How to Niche as a Fractional CFO (HUGE benefits!)

What if I told you there's one simple thing that you can do in your firm that will result in better clients, better paying clients, increased operational efficiency, and more profits and more fulfillment for you as a firm owner? You might be surprised to find out that 73% of firm owners that I've surveyed aren't doing this. What is it? It's growing a sweet, luscious beard. Just kidding. It's defining a niche. In today's episode, I'm going to share with you a four step process that you can follow to get a niche in your firm and start reaping all of these benefits. Let's dive in. At some point, some marketing guru probably told you that you need to niche down by picking an industry. So you consider coaches, law firms, marketing agencies, and vegan snack manufacturers. You look over the list and boom. Vegan snack manufacturer. As it is, you are now officially niched down, but you're probably not seeing any benefits from it yet. And that's because you only considered industry, which is only one of four dimensions that you should consider when picking a niche. Once I realized that I needed to go much deeper when picking a niche, my business exploded, prices increased, margins doubled, sales became so much easier, and we started getting amazing clients. So here are the four dimensions that I consider when picking a niche. The first one is, in fact, industry. Picking an industry can be a great first step when niching down. Some of the most successful firm owners I know are hyper specific when it comes to the industries that they serve. Med spas, dentists, children's clothing retailers, or personal injury lawyers. There's literally an endless list of possibilities. This is a logical first step, especially if you have deep industry experience. But what if you're just getting started or you don't have a lot of experience? I would start off with something in the professional services. Now I completely realize that professional services is not a hyper specific niche, but that's okay if you're just getting started. You can get more specific later. The next dimension to consider when picking a niche is revenues and margins. One of the top benefits of offering advisory services is that you can charge a price premium for those services. However, as I like to say, you can't squeeze water out of a rock. You. Here's what I mean. Let's say that your niche is small law firms. And let's say that you want to price your services at $5,000 a month or $60,000 a year. And you're going after law firms that are only doing $500,000 a year with a 10% net profit margin. That means they've only got $50,000 net profit. You're trying to charge $60,000 for a service when there's only $50,000 of net profit to play with. It probably doesn't make sense. So where should your prices land? My general rule of thumb is that your prices should be anywhere between 2% and 5% of gross revenue. Remember, you can. You can't squeeze water out of a rock, so you've got to consider revenues and profit margins when considering your niche. 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, Giacon 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 P and LS to AR aging reports. Or you can use gfcon like my firm does to create our custom CFO reports every single month. My favorite part about gicon 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 gicon 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, G Accom has completely replaced all the other tools, services and workflows that we were using to generate CFO reports. Geocon 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 Giacon right now. Be sure to use the link in the description below to save 30%. That means you can get started with Giacon for as little as $28 a month. Join my firm and over 10,000 other firms and try G Accon today. The next dimension that I think you have to consider when picking a niche is what systems are those businesses using? If you've got clients that use a mixture of QuickBooks, FreshBooks, Sage, Netsuite, Slack teams and all the other things, how can you ever hope to have the processes, the procedures, the systems and the automations in place that will allow you to scale beyond three or four clients. I've tried it. It simply doesn't work. You'll end up hitting a glass ceiling and your growth is going to stall out early. I highly recommend you take time to think through based on your experience and expertise. Which accounting systems and business operating systems most closely align with what you want to do as a fractional CFO and include those considerations in your niche. The next and most consideration when picking your niche is values alignment. Frankly, it took me way too long to realize that this was missing from my niching process. When your niching process doesn't consider values, you end up with clients that frustrate you, a lack of passion for those that you serve, clients that just don't align with your why, and a general lack of fulfillment from your business. Here's an example from my firm. Serving with the heart of a teacher is one of my firm's core values. Back in 2020 I was on a sales call with a super ideal prospect. They were doing multiple eight figures and they were working in light manufacturing. In fact, their biggest client was Tesla and I'm a complete Tesla fanboy. So I was really jazzed up by this opportunity. On top of that they were a multiple eight figure company which meant they were going to be on our largest package at $7,500 a month. I was so excited to start working with them. Well, at the end of the sales call the would be client says hey listen, by the way, I don't want the CFO call. I don't want any of the teaching and coaching stuff you guys talk about. I just want the reports and the facts. I've made it this far in business without the coaching and all that other stuff and I don't plan on starting now. My stomach completely sank because I knew I was going to have to walk away from this guy. Teaching is just a part of our DNA and I knew that if this guy didn't want that, it was going to end up just frustrating us or we'd just end up frustrating him and it wouldn't be a great relationship. Just a few years prior I would have definitely taken this prospect on as a client and run with it and I would have run right into a brick wall. I'm so glad I turned that opportunity down because I know it wouldn't have ended well for anybody. So make sure you know your values and include those values when you're niching. I really do believe that the riches are in the niches and I love the quote from Alex Hormozi where he says, don't make me niche slap you, but make sure you're going beyond just industry when you're considering your niche. Also, think about revenues and margins systems and values so that you can get the most out of your niche and out of your business. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, I can't wait to see you right back here next week, my friend. I'll see you then.