Should you let the next generation build your brand? With Jim Downes of Blueprint CFO

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Today we are going to South California. We're going to talk about the cost of chaos because you have a business called Blueprint cfo, which is, you know, chief financial officer. So Jim, tell us what you do at the Blueprint cfo.

So, Jim, we're an accounting company, in effect, but we're a different kind of accounting company because we help our clients use their current financial data to improve the performance of their business in the future. And that's kind of making, you know what I like to think of it as making accounting relevant because most of the time the financial statements that a client gets put in a drawer and nobody really looks at the data to say, you know, what does this data tell us that we could be doing better. And so that's the whole focus to Blueprint cfl.

Now, Jim, we also had this conversation about, you know, getting out of the way as a founder and letting the next generation build the brand. Do you mind sharing that dynamic?

No. So, I mean, I know we know we're not going to talk about this, but I'm 74 years old and so I started Blueprint when I was 71 years old, but really I started it when I was about 50 years old, but it went through a lot of iterations and I never really got it right until I came to the conclusion that the timing was right for this kind of service. And I was able to surround myself with young people like you just mentioned that could help me make it happen. Because you can only take something so far on your own. You know, you may have the idea, but if you can't build a team of people that are talented, that get it and want to do the same things that you're putting forth as a unique mission of a company, then you're not going to get there.

And Jim, I don't get many chances to ask someone in your position this question. How much should companies be spending on marketing?

Every company's different, so it's hard to say exactly. You know, I always think in the my mind that a 10%. 10% of your sales should be spent on marketing. But we see many companies that have growing that don't spend that much money on marketing. But you know, many times companies are just spending money blindly without really knowing what the benefits of of that marketing money is. Most companies don't track that information, which is kind of, I don't say stupid, but definitely not something they should be doing. They should be tracking where those clients are coming from and making sure the money they're spending is being spent wisely.

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