How a CFO Can Transform Your Profits & Wealth with Michael King

Hey there, real quick, before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Oh, my God. Another great episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur show. And this one, I'm talking to someone by the name of Michael King. Michael King. You know, he's a nuclear engineer turned cfo. I mean, he went from working in the military on submarines to running a plywood company to building a business. And he talks about that journey. He talks about what it means to be a fractional cfo, what it takes, why you need one, how it's going to elevate your business, how it's going to accelerate your profits and also accelerate your wealth. I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. All right, so check it out. I'll see you in the episode. This is the absolute entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth success so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom, because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur.

Hey there, Michael. So good to have you on the show, man. I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Man.

This is going to be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to being here and talking to you about some. Some exciting stuff today.

Yeah, well, as you all heard on in the intro, Michael and I have kind of walked in the same circles for, for a little while and, and we're only just meeting in the last, say, you know, three, four months. But it was one of those things that when we. We had our first conversation, we go, oh, no, this is, this is a place where we can keep having conversations. You're going to find as we talk to Michael as his journey, that, one, he's got a journey that's. That's unique. But two, he's. He's got a heart of gold. And three, he's smart as hell.

So.

So let's just start. For those that don't know who Michael King is and what Michael King does, let's just start there. And let's just start where, you know, how did we get here? What, you know, because you have a unique kind of background.

It's. It's not the classic story that you've heard 100 times, to be sure. I actually started my career off as a nuclear engineer in the Navy on submarines, supervising the operation of nuclear power plants. And I did that for a little over 11 years and decided maybe it's time that we don't live in a steel tube anymore and, you know, tool around the Atlantic Ocean. So I made the traditional career transition from nuclear power into plywood manufacturing, of all things. And I started off at a, at a plywood manufacturing plant with, as a staff engineer. And then through a random turn of events, I found myself running the plant about a year or so into my tenure there. And part of that, Mel, was my responsibilities was I had PNL accountability. But as you might imagine, with a degree in nuclear engineering and, you know, submarine military service, I wasn't really sure what PRL stood for, much less how to be accountable for it. And in that role, I'll never forget, I had a controller and some staff accountants that reported to me. And every couple of weeks they'd bring me this stack of papers, reports, you know, different accounting reports, finance reports, and.

Listen to accountants, to accounts. That's artwork. So just, just so clear it is.

And I would tell them, like, ladies, just put those in my inbox and I'll take a look at them after lunch. And as soon as they left my office, I. My fingers started going, and I'm googling, you know, what does IRR mean? And trying to figure out long term and short term liabilities. But as you might imagine, you're not going to YouTube your way into a set of financials the company's doing, you know, $90 million a year. You're not going to Google your way into understanding the financials. So one day I get up the courage to, I go to the controller and, you know, sweet Southern lady, you know, kind of like my mom, and her name was Ms. Denise. And one day I said, Ms. Denise, gosh, can you help me understand what I'm looking at here? And she says, bless your little heart, sit out. And what happened? Yeah, what happened, Mel, is she starts using accounting terms to explain other accounting terms. And my head's spinning. And after a while I said, Time out, Ms. Denise. What I need to understand is how do I use these reports to make better decisions in the business tomorrow? And she pauses for just a second and she says, well, sweetie, that's your job, not mine. So I said, okay, fair enough. And so I decided to use my GI Bill and I go to get an MBA because I wanted to learn the language of business. I realized my passion was more aligned with business than engineering. But when I got to business school, first day in graduate level accounting, there's a PhD up there teaching, and he was doing a lot of the same stuff that the controller had done, you know, and when I started thinking about it and said, you know, accountants are a lot like engineers or software developers. They're great at communicating with one another, but a lot of times they struggle to communicate to others, to decision makers in business. In this example. And I later learned that, you know, 50% of small businesses fail in the first five years. 80%, they don't even make it to 10 years. But when you pull the data back, when you peel the onion back, what I learned is most of them aren't failing because of a bad product or a bad service. Most of them are failing because of bad financial decisions. And so when I consider the fact that a lot of folks in the accounting and finance world struggle to communicate with these. These business owners that desperately need to understand what they. What the accountants know, I said, this is a problem. And it was something that I got really passionate about solving. So seven years ago, I started my own company. And we didn't call it this at the time, but it's. It's a fractional CFO service. And my mission was to help business owners understand their numbers so they could make better decisions. And so, yeah, seven years ago next week actually is our birthday, we started serving small business owners as fractional CFOs. And, you know, about 18 months ago or so, I got bored. One day I kind of had. My firm was more or less on autopilot. I had a team doing all the things. And as you know, Mel, a board entrepreneur, is a dangerous entrepreneur. Yes. And one of our mutual friends, shannon, actually was DMing me on Instagram, and she said, mike, could you please work with me to coach me, like, show me how you built this firm. And I said, you know what? I had some free time on my hands. And so that was the birthday of a new business called the CFO Accelerator, where I work with accountants and other fractional CFOs to help them learn how to start scale and optimize their advisory services because I, you know, I'm very passionate. Like what I said earlier about the need to help business owners understand their numbers, I want to get that out. I want to empower more people to learn how to do that, because those small business owners are the backbone of our economy. It's not Tesla. It's not, you know, Apple. It's small business owners. And so I said, this is a great opportunity for me to get out in front of more people and empower them to not only build a firm that, that they're loving and doing work, that they're, that they're loving and getting paid more, but it's also a way to further impact small business owners.

This is cool. And I'm going to break it down for the, for the watchers, the viewers, the listeners, and all that stuff, because I think it's really important. Too often and, and as a cpa, okay, I get it. And I hear it all, all the time. Too often we actually come at our financial information, whether it's personal finances or business finances, as.

A compliance issue. In other words, I just got to do the accounting because I had to do the tax returns, and I got to do that. And nothing could be further from the truth. The most, the most elementary, rudimentary use of your financial information is for compliance purposes for filing reports and everything, because you can. We talked about this before we even started. We can farm that out. The value in your numbers is in the interpretation of those numbers and the application of the lessons that you can extract from the numbers. And I, and I think that's the thing that as entrepreneurs and I, I hear it especially in the space that, that I, that I play in. Well, I'm a creator. I'm not good with numbers. Well, y', all, your financial success on business and personally is on the other side of that math problem. And it's basic math. But if we don't, you know what, what Mike is doing is he's standing between the reports and you as the interpreter, the guide, and the one that will demystify the stuff that's going on so you can operate at a higher level. More profits, optimization, scaling, all those things. And you can't do it without good numbers.

I, I've always remember what one of our mutual friends, Brendan Burchard, says. You know, yes, in business, mission is everything, but without money, we can't sustain the mission.

Yeah.

And I think it's, it does a disservice to those that you want to go and serve to not Understand your own numbers. Because when, when you're not making smart financial decisions, you're at the end of the day, you're limiting your impact. You're limiting your ability to serve more people at a deeper level. And I like the way. I like the way you worded that, Mel. The way I've always kind of looked at it is, you know, one slight nuance to what you said is, you know, is you've got the books over here and then you've got your goals, you've got your dreams, you've got these big plans that you want to do for yourself. And a lot of times we don't know how to bridge the gap between QuickBooks and those goals. We don't understand, you know, is it safe for me to hire somebody else right now? Do I have enough money, do I have enough cash in the bank to be able to pay myself more? Can I invest in this, you know, new social media manager? We don't know those things. And so what I've seen so many times that it hurts my heart. Now, people tend to do one or two things when that happens, and this is especially true for creative types, is they'll do one or two things. They'll either cross their fingers and close their eyes and pray to baby Jesus that this decision will work out or they do nothing.

Yeah.

In both of those can be equally damning to the success of your business. There is another way. There is a way to understand is this decision safe, Can I do this with confidence that it's going to produce the profitability and the cash so that this goal becomes a reality in three years? And that's where a cfo, a fractional or a virtual CFO can really step in to help put numbers behind those dreams that you have.

So cool. So let's just talk more tactically so people understand, because I. Look, you're preaching the choir here. I mean, I get it. And, and I think that if we truly are looking to one, create a business of impact, that I call it the legacy factor, a business that outlasts us. And, and so what we need is a business that can run without us, which means that we need team, we need systems, we need processes, we need all of those things. If we want financial freedom personally, we need to create the. The business machine on one hand, but we need to create the money machine on the other hand. And it's the money machine that's going to give you the freedom and it's going to give you what you need. And so in both those machines that we're trying to build. There's numbers involved, there's management involved, there's ideas involved. And so if we truly want that, it's important. Now we hear these terms, controller, cfo, CEO, visionary.

You know.

An implementer, or you know, those integrator. We hear all those terms.

Where does, where do you see a CFO fitting in? And when is the most optimal time in your mind to, to bring one on? And the beauty of using a fractional CFO versus saying, oh gosh, I got to go hire someone.

Sure, sure. So let's start with just getting some common definitions, understanding of some of these roles. Let's start with like a bookkeeper and we'll use the term bookkeeper and accountant interchangeably. They're not necessarily the same thing. But just for the sake of conversation here, let's assume those are the same thing. When you think of a bookkeeper or an accountant. Normally with those folks, they, they're passionate about what they've been trained to do their whole career. Their experience is, is reporting on what happened in the past. What was my profitability last month, how much cash did I have last quarter? What was my revenue last year? They're really good at telling you what happened in the past. And just like you said, Mel, those things are really important for compliance purposes. The tax man wants to know what you did last year so you can figure out how much you owe this year. Right. So it's really important to have those fundamental things like bookkeeping and accounting in place. But like I mentioned earlier, a lot of times as entrepreneurs, whether you're CEO or the visionary, you're not really thinking too much about what happened last quarter or last year. You're thinking about next quarter, next year, five years, 10 years from now. And so just like you need help figuring out what happened in the past, you also need help figuring out what is going to happen in the future. So you've got these visionary ideas, you've got these bold goals that are out there and you start putting the pieces in place to bring those to reality. But you start asking yourselves questions like, okay, in order for me to get to this three year goal, I'm going to need a full time marketing manager, or I'm going to need an operations director, or I'm going to need to increase my ad spend in order to get there. And then you start worrying about things like, is it profitable to do that? Will I have enough money to do that? Does it make sense? What are the tax implications next year if I do these things? This year. That's where the CFO comes into play. This. If the bookkeeper and the accountant are rearview mirror looking, then the fractional or the virtual CFO are forward looking. So as you start to have questions and uncertainties about the future, that's when you might start considering bringing on a virtual or fractional cfo. And I think it's also important to say that the difference between a virtual or fractional CFO is simply branding, it's marketing. They're both the same thing. Anybody that tells you different is making stuff up. Uh, they're, they're the same thing with just a different name on it. So that fractional CFO is the one that can help you kind of look towards the future and figure out the, the viability or the feasibility of those goals that you have. They're the person that can say, I see where you're trying to take the ship. Watch out for these potholes. You know, I've worked with a lot of businesses that have tried this. This doesn't work, or this works really well. They're that first sentence, looking into a crystal ball in helping you kind of predict what's going to come and give you more confidence around those decisions. Now when should you get one? That's a question I get asked all the time now. The bookkeeper and the accountants. I would argue that should be one of your first, if not your first hire. You get into a business and you start generating any amount of revenue. I want you to go out and find a bookkeeper and bookkeepers. You can get them. I mean, they're all over the world now. You can find them from know, $200 a month to $2,000 a month. When you're just getting started. I would lean towards, more towards the 200 or $300 a month. But once you start getting into the high five figures, certainly into the six figures, you want somebody that's, that's got their, their game together, somebody that's got some miles behind them. And the reason that that's important is, remember I said they're figuring out the stuff that relates to taxes. And so if you've got a bookkeeper that's not doing your job, one of two things is likely to be true. You're either going to overpay on taxes or you underpay on taxes. Both of those are bad. So it's, it's definitely an investment, not an expense to get a quality bookkeeper and an accountant. Now where you'll get a lot of different answers is when does it make sense for to hire a CFO. And I've been doing this for seven years. I've coached hundreds of fractional and virtual CFOs. Now, I think the rule of thumb that tends to be the best guidance is unless you're in a SaaS company, and I'll address them separately, if you're in a service based business, a product based business, somewhere around, you know, maybe half a million in revenue, it can start to make a lot of sense because when you're smaller than that, there's not enough variability or uncertainty. I know you want the help, but to get a CFO that's worth their weight, it won't, the expense just won't pay for itself. Yeah, there's no, there's, there's not enough ROI. There's just not. Now you can hire CFOs that are less expensive that you could afford at that price, but the reality is most of them don't have enough experience to be able to provide the strategic guidance that you need. And so I would rather you just hold off a little bit longer until you get your business to that point. Now, if you're a software company, like a SaaS company, or you're somebody that's looking to raise significant capital early on, then it would make sense to get that fractional CFO that has experience in your industry, that has experience with VCs or PEs, you might want to consider bringing them on super early so that they can help you with the complex models and pitch decks and those kind of things. There's a whole set subset of experience and skill sets that you'll need if that's true for you. So kind of in summary, bookkeepers, rear view mirror looking, CFOs, forward looking, you want to think about bringing that CFO on if you're looking for big investors or you're a software company early on. Otherwise I would say, you know, half a million to $1 million in revenue, you'll normally start to see a great payback on that investment.

Cool. Now I can hear, I can, I can hear them all saying now, but I got an, I got a CPA or I have an advisor. Now I have my answer to this.

I'm curious what your answer to this and I'll give you mine afterwards. Okay, probably, they're probably the same.

Maybe now there's a lot of pressure, like what would Mel say?

The question is, how do you respond? How do you respond to someone says, but I already have a cpa.

So the way that I look at that is think about Doctors. All right. The term doctor is pretty broad. There's a lot of different skills in, in education degrees that, that constitute a doctor. And so if, if you've got a pain in your foot, right, but you go to a dentist to get help. Both of you know, a podiatrist and a dentist are both doctors, but they have very different skill sets. They have different experiences, they've gone to different schools for it. And it's the same thing with like, but I have an accountant and you have somebody that has a very valuable and necessary skill set, but they've been trained on a very different type of thing than what you're looking for help on. On the forward looking. They're typically trained on what's happened in the past, not on the future looking stuff. Okay. Now there's some, there are some amazing fractional and virtual CFOs that are also accountants, but they've also been working on the forward looking stuff. So I would say, you know, if you have that mindset of, you know, I already have an accountant, then again, I just ask you, I would challenge you, what questions are you asking for help with? And there's normally some, some telltale signs that you're asking the foot doctor for the dental issues. Normally the way that that kind of materializes is people will start to get frustrated. They'll start to say things like this, mel, gosh, I've been asking my, my accountant to help me figure out what am I going to owe in taxes next year. I've been begging my accountant to help me figure out my cash flows. I've been asking my accountant to look at my P and L and figure out what are some things that I could do to increase my profit margins, to increase my cash. And they just won't help. They tell me they will, but then I don't ever hear back from them. And normally the reason is they want to help you, but again, they're not trained with that and so they end up ghosting in a lot of cases. That's normally like the number one sign you're asking the right questions. You're just asking them to the wrong person.

Yeah. So I love to hear your. I am 100% in agreement with what you're saying because it is really easy to believe. And this is really just because of a lack of understanding that, hey, they have a cpa, they should know this stuff.

But if you're not specifically trained in it, you don't. Okay, Correct. And, and so not all CPAs are created equal. I have a CPA most of my work is forward looking because I'm valuing businesses. I'm looking towards the future. What's the value, what's the, the risks? What are the returns? You know, whereas the majority of them are, like you said, rearview mirror, historical scribes, if you will, to do that. So, and I want to bring this up because I'm, I'm hoping that we get you, the listener, the viewer to understand that just because you have an account doesn't mean that you're out of the woods. Is it the right person? Do you have the right team? Do you have the right people to carry the ball with you? The next stage of your business, the next season of your business, and that may be a fractional cfo, it may be other people. I know that I got put on a board of directors. This is now going back a few years. That's, it'll be 20 years in two months that I've been on this company. But I actually, they brought me in to value the company because they wanted to sell. Now this was a company that was founded in the 1800s.

Wow.

So the late 1800s, still privately held. I was going to value it. So we're going to sell. But I noticed that they're, hey, they're, their margins are shrinking, their market share is shrinking. And I, oh. And I'm looking at these, these, the board of directors, which were all shareholders and saying, hey, you can do this. I mean, you can, but you're leaving a lot of money on the table. You don't jump ship. When we're on the rapids and we're ready to go over the edge of the, the, the, the, the falls. And they said, well, what do you suggest? And I said, we look forward, we retrench, we rebuild, we grow. And at that time, then you can choose.

To sell or not sell. Well, at that time they were doing probably 20 mil and we just crossed 300. Wow. You know, and, and, but the, the. What I want to get at is why I think that happened. One, the management team changed, but also I thought a year. So long story short, they, they, I basically told them, stop your dividends, stop paying dividends to shareholders reinvest in the business. I thought they looked at me like I was the devil because I said, you're not getting checks anymore, you know.

But they did it.

And a year later they asked me to be on the board and I was their very first outside director. Wow. Since then they put, we put three other directors on the board that are outside directors, outside perspective, not inside Perspective that, that we all get compensated. But what happened is that brings new blood, new vision, new ideas, new strategies to a business, to a future, to a financial future that wouldn't otherwise be there. Because as an entrepreneur especially, you're entrenched in that day to day mix of stuff and you can't see the other things that maybe other people might be able to see. And so this is the thing that I think becomes valuable with some of the stuff that you're doing, is you get a chance to step in and give strategic vision to something that they may not see, that may be obvious to you.

You hit a word there that I say all the time and I think it's important for everyone to understand a lot of the tangible deliverables that a virtual or fractional CFO can give you. Don't tell them I told you this, but a lot of the deliverables are kind of a commodity. So what kind of things should a fractional CFO be giving you? You should have things like financial health assessments, cash flow forecast, budgets, projections. Those things are all very important and they're, they're valuable to, to an extent, they're great for decision making tools. But the word that you use, Mel, is the thing that I want you to be looking for if you're considering hiring somebody like this. It's perspective. Perspective is the, the great equalizer. It's the, or the great differentiator. You want to bring someone in that has a different perspective or a deeper perspective based on their experiences and their education and all the things that they've done. So what I really want to encourage you is like, if you get to the point where you're like, I think it might be time, I want you to really focus on how are they going to deliver their perspective. And it's important a lot of times that they have perspective in your industry or a related industry. Because, you know, again, if you go, and I'll give you a great example, if you own a restaurant and you brought my team in to be your fractional cfo, it would be a dumpster fire. It would be horrible. We would not serve you at the level that you deserve to be served at. Because we have no experience in the restaurant industry, we're not going to be able to offer perspectives on, you know, best in practice and what does world class look like? What is the industry doing and how do you need to respond to stay at the front of it? We can't give that to you, but there are those that can. On the other hand, if you're a service based business. If you're a plumber, an electrician, a construction company, mover, roofer, we come in there and tear it up for you. Right. Like, because that's what we know. And so we were able to offer a lot of perspectives on those, like, service based industries. So perspective is a really key word I think, when it comes to CFO services. And so as you're interviewing people, make sure that they understand and know how to offer their perspective. If they're just telling you about cash flow forecast and projections and that perspective isn't part of what they're, they're selling you, you might have the wrong person.

Yeah. So good. So good. I want to shift gears just a little bit. Okay. Because there's another side of this that I think is really important. There are people out there that are in, you know, the, the expert space, the authority space. They're, they're coaches, they're mentors, they're consultants, and they do business consulting. And this idea of potentially adding this element of CFO consulting or fractional CFO could be an interesting dynamic. And one of the things we talk about in the affluence blueprint is the importance. The first pillar is the generate pillar. It's how do you scale and optimize your cash flow? Because it's that cash flow that builds the assets, that build the money machine to give you the financial freedom. And we need that cash flow. And one of the, one of the best ways I know to be able to do that is to take expertise, to pay, take knowledge, to take a experience, to take a perspective and bring that to the marketplace in a different way. And so I know that on one hand you're doing the CFO stuff, but on the other hand you're working with people to help them say, hey, there's another arm of your business, be it a cpa, be it a consultant, be it someone that you could bring in, that is a profitable, can be a profitable income stream beyond, you know, swapping hours for dollars and commodity type of work. Can we talk a little bit about that journey, that journey of someone that maybe wants to be that cfo, that fractional or virtual cfo, be it a CPA or someone else.

Sure. I think there's a couple of things that have to exist. This is actually a very touchy point in the, in the CFO industry right now. There's a couple of things that have to exist before you can get in the game, in my opinion. Again, I've been doing this a long time and I've coached hundreds of people. So I come at this from a position of I've got some miles behind me. Now you've got to have both technical skills as well as what I call CFO leadership skills. Now the technical skills are pretty obvious. Okay, so what are those forward looking skills that you've got to have? Well, you've got to have a fundamental understanding of accounting is one. Okay, do you need to be a cpa? No, I'm not a CPA and I've been doing this a long time. I made a lot of money at it. I'm proof I don't have to be a cpa. But you do have to have a fundamental understanding of how accounting works. You've got to understand how to put together things like cash flow forecast. You've got to understand how to do budgets, projections, those types of things. You've got to understand how those work as a ticket to admission to get in the game. But then you've also got to have what I call CFO leadership skills.

CFO leadership skills. And that's where it leans more towards coaching than technical skills. Because at the end of the day, if you're not able to get people to take action, then what are you really doing?

Yeah.

So if you've got the technical skills and you have the coaching skills or the leadership skills, and I just define leadership as the ability to motivate and inspire others to take action. Very simple definition. If you have that, then offering CFO services can be an amazing offering for you. It can be great because CFO services tend to be a lot less about dollars for hours and more about, like we said earlier, that perspective. So it's a much more value driven service than a time driven service. And so now what becomes true is three things. One, you're working fewer hours, you're making more money, but most importantly, you're having a higher level of impact, in my opinion, by offering those services.

And so what do you do with all that? Well, if you have more time, you can serve more clients. If you have more time, you can spend more time with your kids, traveling, doing whatever you want. You know, the sky's kind of the limit when it comes to that, but I think you got to have those requisites, you know, you've got to have the technical skills. Now the cool thing is you don't have to be, you know, a lot of people, a misconception they have is like, well, I'm not an expert enough, I don't have enough technical skills. I'm like Remember, you're not applying to be the fractional CFO of Tesla here, right? Looking at publicly traded companies that have, you know, billion dollar balance sheets and Gap is, you know, a massive concern, right? We're not talking about that. We're talking about small and medium sized businesses that are normally run by, you know, just, there's a CEO at the helm, they need help making better decisions, you know, so if you have some of those fundamental skills, you probably have enough to get in the game. Now do you need to build on those skills? I think always, always, always got to be building on both of those skills or you start to die. But you can definitely get in the game with that. Did that answer your question?

Yeah, I think it answered my question. And the other thing that I want to make sure people understand is that.

All skills are learnable. And, and so these are things that, that you can develop in the right environment with the right training, with the right coaches, with the right mentors to, to be able to do that. Look, I didn't know this is going to date me, all right? I went to one of the large consulting firms in downtown Los Angeles. The very first job they put me on was an audit. It was an audit and it was the inventory. It was the middle of August in Los Angeles, so It was like 103 degrees. And they sent me out to inventory a company by the name of Bandini. For those of you who don't know Bandini, they manufacture fertilizer. So here I was, three piece suit, galoshes all the way up to my thighs in mounds of steaming manure going, this is, this is what I went to school for. Now how I got into valuations, the forward looking, the other skills was not because I had the skill set. It was simply because at the time they said, hey, we understood, we understand, kid, that the merger and acquisition group came to me and said, we understand that you understand how to use a computer. And then, you know, this thing called spreadsheets. Now the spreadsheet we were using back then was something called multi plan, you know, and I said, yeah, I can do that. And they go, we're doing a merger of three insurance companies. Would you be willing to put the, the what if and the analysis together? And I go, okay, so I did it. And I, and I immediately said, beats inventorying manure, I'm switching departments. But so I learned it. I, it wasn't, it wasn't something that, that I knew, I didn't know anything about valuations, the valuation theory, the finance theory, all that Stuff analyzing businesses with a forward looking mentality. So even if you may not sit back and say I have the skills, it doesn't mean I don't have the skills. It doesn't mean you can't get the skills. And I think that that's. But I do agree with you that, that we need to have that. And then I would couple it with one other thing which is in your leadership and is that is our ability to communicate. Oh yeah, the numbers themselves are one thing. And I see a lot of my CPA colleagues, they try to sit behind the numbers. But I did a lot of testimony, expert witness testimony. And I realized that it was the story I get to tell around the numbers that made my testimony most powerful, most memorable and most persuasive. And so that's what I had to look at. And I think if we, when we do that, then it'll, it'll be a little, a lot more. More powerful.

You know, I couldn't agree more. Storytelling is, is probably the second most under underdeveloped skill in business. And it's so important because business owners are demanding more now than just reporting. And so how do we communicate what's going on with the numbers and how they relate to goals? It's through storytelling. And I would say that to the extent that you become a relatable storyteller, you will become a successful fractional or virtual cfo. Storytelling is so important, especially when you start mixing perspective in with it. Right. All these things start to kind of tie together. And I'd say like the other thing, Mel, that's important with this is do you have the heart of a teacher? Are you the type of person that can show up and be patient and explain things five different ways to people until they get it? But again, all these things are learnable, all these skills are learnable. So I would say, you know, that open mind and a growth mindset. You know, if you're like, okay, I understand the basics over here, I want to learn, I'm willing to invest the time, then you can be. What was it, Carolyn Dweck that said the equation of success is effort applied over time? You know, if you're willing to put in effort and you're willing to put in the time, you can do extraordinary things.

It absolutely now. So I'm going to reiterate something that maybe they. If you heard it, I want you to hear it again. If you didn't hear it, I want you to hear it this time. One of the key elements that I like about what you do, Mike, and what the people that you work with do is the fact that disengages your compensation from the clock. You know, you're not selling.

You know, sessions, you're not selling hours. Can I buy an hour of your time? You, you are driven by results, you're driven by value, and you get paid for the value. And I think that that in and of itself starts to elevate your ability to optimize your cash flow, increase your income, and ultimately accelerate your wealth. And I want to make sure that everyone hears that loud and clear, because this isn't just someone going in and doing, oh, I'm just going to go mentor and coach and sell a bunch of hours. That's not the way that this is. This is done, right?

You get to a point, and I'll just be super transparent because I talk about this stuff on YouTube all the time. So there's no secrets here. You know, one of the hardest things for people to realize as they get into that next level of business is divorcing their, their pricing from their time and just embracing this concept of, but I'm adding so much value. And there's a couple of examples that I think bring home. One is, you know, in our business, you know, we charge anywhere from 5,500 to $8,000 a month for our services. Never once does a client say, how many hours did you log? Right, because they're so focused on the fact we're telling them how to, you know, get their, their net profit up by a million dollars over the next 18 months. They're, they're more concerned about the outcomes. And so they don't care if we work one hour or a thousand hours to get there. And the same can be true for you and your business. In, in virtually any industry, the same can be absolutely true. When you get more focused on outcomes and less focused on the tactical deliverables and the bullet points and the check marks, that's where people start thinking about hours. So I would just encourage you, you know, move, move your discussions as far away from the decimal point as possible. And as you make that journey, people become less and less concerned about how many hours you're working and those. And they're more concerned about those outcomes that you're providing. And it can be true in literally any industry. I mean, think about a plastic surgeon. You know, when was the last time a plastic surgeon billed based on billable hours? You know, they don't bill you by a time. They, they're going to give you this new face or they're going to give you the tummy tuck. It's the outcome.

Yeah, right.

Think about lawyer. Well, I guess lawyers are probably a bad example. They're pretty, they're pretty. They're like, yeah, not lawyers, but anybody else, you know, anybody else. I had a conversation earlier with, with a marketing agency, you know, and they're charging $30,000 for this program, but they're talking about outcomes. I'm not asking them, how many hours are you working? You know, I don't care because they're telling me outcomes, revenue outcomes. So I really encourage. And in fact, I would, I'd say, I challenge you to really think how can that be true for your industry as well. I bet there's a way.

So, and, and I totally agree with you that, that we should be results and outcome driven versus, versus doing some mathematical equation on a timesheet. So, and so now there may be people out there that are listening, going, this is kind of intriguing. I'm wondering if I can add this to my business or. I want to expand my knowledge in this arena. And I know that you have something coming up that's coming up and, and I'm going to be there. You are.

And I'm so, so excited.

So let, let's just talk about what this is and what, what's going on and, and everything. So, so they know and, and if they, if they want and, and they see that this is a good fit, let them, let them come and join us.

So a little bit of background because it's important for context. I started my firm, like I mentioned, seven years ago next week. And I got several years into it and I found a couple things to be true. One, I was burnt out. I'm working a ton of hours. I was still very hourly, you know, billable hours, kind of focused a lot, a lot more focused on the tactical work. I had clients that I didn't love, you know, because I just, I was so hungry to get clients because I needed money, you know, and so despite the fact I'm working all these hours trying to get every client that we possibly can, I was actually making less money than I made when I worked in corporate America. And I reached this point, Mel, where I was like, I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore. And I got to work on this Monday morning, and I was just completely devastated. I felt like a failure. You know, obviously this isn't the industry for me. And I said, you know what? I'm going to fire all my clients today. I'm, I'm Going to fire all my clients, and I'm going to give myself six months to rebuild this thing in a way that I'm proud of, where I'm making more money than I made in corporate America, where I'm serving clients that I love, and where I have a firm that actually works for me, not the other way around. Gave myself six months or I was going back to work for somebody else. And so I did. I fired all my clients that day. And I rebuilt it from the ground up. And because I rebuilt it with intention, I. Spoiler alert, I made it right. The six months. I'm here, I'm here. Here we are, right? But when I was going through that rebuilding process, Mel, I said, you know what? I'm gonna go, I'm gonna hire a coach, somebody that can show me the right way to do this thing, or I'm gonna take a course. And I had, you know, luckily I was in a position in life where I had some money that I could throw at it, and I couldn't find anybody at any price. There was nobody that was showing me, how can you build advisory services the right way? There were a lot of, kind of the old school CPA firm folks, you know, but again, that most of them were just showing you how to maximize the dollars for hours. And I said, that's not for me. And I said, you know, if I ever get to the point where I've, like, figured it out, I'm going to be that person that speaks to those that are coming behind me, that person that's willing to pour out and show others how I've done this. And so, like I mentioned earlier, about 18 or 20 months ago now, I started that program called the CFO Accelerator. And we've been blessed to serve. You know, a couple hundred firm owners at this point have gone through the program, but people keep asking for something, you know, through Covid, and people are like, when are you going to have a. When is there going to be a conference for CFOs? And I'm like, no, we're not doing a conference. We're not doing a conference. All right, well, so we finally decided, let's. Let's get an event together in person where we can bring virtual and fractional CFOs and accountants that want to offer advisory services from around the world, get them into a room for three days and just pour into them, just literally leaving nothing behind. Like, what can. What. What can we do in three days to just completely transform their services and their businesses and maximize the impact that they're having on their clients. How can we do that? And so you know, we, we figured that out and that's what we're going to do. May 16th through 18th right here in Dallas, Texas. We are having, to the best of my knowledge, the literal first ever in person conference for virtual and fractional CFOs. And I'm going to share seven frameworks, seven frameworks that we, that we use. I've never shared before. This is all brand new material that's going to help with some of those things I talked about earlier. Mel. It's going to help with those CFO technical skills, it's going to help with the leadership skills and it's going to help with the firm building skills. Right. So you're going to leave this event with the playbook. You're going to leave with your growth plan to make those things true for you. You're going to make more money than you make in corporate America. You're going to have clients that you love and you're going to have a firm that works for you. And if you can't tell, I'm pretty giddy about it. It's going to be awesome.

I'm excited. So for those of you.

Just to know, I'm actually going to be speaking there. So that's actually how Mike and I met. He had heard my name from a few people and, and reached out and we ended up connecting and, and so I'm going to be there speaking also about my journey was a, as a forward looking financial professional and helping people do that. We'll talk about my, my view of, of pricing and value and, and creating value at a level that, that you start to eliminate the price question because the value is so good and, and the way you present it. So it's going to be fun. Fun. It's going to be exciting. 3 days to elevate your business. 3 days to add an arm to your business. 3 days to see a different perspective to your business.

In, in Dallas in, in a couple months. So what one, what were the dates again and how can they get information on it?

Sure. The dates are May 16th through 18th. We're going to be in downtown Dallas at the Hyatt Regency. So it's, it's a little bouge. You're going to love it. We're doing it right. I like to tell people this isn't going to be your like traditional accounting conference where you're like worried about getting CPEs in your free drink ticket. This is going to be an experience if you Know Mel, you know, I'm very similar with Mel and how I show up and I teach. So it's May 16th through 18th in Dallas and if you'd like to know more, you can go to the CFO accelerator live dot com. The CFO accelerator live dot com. We'll put those in the, in the show notes, in the description. Right, Mel?

Yeah, absolutely. We'll make sure that they have it.

Yeah. You know what you always should do? Let's do, let's do a 50 off for your listeners. If your listeners want to come, I would love to extend them a gift so that they have more incentive to come and see you talk. So check out, if you use promo code, Mel, Mel will give you $50 off your ticket.

That would be awesome. Thank you. Thank you. And those of you that, that are coming, let me know you're coming. Post it, let us know and make sure that we get a chance. I'm going to go there. I'm not, I'm not one of those guys that's going to just fly in speak and get the heck out. I'm going to be, I'm going to be hanging out for a bit. So, so it'll be a good time. We'll make a difference. We'll give you perspective and have some fun. So anything else as, as we start to close this out that, that we want them to know about you, about this journey, about them, what they should be thinking about next?

Yeah, I would just say this. Whether, whether you're in this industry, the CFO industry, if you're entrepreneur.

My challenge to you is.

The journey to mastery has a lot of steps along the way. And I would just challenge you to get the coaching and the guidance that you need. You know, coaching in courses can be such an amazing thing. Look for those that kind of have that proven track record of helping you on that journey towards mastery. Look for those folks that have the heart of a teacher. Because again, if you will, if impact is important to you, and my guess is if you're listening to this show, impact is like everything to you. Find those folks that can help you on that journey so that you can maximize your impact.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to just one more thing that I failed to say that I think is really important at the time that we're, we're recording this. We are in the midst of some uncertainty about our economic future, our financial future. I don't think that it shouldn't be fear based, but the fact is, is that look, we're coming out of inflation, it's slowly coming down. We've got interest rates are going up, we've got layoffs that are going in. So this is the time that I think all of the entrepreneurs, all coaches, mentors, consultants, this is the time to lean in because people need their help, need your help. They need your perspective. This is the time to up your game, to build your game, because there's opportunity here not to take advantage, but opportunity to serve. And the byproduct of that service becomes a benefit to you. So with that, as I always, always say, first off, Mike, thank you for being here. I can't wait to see you in May, my friend. And we're going to have a lot of fun. And for the rest of you that are watching or listening, as I always, always say, to always strive to live a life that outlives you. See you in the next episode. Cheers. Thank you for listening to the affluent Entrepreneur show with me, your host, Mel Abrahamic. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent Entrepreneur Facebook group. Now I going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you there.

And that's it for this episode of Building your money Machine where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple podcast or wherever you're linked listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.