164. Firing My Client Changed Everything

It was hard to let her go as a client when you came to the realization. How how did you work through that? being able to walk away from that meeting knowing that like it's okay for me to say no to something because it no longer makes sense for not only the client but no longer makes sense for me. No one has ever asked, do you have a CPA license? They don't care. They're selfish. They just care about.

themselves and the outcomes you can help them deliver. You don't have to learn all of the marketing things to build even a multiple seven-figure firm. Until you start speaking to them, that's not truly prospecting. Marketing is just a way for them to get to know where you are. It's a lot of social proof at this point in day and age. The conversations and the prospecting, that's where the real money happens.

What are the first three to five things that you would do to start building your firm from scratch? Like you have nothing. That's so hard. I think the first thing I would do is

Julie, thank you so much for being here today. Before we get in to all the stuff that we've got to talk about. I have to say, it has been so remarkable to watch you grow as a CEO over the last two years. Where you started when you and I first connected, I think it was back in May of 2023 to where you are now. Your growth has been inspiring. Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much, Mike. I'm so happy to be here and like reflect back on that. Like even just hearing you say like CEO.

Of how I would have reacted before to like how I feel right now. I feel like you guys have been such a pivotal part of that journey. So I'm so thankful for everything that you guys have done for me. You you're more than welcome. And it's you are the reason we do it. Watching people like you that grow into it and flourish. That's that's literally why the team and I get out of bed every day.

I wanna dive into this CEO thing and what that really means and maybe the difference between fractional CFO and CEO. But first for the people that don't know you, can you just give us a quick rundown of Like what was your background and how did you get started as a fractional CFO? Yeah. So I think uh like everyone else's or not everyone else's but many people's stories, I kind of stumbled upon this by accident. I was

trying to avoid accounting a little bit from my past because I did the auditor track and everything else. And I was like, nope, I'm going to do something completely different. But ultimately my passions led back to helping other people with their numbers and their finances.

But I knew I was doing something more than bookkeeping and I just didn't know what the heck to call it. I was like, I know this is not what I'm doing is just classifying transactions. I'm doing so much more analysis, like reviewing.

reports with people looking more at future projections and financial strategy. I didn't know what to call it until I stumbled upon you and I was like, holy crap. I'm doing something for basically four hundred dollars a month that I need to be charging thousands of dollars. And I finally have like a term to put to what I'm doing. Because I didn't have a ton of true corporate experience. I was in public.

I just didn't know what a CFO really did or what that means. And that there was a fractional version of that. So that's how I really came about it. And I was like, okay, I need to be up-leveling a lot more here. And I'm playing really small. I cannot be charging people$400 a month.

That wasn't an overnight shift though, the moving from four hundred dollars a month to thousands of dollars a month. What were some of the things that made it hard for you, Julie, to go from four hundred a month to where you're at now. Yeah, I think a lot of it came back to um how I feel about my clients because in the beginning I just said, I don't care what level my clients are at. I wanna serve them in the best way possible and obviously making the pricing right for their business.

And so I struggled with feeling like I was leaving people behind, but I realized pretty quickly that if I kept serving those people at the level I was doing, I was creating burnout for myself. And I the more that I took on with these lower level clients, the more often that I was like, you know what, like I'm starting to resent this. I feel like I care more about their business than they care about their business.

And so I was just like scraping at pennies and felt like I was doing so much work, but they weren't making pivotal change. And so at the end of the day, it was like, okay, stuff has to change. I started to come more into your realm and it was like, okay, now I know what the perspective of What other people are doing and what they're charging and seeing the value transition there. That I had to do a lot of inner work as well to be like,

Can I even charge that amount of money? Like, am I allowed to do that? And then working those two pieces together of just being like, you know what, there are people out here who are ready and willing to have someone on their team. and pay that type of dollar in the thousands of dollars range and not four hundred dollars a month. And it's okay that I don't serve everyone at the exact same level across the board because otherwise I just end up in so much burnout. It's not worth my time anymore.

What were you seeing that made you feel like you cared more about their business than they did? Yeah, I think a lot of it came back to um when we really would look at like cash flow or we would be looking at potential projections. And a lot of times I feel like

the people that we would be having the conversations with, these clients, like specifically thinking about this one client I worked with. And she was such a great visionary. But she was like, I'm just so bad at numbers. I don't want to be thinking about that. I don't want to be doing that. And um, that's what your job is. And it was like, well, that's great, but you also have to take ownership as being the CEO. And so I realized that.

She was basically telling me like, I want you to run the numbers. I don't really care so much about them. And so I was like, at the end of the day, I honestly feel like I do care more about them than her. And she wasn't implementing, you know, suggestions that we were giving her about changes that she should make. And she really kind of was sitting in like a victim mentality and mindset. And a lot of those similar

um things I saw in a lot of those low level clients that I was like, this is not the right fit for them. This is not what they need. Maybe they need financial strategy, like in a one time, hey, let's light a fire. But that consistent month over month, like trying to just pour into them what I truly believed would help change their business, like they weren't buying into it because they only saw it as

Well, this is bookkeeping level services and they're just getting a little bit extra. Like they weren't really seeking out and looking for that financial strategy. So I was pouring so much into them. Which led to me burning out and being like, no, but you must be able to see this or you must be able to understand like I wasn't putting two and two together that like if they have to be invested in it before I actually can deliver on the things and them see the value and what's

I think I know the story you're talking about. We've talked about this client before. It was hard to let her go as a client when you came to the realization. How how did you work through that?

Yeah, I mean I definitely, like you said, I reached out to you and it was just like, Okay, what why am I sticking with this person? And what is holding me there and just really reflecting back and asking myself, am I holding on to this because I'm scared if I let go of this person that now that's an empty spot? But at the time, like she was already having failed payments. And so she was already so behind. And just not only from me internally, but like logistically looking at it of like,

She's never gonna be able to catch up. And at the same time, if I keep holding onto her to really help her through the next stages, that's not me letting go of something that I need to say it's okay to let go because then that opens up space. me mentally to be able to handle taking on new clients instead of trying to hold on to something that is no longer working. When it came time to pull the plug, can you walk me through what you said? Because I know I've lived through this.

For me, and I think for probably a lot of people watching or listening to this, there's a level of anxiety that kind of brews up inside, especially early on when you haven't had to fire a client before. Like you mentioned, there's some like some scarcity, some fears that go on. And it for me, it brewed up a lot of anxiety. And then you sit down to write the email or to think through what you're gonna say. That's hard. It's heavy.

How did you work through that tactically and maybe what did you say to her? Was it an email, a phone call? How did you approach it, Julie? Yeah, so I believe in being very transparent with people and honest with people. Um, I'm not trying to break up in a text message basically with people.

And so I decided, you know what, on the next monthly call that we have, I'm gonna address this. And I'm gonna do it face to face with her because I feel like that goes a long way to be really genuine. It's who I am at the end of the day. Um, I wanna feel good about the conversation that we're having and also show them that I do care about them and their business, but like it just doesn't make sense anymore for us to work together.

and trying to show her, you know, the logical part of it. So we went through our monthly call at the time. And I knew at the ending I wanted to kind of account for like 15 minutes to have this conversation. So we presented the financials to her like we typically do. And we walked through the numbers and just were showing her like things are not looking great, just like we kind of had been having those conversations.

looking at the cash flow, talking about all those outstanding obligations that she's currently not able to meet, trying to give her something to be able to say, you know, hey, what are you gonna do about it? The phrase that you taught me and I love to repeat back is like, you know, what needs to happen or what is the exact phrase? I'm blanking on it right now. I always have it on a post-it note by my desk.

And it's like, what has to be true in order for this to happen? And so um trying to help her have a little bit of a come to Jesus moment in that moment, like during that call. And her recognizing like, yes, the next logical step is I also cannot afford to continue to keep you guys on my side as well. And I've got to take ownership on all of this. So I was trying to lay the breadcrumbs a little bit for her during the call. And then I just said, you know what, like at this point in time, like

You know, this is the plan. We are happy to help offboard you. We're happy to help you provide you with the materials that you need, the things that you need. We're gonna we're not just gonna like leave you cold turkey. We're gonna sit here, we're gonna deliver the things that we promised we would deliver. We're gonna make sure that you know how to utilize the schedule.

We're gonna make sure here's the bare bones of what you need to do to keep your business alive. Like it's okay for you to not do these XYZ things. So that she felt like she had the tools she needed to continue forward, but allowing her to take over that ownership of it so that she could care for it more and realize that value of needing someone there and needing to really

basically say for business. And then just said, you know, it's it's just it doesn't make sense for us to continue this because we don't want to be the reason that we're bankrupting you if you have other things that you have to prioritize first.

And so um just being realistic and genuine, I think like that's something that's so important to me. Obviously, it's vulnerable, it's scary. Um, they could say anything at that moment in time, but the result ended up being her being thankful for what we were able to do up until that point, being honest with her. Um she was just like, I don't know what I'm gonna do without you guys, but I don't know how I would have even gotten here without you guys.

And so, just like that reciprocity, being able to walk away from that meeting, knowing that, like, it's okay for me to say no to something because it no longer makes sense. for not only the client, but no longer makes sense for me, but doing it in a way that feels genuine and like coming back to that core because it is so important to me just to be able to have those hard conversations and to be able to show up like right next to clients. Even if they're not meant to be your client anymore.

After the conversation was had, did you go out of business and did you go broke? I did not. You know what's funny is Soon after that, I ended up signing like a true fractional CFO client that was more than uh four or five times the amount of revenue that I wasn't even receiving from this client anymore because she couldn't even pay us.

So it was just like, okay, the universe showed up and what I was supposed to do and you had challenged me and said like, I can't rem remember the exact terms that you had said, but you had said basically like nothing's going to change if something doesn't change. And so like if I'm sitting there in my scarcity mindset afraid to let go of this low-level client, I'll never be able to open up the capacity to be able to bring in the right type of client that I want to receive.

So that does sound like something I would say. I don't remember but that does feel We can go back to the Slack messages and look up too.

They're probably all there. Uh what that's a great segue. Um, what types of clients do you serve best? Today. Kind of where what does that ICA or ideal client avatar look like for you and why? Yeah. So right now I feel like I, um, with you know, referral partners especially, I always describe it as I love working with people who are non-inventory based.

I don't have an inventory background. And I believe that every business of every kind deserves a level of financial strategy, but I'm looking more for the person that I work with. So I'm very female focused.

Um obviously I have a good connection with people who are moms or parents. Um no hate against men or against uh, you know, husband and wife business owners. It's just I think there's a better way to for me to be able to do have an impact and connect back to female business owners that I just get a little bit more of like the challenges that they're struggling with and the way that our mindset works and everything that's tied up around money and all those things that I that I find it

It's best to do that. And I've really been sitting in the space of trying to hit the market in the one to three million space and pushing myself more because I did come from that background of, you know, doing bookkeeping at four hundred dollars a month. There's a lot bigger pool of businesses and a lot smaller businesses that, yeah, maybe they need like a one-off, but they're not my sweet spot of clients who I want to stick with.

with, you know, on that monthly retainer. And so I know there's more work for me to push myself further, but like getting even just to be able to say like, hey, these are the people that I work with and repeating that over and over, especially with referral partners and having conversations with others. It just reconfirms like, yeah, this is the right group of people I need to be working with right now, and my future will hold something even greater in at the end of the day. So

You said something there that I think is really key, repeating myself over and over, especially with referral partners. What are you talking about then? Yeah. So something that I learned last year, which was like so pivotal um when you talked about at the conference, you had Jeb Blunt coming um in to present on it about prospecting. Like it's something that never even crossed my brain. I didn't even know what it meant to prospect.

And so going through the conference and then the workshop in the summer, I was just like, holy crap, there's a whole other area of business that I just didn't even realize existed and like Like I was never taught it in school. I never saw it really exemplified in front of me in public accounting. Yeah, partners went and played golf with people, but like I wasn't about to go find a bunch of moms to go play golf with. So like it didn't make sense to me of so of what I needed to do in my business.

And so something that I challenged myself in really 2025 was to be able to say, uh, my word this year is to be visible. Like visibility is the number one thing. I cannot sit behind my desk anymore. I need to put myself out there if I want to grow the business that I want to have. And so I just said, I'm gonna be booking as many coffee chats as I can with people.

um and talk to them about what I do and make, you know, honest, genuine connections with them with no intentions other than just to say, hey, I would love you as part of my network. If we have value alignment and if we serve, you know, believe in similar services in the sense that like, you know, we're not here to make a buck. We really want to build people up, that female focused kind of vision.

Um, being able to just say, let's help each other out. And if that turns into a referral partnership, great. And if it doesn't, that's okay. It was great talking to you. But I think I probably was taking, I was doing multiple um days during the week when I opened up my calendar to that. And for me, being able to have three to four calls in a single day, just a 30 minute coffee chat, which inevitably usually turned into an hour because we would just keep going on stuff, which I loved. But

It was all via Zoom. It was never in person. That's something that I could never see myself doing before. Like, who am I? This like exactly.

Extroverted person talking to all these strangers about what I do with no like potential reciprocity at the end of the day and just wanting to make genuine connections. Like I feel like it's something that has been so pivotal in what I do. And Really solidifying, oh, this is really what I'm going after, instead of it just being something floating in my brain that's an idea.

How has it been pivotal? What what are the business implications that have that have come from it? Yeah, so from those connections I've been able to be connected to other groups of people, other things that have potentially been locally, being able to refer services for them or also they refer services to me, even if it's just a potential client.

or another referral partner who they know that works within, you know, the industry of business owners that I want to focus on and being able to make those connections, like I wouldn't know the first thing how to really go out there and find those groups or didn't even know that they existed. without having those conversations and putting myself in that position to be able to have those coffee chats. Yeah, you beat around the bush though. This has turned into dollars for you.

It totally has, yes. It definitely has helped me sign some clients. Yeah, but your business has probably doubled in the last year. Is that a fair I'm trying to think numbers. My my run rate right now is almost double what it was last year. I've off boarded almost all of my low low level clients. So I made a very specific goal at the end of the day that I didn't want

to um go too crazy on myself. I wanted to have a manageable way to onboard new clients that I said I want eight clients this year. And so far I've already signed two in 2025 and I have four others that are in the pipeline to have sales conversations. Um so just being reasonable about that and being able to say, pushing myself on pricing, I want to bring in clients that are at the three K mark or above.

If I get any other clients in any other way, that's just the bonus and cherry on top. If they're not the true monthly CFO clients. But just having those conversations, I just tell people straight out of the gate like. you know, when when we're having our conversations in those CFO or in those coffee chats, is I just say, you know, I would love to know like what are you working towards right now? How can I serve you? And then they inevitably ask me back.

And I just tell them I'm looking for and I tell them what I'm looking for. And I always try to use that phrase too with them. And you guys say is who is the first person that comes to mind that could potentially use services to try to make those connections. And so just like practicing all the things that we were taught last year.

from between Carol Mahoney and Jeb Blunt and everything that you share with us, like I feel like I can't implement it all immediately, but as I'm learning and going back to all of the information that we got is just tweaking things, adding the next next thing that I can do, adding the next thing that I can do and just trying to get those reps in.

So what what I heard you say is in these coffee chats, and I think this isn't like important to dive into, Julie, because I see a lot of people one, I see most people won't even do this. Like they they just won't even get in the game. But the vast majority of people that do get in the game, they get on these coffee chats and it's just kind of a a shoot the breeze. But I heard you you kind of have a very intentional approach to it. So you start off

by getting really curious about them and tell me about yourself and your goals and what are you trying to accomplish. And then that law of reciprocity hits in where they realize, oh my gosh, I've been talking about myself the whole time. Tell me about you and what you're trying to do.

And so you share some things about you and your firm and what you're doing, but you're very intentional about saying, Hey, these are the kinds of people that I like to work with. Who's the first person that comes to mind that might that looks like that that might need help, the kind of help that I offer. There's this intentionality behind it where you're still very friendly, very authentic, very servant hearted.

But you're also like, yeah, there's a business thing here. And so you're not scared to say Who do you know? And that flow is what's resulted in not just the additional connections and the growth of the network, but it's grown, it's resulted in actual revenue growth for you as well.

Yeah, yeah. And I think like in the beginning it didn't look like that. I just was like, Holy crap, I just booked a bunch of calls. Oh my god, what the heck am I gonna say to these people? And definitely stumbled upon myself and for you know what I was talking about and just like, oh God, I was talking too much. They don't need to know my whole life story. Like, but I found that there was always something

that was a genuine connection back to who they were as a human and who I was. And whether that's a similar interest, a si similar path in our life stories, a similar background, whatever that might be, that that usually was like the pivotal moment.

So like the other day I did a coffee chat and this person um she does like CRM systems and I was like oh that might be a good person to be connected to. Like she does stuff with Huxpot. Like this would be great. Let's let's get on a call. The first thing she said to me was like The reason that I decided to get on this call was because your message to me on LinkedIn was so genuine and I felt like this was worth reaching out. And so I think that's something to say about like

Like just the process itself in being who you are and just being open and honest about it. Because in my messages, I do say, like, hey, I'm looking to grow a really great network. who have values alignment and that type of thing instead of just like, oh, you want to get on a coffee chat and see if we could be great referral partners. Like I don't use those words.

Um, because it just feels just like everyone else is doing. But once we got on the call in her background, she had an Indiana Jones hat that was on the globe next to her. And I was like, what's that Indiana Jones hat? And she told me all about how much she loves Indiana Jones. And we spent a good five, 10 minutes talking about Harrison Ford and how much we love him. That's how the call started.

And then right uh at the end of the call, she was like, you know what? My husband and I, we do this business together and he's really more the numbers person. I we are looking to make some changes in our business. We've been at this for a long time. Like it turned more into the next steps of a potential like prospecting call versus a referral partner call. And I just went into it like, hey,

I think you have a really great background. I could utilize you as potentially someone that I could refer clients to. I want to get to know more about you. It looks like we have values alignment and this could maybe be a client. Like you just never know when you're getting on a call, like what those connections can be and who they know. When you do those LinkedIn reach outs, which AI bot are you using to automate that whole process, Julie?

So I'm not using an AI bot. I did uh for a while. I was trying to do it myself because I do care so much. I was having a hard time just even trying to make connections with people because I was like looking at them, like evaluating them like I was gonna get married. Like everything about their profile.

So I did bring in a VA for a little while to help me just be like get over the hump of let's not try to overanalyze their profile before they even accept your connection. And um, once they did connect with me, then I was the one that would send the initial message. And I would then spend the time.

To look through their profile, I would look for something that might be a great like way to just start talking or something that I found was interesting. I'm just going back to being like genuinely curious.

I love talking to people. I love hearing their stories. I want to know more about them. But trying to do it in a way that isn't like icky, like, oh hey, I know this person is looking for that. Just trying to iterate some of their language, telling them what I'm about, and then just going from there and just being human.

Tell you uh so you know I was joking when I asked about the AI bot because it's so weird to me that people try to automate personal connection. It just doesn't work. At least the people I wanna work with, that's not gonna w to fly with them. But I will give you a quick uh a quick plug for a new platform that I've been using for about a week now, and I absolutely love it.

It's called condo. And so if you go to trycondo.com, we'll put a link in the description below. It's an it's a third-party inbox for managing your like your like LinkedIn inbox. So there's no AI or anything to it, but it helps you organize into like folders and tags different people and you can set reminders to follow up with people at different times. It really takes a horrible inbox experience from LinkedIn and makes it

very manageable. So I'm not an affiliate or anything of them. There's none I just like sharing tools that work. And the LinkedIn inbox is a dumpster fire. So huge fan of Tri Kondo. Uh so you can check it out. Let me know what you think about it. No.

I appreciate that because that's something that's like I have this whole air table system built out and I was trying to reverse engineer it and it's like insane, but it's so cumbersome. So that sounds like efficiency, I I love that. I'm definitely gonna work. It's like nineteen bucks a month.

So I'm only a week into it. It may end up being horrible, but I'm using it every day. So uh your mileage may vary. All right, Julie, what is one thing that you believed about fractional CFO work when you were first starting or maybe right before you first started? That just turned out to be wrong. Yeah. So I think um and once I really figured out what fractional CFOs do and you know, understanding like, oh wow, I really was doing a lot of this similar work before.

I have a very deep seated um limiting belief that was I had to be a CPA. And this was before discovering fractional CFO stuff. Um, and it just felt like that kept reoccurring for me once I did get to the fractional CFO space where I was like. But I'm not good enough to be able to provide to people unless I'm a CPA. And so it held me back for a little while. Like I really had to come to terms with it. I think every probably two to three years in my career path, I was like, I must go get my CPA.

And then it was like, no, what is the point of being a CPA right now? Same thing when it became the fractional CFO time. And even though I knew your story and your background, but I was like, oh, but he has all this experience and corporate and like those are things that I don't have. So how could I be able to better serve my clients?

Like I've got to have all of this under my belt in order to do what I need to do. I realized that there is such a variety of people with so many different backgrounds who are able to serve in that fractional CFO space. There is no one right path. To get to being able to call yourself that when you can help your clients with that forward looking financial strategy projections outlook.

It doesn't matter what your background is. It doesn't matter that you have a CPA. It doesn't matter if you have a CMA or whatever other, you know, three letter association that you need. It's not necessary. Are you able to make pivotal change? For your client. If you're able to make impact for your clients and be able to help them see what they need to be able to see to make changes in their business.

And ultimately come back to I'm really big on how does your personal and your business goals marry together and are we building out the business that you really ultimately need? And that you want and how are you going to achieve those different goals? It all comes back to that. So like if we can have that

Circle path, does it require me to have a CPA to do that? Does it require me to have 15, 20, 30 years experience in corporate accounting to be able to do that? Absolutely not. There's a lot of things that I've done in my career. That many other people haven't, that I have experience around a perspective shift around that they may not have.

And I and I think that to me, once I had really dealt with those limiting beliefs, especially around the CPA, I let go of that. It kind of opened up the floodgates to like, well, who's gonna stop me? Like I'm out here to help these people and I'm making impactful change. What's gonna stop me? How many clients do you think you've lost? Or how many prospects or potential sales do you think you've lost?

Because you don't have a CPA license or you're not a CMA. I mean, how many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars did you lose because you don't have that? Zero. I uh there's not been a single person. Usually they're just like

Do you prepare taxes? And then my response is always, I don't, but I believe that CPAs who prepare taxes are the most niche of niche people. And we're going to find you a really great one to do that. And just that phrase alone satisfies any question that they have around that.

I remember probably six years ago. I was in a similar boat, maybe seven years ago, and I was looking really hard. So I have an MBA and so I'm looking at state requirements, how many more classes would I need? And then when could I start taking the test? And uh I then I started looking at the CMA and somebody asked me, do you want to be the CEO of this company or do you want to do client work?

in service delivery in your own company. And so essentially what he was asking is, do you want to be a CEO or a fractional CFO? And I said, I I want to run the company. And he said, then don't bother getting any of the letters after your name. Spend your time and money and energy learning how to be a better leader and how to build a company and not how to do better service delivery. And that was a really pivotable.

change in in my mindset as well. It was like, oh, this is a totally different ball game over here. the CEO thing. And so there was a quick season where I was really asking myself, do I want to really lean all in on the CEO thing or do I want to focus on

service delivery and I I chose the the former. I wanted to do the CEO thing. And so that was for me a really liberating thing to recognize like, oh, you don't have to do this if you want to go down that path. But I will also say if somebody's listening And they're like, well, I want to be both. I want to have my company and I also want to do service delivery. I can tell you this.

And I've I don't know how many hundreds of sales calls I've been on now, but I mean it's many hundreds at this point. No one has ever asked, Do you have a CPA license? Wait, are you a are you a CMA? Nobody has ever asked. They don't care. They're selfish. They're all a bunch of selfish people. They just care about themselves and the outcomes you can help them deliver. And I just don't, I think we over-index.

because of the the finance and accounting worlds a lot of us come from, where it is important if you want to achieve a particular position or reach a pay threshold, you've got to have the right letters after your name. And so we carry that into entrepreneurship.

And it just isn't transferable. They the the people that pay you in this world, they don't care. They just want to know if you can help them get whatever outcome. So for anybody that's listening to this and and you're hung up and having those internal dialogues of like, I'm not good enough because it really doesn't matter in in this world. They just people just care if you can help them achieve their goal.

Yeah. I mean, hands down, Mike, like I I think even just saying I've never even had a client ask what's my background. What have I done before? Like what type of jobs have I had? Like they not even that. So even if you're like coming from your track as well, like from the engineering space and you know, Mabel and all the different things that you've done, like you're living proof of like what can is the potential, even if you aren't within the finance accounting space. Of what can be possible.

Let me ask you this. Uh so you've been doing the fractional CFO thing for two ish years now. What is the crazy client story that made you question your life choices to go into this industry? Maybe it's questioning my life choices of what clients I take on, looking for the red flags. I have to have a better like ability to do that and look at that up front. I had a client who was

They didn't want to see numbers at all. There was a lot of things going on at home that the business ended up turning into something that was trying to hide things from their spouse and how many different personal uh transactions came through the business that were like, Okay. We're we're running out of money real fast because

You're not honoring what's happening here at the business, but then I start unraveling things and realizing, oh, okay, I've got to exit this very quickly. I don't want to be involved in that. Um, so I don't want to give away too much, but there is a lot of interesting stories. And excuses, and just, you know, she even said to me, My husband wants to join the call, but don't tell him XYZ thing, only look at the top left. I was just like, Okay.

I'm not a therapist. This is not a therapy session. The husband is not a business owner. And now I have to be careful about what XYZ things I say about your business. And just from a financial perspective, like you are not in values alignment with me. So Um, I that that client, there was a lot of very interesting conversations and things that I saw run through their business.

You mentioned something that's near and dear to my heart that values alignment with the with the client. Can you talk to us a little bit about what what does that mean? What does it look like? What are your values? How do you use that in the client vetting process? Yeah, I mean it's something that I think like each um CEO, like and firm owner, you really have to figure it out. I feel like my values.

still evolve a little bit because I'm just trying to dial in like less is more and not get too crazy, but just being able to have, you know, asking clients and during the prospecting call, you know, about um if if they're open to hard conversations and You know, what is their perspective around money? And um do they have any in more or less words trying to figure out do they have limiting beliefs or do they have mindset issues around finances? What did they do before? You know.

Trying to really suss out what is their background and how they've reacted to things previously, I think is a really important because then you can see different stories start to align with like, okay. I can see where they stand on this, but also just letting them know up front that um we are not a background player. We are someone who is here right by your side. We are a team player. We are someone that we want you to rely on that we are here for you um on a consistent basis and that we're not

someone that is an afterthought. Like we need to truly be an advisor in your business. And that to me is so critical and so important because otherwise we can't get our job done when we're always playing defense instead of being on the offense with the client. And so if they're down for that, like to me, I feel like that is such a big component to realizing as you move forward into the monthly container whether or not it's gonna be really stressful.

a pain in the butt type of client, you know, like feeling like you're always kind of dragg they're dragging their heels or not relying on you and just not being seated in that proper role. Um but just

again going back to the what we talked about before, having genuine conversations, really trying to ask them the questions that are gonna show examples of what are they like when they talk about money? What do they like when they bring someone in? How do they feel about it? What have they experienced in the past? Who was doing it?

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How did you figure out what your values were? What what was that process? You know, actually, um we did a work I did a workshop with you that was a few years ago, and I think it might have been even in, let's see. Twenty two, twenty-three, I don't know. You had talked about mission, vision, values.

And it's something that like to me, building a business, I was like, yeah, that's for corporate. They've got their mission, their vision. That's so nice. Like value is okay. There's all of that. But that's not for me. I'm just a small business. Like that's not what I'm about. And then you were like, No, you need to know where you guys are going.

And so truly during that workshop, being forced to take the time to sit down and write out, even if there's evolution to it, like today, this could be my mission, vision, values. In six months, it could tweak and change. And that's okay because I'm still learning as I go.

Nothing is ever set in stone as an entrepreneur. Like you will never have a exact plan. If you want an exact plan, go to corporate. Like if you want to show up every day to do the same thing every single day and know exactly what's expected of you, you should not be an entrepreneur.

Um, but just really honing that in because the the only person who's gonna care the most about those mission, vision, values is you as the CEO. And you have to be able to show up and talk to your team about that. You talk all the time about Um, you know, I think Gretchen said or you said about how at the beginning of every one of your meetings, you would go down the line, okay, what's our values? And you, cause you wanted to drill that into your team.

So that we all can be on the same page. Um, that was the whole purpose. And so I do talk to I have right now someone on my team right now that is an employee and I want to build that out and we're thinking about bringing on new people. And I said we have to make sure that with clarity, these are still the mission, vision, values.

That we're at right now and where we're headed towards. Because like I said, things do tweak and change. Does this really make sense? Or was this where we were before when we had certain limiting beliefs? And maybe we need to change that.

What is your vision for your firm, Julie? What are you trying to build? I'm trying to build a place where women can feel empowered with their finances while they're pursuing their passions. So ultimately that's the goal is the expanse of not just from a fractional CFO perspective. I think that I want to dive into the future further into how we really can get women to not be afraid to have conversations around money.

not to say that I'm not good at numbers, to be able to really make an impact, but The best place to start right now is to have those conversations with them as business owners and be able to take it from there so then it can seep over into the rest of their life so that they can do it in a way that doesn't feel icky, that doesn't feel like they're not allowed to and like Go make some freaking good money. Like you are capable of doing this and really building them up.

I love that saying. Uh in business, mission is everything, but without money, you can't sustain the mission. And so it's important, even for mission driven entrepreneurs, to remember that That's all fine and good. But if you don't manage your finances and and make sure there's money in the bank to pay the bills and to pay yourself, none of the rest matters. And so we we gotta keep a focus on that.

I'm curious though, as far as your firm goes, where do you see its size-wise going? So goals-wise, what what do you see for for your firm? So I wrote out this piece of paper. I think it was at the end of twenty twenty four. I did some reflection and some journaling and I said, What would it take for me to get to that million dollar mark?

And how can I reverse engineer that? And how many people on my team would I need to be able to do that? Like I said, I'm looking for slow and steady growth right now. Um, I am pushing myself this. A few months ago I moved into an office because it was something that I needed from a confidence perspective, but also a boundary perspective of home life versus work life. But I said I really wanna be able to have people around me and I wanna be able to um move up to the next level. So ultimately

In the big, big picture, I would I have this number. It says thirty-three people. I wrote on a post-it note many, many years ago. Am I gonna need thirty-three people to support a million dollar firm? No, but in the far, far future, I would love to be able to have something that That allows that kind of big service um mindset of helping people from a personal finance perspective.

A business finance perspective, I have a little sweet spot of a nonprofit non for profit type of idea in there. So like I've got a lot of visions in my head um to be able to help people and how many people it's gonna take to get there. But ultimately if I could do, you know, Three, four, five fractional CFOs on my team. We do do the bookkeeping for our clients. We believe in like an all-in-one type of method. And so

that future of having the bookkeepers on um here locally as well. So building up to like eight to ten people, can I do that with over a million? I think I really can hit that by having um that, you know, that group of women around me. When you think about the pursuit of that goal, million dollars, eight to ten employees around you, what do you think is your biggest personal bottleneck in pursuit of realizing that vision? I think

My biggest bottleneck is probably not getting stuck in the weeds of the details of what's going on with clients and the business right now. Of being able to pull myself out and almost be That strategic advisor that I need to myself or bringing in those people to be that, whether through mentorship or hiring someone, I currently don't have anyone in the option.

seat or an assistant VA OBM seat. It's something that I'm looking into going to next because I know I'm being drained on that side. I've done a a a really um good job, I feel like, at delegating as much as possible. So that I'm not the only one responsible for client work.

I'm trying to be more in that CEO seat versus the delivery seat. And um I find that I'm still doing a lot of tasks that are just eating up my time that don't allow me to really focus on the vision. That I'm just doing like the day in, day out tedious stuff. So I actually have a call later today with someone that's op strategy, so we'll see how that goes if it's a good fit.

Let me know how it goes. Slack, drop something in the Slack later as far as an update. I'd love to hear how it goes. What what do you think most fractional CFOs are getting wrong right now? Because you're you're in inner circle. 300 some odd firm owners in there. So you get to see a little bit behind the curtains. What do you think most are getting wrong?

I think a big thing that comes back to it and we're all so analytical is that we're worried about exactly how to do some process, have a certain background, do something in a specific way to be able to like visualize it out. Before we actually do the thing, it is so hard to get that out of your system. I still do it. I try really hard not to do that and just like.

You know, build the thing. We don't need to build the thing and then wait for them to come. We've got to get them to show up and then we can build the fields. Like It's a little bit of the opposite of that field of Drims mentality. Like we can't spend all day building out these beautiful projections and spreadsheets and doing all these things. When instead, if you have no clients who can utilize them, then what's the point? Like there's a there's a time and a purpose to do refinements.

And to make your process more efficient and better. But with so many people coming in, I feel like we're all trying to figure out what is the key of what we're going to deliver and how we're going to do it from a process standpoint. That's like, you gotta get those clients first.

You gotta focus on the things that are really gonna move the needle. And like I experienced this without realizing it. In twenty twenty three, we had a really rough year personally, and my husband decided to leave his job because he was

you know, going through some really toxic workplace things. He wanted to do his own business. And for me, because at that time I didn't know how to really prospect, I thought marketing and prospecting, even though I didn't know the word, was all about get on social media or just like post some stuff on socials. And hopefully I'll get clients, but the real way for me to get clients is just to deliver really well. Well, delivering really well got me zero new clients. I never made an ask.

for hey do you know any others I never asked for testimonials I never did you know outreach I never tried to find new clients on my own I just was like well if I do a really good job people will recognize that And if I just refine this process and create a better dashboard or create a a new, more efficient process, like it was not bringing me more business. And I was very stagnant. And when 2024 came around and I started

hearing all of these different phrases and learning from you and the people that you brought in about how do I prospect? How do I sell? How do I put myself out there? What do I really need to be focusing on? Like we've got to get out of the weeds.

And get out of our own way in order to move forward. And the other stuff will naturally take care of it because we are so analytical, like in the process, we will make it better. Like we will just naturally always look to make it better and do it in a more efficient way. But that doesn't have to come first.

What do you think is the biggest lesson you've learned about prospecting and marketing that you wish you knew two years ago? In fact, let's start Julie with what's the difference between marketing and prospecting? What is what does prospecting even mean? Because Two years ago you didn't know. So there's probably someone listening to this that's like what is what is that?

Um so to me prospecting is Is the intentional act of going and building relationships with people and talking to them about their businesses, getting to know them, and then having that reciprocity of, you know, just trying to put yourself in a room of People being open about where you are in business, but wanting to really truly make an impact and trying to seek out clients, referral partners, like.

an intentional way to go do that. To me, that's having conversations, that's getting on coffee chats, that's going to, you know, different local events, like whatever that might be, versus marketing. is truly the kind of billboard. You can't talk to a billboard. You can call a number. You can look at a business card and same thing.

That's not a conversation. That is you just putting out information kind of the walk-by window about what your business is that might entice someone to potentially have that conversation. But until you start speaking to them. That's not truly prospecting. Marketing is just a way for them to get to know where you are. It's a lot of social proof at this point in day and age. It's just something exists there. They know I'm not just some fraudster. But at the end of the day, like

the conversations and the prospecting, that's where the real money happens. I think there was someone that was at one of our workshops, I want to say Dan Dolvet, he said cash is in the conversations. And it's a hundred percent true. I remember that. So important to nail down that distinction because a lot of us, myself included, we don't come from a background where we know how to do marketing. You know, marketing is like everything from SEO to ads to social media to

blog posts and all those different things, the billboards and TV like marketing is so many things. But one of my big realizations over the last, I mean, even just a couple of years is

You know, prospecting, I think, is maybe could be considered a subset of marketing. It's one way to market. You don't have to learn all of the marketing things to build even a multiple seven figure firm. You know, when you do the math on how many clients you need, it 3K to 10K a month, you just don't need that many that you've got to be a marketing guru if you'll just to have that consistent.

consistent investment of time to build relationships and meet people. And I think you did such a great job of articulating this earlier, Julie, where you're you're intentional about the conversations, where You're getting to know them, they're getting to know you, and then you don't shy away from the ask at the end. If you can do that, it's very possible to build a As big as you want. You f firm up to up to eight figures. Just doing that consistently.

I think that's where a lot of people in our industry get it wrong is they don't get out of the spreadsheets and the KPIs and the graphs and let me just make this three way model four percent more accurate. Those things don't really matter because if you don't have any clients, then nobody cares. So just do the prospecting. It could it doesn't have to be TikTok dancing or anything like that. Just reach out and have, what did you say? Three or four conversations with people.

a week consistently and it I mean, you doubled your business in under twelve months. So it's It's not an overnight thing, but it's also not a five year thing either. So it's kind of that really good, I think, realistic, achievable middle ground. And I I agree. That's that to me is the number one mistake that people in our industry make.

And it's holding them back from having impact for themselves, but also for the clients that desperately need their services. Just go prospect. Don't read, don't get crazy. Just just go prospect and do it. Consistently. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think I think one thing um you had talked about and Jeb talked about is like it's a sixty to ninety day window. And like every moment that you're not prospecting, that's impacting what's gonna happen in the future.

So uh I had built up my schedule so much I did take a little bit of time off during March because things just got really crazy, helping clients with like tax prep and all of that, like helping you know, facilitate those conversations. And so I had to take a break and it was like, oh man, I gotta get back in that rhythm because it it does take. It takes time to create that habit, to get into that process, to honor that time on your calendar.

Because it will have such a long term impact on what you're doing and the conversations you're having. But I also want to tell people like Like do not have fear around things needing to be perfect. Like I said in the beginning on coffee chats, I was just such a goob. Like I didn't know exactly what to say. I was stumbling on my words. But even

even till this day, I have I don't know if I've really updated my LinkedIn profile. Like there's stuff on there, but is it optimized? Is it in the most the most um you know perfect way that it's actually set up on there? Probably not. Like It's just um enough to have the conversations that if you

if you talk to people and you're just genuine in who you are, I believe like that goes such a long way that they don't necessarily care about what pretty flashy things you have on there, the exact way you wrote something about your past, you know, like we talked about before, do people really care that we're a CPA?

No, not at all. They want to talk to people who that they're willing to have a conversation with that is genuine and is human. I mean, that's the feedback that I get all the time. And I think if more people look at it from that perspective, that you'll be having more um impact in what you're doing and seeing the fruits of that labor a lot better.

Julie, if you had to start from scratch today, if you had to just start the whole thing over again today, knowing what you know now, what are the first Three to five things that you would do to start building your firm from scratch. Like you have nothing. Nothing. What would what would you do? First three to five things. That's so hard. Um I think the first thing I would do is

I would reach out to my entire um personal network and just let them know what I was doing. It feels really scary to do that, but you never know who knows someone or who may be a really great connection for you. Just let them know. The second thing I would do is I probably would hire an executive assistant. And then the third thing I would do was um I really would get super clear on my offers, the mission, vision, and the value. Like those four things and um pushing myself.

Higher than what I think. Like looking at picking a number and then challenging myself to either one and a half times or double it and sit with that feeling and then just go talk to people and see what they say and see if I can find the right room. So not not website, not LinkedIn profile optimization, not blogs, not newsletters. Connect talk.

with your whole network, getting your your phone and you're pulling up your contacts, your LinkedIn contacts, letting them know what you're doing, asking for referrals, I'm guessing, and then getting your your pricing, your scope, mission, vision, values, all those things dialed in. Yeah. A hundred percent. Getting clear on that and then just go out there and

Um, Jeb said it best, and I have this phrase in my head all the time, become the mayor of your town. People need to know who you are and what you're doing. And what if your town is an online group of people, great. If your town is physically, locally your town, great. If it's a mix of all those, Great. People need to know who the hell you are and what you're doing.

One of the things that we talked about was the uh the prospecting and sales stuff today. And I actually have a great episode on that, which we're gonna link to right here if you wanna check it out. Julie, thank you so much for being here. I cannot wait to hopefully see you this summer at our brand new mastermind. Yes. I can't wait to do her. All right, thanks Julie. Thanks Mike.

All right, my friends, I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, it would mean the world to me if you would leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening to this episode. In the meantime, I can't wait to see you back right here next week. I'll see you then.