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Hire a Fractional CFO with Matt Putra #5954 · Financial Survival Network

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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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  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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  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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  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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  Network dot com. Just go there. While you're there, sign up for
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  your free newsletter. Matt appreciate your stopping by and very enlightening. Hey,
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  if you got a question for matter myself, you can only send me an
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  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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  for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times.
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  For the latest, go to Financial Survival Network dot com. Financial Survival
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  Network now more than ever,