111. Perfectionism Is Ruining Your Firm

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We've got Michelle and we have Amanda. Both of these fractional CFOs started their firms about two years ago. Both of them are great at what they do. They're both hardworking, they're passionate about serving their clients, and they're driven to create a massive impact. But Michelle and Amanda's firms are in very different places. Michelle, she's willing to take chances, she's willing to try new things. She acts quickly on her ideas and she follows her intuition. Yep, she makes mistakes, but she learns from them and then she moves on. As a result, her firm, her team, and her revenues are growing extremely fast. She's loving her work and she's excited about the future. Amanda, on the other hand, well, Amanda's a perfectionist. Amanda likes to think everything through and devise a methodical plan with multiple scenarios before ever taking action. Amanda is terrified of failing and making mistakes, and so she tends to over plan and overthink. This has resulted in her rarely taking action or trying anything new. And that means that her firm has struggled to grow and now she feels stuck and frustrated. In fact, she's thinking about hanging it all up and going back to work for somebody else. Yes, these are hypothetical fractional CFOs, but I see these two scenarios playing out like daily. In our industry, there are those that are willing to take action and those that are paralyzed by perfection. In today's episode, I'm going to share four areas where I see fractional CFOs letting perfection ruin their firms. My hope is that you'll be able to identify some areas where you're allowing perfection to slow your firm's growth and hopefully let go of that need for perfection so that you can have a greater impact. Be sure to stick around until the end though, because I'm going to show you one area where perfection is secretly killing your growth. And it doesn't even even require any work or effort on your part to recognize an immediate profitability impact. Let's dive in. The first instance of perfection killing progress and growth is waiting to hire a team until the perfect time. Listen, this is a fact. You cannot scale a fractional CFO firm alone. And you definitely can't build a seven figure firm alone. It takes a team and there's just no way around that. But a lot of fractional CFOs, they get frozen by the idea of hiring. They obsess over questions like, well, when should I hire? Can I afford to hire? Who should I hire first? Should I hire another fractional cfo? Should I Hire an ops manager. Maybe I should hire an executive assistant. So what are the answers to these questions? Well, first, you should probably hire one of these roles now, if you haven't already done so. If you're not sure if you can afford to hire somebody, well, go look at your projections. If you don't have projections, hit pause right now and go get them. And that brings us to the question of who should you hire? Well, honestly, it probably doesn't matter. Think about it like this. Even if you don't hire the perfect role first, you're still hiring help. You're bringing in somebody that can help you buy back your time so that you can scale your firm with without destroying your sleep, your health, and your relationships. The worst case scenario here is that you get help. If you're waiting to hire somebody until the perfect time, your firm's growth is dead in the water. The second place where perfection will ruin your firm is if you wait to fire bad clients or bad team members until you have the perfect wording or the perfect timing. Having the wrong people on your client roster or on your team will suck the life right out of you and your firm. And I think we've all been there at some point or another. We've got that client that doesn't show up for calls. Maybe they're disrespectful or they argue with you. Sometimes they just don't even follow your advice. They're the ones when you see their name pop up in your inbox or on your calendar, your stomach drops, you're like, oh, my God, I don't want to deal with Barb today. And the same thing holds true with team members. They're the ones that. They're just not a good fit for your firm anymore, for whatever reason. But in both cases, you've realized it's time to let them go, but you just don't. You end up obsessing, trying to figure out when the perfect time is. You're like, oh, my gosh, if I let the client go now, I'm gonna be in this major cash crunch. Or if I let so and so go from my team right now, it's gonna cause havoc. I need to wait until a better time. But guess what? That better time never seem come, does it? Other times, we sit down and we think that we can come up with this perfect script for letting a client go or firing an employee. We want to think out, like, exactly what to say so that at the end of the conversation, everybody's happy and we all walk away with Friends and we go to happy hour and we have a white claw together. But listen, the truth is there is no perfect time or perfect script for firing clients or team members. Once you realize it's time, it's got to just be time. The longer you keep them around, the more negative impact they're going to have on your firm and your growth. If you know that it's time to make that decision, spend like 30 seconds figuring out exactly what you're gonna say and just make the call. The third place where perfection is killing your firm and your firm's growth is when it comes to business development. One of the most effective ways that I know to get new clients is to speak on stage or to do live webinars. But there's so many people out there that they want to wait to do those things until they're already good at those things. And that is absolutely crazy. Right? How nuts does that sound? I mean, how are you ever supposed to get good at something if you don't go out and actually do the thing? I think we all know academically or in theory, that this is true, but we tend to not apply it to ourselves. I wonder how you, watching this video, have known that you should start maybe posting on LinkedIn but you haven't done it yet because you haven't written the perfect post or you're still waiting to watch one more course or research something else a little bit more before you hit publish. Maybe you've been putting off going to that networking event or the big industry conference because you don't feel like you have the perfect intro or elevator speech or the perfect way to ask somebody that you meet for a sales call. These things are killing your firm's growth. You've got to just commit to getting out there and taking action. You've gotta be okay with the fact that, yes, you are going to suck at these things at first, but you're gonn get better over time. I mean, I think for most of us I know, certainly for me, I tend to grossly overestimate how much time and practice it's going to take to see meaningful progress. The truth is, just a few reps makes the world of difference. Don't let perfection get in the way of business development. Get out there, meet new leads, tell them about the amazing things that you can do for them, and close those sales. Finally, perfection is holding you back from raising your prices. I remember when I started my firm eight years ago, I was literally charging $500 a month for my CFO service. I knew that I had to raise my prices. But I kept telling myself that before I could, I needed to dial in my CFO report just a little bit more. I needed to get my projections just a little bit more accurate. I needed to finesse my post call follow up emails just a little bit more. I kept trying to perfect everything and so my pricing stayed stuck for years. And I almost went out of business as a result of it. In fact, I almost missed my rent payments on more than one occasion. Here I am eight years later and I'm still working to improve my reporting. I'm still working to make our CFO calls a little bit better. I'm still tweaking our onboarding process. And guess what? None of it's perfect. But damn am I glad that I didn't wait for perfect to raise my prices or I'd probably be homeless by now. I can almost guarantee you that you're not charging what you should for your services. Very rarely do I talk to fractional CFOs that are overcharging. Now I do sometimes see fractional CFOs that are serving clients that are too small. The reality is that you can't charge $5,000 a month to a coaching client that's making $500,000 a year. The math just doesn't add up. But if that's the case, then you're probably also telling yourself that you need to perfect your services a little bit more before you can go after the bigger clients that can afford you. And that's rarely the case either. My is that you're good enough today to start going after those bigger clients. Will there be some bumps along the way? Probably. But that's just part of the journey. If you're holding back on raising your prices until you're closer to perfection, then I just wanna encourage you today to bet on yourself and raise your prices with just one client. Maybe today's the day that you need to go after that lead that you think is just a little bit too big for you right now. My bet is that you've got this. Look, I'm not delusional. I know that letting go of perfection is hard. In fact, I like to think of myself as a bit of a recovering perfectionist. But I know that you have big goals. I know that you have big ambitions. And so don'. Let your need to be perfect stand in the way of everything that you've got in front of you. Be okay with okay. In fact, be okay with sucking. Sometimes. Just get in the game. If you're committed to getting in the game and taking massive action, then I'd like to invite you to the 2024 CFO Accelerator live, happening May 15th through 17th in Dallas, Texas. We're going to spend three full days learning what actions to take to get more leads, to land more clients, and to scale to seven figures. Go to the cfoaccelerator.com or click the link in the description below to learn more. All right, my friends, I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, it would mean the world to me if you would leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening to this episode. In the meantime, I can't wait to see you back right here next week. I'll see you then.