CFOs: Avoid These LANDMINES

And honestly, I remember back to those early days, and I had a lot of voices that were telling me that I didn't have what it took to start a fractional CFO firm. I had a lot of voices that were telling me that I was silly to go out and venture into entrepreneurship because I was leaving so much salary and benefits on the table from my corporate job. And a lot of those voices were coming from a very kind and loving place, from friends and family, that with the best of intentions, they were trying to tell me that they thought that this was a bad idea. But there were also some other voices that were coming from inside my own head that were tending to be a little bit less friendly. They were telling me that, you know, I didn't have what it took and that this was a stupid, ridiculous idea. But as time progressed and I could start seeing some of the wins that my clients were having, as I started to get a little bit more revenue, as I could start to see the impact that I was having, I started to get momentum. And with that momentum came more confidence. And over time, I did realize you. Yes, you can do this. Hey, numbers nerds. My name is Michael King. Welcome back to the Connected Accountant. We got a big, big month going on, because at the time of this recording, we're in the month of March, and March is my fractional CFO firm's birthday month. In this month, we're turning 6 years old. And I got into this habit years and years ago of every month on my company's birthday month, of just sitting back and journaling and reflecting on the biggest lessons that I've learned or the most impactful lessons that I've learned over the course of my journey as an entrepreneur. And I recently did that. And I thought, hey, what a great episode to just kind of share some of those lessons that I've had with you in hopes that some of them inspire you or give you clarity on your own business, or at a minimum, maybe they'll just entertain you a little bit in the morning on your drive to work. So let's go ahead and dive in on those six most impactful lessons that I have learned in my business over the last six years. The first one is a big one. Know yourself. And what I mean by that is really be deliberate about. Reflect. Reflecting on the type of work that you want to be doing, the services that you want to offer, the type of entrepreneur that you want to be. Know how you want to show up. Know what kind of partner you want to be in your relationships. Be really really intentional about that, and make sure that you're designing your business in congruence with what is true for you. And for a long time, I thought that I wanted to build a team of around 10 or 12 people at KFE, my fractional CFO firm, so that we could scale to a particular level. And as we started building the team, I realized that I was in a season of life where I just didn't want to lead and manage a team of people. I've led teams as large as 500 people before when I was in manufacturing. I've led large teams when I was in the military, et cetera, et cetera. And I was like, you know, that's just really not in my heart right now. It's not the way that I want to serve. I want to lead my clients. I want to lead my coaching clients. So I was like, hey, I'm going to actually scale the team back. That's just not for me. Some other things that you might think about on knowing yourself is what kind of services do you want to offer? Do you want to offer bookkeeping services but not tax prep? Do you only want to offer strategic services? And no tactical. There's really no right or wrong answer. There's just what's right or wrong for you. And so I want you to be really deliberate about thinking about the type of work in the type of business and the type of life you want to live and make sure that there's congruence between what's actually happening in reality and where it is that you want to be. Now, word of warning there for me, anyway, this wasn't just like some magical aha moment, like where I just sat down and I said, now I will know thyself. And this is the 10 things that are true about me. It was actually a process of trial and error. I would try some things and I'd say, you know, I really don't like this, and so I'm not going to do it. Or I would try some things. And I was like, man, this really fires me up. This really energizes me. This is bringing me a lot of joy. I'm going to do a lot more of those things. But I think the trick is just to be intentional about reflection. And journaling is a great way to do that. The next lesson that I learned is that I'm capable. As I've mentioned before, when I first started KFE six years ago, I had two types of voices talking to me. I had some friends and family and loved ones that thought they were being supportive, but they were telling me that I was probably a little bit cray cray for giving up the really stable, high paying corporate job that I had with the benefits and all the things to start this business. And I also had some internal voices that were like, what in the world are you doing? What makes you think that you can start a fractional CFO firm? Who are you to do this? What kind of experience do you have that makes you qualified to do this? But I will share with you that after six years now, hundreds of clients on the CFO side and coaching and all the things, you start to have, these wins. And those wins build momentum. And over time, for me anyway, I've learned that the voices inside my head never completely go away. But what I've learned is that I have to take action despite what those voices are telling me. And I really think that that's kind of the definition of courage in a lot of ways is taking action despite fear, despite what those voices are telling you. So my big message on I am capable is that voices never completely go away. And your job is to take action despite those voices. But like I said, the good news is they will get quieter over time. In those external voices, nothing will shut them up more than success. Oh, this is a big one. Perspective is everything. And I think there's two points to perspective that I want to share with you. Number one is your perspective about the world around you. You know, you can't control the things that are going on in life to a very large extent, but you can change the way that you see yourself in the world. And I will tell you that there is some empowerment and some peace for me, some serenity that comes with recognizing that I get to view. I have the power to view how I see myself and what's happening around me. Is it opportunity or am I a victim of what's happening? And I think that if. If you can get to that place where you recognize that you are 100% in control of how you see yourself in the world, it's a very freeing and liberating thing. The second point that I'll share with you about perspective is your clients, more than anything else, are paying for your perspective. They're not paying you for your ability to generate an accurate P and L or a balance sheet. Sure, there's a piece of. But what they really want is your perspective. What are you seeing in their financials? What are you seeing as being the risks in their business? What are you seeing as the thing that's propping their business up that they need to do more of. And I think that all of us in this industry need to be more deliberate and intentional about sharing our perspective with our clients. This next one, this is probably the number one mistake that I see earlier stage bookkeepers, accountants and fractional CFOs. And honestly, across all business industries, number one, one most common mistake I see people making do sales. Sales. Especially for us in our industry, the types of personalities that we tend to have as bookkeepers, accountants, fractional CFOs. We don't typically love sales. There's a lot of feels that come along with it, and I've talked about those in another episode, so I'm not going to dive into them here. But sales, they just kind of feel unnatural for us. They don't light us up. And so what we tend to do, rather than leaning into sales activities, we go and retreat to our spreadsheets and our pro formas and our financial models, because that's where we are comfortable. That's where we find security. But I will tell you, if you want a business that pays you more as a CEO than when you made in corporate America, you've got to be comfortable with the discomfort of sales. You've got to lean into it. Now, I'm not telling you you've got to go out and become the world's best salesperson, but I will tell you that you've got to lean into sales activities. You've got to lean into some of the marketing kinds of things to generate sales or the business just isn't going to work. Because mission is everything in business. But without money, we can't sustain the mission. And as accountants or numbers nerds, we know that at a conceptual level, yet we are so resistant to leaning into that one thing that makes money possible for us, and that is sales. So I'd really encourage you lean into sales. You will get more comfortable with them as you do them more. But it's absolutely essential if you want to have this be more than just a hobby. Did a recent episode on this one, don't skip processes. This is the number five big lesson that I've learned in business. So check out that episode if you haven't watched it already. But the big lesson here is if you want to scale your business, you can take it to probably 100,000 bucks a year, depending on the services that you're offering. But you're going to get to a point, whether it's 50,000, 100,000, $200,000, you're going to get to a point where you've got to bring a team on board. You're going to have to hire somebody to help you out in some capacity. And if you don't have processes documented, it's going to create a lot of frustration for your team members, it's going to cause frustration for your clients, and it's going to frustrate the heck out of you because you're going to feel like your team's constantly asking you a thousand questions and needing help and clarity. So I'm like one of the first things that you should do in business is be really diligent about documenting some of those core processes. So in the notes below I will link to our episode that we did on the I think it was six most important processes and procedures you need to have in your business. Finally, I'll share this with you. This is a hard one and I find myself getting sucked into it a lot of times. Still, comparison is dangerous. And with the social media world that we live in, the oversharing of pretty pictures and pretty stories, that's part of our culture now, where we see on Instagram or LinkedIn, it's always positive. You know, we raised this money, we got this client, we just hired 52 people. Life is great. We tend to compare ourselves to that narrative that people are sharing. And it's such a dangerous thing to do for a couple reasons. And number one, I can tell you, as somebody that's worked with on the CFO side so many businesses now and is a coach of bookkeepers, accountants and fractional CFOs, I get to see behind the curtain. I get to see their business in its full naked glory. And I can tell you that more times than not, the picture behind the scenes isn't nearly as pretty as people kind of make it out to be on social media or in your group coaching calls and those kind of things, everybody's got some nasty truths about their business. Everybody's got some skeletons in their closet. And so I want to encourage you when you see people bragging and you know, I think the hyperbolic example is, you know, the cool bro on the jet, the pj. It's private jet for those of you that aren't as cool as me. But you see the cool bro on the PJ bragging about this and that and the other, a lot of times, you know, those are $30,000 millionaires. And so try not to compare yourself to other people because a lot of times it's all smoke and mirrors. The other reason that I think comparison is such a dangerous thing to do is because a lot of times you're comparing your chapter one to somebody else's chapter 15. And while I think that it can be healthy to look at people that have some experience and some more miles between you to look to them for inspiration, what I want to caution you is don't look to them for comparison. Don't look to them is the metric by which you should be judging yourself or your business. And a lot of times too, they may have different goals or objectives. You may find that it's important to you to spend 20 hours a week working in 20 hours of the work week with your kiddos. They may value working 80 hours a week. And maybe they don't have kids or maybe they don't like their kids and they don't want to spend any time with them. And so their business model may be completely different. It's almost impossible to tell that from somebody's, you know, LinkedIn post or Facebook story or their TikTok. You just don't know what makes them tick. And so it's so dangerous to compare them. Yes, use other people for inspiration, but but don't use them to judge how far along or if you're winning or if you're successful in business. It's such a toxic thing to fall into. So anyway, I really appreciate you tuning in. I would love to hear what is the top lesson you've learned in business. So share that in the comments below. In the meantime, thank you so much for being here this week. I can't wait to see you next week. Right here on the Connected Accountant Sam.