ESSENTIAL Process To Launch CFO Services Faster in 2023

Hey my friends, my name is Michael King. Welcome back to the Connected Accountant. Today we are on part four of our four part series on all things fractional CFO services. Today we are going to talk about the seven steps that you should take if you are thinking, even thinking about getting into fractional CFO services. If you haven't had a chance, make sure you check out the other three videos in the series which I have conveniently linked to you in the description below. You're welcome. But without further ado, let's so let's dive into those seven steps that you need to follow if you want to start fractional CFO services this year. Now, the first one I'm going to share with you is a little bit counterintuitive, but I want to really emphasize and really stress. Don't skip this step. I want you to start by identifying your personal goals and then your business goals. One of the things that I believe should be true for any CEO of a virtual or fractional CFO firm is that your personal life should direct your business, not the other way around. But so many of us, we start by setting our business goals and then our personal life kind of takes a backseat to that. And so I think it's so important to start by thinking through what are your family goals, what are your lifestyle goals, what are your income goals. Think about those things, then make sure that you're building your business around that. And if you start with business goals, you are likely to find out down the road that you're working more hours that you wanted to. You're not able to take the vacations you wanted to have, you're not able to take your kids to school and watch the school soccer games and all those kinds of things. So I really want you to be intentional, write out your personal goals, then start thinking about your business goals. The next thing that I want you to think about. The second step is to identify your values. Again, this is another kind of counterintuitive one that a lot of people don't do, but it's going to serve you well. And what I mean by identify your values is think through what are those things that are, that are really important to you, those values that you hold near and dear to your heart as a human being and as a business owner. It's and I want you to write these down and I want you to use them as a tool, kind of like as a North Star, for all your decision making. And that should influence and inform who you hire or who you fire. It should inform the kinds of clients that you work with. It should inform you on when it's time to get rid of your clients. It should really just become that thing that you go back to for any kind of key decision in your business. But think about what are your values, what you are, Write them down. And don't just let your values become one of those things where, you know, it's like the whale, you know, on the, on the photo on the wall that says inspiration beneath it, right? It's not just something that looks pretty on a wall. But really think about what those values are and use them as a decision making tool and as North Star in your business, it will serve you really, really well. The next thing I want you to think about is identifying your audience. And what I mean by that is who do you want to serve? And a great place to start is, let's say you've been working as a, as a tax preparer or a controller, or for the last 10 years, maybe in the medical space. And so you may decide that you want to start fractional CFO services for small clinics as an example, or maybe you've been working with coaches as a bookkeeper and now you're ready to start offering fractional CFO services. Coaches might make sense to you. On the other hand, maybe you've been working in retail for the last 15 years as a bookkeeper, an accountant, whatever, and you decide you want to get into CFO services, but you're burned out on the retail industry. You don't pick retail. But I want you to think through what industry do you want to serve, what kind of revenue ranges, what geographies, what accounting platforms do they use? Think through those things. And just to get an idea of where to start now, I'm going to say this about 15 times in this video. Remember, you can change your mind later, okay? But it's really important to get as specific as possible now just so that you can start working in some direction. And if you get six months into it, or three months or three years, and you decide you don't like that industry anymore, you don't like that target market anymore, just change it. You're the boss, you get to do whatever it is you want to do, the next thing I want you to do, this is going to be a little bit uncomfortable. If you're even thinking about starting fractional CFO services. As uncomfortable as this may be, I want you to do it because it's going to start establishing you as a thought leader in the space. I want you to start delivering Value on social media. Now let me be really, really clear on what this is and what this isn't. I'll start by what this isn't. I'm not suggesting that you get on TikTok and start doing Dancy videos. I'm not suggesting that you post Instagram reels of you, you know, doing the pointy things. If you don't know what I'm talking about, good for you. That's not what I'm telling you to do. I want you to actually deliver value from a thought leaders perspective on social media. So what does that mean when you think back to your audience that you want to serve? Think through 10, 15, 20, just brainstorm, you know, let's say 20 different questions or problems that business owners in that audience have. And I just want you to create posts where you address those specific questions and problems and help them solve them. Okay? This is your chance to actually deliver value. And because you're doing this, you're, you're talking about the problems that they have. You're showing them what the solutions are to those problems. That's what we call thought leadership. You're the person that understands them. You're showing that you get, not only get them, but you also understand how to solve the problems that they have. And I'll be honest with you, I should have been doing this years ago, maybe like four or five, six years ago. I should have been doing this and I didn't until not that long ago. I am certain that I probably left high six, maybe seven figures of value on the table for my business over the course of those last six years or so. What I also want to encourage you, don't overthink it. I don't want you to go get a social media manager or a copywriter. I want you to just think through what are those 20 problems or those 20 questions they have. What is the question or what is the problem? What is the solution to that problem and what is the outcome? That's it. And just get started. Don't go for perfection here, just get started. In parallel with that, I want you identifying what services you want to provide. Now I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because I covered this in detail in video number two of the series which I'm going to link to in the description below. And also I should pop one in the tile up in the corner of the screen. But one thing that I want you to remember is keep it simple. Don't overcomplicate it. Just think of those four services that I talk about in video number two in this series. And I also want you to remember that you can change those services over time. So again, we're just talking about getting started. So pick, you know, one or two or three or maybe all four of those core services. Just go all in on those. And six months from now, you can think of other services that you can use as upsells or cross sells and those kind of things, but identify those services. The sixth step. This is another one you're going to want to overthink. And I'm going to remind you before I even show you the fancy neon green card, you can change this at any time. The most important thing to do here is just get started, and that is figure out your pricing. Figure out your pricing. Now, there's just a couple basic things I want you to keep in mind. Most importantly, I want you to think back to that audience that you want to serve. I want you to think, what is their typical revenue range? What is their typical net profit margin? And make sure that the price that you want to charge for your services makes sense. Does it pass the straight face test? So, for example, your typical clients are netting, let's say, $10,000 a month, and you want to charge $5,500 a month for your CFO services. That probably doesn't make sense, right? You're taking 55% of their net profit away for your services. So it's probably going to be really, really hard to sell that, right? So you may want to go back and rethink your audience and say, like, hey, if I want my pricing to be 5,500amonth, I need to be thinking about clients that have $50,000 a month or more of net profit. That's just an example. But I want you to just kind of think through that. Don't spend a whole lot more time analyzing your pricing beyond that when you're just getting started. Now, like I said before, remember, you can change this at any time. So if you start off, let's say Your pricing is $2,000 a month, and you get a couple clients under your belt. You get months into this and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm delivering way more value than $2,000 a month. I'm bringing too much to the table. I should be charging $3,000 a month for this. You get to just change your prices, right? So the next client that you get, your pricing is now $3,000. And so because you've got that flexibility, it doesn't have to be A thing set in stone. I don't want you to overthink your pricing. Just make sure that it makes sense for the audience or the target market you're going after. Try out pricing and just get after it. Great segue into the final step, the seventh step. If you want to get started with CFO services, you got to get out there and sell. You got to get out there and sell. This is the part that is the most important, because as I like to say, in business, mission is everything, but without money, you can't sustain the mission. And I stole that quote from Brendan Burchard, so I can't take full credit for it, but it's so true. But as numbers nerds, we get a lot of anxiety around selling. It's not something that comes super, super easy to us, but you've got to get out there and just sell. And the two places that I want you to start if you're just getting into the game, are upwork and on social media. So let's talk about upwork first. There's this myth out there that there are no good customers on upwork. And I throw the BS flag on that. Probably the first half million dollars that my firm, KFE Solutions, did in revenue came directly from upwork clients. Is it hard to find good clients? Absolutely. Because there's a ton of what I'll call bottom feeders on upwork. People that are just looking to, you know, get the lowest priced service provider out there. They don't want to pay the premium money that you probably want for your services. But I can also tell you, even still, once or twice a year, I pick up a really good fractional CFO client, right on Upwork, somebody that's paying 45 to 55, maybe $6,000 a month. They are absolutely out there. Is it a bit of a skill to figure out how to identify them, how to capture their attention and how to close them down? Absolutely. But it just takes a little practice. And so I would encourage you, over time, I want you to build out a framework for how to handle sales calls that'll give you a lot more confidence and structure to what you're doing. But all that to say, just start fishing on upwork. The reason that I like upwork so much is because it actually makes sales a lot easier. Because that's an entire website full of business owners that are raising their hand and saying, I have money, I want to spend it on the kinds of services that you do. And, and that's one of the easiest kinds of sales that you can close. So upwork is a great place to get started. The next place that I want you to sell is on social media. I'm not a proponent of the cold DMs or the spammy salesy, slimy. You know, you connect with somebody and then you immediately send them, hey, let's hop on a call and see how I can serve you. You've done a good job delivering value on social. You're going to find that there are people that start to DM you, that reach out to you and say, hey Mary, or hey Bill. I noticed you were talking about cash flow forecasting last week, and it's one of the biggest things that my business struggles with. We, gosh, cash flows, big problem. I'd love to talk to you a little bit more about how maybe you could serve us and help us get our cash flows dialed in. As an example, let people on whatever platform you're on, whether it's LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook, once you've got your audience identified, once you've got your pricing identified, let them know that you're now taking applications for new clients and give them a link that they can sign up for a call with you or whatever. But just kind of put it out there in the wild. And if you've done, I'm telling you, if you do an even decent job here, people are going to be coming to you. But I can't stress enough. You got to get out there and sell. Don't spend time. All these other six steps, right? This isn't a month's worth of work. This is a couple of days worth of work. Okay? I can't stress that enough. There is no more important thing than just getting out there in selling, in testing your pricing, testing your audience. Sales calls are the number one place to do that. Lean into it. It's going to be uncomfortable. But as I like to say, the magic happens outside of our comfort zone. If you are serious about starting, scaling, or optimizing your fractional or virtual CFO service, but you want some more help or some more direction on exactly how to do that, I want to encourage you to check out the cfoacademy.com I'm going to include a link to it below. But the CFO Academy are the seven playbooks that I use to start, scale, and optimize my firm to high six figures and into seven figures. It's the exact Playbooks that I use to get new clients, to handle sales calls, to handle onboarding, to handle all the processes and the procedures ongoing CFO support how to handle a CFO call. It's literally the seven Playbooks, the operating system that we use to run my firm. So check out the cfoacademy.com if you'd like to learn more. And in the meantime, I can't wait to see you right back here next week. Thank you, my friends.