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If you're going to hire a fractional
CFO, look for someone that's been a

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CFO. And if they haven't been
a CFO officially, have they had another

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senior seat in on a finance team. What you don't want to do is

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hire a fractional CFO that was a
controller before. Unless you were listening to

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00:00:14,759 --> 00:00:19,920
Carrie Lutz's Financial Survival Network, where
you get valuable information. You just can't

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find anywhere else to thrive in today's
trying times. You need the Financial Survival

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Network now more than ever. Go
to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com and get your

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00:00:31,719 --> 00:00:42,039
free newsletter and gift. Financial Survival
Network now more than ever. And welcome

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you are listening to and watching the
Financial Survival Network. I'm your host,

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00:00:45,920 --> 00:00:52,280
Carrie Lutz. Well, you've heard
of time shares, fractional vacation home ownership,

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you heard of fractional jet ownership.
Well, we're going to talk to

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a fractional CFO. Matt Poutra's with
us now. Matt, Hey, welcome

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to the show. So I guess
it's in order to be a fractional CFO,

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you must have been a CFO at
some point, right, Yes,

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And that's actually not that common among
fractional CFOs that are out there. You

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know, I was appointed by a
board and I was a safe over five

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years, but private equity group and
then just didn't want to do the corporate

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brand anymore. So broke off and
now I'm I serve you know, between

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myself and other CFOs at our company, we serve twenty five clients around the

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world. That's great, and so
a lot of this is done remotely obviously,

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well yeah, mostly, yeah,
right, which is easier now than

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ever before. Right, it's no
problem. Yeah, we beat there's a

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bunch of clients we've never even met
before in person. Right. So you're

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taking on a client, the first
thing you obviously have to do is review

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their systems and make sure that you
actually can do it remotely, right Yeah,

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well definitely yeah. I mean,
we we have a onboarding is an

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eight week sprint with us, and
so we dive into all kinds of stuff

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in those eight weeks, and it's
kind of brutal, honestly. But at

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the end of eight weeks you come
out of with us knowing everything that we

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need to know and a financial model
and a plan and a path to get

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to where you want to go.
Right, So Obviously it's complicated, right,

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we're dealing with finance all that.
What kind of things can you bring

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to a company that was considering hiring
their own CEO or rather CFO. What's

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the advantage of working fractionally. Yeah, there's a couple of advantages. I

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mean obviously ones costs. Right,
so you know, to get a proper

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CFO, you're looking multi six figures
two hundred thousand minimum a year. We

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can deliver you a full finance team
for most companies, or if you want

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a full time like one hundred fifty
grand a year, you know, for

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a full bookkeeper controller. In a
fractional CFO, you'll get everything you need,

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nuts of bolts, bookkeeping and reporting
and all that. The other thing

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that you get with us that you
don't get with somebody else is we see

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many companies. We see what the
market's doing, we see what a number

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of people are doing, and so
then we can sort of compare you to

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others in your industry and tell you
where you might land in terms of metrics

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or KPIs. We can share some
things, not everything, but we can

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share some things about what we're seeing
that's working. Whereas if your a CFO

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was in your own company and nowhere
else. There's a limited, limited market

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view that they'll have, so you
can benchmark and show them in industry wide

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comparisons. So a lot of the
companies you onboard with they're having issues,

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right, They might have had a
CFO they lost or parted company with because

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they weren't happy with performance. The
company might be lagging in performance. How

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do you how do you do it? Like? How do you get perspective

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and show them help them turn the
company around effectively? Yeah, So the

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very first thing that I do is
we build a financial forecast. So I

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look at their finantal look at KPIs, I look at growth drivers, I

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look at the teams, all these
things, and I map it all into

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financial forecasts. So it's a month
by month proper to law statement, balance

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sheet, cashalw statement over five years
into the future. Because what I want

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to see is if they continue operating
the way they are today, what does

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it all mean? Where does it
all go? So I take into account

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their growth forecasts and all all of
this stuff, and I say, well

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what does this look like from there? Of course I have to add,

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you know, based on what I
know of the market, is this growth

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plan realistic or not? Or is
it going to cost more than they think?

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And so then I add our own
sort of industry knowledge to it,

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and then I really I can see
what spits out. Is that what you

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want? Is it not? Is
their risk? Where is the risk?

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And so that's where I start with
everything is we build a financial model from

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there. But we're talking about fixing
things. You know, we got to

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look for profit leaks, so I
manage marketing correctly? Have they negotiated payment

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processing? Do you have staff that
don't know what they're doing or redundant?

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How our departmental budget's being managed?
Who report on this? And so we

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got that there's a lot to do, but we look really we use the

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P and L and the forecast to
help us identify where to start. The

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other thing that we do is we
create a risk register with the leadership team

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where we embed with so we just
go and we get, Okay, what's

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all the risks, what do you
think they are? And then we map

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them against what's the most likely and
the most impactful risks. In between that

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and our financial reviews and our audit
that we do, we sort of identify

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what are the top areas to work
on first, and then we just start

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working on the top most areas where
we think there's either opportunity or risk and

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you know, eventually work our way
through those. But it's been working.

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I mean, you know, there's
one client we joined and I paid for

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myself for two years within the first
three weeks by just identifying that they were

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mismanaging you know, some ad budgets
and whatnot. So when you delve into

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the companies, you usually able to
save them money. Yeah, if you're

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big enough, if you're over five
million, usually we'll pay for our in

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like dollars, dollars and cents.
And I mean there's always intangible things like

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the peace of mind knowing that you
know, you know you can get to

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where you want to go. But
typically, if you're big enough, we'll

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pay for ourselves many times over.
It's very cool. And so you're dealing

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with turnarounds mostly, or what types
of companies you're dealing with them? Maybe,

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yeah, that type of thing.
I'd say. There's there's three big

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ones. So one is turnarounds,
Hey we're in trouble, help us get

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out. The other is we want
to raise money or we've just raised money.

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Help us accelerate. And the other
is here's where we are, Here's

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where we want to go. How
is it that we're going to get there?

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Those are the three main things that
we do. I mean, the

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through line for all that is people
want to make big moves for some reason.

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That's what we're excited about. That's
what we like. But I mean,

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we joined somebody who had lost seven
hundred grand in a year for the

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prior to years, and now they're
going to make seven hundred grand profit this

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year. So you know, turnarounds
are fun so as growth. Yeah,

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yeah, So industry, do you
have industry particular industries that you favor.

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Yeah. Our big ones right now
are sort of e commerce is a big

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one, SaaS and then clean tech
and green tech, so we just kind

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of know how to navigate those quite
well. And in the future what we're

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doing is we're kind of we're adding
other CFOs with other specialties so that we

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can serve serve others in different markets. Interesting. Interesting, So if somebody

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is listening to you, now,
who's really considering this type of fractional setup,

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whether it's fractional CEO, I've seen
them and the controller whatever it is,

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what advice would you give them,
and how you pick the appropriate partner

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because you really is a partnership or
anything else. Yeah, So, I

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mean, you know, the big
one is if you're going to hire a

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fractional CFO, look for someone that's
been a CFO and if they haven't been

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a CFO officially, have they had
another senior seat and on a finance team.

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What you don't want to do is
hire a fractional CFO that was a

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controller before, unless that's all you
really need is a controller, right,

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But if looking for fundraising, debt
arrangements, you know, supplier negotiations,

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all these things, you know,
you want to find someone that's kind of

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been there, done that. And
you know, if you're in a high

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fractional CFO, you're not going to
hire an accounting firm CPA. You know

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they are like they will give you
value, but not in the same way

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as if you're really looking to make
some moves and figure some things out.

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Yeah from there, Yeah, go
ahead, Sorry, I'm say so.

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It's important to realize that you're not
just the bean counter, see your actually

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your management. Oh yeah, I
mean you know I've at this point now,

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you know, I've been an executive
for ten years, pretty high level,

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and I work with one company for
example, we're doing multinational expansions and

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restructuring, global restructurings. So like
we play at a high level here,

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and because of that experience, we
can help people navigate choppy waters, you

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know, see the future like we've
sus seen a lot of mistakes, We've

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seen a lot of growth, you
know we're doing. And then the other

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thing I would say is if you're
going to hire somebody, you know,

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look ask about their experience in your
industry with companies like yours. Have they

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succeeded, how have they done?
Have they been effective? And then you

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know, really, you know,
maybe call some people, figure out who

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they know, and find a way
to get some reviews from people that they

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know. Backchannel is often great if
you can, but you know, finding

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a service provider is very difficult to
know what you're getting into until you really

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get into it. Because it's the
same with marketing agencies, it's the same

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with accountants. It's like, do
the best you can, make the best

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call that you can. But again
I would say, look at their lived

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experience, look at their successes in
market and then make the make your gut

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decision from there makes a lot of
sense here. Matt really appreciate your stopping

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by. Can you tell us where
we find you on the web how we

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connect with you? Absolutely so.
The website is eight X dot co E

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I G H t X dot co. And you can find me on LinkedIn

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at Matt Putra just search my name
and we can chat on there all right,

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and the links are in the show
note to this interview on Financial Survival

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00:10:03,279 --> 00:10:07,679
Network dot com. Just go there. While you're there, sign up for

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00:10:07,679 --> 00:10:11,360
your free newsletter. Matt appreciate your
stopping by and very enlightening. Hey,

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00:10:11,399 --> 00:10:15,000
if you got a question for matter
myself, you can only send me an

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00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:20,399
email KL at Carrie LUTs dot com. Matt appreciate you coming on and hey,

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we'll be talking to you. Thank
you so much, Kerry, thanks

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00:10:22,080 --> 00:10:28,559
for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival
Network, your solution to today's trying times.

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00:10:28,840 --> 00:10:33,759
For the latest, go to Financial
Survival Network dot com. Financial Survival

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00:10:33,799 --> 00:10:37,240
Network now more than ever,