Latest / Better Together / The Financial Mistake That’s Slowing Your Growth | Cheryl Muccia
Transcript
- Meesam curingbusy: Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Better Together podcast. I'm Sean Sunsvold, co-hosting with my partner in business and in life, Kelly Sunsvold. Today we're joined by Cheryl Mucha, founder and CEO of CFO Your Way, a company redefining what it means for growing businesses to have strategic financial leadership. With decades of experience in finance and operations, Cheryl leads a team that acts as an outsourced CFO for companies that need more than just bookkeeping. They need clarity. They need systems and a financial strategy that aligns with their long-term vision. CFO, Your Way specializes in helping business owners make confident decisions through strong internal controls, customized systems, and actionable insight. Cheryl's approach is collaborative and empowering, helping businesses not just manage the numbers, but truly understand them. Whether you're scaling faster, looking for more controls and clarity, Cheryl brings the kind of steady strategic guidance that makes growth. And today we're excited to hear her story. Cheryl, thanks so much for being on with us today and welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited about the conversation. Me too. We've known each other for like 18 months now with the groups that we've been a part of. And so this is like, I'm really excited to kind of have a little bit more of an in-depth conversation with you. Let's just kind of start at the beginning with your story. Tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to starting CFO your way. So in college, accounting degree, sat for the CPA exam right, you know, right out of college, started my career at a CPA firm doing the typical tax audit stuff. Actually met my husband at the firm and we got married. He's still there 30 something years later. And we decided that if we were going to have a family, couldn't be both working the tax season grind, right? So I left and then I, you know, from there, I just worked for smaller family owned businesses and saw the you know, all the pieces that were needed to effectively run the business, not only from a finance perspective, but HR and, you know, just running an office. Started CFO your way, it'll be 14 years the next month. Just seeing that need and knowing that smaller businesses needed the expertise and the insight to their financials. So we've grown over 14 years. We're now a team of eight and the team members are from bookkeepers to controllers to CFOs. So we're really good at. filling in the hole within the business organization. Yeah, you mentioned like, you know, fractional, like that really wasn't even a term in 2020, or sorry, 2012. It wasn't 2020. But in 2012, when you got started, like that word, really didn't, it didn't have any traction, didn't have any momentum yet. Right. That really wasn't a concept that we had before. What was something that you saw in the market that you were like, this could be a workable model for me? Back then, it was called Outsource. So Outsource was not overseas, then it was just outside of the organization, right? So I saw, back up a little bit, Cheryl, in that job that I was in, I was doing it all. The business owner was out, you know, doing his thing, spending his money, doing, playing golf and all that. So I was running the organization and there was a generational change. So he was passing the business onto his daughters. And the daughter's first comment for everything was, why do we need all these people? Why do we need the office space? And the light bulb just went on for me. Like, why do I have to be here sitting in this seat 40 hours a week making someone else lots of money, right? When I can be doing this for the smaller businesses myself and have the flexibility and know that my job is secure, right? Because I now control it. Yeah, I think it's, you you, it's interesting when that light bulb goes off, right? Like, cause you start thinking about it and going, wow, maybe I, maybe I can do that. Maybe I, maybe I can make it look this way instead of the way you've always done it. Right. And you mentioned early on, like, you know, 14 years now, you're about ready to celebrate for your business. I'm curious what those early years looked like when getting started, right? Like what were some of the challenges that you had to go through in growing the business to where you are now? Like, let's talk about some of those early years and just when you had those moments of like, ⁓ no, what am I gonna do? And there's lots of those moments. But I think the first thing was, of course, that leap of faith is really difficult. You're going from a nice salary and health benefits and everything to zero, right? Yes. We've all been there. Yes. Yeah, been there, done that. that, you know, what do you tackle first, right? And of course, the tackle first is generate revenue. So what do you do? You go out to all these, well, at least what I did, I went out to all these businesses that I've been a customer to all these years and said, Hey, look at what I'm doing. You use my help. Can I help you? And that's how I started to gain traction. I'm sure you can vouch for this too. In those early years, you take anything and everything that comes your way, right? Just because you want the revenue. And as you mature in the business, get more picky about who you allow. ⁓ And 14 years later, I am super picky about who I let in and who we service and our clients. Yeah. It takes a minute. And also too, like when you start up that business, you're having, not only you're taking on, cause you're kind of, I don't want to say, well, you are sometimes, you're desperate. Yeah. There's desperation in there. You want to make this work. You know, and you're really thinking about that. For us, it was networking events. We were also like, you know, doing what you did. We're going to local businesses. Hey, do you need help? It's also clarifying the offer too. We found that, you know, having a background, as long as I do in marketing, there's a lot I can do. So it's narrowing it down as well. Lots of things that happened that kind of that first six months from idea to. LLC to all that stuff. Has there been moments in your business where you weren't sure what the next step to take was? Like, how did you get through it? Did you have like maybe a mentor in your life that helped you guide or allowed you to bounce ideas off of? Like what helped you along the way? in the beginning, it was a lot of what was going on in my mind. And then as I As I move forward and you get to that point where you need to hire and what does that look like and when do you hire? And I need to market and because I'm not a marketer, right? I need to market. How do I do that? I always ran under the premise of find the expert that can help you. So once cash was flowing and I could afford to do that, I picked the biggest pain point, right? Was it, I was overworked. hire an employee was, did I need to market more and grow more, hire the marketing expertise. So I was never afraid to invest in those things as soon as I could afford to do it. And I think that really projected me forward. I think that's so important. I love how you talked about like starting with the biggest pain point, right? I think it's so easy as business owners, we see all the pain points, right? They all kind of get equal weight, but I think it says something about your ability to prioritize them and go, okay, this is my biggest pain point right now. Right. And two months later you're going, okay, this is now my biggest pain point, or this is now my biggest pain point. think it ties really well to, know, strategically, you know, in your business, how you, and so I want to talk a little bit more on that one and, know, and hiring a CFO or bringing in a CFO, right? Like when should a business consider bringing in a CFO and what are some telltale signs that a fractional CFO might be someone that can help their business? a business owner should bring in the CFO when they get to the point of growth that it's too much for them to understand or they're, you know, a lot of business owners just fly by the seat of their pants until they get to this point of like, great, I have this, I now have a real business, right? Now what? What's next? see growth, I want to grow, but how do I get there and not step backwards for all this effort that I've put in? So the first step before you can even hire a CFO is to have good books and records. So if you're the business owner and you're doing all the things and not really paying attention to the accounting, you need a bookkeeper first. Because as a CFO, we can't do anything without good, accurate books and records. there's- That they might need some help. So telltale signs are, really becomes a struggle to know, like, when is that next hire? When can I invest in equipment? When can I invest in even marketing? Because they just don't see, like, they see the growth, but they don't see if that growth is enough to sustain those next steps. or maybe their margins aren't good enough to sustain those next steps. So the CFO will give you that deep dive into, I call it the story behind the numbers, right? Those numbers tell you so much. They need to be accurate and you need to be able to kind of dissect them and slice them up into a way that is meaningful and gives you the information you need to take that next leap. for sure. You know, in the fractional, like we talked about previously here is, you know, like that's a newer concept. I feel like it really started hearing about it in 2020, just how companies could save money. You can get higher up people with more experience for less because you're sharing the weight of their salary, in essence, across several businesses. So what are some misconceptions that business owners have around hiring? a CFO. Like you mentioned an accountant. Does an accountant count as a CFO or is it a separate position? the accounting kind of silo within an organization can be many people. Of course, I mentioned the bookkeeper. Larger organization will have specific people to do accounts, payable accounts, receivable. So that accountant can be in different positions. And then there's the CPA, right? The external CPA that's that's managing the taxes, being tax consultants, which we are not. Right. So the in-house accountant can be many different things, a CFO at the highest level. And just to go back to the fractional model and maybe some hesitation around hiring fractional, a full-time CFO, although lots of organizations don't need a full-time because there's just not enough to keep a full-time CFO. kind of occupied for 37 and a half hours a week. The fractional model works because we're there when you need us. We can bring all this global kind of expertise that we get from all of our clients to each and every one of our clients. So we're not kind of sitting in one seat in one business in this silo of what's just going on here when we can bring all this external knowledge and even sometimes it's figuring something out. Like lot of business owners have the same issues. We figured it out there so we can implement it here. Yeah, I think that's a really good tie in that, you know, that that fractional experience and that ability to work with multiple businesses, you get that experience across, you know, multiple, you know, business lines and different ways of the way people work. you know, and then you kind of tie it down. Like there's a lot of similarities as it goes, right, especially in the financial world, right? It may be something where a consumer business might run a little bit differently than a B2B marketing business or something like that, but the numbers tell the same story, right? Right. For the most part, the numbers tell the same story. There's, of course, nuances for industry or even size, size of the company. The struggles are different. Yeah. And I think maybe that's a good question is like, is there a business size that it makes sense to bring it to start having that conversation internally to like bring on a CFO. Again, it depends on industry because you know, a million dollar company for one industry is very different than a million dollar company for another industry. A million dollars is like that mark, I say, to at least have the conversation. And I'm willing to have those conversations with the dooms. with smaller businesses. What are the struggles? What are your plans? What are your hopes and dreams for the next three to five years? do you have a plan to get there? If you don't have the background or knowledge as a business owner to execute on that yourself, that's when you bring in the CFI. Yeah, I think that's a good way to explain it, is like when that knowledge base gets beyond you. And I think for a lot of business owners, we struggle with the numbers. Right? Like an accountant for our business was one of the first hires because I've never taken accounting class. I don't want to do the accounting. Like it makes my head hurt. Right. But it's something as a business owner, I've had to learn the basics of it, right. To get through, you know, and without understanding the numbers, why is it so detrimental to business owners, you know, and their business when they don't understand their numbers? they don't understand their numbers, their money is leaking out of the business. And they don't even know where to look for it. So money can be leaking out as far as profit margins aren't great enough or expenses are too high. there's certain categories of expenses that we look at. We look at overall, but there's certain categories of expenses that it's an easy fix to bring those expenses down. But business owners aren't exposed to that. They don't have the contacts or the people within their circle. to go to to even know if it's realistic or not. And this is where the fractional model comes in again. I see so many different businesses and so many different, what they're paying for certain expenses to know, as soon as I look at it, know whether it's realistic or not. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, very important, think, again, just the confusion of it all. Yeah, we look at businesses too. A lot of businesses have different... services or different products they're selling. And they're overall, they're profitable, but maybe one of those is not profitable, but it's hidden. They're not looking at it. And if you just drop this one product or service, you could be that much more profitable and less stressed every time trying to manage it. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I kind of some themes that I've heard through here. know, Sean has a background. He's talked to you many, many times. You know, you and I were just meeting for the first time. But one of the things that I have heard you talk about a lot is helping business owners move from confusion to confidence. What's your process for doing that? Education. We want our business owners to understand not only the work that we're doing, but what it all means. They need to understand the story is theirs, right? The numbers are theirs. They need to understand what it all means. And we educate them. We spend time with them making sure that they know what's going on in their business. And then the numbers validate that. Yes. Yeah, for sure. ⁓ you know, and I know like, again, just in the long time of knowing you, you've always talked about your collaborative approach that you take with clients, you know, and working together. When you start working with a new business, what are those first couple months of being their CFO look like? Like, what is the process you kind of take them through? the initial engagement is a deep dive understanding of the business. So having the conversations with the business owner, having the conversations with their CPA and anyone else within the organization that touches the accounting function. Either they need information from or they're feeding information to the accounting function within the organization. Understanding processes, understanding checks and balances, who's doing what and how, because that's how we kind of pull apart what's going on to find the inefficiencies, make the organization run better and more efficiently. So it's a lot of conversation, a lot of note taking, and then... making the recommendations and suggestions to make change. We never go in with the headlights on and the plow in the front of the truck, just making changes. We want to make sure that it's going to be sustainable, right? And that's through conversation and really learning what's going on in the business. just that kind of that process of walking in to understand, not to completely change, right? I love that approach for you of just, you know, you know, walking in to make sure that you have all the pieces in place before you ever, you know, like you talked about bringing the bulldozers and knock everything over, right? Right. Yeah. And you have to have buy-in, right? ⁓ yeah. If you're going to make change, you have to have buy-in for that change. Like I hear so many times, but that's not how we always did it. Well, the way you always did it might not be the best way to do it. So let's have this conversation and figure out a better way. Cause in the end it's making, it's making everyone's job easier. Yeah. And more efficient. Exactly. for sure. There's always at least one or two of those people in the business. And it's a delicate conversation, right? It You have to really show the light at the end of the tunnel, right? That it's going to be, it's going to be. Yeah, exactly. Systems and internal controls and all of that, I spent Friday afternoon. working through our project management system, coming up with some automations. No, we haven't always done it like this, but this is what we're going to because, you know, we got to streamline things, you know, and companies need to do that with their finances as well. Why do you think that companies often overlook the importance of systems and internal controls and how they actually empower growth? They overlook them because they're making money and they're growing. I always say despite themselves, right? Right. But it catches up, like you just mentioned, putting a system in place. Put it in before you hit that big growth projectile because that foundation is laid and everyone knows how to do the thing, right? And how to move forward. Everyone's on the same page again, right? And then the growth becomes easier because you have all the tools. And those tools are so important. Even in just our world of whether it's streamlining processes for how a workflow goes, or recently I did a couple things to try to make some things easier with our accountant, right? Like just having those processes in place, like you know what it's gonna look like every single time, right? I think a lot of businesses, it's like they start with something and they do it one way for a little while and they realize it's not working, so they try something else and well, that didn't quite work either, so let's do the next thing. right? And, but they don't really keep it going or pick one system and modify it until it gets to that point. So like, kind of talk about that a little bit more when you come in and, you know, and you start putting those systems in place. How, what's kind of the pushback when you get it to start working, but someone goes, I don't like it, you know, how do you work through that with them? Again, it's open conversation and, and really brainstorming. And sometimes it's more training too, right? Maybe the person just doesn't understand their their piece and the overall puzzle, right? So it's open conversation, honesty, and good listening too, I guess. But yeah, we're always, you don't always get it right on the first try, right? So you try something else. exactly. you like you mentioned up at the top of this podcast that you have a team now of eight people, right? So what kind of keeps you grounded as a leader and a founder, are there routines, people, values you return to when things get hard? Because you know they get hard. There are challenges that come up. Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the hardest things in growing the business was the team, the employee part of it, because I did not expect that to be so difficult. But right now, my team is great. They are invested in CFO your way as much as I am. This work environment where people enjoy coming to work every day. And I guess the routine is regular check-ins with my team. have bi-weekly team meetings that everyone gets on the Zoom because we're scattered all through the state of New Jersey. And we get on a Zoom and it's not business. It's not a business meeting. It's a, how are you doing? What's going on in your life? How's your family? It's that very personal touch. people appreciate that and it goes a long way in their commitment to the company and their work ethic. Did that answer your question? Yeah, it did. It just really resonated. just when you expect a person is just going to be a robot and taskmaster, you know, you lose the person, the employee kind of loses interest and you don't get that buy-in, you know, and I don't know, I'm big on teamwork and collaboration and it's just like, You want to have those different, you hire those employees, like why not invest in them? You know, as like, hey, you have a sick kid at home, like let's, how are you doing? Right, exactly. And you used the right word there, invest, right? Your employees are your biggest asset for any company. Without your employees, you're nothing. Yeah. Right, so why not invest in them and create this environment? where they want to come to work every day. I've been in those environments where I didn't want to go to work every day. The stress, you don't want, you you show up in the office, pre-COVID of course, you show up in the office and you're like, I don't want to be here. I don't want to do the thing. But if you create the right environment, they show up, they do it. I have a very open collaboration with my team. I run under the notion, if you have a question. ask it, there's no such thing as a dumb question. I'd rather spend the time and understand and educate than you struggle, get stressed, and want to throw your laptop out the door. Just have that open communication. And my team really appreciates it, and I appreciate them. Again, I have a fabulous team. Yeah, yeah. I think on that topic of collaboration, you work closely with a lot of other business owners. How have those relationships and that idea around collaboration, you know, played a role in your own growth as not only, you know, a business owner, but a business leader? So collaboration to me is really critical in everything that we do. And it has helped me become a better communicator, a better listener, and a better educator. So it's a listen for those cues where people aren't always forthright and... or upfront in what their struggle is or what their pain is, right? But listening for those clues to understand what's really happening behind what the words are that are coming out of their mouth, right? To be able to ease that pain and recognize what's really going on. So it definitely has helped me be a better person in communication from both the listening and the speaking side, right? And just understanding, you know, people have, there's always something going on behind the closed door that people aren't willing to share. to have that intuition, I guess, is the word I'm looking for, to have that intuition to be able to recognize that there's something else going on and how can I really help? Yeah. Everyone's got that struggle behind closed doors that they're not going to let on to. ⁓ You know, it's a very different work environment than I think what is the norm in the US right now, which is awesome. We've titled our podcast, as you know, is Better Together because Sean and I figured out that we could build something better than we could separately. So who has helped you along your journey? So of course my family. My husband, like I mentioned earlier, is also a CPA. He walks the walk and talks the talk with me. So he's been great. You know, cause you're an entrepreneur, you're flying solo, but he's been great to be able to push ideas off of it. And he's my biggest support team. And of course my kids just going and engaging with coaches in specific areas where I felt I needed. I needed support and help to help me grow, right? To grow in those areas. One area is sales, right? I hired a coach to help me through sales because I am not a To me, sales was like you're talking about yourself, you're bragging. Well, no, there's methods of sales. It doesn't come across like that and that's not what you're doing. So sales coach was a big thing for me. And I've always had a business coach to be able to go to with the struggles or the questions and whatnot. So I think investing in those pieces of the business is critical as you're growing. think coaching is just so important, you know, and having And we kind of talked about earlier, like that mentor, right? That person you can go to and go, you know, how do I handle this? Right? Because a lot of times as business owners, we're guessing, right? Unless we've had seen somebody do it, we're guessing how to take some of those next steps. you know, just kind of thinking about long-term for you and your business, like what's next for you and CFO your way? Like what's on the horizon for you this year that you're trying to accomplish? for this year, I have an idea for a new service offering kind of model with the clients. we just started talking through that. Fortunately, unfortunately, this is our busiest time of year, so it's kind of on the back burner till Q2. But new way to interact with business owners and businesses that need our services, but maybe can't afford a higher monthly fee so that they can still get access to our experts. expertise and just continued growth, steady growth for me. Like I'm not looking for huge leaps and bounds. Steady growth for me is the way I've always operated. Because again, it's making sure you have the people, right? And for me, the people is hard because I'm very, very particular about who I let in. Yeah. Yeah. Now it makes complete sense, you know, and I think that's there's wisdom behind that. You know, one of our podcast guests, an earlier podcast, they scaled too quick and then they lost everything. So she's learning how to rebuild a company and she has, and she's done a great job at it, but that was an early lesson. And I think that what you said were scaling slow, know, or steady. What was the word that you used? Steady. like that No big leaps and bounds, just steady growth. You steady growth, you get the operations and the right. people and the right systems around you and then you can take off. my biggest, I think, word of advice is surround yourself with people that you can rely on and have your back. So people in different areas have different areas of expertise that you can tap into their expertise. Like I said, I make myself available because I don't want people to struggle. If it can be a five-minute conversation and I can help them get over the hump. I'm happy to have those conversations. it's having those people around you that are willing to support you and help you. The best way to get in touch with me is through my website, which is CFOYourWay.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. We have both my personal page, which is Cheryl Mucha, and the CFO Your Way page. Yeah, there's... blocks on my website to fill out, to get in touch with me. And happy to, again, happy to have those conversations and support business owners as they're coming against ⁓ either a roadblock or a struggle. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that. And the financial side of it, I think it's so important. I can't speak enough to, you know, just the quality of work you do and, you know, again, having known you for a while. So thank you so much, Cheryl, for being here today. It's a wonderful conversation. I look forward to, you know, being able to do it again sometime. Thank you a lot. Thank Thank you so much for having me. This was great. Take care.