Does Your CFO Firm Need a Partner to Win? (2023)

Hey, there. My name is Michael King. Welcome back to the CFO Report, where I talk about starting, scaling, and optimizing fractional CFO services. If you've been following me for a while, you know that my team is absolutely amazing. And the OG on my team, Carlos, he's been with me for years and years now. So one of the questions that we get asked all the time is to build a successful firm in 2023. Do you need a partner? Carlos and I are great partners because we complement each other so well. I'm great at sales and business development and marketing and growing the firm. I'm definitely the visionary. Carlos is awesome at CFO work and coaching clients and keeping them happy and adding tons of value. Together, we have tremendous impact for our clients. But do you need a partner in order to build a successful firm in 2023? If not, how can you do it? That's what we're talking about today on the CFO Report. Carlos is chatting, actually, with one of our inner circle members who asked this exact question. He's trying to figure out, is it time for him to bring in a partner? Does he need a partner? And if so, how do you make that partnership super successful? Let's dive in and check out that conversation.

I would like to hear your thoughts on how important was it for you guys to have a partner, a business partner, after all, I mean, from what I've seen between you and Mike, you guys complement each other very well. How important was it for you guys to have each other? And what are your advice for us if we're starting? Like, when should we think about bringing somebody as a partner? And the reason why I asked that is because your insights on hiring people are very relevant. Absolutely. And the values and all of that for. For sure, that is key when they're hiring somebody, but I think ultimately they will never have the same vested interest that you have as the business owner. Right. To make things happen and grow your business. So what should be a trigger for us to think about bringing an actual business partner instead of just more employees?

Great question and very good observation about Mike and I. We were lucky to meet each other, and we do complement each other very well. A long time ago, we decided that Mike is really good at sales, so he would go out and hunt. He would bring in the prey, and I would cook it. Right. So he goes out and hunt, and I'm the cook in the kitchen. Right. So we came up with that, and it's worked wonderfully for us for a while now. Is that the only way the only path to success and to grow. I would say no because I work with dozens of business owners that don't have partners. It's worked out well, you know, because we do compliment each other. He's great at sales. I'm great at the CFO services and the accounting and the business development and the coaching and all that kind of stuff. But can you leverage a team to also do that? Absolutely.

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You can a team around you that supports you in maybe areas that you don't have that great of impact as you do in some other. And they don't necessarily have to be business owners to execute at a high level. If they have the right values, if they have the right roles, if they have the right processes, if they have the right accountability. Every day business owners build businesses without partners and having a firm is no different. Than that. Now, traditionally I worked at Deloitte. So you look at the model for Deloitte and it has partners, it has directors, it has senior auditors and senior managers and all that structure, which is a very traditional firm. Now, do you have to build your firm like that? No, absolutely not. That's a lot of the things that we've discovered along the way. You don't have to do things the way everybody does, firm building or whatever. Can you have people that are good at sales in your team? Because you might not be good at sales. Can you have people that you leverage to do marketing? And they can be contractors, Full time employees, part time employees that deal with marketing. Can you have people that are CFOs or tax preparers or bookkeepers or all of that? Can you build an organization of seven figures or multiple seven figures by leveraging a team? Absolutely. But you have to have the right processes in place in order for that to work. Because the key word we all are missing is, is accountability. If the accountability exists within a partner relationship. Because we're both interested in making money and being effective at what we do. And we know that the more effective that we are, the more money that we make. That's not necessarily the case for an employee, but an employee has different motivations to just keep their job or get a pay raise or, or be based on commissions or whatever those motivations are. But if we don't hold people accountable, then that's the word that we're missing from being able to leverage people in the right way. And every day businesses thrive under that model. Now, if you're looking, let's say you want a partner, the way I've looked at that is always, this is like a marriage. The same way as you choose your spouse wisely, you have to choose a business partner wisely. And having those core values in place and knowing what they are and going through that, having proper documentation, always being clear, open and honest, and having those conversations all along the path, the journey, are essentials to keeping the partnership alive.

All right, my friends, I hope you found this episode of the CFO Report to be helpful. If you did, be sure to check out this episode where I talk about how I compensate CFOs on my team. In the meantime, I can't wait to see you back here next week, my friend. I'll see you then.