CFO Stories: Pam Jordan (Pivot Business Group)

Hey there. Welcome back to the CFO Report. My name is Michael King and I'm really excited today because I've got a brand new episode in my CFO Stories series. If you're new to this, CFO Stories are interviews that I have with other multiple 6 and 7 figure fractional CFO firm owners who share some really candid stories about their journey to start, scale and optimize their own firms. Today I'm talking with Pam Jordan. She's the CEO of Pivot Business Group. And picture Pam is sharing some pretty candid behind the scenes experiences that she's had in her journey over the last several years of building her firm. You're gonna wanna check out this episode because Pam lays out the exact step by step process that she would follow if she was to start her firm owner from scratch today based on all the lessons that she's learned. So without further ado, let's check out my interview with Pam Jordan. Pam, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you so much, Mike. I'm so pumped to be here.

It's been so incredible to watch you and learn from you over the last several months and what you've built with your firm. So I'm really excited to have this conversation today so other people can have a chance to learn from what you've built and the success that you've had.

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be a part of your community and support other CFOs. I love it.

Awesome. Let's dive in. Let's start like super high level. What's the name of your firm and how long have you been in business?

Sure. My company is called Pivot Business Group and we've been in business for over seven years now, so we're rocking.

Oh, seven years. We just hit seven years back in March, so we're been a journey, I'm sure. So before you started Pivot, what was your background? Like, what was your origin story?

So the short version is thought I was going into the nonprofit world and then I was a budget cut. So I learned, oh geez, money's important. So I went out into the commercial world and actually worked in the construction industry for a long time. But unfortunately the company that I worked for had to file bankruptcy because they stopped filing watching their numbers. The owner was not fully engaged in the company and the people that was running it just basically ran into the ground. So we had to file bankruptcy. And so I ran, you know, ran through that whole process with the lawyers and the banks and it was A nightmare. And I decided I was never going to let another business owner have to file bankruptcy because they didn't pay attention to their numbers. So I started Pivot Business Group to help entrepreneurs understand their numbers so no one would ever have to be in that courtroom.

Very similar mission. Just. I love that idea of just helping people understand, understand their numbers. It's simple. But there's a lot of power in that and a lot of empowerment with it as well. So today, so you've been in business seven years now, what does your business look like today from a services perspective? Like what are your packages and are you like a full service one stop with all the accounting and tax or is it just CFO or what does it look like?

We are actually just starting to expand services. So right now we provide fractional CFO services, We provide full service bookkeeping and we are just now this month starting tax strategy and tax filing services. So we are full service and so pumped about it.

Super exciting if you offered all of that since the beginning, like obviously the tax is new, but were you cfo, bookkeeping, accounting, all of that from day one or did that evolve over time?

It definitely evolved. When I first started as a fractional cfo, it was just trading time for money and I was just a fractional CFO and I very quickly realized, oh my goodness, all of these entrepreneurs numbers are a dumpster fire. So I'm going to have to start providing bookkeeping so, so that I can have numbers that I can trust to make decisions and advise off of within the probably six months. Started bringing bookkeeping in house.

Did you try outsourcing the bookkeeping and accounting before you brought it in house or was it just out of the gate like a no brainer to bring.

Everything inside out of the gate. I wanted it in under my own roof because I wanted control of it. I wanted month end clothes to look the way that I needed to because bookkeepers are amazing, but they think like a bookkeeper. And I wanted my bookkeeping to have the perspective of the cfo. So I wanted my chart of accounts a certain way. I wanted the process to look a certain way so that myself as a CFO would have the information I needed. So my first hire was a bookkeeper.

Seven years ago it was you and then shortly thereafter it was you and a bookkeeper for sure.

Yeah, it was a 1099 contractor. And the reason I did that is because it was project based. So it was, we would get a set of books. And the other part of evolution of this was everyone's books were dumpster fire and I couldn't just start bookkeeping right away. We had to do some cleanup, some catch up accounting. We call it renovation because we try not to hurt our clients feelings. So what we do is we do a renovation of their books to get them cleaned up so that we can do bookkeeping. And so out the gate it was some lump sum to get it just up to snuff and accurate and reconciled. And then a monthly fee going forward just so that as a CFO I had numbers I could trust and rely on to advise off of.

Is that generally the same model you have today where there's a renovation period and then you, you transfer into the strategic CFO work?

We've expanded our process. So at this point we start everyone with an analysis where we go in and we look at their books and assess what's wrong. We look at them from a CFO perspective and we look at sales, cash flow, profit and scaling. We have four areas that we focus on and we rate them based on those four areas. And then we also do a tax assessment so we have a full view of the client from an accounting, finance and tax perspective. And then we go into renovation. We do the renovation of their books, we onboard them for tax and then we launch them with CFO onboarding. We have a four to six week onboarding period for CFO services. So while my team is behind the scenes fixing the numbers, my CFO is working with the client to get to know what their goals are. To create a budget, to create a cash flow, to do those things, those foundational pieces so that we can start advising.

So just to make sure I'm following. So there's step one is analysis, then renovation and then CFO onboarding. Is that right?

Well, renovation kind of goes in hand with onboarding, but yes. And then, so once onboarding is complete, then we go into implementation. So that CFO implementation of our strategy, the regular bookkeeping and then the tax strategy.

I'm interested in the analysis portion. What is the deliverable to the client at the end of the analysis? Is it, I'm imagining like a report, but what does it look like?

Yeah, for sure, it's a full report. And it, like I said it, we look at it from a bookkeeping perspective. So we created our internal scoring system. We call it a validity score. And so we score their books, they actually get a rate. And it's not subjective, it's like, do we like, it's not like, do we like the chart of accounts? It's like no Are there sub accounts? Do they have a cost of goods sold? Do they split revenue by revenue sources? So we score their books. And then for the CFO perspective, we have a scorecard in those four areas that I mentioned. And then for the tax assessment, they also get a full report of. We look at five areas that most CPAs overlook for tax savings. So they get a full report of where their books are, where they are from a CFO perspective, where they are from a tax perspective, what opportunities do they have? It's a full PDF and it's a deliverable that they can then take to their tax preparer and say, hey, look, they identified these savings. Can you help me? And then they can also, if they have an internal bookkeeper, hey, they found these, these errors or these recommendations, can you make this happen? But then of course, we always offer proposals. So if they want us to do it, we'd love to. But it is a tangible, actionable thing that they can take and run with or it's, it's the playbook for us as, as Pivot Business Group.

That's so smart. So they're going to get this report, but it also gives you the roadmap of what you need to focus on in the first several months of working together. Exactly how long does it take you from the time a client signs to get the analysis report delivered to them?

Seven days. Once we get access to their books and their prior year tax returns, my team goes in and I have my bookkeeping team look, I have my CFO look and I my tax strategist look. So within seven days, we have a full report to present to them and a plan of how to move forward.

Does the deliverable include a call where you're going over over it and taking Q and A, or is it just the report?

100%. It's a call. So it's an interactive based on your goals that you said, here's where you are, here's how you rate in these areas, here's suggestions we have, here's how we can help you moving forward. Here's the package pricing. Do you have any questions? Those sorts of things.

So are you selling those, those reports as a standalone and then you deliver the reports and then sell them on accounting, advisory, et cetera. Is that kind of the. Okay, so it becomes a marketing tool that they're paying for, in other words, correct?

Yes.

And how do you, how do you price for.

Right now, our pro, our initial Profit analysis is $2,500.

Awesome.

Now because it's such a tangible and we also guarantee, if you're making money, 3x return on tax savings.

That's a bold promise.

If you're making money. I can find $7,500 in tax savings in my sleep. We use strategies that most CPAs don't take advantage of. The Augusta rule is my freaking favorite. Like, I can save clients anywhere from 12 to $35,000 with the Augusta rule alone.

So I'm wondering. The turnaround time's awesome, right? And I think one of the important things to remember is, like, the faster that you can deliver what I call that aha moment for the client, where they're like, oh, my gosh, this is why I hired Pam. This was so amazing. I call that the aha moment. When that light bulb comes on to the extent that you can, like, shorten the window until you deliver, that aha moment will set you up for long term success with a client right. Where they're. They're not asking, like, what are we getting for this money again? So I think it's brilliant that you figured out a way to do that in just, you know, seven days, and then probably as quick as you can schedule the delivery call after that. But one of the things that. The questions that. That brings up, Pam, is how important is having a niche for you guys to be able to do that report with that kind of value in such a short amount of time?

We don't have a niche, and I have done that intentionally.

So.

Most of our clients are online service providers of some sort of. However, we do have brick and mortar and manufacturing, but we have a lot of coaches and gurus and marketing firms, those types of people. But we don't have a specific niche that we've targeted.

Interesting. Have you ever thought about it? Or do you just like keeping things interesting and saucy and spicy by. By working with. With all the.

Yeah. So I'm kind of the personality that if people are like, the riches are in the niches, you should have a niche. I'm kind of like, no. Like, just because you say I should is the reason that I'm gonna prove you wrong.

It's awesome. Cause I'm the guy. I'm the niche guy. Right.

And we have friends. And, you know, I've had mentors that are like, you need an itch down. I'm like, hard pass.

Fair enough, fair enough.

Just for spite.

No, it's. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I think it's just like you said, it's a personal flavor kind of thing. And it really just depends on what you want to do. So we can still dine together peacefully. You know, I'm not going to throw you shade for, for not having the niche. So I would also imagine that benefit one of no niche is a lot easier to find clients. Right, because you're not limiting yourself at the top of the funnel. But I would also imagine, does that also make it easier to find people to join your team because it's not industry specific?

Yes, because I'm just looking for good bookkeepers and good CFOs. Whether you have experience in like the trades, like service, you know, roofers and H vac or marketing, it doesn't matter. Numbers are numbers. And as CFOs, there's only so many problems that we see, right? Everything boils down to basically just a few things, a few problems that our clients have. So it's just a matter of identifying what the true root of the problem is and then solving for that problem. All the clients think like their issue is so unique and that's cute, but it's not.

What are the most common problems that you see? I can, I can imagine what they are, but I would love to hear from your experience, like what are those handful of clients that are a handful of issues that like 90% of businesses have in common.

So we've boiled it down to four sources and that's sales, profit, cash flow and scaling. So any problem that most any client comes to us, we can boil it down to those four areas. And we have tools that we've created in all four of those areas. So we're profit first certified. So we use that's a tool. We have cash flow, we have budget forecasts, we have expense audits, we have SOP guides, we have process mapping. So every client challenge in our opinion boils down to one of those four areas and we have tools to address it based on which area it's in. And we have again in our analysis, I immediately with our scoring, I know exactly what their problem is and which area it's in. So I immediately as a cfo, know which tool I need to pull out. Because the diagnostic has just told me they need to do an expense audit and their pricing is too low.

So let's dive into sales as an example because one of the questions that I get a lot from, particularly like earlier stage fractional CFOs is how involved should they be getting when there's an issue in something like sales. I would love to hear from your firm's perspective, like let's Say that you identify sales as a problem that one of your clients is having. How deep do you go and what kinds of questions or prompts or solutions do you help develop for them?

That's a great question. So what we do as CFOs, if sales are the problem, we look at their pricing and we look at their conversion rates. What metrics are they tracking? Where are your leads coming from? So we're big on KPIs, so we look at the key indicators. What's your conversion rates? Where are your leads coming from? What is your client journey look like? And as CFOs, we're able to identify blaring issues. And if it's something like they're just not getting enough leads, as a cfo, I'm not going to build them a funnel and I'm not going to go find an email list for them to purchase. But I will make introductions to marketing firms that I know like and trust that can help them build out their funnel. Like, if they're just not getting enough leads, but the leads they're getting, they're converting, then okay, here's two firms that I trust. Go talk to them, see what they can do to get more deal flow coming in the door. But if they're dropping the ball on their leads, we don't need to bring more leads in. We need to tighten up the ship on that end.

So where would you say that you're. You draw the line for boundaries on? And let's just stay with the sales theme again. So they have a, they have a revenue issue. Where is that line in the sand that like pivot will help you up to this point, but beyond this, you've got to go find some other expert that can solve the problem on a different level than we can.

Sure. So our line revolves around analytics and data. And once it becomes actionable, then you're going to need a marketing coach or a marketing agency. So if you need a website, you need more emails, you need content written. I'm not going to write your content. I'm not going to build your website. But if our analytics show your website used to be converting and now it's not, you need to go find someone to rebuild your website and up your Google AdWords. Like, I'm not going to do that. So we stop at the analytics, we'll identify the issue or where things have fallen off, which then tells them who, what professional they need to go out and hire. Because I don't want to be all things to all people. I want to stay in the zone of what we're good at and what, what our skill set is and not try to pretend to be something I'm not.

That's smart. Our scope of work actually stops before that, but for the same reason that yours stops where it is. You know, we've got our skill, our zone of genius, and the things that we like to do, and so we stop earlier than that. And I think the important thing isn't so much where you stop, but it's having like the mindset and the mental framework to know. This is like conceptually why we stop where we stop and being okay with not feeling forced to go beyond that.

Yeah, 100%.

So back to the idea of team. Let's start like, how big is your team today?

Awesome. There are 10 of us.

Oh my gosh, that's awesome. Can you talk a little bit about what model you've used to build your team? Like 1099, W2. And how do you think about comp? Because I know a lot of people that listen to this are at a point where they've been doing the solo thing for a while and they're like, okay, I'm ready to bring on the next bookkeeper, accountant, fractional cfo. They don't really know where to start or what to pay or where to find them. Could you just kind of share high level how you think about team in the model that you use?

Sure. So for me, the model I use is the outsource model. So client fulfillment is the outsource model. So I have 1099 contractors that have their own businesses that have their own clients that also do bookkeeping for me, that also do CFO fulfillment for me. However, my operational team are W2, so I do have W2. So I have a full time operations manager. I have an executive assistant that does marketing, she's a W2. But all client fulfillment is done by contractors and I pay them. There's one that's hourly because she does project work, but everyone else gets paid a commission based on what I build a client. So it's 10, 20, or 30%, depending on what their role is. So if I build a client two grand a month, fulfillment for the CFO is 40%. If I build a client 750amonth for bookkeeping, bookkeeper gets 20%. And the reason being because bookkeepers have my operations manager who's over them, who then has to manage the client expectations and communication. But the person who's, you know, head down coding, that's a contractor because she has her own bookkeeping business. But what I found is with my model, there are a ton of amazing women out there who are powerful at what they do and hate sales and marketing and don't want to go out and kill it and drag it home. They just want to fulfill on it. And that's fantastic because I don't want to fulfill on it in my stage of my career. I want to go out and kill it and drag it home and then pass it to my team to fulfill on.

At what point did you make that transition from where you were doing fulfillment to where you were going out and killing it and dragging it back and kind of being more of the visionary for the company? When was that in your seven year history?

Real early. Really early. So much so that I was part of an association of CFOs and I got kicked out because my model of bringing in other CFOs to fulfill on the work was intimidating to them. They just wanted me to go out and help a client and come back and I'm like, I don't want to do that. I want to go out and educate people and add value to small businesses and sell it and lead a team. So they were like, thanks, peace. So I was like, okay. So within a year and a half of starting, I was like, okay, I want this to be bigger than me and to do that I need other people to fulfill on it and I need to stay in the area that I enjoy and that I'm good at. So yeah, within the first two years I was like, okay, who else? I need to bring in more people because I don't want to be the only one like doing this stuff.

Where do you find these amazing women that join your team? So if somebody's looking to go hire somebody, whether it's 1099 or W2, where would you suggest they go to find a highly skilled, competent, fractional CFO that could join their team?

Sure. So the places that I found them are LinkedIn. Posting on LinkedIn has worked really well to find CFOs and bookkeepers. To be honest, your group has been super helpful for me to see. You know the CFO accelerator group. I found my most recent CFO at one of your events because she's amazing at what she does and she has her own clients, but she likes fulfillment. She doesn't want to go out and hunt for it. I'm like, fantastic, I will hunt for it. And then the other is just networking because my existing CFOs know other people in the industry and they'll make introductions.

On LinkedIn as an example. Are you doing cold outreach to people that look like they might fit the Pivot mold, so to speak, and saying, hey, would you like to come over here? Or are you looking for people that are clearly looking to get hired?

I've tried both and I tried outreach with automation. And so I use third party software where I basically blast messaged a ton of fractional CFOs that didn't go anywhere. So what I did find was helpful was just putting a listing for looking for fractional CFO to support existing clients because I got better response from that than the blasting a bunch of fractional CFOs. So if there's anyone out there that my autobot messaged on LinkedIn, sorry.

So I'm assuming then, is your whole team remote?

Yeah, I do have an office outside of my home and I do have an assistant that comes in like one or two days a month, but everyone else is fully remote. I actually yesterday I flew my operations manager to Atlanta to meet one of our newest team members. And my operations managers worked for me for six months and this is the first time I met her in person. So it was great. I was like, oh my gosh, actually you're real.

You're real. You're not a. You're not getting catfished. What do you do to intentionally drive a healthy culture within Pivot?

So lots of things. We have clear mission, vision and values that everyone sold out about, including my contractors. So even though they have their own company and their own clients, they understand what my mission, vision and values are. They're bought into them, they're in alignment with them. We have weekly team calls. So depending on which methodology, we've got level 10 meetings every week, win meetings every week where everyone is coming. We all share a win for the week, something that we're excited about, whether personal or business. And then everyone's held accountable to a number. So we have a dashboard, a company wide dashboard that everyone reports to. So there's team accountability, there's team wins, and then we also have a Slack channel that's open all day long that all of us are communicating. We also have team retreats, so we're going to Disney in January. So we're all gonna meet in person and have live get together because there's these women have been doing life together, some of them for years and never met. So it'll be super awesome.

One of the things you touched on was like this shared idea of values. What are the values, like the core values that Pivot has, sure.

So I've got them on my wall, so I'm gonna look at them so I don't mess them up. But empowerment. And so by that, it's not like take over, but it's more of building confidence for our team and our clients to go after the goals that they want. Reliability. So that's being a dependable support team for our entrepreneurs and also to one another. As a team structure, we're all about processes and systems that are repeatable so that our clients know what to expect and we know what to expect from one another. And integrity, honesty, and openness. You do what you say you're gonna do.

They're clearly written down because you just read them. How important do you think it is for somebody that's in an earlier stage in their firm or maybe even a later stage? How important is it for a firm owner to have written values and why do it yesterday?

It's essential these are revised. So my original values have changed as my vision and mission for the company has changed and my company size has changed. And so these core values we created earlier this year actually in Q1 at our leadership team team retreat, it's essential to know where you're headed with your vision and what your mission is, who you're trying to help and why. And the core values are the glue that sticks it together. And the core values are what we base our decisions off of. So as opportunities arise, is it in alignment with our mission, vision, and core values? And especially when it comes to onboarding new team members, whether they're W2 or contractors, we go through this with them. And it's a. It's a stress test of, do you align with these values? Are you a person of high integrity? Do you like structure? Are you out for the empowerment of yourself and others? Are you a reliable human? And if you don't pass those structures, we hire and fire based on them.

How did you get them? I think a lot of people, it's like, okay, great, I get it. I need to have my core values and my vision, all these things, like, identified, but they don't know where to start. Tactically, what is step one, two, and three for somebody that knows they need these things but don't know where to start?

Sure. So whether you're solopreneur or you've got team, get your leadership together or yourself together, and what it comes down to is what's important to you? What does success look like? What is the end look like? Who are you trying to serve? What is I did it look like? What does legacy look like? Because you've got to start big to be able to come down to the granular level. Because I think some people just like Google core values and come up with a word. You know, look at a list of 50 words and be like, oh, I like this one and this one and this one. Like, it needs to mean something based on where you're taking your company. So for me, step one is to define what is success. Where are we taking this company? Some people call it the desired end state. And then once you have that, you can start working backwards to define what your mission, vision, and core values are. Because if this is who I'm helping, this is the direction I'm taking the company. This is the vision I have. This is our mission of who we're trying to help and why. Therefore, our core values are there. So for me, it's a working backwards process, because I love honesty as a core value, but it's not one of mine. Because when we built out our goals of where we're taking the company and our mission, vision integrity was a stronger word for us.

One of the things that you said that I think is important honestly for me to hear, but for other people as well, is they can change, and they probably should change and evolve over time. As your team grows, as your business grows, as the goals change, what would you say are one or two or three signals that it might be time to evolve your core values?

Sure. So for me, a couple signals would be big team changes. There's a saying that says the people who got you here won't get you there. And that's very true. So the people who help you get started are amazing and you love them and you trust them and you give them your kidney, but that doesn't mean they're the one that knows how to help you add some zeros to the back of your company as your team changes, it's potentially time to reevaluate your mission, vision, and core value values. The other thing is as your service offering gets honed in and gets more defined, because a lot of times what I see is fractional CFOs. When they start out, they say yes to everything, right? Because we just want money. And so this client needs this. Oh, I can solve that problem. This client needs this. I can solve that problem. So as you become more defined of you're not trading time for money and you're not just saying yes to everyone and solving everyone's problems, this is what you do. These are the problems you solve. These are the type of people you help. That's when it's time to do a review of your mission, vision and core values.

I remember right now, even it's still, if you look inside of like our EOS dashboard, one of ours is that we're value driven. You know, we want to make sure that everything we do adds value to, you know, our clients, their employees, our team, et cetera. But one of the things that's become like glaringly obvious to the whole team is that more important to us than just driving value is actually driving impact. And we've realized that that word like impact driven resonates and inspires us a lot more even than the idea of value driven. And so we're going to be changing that you team wide from value driven to impact driven because we just learn more about ourselves and our DNA. Like you said, as the team has grown, as the team has evolved, as we've gotten more and more things dialed in, impact is really the thing that drives us more so than value. And so I think you're spot on. Like one is you're coming up with your values, realize that they're not set in stone. It's more important, I think, to have something that will change than to have nothing at all and then just realize like you're going to go through seasons of business and life in mindset changes and those are all things that are gonna cause those values to evolve over time.

Exactly. But I think something is better than nothing. To your point, get something because it.

Should be your North Star. It should be a North Star, right? It should be the thing that like all other decisions are based on. Do you hire the employee, do you fire the employee, do you take the client, do you fire the client? All of those things like, should just go through that filter. In our experience anyway, the decisions normally become really easy.

100%.

Okay, let's, let's shift in a little bit the topic to. Let's talk about a little bit about pricing and then sales and marketing and how you think about that. You're a hybrid today. There's some hourly things that you do and then some fixed price things. Did I understand that correctly from earlier?

No. Everything is fixed price. The only. I only have one person on my team who gets paid hourly. She gets a budget of hours. But all of our client fulfillment is value priced.

All of it's value priced. Were you that way the whole time if you use the value pricing model from the get go or has that been an evolution?

It's been an evolution. I Traded time for money, probably for about the first year, and then went to package pricing.

What lessons have you learned in package pricing along the way?

Clear boundaries are essential with clients. And I know you talk about this all the time, this is what the price is, this is what we're going to provide. And then stick to it. You know, if you give out your cell phone, best of luck to you. But don't respond to a text message at 11 o' clock on a Friday night because they will expect that. Make sure you're clear on what's included and what's not included. What, you know, people call it scope creep. I recently had to have a discussion with a client where he was starting to want things and support outside of our current agreement. And I just had to reel it in and say, here's what we agreed to. We're fulfilling on that. If you want more, we'll have to, we'll have to add more. So boundaries is huge with packages. That's the biggest thing that I found.

When you think about setting pricing, how do you think about how high or low to go? What's the price of one of your packages?

Sure. So our base package for advisory CFO is two calls a month and it's $1,800.

Okay, so then my question is like, why not 1500 or why not 5000? How did you land at the $1,800 price point? Why does that make sense for you and the way you operate?

It's been an evolution for us. Again, I think most entrepreneurs trade time for money and then they don't charge enough. So they put a number out there because they're kind of hesitant to be like $500. And then people say yes and you're like. And then you're like $700 and they say yes. And so for us, it was an evolution. And then our most recent price adaptation was based on compensation for our team because we do have the outsourced model. So I need it to be a number that's enough that my team feels valued and it's enough that the market will bear, but it's also respectful of their time and the amount of effort that we're, we as a team are going to put into it. So it's just been an evolution. Are we at our final pricing? No, I have a weekly package and we have sold that, but learned that, like, my team doesn't want to have weekly calls with our clients. That's too much for us. So the once to twice a month is the sweet spot for our team because none of my CFOs are really pumped about having a call every Tuesday with their person.

I bet. And it really limits the number of clients you can serve when you've got all these weekly calls every single week, week in and week out. What about the upper limit of the price point? Do you have any kind of, and I'm totally putting you on the spot here, but do you have any kind of like percentage of revenue or percentage of profits, anything like that that you think about when it comes to. Okay, here's the size businesses we typically serve. Our pricing shouldn't be any more than, you know, I've heard some people throw out like 4% of revenue. Do you have any models like that that you use, Pam?

So back of the napkin math that we use is their full accounting suite services should be 2 to 3% of total revenue. But by the time you account for bookkeeping, CFO tax, like, it adds up. So based on our packages and pricing, most clients that are south of a million in revenue can't afford our CFO services. And that's okay. I'm not gonna reduce my price so that someone that makes 250 can hire us.

So transitioning from sales or pricing into sales and marketing, let's just go through the funnel. Let's start with marketing. How do you get leads in the door? I mean, you've obviously in seven years built quite a book of business. If you have 10 fractional CFOs or thereabout on your team, how do you find the clients?

Sure, it's all through referral. Referrals. It's referral partnerships. It's me speaking on podcasts. It's me being members of Masterminds. It's me speaking on stages. It's people hearing about us from their buddy who's worked with us. It's people being introduced to us because their business coach, you know, has met me. It's all referrals. We've spent tens of thousands of dollars on an expensive education that funnels and click ads and courses and books and all of that don't bring in sales. For us, it's all about the relationships.

Why is that?

Because we are service providers and our client is not on Instagram or Facebook and going to click an ad that says, want to make more money? Click here. Our client is in the gym or in a bar or in a coffee shop talking to another entrepreneur about his or her struggles with man, I should be making more money or, dang, my tax bill was high. And those are triggers that they need a cfo and hopefully the person they're sitting to, to sitting next to has heard me speak or has heard of our company or has been a client of ours, and that's how I'm gonna sell them.

So it's really like the trust from the relationships. How do you get on the podcasts and on stage to get those opportunities? Like, if somebody's listening to this and they're like, okay, okay, I want to get on a podcast to talk to roofers. How would you tell them, like, what's like step one to get on a podcast, because most people don't know where to start.

Sure. So the first thing is look for, if you do have a niche, look for an association in that niche. So if you want to be the CFO of all CFOs for roofers, find a roofing convention or association and offer to go and speak. Get a vendor table, add value to the audience, pass out, you know, something of value, have some sort of tripwire there, a book, a free budget, cash flow, you know, offer free analysis, something. Go to where they are if you have a niche. If you don't have a specific niche, then it's who are you trying to serve? And go to where they are. Even local networking events, chamber of commerce. I haven't had success at BNI, but I know other CFOs who have those type of events. Those marketing networking events matter because if you're sitting in the room with your potential client or people who, who know your potential client, you're in the right room. And a lot of times you have to pay to play.

Which is probably the answer to the question I'm going to ask is I've never done vendor tables before. Have you had any luck, like actually getting clients with a vendor table? Or is that you paying to play? Like you had to get the vendor table to be able to be in the room?

Yeah. So that was paying to play. Right. Like, I got a table at an event for a specific industry. I had, you know, giveaway stuff, but I did get conversions from it.

You did get conversions?

I did. And by paying to play, I also got stage time, which got more leads.

Interesting. What do you give away at a vendor booth that got interest in leads?

For me, I just had swag, you know, like pens and chapstick and those type of things. But then I had a giveaway for it was Bose earbud things. And I got 30 emails from that and I got seven sales calls out of it. So, like it was a hundred dollar thing. From Amazon that I shipped to the winner, but I also closed him and I closed other people from the event.

I'll tell you one of the most, like, ingenious booth setups that I've ever seen. I'm in Aspen, Colorado. This is when I was the coo, CFO of an IT company. I went to this, this convention in Aspen and there's this, I mean there's, I don't know, 50 booths, right? I mean there's like a booth for everybody, but there's one booth and there's this massive line waiting to get to the booth. And I'm like, what in the world? Like, what are they giving away? Are they just like giving away money over here? Well, it turns out my idea wasn't far off. What this lawyer had done is she, she didn't have a table. She had actually used her booth area and set up a putting green. And on the putting green were hundred dollar bills laying flat on the turf. And the deal was like, you came over and you got one swing with the, the putting the putt in a golf ball and if the ball landed on $100 bill, then you got to keep it. And it was the most ingenious, like marketing, you know, hype building, attention grabbing booth that I had ever seen. And I ended up becoming friends with the lady. She was based out of Denver, where I lived at the time. And I said, you know, how much money did you end up giving away? And she's like, 400, 500 bucks. And I said, did you get any leads? And she's like, oh, we got a hundred leads. Every time we do that, we'll get 100 leads. Because people are sitting there and everyone's talking, the closer and closer they get, they start talking to you. What do you do? What are you about? And she's like, so you have this captive audience of the next three to five people in line for like 10 minutes where they're just chatting with you. And I was like, man, if I ever do a booth, it's going to be a putting green with hundred dollar bills on it.

I love it. That's brilliant. I'll steal it next time.

I might do it if you want to. I'll go halfsies with you on a booth like that when it comes to speaking. So you pay to play, you get the booth, and then you approach the organizers and say, hey, I've got this booth. I would love to speak to the audience. Normally the first question they ask is, okay, what are you going to talk about? So when you get on stage at these things. What's your go to thing that you talk about?

So I actually paid to have someone professionally write a signature talk for me where basically I can do it in five minutes or I can do it in 90 minutes and I just interchange the meat of it. So it's any variation of three keys to increase your profit. Five mistakes. Every entrepreneur makes three ways to save on taxes. Like, it's those kind of gimmicky things. But the bones of it are the same. Like my intro, my attention getter. I just change out the meat of it and then I wrap it up the same every time.

I think that's like one common misconception people have is like, if I'm gonna speak 10 times, I gotta have 10 different talks. And I'm like, no, no, you're gonna speak 10 different times. You should have one talk because you'll never get good at it. If you've got 10 different things that you're talking about. Just pick those, like, the very fundamental core things. And just like you said, just pick topics that are universal to every business owner. To me, it's like, that's just like knowing your audience. You know, every business has either has or has had issues with profitability, they've had issues with cash flow, or they've had issues with growth. So pick one or two, maybe like all three of them, you know, and like, come up, like you said, a five minute version to a 90 minute version, and just get really good at that. I don't know what your experience was. It's not that expensive to hire someone to make those keynotes for you.

Correct. Yeah, and it was definitely been a. It was, you know, it was a couple grand, but it's done now. Right. And so every time someone asks me to speak, I give them, you know, my short list of topics that I can speak about. And sometimes they'll come back and like, oh, do you mind talking about this? I'm like, absolutely. But you know what? I'm gonna use the same content on one of these speeches. Like, I don't create new content because what they want me to talk about cash flow forecasting. Fantastic. I'm just gonna plug and play the content that I have from this speech with that title, and it's gonna be the same.

It's a literal asset. I mean, look at it like you're investing in an asset for your business that you'll just use over and over and over again to generate revenue. So it's kind of a no brainer to, to have to invest the time or the money into having something prepared like that.

Yeah. And like this week, I'm doing three podcast interviews. All of that will bring in more people learning about our firm and what we're doing and excited to, you know, connect with us. That's what we want.

One of the other marketing strategies that you talked about was referrals from like other businesses. Right. Or other professionals. How do you go about finding referral partners that can bring you more clients?

Sure. So for us, one of the best referral partners has been business coaches and executive coaches, EOS implementers, those type things, because those coaches are amazing at what they do. But typically they have their set of things that they focus on. And most all of them touch on finance, but none of them want to go deep. And where we can come in is we love going deep on the finance piece. Some people call it pillars or focusers or whatever in their, you know, system. So I just reach out to them and help them understand. Okay, you're focusing on strategy and leadership and sales. That's fantastic. What do you do about finance and accounting? Oh, well, you know, we do a cash conversion, blah, blah, blah. Okay, well then what? Well, nothing. Okay, well, what I'd love to do is show you how our analysis tool adds value. So I send them a sample of our analysis, the big report that we've already talked about, and they're like, holy cow, this would be so amazing for my class. Sure would. How about we co brand this? And my analysis is now part of your onboarding with your coaching clients. Oh yeah, I'd love to know out the gate how my clients books are doing. And so what I'm trying to do is make my process part of their process because they're going to be more successful as coaches if their clients have their books and finances in order. I've argued with sales gurus and I'm like, how do you help your clients with their pricing? Oh, we don't. We just put, you know, we just pour gas on the machine and they just help us. Like you're just helping them grow broke faster because if they're selling at a loss, you're just crashing the plane faster by putting more fuel in it. And so I come in and I'm like, look, we will help clean up this portion of the business so that everything else that you're doing can be proven. Because a lot of these coaches use metrics, but if they don't have financials to match those metrics, you can't prove roi.

I think a lot of people don't realize what you just said is this is actually not just a win for you, but it's also a win for the referral partner as well, because you're making them more successful. So there's actually a lot in it for the referral partner, not just you, 100%.

And so I've got a 10x coach that we work with. And so our initial analysis is part of his business assessment. And so when he walks in on day one, he already knows where their books are. He knows from a financial perspective and you knows from a tax perspective, is their financial house in order. So then he can go and build his strategy and prove it with the work that we do. The other big referral partners that we have is M and A firms, because mergers and acquisition firms help people buy and sell companies. Well, most companies that are up for sale have crap for numbers, so they are undervalued and they will not get what they want for their firm. So we work with M and A firms to say, okay, you have a client that comes, they want to sell, you look at their stuff, and it's a dumpster fire. They want 5 million. There may be worth a million on a good day, if someone doesn't look at the retained earnings, send them to us, we'll clean them up, we'll get a higher ev, you know, enterprise value for the company. You look better because you've brought in this outside source to clean up their books and help increase the value of the company. You get more money on your commission, and then the client's happy because they get more. People don't sell their company overnight. And in the meantime time, we get the cleanup and we get six to nine months of bookkeeping.

And cfo, Are you doing any kind of a rev rev split or incentive program with referral partners?

Yeah, we definitely have a referral partnership. With these type of agreements. Most people do want a piece. Some people are like, oh, I don't want to take any money because I don't want, you know, any confusion. I'm like, okay, well, it's here if you want it. And then we do have a tiered system. So if you bring us a large, large quantity, you get a bigger piece of the pie.

Let's talk about if for some reason you were going to start over from scratch today, taking all the seven plus years of lessons that you've learned, and you're going to just start your firm over from scratch. I got a couple questions on how you would do this. One is, what role would you hire for first.

And why bring in an integrator, an operations person, if you are not one? If you are a visionary entrepreneur, get an operations person. If you are a high level dreamer, ready, fire, aimer person, you need an operations person to slow you down and document your processes and help you build out the workflows and the contracts and the proposals and your packages. So I would do that sooner than later. Especially if you're a visionary like I know you and I are, because I'll go sell it and then come back to my team and they're like, pam, what the crap? Like we don't even sell that. I was like, well, we do now. I just sold one. And so I had to have my team teach me. Like, no, you can have ideas, we'll talk about them, but we gotta map it out a little bit before you just go out and sell it.

So you would hire an integrator. Like, would you hire like let's say a fractional CFO that's operationally minded so that they could do the client work and keep an eye on the systems and the processes and procedures, or would you go and like find like a. No kidding. Like just strictly ops manager?

If you can get both, that's the gold mine for me. My.

Nope. The rule of the question is your first hire one person, who would it be?

You got to get your house in order, you got to have an operations person and there's fractional CMOS DOOs out there. But if you want to grow beyond you, you've got to get your house in order. Because how I see people fail is they hire people and there is no process for them to follow. There is no procedure to make sure they're doing their job and they fail, fail, spend the money on building the foundation so that when you hire that bookkeeper, when you hire that cfo, there's a process for them to follow. Because I went through at least 5 fractional CFOs because I did not have my processes built.

We ran away some awesome people like five times. Like you, like, we had some awesome people we brought in and they're, they're gone within a couple months because we didn't have anything documented. My heart bleeds for them because I'm sure it was, was not a pleasant experience.

Yes, definitely apologize to people. So unless you have a repeatable process for a fulfillment person to follow, don't hire them.

Would you niche if you started over?

No.

What services would you offer? What would your first package be?

If I were to start over? Out the gate. I would start with a bookkeeping and CFO combined monthly service.

Where would you price it?

Probably two grand.

And you would target those like 500k to a million dollar clients, I'm guessing.

Yeah. And we'll do your books, we'll do your CFO out the gate because that way the books are done. I could advise on the numbers, I would be able to explain the numbers to the client, but then also have time to do the budget and the forecast and all the other expense audit and those sorts of tools that we.

Use that in mind. Where would you find those first, the first five clients? If you could just pick like one marketing strategy, what would you do to get the first five clients as fast as possible possible?

That's a hard question because the things I did when I first started didn't work. So I don't want to say those. It's get yourself, you're armed with the.

Knowledge that you have today. So if you were going to start.

Over today, get yourself in rooms with entrepreneurs, join a mastermind, go to networking events. Bankers have not been helpful for me. CPA firms were not helpful.

The networking thing I think is like the go to, like because a lot of people just getting started, they don't have twenty plus thousand dollars a year to necessarily join a mastermind. So I'm like, okay, don't join the mastermind, go to the chamber of commerce meeting, go to the bni. Like go to a major or even a mid major city, they're gonna have conferences and events like literally every week for business owners. Go do some of those. You don't have to be great or even good to get a couple of leads in the door and just go do those things. Last question. If you could offer one word of advice for fractional CFOs that are coming after you, that are behind you. They're just getting started. One word of advice, one takeaway from your seven years. What would it be?

Be clear on your value. Be clear on the value you bring to the CL impact that that can have. I think too many CFOs don't believe in themselves and they don't give themselves enough credit. And so it's the imposter syndrome. It's the, I haven't done this long enough, I don't have enough initials behind my name. You add value. Be clear on the value you bring and go out there and do it.

If somebody's not clear though, how do they get clear?

I mean I, I have a number of great mindset coaches if you want to talk to.

Do you have a book?

Is there a book you recommend about mindset? Million Dollar Consulting was a really good one for me.

Oh, I don't know that one. I gotta write that. Million Dollar Consulting. Check that out.

Yeah, that one. That one was helpful. It's a mindset, dude, like these CFOs need to understand. And I know you coach people on this one on one. Like your experience has value. For me, I worked with multi seven figure construction company that went bankrupt. That has value. Since then, I've worked with hundreds of, of small businesses. That has value. Even if you worked for a big four in auditing, that has value to a business owner because your experience and the lessons you learned are valuable to the entrepreneur standing in front of you. And that experience needs to be paid for. That client needs to be, you know, be paying for your time, but you have something of value to share with them because of what you've been through. Everyone's story is different and people downgrade their story and downgrade their experience. I, I talked to one CFO recently and she was, she needed one more certification. She. I'm gonna go get this one more thing and then I'm ready. And then I'm gonna go get this one more thing and then I'm ready. But then she'd had 15 years of amazing world experience. Those extra three sets of letters behind your name don't mean crap to your client. The 15 years of amazing things that you've done brings value to your client. And so it's a. Understand your experience has value. Value. What you've learned has value. The mistakes you've made have value. The wins have value. The things you've seen in your world have value. Because your life experience isn't what your client's life experience has been. Your value. They need, they need to know how to not crash and burn a company. They need to know how to manage their money. They need to understand why financial reports have value in the world. And as a CFO or an accountant with experience, that's what you bring to them. And so many CFOs don't see their own value and then don't bring it to the client.

Seven and a half years, hundreds of sales calls, no one's ever asked me if I'm a CPA or if I ever did this or ever did that. It's never, never once came up. It's exactly what you said. It's, it's the experience, it's the perspectives, it's the mistakes that I've made. The wins that I've had, they want to learn from that. You know, they don't. They don't care if I have a CPA license or an MBA or an ea. They just don't care. Like, that's not what they're after. So I think that's really insightful. Thank you so much for being here. If somebody's like, I want to join the mission that Pam's laid out there. I want to be part of that team. How can they learn more about you and Pivot and how to join the team?

Yeah, just go to pamjordan.com and all my contact information is there, and you can be connected to all my companies from there.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Pam. I appreciate you being here and just sharing the wealth of. Of information with everybody.

Thanks, Mike. I appreciate your time. This has been awesome.

All right, take care. All right, my friends, that's it for this week. I hope you enjoyed this episode and this edition in our series CFO Stories. If you found this episode helpful, then you might want to check out this episode where I interview my friend David Richter. David gives an absolute masterclass on how to market fractional CFO services. In the meantime, I can't wait to see you next week. I'll see you then, my friends.

Sam.