Michael KingFounder at The CFO Accelerator

Perfectionism is Killing Your Fractional CFO Firm

Name: Perfectionism is Killing Your Fractional CFO Firm
Uploaded: 2024-06-07T13:30:04+00:00
Duration: 59 s
Channel: Michael King
Description: A fractional CFO warns that perfectionism delayed his price increases for years, nearly sinking his firm. He charged $500/month for eight years while…

7 Jun 2024 · 1 min

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A fractional CFO warns that perfectionism delayed his price increases for years, nearly sinking his firm. He charged $500/month for eight years while perfecting processes instead of raising rates. The lesson: stop waiting for perfect and raise prices, but match them to what clients can actually afford.

Questions this video answers

June 7, 2024

Eight years

$500 a month

You can't charge $5,000 a month to a client making $500,000 a year.

Chapters

I remember when I started my firm eight years ago, I was literally charging $500 a month for my CFO services. I knew that I had to raise my prices, but I kept telling myself that before I could, I needed to dial in my CFO report just a little bit more. I needed to get my projections just a little bit more accurate. I needed to finesse my post call follow up emails just a little bit more. I kept trying to perfect everything and so my pricing stayed stuck for years and I almost went out of business as a result of it. In fact, I almost missed my rent payments on more than one occasion. Here I am eight years later and I'm still working to improve my reporting. I'm still working to make our CFO calls a little bit better. I'm still tweaking our onboarding process. And guess what? None of it's perfect. But damn, am I glad that I didn't wait for perfect to raise my prices or I'd probably be homeless by now. I can almost guarantee you that you're not charging what you should for your services. Very rarely do I talk to fractional CFOs that are overcharging. Now I do sometimes see fractional CFOs that are serving clients that are too small. The reality is that you can't charge $5,000 a month to a coaching client that's making $500,000 a year. The math just doesn't add up.