50. Uncover the 2 Hidden Mindsets Slowing Down Fractional CFOs

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Hey there. My name is Michael King. Welcome to the CFO Report, where I talk about starting, scaling and optimizing fractional CFO services. I want to dive right in today because I've got a bit of an urgent message that I want to share with you. I work with over a hundred fractional CFOs, and, you know, we're just a few weeks into 2023. I guess we're about a month as of the time of this recording. And already this year, I'm seeing two mindsets. I'm worried that are going to tear down or slow down the growth of your firms, the impact that your firms can have. And I'm seeing these two mindset issues really creeping in among a lot of the people that I'm coaching. And I don't want that for you. These two mindsets, if you're not careful, they're really going to minimize your growth this year. It's going to minimize the impact that you're able to have for your clients. It's going to minimize the impact you can have for your team and for your families. Let's go ahead and dive in. The first, first thing, the first mindset that I'm seeing that's slowing people down is this need for perfection. And look, I get it. We're accountants, we're financial professionals. We've been trained our entire careers. We've been trained back when we were in school that everything's gotta be perfect, right? There's IRS codes and there's state codes, and there's GAP and all of these things. And we've got to have QA and double checks, and we need to have models and spreadsheets, right? Everything's gotta be planned out to the T. Everything's gotta be perfect. And that is an amazing, amazing characteristic and quality to have if you're doing accounting kind of work. But if you're running your own firm, you've got to remember that there's a duality here. You're not just the cfo. You're not just the accountant. You're also your CEO. You're the CEO of your own business. And perfection doesn't partner well with running a business. There's nothing about running a business that's ever going to be perfect. This is probably one of the hardest things, things for me to learn. And frankly, it's something I still struggle with from time to time. But growth as a CEO, growth for a business comes from action, not perfection. Really want you to pay attention to that. Growth comes from action, not perfection. And so as the CEO of my business, of your business, what we've got to learn is that really 60 to 70% of perfect is, is normally more than good enough for us to get started. Because here's the thing with accounting. If we do work that's not perfect, it screws people. They underpay on taxes, they overpay on taxes, they're out of compliance. There's a lot of bad crap that can happen to people if we provide them a product or a service that isn't perfect, that isn't accurate, right? And so it's really important to have that proclivity to perfection when you're wearing the CFO hat or the accountant hat. But as a CEO, there is no perfection. All we can do is go out there, we take bulk, bold baby steps. We got to get in the game, we've got to start gaining momentum. And as we go down that path of action, life is going to present us with the lessons on what we're doing wrong. And we make course adjustments as we're going. And it doesn't matter how much planning and modeling and dialing everything you do, life doesn't give a shit, right? Business doesn't care, the market doesn't care. You're going to get punched in the face. The market's going to tell you what you're doing wrong. Your customers, your employees, they're going to let you know what's doing wrong. And then you make game time adaptations, right? Real time. You're changing based on those lessons learned. If you're leaning into this need for perfection, if you're constantly sitting and looking at your computer and you're tweaking the model or you're tweaking your logo, or you're tweaking your pricing or your niche or any of those things. If you're sitting there and you find that you're spending more time on thinking about it rather than just being about it, you're going to have minimal growth and minimal impact this year. If you are recognizing that the need for perfection is keeping you from taking action, I really want to encourage to check yourself on that, right? It's going to be okay. If you got there, you're going to make mistakes, right? I'm giving you permission today to make mistakes. Because with those mistakes, that's where you're going to get growth. That's where revenue growth is going to come from. That's where leadership growth is going to come from. That's where impact growth is going to come from. That's where you're going to be able to build a bigger team and to serve people on a different level. So let go of that need for perfection when you're wearing the CEO hat. The second big mindset thing that I see already this year that's really holding firm owners back is your clients, really. It's like your client clients because you're so busy working in the business. And in a lot of ways, it's not the clients necessarily that are holding you back. For a lot of people, what I'm seeing already this year, this fear of delegation, right? When you're too afraid to delegate. And I think this goes back to the perfection thing. But when we're afraid to delegate, that means that we, as the CEO are spending too much time in the business, and we don't have enough time to work on the business. We don't have time to work on the marketing. We don't have time for the sales calls. We don't have time to just sit down and think about the direction that we're taking our firm, about the challenges that are in front of us, the challenges that are in front of our clients. Instead, we're busy doing transaction allocations. We're updating CFO reports. We're doing all that work, which is important because it pays the bills, but it's also capping your growth. It's also going to stunt your ability to grow and scale and again, maximize that impact and be able to have the change, the transformation that you want to see in small businesses with your clients, with your potential clients. What I see a lot of people doing is there's almost this. It's not almost. There's this huge ego pull. You want to be the guy or the lady in your business that does it better than everybody else. I know you do, because I feel that way, too. We want to be the one that's the best at everything in our business. And our ego wants us to be able to swoop in and show our team, look, I know how to do this. I can do it better than you. If that's not you, then great. You're at a better place than I am. It's a struggle that I have, you know? But what I've also learned is that it takes a lot less time and a lot less effort to let people go. People do their thing, do the work that they want to do, that they're passionate about doing. And if they screw up now, spend your time learning how to coach them how to do better. Spend your time apologizing to the clients and learning how to grow from it. Because there's opportunity for future, there's opportunity for growth when you take that mindset. But there is no opportunity for growth if you're going to always be the one that swoops in in your business, does the work and does everything to whatever you think perfect is. You've got to learn to trust your team. You've got to let go of the need to be perfect. And more importantly, you've got to let go of your need to have your name all over everything that gets produced in your business and goes out your door, or you're not going to have the growth that you want. There's a couple of things that I think really scare people relative to both of these things. The obvious one to a lot of people is we have this fear of failure. What are our team members going to say if we go out there, we take action and we fail or we delegate and it doesn't work out? What are people going to say? What are our clients going to say to us or about us? What are our spouses going to say? But I think the thing that holds back most fractional CFOs is actually, actually not the fear of failure. What I see more times than not is the fear of success holding us back. And so a lot of people ask, like Mike, what does fear of success look like? For me, the fear of success is the story I tell myself when I say, what if I go and I take that action and it actually works? What if I delegate and it actually works and because of my action, because I'm willing to delegate and trust my team and not be just married to this whole idea of perfection, that's kind of bullshit anyway. What if I let go of all that? I lean into action and the business grows. We get more clients, we get higher prices for those clients. Am I going to be able to deliver at that level? Am I going to be able to keep showing up in leading this business and providing the value for the clients that I've promised that I would deliver for them? That's what the fear of success is. And with all the people that I coach, I actually hear more people worried about the fear of success than about the fear of failure. What I want to encourage you today, along with just leaning into action, along with delegation, to bet on yourself, I really want to encourage you to remember the fact that if you really kind of think back on your life, if you really do some soul searching, my bet is you've never really failed at anything. You've put your heart into before. My bet is, is that when you go all in on yourself, you normally win. So I'm betting on you and I want you to bet on yourself. The other thing that I want you to take away from this episode today, if you're really dedicated to growth this year, whether it's revenue growth, whether it's profitability growth, whether it's growing your team, maybe it's growing the amount of free time that you have to spend with your family and loved ones and less time in the business, whatever growth looks like to you, I want you to put time on your calendar to invest in that. One of my favorite sayings comes from one of my coaches, Brendon Burchard. You know, ambition without a calendar sucks. I know. Especially when you're a small firm owner. You get so busy in the day to day. You've got client work that you're doing, you're on the sales calls, you're on the, you know, team meetings. You're watching stuff like this. These things are all really important. But if you have growth goals, again, whatever those are, and you don't have time on your calendar blocked off to invest in those goals, it's never going to happen. So I want to challenge you today. When this is over, whether you're watching on YouTube or the podcast, I really want you to just hit pause for five minutes and I want you to go back and look at your calendar and I want you to ask yourself this one question. Does my calendar reflect my goals? Because the truth is, if your calendar doesn't reflect your goals, your outcomes aren't going to reflect your goals either. So look, I know I'm normally the upbeat, positive, energetic guy, but I'm already seeing dozens of firm owners this year getting held back by perfection and over planning in this unwillingness, this fear of delegation. And I don't want that to be you. You know, we're getting ready to ramp into tax season, right? So all of this kind of stuff that we're thinking about now, for those of you that do taxes, you know, this is all going to go by the wayside. You know, you're looking at maybe before you get a chance to come back and recalibrate around these things, the year's halfway over at that point and I don't want that to be true for you. So really think about these things. What can you do to have a proclivity for action, to trust your team, to delegate, to build a team for the first time? What can you do relative to those things in the next couple of weeks so that you can have a more success, successful and impactful season in a more successful and impactful year. And I also want you to think about, are you betting on yourself, or are you getting held back by fear of success? Or maybe the fear of failure? Look, I know that 2023 has the potential to be the biggest, the best, the most impactful year that you've had. I'm so excited to see how shifting the way you think about these two mindsets can really level up your business. And I'm so appreciative and humbled that you joined me here on the CFO Report. I can't wait to see you back here next week, my friends. I'll see you then.