Latest / The Accounting Leads Now Podcast / From Fence Company Founder to Fractional CFO: Stewart Ervin’s Secrets to Business Turnaround Success

Transcript

From Fence Company Founder to Fractional CFO: Stewart Ervin’s Secrets to Business Turnaround Success · The Accounting Leads Now Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success the go-to podcast for fractional CFOs and accounting firm owners who want to attract more high-paying clients and increase their revenue.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Hosted by James Donovan from Nine Two Media, this podcast dives into marketing strategies specifically designed for lead generation and client acquisition.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: In each episode, you'll hear from industry leaders sharing their success stories and Thank you to your bottom line.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Stuart, so great to have you on the show today.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: I'm very excited and looking forward to speaking with you.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: For everyone who doesn't know you, do you mind giving a quick introduction about yourself, who you are and where you're based out of?
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: So Stuart Irvin, owner of Bracket Management, which is a fractional CFO company, and we are based out of Charlotte.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Our primary sector that we operate in is the manufacturing.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: We shoot for companies that are less than 30 million, really are kind of sweet spots between that nine to $15 million arena and we really look for business owners who are really wanting to grow.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: They may have hit a ceiling, they've lost control, they might've grown faster than they have anticipated and lost a little bit of control of the business.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: So we come in alongside very hands-on part of the management team and really helped help the owners get control of their business.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Appreciate you sharing that.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: How long has your firm been in operation for Stuart?
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we actually started this business back in 2008.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: It was a business as service.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: I had a few small companies and a college buddy of mine had a few small companies and none of them were large enough really to have any overhead.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: And so we made a decision and said, hey, let's start bracket management, let pull our resources together.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: And he had, he had a marketing background, I had a finance and operations background and we were really just running bracket for our own, our own purpose.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: And then it kind of caught wind right in the in the church we were going to and then the in the local area and and he had some solo entrepreneurs that would come in and say, hey, we'd like to you to need some help and I'd like for you to help run our business.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: But that really kind of we shelved it back in 2010.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: He went his own way, I kind of went the corporate route and in 2019, we kind of brought that back and rebranded it because I had spent again a decent amount of time in the corporate arena and started to learn a lot about high level finance and operational business strategy.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: And so we rebranded it as a fractional CFO company and offered primarily strategy at this point and not as much as the business as a service.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: Amazing.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: That's cool.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: We work with a handful of fractional CFO, so I'm excited for everyone to listen to this episode and hear, hear your insight and and basically all of your path towards success.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: But I want to go back a little further.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I think I read on your profile you started your first business when you were 16.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I have always known I wanted to do businesses, like 12 or 13 years old, but I really had no clue as to what that actually meant.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: That I wanted to do self-employment, small, large corporate, no clue.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: So my dad actually started his first company when I was around 10 or 11.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: And it was a vinyl fence fabrication company.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: So they were wholesalers selling to fence companies.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: And at 16, I had the opportunity to do some subcontracting for a local fence company and then I mean that taught me how to do the install so I could build it.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: But now I learned how to do the install and so I literally just started marketing that I had a fence company.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: And so my brother and I started that company and we would work some during the school, but primarily during the summers.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: And yeah, the first business was a fence company and I ran that business for 12 to 15 years on the side.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Awesome Is there.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: I'm curious, like what lessons you took from that first company you had at 16 to about 30?
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: And what is now being implemented in your fractional CFO company today?
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Are there some lessons that go back and forth?
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: So the reality was the majority, the base of my knowledge today kind of started in that 16 to early 20 stage.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: Now the fence company funded my way to allow me to get a master's degree right.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: So I bankrolled that on my own and so that was huge for me.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: But the reality is working for my dad.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: I had to start at the bottom right.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: I had to start at the bottom and I worked all the way to the top, holding nearly all positions within a company.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: So what that taught me was the playbook and so I started learning the ins and outs of you know supply demands.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: Okay, if this was wrong, what was going on upstream, and that really built that foundation to be able to ultimately one day be a business turnaround guy.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: Now I didn't really put all the pieces together until about four or five years ago and I thought to myself, had I not started at the bottom at a very young age and held literally every position in the company, I wouldn't have the formula to be able to do what I was doing today.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: So while again the fence company helped, it really was in conjunction with what I was doing in the per se, my day job as a part time employee there.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: I think it's so important to, like you said, to go through all the different positions in a company to really understand what's happening, and I think it makes it so much sweeter when you are towards the top because you earned it and you weren't just placed there.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: What are you most proud of, stuart, in your career either right from 16, starting a company then or now being older, having a fractional CFO company working with firms making a couple million dollars a year.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, probably rebranding Bracket and really launching that.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, it was somewhat of a dream of mine to back in the 08, 09 timeframe to do this.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: The reality is, marcus Limonis is somewhat of a I guess you'd say an icon or a model that I'd look up to.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: Early early on, I always wanted to be the guy that owned a variety of businesses.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: Well, early on, I always wanted to be the guy that owned a variety of businesses.
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, that takes a lot of capital and sometimes that just doesn't work.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: And so for me to be able to come out now and start a fractional CFO company to not necessarily own them but operate and help manage, help the owners manage that to me is very, very rewarding.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: So again, back in 2010, when we decided the shelf bracket, I thought I was probably going to be it, but to be able to relaunch it and actually find some success at it now is pretty, pretty exciting.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: That's really cool, without giving away your entire playbook.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: I'm curious when you are meeting with prospects, what are some of the, the key questions or things you're looking for in a business to work with?
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Not only can I sign them as a client, but do I want them as a client?
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the number one thing that I say I look for is the owner or the manager has to be a growth-minded manager.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: Earlier in my career, when I was a turnaround guy, in several instances it was a desire to correct the business in order to sell, and that's great and all.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: But you're really you're working towards an end goal.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: When that, when you hit that, it's like okay, moving on to the next one, and then.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: But it's a different mindset when you're just trying to correct, to sell versus correct and grow, and so that is the number one thing.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: I have to make sure that they're, because I'm fairly driven right, so I want to make sure that whoever I'm working with is also growth minded.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: That's so cool, do you guys turn away a lot of potential businesses because they don't fit that mold?
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: No, no, we don't.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Luckily, we've been blessed with the people who reach out to us are very much in that mindset, right?
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: So I think if you're looking for a fractional CFO, inherently there's going to be a desire to grow, right?
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: I was meeting with a business coach last week and he was saying a lot of the people who he works with they're smaller than my target market, but he says a lot of people we work with they're, they're okay with the status quo and he's like you know.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: He says he turns customers away constantly, but for me I haven't seen that.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: For me, it's most of the people that reach out to us are definitely growth-minded and they're trying to take it to the next level.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, interesting.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: So how, what, what's been your guys primary success for attracting new clients?
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Because fractional CFO, it's.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: It's a relatively new thing.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: It's, it's trending now in the industry oh, and I find a lot of business owners.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: They just don't know what they don't know that's so having people reach out to you knowing they need a fractional CFO.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: That's a whole different ballgame from the businesses that need one.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: They just don't know they need one.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: So how do you guys go about attracting and constantly getting the right people knocking on your door?
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for me, the majority of my stuff right now is coming through referrals.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: Now over the last couple of weeks I've actually had several hits on the website.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: That's come but that's not been the norm.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: So for me, referrals is the primary driver.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: So for me, I'm somewhat of an operational leaning CFO, right.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: So I understand both finance and operations, because I started in the supply chain, came up through operations, ended in finance, and so what it works out to be is again being that turnaround guy.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: If someone had that reputation.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: It's always been that way of.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: It's always been referral based.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: So I'm still trying to crack that nut and trying to figure out.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: You know, how do we draw in people, not from referrals, and I haven't quite gotten there yet.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: So obviously I do a ton of stuff on LinkedIn and when I talk to people, they I get constantly get ah man, I do a ton of stuff on LinkedIn and when I talk to people I constantly get oh man, I see your stuff on LinkedIn or I see your stuff on Instagram, but you hit the nail on the head.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: The hardest thing I'm trying to conquer is how do you get a company to recognize they need it before they need it?
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: A lot of times I find that people think that we're just a consulting company, and so the number one thing I try to reiterate is no, we actually come alongside and all the people I'm trying to land, I tell them I'm going to be inside your facility, so I try to stick within a certain region.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Obviously I have that operations lien, and so actually the majority of my guys who are with me today in the process of vetting them out, they say you know what?
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: I not only need finance help, but I need operations help as well.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: And so it ultimately ends up that I'm actually a little more than a fractional CFO.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: I almost act as a VP or a COO or whatever to the owner and we just work on his business as a whole.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: So I haven't cracked the nut yet.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: It's mostly referral based.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, cool.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: So I'm sure it hasn't always been referral based.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: So what would you say to newer firms who are getting started out trying to find their first handful of clients?
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Maybe they don't have a ton of money to spend or invest in marketing.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: They have a decent network.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: How do they go out and get their first handful of clients?
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: So for me, I do a ton of LinkedIn cold outreach.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: I tried.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: The thing I'm having to realize I'm having to do is I'm somewhat having to educate as to what a fractional CFO is and what they do, and if they bite on that, then we can take it to the next level, the next step.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: So for me, I'm just trying to create as much value as I can.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: So I have a ton of free resources on my website and I try to just somewhat look at the leads on LinkedIn sales navigator and I say, okay, this individual fits my demographic.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: I try to reach out to 10 to 15 people per day and you're going to get anywhere from 10 to 20% of those individuals that bite and your goal is to maybe get 5% of those on a call to discuss it further.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: So that's how I've been doing it so far.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: Again, there's interest, but it's still something that I'm trying to fight through.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: How long have you been on LinkedIn to attract new business, because that's a huge part of our model for our clients?
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I've been.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: I've been running outreach on my personal LinkedIn account for over four years now, like it's something we just do every single day and it works great.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: It's a long-term play.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: It's not as fast as ads, but what would you?
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: What's your experience been like on LinkedIn, knowing it's not always going to be, you know, I turn it on and the next day I have a client.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I just set my expectations accordingly.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: So I definitely know it's a long-term play.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: Again, I was talking to someone yesterday and they were saying that they were somewhat doing the same approach and a year and a half later someone contacted them and said hey, I'm ready to do business today.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: The thing I think that for me it helps.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: So, to answer your original question, I've probably been doing the outreach thing for about five months now, so not a tremendously long amount of time.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: But what I've realized is it's much like a realtor they don't need you till they need you.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: So my goal is to post as often as possible relevant information, so I'm always somewhere in the forefront.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: Obviously, if they connect with you and you continue to post and they're going to see you in their feed regularly and then you just offer as much value, knowing that at some point when they need you, they need you.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: So I try to keep my content as educational and somewhat entertaining as possible.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: My goal is to somewhat hit an emotional nerve and they go oh, that applies to me, let me reach out.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: So I know it's a long-term play Again in my brain.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: I just know that if they need me then I could be the guy.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Sweet, Are you doing?
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: You mentioned some content as well and I love that you're doing stuff on LinkedIn.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Is it just cold outreach you're doing, or do you have some other other lines in the water to educate your prospects and stay top of mind?
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: Yes, so I've been contemplating lately about doing some public speaking.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: Obviously, I'm trying to be on as many podcasts as possible to try to get the word out there.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: I dabble a little bit on Instagram and TikTok, but those are just a whole different animal all in its own.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: And TikTok but those are just a whole different animal, all in its own.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: But I've done some local outreach events and some local networking events and again it's all about how many people can I talk to.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: So LinkedIn, really primarily, is the venue for me.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: Again, I just I try to get in front of as many people as possible.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: I love that about LinkedIn because any business owner who takes their business serious, they're going to be on LinkedIn, that's right.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: A lot of the objections we get and people always ask well, hey, I work with construction firms and those those owners aren't there.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: Well, the ones who are are on LinkedIn.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: That's right, they want to talk to you, but you can make that argument with any industry.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: The people who aren't there, well, yeah, they're not there, but there's over a billion people on LinkedIn.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: So, if done correctly which it sounds like you're doing you're able to get in front of a ton of people.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Grow that audience and it's just that slow nurture.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: You will get good opportunities coming in sooner, but it's definitely a longer term play.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: It's one of those deals I told my wife the other day is like you have to just stay with it, because you really don't know who's looking at your stuff.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: And if I said, if I had a dollar for every person that says, man, I've seen you active on LinkedIn, I wouldn't need the company.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: I know it's working, even though you're not getting the necessarily the clicks or the likes, the comments.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: I have had enough people come to me and say, man, I've seen you super active on LinkedIn, keep doing it.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: So I know it works.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: It's just going to be a longer term play.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Well, definitely stay consistent with it.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: It's a solid platform to be on and I think it's extremely underrated especially for the price of Sales Navigator, like 99 bucks a month.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: It's a no brainer, absolutely, stuart.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Are you reading any or are there any books that you would recommend to business owners, other entrepreneurs who are just looking to grow their business or get in the right frame of mind?
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Anything you'd recommend from your side?
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, I guess it depends on the season.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: So for me, obviously I'm an ops and finance guy so I'm trying to learn as much as I can about sales and marketing.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: So I've done a lot of sales strategy but sales execution, I'm realizing, is not my forte, so I'm having to learn a ton about that.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: So Gary Vaynerchuk's recent book is which one I've been reading the most.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: It's actually on my desk here.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: If you're in general business, for me one of the best books I have ever read was Entree Leadership by Dave Ramsey.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: It goes all into the ins and outs of how to run a business and I read that super early in my career and it really taught me a ton about running the business as a whole.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: So to me that's been one of the better books.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it's right now.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: It's just anything I can get my hands on from a sales standpoint.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Perfect, I'm gonna have to check some of those out.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Maybe the last question for you, stuart, and again, not to give away your whole playbook, but a lot of clients.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: We speak with a lot of prospects.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: We speak with people who want to get in, to becoming a fractional cfo.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: They struggle with pricing yeah does your firm address pricing when speaking to new prospects?
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: And here's a scope of work.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: This is what we're going to do and we want to get properly compensated for it, because I know a lot of people they talk like they're doing a lot of fractional CFO work already Right, but they're charging, they're significantly undercharging what they're valued.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Or a lot of people think they're pricing DUI and they're not getting any business.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: So how do you guys go about really finding that sweet spot to get compensated your value?
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the very first thing that we try to do is at least provide a 10X return on the client's investment.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: So for me again, I think I'm a little more than a fractional CFO where I really strive to provide strategy help as well, and we really provide strategy in three different ways One is pricing strategies Three number two is cost reduction or efficiency improvements, and the third is profitable new business.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: And so what I would traditionally do is I would try to take the last three years of their financials and I'll just do your normal analysis to understand all the key financial ratios.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: I'll look at all the ins and outs of their revenues and are they controlling their expenses, and I'll basically will somewhat put together some type of a formula to see okay, if we focus on a 3% price, a 3% cost or efficiency improvement or a 3% new business or some type of variant of that, at the price that we're going to provide you, can we give you an 8% to 10% return?
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: And for the most part we can.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: I really have not had any kickback at all in regards to the prices that we've put out.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: Obviously, it depends on the size of the business, and so I have some stuff that comes out at a thousand bucks a month.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: That's very hands-off.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: It's just primarily a high level review of their financials and report out, and then we can go all the way up to eight to ten thousand dollars a month.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: But again, those are larger companies with a much more in-depth involvement.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: So for me, I, you know I run the math in regards to how much time I'm going to spend on a given month and can my margins be appropriate for that.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: I also know that the more that we scale, we're going to have to be bringing on some help below, and so there's always a thing of OK at this tier.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: How much is going to be my involvement versus maybe a senior accountant, and will the margins make sense at that?
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: So again, for me, I'm adding as much value as I can to the customer, shooting for an eight to 10% return, and then we, just once we get the company healthy, then we start on that strategic goal to make sure they hit those three value drivers.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: That's so insightful.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you sharing that.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: I do have another question for you, because we were just doing some numbers and running some math here not too long ago.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: I was curious what you see as the average lifetime retention with your clients who are working with you.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: So right now it's you know, it's years for me again because we are so hands on that the clients start to rely on us as a part of their team Right.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: So I've had to learn the hard way early in my career the way we were managing some of the clients.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: We were the, we were the guys like we were the boss.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: You're going to listen to us because we're the experts, and I realized that I pissed a lot of people off and so we've, I've, I've matured as a as a professional, and realize now that it's ultimately their business.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: They're entrepreneurs for a reason and we're really just there to add value and help.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: And so when you do that, I constantly, you know we do monthly reviews, we do quarterly reviews and I'm always asking for feedback in regards to are we meeting your expectations?
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: Is there anything we can do differently?
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: But in essence, they really rely on us as a member of their management team.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: So as long as we're performing, we're meeting the scope and statement of work.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: At this point, we've never been released and, to my knowledge, we are in good standing with all our clients.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: That's so awesome.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Retention is the ultimate hack for growing a business.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: You keep your clients around.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: The sky's the limit.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: Some awesome, awesome insight there.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Stuart, is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you want to share with those who are listening?
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: One last piece of advice, or something about growing a fractional CFO firm, about growing a fractional CFO firm.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the biggest thing, I think, in the fractional world that I'm seeing is you kind of hit on it.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: It is so new and so many people are trying to figure out their way.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: They're trying to figure out their niche and where they kind of fall.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: The biggest thing that I'm seeing now is you've got a lot of fractional guys who are really not strategy guys.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: You know so they're really not fractional CFOs.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: They're almost like a fractional guys who are really not strategy guys.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: You know so.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: They're really not fractional.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: Cfos are almost like a fractional controller who kind of disguises themselves as a CFO.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: So if you're going to be out in the marketplace, really make sure that you can.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: You can set yourself apart and really add value as a fractional CFO and not just a fractional controller.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: But but again, I think the market's still trying to somewhat define what all this looks like.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: So just make sure you add value right.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: So it's one of those things where we want the entire industry to grow and not to have a black eye.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: Perfect, stuart.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you coming on so much.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: I appreciate your time A ton of awesome value.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: I'm excited for everyone to listen to this, and if people want to get in touch with you, where can they go?
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you can check me out at my website at bracketmgmtcom.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: But again, I'm most active on LinkedIn, so you can just find me on LinkedIn under Stuart Irvin.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Perfect.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: Hopefully we'll have some people going your way.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Thanks, James.
• 23:59
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• 24:03
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