You Have Too Many Clients?!? (What to do)

Hey there. My name is Michael King. Welcome back to the CFO Report where I talk about starting, scaling and optimizing fractional CFO services. Today I'm talking with one of our inner circle members who's at the point in his firm where he really can't take on any more clients. His book is almost completely full. He doesn't want to hire a bigger team so he's not able to take on more clients. What he wants to know is should he turn off the marketing machine since he can't take on any more clients, or should he keep it running? He's not really sure. So we're going to walk through that story. After we get through that, I also dive into to kind of pick apart his secrets. How did he get to the point where after just three months from leaving his corporate job, he's in a position where his book is full, he's making twice as much as he made in corporate America and he's absolutely living his dream. Let's go ahead and tune in to find out what his story is.

I'm excited to be here and I've only been in business three months, but it feels like a year. And not that it's been dragging. It just so much happens every week and it's amazing to see the growth, you know, with networking, with clients, with colleagues, being on the CFO accelerator. So I'm excited to continuing that journey. I'm learning to smile a little more in my videos. I used to look like a straw man that was scared and so I'm trying at that. I find that actually at clients. I'm sitting there and I feel myself smiling when I'm having meetings.

So you're doing a great job. Yeah, you're doing a great job.

I've got a problem that is people probably wish they had. My problem is my business is going well and I'm making the same money now that I made when I left a full time job. I'm close to bringing on two new clients this week. I'm trying to space them out, but they're pre vetted clients who someone set them up for me. So it's basically mine to lose. I'll be full in terms of my book, in terms of what I want to work. Obviously I'll make more money. So I'm at the stage now where I've really worked my network. I have a really strong network of people. I'm actually in a great group of people with CEOs every week for networking. More leads are coming in and I don't know. I don't have the capacity to do it, and I don't really want to take on more. I'm not sure. Mike, you. You always say, how do you have $2 million business? Think big. I don't want to think big. I'm happy working less than making double what I made before. As I said, that's a great problem to have. And I apologize. I'm not trying to brag here, but I pinch myself that I feel like I'm retired, but I'm. I'm doing what I love. I'm working with the clients I love. I guess my question is how to handle that. I mean, obviously there's people in this group that could help me, but I didn't have plans to add resources to my group until 2024. I'm probably going to be at the stage now where I'll be turning away work, but a lot of my work, and you said this before, Mike, about a lot of my clients, like somebody who's local. So my clients are within an hour's drive of my house. They're not across Canada. They're people want me to come in. And that's part of my offering, is go to the spot and see the business. And I'm finding that works really well for me. How do I deal with that in terms of turning off. Do I go off LinkedIn? Do I shut the shutters? I don't think I do. But how do I manage that piece where I'm not sure I'm ready, I'm not sure I want to. But what's that? That thought process on serving the clients, but also serving my needs in terms.

Of work, life balance, that smart question to ask. And, man, just first, congratulations. Three months out of corporate, you've already matched what you were making. You're about to double it with your next couple of clients. That's amazing. And I want to celebrate you for going out and having that propensity to action and just going out and doing the work and getting it. So congratulations. I'm super proud of you, man. And you're smiling for sure. More on video. So look in terms thinking bigger, that doesn't necessarily mean thinking more clients. So as an example, when I hear your story, and before you even got to that point in your story, the first thing that I'm asking myself is probably not charging enough. If you're landing that many clients that fast, I don't care what you're charging, it's probably not enough. Like, that signals immediately to me, you need to Raise your rates.

I'm not getting client leads because of my pricing that's too low. They're just. They're coming in separately, and they're independent. I don't want to ever be at that place where I'm charging more than I'm delivering in value. So I got a challenge myself on what value can I do? And I get into that scope creep where you guys don't do you and Carlos and team. I do service beyond the core, you know, CFO package. I get into marketing questions. I get into strategy questions. I get into strategic planning. One of the clients that I'm on site for, I'm here, and I'll sit at the table and I'll advise. So I try and get all my work done in person, but I expand that out, and they get into process improvement and things that maybe are going to hold me back from stuff scaling. I realized that if I don't do that, I can't scale. I can't have 15 clients. So I think that's my challenge, is do I want to package it up like you and say this is all I do and turn away those clients and then scale that with my own resource? That's the way to do it. But again, it's not about money. I just want to serve clients. I don't mind doing it for free. I mean, you probably don't say that, but that perception. My clients feel like I have their money, like it's mine. They appreciate that and that they'll pay for those services. But I don't want to be in a position where I'm just making money and not feeling like I'm delivering that value.

We're going to backtrack, and I'm going to push back. You glossed over my point a little bit. I want to make sure that we're on the same page with it. I'm not proposing that the reason you're getting the leads is because your price is low. I'm proposing that because people keep saying yes, all of them are saying yes to you, that your prices are too low. Nothing to do with the leads that you're getting. But I know what your. Your professional background is, the work that you're doing, you're still undercutting your value. And it's evidenced by the fact that everyone's saying y. You can ask a dozen different sales experts what your close rate should be like, what percentage of people should you be closing to signal that your pricing is right? You'll get 12 different answers, but 100% close. Rate, everyone will agree that your prices are too low if you're closing at that rate. Right. It probably needs to look more like 50% of the time. 50% of the people are saying, yes, like, okay, my prices are probably right. But even regardless of that, like, just a guy that's been doing this seven years now, I can tell you, like, with your experience, with the value that I know that you're bringing based on that, with your hardest service, and you love the work, you're underpriced, man. That's where I want to challenge you to think bigger, not necessarily bringing on more clients. I want you to think bigger about what's possible for you. Don't minimize that value that you're bringing. Now back to your question of the marketing thing. I don't want you to turn it off because it can be hard to turn it back on, and it's. It's a slow drip. Once you do turn it back on, a lot of times what I'd rather see you do is keep it on, maybe throttle back, but keep it on and just tell people, no, I'm not taking on new. New clients right now. And I'm. I'm happy to take those clients that you say no to so you can send them over to me, because I am taking on new clients, and I know there's others that are. That are in the program that would love those referrals as well. But I'd say keep it on, right? Keep the smile on the video. Keep working that muscle and exercising that marketing muscle so that if the situation does change one day, if you lose two clients or you decide that you're ready to partner up with someone else and you want to pick up another 15 clients, that way the flow is already there, and you don't have to, like, get back into it. Does that make sense?

It does. And again, everybody's business is different. I appreciate the input. I just. It just got here quick, and I didn't realize it would get here this quick. The engine's still going hot, and I know more is coming down the pipe, so I just got to be ready for that.

Yeah. Let me ask you this. There's a lot of people here that are three months behind you, and they certainly haven't doubled their income from corporate America. If you had to give one word of advice or, like, one nugget of advice to people, what would that be? What's worked really well for you?

I can say that it's actually my video for today. I'm not. A little pitch on LinkedIn but serve the client. Clients that bring you joy. I've had one last week where it was a not for profit and and I turned them away and they, they're begging me to take the work on and they said, I don't care what your price is and it was a process improvement job. I looked at their scope of work, they really needed somebody full time for three months and I turned them away and said, you need somebody that can do it. I don't have the bandwidth to help you. So I'm helping them find someone for free. But they appreciated that. So I'm finding, I'm picking the clients I want to work with and that brings me joy. That's what's going to make you successful and that's where I am. And I just go to work with my client and it's fun. It's so much fun. I can't believe I'm getting paid to do the work. That's what I find works for me is having passion for the clients you're working with. If it's a drag and you have to take it on and if you're at that small end where you're doing bookkeeping or accounting and you want to elevate and you're charging low rates, it's hard there. You got to get to the higher level stuff. I'm fortunate got that out of the gate and it gave me some luxury to say no and choose my clients.

How many referrals are you getting out of that CEO group that you're a part of?

None yet. Just joined it last week. And the whole point is you can't bring business cards to it, you can't sell. It's just networking and it's once a week and once in person one's online so it alternates and it's local, but it's 30 people and they're all in my space. I'm an advisor on the network that I'm part of, so I'm the fractional CFO advisor which is great to be on there. So everybody who needs one, I'm on the website, I'll have a link. It's not up yet, but that just going to create so many more opportunities for me and just meeting people. And if you're doing that and you're not trying to sell, attract, attract, attract. I find that works for me. I'm attracting people to me. I'm not ever selling, I'm never upselling and that works really, really well.

Did you say you don't have a website yet?

I have a website, I'm not on the advisor on their website. So I've got to get my profile up, which kind of just helps me with my SEO, but it also helps me to be out there in that.

Group working the network, working the people that you knew and asking who needs a fract cfo that's been your main lead driver?

Well, I've been meeting people like you talked about who do. Who was I most successful with? So I can give some tips to people here. So some of the regional vice presidents of banking, people that deal with the small businesses, I find those are key people and I actually know them and I know people who know them. The wealth managers are key people for me and giving referrals, joining some of those networking groups that I'm part of that has just entrepreneurs who just want to help each other. I'm in a conference in May where I'm going to be on a panel as the fractional CFO for a bunch of small business people who are at that stage where growth. So I'm with a wealth company that does pre vetting their clients and I'm partnering with that firm as well. Their clients need a business plan. I'm going to be the CFO that helps their clients write a business plan. And when they need a fractional, guess who they're going to call? It's me. So that's the type of people I'm meeting. I'm not looking for clients. I'm meeting the people who know the client.

I was talking on the marketing webinar last week, right? Like get on someone else's platform. Find someone else that has the audience that you need and leverage that audience. You show up to serve and to teach and to share, not to sell. And the business comes to you. Man, I got goosebumps listening to that, brother. You're doing all the stuff, man. Congratulations. Thanks for sharing.

We'll see you in Dallas.

Thanks for sharing all that. All right, my friends, that's it for this week's episode of the CFO Report. I hope you found it helpful. I cannot wait to see you back here next week. I'll see you then.

Sam.