Latest / Revenue Problem Solvers / If You Have 20 Priorities, You Have None | Nate Littlewood

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If You Have 20 Priorities, You Have None | Nate Littlewood · Revenue Problem Solvers

0:00
Repositioning myself from being, you know, the guy in the CEO
0:03
fantasy to instead being his wingman.
0:05
I have more value to add and I can have much more impact in the
0:10
world if I'm the two I see. I'm the copilot now.
0:14
I'm the guy who reads the maps, the numbers of financial
0:16
statements and tells the the the CEO and founder where we should
0:21
be steering this ship. Welcome back everybody to the
0:25
Rev Problem Solvers Podcast where we try to crack the code
0:28
on growing your business by tackling the challenges to keep
0:30
revenue leaders up at night. I'm Karl Ormanzo and on today's
0:33
episode, we're going to dive into the topic of building a
0:36
consulting business. Now today's podcast is sponsored
0:40
by the incredible team at Virtual Causeway.
0:42
Traditional demand Gen. is breaking for a lot of teams that
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we talked to on the Revenue Problem Solvers podcast.
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Virtual Causeway helps fix that by shifting from demand creation
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to demand positioning. Instead of chasing form fills,
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1:01
The result? Fewer cold motions, more high
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intent conversations and revenue teams spending time with people
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who actually want to buy. You can check them out at
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virtualcauseway.com. Oh, and don't forget to mention
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the show for a special rate now. My guest today is the Founder
1:18
CFO of Future Ready, Nate Littlewood.
1:23
Nate started his career as an engineer where he was trained to
1:26
think in systems constraints in real world economics.
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He moved to Wall Street where he became a top ranked equity
1:32
analyst covering my metals and mining.
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His job was to evaluate companies, perform, forecast
1:39
performance and tell the story behind the numbers.
1:42
Not what leadership hoped would happen, but what the data said
1:45
was going to happen. But instead of staying in
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finance, Nate did something most analysts never do.
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He stepped into the arena he Co founded and bootstrapped Urban
1:55
Leaf which is a sustainable e-commerce brand, scaling it
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from a Kickstarter campaign into a 7 figure business.
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Now today, he's the founder and Future Ready CFO at Future Ready
2:06
CFO, where he helps e-commerce and consumer packaged good
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founders grow pot profitably and regain control of their
2:13
financial story. Now, Nate sat in the boardrooms
2:16
of Wall Street, He's felt, he's felt the 2:00 AM founder stress.
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And somewhere in the middle of all of this, if my research is
2:24
correct, he did van life and that was in 2019 before van life
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was cool. Nate, welcome to the podcast,
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Sir, and thank you very much for joining us.
2:34
Well, thank you very much, Carl. Appreciate the intro and from
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what I can tell, very well researched.
2:39
I appreciate it. Awesome.
2:43
So to kick us off, can you give the audience a little context
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about your world? What industries or verticals do
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you work with? What are the selling motions?
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What size companies do you work with?
2:53
Yeah. So I am a fractional CFO.
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The word fractional really just means that I am spread across a
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number of different companies or or brands.
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The reason for that is that the clients and businesses that I
3:08
work with are not really at the stage yet where they need
3:12
someone like me full time. So, you know, I give a little
3:15
bit of my time every week to, you know, a handful of different
3:19
clients. As you mentioned, I'm ACFO, so
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I'm helping them with finance numbers related stuff.
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But really, I guess to sum it up, and at the core of what I'm
3:31
trying to help these people with is taking them from a state of
3:35
chaos and confusion when it comes to their numbers to 1 of
3:40
clarity and confidence. And you know, implicit in that
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journey that we go on is basically showing these CEOs and
3:48
founders how to essentially leverage finance to incorporate
3:54
into their strategy, strategy and business decisions to
3:57
ultimately, you know, grow more successfully, more profitably,
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and at the end of the day, just help them sleep better at night.
4:04
Really, I focus specifically on e-commerce and consumer products
4:11
businesses. I guess what these companies all
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have in common is that they're all in the business of in either
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purchasing, manufacturing, holding and then distributing
4:21
inventory, right? So these are all physical goods
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companies, which means that there's a whole myriad of, you
4:28
know, financing and investing related considerations around,
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you know, the holding of that inventory.
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There's some, you know, accounting unusual unusualities
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about it, but peculiarities I should say about it.
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And yeah, that's, that's the space I play in.
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There's generally 2 main reasons why people will come looking for
4:50
someone like me #1 is they have started to grow tired or
4:56
frustrated with the poor correlation between the time and
5:00
effort that they're investing in the business and the financial
5:03
outcomes that they're achieving. And that could be materializing
5:07
in the form of they're not paying themselves enough, or
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maybe they're not paying themselves consistently because
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they're prioritizing other things from a cash flow
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perspective. Or it could be that they're just
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working hard as ever and generating millions of dollars
5:20
worth of revenue, but none of it seems to be accumulating in the
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bank account at the end of each month.
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And they're like WTF? Like, what's the point of all
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this if, you know, none of it's making its way into my pockets?
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The other big reason that people work with someone like me is
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really to address overwhelm and being stuck with too many
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decisions or choices. So during my onboarding process,
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I will commonly have a conversation with my founders
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about, hey, you know, what are your priorities?
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What are you working on at the moment?
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And it's usual during these conversations, Carl, that I'll
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get a list of, I don't know, 20 or 30 different things.
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And some point I have to politely say, listen, if you
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tell me you've got 20 or 30 different priorities, and what
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I'm hearing is that you've actually got none because no one
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can focus on that many things. And part of what I do is help
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them figure out what are the two or three things that they really
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need to be focused on in order to achieve whatever financial
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goals that they may have, either as a business or an individual.
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Well, if you can't tell, Nate's got lots of things to handle and
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you can see that finances it well, it's a pretty simple
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world. No, it's not at all.
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There's so many moving pieces. So working with somebody like
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Nate, you obviously be be great, but so let's transition into how
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we got here. So how we got to the topic today
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is I asked Nate, I said, hey, what's it like?
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I asked everybody, what's a successful revenue initiative
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you ever LED or what's the most challenging revenue initiative
6:52
you either solved or currently solving?
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And we with a little bit of a back and forth and a good
6:57
conversation, we got to the topic of like building a
6:59
business and more specifically building a consulting business.
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So if we can maybe start the conversation this way.
7:09
You walked away from a pretty high status Wall Street role and
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you said, hey, I'm going to go build my own thing.
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What was the hardest part of shifting from being the expert
7:19
inside of a massively large company to all of a sudden it
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being you and you selling yourself as a product?
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Yeah, interesting question. I guess there's a few
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significant chapters there and evolutions in my thinking and,
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and thought process that are worth maybe touching on.
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So the first one was leaving Wall Street.
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You know, I had been there about a decade.
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I had a global career by this point.
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I was getting paid pretty well, but I had this kind of growing
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discontent in terms of job satisfaction.
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Like there was a voice in the back of my head saying, hey, you
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don't really belong here. This isn't really that well
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aligned with your values and, and who you want to be as a
8:06
person. But you know, I had the golden
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handcuffs on and I just stuck with it for, frankly, probably
8:13
longer than I should have. But the process of leaving that
8:18
world and stepping out into the entrepreneurial world, I like
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describing it to people as if it's like you're at the top of
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this grassy Knoll. It's lush, there's food, there's
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plenty to eat, and you just jump off the top of the Cliff.
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And initially it's absolutely freaking terrifying.
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Like you're hurtling toward the ground.
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And I, I, I felt sick. There were periods where I
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literally felt sick with just fear and uncertainty and like I
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didn't know what was going to happen or you know, how I was
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going to land or where I was going to land.
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But after a little while, what happens is your parachute comes
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out. And when your parachute comes
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out, instead of staring straight at the ground, you can kind of
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lift your head up and start to look around to the horizon.
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And as I did that, I was like, huh, wow, there's actually like
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a whole world over there that I've never noticed before.
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There's actually all these people over this direction that
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are doing really cool things that I've I've never seen done
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before. And it starts to be like a
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really fun process as you can just kind of float, float around
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and explore these worlds that you were just unaware of before.
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And I, I just kind of, you know, was blind to in the year or two
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that followed that, that's when I went and started my own
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e-commerce business. You mentioned urban leaf before.
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And that was really, I guess a bit of a, you know, personal
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reinvention. I was reinventing who I was as
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an individual, as a professional and you know, the the
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contribution that I wanted to leave to the world.
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And like a lot of founders or, you know, entrepreneurially
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minded people when they look to start their own businesses
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initially, like I was drawn to the founder CEO role.
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And that's, you know, that's what I did for six or seven
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years. In hindsight, looking back and
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you know, it took me many, many years to get to this point, but
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in hindsight, I've now come to realize that I am, I do not
10:18
actually belong in the founder CEOC.
10:21
There are parts of that job that I enjoyed and I think I was
10:25
really good at, but there's also a lot of parts of that role
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which I don't think I was good at and I kind of avoided because
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I really didn't, you know, I, I just didn't enjoy doing them.
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And my subsequent evolution from ACEO founder to now in a
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fractional CFO is essentially about repositioning myself from
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being, you know, the guy in the CEO found a seat to instead
10:52
being his wingman. So I have more value to add and
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I can have much more impact in the world if I'm the two I see.
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I'm the copilot now. I'm the guy who reads the maps,
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the numbers of financial statements and tells the the the
11:09
CEO and found out where we should be steering this ship.
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And what I've come to realize is that that role is a much better
11:18
call on my skills, competencies, and, you know, the stuff I'm
11:21
really good at. And the impact and footprint
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that I can have is also far larger because rather than only
11:29
being involved with one business before I eat my own, I can now
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be involved in many businesses. And so I'm not only focused on
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the stuff that I'm genuinely good at and can do well, but I
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can, you know, inject that value into many more companies than
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what I was doing before. Does that make sense?
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It totally does. There's a there's there's
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definitely the the aha question that I that I was writing down
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as you were talking is, is this when and and maybe I'm sort of
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thinking of others and even a little bit about myself.
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But you, you left, you go from forsake of conversation, a
12:06
stable position to going and say, you know what?
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I want to try to do something for my own.
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And when you have that idea for yourself, like the urban leaf
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one, and if I'm not mistaken, I think I think you wanted to be a
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chef at one point, but you didn't want to do all the crazy
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hours. Maybe there's a connection
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there. But but you want to start your
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own thing. When you start your own thing,
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it's you. It's your idea.
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You're going to take it on. But as you got into the role,
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like you, just you, you meant, like you said, Hey, like that
12:34
seat wasn't for me. How do you determine or what
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would you advise somebody on if they're going into that role
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being like, hey, look, this is this is the role that you're
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supposed to be and you're not supposed to be the one that
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you're in? Or maybe if I flip it a
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different way to say, what was it for you that said, you know
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what? I don't want to be ACEO.
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I'm actually better as ACFO. What, what was the lead up to
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that for you? Good question.
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I guess, I guess it, it wasn't any one thing, but there was a
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few clues spread out over a number of years.
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So the first clue was just looking at how I ran the
13:17
business as a founder CEO, right?
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Like I'd spent, I'd just spent ten years on Wall Street.
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I was basically, you know, building and eating financial
13:24
models for breakfast. Like, you know, I, I could build
13:27
Excel models and, you know, do fancy equations in my sleep,
13:30
right. So all of the, you know,
13:34
analytical side, I, I basically had my own inventory management
13:38
system and an ERP system all built in spreadsheets.
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We had insane amount of forecasting in terms of sales
13:45
and volumes of every single skew.
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A very, very fancy complicated financial model which, you know,
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frankly I, I don't think many 8 or 9 figure brands would have
13:54
had. And, you know, we were just a
13:55
small start up at the time. So, you know, I really, really
13:59
over indexed on all that sort of stuff.
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And I, I really enjoyed doing that.
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But at the same time, when you're the founder of a consumer
14:08
products company, like you also need to care about things like
14:12
branding and, you know, your meta ads account and, you know,
14:18
you know, marketing campaigns and e-mail newsletters and all
14:21
this stuff. And I, I just never got into
14:23
that. Like, I enjoyed kind of learning
14:26
about it for a day or two. I was like, OK, cool.
14:28
Yeah. Like, you know, that's it.
14:30
But I remember I signed up for this course at one point, which
14:33
was basically, you know, teaching you how to manage or at
14:37
least oversee your Facebook ads account.
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And, you know, they have all these systems and processes.
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And I, you know, watched all the videos, completed the course.
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I I pulled out of that and quit after a week.
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I was like, no, I, I cannot do this shit like this.
14:51
This is gonna freaking kill me. It's, it's no, no, this is just
14:55
not me. And, you know, caring about
14:59
brand building and marketing and, and promotion for a
15:02
consumer products founder is a freaking important part of the
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job. And I, I kind of looked at that
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and I was like, I just don't like this.
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It doesn't excite me. It does.
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It's, it's, you know, it's something that I procrastinated
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on. I always put off when I did
15:16
have, you know, reluctantly spend time on it.
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I never really enjoyed it. So that was clue #1 clue number
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2 was a little, oh, I guess it's maybe 3 or 4 years ago now.
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I started mentoring with an accelerator program located here
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in New York. It's called Food Futureco.
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And I came in just part of the mentor bench, but very quickly
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became the lead mentor for the entire program.
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So I was working with all of these different founders and
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essentially helping them get unstuck in their business and
15:48
remove roadblocks and whatever obstacles they had from, you
15:51
know, progressing things. And I'd never really thought of
15:55
myself as a coach or mentor up until this point.
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But through this experience, I was like, huh, this is actually
16:02
quite fun. I enjoy this.
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And you know, I'd never really self identified as as someone
16:07
who would do this sort of thing, but I kind of surprised myself.
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And you know, they seem to appreciate having me around.
16:13
So I was like, huh, OK, that's an interesting data point.
16:16
So when I kind of sat back and thought about this, I was like,
16:22
all right, I understand finance and numbers.
16:25
I've done that for a decade. I understand what it's like to
16:29
be ACEO and founder of one of these businesses.
16:32
And quite frankly, Carl, I basically Venn diagrammed my way
16:36
into this. I just took those two circles,
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overlapped them, said, OK, what's at the intersection?
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That involves a little bit of mentoring.
16:43
I've heard about this fractional CFO ING thing, like sounds like
16:47
it could be interesting to me. So I just started exploring it.
16:51
But to be honest, for the first year or two, I dealt with huge
16:56
amounts of imposter syndrome because I was like, I've never
17:00
been a freaking CFO in my life. Like who am I to be selling CFO
17:04
services when I freaking never been ACFO for anyone before?
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I've never had that title, but then I thought about it, it was
17:10
like, OK, I might not have had that title, but that was
17:13
essentially what I was doing in my own company.
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Like I had the CEO title, but I was basically, you know, acting
17:19
as the CFO in my own business for, you know, six or seven
17:24
years. And, you know, I've also kind of
17:27
evolved my positioning a little bit.
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And, you know, I, I, I, I'm now much clearer on my, you know,
17:33
value proposition and how I differentiate myself from other
17:36
CFO types. And, but thankfully I, I
17:39
struggle a lot less with imposter syndrome than I did.
17:42
But yeah, that's kind of the story of how we got here, I
17:46
guess. Interesting.
17:48
It's, I find the, the world of the executive suite is, is
17:52
really interesting in, in my opinion, there was a gentleman
17:55
that I got to work with early in my career.
17:58
He was the, he was the former CFO at Ford and then when I met
18:05
him, he was the CFO at Tower Automotive, which rebranded and
18:08
then he became the CEO. And there seems to be that if
18:12
you have really strong financial understanding of a business,
18:16
taking that next step and taking that CEO seat, seems like
18:19
there's a, there's a typical correlation path to get there.
18:24
And maybe it is because of all the financial acumen and all the
18:27
things you're talking about. Now, the flip side of what
18:29
you're just saying is like not having that seat as a founder
18:32
CEO. We all have skill sets, right?
18:37
And so like, what are the, the things that you don't like,
18:40
you're going to put off, you're going to try to learn, but then
18:41
you're going to put off because somebody, that's, that's
18:44
effectively why you start to hire people say, look, I don't
18:46
want to do the meta ads like these Google, I understand the
18:51
value, but I can't, I, my skill set isn't there for them.
18:55
So I, I, I can certainly sort of correlate there.
18:58
Now, do you see now, now that you're in this role and, and
19:02
you're going into it, you're sorry, you've, you've
19:06
transitioned, you've built your own business, you've done all
19:08
the coaching and the mentoring. How often are you having this
19:11
conversation with the people that you're mentoring of like,
19:14
Hey, you know what, I know you founded the business, but you're
19:18
in the wrong role. Do you have that often or is
19:22
that is that? A common conversation, yes, it
19:25
comes up quite a bit. I, I'm not sure if you were, but
19:30
I, I also run a podcast. And in fact, I had a founder on
19:34
not so long ago to talk about this exact question.
19:39
Sorry, not a founder, but Aceo. So someone, a woman who'd been
19:42
brought into an early stage company to be the CEO.
19:46
And part of what sparked my interest in having that
19:49
conversation is I'd very recently had conversations with
19:54
a couple of my clients who are CEO slash founders.
19:58
And they've been asking themselves this very question
20:01
like, do I belong here? Is this really me?
20:04
Should should, am I the right person to be, you know, running
20:07
this business? And to clarify, a, a lot of the
20:12
clients that I work with or brands that I work with, they're
20:15
generally post product market fit, right.
20:18
We're beyond the, hey, this is an interesting idea phase.
20:22
Like we've actually got some traction.
20:23
We're probably doing a, you know, 2, at least two or three
20:26
million in revenue, you know, hopefully profitable or at least
20:30
on a very short pathway to profitability.
20:33
But the step we're trying to take here is to go from that
20:38
into building a real company and a real company for this, you
20:43
know, purpose of, of this definition has got, you know, a
20:46
fully fledged org chart, right? We've got the all the sea seats
20:50
suites filled, we've got systems, we've got processes,
20:54
we've got kind of standardized ways of doing things.
20:57
And, you know, we can start making decisions in a structured
21:01
and systemizable and repeatable way.
21:04
So a lot of my founders are kind of at, you know, at the
21:07
beginning of crossing that chasm or, you know, in the process of
21:10
trying to do it. And so a lot of the decisions
21:13
that I'm helping them think through are like, OK, how are we
21:17
going to build out this team? Like what is the most
21:19
responsible way to do that? Should we have ACMO?
21:22
Should we have an agency? Should we be doing self
21:25
fulfilment? Should we be working with a
21:26
three PL. Like how, how do we need to
21:28
actually build this business? And each one of these has got,
21:32
you know, its own risk reward, pros and cons.
21:36
But a question that, you know, comes out very commonly is who
21:39
should be the CEO? Who's actually the person
21:41
running this? And how far are you, the
21:44
founder, either willing or capable of of taking it?
21:49
And the answer to that question is going to be, you know,
21:52
different for everyone. I don't know that there's any
21:56
set formula. And I think it's a sort of
21:59
decision that one could, you know, dwell on for months, if
22:04
not years and, you know, not, not necessarily come to the
22:07
right answer. But I think I'll when a lot of
22:11
people can just feel it in their stomach and say like this, this
22:15
is not me. I, I, I shouldn't be doing this.
22:17
I'm, you know, I'm the product person, I'm the innovator, I'm
22:20
the designer, I'm, I'm the customer person.
22:22
Like, you know, I, I need to be in that sort of role.
22:25
And yeah, we have conversations all the time about, you know,
22:28
growing org charts and the evolution of the team.
22:32
It's, it is an interesting one, I I think, and it would be a lot
22:35
of fun to just specifically hone in on this topic.
22:38
And now I have another podcast to go listen to.
22:40
I do know you had your own podcast, but I did not see that
22:43
that episode. I'll have to go into it because
22:46
it is, it is a question, right? Oh, you know, do you want to be
22:50
the CEO? OK, great.
22:51
And when you do have the CEO, as somebody said, you know, the
22:57
crown is heavy. So there's a lot of things that
23:00
come on your plate and do you want to handle all those things?
23:02
So anyway, sorry, we're a little bit off topic and I, I want to
23:05
make sure we come back to it because the whole conversation
23:07
around fractional. And by the way, thank you for
23:09
for engaging on that, because it is a genuine curiosity for me is
23:13
like talking with others and knowing, Hey, I started this
23:16
thing, I'm going to hand it over.
23:17
It's quote UN quote my baby that I want to make sure it goes
23:20
well, you know, and how, how are people able to do it?
23:23
So maybe there's another topic for us another time, Nate.
23:26
But if going into this, going back to our topic, I think you,
23:32
you talked, you talked a little bit of stepping out and doing
23:34
your own thing and, and seeing that Venn diagram.
23:37
So you saw that, that that was the, the opportunity for you.
23:41
But this shift into fractional, there's some, there's, there's
23:46
schools of thought that I've heard, admittedly, some are
23:49
like, oh, well, if you're fractional, you can't be you,
23:51
you must not be that good, which I don't subscribe to.
23:54
The flip side of the coin is, you know, having somebody like,
23:57
I always like to say, you can't buy experience.
23:59
You just have to experience it. But bringing somebody like you
24:02
in to help, like you bring a world, a wealth of experience
24:06
and a world of experience that they might not actually have.
24:08
And you can say, look, I've seen the movie.
24:10
I know how this operates. So now you you are have that
24:14
sense. What was it like building the
24:18
business for the first time and starting that fractional side
24:21
and saying, hey, you know what, I am going to go on my own.
24:23
I'm going to do these things. How did you handle the build
24:26
phase of just start getting your own your your clients and
24:29
getting set up? Like what was that experience?
24:31
Like, yeah, yeah. So for a trained engineer who
24:38
had spent most of his life in finance, there's probably some
24:44
stereotypes about me and my personality that are coming to
24:46
mind, and I'll just confront it head on.
24:49
Your stereotypes are probably not too far off the truth and
24:53
accurate. Like, I'm.
24:54
I was not put on earth to be a salesman.
24:56
All right. And but that we we could talk
25:02
about sales and and, and and what's happened there is maybe
25:05
is a separate question, but. Well, I did actually have Mark
25:08
Roberts who trained engineer from MIT went to to HubSpot like
25:13
he was on the podcast not too long ago and similar things like
25:16
look like I went and got my MBA and then I reverse engineered
25:19
how to build a sales and all the processes.
25:21
So anyways, I I feel like I would like to dig into that one
25:25
a little bit, but anyways. But you, you know, very.
25:27
Yeah, Yeah. Well when when I was first
25:30
starting out, I really just prioritize getting reps.
25:36
So some of the ways I did that is I got on up work and I bid
25:41
extremely competitively. You know, I was competing on,
25:45
you know, financial model build out jobs with, you know, people
25:48
in India and yeah, other other other parts where people are
25:52
obviously willing to work a lot cheaper than we are here in the
25:55
US. So I was, you know, doing jobs
25:58
where my hourly rate would have been, you know, 50 bucks an hour
26:01
or something just because I knew I needed to get the reps I
26:05
needed FaceTime in front of other founders and needed to
26:07
understand how they think and the problems that they want and
26:10
the concerns that they have and, you know, all that sort of
26:13
stuff. I also networked my way into a
26:18
couple of other fractional CFO shops, guys who were a few years
26:22
ahead of me. They're a bit more established
26:24
and I could see that they had the whole sales and marketing
26:27
thing figured out. And I basically said to them,
26:30
hey, like if you ever come in and cross any clients who are
26:33
not a great fit for you, maybe I could like subcontract to you.
26:36
So in financial terms, it basically meant that I was
26:40
selling my time to them on a wholesale basis and getting, you
26:44
know, the, some of the less desirable clients that they
26:47
didn't really want to do themselves.
26:48
But rather than just saying no to these people, they would
26:51
essentially give them to me. So what I was doing is, you
26:55
know, giving up a large part of, you know, the, the, the hourly
26:59
rate or the, you know, monthly retainer.
27:01
But at least I didn't have to worry about customer acquisition
27:04
and marketing and sales, which at that point I, I certainly had
27:07
not figured out. Now, once I had done that for a
27:11
while and gotten some FaceTime with clients, even at, you know,
27:15
ridiculously low rates, I started to see problems and
27:20
patterns and understood, you know, how other founders were
27:23
talking and the way that they were explaining things.
27:25
And I then started to be, you know, a bit more active in terms
27:32
of doing my own marketing and trying to get clients directly
27:36
myself where obviously, you know, the margin and the math
27:38
is, excuse me, is a lot better. But when I first started doing
27:42
this, I was very, you know, approaching it as a engineering
27:49
mind would, which is that I was very focused on the attributes
27:54
or the features of my offer, which is like, hey, look, I'm
27:57
going to build this amazing 13 week cash flow and it's going to
28:00
have these six different sections and there's going to be
28:03
this, you know, fancy three statement model and look at this
28:05
beautiful dashboard I can build for you.
28:07
Isn't this wonderful? And I was kind of focusing on
28:10
the widgets and all of their features.
28:13
But. Nobody really cares about the
28:16
widgets and the features. All they, you know, what I now
28:19
realize is what they, they really care about is whether or
28:22
not you know how to solve their problems.
28:24
They could care less what your dashboard looks like and you
28:28
know how far out your cash flow model goes.
28:30
Like it it it's about like, how can you make my life easier and
28:33
what problems you can solve for me.
28:35
So when I first started doing this, my conversion rate on
28:39
sales prospects was like probably less than 5%.
28:42
It was embarrassingly low. It was so bad that I would feel
28:47
really pathetic when people would give me a referral, you
28:51
know, from another CFO firm for, for example, they would
28:54
sometimes send me a referral and say, hey, like, maybe you should
28:56
talk to Nate. And I just, I would always be
28:58
dropping the ball. It was like embarrassing.
29:00
It's like, I can't catch anything.
29:02
I've got these people throwing things at me, but I can't catch
29:04
anything. And it was, it was really,
29:06
really frustrating, But I was a problem I wanted to solve.
29:10
So I did a lot of reading, a lot of self education, spoke to a
29:14
bunch of people, got some help. One of the most impactful pieces
29:20
of learning I did during that period was reading a book by a
29:24
woman named, I think it's April Dunford.
29:27
The title starts with sales pitch, I think, and it's
29:30
basically like a framework for selling to B to B founders.
29:35
And what I learned through this is that I had been kind of
29:39
assuming up until this point that my potential customers knew
29:45
how to buy a product like mine, which kind of sounds dumb when I
29:51
say it because most of them haven't.
29:53
And like, if I asked them, have you ever had ACFI before, they
29:55
would clearly say no. So I realized, well, if they
29:59
haven't bought someone like me before, why am I acting like
30:02
they have? They don't know what features
30:05
are important. They don't know what their
30:07
options are. They don't know the questions to
30:09
be asking. So rather than kind of shying
30:12
away from the reality that I have competition and my
30:16
customers have options, I started tackling it head on.
30:20
And so I said list. Listen like you're going to have
30:22
options. You're probably talking to other
30:24
people. I've actually saved you some
30:26
work here because I've categorized your options into
30:29
these three categories. You can have this one, this one,
30:31
or this one. Like everyone you talk to in the
30:33
CFO space is going to fit into one of these categories.
30:35
Here's the pros and cons of each.
30:37
This is why this would be good. This is why that would be bad.
30:40
And I've, you know, I've been in your shoes as a founder.
30:43
I know what it's like to be dealing with the sort of finance
30:45
and money problems that you're going through now.
30:47
That's why I think this is important to you.
30:50
And that's why I think you should be thinking about it this
30:52
way. Oh, and by the way, the not
30:54
logical conclusion here is that you should be working with me.
30:57
And so I, I kind of, you know, completely changed how I thought
31:02
about sales in, in the couple of months after I, I made that
31:05
pivot, like my conversion rates went from 5% to nearly 80%.
31:09
And I was like, you know, closing almost everyone I spoke
31:12
to. They've come down a bit since
31:14
then, but certainly, you know, there are multiple today of, of
31:18
where I began. It's amazing that the the sales
31:21
pitch is a great book and and exactly what you're saying makes
31:24
me go back to what's your toilet story is exactly what I think
31:28
you were trying to do. And if anybody hasn't read it,
31:31
actually I've had the fortunate ability to work with April early
31:34
in my career with, with Vidyard and then one of the one of the
31:37
companies that I was that I helped the founder on David with
31:41
Level Jump. It's actually in that book Level
31:43
Jump software. So, yeah, so it's very cool.
31:46
And I had to obviously had to read it to to care to see what
31:49
the story was. But either way, there is a
31:52
really good clue there. And I like how you called that
31:54
out because if you haven't read the book, I'll kind of give it
31:57
away. If you've ever tried to buy a
31:58
toilet, what's the difference? What are the differences of the
32:02
toilets and how do you know which one to buy?
32:04
And so it sounds like you took that advice and applied it to
32:07
what you're trying to do and said, hey, here's what this,
32:09
here's what I bring to the table that's going to be different
32:11
from others. Because you're right, I've
32:14
never, I've never worked with the CFO, Nate, I don't even know
32:17
what I should be asking you. So by by taking that again, I'm
32:21
tying it to Mark Roberts. What Mark did is he reverse
32:24
engineered the entire sales process.
32:26
And what it sounds like is you took the advice from from April
32:29
on the, you know, defining that thing, but then reverse
32:33
engineering to say, hey, by the way, working with working with
32:36
the CFO, here's all the things that we do and here's all the
32:38
stuff that you're going to need. Oh, and by the way, here's all
32:40
the questions you should be asking.
32:41
Just work with me. You don't need to work with
32:43
anybody else. It's kind of what I'm
32:44
anticipating that document look like.
32:47
Yeah, yeah, that, that that's the general gist of it.
32:50
One, one piece I would just add on there is that my target
32:55
customer is getting 2 or 300 unsolicited inbound messages,
33:03
emails, DMS a week. I know that because I used to be
33:07
my target customer and I know what it feels like to have all
33:10
this, you know, unsolicited spam just landing in your inbox.
33:14
And they need, they're spread thin, right?
33:18
They don't have time to research anything and do the due
33:21
diligence on, on any, you know, major decision that they have to
33:24
make. So a big part of this is just
33:28
making them feel like they're making an educated decision.
33:32
And if you understand your industry and you understand the
33:36
sort of questions that your, your customers experiencing and,
33:40
and I did because I've been in their shoes, then, you know, it
33:44
was it, it wasn't too hard to kind of piece that together and,
33:48
you know, make them feel like they had done their due
33:50
diligence. And oh, by the way, I just
33:52
summarized the CFO, fractional CFO landscape for you in two
33:56
slides in 5 minutes. You know, I've just saved you 3
33:59
hours of work. So yeah.
34:02
That's and it's a piece of value that they walk out of it with,
34:06
which is now the other thing you you talked about earlier on that
34:09
I'd like to not over over or step over kind of miss.
34:14
You started to build the fractional, but then you also
34:17
said you more specifically niched into it to say I
34:21
specifically work with E com and CPG companies.
34:25
How did you evolve into that? Very much from like, oh, I'm a
34:28
fractional CFOI can work with anybody.
34:31
But then you said, no, you know what, I don't want that.
34:33
I'm better suited here. How did you make that
34:37
determination? For me, it was pretty simple.
34:41
It was. It was a space I'd operated in
34:43
as a founder. So I mean, my own ecom business
34:47
was, you know, not dissimilar to a lot of the companies that I'm
34:50
now working with. So, you know, I understood the
34:52
technology, I understood the softwares, I understood, you
34:55
know, the lenders that they deal with.
34:56
Like I, I just know the landscape.
34:59
And for me, I guess it was 1 less thing I had to learn.
35:05
Like I didn't have to study the industry.
35:07
I'd already been studying it for seven years.
35:09
So there's that. And I think I, I mean, I guess
35:17
there's a follow on question you could ask is why did I choose
35:21
not to change and maybe pick a different industry?
35:25
And I'll be honest, there are more lucrative industries I
35:28
could have picked, right? I'd probably have much higher
35:31
retainers if I was targeting 8 figure SAS businesses that had,
35:36
you know, raised the Series A or Series B, for example.
35:39
Like that would probably be more lucrative for me personally.
35:43
But I like the fact that I could talk about this space
35:48
authentically. And I think having lived the
35:52
life of a CEO founder meant that I can have a lot of empathy for
35:56
the sorts of problems that they're dealing with.
35:58
And that just makes it, you know, fun and easy for me
36:02
because I can connect with founders very easily.
36:04
Like, I know what it's like to be stressed about payroll.
36:07
I know what it's like to, you know, be worried about how
36:11
you're going to finance the next purchase order or not know what
36:14
cash goes, you know, cash flow is going to look like in a
36:17
couple of months. I know that because I've lived
36:19
it. I've been there.
36:21
And you know what? I've also figured out how to
36:23
solve it. Let me show you this tools.
36:25
It's not that hard. I can help you do it.
36:27
We can do it together. So yeah, that that for me was a
36:32
pretty, pretty easy, you know, direction to pick.
36:36
I think it's also great that you did it for the reason that not
36:40
everybody is suited for certain stages of companies, right?
36:44
And so it sounds like you like to work with those.
36:47
It sounds like you like to work with the, the, you know, the
36:50
scale up, I'll call it scale up for a sake of conversation.
36:53
Maybe it's not start up, but it's scale up.
36:55
Once you get to scale up, maybe that's where you need somebody
36:57
like you. But they're they're I, I have to
37:00
think that there's some level of excitement in that scale up or
37:03
that motion is where you really get excited on.
37:08
I do, I do. I, I mean part, part of what
37:11
drew me to the fractional model was diversity.
37:16
I like solving diverse, interesting problems and
37:21
everyday I'm talking to a different founder who's got a
37:23
different problem. And not only that, or I guess
37:28
taking that a step further, I also like that the businesses
37:32
I'm working with are solving, you know, very, very different
37:36
and diverse problems. This isn't like, you know, we've
37:39
got an optimized ad buying engine and we know precisely
37:42
what our return on ad spend and lifetime gross profit and all
37:45
these sorts of things look like. No, we're not there yet.
37:48
We're still figuring that out. And so we're doing all of these
37:53
different experiments and figuring out how to prioritize
37:57
investing our scarce time capital attention, human
38:01
resources, because we got a lot of things that we could explore
38:04
here. And what we need to do is figure
38:07
out what are the right growth experiments to run, where is the
38:12
best places for us to invest our time and energy?
38:15
And how do we actually put the building blocks together to kind
38:19
of build a real company here, I guess.
38:24
And again, like linking back to my experience as ACEO and
38:27
founder, I've been across every department, right?
38:30
I've done HR, I've done accounting, I've done
38:32
operations, I've done marketing, I've done finance.
38:34
Like I know a little bit about all of these different areas.
38:36
And so when founders are struggling with decisions across
38:40
multiple disciplines or domains, you know, like I get it and and
38:45
I like solving those diverse problems.
38:49
So, yeah, I think fractional is interesting because of the
38:53
diversity of businesses, but early stage is interesting to me
38:57
because of the diversity of problems that we're dealing
38:59
with. So I, as I take away from I and
39:03
I just looked at the time and realized we're going to run,
39:05
we're going to, we're going to run out of time if I don't ask
39:08
this. But it what I, what I do like
39:10
that I heard from you and maybe I'm wrong, is you stepped into
39:14
the, into the fractional world because you found that you enjoy
39:18
working with a certain, certain type of people.
39:20
So you went into said I'm not just a fractional CFO.
39:23
I'm a fractional. You picked, you picked a role.
39:25
So CFO, then you also said, I'm going to pick a, a segment or a
39:30
stage, which is the scale up. And then you also picked a niche
39:34
and you said I'm going to be for Consumer Packaged Goods and
39:37
e-commerce. So you all of a sudden said,
39:39
look, here it is. So now that role or what you're
39:43
trying to do becomes very specific, but you also come from
39:46
a skill set and a knowledge, say, look, here's how my
39:49
background ties into exactly where you are and I'm ready to
39:53
go. Plus any of the content or any
39:55
of the things that I'm sure that you asked about, you speak from
39:58
a level of authority. And I don't mean it in a
40:02
negative way, but you more of an expertise and maybe expertise
40:05
versus authority because you've lived it, you've been there, you
40:09
can experience it. And clearly listening to you
40:11
talk, you get really excited about working with these
40:14
founders and helping them solve the problems and moving them
40:17
just a little bit forward. Yeah, I do.
40:20
I do. For me, it's it's a huge help
40:25
that I believe. Firstly, I believe that
40:28
entrepreneurship and founding a business is one of the hardest
40:32
jobs in the world. And I have a huge amount of
40:37
respect and admiration for people who are not only bold
40:42
enough to recognize that some part of their status quo or the
40:46
world isn't working, but they're also brave enough to have a go
40:49
at fixing it. It's like we don't like the food
40:52
system, or we don't like the way that this works, or we don't
40:55
like our options of products or choices in this category.
40:58
I'm actually going to have a go at building a better option,
41:01
damn it. So off I go.
41:03
And to me, these are the people who are trying to make the world
41:08
better for everyone. They're saying the status quo
41:10
sucks. I want a better version of it,
41:13
and I'm going to try to build it.
41:14
And they're the ones who are moving society forwards.
41:18
They're the ones who are leaving legacy models, legacy products,
41:21
legacy ways of doing things behind and trying to build
41:24
better future versions. And I want to be able to support
41:29
them because I think we have a lot of work to do.
41:32
We need a lot of better versions of a lot of things.
41:35
And you know, I, I get a buzz out of being able to support
41:39
people who are on that sort of mission or path.
41:41
It's awesome. I, I, I had somebody tell me
41:43
once not too long ago, they said, you know, I will only
41:47
invest in somebody if they've actually sat in the shoes,
41:51
they've experienced a problem and they built a thing out of a
41:54
problem statement that they were facing.
41:56
If those, if those are the people I will invest in because
41:59
they understand the pain and they're not just looking at it
42:01
from a, oh, that's a great idea that I can tap into.
42:05
It's like, no, I want to make something better because I
42:09
experienced this pain point and it frustrated me.
42:12
So it was an interesting way of thinking about it, but it also
42:15
sounds very similar to what you you just said.
42:17
So it's cool before we run out of time, Nate, I as we get to
42:23
moving to the wrap up phase here, I always like to ask
42:26
somebody, everybody likes new and everybody likes different.
42:28
And if you do both at the same time, it can either cause
42:30
friction or uncertainty. So for somebody thinking about,
42:33
you know, starting their own consultancy or fractional
42:36
business, what are two or three actionable things that you would
42:39
tell them to consider before they jump off the that Cliff,
42:45
like you said, for the parachute to expand?
42:50
Yeah, my sister-in-law was actually going through this a
42:53
little while ago. She was, you know, moving out of
42:56
the corporate world, thinking about getting launching her own
42:59
coaching business and she was getting hung up on websites and
43:02
e-mail addresses and you know, the need for this, that and
43:05
everything else. I was like, no, forget it.
43:07
You don't need any of that nonsense.
43:08
Just get your contact list. You know the 2030 fifty people
43:13
that you know best. You know, some people that like
43:15
trust and respect you from your time working in corporate
43:18
wherever and say, hey, I'm thinking about doing this thing.
43:21
I'm sort of thinking about solving this problem for this
43:24
sort of person. Was wondering if you might know
43:27
anyone that you could put me in touch with who or you know who
43:30
could use this solution and just start having conversations with
43:33
people who have the sort of problem that you want to solve.
43:41
That is incredible advice. And it's funny, there's a lot of
43:45
times where starting at a new company, I suggest that to
43:48
account executives or, or people in the team, say, go back to the
43:52
people you've worked with, ask them about, say, hey, I'm in
43:55
this new role, I'm learning a new thing.
43:57
I held you at high regard. Can you give me a little bit of
44:00
time? It's amazing what you learn from
44:03
them. As long as you ask the question,
44:05
you come from a place of good. So anyways, we're going to,
44:09
we're going to run out of time, Nate, but this has been a lot of
44:11
fun. If somebody wanted to pick up
44:14
the conversation, talk to you a little bit more, where would you
44:17
advise them to try to find you? Yeah, 2 best spots are my
44:21
website, whichisfuturereadycfo.com.
44:26
You'll learn more about the various services and and bits
44:28
and pieces that I have on the website.
44:31
Or you could look at my LinkedIn.
44:35
My name again is Nate Littlewood and I'm posting on LinkedIn most
44:39
days, Pretty easy to find. So yeah, that's the the best
44:44
social channel to find me on. And you've also got a podcast,
44:47
and that one again is called. Profits on purpose.
44:52
Profits on purpose. So yeah, I obviously I have one
44:56
that I need to look into now, especially about the CEO
44:58
conversation, which is sounds like it'll be good fun.
45:01
The episode is with Mackie Swan. It was 20 something mid mid 2024
45:06
or 26. I can't one of them I think.
45:09
OK, awesome. Nate, that's going to wrap up
45:13
another episode of The Revenue Problem Solvers.
45:15
I want to thank you for sharing these incredibly invaluable
45:18
insights today. There's some strategy you can
45:19
put into action on Monday. Remember, success leaves clues
45:22
in every revenue problem has a solution.
45:24
Sometimes you just need the right conversation to find it.
45:27
Until next time, it's Carl with the Revenue Problem Solvers
45:30
helping you turn your obstacles into opportunities.
45:32
Thank you for investing your time with us today.
45:34
We'll see you in the next episode.