If you're going to hire a fractional CFO, look for someone that's been a
CFO. And if they haven't been a CFO officially, have they had another
senior seat in on a finance team. What you don't want to do is
hire a fractional CFO that was a controller before. Unless you were listening to
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you are listening to and watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host,
Carrie Lutz. Well, you've heard of time shares, fractional vacation home ownership,
you heard of fractional jet ownership. Well, we're going to talk to
a fractional CFO. Matt Poutra's with us now. Matt, Hey, welcome
to the show. So I guess it's in order to be a fractional CFO,
you must have been a CFO at some point, right, Yes,
And that's actually not that common among fractional CFOs that are out there. You
know, I was appointed by a board and I was a safe over five
years, but private equity group and then just didn't want to do the corporate
brand anymore. So broke off and now I'm I serve you know, between
myself and other CFOs at our company, we serve twenty five clients around the
world. That's great, and so a lot of this is done remotely obviously,
well yeah, mostly, yeah, right, which is easier now than
ever before. Right, it's no problem. Yeah, we beat there's a
bunch of clients we've never even met before in person. Right. So you're
taking on a client, the first thing you obviously have to do is review
their systems and make sure that you actually can do it remotely, right Yeah,
well definitely yeah. I mean, we we have a onboarding is an
eight week sprint with us, and so we dive into all kinds of stuff
in those eight weeks, and it's kind of brutal, honestly. But at
the end of eight weeks you come out of with us knowing everything that we
need to know and a financial model and a plan and a path to get
to where you want to go. Right, So Obviously it's complicated, right,
we're dealing with finance all that. What kind of things can you bring
to a company that was considering hiring their own CEO or rather CFO. What's
the advantage of working fractionally. Yeah, there's a couple of advantages. I
mean obviously ones costs. Right, so you know, to get a proper
CFO, you're looking multi six figures two hundred thousand minimum a year. We
can deliver you a full finance team for most companies, or if you want
a full time like one hundred fifty grand a year, you know, for
a full bookkeeper controller. In a fractional CFO, you'll get everything you need,
nuts of bolts, bookkeeping and reporting and all that. The other thing
that you get with us that you don't get with somebody else is we see
many companies. We see what the market's doing, we see what a number
of people are doing, and so then we can sort of compare you to
others in your industry and tell you where you might land in terms of metrics
or KPIs. We can share some things, not everything, but we can
share some things about what we're seeing that's working. Whereas if your a CFO
was in your own company and nowhere else. There's a limited, limited market
view that they'll have, so you can benchmark and show them in industry wide
comparisons. So a lot of the companies you onboard with they're having issues,
right, They might have had a CFO they lost or parted company with because
they weren't happy with performance. The company might be lagging in performance. How
do you how do you do it? Like? How do you get perspective
and show them help them turn the company around effectively? Yeah, So the
very first thing that I do is we build a financial forecast. So I
look at their finantal look at KPIs, I look at growth drivers, I
look at the teams, all these things, and I map it all into
financial forecasts. So it's a month by month proper to law statement, balance
sheet, cashalw statement over five years into the future. Because what I want
to see is if they continue operating the way they are today, what does
it all mean? Where does it all go? So I take into account
their growth forecasts and all all of this stuff, and I say, well
what does this look like from there? Of course I have to add,
you know, based on what I know of the market, is this growth
plan realistic or not? Or is it going to cost more than they think?
And so then I add our own sort of industry knowledge to it,
and then I really I can see what spits out. Is that what you
want? Is it not? Is their risk? Where is the risk?
And so that's where I start with everything is we build a financial model from
there. But we're talking about fixing things. You know, we got to
look for profit leaks, so I manage marketing correctly? Have they negotiated payment
processing? Do you have staff that don't know what they're doing or redundant?
How our departmental budget's being managed? Who report on this? And so we
got that there's a lot to do, but we look really we use the
P and L and the forecast to help us identify where to start. The
other thing that we do is we create a risk register with the leadership team
where we embed with so we just go and we get, Okay, what's
all the risks, what do you think they are? And then we map
them against what's the most likely and the most impactful risks. In between that
and our financial reviews and our audit that we do, we sort of identify
what are the top areas to work on first, and then we just start
working on the top most areas where we think there's either opportunity or risk and
you know, eventually work our way through those. But it's been working.
I mean, you know, there's one client we joined and I paid for
myself for two years within the first three weeks by just identifying that they were
mismanaging you know, some ad budgets and whatnot. So when you delve into
the companies, you usually able to save them money. Yeah, if you're
big enough, if you're over five million, usually we'll pay for our in
like dollars, dollars and cents. And I mean there's always intangible things like
the peace of mind knowing that you know, you know you can get to
where you want to go. But typically, if you're big enough, we'll
pay for ourselves many times over. It's very cool. And so you're dealing
with turnarounds mostly, or what types of companies you're dealing with them? Maybe,
yeah, that type of thing. I'd say. There's there's three big
ones. So one is turnarounds, Hey we're in trouble, help us get
out. The other is we want to raise money or we've just raised money.
Help us accelerate. And the other is here's where we are, Here's
where we want to go. How is it that we're going to get there?
Those are the three main things that we do. I mean, the
through line for all that is people want to make big moves for some reason.
That's what we're excited about. That's what we like. But I mean,
we joined somebody who had lost seven hundred grand in a year for the
prior to years, and now they're going to make seven hundred grand profit this
year. So you know, turnarounds are fun so as growth. Yeah,
yeah, So industry, do you have industry particular industries that you favor.
Yeah. Our big ones right now are sort of e commerce is a big
one, SaaS and then clean tech and green tech, so we just kind
of know how to navigate those quite well. And in the future what we're
doing is we're kind of we're adding other CFOs with other specialties so that we
can serve serve others in different markets. Interesting. Interesting, So if somebody
is listening to you, now, who's really considering this type of fractional setup,
whether it's fractional CEO, I've seen them and the controller whatever it is,
what advice would you give them, and how you pick the appropriate partner
because you really is a partnership or anything else. Yeah, So, I
mean, you know, the big one is if you're going to hire a
fractional CFO, look for someone that's been a CFO and if they haven't been
a CFO officially, have they had another senior seat and on a finance team.
What you don't want to do is hire a fractional CFO that was a
controller before, unless that's all you really need is a controller, right,
But if looking for fundraising, debt arrangements, you know, supplier negotiations,
all these things, you know, you want to find someone that's kind of
been there, done that. And you know, if you're in a high
fractional CFO, you're not going to hire an accounting firm CPA. You know
they are like they will give you value, but not in the same way
as if you're really looking to make some moves and figure some things out.
Yeah from there, Yeah, go ahead, Sorry, I'm say so.
It's important to realize that you're not just the bean counter, see your actually
your management. Oh yeah, I mean you know I've at this point now,
you know, I've been an executive for ten years, pretty high level,
and I work with one company for example, we're doing multinational expansions and
restructuring, global restructurings. So like we play at a high level here,
and because of that experience, we can help people navigate choppy waters, you
know, see the future like we've sus seen a lot of mistakes, We've
seen a lot of growth, you know we're doing. And then the other
thing I would say is if you're going to hire somebody, you know,
look ask about their experience in your industry with companies like yours. Have they
succeeded, how have they done? Have they been effective? And then you
know, really, you know, maybe call some people, figure out who
they know, and find a way to get some reviews from people that they
know. Backchannel is often great if you can, but you know, finding
a service provider is very difficult to know what you're getting into until you really
get into it. Because it's the same with marketing agencies, it's the same
with accountants. It's like, do the best you can, make the best
call that you can. But again I would say, look at their lived
experience, look at their successes in market and then make the make your gut
decision from there makes a lot of sense here. Matt really appreciate your stopping
by. Can you tell us where we find you on the web how we
connect with you? Absolutely so. The website is eight X dot co E
I G H t X dot co. And you can find me on LinkedIn
at Matt Putra just search my name and we can chat on there all right,
and the links are in the show note to this interview on Financial Survival
Network dot com. Just go there. While you're there, sign up for
your free newsletter. Matt appreciate your stopping by and very enlightening. Hey,
if you got a question for matter myself, you can only send me an
email KL at Carrie LUTs dot com. Matt appreciate you coming on and hey,
we'll be talking to you. Thank you so much, Kerry, thanks
for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times.
For the latest, go to Financial Survival Network dot com. Financial Survival
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