Start Here If You’re A New Fractional CFO | Masterclass

A fractional CFO explains how to start a virtual CFO firm. The core services are financial statement review, cash flow forecasting, budgets, and goal-setting. Seven steps to launch: define your goals and values, pick your audience, build thought leadership, choose services, set pricing, and sell on Upwork and social media.
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As a guy that started his fractional CFO firm eight years ago, when the industry was still in its infancy, I know exactly how hard it is to start a firm and scale a firm. That's why over the next 30 minutes, I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to know to successfully start your firm so you can avoid all the mistakes that I've made over the last eight years. Let's dive in. You're going to hear three, three words used interchangeably in these videos and out in the wild. Those terms are virtual cfo, fractional cfo, and outsourced cfo. Those words are completely interchangeable. They're just a matter of marketing or branding preference for the business owner. I picked fractional CFO for my firm, and the reason for that is because I did some Google Analytics research and I found that more people tended to search for fractional CFO services when compared to virtual or outsourced CFO services. You get to decide for yourself what kind of CFO service you want to be. You do, you boo, and you live your best life. Let's start our discussion by talking about, at a super high oversimplified level, what bookkeepers and accountants do. Bookkeepers and accountants do what I like to refer to as rear view mirror reporting. You're talking about and reporting on things that happened in the past. For example, you are reconciling bank statements from last month, or you're categorizing transactions from last week, or you're providing financial reports from last quarter or last year. All of those things are things that happened in the past. And that work is critically important for literally every single business. It's important because you need to understand what your financial performance was in the past so that you can make smarter decisions about the future. It's also critically important for compliance purposes. But here's the thing. Business owners, their goals, their dreams, their aspirations, those things all live in the future. Business owners, especially those that are in growth mode, they need somebody that can help them put a financial plan in place to help them reach their goals. They need somebody that can come in and help them understand if their strategies make financial sense. They need need somebody to come in to help them take their goals and dreams and aspirations and put some financial legs under them. And that's where the fractional CFO comes in. Your job as a fractional CFO should be to help business owners plan smarter for the future. Your job is to be the one that's helping them look forward and to understand how their decisions are going to impact things like profitability and cash flow and taxes. And the amazing thing is that there are so many business owners that are looking for that kind of support right now. And why is that? Business owners just aren't good at looking through the nitty gritty of the numbers nerd stuff that you and I take for granted. Yes, business owners understand that profitability is important, but they don't normally know how to think through how their new marketing budget is going to impact profitability in two quarters. Yes, business owners understand that cash is important, but they don't know if they have enough cash to fund their new hiring strategy. Yeah, business owners understand taxes are due in April, but they don't know how to think through how much money they need to set aside now so that they won't be short when the bill comes in. But the good news is you do know how to calculate those things. You do know how to think through those things. And that's why business owners love working with virtual CFOs. That's why virtual CFO services are so valuable to business owners, especially those businesses that are in growth mode. And that's why CFO services typically pay so much more than bookkeeping or accounting services. All right, I want to share one final thought with you. And if you've got a pen and paper, I want to encourage you to write this down because it's critically important. And I think the reason for that is because what I'm about to share with you is the difference between a good CFO firm in a world class CFO firm. Yeah, virtual CFO services, they're all about providing those forward looking financial perspectives. But a world class virtual cfo, they're also a world class teacher, they're also a world class coach. And the reason for that is you have to be able to communicate your perspectives, your insights, your thoughts around what they need to do in a way that the business owner understands. You've got to be able to take all of your accounting jargon and break it down in a way that the business owner can take that and leverage it to make smarter decisions in your business. And I would argue that the hard work of a fractional CFO isn't the financial analysis. The hard work is learning how to take what you're seeing in their financial strategies and translate that to the business owner in a way that they can truly understand it. And it becomes a tool to empower them to be better business owners. Your job is to help the business owner take their goals and their dreams and their aspirations and, and put a financial plan in place so that they can achieve those goals. But like I also mentioned, there's no standardized definition of the kind of services a virtual CFO has to offer. There's no regulations around it. So you really get to offer whatever services you want. But after running my own firm for over six years now, I've found that there's really four essential core services that a good virtual CFO package should include. So again, you can offer some of these, all of these, none of these, it's completely up to you. But if you want to have clients that are paying you top dollar, if you want to have clients that are with you year in and year out, that you're able to help them achieve real growth, I think that you're going to find that you've got to have these four core services in place. So the first core service that I think all virtual CFOs need to offer, you need to offer a review of the financial statements. And what I'm talking about here is going over the P and L, the balance sheet and the statement of cash flow. And more importantly, as you go through those reports, you, you need to be providing your perspective on what you're seeing in those reports. How are their gross profit margins trending? How is their cash from operations trending? How are their debt levels relative to those goals that we talked about earlier? Your job is to show the client not just what is happening, but to share with them your perspectives on the good and the bad and the ugly. You've got to talk about it all and I would encourage you to hit on all three of those things. The good, the bad and the ugly. Let them know what they need to keep doing. Let's let them know what they need to stop doing. Let them know what they need to change immediately. Now, during this conversation, this is a 30,000 foot conversation. This is not the time to get into the nitty gritty financial details. For example, this isn't the time for you to talk about it. If a particular expense should be categorized as meals and entertainment or travel, that's bookkeeping work. We wanna stay 30,000 foot view here. Now it's also important to point out that while virtual CFO services are more of the forward looking services, a review of the financial statements, you're probably saying to yourself, well that's more rear view mirror looking. And you're absolutely right. But I think that before you can get into some of the other services we're going to talk about, it's really important to have a conversation with the client to ground them on what's happened so far and where they're at so that you can better guide the conversation on what needs to happen in the future. The second service that I think all virtual CFO should be offering is cash flow forecasting. And cash flow forecasting is really not that complex, but it's a really, really effective tool. At the core of it. All you're doing is saying, okay, how much cash do you have in the bank? Today we're going to add the cash that we think is coming in, then we're going to subtract the cash that is estimated to come out and that's going to leave us with a future bank account or cash balance. And you can do this weeks into the future or years into the future. But it becomes such a powerful tool because you and your clients should use it to answer questions like, can I afford to hire this new operations person? Check the cash flow forecast. Can I afford to up my marketing budget? Check the cash flow forecast. Can I afford to pay myself more as the CEO of my own business? Check the cash flow forecast. It really should be a tool that you and your clients are using on a regular basis. The third tool that all virtual CFO services should be offering are budgets and projections. Now, let me be really clear here. I'm not talking about AICPA projections. I'm talking about internal use, management use only types of projections. And this is kind of what it looks like. We're basically recreating forward looking P and L and other financial statements. We're looking to say, all right, business owner, based on what you've told me, your plans are for the upcoming quarter or months or years, this is what your financials are going to look like, maybe on a monthly or a quarterly or an annual basis. And this is such a powerful tool because it helps business owners understand how the decisions that they're looking at making impacts profitability. And so maybe they're looking at a major new marketing initiative and they think it's going to change revenues by this much, but there's going to be some increased SG and A as a result. We put those into the projections and we say, look, if you hit your revenue goals and you stay on budget with that marketing spend, this is what your estimated profitability is going to look like. And when you combine that with the cash flow forecast, this gives the business owners a level of visibility and a level of perspective that most of them have never had before. And they're so grateful for it because it helps them to make smarter Decisions. Because what most business owners are doing without a virtual cfo, with the best of intentions and with the best of planning that they know how to do, they're just making decisions kind of willy nilly and they're hoping that those decisions are profitable for them. And it's because they don't have a tool or a framework like this through which to look to say, oh my gosh, even if I hit those goals, I'm still going to lose money off of this particular initiative. And so you have this ability to give them the cash flow forecast in the budgets and projections. And now they can sit down and game plan and strategize and understand timing and magnitudes of their decisions and how it's going to impact their business in the short term and in the long term. All right, the fourth and final service that I think all virtual CFOs just have to offer. You've got to help your entrepreneurs with goal setting. Now, I know this might sound silly because you're like, of course they have goals. But what I'm here to tell you, after working with and coaching hundreds of business owners, the reality is that many, if not most, multiple six figure, seven figure, even some multiple eight figure business owners, they really struggle to put goals in place. Now they understand kind of the big things they're trying to do in their personal life, but they have a hard time translating that a lot of times into what that means for their business. And so you have this unique ability to do that, to put some legs under these big goals. Here's an example. Maybe you have a client and one of their big goals is that they want to pay off their house in the next five years. And maybe they still owe $200,000 on that house. You could say, all right, in order for you to do that, we need to increase your distributions by $200,000 over five years. You can math that out to figure out what that translates into per month. And then you can say, all right, we need to increase your distributions by X amount per month. And in order to do that, what do we do next? Well, let's work backwards through the P and L to figure out how we can increase profitability by that much. And so you can do backwards math and say, all right, based on what I know about their margins and what I know about their products, we could say you need to your revenues by, I'll make up a number $30,000 a month, and you need to maintain a gross profit percentage of 62%. And you need to maintain or increase your Net profit margins to 23%. And that will give you the extra cash that you need in order to increase your distributions and pay that home off in the next five years. And you really just start to lay out this month by month plan where you keep them laser focused on like one thing in their financials so that it will work to maintain those margins or increase those margins or increase their revenue so that they can see the extra distributions and pay off their home. And when you become that person on their team that's helping them understand how to achieve their goals, and you're putting those plans in place and you're helping hold them accountable, you become invaluable. Because like I've said before, there's nobody else on their team and there's certainly no other vendors on their team that are helping them put plans in place like that, both strategic and tactical, so that they can see a clear path to, to their financial goals. So, once again, every single virtual cfo, I think you got to have these in your arsenal. You've got to be able to review financials and include your perspective on the good, the bad, and the ugly. You got to help them understand their cash flows. You've got to help them understand their projections, that estimated future profitability. And you've got to get really good at helping them take their goals and put plans in place to achieve those goals. Scaling a fractional CFO firm is hard work, especially when you think about all the different tech platforms that are out there that claim to make your life easier. Most of them end up not working as promised, and you spend more time on them than they're worth. After running my own fractional CFO firm for the past eight years, I have found one platform that has been consistently delivering for us for years and years, and that is Giacon. Giacon is one of those platforms that works quietly in the background, day in and day out. In fact, Giacon saves my firm well over 40 hours a month, every single month. But how does it do that? Well, G Accon is a data connector that links accounting platforms like QuickBooks, Online, Sage, FreshBooks and Xero to Google Sheets. This data connector allows you to fully automate your custom reporting, consolidate reports, and even get live currency exchange rates. Best of all, it eliminates the manual work like repetitively copying and pasting data. You know, the kind of work that nobody really wants to do, but super prone to errors. Yes. G Accon does all of that for you automatically, anytime you need it. If you want to scale your firm without adding a ton of additional technology or labor expenses. You need to check out G Accon. Get 30% off G Accon for the first three months by clicking the link in the description below and start saving time and money with Giacon today. Honestly, CFO services are some of the most rewarding and fulfilling work that I've ever done in my professional career. But I also recognize that CFO services aren't for everybody. So I'd like to share with you some behind the scenes pros and cons that you may not have considered. The first potential con to offering CFO services is that those services require absolute critical thinking. What I mean by that is first you're having to analyze the financial data. You're having to pull out key insights and come up with actionable items for the client. But you also have to simultaneously balance that against the client's goals and their tendencies, their habits, their fears, their apprehensions. And you've got to take those insights and those client behavioral things and marry them together to come up with the right suggestions for that client. You can't do one without the other or you're going to lose the client. And so that requires a constant and deep level of critical thought. And it's not that other services like bookkeeping or accounting don't take critical thinking. I'm not suggesting that at all. It's just that I found that some CFO services require a much deeper level of critical thought. You absolutely can't just phone in CFO services. You've got to do the work. The first pro is that CFO services typically mean that you make more money with higher margins while working less time. I remember when we made the shift from offering bookkeeping and accounting services years ago. We went from charging $500 a month to about $1,500 a month in our first 30 days. In the months and years since then, we've gone from 1500 to 2,500 to 3,000. And now we're in EXC $4,000 and beyond. And because of that, that means that you can serve fewer clients, have a greater impact, all while working fewer hours. And that change has made a night and day difference for my personal life because I don't have to be at work nearly as many hours to make the same amount of money as I used to be. The second potential con of offering virtual CFO services is that honestly, sometimes boundaries can become an issue. And when you think about accounting or tax prep, boundaries can in scope of work are pretty clear, right? The books are closed out, the taxes are filed. Wipe your hands, end of day, we move on to the next thing. But that's not always the case with CFO services. And there's a few reasons for that. The first one is the fact that especially newer fractional CFOs or virtual CFOs, they're not really good at coming up with a defined scope of work for their services. And as you and I both know, when we don't have a really clear and defined scope of work, scope creep can start to come in because we haven't really been clear on what it is we're seeing supposed to be doing. The second reason that boundaries can become an issue with CFO services is because most of us are super passionate about serving our clients. We want to pour into them, we want to do all the things. And because of that, we oftentimes find ourselves saying, all right, let me do just this one other thing for our client. Let me just help them with this one other project, this one other thing that's outside of what I should be doing. But as you and I both know, one thing becomes two things becomes ten things. And after a while, those ten things become expectations that the client has of you to do. Right. Precedent is a real thing, because now we're doing 10 things that are outside of the scope of work. We start having to work longer hours on that client, and we start to resent the work and resent the client, and that ends tragically for everybody 100% of the time. The third reason that boundaries become an issue is because we have this mindset that we're charging all this extra money, but we're only working a certain amount of hours, right? We're correlating our pricing to, like, an hourly rate. Even if we're charging a fixed price, we still think like, oh, I'm earning this much per hour. And we start to feel guilty about that. And so we start to convince ourselves that we've got to do more work or additional work because they're paying us all this money. And I'm like, no, that's such a big mistake. Because you've got to shift your mindset from thinking about the hourly work that you're doing and more think about the value you're creating. And those are two very different mindsets. And a lot of times it's hard to make that shift. And honestly, it can take a lot of time, and it always takes of a lot, a lot of discipline to shift from that hourly mindset to the value creation mindset. The second pro that comes along with offering advisory or CFO services is that there's a lot less complexities and a lot less risk. And here's what I mean. Those of you that do tax prep, for example, you know how crazy that life can be. The government likes to wait until right up until the end of the deadlines to announce laws and regulations and form changes. And you're like running around trying to collect 89 different documents from 32 different clients. And it's rush, rush, rush, trying to get everything out the door by April 15th. And in the midst of all of that, you've got to stay completely up to date and abreast with all the law changes and the regulation changes and the form changes. Because if you goof up, it could cost your client thousands or tens of thousands of dollars or maybe more. And so that puts a lot of burden on you as a tax preparer and as a tax expert to manage all of those deadlines and all of those those dynamics that come along with it. But that ain't how CFOs role. We don't have those kind of rush, rush, rush deadlines and complexities that come along with offering some other services like tax prep. It's a much more predictable, chill, steady state world. And I get it. There are people out there that absolutely love doing tax prep and doing things associated with that. And I'm so grateful that they're out there. That's just not a life for me. The third downside to offering CFO services is honestly, it's a downside that I grossly underestimated. And that's the fact that hiring people to help you with CFO services is a lot trickier and a lot harder than hiring somebody to help you with bookkeeping or tax prep. Here's what I mean is you've no doubt realized by now the forward looking work is very, very different than typical accounting work, bookkeeping work, or tax prep work. It's an entirely different skill set. And it's honestly a much rarer skill set to find. And so when you decide that you're ready to start scaling your business and you want to bring on additional fractional CFOs or virtual CFOs to help you with the work, you've got a much smaller pool of people to pick from that have that skill set. And so that means that you typically will have to bring somebody on and then train them and teach them how to do the forward looking work. And that takes in some cases a lot of time. And so there's payroll and things that come along with paying Those people while you train them. I grossly underestimated how hard it would be to find people that are interested in the forward looking work, that have the technical capabilities to do it and that are willing to come in and like learn those kinds of skills and then get them onboarded and get them out there to where they're starting to generate money for the company. So much, much harder to scale your team. And because it's harder to scale your team, it's frankly harder to scale your revenue compared to compliance or non advisory services. The third and final pro for offering CFO services is the fact that those services can be absolutely transformational. And what I mean by that is when you get the right kind of client, the client that's willing to listen to you, that's willing to try some of the things that you suggest, and when you deliver them a really, really good CFO experience, you can start to see the progress that they make with their business. You get to start to see revenues increase and profits increase and cash flows change for the better. Debts go down. And when those things happen, businesses can hire more people and they can pay people more money. And when more people have jobs and when they're making more money, they get to go buy houses and send their kids to college and save for retirement and do amazing things. And you get to sit back and look at that and realize, wow, I made a real impact. I made a real impact with real people. And you have the opportunity to see firsthand what that impact is. The other transformation that you'll see when you do it right with the right kinds of clients is you're going to see the entrepreneurs themselves evolve. They're going to start to make more informed decisions. They're going to start to feel more confident. You're going to see them mature and grow as a business owner and do even more amazing things, and you're going to enable them to have an even greater impact. Let's dive into those things. 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, to school and watch the 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. 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? Write them down. And don't just let your values become one of those things. You know, it's like the, 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 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 or an accountant, whatever, and you decide you want to get into CFO services, but you're burned out on the retail industry. Don't pick retail. But I want you to think through what industry do you want to serve? What kind of revenue range, 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, 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 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 Them 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'm 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, two of this series, which I'm going to link to in the description below. And also I should pop one in the tile up in the the corner of the screen. But one thing that I want you to remember is keep it simple, don't over complicate 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 at 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 a couple of 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 Brendon 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, KFP 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 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 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. But 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 on 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 and selling and 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. Z.










