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The One CFO Skill That Can Save (or Kill) Your Business - With Jack Weinstein · The Accounting Leads Now Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success, the show where we dive into the stories and strategies of the financial minds who are driving businesses forward.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, james Donovan, and today's guest is someone who spent his career helping entrepreneurs not just balance the books but realize their full potential.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Jack Weinstein is the CFO at PacVins and he supported over 50 successful entrepreneurs throughout his journey at PacVins, and he's supported over 50 successful entrepreneurs throughout his journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: What makes Jack stand out isn't just his depths of financial knowledge.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: It's his belief that growth can be exponential, that low cost doesn't always mean cost effective and that success demands a clear plan.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: He's here today to unpack what financial firepower really means, how founders can avoid the common traps that stalls growth, and why careful financial management isn't just an obligation, it's a weapon.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: So let's get into it.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, james.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to be here.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Jack, thank you so much for being here.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I'm really looking forward to this one.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I know you got a ton of knowledge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: But first, for the listeners who aren't watching this recording, we need to talk about how you always have amazing hawaiian shirts on living in hawaii.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: You never disappoint showing up.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: See the palm trees.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: In the background you have the hawaiian shirts let's talk a little bit about.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: You must have a massive wardrobe of hawaiian.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: I do at this point.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Actually, almost all of my clothing is Hawaiian shirts.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: I used to wear very traditional suits and ties every day, which was a lot less fun in my opinion, but I moved out here to Hawaii in 2023.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I moved from San Francisco and I've lived all over the country previously, but it's a pleasure to be here.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: I originally came out to keep a closer eye on my parents, who are in their 80s.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: They're slowing down a little bit, but what I found when I got here is that there are not a lot of traditional, extremely competent accounting firms or financial planning resources available for businesses in Hawaii.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Also, ever since the pandemic ever since COVID I've done almost all of my work remote.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: I work with clients all across the country because you never know where entrepreneurs might choose to be, and accounting and finance is a function I've found that can often be done very effectively from a remote location.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: It doesn't necessarily require a person sitting in the office typing out figures on a spreadsheet.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: A lot of that work can be done capably and at a more cost effective rate elsewhere in the country I love it and I love that.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: You just you bring so much personality and you're like you said.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: You're not.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: You're not wearing a suit that's uncomfortable.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: You're, you're yourself.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: You're really taking in the.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: You know the culture of Hawaii, and you got the shirts to match.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Every time we jump on Zoom.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I look forward to seeing what new shirt is Jack going to have on.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: So this is great.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: So, Jack, let's start with your path.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: How did you land in the CFO seat at PacVins and what keeps you, or what's kept you, in the game all these years?
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: So what I want to mention is I'm actually doing my dream job right now, which might be the first time you've heard this from an accountant.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: It's not traditionally a dream path, but I'll tell you.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: I started my career in the Fortune 500 world.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I worked for 20th Century Fox for many years in corporate finance, and, although there is a lot of stability and certainly a lot to learn working for a Fortune 500 company, everything moves so slowly.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Everyone is extremely siloed.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: They have their own little specialties, their own little areas, and it takes a very long time to make any sort of a decision that actually impacts the overall business.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Since leaving the company, I've had the opportunity to work with a variety of entrepreneurs, ranging from bioscience companies and pharmaceutical developers to crypto mining facilities, to agricultural facilities, large food processors, you name it.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: It's in quite a few family offices and law firms as well, and what I've benefited from, what I've learned from working with this wide variety of clients, is that it's just so much more lively and so much easier to get decisions made when I'm working directly with entrepreneurs that are building their own business, that are living their own dream, and it's inspiring to get up and talk to those people every day.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Their challenges may be pressing.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: They may be dealing with a lot of internal issues that make it a little bit complicated to manage the firm.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, that's a path they chose for themselves.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: These are some of the most ambitious people in the country that have a dream and they put everything else beside them behind them in order to pursue that dream.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: You mentioned you've supported a handful of entrepreneurs.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: It's so cool what you're doing and how you can get involved and help them see their dream come to fruition and come to reality.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: What drives you to keep doing the work that you do?
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Let me give you an example of one of the first entrepreneurs I supported.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: This, in fact, was the first opportunity I took on as a chief financial officer in 2018.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: At the time, I was working for an investment bank in California called GT Securities, which is a role that I took on after I left 20th Century Blocks and we brought on a client that had a vision for developing pain relieving pharmaceutical products specifically for the hospice population.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: So the founder what really inspired me about this gentleman?
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: The founder was the chief operating officer of a company called Heart Hospice, which was one of the largest privately held hospice organizations in the United States.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: His partner was a medical doctor, a researcher from Columbia University, who was responsible for developing these products, and they had a vision to build out this pharmaceutical manufacturing facility and produce these proprietary pain relieving products specifically for the hospice population.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: It struck a very personal chord for me.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: I have a younger brother that has a serious autoimmune disease and he actually has benefited from related products similar to the ones that they were going to produce.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: So I was living in Los Angeles at the time, working the investment banker lifestyle 80 hours a week, suit and tie every day and I packed everything up, I quit my job and I moved out to rural Oklahoma in order to partner with these two guys.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: I was the second employee.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: They had one executive assistant that was supporting them at the time.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Zero office space, pretty much zero resources.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: But we really believed in what we were doing and we pulled together our efforts.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: We pulled together our contacts and over the course of the next two years we raised about $25 million in equity capital.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: And we put it to work.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: We bought an old Tyson Foods chicken processing plant in eastern Oklahoma, a big, aging 40-acre industrial complex that's dominated by a massive 65,000-square-foot cast-in-place concrete bunker.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Basically that Tyson had moved out of 10 years earlier.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: I mean by the time we moved in we got an extra deal on the place.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: It had cost Tyson around $30 million to build.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: We acquired the property for $2 million and the reason why is because the windows were broken out, there were wild animals living in the property, there were weeds growing up through the parking lot.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: It was in rough shape.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: The town it was in, stilwell, only had 4,000 residents and unemployment was about 40%.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: It was in a tough position.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: So we came in.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: We acquired the property, we redeveloped it over the course of about two and a half years and turned it into believe it or not a modern pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in rural Oklahoma, and by the time I left the company and moved back to California, we were at 250 employees and we'd gone from nothing to eight figures in annual revenue.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: So I had a chance to support an entrepreneur two entrepreneurs through the entire startup journey, from square one into a successful company, and it was such a joy and revelation.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Sure, just there would be so many lessons and acquired from seeing you know a team of three or four.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: So you mentioned you were the second employee being hired to eight figures a year in annual revenue and just like I'm sure it wasn't all up and to the right a little bit of maybe some of the hardest times that either you experienced and then you over, you overcame, or that the business experience that you were able to overcome as a group what we did when we first started was we leased the property from the existing owners with the option to purchase it in the future.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: They were quite happy to give us that option because they didn't anticipate we were actually went by the building and do anything with it.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: But we set up our initial office there and it was a little eerie at first.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, we were using maybe a thousand square feet out of this 65,000 square foot structure.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: So the rest of it we kept the lights off, we kept the heating and the cooling off and the rest of the building and it was kind of like a large ghost facility that we used a small corner of initially.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: And starting a company is a fearful process.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, each one of us were concerned.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: If this doesn't work out, are we going to be able to make a living?
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Will we be able to pay our bills?
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: We all, I think, had sacrificed something in order to make that happen, and that's the entrepreneurship journey right there.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: It does require quite a leap of faith to move from a secure employment opportunity into starting a business or participating in a startup business, but the kind of people that are willing to make that leap historically we've seen the people that do that are the ones that are willing to enable to build significant companies and institutions throughout our country and, at the end of the day, make a measurable difference even in the business history of the United States.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: So it's I just admire people so much we're willing to either start a business or participate startup.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: That's so cool.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Congrats on going through that whole experience and helping them, you know, be an integral part of that reaching, you know, eight figures and growing from less than you can count on a hand to 250 people.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: That's so cool.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Well, James, one of the questions you asked me was about some of the challenges involved, and I'll be the first one to tell you I did a lot of things wrong with that process as well.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: So if I were going through it today, I would have reached out strategically to venture capital groups in order to find the appropriate financing for us to pursue the venture.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: We raised $25 million, but it was from 120 different individual accredited investors, all of whom had my personal cell phone number, who would call me at all hours of the day and night for an update, and that alone quickly turned into a full-time job, in addition to trying to manage the cash flow and keep on top of the accounting and the tax filing and the payroll and everything else that a business needs in order to operate.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: And as we went forward through the process, we were often stumbling a little bit.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Anyone that's involved in a startup is typically wearing multiple hats.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, at one point I was doing a lot of interviews for people that were going to be on the production line.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: They didn't know the first thing about manufacturing pharmaceuticals.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: All I could really judge was whether a person's personality seemed like they would be a good fit for the team, whether they were enthusiastic about the mission that we were pursuing.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: But we were growing so quickly and we had such a limited executive team available to conduct these interviews, I ended up doing quite a few of them myself, and it was really an eye-opening experience that's yeah.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: That's just so cool to hear your perspective on that, and all the lessons would have come across.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine you know giving out your personal number to that many people, having that many people call that.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I'm surprised you didn't just, you know, get a new phone or hire someone to look after your phone for you.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Um Jack, what's one thing that most people, even founders, don't understand about what a CFO really does?
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of founders have the assumption that, hey, I'm in charge of the business I do in an early stage.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Business is be responsible for approving large expenditures, approving hiring plans, approving anything that needs a final decision made on it, but not necessarily preparing the data that goes into supporting those decisions.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: A lot of the entrepreneurs and founders that I've worked with they have consistently stumbled because, even if they come from a financial background, it takes such a tremendous amount of time to both properly prepare the accounting records and then also to offer.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: The second step here is critical to offer valuable insight and analysis into what the records actually mean for the business.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: It's one thing to say, hey, we're making $10,000 a month, we're losing $10,000 a month.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: The most critical next step is what does that mean for the business and what are our options to do something about it?
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: If we have excess capital, it's not that useful for a CEO to hear, hey, we've got $10,000 extra a month coming in.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Having specific spending plans on how that money could be used to further the business growth and achieve the objectives of the company as a whole, that's really indispensable.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Conversely, if the company is losing money, chief executives need to know how much time they have in order to make changes in the business and what kind of feasible changes could be made in order to get the business out of a bad situation, whether it's reducing overhead and, potentially, headcount in order to shave off expense, or pursuing a loan, or bringing on outside investors in order to shave off expense or pursuing a loan, or bringing on outside investors in order to provide additional capital and get to a place where the business is once again healthy.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: The CEO and entrepreneur, as much as possible, needs to be in that final decision making, and any time that they're spending digging through data, trying to compile information in order to get enough information to actually make the decision, is time that's wasted and not their best and highest use of their abilities.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so true.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I think it always comes down to the delegation piece, right, and how much are you able not even willing how much you're able to let go of and reallocate your time in a higher revenue generating activity?
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: If you're not the expert in the numbers, why are you hanging out there Like let someone else who is the expert do that to get the highest value you spoke a little bit about.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: If firms are losing money, if they need to shave off, they need to reduce headcount.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: How do you navigate those conversations with founders where maybe the founder believes no, if we lose anybody like the workload, everyone's going to be super stressed, everyone's going to be taking on too much stuff.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: But you're telling them look, the numbers don't make sense, you need to reduce your payroll.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: How do you navigate those difficult conversations?
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: It's a tough conversation sometimes and I'll give you a specific example.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: I currently work as fractional CFO for a client that does about $8 to $9 million a year.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: They're a respectable small business and they're in a position right now that they likely have to reduce some headcount in order to remain solid and in a good financial position is they've had some people with them from day one who very much believed in the business, who might potentially be on the chopping block, who actually voluntarily reduced their salary because they believed so much in the business for the first couple of months.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: In some cases, the first two years, and cutting those people who were such believers in the team can be a real challenge.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: At the end of the day, it's important to do whatever's necessary to keep the business healthy, but it doesn't necessarily mean that's the option that chief executives should take.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Sometimes there are no better solutions.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: A business has to be profitable ultimately in order to continue functioning.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: Otherwise it can't really remain a business.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: It's going to have to be a non-profit.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: But if there is a clear pathway to get to profitability by spending more money, often it is better to pursue a loan or it is better to bring on outside investment.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: And that is a really significant distinction, too, between a controller and a CFO.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: This is something that a lot of entrepreneurs, I think, do not fully appreciate, and an accountant or a controller is primarily backwards looking.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: They're focused on maintaining appropriate accounting records for the business running the payroll, making sure the tax filings are done correctly.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: It's an indispensable business function but at the end of the day a controller is typically going to give a chief executive raw information on the business.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Here's your P&L statement.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Here's your balance sheet.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Now you figure out what it is that you need to do.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: A chief executive officer can typically go the extra step and actually suggest specific pathways that business can take to deploy additional capital to save money or cut spending and then, most critically, to actually go out execute on those plans for the chief executive.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: So the chief executive may say, ok, I want to take a loan out in order to support the growth of the business or to avoid laying off debt.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: Well, somebody's got to pick up the phone and either find an appropriate broker or find an appropriate lender and negotiate terms with them that fit businesses' needs.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Sure, typically a CEO can do that, but it is a little bit specialized and it takes a lot of time.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: At the end of the day, the chief executive officer is someone that they can task with.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Okay, we agree, we need $5 million in additional capital by this date.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Go, figure out a way to make that happen.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: And that often is a big part of the role that I feel these entrepreneurs.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: There's so much value there.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Jack, Thank you so much.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: You're very passionate about helping businesses obtain what you call financial firepower.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: What does that look like in practice?
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: It's a good question, and the biggest mistake that I see when companies are going after this financial firepower is they are thinking about their needs, which is reasonable.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, I need $5 million for my business.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: I know exactly what I'm going to do with this $5 million.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Let me just convince the lender that I'm going to do with this $5 million.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Let me just convince the lender that I'm a really cool business and they're going to give me the money.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Lenders, financiers, investors, anybody that's providing capital they're human beings and they have their own goals that they need to satisfy, so understanding what those goals are is particularly critical in order to come to a successful conclusion for the entrepreneur, and I'll give you an example of this.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: A big part of my career I've spent supporting either private equity groups or venture capital groups.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: I was the CFO for Kevin.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Harrington's venture capital group down in Boston.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: He was one of the original Shark Tank investors.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: I served as interim CFO for Enthos Capital, which is a private equity group in Santa Monica that manages a $3.5 billion fund.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: They currently serve as venture capital a CFO for Impax Capital in Texas, which manages an approximately $2 billion fund as well, and so what I've learned is I've spent a lot of time sitting on the other side of the table evaluating opportunities to place capital, and all of these groups have their own consideration.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: If it's a family office, they want to typically know that there is a clear pathway for an exit on the investment, whether it's refinancing a property or whether it's raising additional capital or simply receiving sufficient distributions in order to make the return on their investment make sense.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: If it's a VC group or it's a private equity group, they've got their own people they have to be responsible to, called limited partners.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: These are the groups that are putting in capital.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: If it's a private equity group and maybe a large limited partner we worked, for example, at one point will be endowment at Yale University.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Some of them are small limited partners that are just going to put in one hundred, two hundred thousand dollars.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: But they're all people that the VCs and the private equity groups have to answer to and they want to look good for.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: And what that means is not only getting the best possible return on capital, but also showing that there's positive unrealized gain sometimes that they can report to these financial groups.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: And an unrealized gain, of course, is just an increase in the value of an investment that has not yet been realized.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: So if I buy a stock, the value of it goes up and I don't yet sell the stock, I have an unrealized gain, an increase in the value of my asset.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: So what these guys want to know if it's private equity group or a venture capital group that you, as an entrepreneur, are going to for funding they want to know that not only you have a clear pathway to repay or to exit them from the investment, but also that you have a clear pathway to continue growing your company, even if you need more money.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: What these groups would typically rather hear is not hey, I want to get $5 million from you and then I'll pay you back $5 million.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: They want to hear I'm going to get $5 million from you and use it to double the size of my company and then I want another $10 million from you so I can do it again, and that goes over very well.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: That's something that they can report back to their limited partners.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: We made a great investment, you had a terrific increase in your unrealized gain, and now we're making a second investment in the same company because our judgment was so good and now we get to continue participating with this extraordinary entrepreneur.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: So what I'm trying to say is as an entrepreneur, it's so important to put yourself in the shoes of the capital provider and think about what it is that's important to them, not just what's important to you as an entrepreneur and what you're going to do with the money.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: It's interesting.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: That's a cool perspective shift, though, to look at it through that lens.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Jack, you spoke a little bit earlier about potentially taking on loans.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: What would you say to the business owner who, I don't know, maybe is a little bit uncomfortable taking a loan?
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Or or you're like hey, look, data shows and maybe let's put it into the marketing, the marketing perspective.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: So you look at someone and you can say, hey, right now you're getting a you know five X, nine X return on your ad spent.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Whatever that may be, there's only so much cashflow that's coming in and out so you're not able to increase your ad spend a ton, despite seeing a really good return.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Maybe you're you're bleeding elsewhere, whatever it is, if someone's uncomfortable going out and taking a loan.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: But you know, look, if you poured a lot of gas onto that fire, you have data showing how much of a return you'll get.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: How do you coach some of your clients through that decision-making process, and is it the right decision to go get a loan or is it better to try to plug where some of the gaps are elsewhere in the business?
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: It's a fair question too, because if the business is persistently losing money, getting a loan just buys more time.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: It doesn't necessarily solve the problem.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: So a loan does have to be coupled with a fair plan to either increase revenue or decrease spending, or both in order to get the business into a stabilized position.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: A loan should have a very clear objective associated with it.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: For an entrepreneur, I need this loan to get the business into a stabilized position.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: A loan should have a very clear objective associated with it.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: For an entrepreneur, I need this loan to get the business to this position, and then we'll be comfortable from there on out.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: An entrepreneur also needs to be thoughtful about what kind of loan they're taking, because there's a lot of different lenders out there, ranging from merchant capital, advance or MCA loans, which tend to be extraordinarily expensive.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: They're often above 30% annual interest because they build in all kinds of fees and penalties that make a loan quite expensive.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: But they're unsecured.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: They don't typically require any sort of collateral.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: On the other hand, the loans that have the least expensive cost of capital are generally loans that are secured by real estate or other hard assets.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: If there are assets like that to take advantage of, that's what I always encourage my clients to explore, and one thing to keep in mind is that it's not always necessary to borrow against the current value of these assets if we can justify an increase in the value of the assets.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: And I'll give an example in the form of the pharmaceutical facility we worked on in Oklahoma.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: We bought this facility for $2 million and two years later I was able to secure a $10 million loan on this facility, which begs the question what kind of lender is loaning $10 million on a $2 million facility?
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: That's not very much capital as collateral.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: What happened was we showed that we had a clear plan to build out the facility and ultimately improve the valuation of the property from $2 million at that point to $20 million.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Once our improvements were complete, we got an objective, independent appraiser to come in and provide an attestation that that was indeed the case, and the lender was willing to loan us money on that basis of improving the property.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: And ultimately they did see a significant increase in the value of the collateral and we were able to repay the loan.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: So the lender was happy and the business was happy.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of thought that goes into successfully closing on a loan and especially making sure it's the right loan for the business, but that's a big part of what I help provide entrepreneurs through.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: That's cool, so it's not.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I need a loan to run to the bank and ask for whatever amount like.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Really think about what the objective is.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Otherwise you're kind of just buying time and you're digging a hole.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: It takes some thought, believe it or not.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: 80% of business loans in our country come from private loans.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: They don't come from credit unions.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: They don't come from banks.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Only 20% of loans come from credit unions or institutional lenders like banks.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of private options out there, and when it comes to private world, almost everything is negotiable.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: You just have to find the right partner that's able to negotiate effectively on behalf of the business.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Remind me after Jack, I got someone I need to introduce you to in the loan space.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: I think you two could can work really well with one another.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: What's one habit you've picked up from working with entrepreneurs that's influenced how you think about business?
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of good habits that I picked up from entrepreneurs.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: One, though, that really stands out to me is it's totally fine to disagree, whether at the senior leadership team, whether it's the CFO that disagrees with the CEO or the chief operating officer has a different opinion than the CEO.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Totally fine to have disagreements, but they should be handled in private.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: It's so important to project confidence, both to the team and to customers, and to show that we believe the business is in a good position and things are only going to get better.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Even if the business is facing some significant jeopardy, that's ultimately the responsibility of the C-suite to solve.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: So any disagreements, any infighting, really should occur privately, in individual conversations.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: It's so important to project confidence and, in my opinion, a positive attitude to everyone else that works for the business, because everyone else that's on the team, they're showing up, they're doing their best every day and they're not responsible ultimately for the higher-level strategic or financial considerations that guide the entire business.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: The c-suite is responsible for those things and, um, any, any disagreement about those items really needs to be handled behind closed doors that's good.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: I I really like that.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: I got a couple rapid fire questions for you here and then, um, as, as we get to the end, then then we'll wrap this up your favorite business or finance quote that you live by.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: There's so many good ones out there.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: I know I'm going to put you on the spot here a bit.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: I should think of something more profound, but I mean one of the quotes.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: This is going to sound like a little bit of a dorky accounting quote, but it's an old school one, and a penny saved is a penny earned from.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Benjamin Franklin is something that's always stuck with me, because I do see a lot of entrepreneurs that spend money unnecessarily on things that they think would show well for the company but don't always have a positive impact on the bottom line.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: And I'll give you an example.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: I worked with an entrepreneur recently that was successfully raised about heat figures for his business and the very first thing he went out did was buy a private jet for the business and this is a business that had one location and he lived within a few miles of the one location, so there was no need really to travel to other states.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: But he felt like it was important for the business to have a private jet in order to show a veneer of success to outside partners.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: Ultimately, it proved to be a huge headache.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Private jets are tremendously expensive.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: I learned firsthand that you require a separate insurance policy on the engine compared to the body of the aircraft.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: You've got big pilots, there's hangar fees, there's all kinds of additional insurance costs.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: So it's a prohibitively expensive investment unless the business really needs one.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: So don't spend money unless you have to spend the money, unless it actually goes to some purpose that supports the growth of the business and the entrepreneur's vision.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: That's a great example.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing that.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Your go-to book or podcast that shaped how you lead.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: I'll cite another old example.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: I guess I have a lot of old ones, but in high school one of the books I was tasked to read was the Richest man in Babylon, which is really a book that's more about personal finance than about business leadership, but I found it applies very well to business leadership and the central thesis of the book is no matter who you are, your labor is worth a certain amount, but also your capital is worth a certain amount.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: It's important to make your capital work for you.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: A lot of the clients that I work with that do prove to be very successful.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: I'll cite one in particular a law firm that's doing very well.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: They end up producing a lot more cash than they spend every month, which is great.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: But when I came on board with this client, they were just keeping all that cash in a checking account and it built up to hundreds of thousands of dollars that they were basically earning absolutely nothing on that they were basically earning absolutely nothing on.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: By simply moving that money from a checking account into a savings account a high-yield savings account, they were able to get essentially $20,000 in extra income every single year just as a result of interest on that cash.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: So it's so important not only to make sure that your workers and your employees and your team and your technology is working for you, but also your capital.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: There's no need to have capital sitting around doing nothing.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: If it's not being used, it should either be distributed out to the shareholders and the owners of the business or, at the very least, it should be put into some sort of an opportunity that has very little risk and generates positive cash flow.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: That's so good.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: I got two more questions for you.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: I'm really excited for this one.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: If you weren't doing finance totally different world what would you be doing?
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Or what would you want to be doing.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: You know, believe it or not, my undergraduate degree is in English literature, so I thought at the time in college that I was going to become a novelist.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: After I graduated I learned that the career prospects for a novelist were not especially good, which is part of the reason I went back to business school and ultimately entered a career in finance and accounting, which I enjoyed very much.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: But I would likely work as a novelist if I were not doing my present occupation Although, to be perfectly honest at this point, I'd probably do a fair bit of writing on the subject of accounting and finance, because it's just something that fascinates me.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Post it up.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Still in Hawaii, you think on a beach writing novels, or would there be a different landscape for you?
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: I would stay right where I am, but in my opinion, just personally travel is one of the great joys in life.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: I've had the privilege of traveling to more than 45 countries in my lifetime and I'm just about every continent missing Antarctica and Africa still but it's really eye opening to go around the world and see how other people are living and also to realize that we're all human, no matter matter where we live.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: There's a lot more that connects us than divides us well, and I need to ask another question now because, because of the travel, because we we share that, that bug in the passion for traveling, if you can, because this is probably a very difficult question, I know it's hard for me what, what's been your favorite place or country that you've traveled to, or, I guess, what are some of the spots that are highlights for you, because it's apples and oranges to some of them.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Right, it's hard to maybe pick the most favorite one for a variety of different reasons, but I would love to know what stands out as some of the places you've traveled to.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: What I really enjoy is seeing places that have a deep connection to human history.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: So one of my favorite visits.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: I had the chance a few years ago to visit Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which is just a phenomenally beautiful temple and what struck me about it?
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: It's a World Heritage Site.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: It's been around for a very long time.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: It's actually.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: There's a little town that's right up next to the temple where people live and they have a relatively modern life because life goes on um, even though they're in the the shadow of such an architectural wonder.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: In 23, I had a similar chance to visit machu picchu in peru, which was absolutely incredible, but likewise there's a town at the foot of uh, at the foot of the mountain called agua caliente, and it's just a regular place where regular people live.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: So it's so interesting to see these historical artifacts directly connected to modern human life.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: I just love that.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I could have a whole other podcast talking about travel stories and hearing all about that.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: I would love to know.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Last question what's the best advice that you've ever received?
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: This may sound a little generic as well, but when it comes to being successful in entrepreneurship, or successful in business in general, nothing beats tenacity.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Talent doesn't beat it, charm doesn't beat it.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: There's nothing in the world that impacts success quite as much as just not giving up, and what I want to emphasize here is not giving up does not mean never failing.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: It means standing back up after a failure and continuing to move forward, and that's really what impacts success, in my opinion.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: You only lose when you quit, and if you just keep going, you can't lose, and each time we fail, too, it helps us to succeed in the future.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: In my experience, I mean everyone.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: We work with every effort we make.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: It's more likely to be successful if we draw upon what we've learned from our previous failures.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: That's amazing, jack.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Where can people get in touch with you if they want to reach out, potentially work with you?
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Just continue the conversation that we've started.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: You've shared a lot of great insights.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: What's the best spot for them to get in touch?
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: The best thing to do would be to go to the website pacfinscom.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: That's P-A-C-F-I-N-S and it's short for the Pacific Accounting Company.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: So if you go to pacfinscom, there is my contact information right on the website and I would be happy to have a conversation.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: We'll put that in the show notes, Jack.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough for coming on.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: This was amazing.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing all the insights and for sharing your time this afternoon.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Thank you, james, I really enjoyed this.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning into this episode of CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: I hope you found value in today's conversation.
• 35:23
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• 35:26
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• 35:30
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• 35:35
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• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Second, if you're ready to take your business to the next level and attract the high end clients you deserve, head over to accountingleadsnowcom or click the link in the show notes to book your strategy.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Call it's time to position yourself as the advisor your clients need.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: And don't forget you can connect with me on LinkedIn to stay up to date on what's happening in the world of accounting and financial growth.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: We've got exciting topics coming up, so stay tuned for the next episode of CFO Chronicles.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Until then, keep pushing forward.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Your growth is just one strategic move away.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success.
• 36:13
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• 36:19
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• 36:23
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• 36:28
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• 36:32
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