7 Deadly Mistakes New Fractional CFOs Make

If you ignore these tips for your fractional CFO firm, you're probably going to regret it later. Whether your firm is stuck and you're not gaining any traction, or maybe you're not getting any new clients, or maybe your revenue has just plateaued, it's probably because of one of these seven mistakes that we're going to talk about today. The first mistake is that we're not setting and maintaining boundaries. Look, if you're anything like me, you've probably got a massive heart for service. And what that means is, like, we always want to go above and beyond to serve our clients however possible, whenever possible. But what that ends up looking like is we start answering phone calls after hours, we start answering the emails on the weekends, we start doing more and more work that wasn't initially part of that scope of work that the client signed up for. And so one of two sacrifices normally ends up having to happen to facilitate that. The first one is, if we're serving this client more, then maybe that means that we're not serving our other clients at the level that we promised them. But more often than not, what ends up happening is, number two is, and that means that we're serving this client more than we agreed to at the expense of ourselves. That means that we're not being with our family. We're not present with those other things that are important to us. We're not able to focus on our own goals and our own dreams and our own priorities because we're serving that client beyond what we initially agreed to. And that's why it's so important that we start before we even get involved with clients, if that's possible. We've gotta understand, like, what are the boundaries that we want to have? What are those ideal boundaries that we want to operate our firm within? And then we reinforce that and we communicate that on the sales call. We reinforce and communicate it during the onboarding process. And then we reinforce that and we recommunicate that month in and month out, whenever the client does try to push the limits of those boundaries. It's our job as CEOs to keep things within that scope of work so that it doesn't come at the cost of our other clients, or more importantly, ourselves and our families and our own joy, energy and ambitions. The second mistake that holds us back is we don't have set packages. A lot of times when we first start getting into business as fractional CFOs, we just want to go out and we want to be all things to all people. Every client looks a little bit or maybe even a lot different. And so we don't have a set package. And that introduces some inherent problems. Number one, when we don't have a set package, it's almost impossible to hire anybody to help us. And when we can't hire anybody to help us, we're limited by our own time on how much we can scale our business. Number two is you're not able to really get any efficiencies, you're not able to get any systems in place. And so you don't ever really get good at the things that you're doing. And because of that, you're not able to scale, you're not able to serve clients at a higher level faster. And both of those things end up keeping us stuck as firm owners. So I would encourage you, like, if you don't have set packages in place, dedicate some time over the next month to really thinking through, like, if I was going to have one, maybe two or three scopes of work, what would each of those scopes or packages include? What are those things that I love doing? What are the services that I love providing that really energize me that I'm uniquely good at and qualified to do? Just really think through, like, what are one or two or three packages that you could offer and start to sell those. Because I'm telling you, if you don't get those in place, it's going to be so hard to hire because you don't really know what to hire for, because every job's different. But you're also not going to be able to put the systems and the processes and the procedures in place that are going to allow you to scale and become more efficient and more effective. The third big mistake that I see holding back a lot of newer firm owners is not hiring help fast enough. I love the saying, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. And I think that holds true for fractional CFO firm owners as well. And I found that for most people, the smartest, most efficient and effective hire is an executive assistant or a virtual assistant. Even if it's part time, Even if it's 1099, having a great assistant on your team can make all the difference. And yeah, assistants can help with things like calendaring and email and client communications. But I found that more importantly than that, a great executive assistant is going to help keep you prioritized. They're going to help keep you focused, they're going to help hold you accountable for those things. That you need to be doing as a firm owner. And so I'd say to you, look, if you are finding yourself right now where you're kind of stuck, where you don't have enough time, or your time is bleeding out of work and into your family time, and you don't have an executive assistant, highly encourage you to consider making that higher. Maybe next when it comes to generating CFO reports for my clients, my firm has two non negotiables. The process has to be accurate and it has to be efficient. That's why my firm only trusts Giacon. At its core, G Accon is a data connector between accounting platforms like QuickBooks and Xero and Google Sheets. But G Accon is so much more than just a data connector. Right out of the box, you're going to get hundreds of templates for all the reports that CFOs and accountants need to run for their everyday workflows. Everything from balance sheets to PNLs to AR aging reports. Or you can use G Accon like my firm does, to create our custom CFO reports every single month. My favorite part about gfcon is that you can set it up to automatically create all of these reports. That means every month I'm getting fresh reports with fresh data ready to deliver to my clients. And because gfcon is automated, that has completely eliminated the need for my team to download data from QuickBooks, upload it into Google Sheets, manually, apply formulas. All of those things that take up a lot of time and are prone to errors. In fact, gfcon has completely replaced all the other tools, services and workflows that we were using to generate CFO reports. Giacon is literally our one stop shop for making all of our CFO reports automatically every single month. If you're ready to start saving time and reducing errors, then you need to check out G Acconnect right now. Be sure to use the link in the description below to save 30%. That means you can get started with Gicon for as little as $28 a month. Join my firm and over 10,000 other firms and try G Con today. The fourth mistake that I see holding back a lot of newer firm owners is undervaluing their time and their expertise. I remember when I first got into the industry, I started to tell myself this story. I built this narrative where I said, well, based on my education and my credentials and my work experience, nobody would ever pay me more than this amount or nobody would ever value my time. This. And so as this story continues to unfold and the narrative continues to Build. What we start doing is essentially negotiating with ourselves about what we can charge out in the open market. But what I've learned is you're actually the toughest negotiator of your time and your expertise and your value than any potential client you're ever going to have. You're going to be harder on yourself than any lead that you ever get on a sales call with. And I think the reason for that is a lot of us get into this comparison trap where we look at our former bosses, or we look at CFOs of these large publicly traded companies, or we look at the senior finance people from some of the firms we've worked for, or some of the big companies in corporate that we work for, and we start comparing ourselves and we say, well, gosh, I don't know nearly as much as my old boss did, or I don't know nearly as much as the CFO of Tesla. And so my value to a client is diminished. But what you've got to remember is you're not trying to be the fractional CFO of Tesla or Google or of any of these big companies. You're trying to help small businesses with small business finances. And my bet is you are more than qualified to help a company that's doing a million, 2 million, maybe even $10 million a year in revenue. Because the complexities, the intricacies, the challenges that a small sub $10 million a year business has, you can't even compare that to the financial challenges of a publicly traded company like Tesla. And so I'm like, we've got to stop comparing ourselves to the CFOs or the senior finance leaders of these big companies, because it's an apples to oranges comparison. A great story that I like to tell is, you know, if Apple hired me to go and be the CEO of Apple, I would probably run Apple into the dirt. It would probably take a while because there's just a lot of money in the bank. But I am very confident that I would eventually run Apple into the dirt. I'm not qualified to be the CEO of Apple. Similarly, I bet if you took Tim Cook and you made him the CEO of one of my companies, he'd probably drive it into the dirt too. Because it's a completely different skill set to help a small business as it is to help a large, multinational, multibillion dollar publicly traded company. If you find yourself building that narrative, building that story in your head that based on your experience or your education or your credentials, your value is somehow diminished because those wouldn't serve well in a larger company or a publicly traded company. I'm willing to bet you've got what it takes to help a one, five or even a $10 million a year company. Don't negotiate with yourself. The fifth mistake that I see holding a lot of newer fractional CFOs back is you're looking for clients in the wrong places. If you're one of these firm owners and you're at a place where you're like, look, in order for me to scale to the next level, I've got to start charging 2000, 4000, $5000 a month for my services. Then I've got to start finding clients that are in the seven figures or multiple seven figures range. Then you got to stop looking for clients on Instagram, you've got to stop looking for clients on TikTok. Because the truth is those multiple seven figure businesses aren't looking for financial thought leadership on Instagram and TikTok. And so where do you find those businesses? Well, in my experience, I've been doing this seven and a half years now. Those folks that are looking for financial thought leadership, those business owners, they're at conferences, they are in masterminds, they're in coaching programs, they're in networking events. You've got to figure out for your niche, like where are those multiple seven figure business owners hanging out? And then you've got to go hang out there. But I promise you, they're not looking for thought leadership on Instagram and TikTok and those kind of places, you're going to have to look for those clients somewhere else. The sixth mistake is that you're thinking too much like a CFO and not enough like a CEO. I see this happening in two distinct ways. Number one is you're not leaning into sales and marketing enough. I know for a lot of us, sales and marketing don't come natural. They feel kind of icky. We don't like to sell, it feels sleazy. I don't like to put myself out there. I'm an introvert. But if you want to grow a business, you're going to have to figure out how to do those things. The good news is there's not a lot of competition out there. So you don't even have to become like good at sales and marketing. You just need to show up and do the bare minimum a lot of times. But if you want to scale a firm, if you want to be able to increase your impact, if you, you want to be able to serve other businesses, you've got to get out there and let them know who you are, what you do, and how you can help level them up. And you've got to do that through marketing. And then you've got to get those people onto a call, have those sales calls and turn them into actual clients. The second half of that is so many people, they're just not starting because they're waiting until things are perfect. I think one of the biggest lessons for me as a CEO is just embracing this idea of good enough. In a lot of ways, I'm a perfectionist. I want everything to be polished. I want all the I's to be dotted, I want all the T's to be crossed. But in no way, shape or form does that work in entrepreneurship. In no way, shape or form does that work. As a business owner, you've got to just get stuff out of the door. You've got to just be comfortable with the fact that things aren't going to be perfect. And in a lot of ways, that's contradictory to what we've learned our entire professional careers. On the finance and accounting side, everything's got to balance, Everything's got to be perfect. Everything's got to be ready to be presented and nitpicked and pulled apart. And it's got to stand up to the audit. That doesn't work in the world of entrepreneurship. And so I'd really just encourage you, if you're still working on the website, to get started until it's perfect, or you're trying to come up with the perfect service package or pricing, or you want your CFO report to look just a little bit better, the grass to be just a little bit prettier. It's never going to happen. You've got to have this propensity to action. You've got to take the bold baby steps. You've got to move forward if you want to succeed as a firm owner. Finally, the seventh mistake that I see that holds a lot of fractional CFOs back from getting the scale and the revenue and the profitability they want is they think that they're going to start by selling bookkeeping and accounting services and then upgrading to CFO services, it never works out. And the reason for that is when you come into a relationship with a client as a tactician, as the one that's doing the accounting and the bookkeeping, there's this psychological anchor that takes hold. They look at you as a tactician, they look at you as somebody that does tactical work. They look at you as the bookkeeper or the accountant. And then when you want to get that seat at the table on the strategy side, on the C suite side, when you want to start talking to them about decisions that are going to make them hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, they don't look at you that they're like, oh, no, Bill, he's my bookkeeper. No, Amanda, that's the accountant. She does the accountant stuff. We're over here talking about strategy. We're talking about the five year plan. I'm not really sure how the bookkeeper gets involved in that. I'm not saying that this psychology is right or wrong, but it just is. Once you get in the door as that tactician, it's almost impossible to change the narrative, to change that perception of you as that person that's going to help them with strategic financial decisions. So what does work there? Well, if you want to offer CFO and bookkeeping and accounting services, what can work really well is lead with the CFO services, sell them on the idea of you as the fractional cfo, and then once that relationship has been established, then say, you know what, by the way, a lot of businesses like yours also need bookkeeping help. And so I can help with that, or somebody on my team can help with that too. And we would charge an additional $500 a month for that. But you've got to anchor yourself with the client as the strategic financial thought leader. Then you can go in with the tactical work. It does not work the other way around.