy $7 million in profit last year, and they are not as smart as me. And I did not make $7 million.

Up to, like, oh, I helped with that client. Oh, I specifically won that deal myself. Oh, I lowered that cost. Like, you just start adding all these things up, and you see the profit formula evolve, and it's like. Like, that was literally completely me. I added 500,000, a million dollars straight to the bottom line just in a couple of months. So it's like, why don't I get a percentage of that? Why am I just getting this fixed paycheck? Funny how that works out.

Yeah. Here's your nice bonus at the end of the year. You're like, that's like 1% of what it should be, but thanks. So you and I work together over a period of 90 days, like our coaching program. What was kind of the issue you were running into before you and I started working together?

Yeah, the big. The big struggle for me, and we go back and forth on this. I really want to qualify it as I'll use my sports analogies here, but it's at bats, right? And a big, big problem that I was running into was, you know, my background being almost exclusively finance and analytics. You know, I think of myself as kind of a, you know, keyboard or Excel warrior over here. I didn't have as much sales experience closing nor attracting the right lead. So it's a combination of prospecting for the right client and winning them over with an irresistible offer. The big proponent where you gave me a lot of success is really kind of through the paid advertising, through the Google reach, through developing an offer that conveys the right messaging that addresses the client's pain points that they currently have today to fulfilling their dreams of where they see their company going. So the biggest thing was getting those sales at bats and practices, knowing that If I handle 10 calls, 10 appointments a month, then I'm going to be able to close at least two of them, which is going to add right about 120,000, 200,000 in contract value towards my entire business throughout the year. So that was probably the biggest turning point. But I want to say the most important thing was the packaging that you really helped me kind of transform my kind of sloppy, what I called white glove services into a very tight package and concise offering to my customers that conveys a ton of value, that delivers a ton of value. That was message the right way to address my customers concerns. That was, that was really, I think the key piece that was really missing from my mom in addition to obviously all the messaging and sales support.

So let's talk about the packaging part because this is, this is something a lot of people struggle with. Most people we work with are like you, really, really smart. Whether it's a finance background, an accounting background or it's bookkeeping or even a little bit of a non traditional route. Sometimes we're a little too smart for our own good because our finance brain's here and our client's finance brain is here and there's a big gap. What specifically about the packaging part like made it easier? Like how is that, how is that helpful?

I think I get what you're saying about acting too smart or using verbiage that is way too high level for even the marketplace or niche that I'm going after, which is going to be tech CEOs or SaaS. CEOs because specifically the way that their brains are trained to think is almost simplify everything. These are engineers, these are product guys. So by really pointing out the unique pain points I was able or we were able, you and I were able to sit together and, and identify what solution can I offer to these 10, 15, 20 pain points that SaaS and tech CEOs are going through today. And then from there we identified, you know, what's a priority that we should immediately attack for those clients that we should immediately attack for these technology organizations versus what are ones that are going to be a lot more costly, both in my time and investment and in capital for the client for me to solve for those. So we kind of built like a product roadmap for ourselves of prioritizing the lowest hanging fruit that to go and solve for the clients first in the discovery process or my implementation of hey, here's my fractional CFO package. I'm going to come in and clean up xyz because I know as a tech CEO this is probably what you're worrying about the most. So let me come in and show you, you know, my salt and show you that I can prove this out and then from there we can continue with the ongoing services to manage your financials. So it's more about like getting them to rethink about how their business interacts with. But that package was exclusively built to resolve the biggest pains that take away majority of their time from them being the CEO of their company. Right over here worrying about financials, if they can pay their employees, if they have to worry about cash flow or go and get a line of credit, when it's like, why don't you have me deal deal with that for you? So that was the logic behind it.

Yeah, that makes sense because often, oftentimes when are presenting something to them, they're not thinking about reconciliation or cash flow or modeling. They're just like, can I grow? Can I pay employees? Like, am I going to have more money? Sometimes it's the, you know, go check the Chase app on my phone. Do I have more money in my bank account this month than last month? Which it's a little scary, but, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna skip that, that part. So when, when they're, they're doing it oftentimes like there's four things you get. You kind of want to talk your offer around, right? What you know, how to do, what you, what you like to do, what your client needs, what your client thinks they need. You know, if they knew what they needed, they would have already done it. Usually they don't use the right words because if they knew the right words for the problem, they would have already fixed it. So I know, before you and I joined, started working together, you looked at a whole bunch of different things in growing your firm, whether it's like, other people or other things like that. Like what?

So it's good to see that all these consultative accounting finance frameworks kind of.

Drops a little bit. Your offer kind of dialed in in a way that made sense, because I know before you were doing very heavy white glove, and we wanted to pull back some of that. I know, like, we like doing that, but it's not as profitable. Was there anything that, like, we did that was, like, specifically helpful or, like, really kind of stuck out to you?

Yeah, I think in addition to, I guess going back onto the original offer that I offer clients, which is really kind of billing for the upfront implementation, which requires the majority of my work, I'm starting to realize now the hardest work, when I jump into a client's QuickBooks, when I jump into a client's, you know, financial model, when I try to understand, like, what's going on with their business, I can spend probably, like, 10 to 15 hours that first month building the entire framework that I effectively need to drive their business in the future.

You're.

I'm pretty much building them a car, building the dashboard, building the steering wheel, building the wheels themselves just so I could jump in and then drive. Every month forward is kind of the idea of, you know, it streamlines my work as a fractional CFO. Knowing that I've organized their QuickBooks, I've organized their chart of accounts, and I've got the business in a good place to succeed now. I can just do less muscle power with my hands and being the keyboard Excel warrior that I usually am, and start using, like, my brain instead and start influencing them with all the frameworks and strategies that I've learned from other clients and kind of take that with me. So that upfront bandwidth that I sacrifice to help a client is then removed. So the harder I work up front. Right. For the first month and a half is completely taken away later down the road when all I got to do is just manage the client's expectations and financials.

Yeah. And hopefully we get paid for it up front, too.

Yes.

Yeah. Because that could be a challenge. It's like, all right, they signed on and cool. They left after month one. Shoot.

I'm right.

Right. That's why we kind of show people the front end package. So I know you came to us at one spot. You know, you're at a different spot whether you don't want to share, like, actual numbers or size as a percentage. But like what's been kind of the change over the last 90 or so days for you?

Yeah, yeah. So can I share numbers if you want?

Yeah, yeah.

So I was, I was averaging around $10,000 a month and a combo of that was one or two retainer clients, some project work, some random financial models, like bunch of pricing models that customers were expected. So rounded up to 10k a month is really where I was floating between after I think about 45 days with you, we increased a couple of my clients retainers, we offered a new expanded services that minimize my work and then we kind of put, put all the other work that I can do kind of on the side, but also as an additional offering for that white glove kind of touch if someone needs a valuation model or a random pricing model. But going basically from 10k all in last August to now $35,000 today. I guess that's a more than three extra term. Right. So, but so, and right now as I sit here, we're on pace for $90,000 in reoccurring revenue a month. So exciting times ahead for Robin Consulting group.

I mean, $90,000 a month reoccurring. You only need $83,000 a month to do a million dollars a year.

Yep, yep. Aggressively hiring and aggressively planning for the next couple of steps and pushing out paid ads. I want to double down on my roas. So there's a whole bunch of stuff that's, that's coming out. So I'm excited to get some more content out there.

Heck yeah, man. That's awesome. I'm glad to hear that. So that's a big change from 10 to 35. Right. When we look at that. Because I know one of my big changes was I started off in fractional CFO that added on, still had the corporate job, did that for a couple years, became CFO of a middle market company, still did fractional CFO that was growing. And I got to a point where I was kind of making the same in both jobs and I quit being the corporate cfo and I was like, oh, wow, my life is a hundred times better. Right. You talk about stress and whatever else. Right. Like the whole, my wife doesn't see me because I'm hunched over like this on a computer for 19 hours a day. It's funny, I do a presentation. I like zoom in on my face. You can see the vein popping on my forehead. I was like, do I look happy? So let's, let's talk about that. Like, are you spending more time at work, the same, less like, what does that look like?

Yeah. I mean, the big takeaway is absolutely, I'm prioritizing my bandwidth, and my bandwidth has gone from being this Excel modeler, perfectionist, that everything's got to look good. That way, it's simplified for my customers to understand and my clients to understand to now, today, I'm pushing things over the fence, delegating responsibilities to my team, putting responsibilities on probably the more effective and more impactful items for my clients, like a cash flow forecast, instead of putting together, you know, an entire variance analysis just to get, like, the key points across. So my bandwidth has effectively gone down from 60, 70 hours a week where I was last August before we met, to today, pretty flat around 40, 40, 40 hours a week. And most of that is actually working today on the business rather than in the business, which is probably one of the more important things, because as a cfo, I can't sit here doing all the financial modeling. I can't sit here doing majority of these lower kind of less strategic hours, more on the business, less kind of doing a lot more of the grunt work. It's probably a better way to frame it.

So a lot of people we speak to, right? It's January. Tax time's coming up. Depending upon what your mix of revenues from, is it tax heavy, bookkeeping heavy, CFO heavy? This can be, like, a really stressful time of year for some people, and oftentimes we speak to them and they're like, well, you know, let me get through tax season. And they usually come on the phone of like, hey, I want to get out of taxes. And I'm like, okay, well, why are you signing up for a whole nother season of taxes when you just told me you don't want to do it? And I. I sit there and scratch my head confused because it's like, why do you sign up for more of what you don't want to do? We can help you get out of that. Please explain, you know, whether that's fear or they don't believe in themselves or whatever it is you join, you're working a lot, right? The people. So a lot of people we speak to during this time of year are probably working those kind of hours. Now. You're not working those kind of hours, and you're. You're earning a lot more. How did you find the time to do a lot of the stuff that we did, like, made a rebuild, your pricing, do some marketing stuff, get some sales stuff. You know, you and I are working on some hiring Stuff that we were just talking about. How did you find that time to do that?

I think, I guess if you're asking, like, the investment itself comes down to not just, you know, the capital or the fee, it doesn't come down to just the time, but it's really more of the commitment. That's the hardest, one of those layers to really kind of find time for. When I broke up kind of my schedule, I blocked it out of when I was gonna spend time dedicated to working with Charles and dedicated to working on my business. It was mostly found kind of outside the normal hours of nine to five. I think it was basically maybe three hours during the week and then two hours during the weekday when I put my daughter to sleep. Life was, you know, cleaning up the kitchen or in bed already. And it was just, you know, maybe a 9 to 10pm one hour on a Wednesday, and another 6 to 7pm, another hour on a Friday, you know, and it's really not that crazy. Work in the last six weeks was really when I started transforming my businesses top line and effectively started focusing on generating more profit by spending, you know, ultimately less time in the business, delegating some of those responsibilities, as well as, you know, bettering my sales process. So majority of it was maybe five, six hours a week. Our, you know, weekly meetings where we would catch up and work on improving my business and ultimately how to deal with certain types of clients. Because I came in with, you know, real estate client, I came in with a tech client. I came in with, and I really just wanted to focus on, like, one single niche type. And that's where, like, Tech and SaaS had really spoken to me. But I would definitely recommend for anyone getting used to block scheduling, giving it a try as a cfo, or if you intend to be a fractional cfo, you need to have the ability to plan. It's innate in our blood if you want to be successful in this business. I would definitely say block scheduling has really helped, as well as setting a commitment to have deliverables completed that we can move on and graduate to the next step of your process, Charles. So, okay, that was probably the biggest one.

Yeah, that makes sense. I like. I like the word commitment that you mentioned, because when I went to school, my thought was, finance makes the most money. I'm gonna go to University of Florida. Like, not. Not a very large or not a very involved process. It was like, how can you make the most money? Finance. Cool. I'm gonna go to school for finance. Go to University of Florida. You know, that's the decision you make at 18 years old. You're not. And I'm not a complicated man working for myself, I never really imagined. One of the things I've noticed and you said the word commitment was it is a commitment, right? Whether it's a commitment to you, to your family, to your employees, right. To your customers, making that commitment to say, I'm going to work for myself and I'm going to go all in. And a lot of times I speak with people who have their business but aren't all in on their business. Maybe they're all in on their clients or all in on like the old way that they need to do things are all in on accounting instead of all in, like on the growth of their business. And if they. Maybe it's an understanding issue or maybe it's a belief issue or, or seeing it not. But if you see a new model and you're all in on you and you're not all in on like the way or the path, it just makes sense to move over and like, I don't know, like you, like you found time, right? Yeah, sure. It was maybe at 9:00pm, right. Sometimes if I launch something new, I'm in front of the computer at 9pm not all the time, but sometimes I am. And so I think like the word commitment you said really stuck out to me because working for yourself is a commitment, right? Like, I don't want to be like, oh, you can be a millionaire and work two hours a year. Like, they don't. It'll work like that. That'd be cool.

Yeah.

I have not figured that out. When I do, I will let you know.

Definitely. I think Horosi has a. Alex Hormozi has a mental framework that he runs through where he's like some sort of. You're in a car and you gotta have, you know, your rear view mirrors keeping you within the lane. And that lane is your scope creep. Like, I could be a fractional CFO that does accounting. I don't. Right now, I don't do bookkeeping, I don't do tax filing. I don't do any of that because my background similar to yours is FPA Revenue management, a little more the analytics side. So by keeping myself in my lane, which was some of the stuff that we had worked on, right. That car also has traffic behind it that is pushing it forward. Right. Because if you slow down, you're gonna slow down the rest of traffic and they're gonna honk at you. So you gotta keep going. So you need Something that's constantly pushing you, keeping you within scope. But then at the same time, your mission or vision is to grow to X revenue. So you've got to have like a carrot on a stick in front of you that you're going towards. So keeping your blinders on, keeping yourself in that, you know, focus lane is super, super critical to not go out and reach into. I could easily reach into accounting right now. I can easily offer, you know, product services, right? Or product management services. I don't want to go that route. I want to stay exactly where I'm at and continue to succeed in this model before jumping lanes, before expanding, kind of like my service reach. So that guiding light towards my mission right now is probably the most important part that I'm chasing while not getting distracted on random side projects, random whatever, whatever the next journey is, right. I want to be continue here at least until, you know, a million dollars a year, $2 million a year in top line, and then start to expand Robin Consulting Group into a much larger faction almost.

That makes sense. If it works, why not do more of it?

Yeah, exactly.

Like so many people get stuck, they do a little bit and then they try something different. When it's like, why not just do more, right? Don't, don't get distracted. So we work together for a while. If there's anybody, maybe they're watching this, right? Or they consume my content or looking at this and maybe they're on the fence about joining or booking a call. Like, what would you say to them?

Yeah, I would say, look, if you're looking to explore into fractional CFO services and you've got an accounting background, you've got a finance background, maybe you're just an analyst or a data scientist. Charles can help improve one your package, your offering, he can build you something tight that people are going to want to respond to and create value out of the messaging that you go to market with. And then also there's a ton of value in profit surges I ideas and frameworks from just the group, but also in getting your company organized for paid ads, for building legit agency, for building a legit firm. There's a lot of different avenues that Charles can help you with. I mean, he'll obviously start with the lowest hanging fruit, which is probably going to be your offer, and addressing your ideal customers pain points at the end of the day. So I can't recommend, you know, what Charles, what you've done for me, what you've done for Robin Consulting and how you've just already distilled everything of a fractional CFO already into a bottle service. But it's. It's very. It's really interesting because not everyone's services is exactly the same. It focuses on. What's the Japanese word? Ikigai. Like, what you want to do, what you're good at, what keeps you whole. So it's like all those things kind of meshed into one, and you've compiled that framework basically into what a fractional CFO can do. You can be for yourself is maybe the way to phrase that.

Thanks, man. I appreciate that. And so if you're watching this, you can check us out on whether it be YouTube or Instagram, or go to our website, which is profitsearchgroup.com so if someone's looking to work with you, learn a little bit more about, like, maybe they're not super good at analytics, they want to bring on your firm, or if they want to hire you, like, where can people find you on the Internet?

Absolutely. So I'm on. I'm on LinkedIn@LinkedIn.com backslash revenue, Rick. And then I've also got Robin CG.com is.

Is our firm's company page Robin CG.com. okay, cool. So that's where you can re. Reach out to him. If you guys have any other questions or anything else, let us know. Put in the comments. Whatever else, if you want to reach out to us, you can always go to profitsearch group.com. hey, man, I really appreciate you being here.

Same here, Charles. Thanks, man. We'll catch you later, dude. Yeah.