Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 47. From Homebuilder to Fractional CFO: 30 Years of Scrappy Lessons with Mark Dunaway

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47. From Homebuilder to Fractional CFO: 30 Years of Scrappy Lessons with Mark Dunaway · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening, everybody? Welcome to Scrappy What's Successful. It's a show where I sit down
• 0:07
  with your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated
• 0:12
  or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple
• 0:16
  Consulting Firm and Pineapple Analyst AI, always helping small businesses become more data driven. Fun
• 0:21
  fact of the day, Mobile, Alabama. They hosted the first ever Mardi Gras. it was
• 0:25
  in seventeen three, and it was a full fifteen years before New Orleans even existed
• 0:30
  as a city. So apparently Mobile is the home base for Mardi Gras. But that's
• 0:34
  neither here nor there. Today I'm joined by my friend Mark Dunaway. He's the area
• 0:39
  president and fractional CFO for Focus CFO. This covers coastal Alabama and Pensacola, Florida. So
• 0:43
  after 30 plus years in the home building leadership roles, he relocated to Mobile, Alabama
• 0:48
  to build the CFO, the fractional CFO market from scratch. So, Mark, I appreciate you
• 0:52
  coming on, man. I'm excited to chat with you. We know that you're successful today.
• 0:57
  The question we have for you. Do you think you fall more on the sophisticated
• 1:01
  side or more on the scrappy side?
• 1:04
  Probably scrappy.
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  Scrappy.
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  'Cause you know when you're starting, you know, when you're starting a business, you you
• 1:14
  have to start at a low level. And so I think Scrappy is a a
• 1:20
  better definitive label for getting started.
• 1:23
  Yes, I totally agree. It is it is making stuff work regardless of what you
• 1:28
  have. where'd you grow up? Did you have entrepreneurs in the family?
• 1:33
  no entrepreneurs in the family. I grew up in southeastern Kentucky and my father was
• 1:39
  a Baptist minister for fifty-one years up there, four churches. So I wouldn't call that
• 1:46
  an entrepreneur, I would call that a a spiritual calling is how I would characterize
• 1:53
  that. And and mom was a quintessential pastor's wife, mama's bear. You know, always protecting
• 1:59
  us from all those evil congregationalists, but I'm just kidding. He he was a big
• 2:06
  impact player in that area, all kinds of stuff named after him and and left
• 2:13
  a a legacy. And so, you know, he didn't breed entrepreneurialism in my head. He
• 2:19
  put the idea and the concept of legacy out there for me. Unfortunately it took
• 2:26
  me about forty years to pick up on it. But
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  Yeah.
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  I finally you know have have really found happiness in in transitioning wisdom, you know,
• 2:40
  from me to people, you know, before they make the same mistakes.
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  I like it. I like it. So all right, so give me give me like
• 2:49
  the fifteen thirty second of what you do today and then we're gonna we're gonna
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  build the bridge from how the heck you got started to where you are now.
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  Well after after many years in the business and working for four or five pretty
• 3:03
  decent sized home builders, I went back to to Louisville and helped a small small
• 3:09
  business and we grew it through COVID about five times over and it just got
• 3:16
  to the point where you know COVID was not a good time to be in
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  business and so I was suffering from severe burnout and I went home and my
• 3:29
  wife said, you know, you really don't have to you really don't have to do
• 3:35
  this. And I said, Well, I have to do something because if I don't, you
• 3:41
  know, I'll just waste away. And I love golf, but I can't play it every
• 3:48
  day. So focus CFO came to me with the opportunity to build a fractional network.
• 3:54
  to go in and help small business. And I really I thought that was great
• 4:01
  alignment with what my heart was telling me is is just just help people make
• 4:07
  an impact. You know, I saw a the the women's national track and field coach
• 4:13
  for the Olympic team spoke a few weeks ago and I was fortunate enough to
• 4:20
  see her. And and part of her session was, you know, make them say your
• 4:26
  name over and over. She I bet she said it 20 times, make them say
• 4:33
  your name. And it's not because your name means anything other than that person impacted
• 4:39
  me in a positive way. Make them say your name. And I thought, you know,
• 4:45
  that was really, really a pivotal piece for what we do because Companies today they
• 4:52
  start entrepreneurial entrepreneurs who are are are geniuses, but that doesn't make them great back
• 4:58
  office people. And you know, any business is at least a three-headed marsh monster. It
• 5:05
  needs, you know, that genius entrepreneur to drive the vision. And then you've got to
• 5:11
  have somebody feed the business. But the way things work in our world today. You've
• 5:17
  got to have somebody who can provide analytics and operational forecasting and build the business
• 5:24
  behind the scenes to the plan. So, you know, if you go if you need
• 5:30
  heart surgery, you're not gonna go to your you know, your regular doctor and say,
• 5:37
  Cut me open, Mick, you know, you're gonna say, Give me the best heart surgeon
• 5:43
  I can find, because I want somebody that's a specialist. can go in and detail
• 5:49
  and add value to this process. And so that's what we try to do. We
• 5:56
  have people as affiliated CFOs and they have to have at least two to three
• 6:02
  decades of real industry level experience before they come in because small business can't hire
• 6:09
  those people. You know, they could, but they can't afford because they're you know They've
• 6:15
  been on the top of the food chain for so long and they come in
• 6:21
  and get done with their careers and and they wanna, you know, give me one
• 6:28
  or two days a week worth of work because I need to do something and
• 6:34
  I've got so much to give. And so they go in and bring these businesses
• 6:41
  this unique perspective of financial operational leadership. And you're not going to get that typically,
• 6:47
  you know, as a $40 million year business, and you go out and hire CFO,
• 6:54
  you're going to have to learn that person. And it'll be six months before you
• 7:00
  even know if you made the right decision or not. And a lot of CFOs
• 7:06
  are so talented, but they're talented as accountants and bookkeepers and CPAs are talented as
• 7:13
  you know, tax advisors and a st a a state, they help support your state
• 7:19
  building, but nobody really fills that lane like a true CFO. As a matter of
• 7:26
  fact, you know, probably 30% of the people I talk to that are CFOs now
• 7:32
  that are looking for this type of position have no accounting experience whatsoever.
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  It's kinda good though. It's kinda what you want. You want the operational finance. You
• 7:41
  don't need to know debits and credits inside and out. You kinda want to know
• 7:44
  how does finance impact the business? Did you did you always have that? Like as
• 7:48
  a kid, were you were you running a lemonade stand? Like did you understand cost
• 7:51
  of goods sold versus price? Like what tell about you as a kid.
• 7:55
  Well that piece of it, you know, that piece of it kind of came later.
• 8:00
  you know, my dad was this enormous personality. he believed in people, he loved people,
• 8:06
  and my mom, you know, set back and ran the ship. And so I got
• 8:11
  a little bit of both of those things, but I understood, you know, that, you
• 8:17
  know, things that you had to manage financially, you had to manage. And and they
• 8:22
  set excellent example for me over time. But one thing happened to me when I
• 8:28
  was early in my career, I was a controller to CFO for a construction company
• 8:33
  and we were growing out the seams. You know, we started out, I was with
• 8:39
  them for about 12 years. We started out at about 10 million dollars and and
• 8:44
  this was in the nineties. We grew it up to about ninety million dollars and
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  we were working all over the country and and I remember, you know, our our
• 8:56
  owner who was like a second father to me, kept saying, you know, I've never
• 9:01
  run a 20 minute $20 million business before. I've never run a $30 million business
• 9:07
  before. And so, you know, the first thing he did is he was a bank
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  he was on a bank board and so he would he would bring he wouldn't
• 9:18
  bring customers information but he would bring the philosophy of how a bank reviewed a
• 9:23
  client. And he would bring that back and we would review that on how our
• 9:29
  business should be presented to a bank. See, this is something that it's a it's
• 9:34
  it really becomes unique in your experience because they they don't teach this in college.
• 9:40
  And when you're an accountant or a controller or even a controller who is being
• 9:46
  titled as a CFO, you don't have that inner relationship. with banks and those mindsets.
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  So that was the first thing that that happened to me that really, you know,
• 9:57
  expanded my my opportunity, you know, intellectually. And then the second thing was my dad
• 10:02
  had moved back to Western Kentucky where I was at and he took this church
• 10:08
  startup and he came over and talked to my boss and he said, I wanna
• 10:13
  build a church And I'm gonna, you know, do it with donations so I can
• 10:19
  do it as cheap as possible. And my boss brought him up to my office
• 10:24
  and he said, Here's your project manager. He'll he'll he'll design
• 10:29
  Yeah.
• 10:30
  it, he'll analyze it, he'll bid it out, he'll get the numbers together for you,
• 10:36
  and he'll get somebody to be the superintendent on site. And so he did that
• 10:42
  for me probably seven or eight jobs, you know, ranging from five hundred thousand dollars
• 10:48
  to three or four million and And and taught me that the world exists outside
• 10:54
  of the Excel spreadsheet box. Right. And so if you're going to be a great
• 11:01
  CFO, you've got to manage those two worlds together. You know, your expectations and your
• 11:07
  plan have to be realistic enough that the field can can meet those those objectives.
• 11:13
  And so I felt like coming out of that process. I had a really unique
• 11:19
  experience that allowed me to go on and and be a division president, a president
• 11:26
  of of a company and and you know work on a higher tier tier than
• 11:32
  just a CFO. and so I think when I talk to people, you know, I
• 11:38
  can talk to them from a chair that they have more familiarity with than the
• 11:44
  chair of you know because honestly can entrepreneur give a great assessment to a CFO.
• 11:51
  I mean it just depends on their experience, but typically it's it's it doesn't work
• 11:57
  like that. So having somebody in between who can pair the CFO with the company,
• 12:03
  the CFO's already proven over and over again And and then you you merge those
• 12:09
  personalities and then I walk away and and and let them do the work now.
• 12:16
  So that's the kind of you know process that we go through so that we
• 12:22
  can make sure that the person we put in there is the right person and
• 12:28
  and is doing the right things.
• 12:31
  What was your first ever job? Like did you were you in retail or a
• 12:34
  restaurant at like sixteen or were you were you in this construction industry as a
• 12:38
  kid at all?
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  Bagging groceries and wash
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  Okay.
• 12:41
  and washing cars at a car dealership. Those were
• 12:44
  Okay.
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  those are the two things. And then in my small town I grew up in,
• 12:51
  I I had a six hour radio show and because that radio broadcast our basketball
• 12:57
  high school basketball games, the high school had me as the announcer for the games
• 13:02
  too. So That's the four things that I was really doing when I was in
• 13:08
  high school, my first jobs.
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  A six hour radio show. Was it just you
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  Yeah.
• 13:14
  to have guess? Was it was it a call in talk show? What was the
• 13:16
  give me some details?
• 13:17
  No, it was it was just it was really just keeping the radio station open
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  from six to twelve on Sunday night.
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  Yes.
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  but that went all the way back to the late seventies and early eighties. So
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  that's a long, long time.
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  Okay. And you're you're doing basketball high school basketball radio shows at that time too.
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  Okay.
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  Yeah.
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  Were you a basketball player?
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  for a little while, but I didn't I didn't really get the growth spurred until
• 13:52
  after I got out of high school. So that's when I became a little more
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  athletic, I guess.
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  Okay. how are the grades in high school?
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  I'm sorry.
• 14:04
  How were the grades in high school?
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  they were good in high school. You know, college was a different story. That was
• 14:10
  Okay.
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  was a lot tougher because they they didn't give you a grade in in learning
• 14:14
  to have an adult life, you know. You didn't you didn't get a grade in
• 14:18
  that class. I would have got a A in that one, but you know, the
• 14:21
  others were
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  Okay.
• 14:23
  really, really hard.
• 14:26
  You gotta you gotta put your energy where you wanna put it. any garage sales
• 14:30
  or yard yard sales that you guys frequently did as a family growing up?
• 14:34
  Yeah, my my mom was a garage sale crazy. I mean, yeah,
• 14:38
  Okay.
• 14:39
  had like three times a year and and made the church have have yard sales
• 14:43
  and just she loved yard sales. So, you know, and and I guess to to
• 14:48
  the point I made earlier, you know, she always she always kept a ledger and
• 14:53
  everything that was sold, you know, she was writing it down and the price and
• 14:58
  at the end of the day she would coordinate all out and you know know
• 15:02
  who what she sold and and if it was mine or my sister's, you know,
• 15:07
  she gave us the money for it and everything. And so I guess that was
• 15:12
  the first brush with accounting.
• 15:14
  Wow. Okay. That's pretty good. Were you out there selling as a kid or and
• 15:16
  like talking to the guests, your name? Okay.
• 15:18
  no. No man. I'm the the the the sales piece I would love to say
• 15:23
  it's easy for me, but it's not my natural habitat. I guess as a a
• 15:29
  leader in in those companies, I had to have more of a public persona. And
• 15:35
  so you know, I kind of relied on what came from my father's side. you
• 15:41
  know, into dealing with people and and, you know, I'm I'm an old fashioned guy.
• 15:47
  I like to sit across the table from people and I like to shake people's
• 15:53
  hands and look in the eye. And I'm not smart enough to maintain more than
• 15:59
  one reality at a time. So it's really hard for me to lie and and
• 16:05
  I just like being honest with people and learning about what they do and and
• 16:10
  looking for ways to help them look at things a little bit differently.
• 16:16
  Gotta go pretty far, that mentality in the construction business. Because people are always thinking
• 16:20
  that they're getting scammed or they're overcharged or something like that too. But if you
• 16:24
  show up and you're like, Hey, here's what it is, I'm gonna shake your hand,
• 16:28
  we're gonna do it right. I imagine that went pretty far.
• 16:31
  Yep, yeah, I agree. You know, I would always tell our sales teams, you know,
• 16:37
  they're buying from you, which means that they've looked at the market. And so no
• 16:43
  matter what they tell you, they're buying from you. And and those reasons substantiate the
• 16:49
  price. You know, so don't ever apologize for the price. Don't say, well, you know,
• 16:56
  you can have five thousand dollars off because all you're saying is is my product
• 17:02
  is cheaper than what I price it. So just you know, be honest and and
• 17:08
  be confident that that whatever you are selling is a fair price.
• 17:14
  Interesting. Okay. So that's like that's like the the value conversation, right? It's the price
• 17:18
  is the price and if you get enough value out of it, here's what we're
• 17:22
  gonna do. And it's it's phrased a lot more more like human than that. It's
• 17:27
  just hey, like here's what it is, don't devalue yourself because we're gonna go we're
• 17:31
  gonna build you a home. We're gonna build you and was this commercial or residential
• 17:35
  that you were building?
• 17:37
  mostly residential, you know, from early two thousands on was all residential. And and and
• 17:42
  every company wants to do some type of commercial development, you know, just to know
• 17:47
  that that's not what they want to do. So they go around dreamline
• 17:52
  Yeah.
• 17:53
  and it's no, it's not what we want to do. But you know, the the
• 17:58
  trades seem to be seem to be better in the commercial than they are in
• 18:03
  the residential. we're we're kind of the the lower level, you know, but you know,
• 18:09
  still high quality, but there's there's a higher quality it seems in re in commercial.
• 18:14
  That's why it's just more expensive.
• 18:17
  Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay. and are you handy yourself? Like if something breaks in the
• 18:21
  house, do you are you fixing it? You're grabbing a hammer and a nail?
• 18:26
  Well, when my wife took this job that moved us down to the coast, it
• 18:32
  seemed like this is the first and you can tell I've spent my career in
• 18:38
  new home construction because I'll tell
• 18:41
  Yeah.
• 18:42
  you this is the first used home that we've ever had. So
• 18:45
  Okay.
• 18:47
  I've found myself to be quite useful, not 'cause I wanna be, 'cause I have
• 18:52
  to be. So
• 18:54
  So calling it a used home, that's pretty great. Okay. Take me to the start
• 18:58
  of the area presidency in in focus CFO. So you move down and they say,
• 19:03
  Hey, cool, we don't have any CFOs in the area, and you raise your hand,
• 19:08
  say that sounds pretty cool. How how do you get into that? Did you know
• 19:13
  people at Focus CFO? Like why was that a such a calling other than to
• 19:18
  help people?
• 19:19
  Well they you know Focus CFO has grown quite a bit in the past eight
• 19:25
  years. they started in 2001 and they were strictly in the Columbus, Ohio area. And
• 19:31
  then about eight years ago they brought in a a guy who was a client
• 19:38
  and he sold his business and he's you know extremely intelligent. And very growth-minded. And
• 19:44
  so they began recruiting more area presidents across the country, like myself, you know, people
• 19:51
  that were had been in industry for a long time, maybe people that didn't want
• 19:57
  to do the CFO work themselves, but CFO or people that were good leaders, you
• 20:03
  know, had a had an experience as good leaders. And so when they came to
• 20:10
  me and they started talking to me. It was in Louisville and I put together
• 20:16
  a business a business plan and we found some people up there to do the
• 20:23
  work and I still have some clients up there and but but then you know
• 20:29
  after about a year and a half up there of build, build, build, then my
• 20:35
  wife got a unique opportunity down here and we'd always wanted to come back down
• 20:42
  to the coast anyway, and so This has been truly build it from scratch type
• 20:48
  of scenario, you know, because the nearest area president to to me is in Atlanta.
• 20:55
  wow.
• 20:56
  I have you know, I have the only franchise in in Alabama. there are none
• 21:02
  in Mississippi, there are none in West Florida, and there are none in Louisiana. So
• 21:08
  it you know, it's a big, big opportunity to Find some more area presidents and
• 21:14
  find some CFOs to be affiliates, and so but there's no branding down here like
• 21:21
  there was up there. So the concept changes and you know, when you talk in
• 21:27
  in coastal Alabama about fractional CFOs, typically what you're talking about is CF CPAs or
• 21:33
  accounting professionals that want to do work by the hour for a company. you know.
• 21:39
  bookkeeping services and and tax and and you know maybe receivables and payables work and
• 21:46
  so I have to you know constantly clarify that's really not what we're bringing to
• 21:52
  the table. And it's you know, the other thing that's unique about this area is
• 21:58
  there's so many self made businesses down here. And so when you go in and
• 22:04
  you know nobody, you know, nobody's Going to go in and tell Jack how to
• 22:11
  run, you know, his consulting agency, right? Because Jack started it from scratch, right? Nobody
• 22:17
  knows more about pineapple than Jack, right? and so you really have to find that
• 22:23
  person that is open to a new perspective, and you have to use stories, you
• 22:29
  know, experience stories to kind of help them understand that, you know, our team just
• 22:36
  sees things differently. You know, you see two opportunities with two different clients to build
• 22:42
  your business and and you're trying to let both your guys just go crazy. You
• 22:48
  know, one client's company pays in 10 days, he has a lower margin on his
• 22:55
  work. The other guy's client pays in 45 days and he has a high margin
• 23:01
  on there. And then the perspective they're missing is how do you balance that? Because
• 23:07
  you've only got a million dollar line of credit. You know, how do you balance
• 23:13
  that? So weighting those two things and and doing some analysis there and being able
• 23:20
  to say, you need you need 70% of your loads, you know, your revenue coming
• 23:26
  from the 10%, the lower margin stuff. Because that's giving you the cash flow to
• 23:32
  pay and hold the, you know, hold the account that's giving you the bigger margin.
• 23:38
  And in the meantime, while we're making money, let's do your let's do our financial
• 23:45
  presentation different and let's get in with some banks that we know can can you
• 23:51
  know blow that account wide open for you. You don't need a million, you need
• 23:57
  five million to grow. And as long as it's backed by the receivables of these
• 24:03
  companies. then, you know, you're not a five million dollar company anymore, you're a twelve
• 24:10
  million dollar.
• 24:11
  And this is the this is the CFO versus CPA, right? The CPA says, Hey,
• 24:14
  the books are in a good order and I I'm downplaying them a little bit,
• 24:18
  but the CFO does that, that keeping the plate spinning and and focusing on growth.
• 24:22
  Is that a fair way to summarize it?
• 24:25
  Yeah, and and also, you know, it's when the owner says, Well, I want to
• 24:29
  grow to twelve million and I wanna do it by the end of three years
• 24:34
  'cause I'm a hundred percent owner and then I wanna I wanna be able to
• 24:39
  sell it. How do I get there? You know, 'cause hope's not a strategy. You
• 24:44
  know, hope is not a strategy. And so you need somebody who can organize it
• 24:49
  and and set the goals back and backwards, you know, go backwards. We know what
• 24:54
  five years is supposed to look like. what is this quarter supposed to do? And
• 24:59
  then break the quarter into weeks, and then let's start measuring our success at weeks
• 25:04
  because there's still time to parry, so to speak, and and adjust and pivot, you
• 25:09
  know, if you're looking at it by weeks. But if all you're doing is looking
• 25:14
  at an annual goal, I mean, in home building, for instance, if it takes five
• 25:19
  months to build a house. I mean, once July gets there, you're done. So you've
• 25:24
  got to be planning, you know, in January, February, and March, you know, so that
• 25:29
  you'll have the inventory to in to hit your goals and you know, and get
• 25:34
  all the houses in by the end of the year. And and again, it's it's
• 25:39
  really more of a financial operational analysis. And then, you know, that way everybody on
• 25:44
  the team understands exactly what they have to do, right? You go in, you have
• 25:49
  your meetings, you know, sales is talking about we're plus minus for the week, we're
• 25:54
  minus for the month, but because we're plus for this week, we'll be plus for
• 25:59
  next week, I think we'll by the end of the month we'll be back on
• 26:04
  track. You know, and that's the kind of conversation that you want to have at
• 26:09
  those meetings. Short, sweet, to the point. And then if there's a problem, what do
• 26:14
  we do to help? Right. What you don't want to have is I could sell
• 26:19
  more if operations would build them faster. You don't want to have that conversation in
• 26:24
  those meetings. And so if you build the meeting and you build the program and
• 26:29
  the plan for these specific things, the other thing that's happening is we're taking the
• 26:34
  owner out of that everyday decision process, right? So the owner wants you know 12
• 26:38
  million dollars out of his company in five years. Well, he's not gonna get that
• 26:43
  if he's still making every decision because nobody wants, you know, if I buy your
• 26:48
  company, the last person I want to be there running it is you, right? I
• 26:53
  want to run it. Or I want to bring people in to run it. And
• 26:58
  I can't do that if you're making all the decisions. You know, so we need
• 27:03
  your team making the decisions in accordance with the plan. And then that makes it
• 27:08
  a lot easier and a lot more valuable to us to pay more money for
• 27:13
  it if we want to if we come in and Find an operator.
• 27:18
  Okay. So you took a you took a concept there that a lot of people
• 27:22
  talk about but actually don't execute on. So five years from now we want to
• 27:26
  exit for twelve million dollars, right? And then you're saying you break that plan into
• 27:31
  chunks, essentially, whatever digestible chunks are, and then each team or each department, each person,
• 27:35
  whatever the size of the business is, they then have their goals that align with
• 27:39
  the overarching goal, right? All this, it makes sense. I feel like people can talk
• 27:44
  about it, but it it usually ends up being more of the the hope that's
• 27:48
  not a strategy, actually, than than the true strategy that's quantified and and selfishly data
• 27:52
  driven. How do you get people to stay on that? So like week one, everybody's
• 27:57
  pumped up, everybody's ready to go. Week two, we missed last week, but it's fine,
• 28:01
  we'll make it up next quarter, kind of thing. How do you get people to
• 28:05
  actually stay on track with that plan?
• 28:08
  Well, I mean you you you stay on track because you're focused on weeks. And
• 28:13
  and you know, if you get seven weeks into the quarter and you're failing bad,
• 28:19
  there's still time to correct. But there's no time to correct if you're looking at
• 28:25
  it at a quarterly basis and then you're looking backwards. Remember controllers, CPAs, a c
• 28:31
  bookkeepers and they're an accountants, they're looking backwards, they're not looking forwards. So we need
• 28:37
  them in there keeping the scoreboard, showing us where we're at, but we also need
• 28:43
  to know where we're going and that way we're making decisions on what we do
• 28:49
  to get there. And you know, at one particular place I was at, we started
• 28:55
  out small and we blew it out and and you know grew to about four
• 29:01
  times what we were doing and we became the record breaking division in the company.
• 29:07
  And and they would keep coming in giving me these big annual goals that were
• 29:13
  what do they call them? B HAGs, big hairy, auditious goals. And and
• 29:19
  Yeah.
• 29:21
  and and so my team would come in and say, well what's our goal for
• 29:26
  this year? And I'd be like, I don't know, but we've got to get a
• 29:32
  hundred and a hundred homes closed in the first quarter. So You know, that's seven
• 29:37
  seven, eight homes a week. So how are we going to get seven, eight homes
• 29:43
  a week? And then if we got seven, eight homes a week, then we're having
• 29:48
  a party, right? everybody, not sales, not not operations, everybody, even the back office administrator.
• 29:54
  So everybody in your organization needs to know what the goals are. They need to
• 29:59
  know where you're at. And then because you know, here's a here's the Mark Dunaway
• 30:05
  theory is two. is better than one. Three is better than two. Five is better
• 30:10
  than three. You know, and if you get everybody moving in the same direction and
• 30:16
  your chances of reaching and beating those goals is much, much better than, you know,
• 30:21
  if you just, you know, have a champion marketing guy and he's bringing the business
• 30:27
  in and you can't support the business because you haven't, it's too much business for
• 30:32
  you. and you haven't built the back office and the rest of the company big
• 30:38
  enough to to perform the work, you know. So that's I mean, that's that's my
• 30:43
  mentality is is break it down into little parts and you know, you can't you
• 30:49
  can't eat that elephant all at once, right? You gotta eat it one bite at
• 30:54
  a time, right?
• 30:56
  How much should finance be involved in sales or sales strategy?
• 31:00
  Well I you know, I I think you know finance is is working to set
• 31:05
  the objectives and then how those objectives align in each department, including sales, you know,
• 31:10
  it's it's let's have the conversation with sales about what do they need to do
• 31:16
  to achieve the objective. You know, if they put too much margin on it. They
• 31:21
  can't get the volume. They can build the profit, but they can't build they can't
• 31:27
  get the volume. And so if they put too little margin on it, they get
• 31:32
  better volume, but they don't get the profit. So they need to understand, you know,
• 31:38
  exactly what you're trying to get them to. And that's your job in finance is
• 31:43
  to bring everybody together to this plan, right? not to leave them on their own
• 31:49
  and say, you know. I want to make a million dollars this year and my
• 31:54
  overhead's a million so I need a million in gross profit. You know, how many
• 32:00
  homes or you know, how much revenue is that to get me a million or
• 32:05
  two million in gross profit? And then, you know, let them come up and and
• 32:11
  and create the starting point for the conversation. Well, we can do this. We've got
• 32:16
  to do, you know, we make a hundred thousand on each one of these things.
• 32:22
  So we need 20, 20 units. generating a hundred thousand dollars of gross profit apiece,
• 32:27
  that's two million. Okay, what do we have to do to get a hundred thousand
• 32:33
  dollars on each one of these units? And how can you make sure we're gonna
• 32:38
  get twenty? Because it's not gonna be in it's not gonna be a straight line.
• 32:44
  You're not gonna do five a quarter. I'll just tell you that right now. You
• 32:49
  know, January's gonna suck. August is gonna be great. Nobody's buying in December, you know,
• 32:55
  blah, blah, blah. And and so now let's get in here and start balancing so
• 33:00
  that every time we look at a week, is it realistic? Right.
• 33:05
  Okay. Okay. This makes sense. let me hit you with some lightning round, scrappy verse
• 33:09
  sophisticated questions now. we're gonna start kind of on the finance side of things. Have
• 33:13
  you ever had to play the credit card timing game where you do something like
• 33:17
  you wait till tomorrow to charge something because that's next month's statement?
• 33:21
  Yeah, I I don't think anybody that's ever been in business hadn't had to do
• 33:26
  that. cash flow's king, you know, and and you've got to really, really manage your
• 33:32
  cash flow because I've seen a lot of companies with positive P&Ls go broke.
• 33:38
  Wow. Yeah, that's that's scary. how do you deal with something like I guess this
• 33:42
  is kind of a scrappy question? in the materials world that you lived in, you're
• 33:46
  ordering hundreds of thousands of dollars of materials. How the heck do you pay for
• 33:50
  that? Do you space that out over time? Like there's gotta be some scrappy solutions
• 33:54
  to figure that out.
• 33:56
  Well, I mean, you've got to time it out and and and typically you're not
• 34:02
  gonna do it with cash flow because your cash flow won't time with your purchasing.
• 34:09
  And so you you're gonna have to have some type of financing vehicle in most
• 34:15
  cases. And what you have to do is you make sure there's more than enough
• 34:22
  financing there to to to get you through those times. growth. It's a bigger bigger
• 34:28
  line because, you know, you're spending more money than you're getting until it levels off,
• 34:35
  right? if you're getting smaller, then it becomes much easier because then you have more
• 34:41
  money than you're spending as you sell things, you know, because you know, the volume's
• 34:48
  shifting down.
• 34:49
  It's the promise of tomorrow will be better almost. I get it. I like it.
• 34:53
  take me inside the office a little bit. So how many monitors are on your
• 34:57
  desk that you work at?
• 34:59
  I'm a dinosaur, Jack. You know, I've got I've got one monitor. I've got two
• 35:03
  monitors in a in a in a closet in the in the other room out
• 35:07
  there.
• 35:08
  Yeah, yeah.
• 35:09
  I've got two monitors in the floor of the closet. And I would I do
• 35:13
  everything off of this off this laptop. It's like a twenty inch monitor, but it's
• 35:18
  it's that's all I need, you know. Yeah. My wife.
• 35:22
  Okay. That's pretty good. It's pretty good.
• 35:25
  My wife uses three and they're all wraps, you know. And yeah, she'll she'll come
• 35:28
  in here and
• 35:29
  That's what I'm talking about. That's the stuff.
• 35:32
  she'll say, Why aren't you using those other two? And I say, 'Cause I got
• 35:36
  crap all over my desk. That's all.
• 35:39
  on that note, what is the most unique thing in your office?
• 35:43
  The most unique thing in my office is can I don't know if you can
• 35:48
  see it or not. There it is. That
• 35:51
  There we go, yeah.
• 35:52
  is an electric guitar signed by each member of the Rolling Stones.
• 35:57
  Whoa. How the heck did you get that?
• 36:01
  my son bought that at a at a auction for me and and gave it
• 36:07
  to me as a as a birthday present.
• 36:11
  Are you a huge stone fan? Stones fan?
• 36:14
  I've I've always liked them. I've only seen once, but you know, that I mean
• 36:19
  they've been making music for sixty years. They're all in their eighties and things still
• 36:24
  pack a stadium. So you know,
• 36:27
  Yeah.
• 36:29
  I think they're they're really good, but it's it's unique because you know, Charlie Watts
• 36:35
  is dead and his signature is on the guitar. Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, and Ronnie
• 36:41
  Wood. So
• 36:42
  Wow. I've asked that question a decent amount and that is definitely the most unique,
• 36:47
  probably the most valuable thing that I've gotten so far. I like it. any business
• 36:52
  cards currently on the desk?
• 36:54
  I'm sorry.
• 36:55
  Any business cards currently on the desk?
• 36:59
  I've got I've got a tray,
• 37:01
  Yeah.
• 37:03
  you know, of of all business
• 37:05
  yeah, there we go.
• 37:06
  cards. you know, as you're as you're building a business, you know, you have to
• 37:12
  cast a big net. if you're looking for referral partners, I mean I know you
• 37:18
  you know this as well, you may have to talk to 20 referral partners to
• 37:24
  find one, right? And so that's what I've been doing down here as I've been
• 37:30
  trying to build the market is I talk to everybody. And Pensacola is about 40
• 37:36
  miles from where I'm at, and Mobile is about 20 miles, and and then you
• 37:42
  know we're one big county in the middle full of entrepreneurs. And so I'm typically
• 37:48
  in all three places at least every week. And so, you know, I'm trying to
• 37:54
  have at least you know five to seven face-to-face meetings with people a week and
• 38:00
  and and just kind of you know tell them what we do and and look
• 38:06
  for you know that connection. You know, do you see how this business could help
• 38:12
  one of your clients? and and you know, maybe no, we don't see how it
• 38:18
  could help, and then you know, it's it's more work, but about one out of
• 38:24
  twenty. will be a good referral partner. So as I start the thing, I have
• 38:30
  I just talked to everybody.
• 38:33
  It's a scrappy way to do it, but you gotta do it. I like it.
• 38:37
  when you're going out, you're having an in-person meeting. You got a lunch meeting. Are
• 38:41
  you always setting a reservation for lunch?
• 38:43
  I I try to, you know,
• 38:44
  Okay.
• 38:46
  sometimes you know, because the the process of of mining for people is, you know,
• 38:50
  everybody's using it. Bankers are using it, you know, everybody's using it. And and so
• 38:55
  you'll find somebody you'll connect, you know, on LinkedIn or something and and and they'll
• 39:00
  say I'll say, would you be open to us learning more about what we do
• 39:05
  and how we can work together over coffee or lunch or something like that? And
• 39:10
  they'll say, I'll send yeah, I'll send the invitation. But most of the time it's
• 39:15
  me. But it I
• 39:17
  Right.
• 39:18
  try to set it all up because I need that guidance, you know, you know,
• 39:22
  you know, it's like today, you know, I I had an alarm set on my
• 39:27
  on my phone for three for it's three o'clock my time, so that I can
• 39:32
  make sure that I'm sitting here at at three thirty, four thirty your time when
• 39:38
  when when you were ready. You know, because you can get out there and I
• 39:43
  mean you lose a lot of time talking to people and stuff like that. And
• 39:48
  and to me, appointments are are very, very important. You know, they may not like
• 39:53
  what I sell and they may not like what I say, but what they do
• 39:59
  like is the fact that I'm showing up.
• 40:02
  Yep. Yep. That's a
• 40:04
  I I know I know you know that too, Jack, because that's just such a
• 40:09
  a foundational belief in business is show up first, you know, because you gotta do
• 40:15
  all you can do, right? And if you can't show up, you need to go,
• 40:21
  you know, back to washing cars and bagging groceries.
• 40:25
  There you go. I love it. Mark Dunaway, everybody. 100% scrappy. I mean, we knew
• 40:29
  it from the start. 100% scrappy. I'm a huge fan. I think the the CFOing
• 40:34
  that you do and the very like kind of first principles way that you go
• 40:39
  about it's it's really honestly it's it's inspiring because I'm trying to do 18 different
• 40:43
  things at once. And sometimes I gotta say, okay, what is the goal for the
• 40:48
  year? Does this help the goal? No. Okay, then stop doing it. So. I appreciate
• 40:53
  the conversation, Mark. Thank you so much for coming on. What do you want the
• 40:57
  folks out there to know? Anything you want to promote?
• 41:01
  I wanna promote you. I mean, I think I think what you're doing is is
• 41:06
  awesome and now you're you know, you're working in this lane that's gonna be so
• 41:11
  critical, you know, to the next generations. working in this AI lane. people, you know,
• 41:16
  they need to connect with you. They need to they need to hear the story,
• 41:21
  you know, that that you're gonna tell because You know, you're a straightforward, you're honest
• 41:27
  person. and and even though you got bad choice in basketball teams, you've got I'm
• 41:32
  just kidding. that's an inside joke for all those people that are listening
• 41:37
  Yeah.
• 41:44
  that that are just like rolling their eyes because they don't know what I'm talking
• 41:49
  about. But you know, I I think people really need to tune in and and
• 41:55
  have a conversation with you or two to really figure this thing out because This
• 42:01
  stuff is changing our world, you know. I mean, software developers are are are taking
• 42:06
  a back seat to the guy who's sitting on a desk saying, I want this,
• 42:12
  right? And this whole thing is coming and you know, and it's being built right
• 42:18
  there. And I mean, that is so far beyond my own personal comprehension. that that's
• 42:23
  where I want to give the kudos back to you. And that's one thing that
• 42:29
  I was really, really excited about, you know, when we met is is that, you
• 42:35
  know, you're somebody that can that can be the Sherpa for businesses in this AI
• 42:41
  realm. I think it's awesome.
• 42:43
  I appreciate that, Mark. And I will give all the credit to my team because
• 42:47
  I'm just I'm going in 18 different directions trying to figure out what my strategy
• 42:51
  is. But I think I think we're the with the perfect combo of the financial
• 42:55
  guidance and me with a little bit of the AI stuff. So very much appreciated,
• 43:00
  Mark. Everybody, if you're in the home building industry, construction industry, you need some financial
• 43:04
  strategy, give Mark a shout. he's he's as honest as they come, he's a good
• 43:08
  guy. He will tell you if they can help and what the right solution is.
• 43:12
  Especially if you're in that Alabama, Pensacola area. Give him a shout. Mark buddy, thank
• 43:17
  you so much for coming on, man. I appreciate it.
• 43:20
  Thanks, Jack. I'm so grateful for the opportunity. Thank you.
• 43:24
  Thanks everybody. Stay data driven.