Nelson Tepfer, Regional Director, The CFO Center
Having worked in leadership roles across the finance function, Nelson’s experience spans the healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, transportation, real estate, and online marketing sectors. Prior to joining The CFO Center, Nelson has served in the roles of the CFO, interim CFO, and consultant; working with small and mid-size companies to achieve their strategic, financial, and operational goals. He earned a B.S. in Finance from Touro College, and an M.B.A. in Corporate Finance, Financial Instruments and Markets, and Accounting from NYU’s Stern School of Business
https://www.thecfocenter.com/
Nelson.tepfer@thecfocenter.com
Phone: 917-865-6597
AUTOMATED EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Scaling Up Services where we speak with entrepreneurs authors business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service based business faster and easier. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:22] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For more details about the program, visit eckfeldt.com/thrive . That’s E C K F E L D T. com / thrive
[00:00:57] Welcome, everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. Our guest today is Nelson Tepfer and he is regional director for the Greater New York area for the CFO Center. We're gonna find out a little bit more about their business. We're going to talk to Nelson about what service companies typically get rate and get wrong when they think about their finances and think about strategy. I'm excited for this. I think finances are often a very overlooked element to scaling of businesses in general and particularly service based businesses. Understanding how money flows. Understanding how profitability works. Understanding how to be strategic around looking at your finances and setting up your books. Learning about your business through money is great. So with that. Nelson, welcome to the program.
[00:01:36] Thank you. Great to be here. What do we talk a little bit about your background first and then we can talk about the CFO center and then we'll talk a little bit about what you've learned. Being an advisor to businesses and what you've learned about service based businesses. So what does your background how did you get into the work that you're doing now?
[00:01:51] So I was the CFO of the company for about 11 years when a friend of mine reached out to me and said, a friend of mine is having some trouble with this company. Can I have a conversation and to see if I can help? That's no problem. How about a friend or a friend? I'll have that conversation. And that conversation turned into a year long interim CFO. And what I learned by doing that was that these skills, which I had and my regular corporate role is so much more impactful to these smaller middle sized businesses. It's so much more engaging for me to work. I learned in parliament, business and the industry, and now I'm able to bring all the skills that I had in my previous role to have a real impact on a company like this. So I started doing more work like that, and that's about six and a half years working across eight or nine different industries while helping clients, helping businesses grow to help, helping them achieve their goals. A can still I had in my previous role for this level and then I wanted to take what I was doing to the next level. So I joined the CFO center as a second member of their New York New York team. I took over the team about a year later and when I was walking those in the region.
[00:02:49] You've managed the team of CFO service providers in the New York Greater New York area.
[00:02:55] So it's kind of like you have a business within a business here. What? And just talk to us a little bit about what the services are in terms of what you do, what you don't do, why why you've kind of chosen that particular suite of services to provide to the market.
[00:03:09] Sure. So we provide part time CFO services to companies that don't need, don't want or cannot afford a full time CFO in almost a decade of doing just this paperwork. It's almost always built need. Most companies simply do not need a full time CFO sitting on their payroll in their office for the most part. They need that level of experience and expertise will help guide them to call on as a resource, but they don't need that person sitting there for time. Here in the New York region, a full time experience CFO is very expensive.
[00:03:38] And making sure you say you want to have that resource available when you need it, but you don't necessarily need them. Therefore, I stick to that CFO role. If you don't do the company's books, whether or not the company's account, then we stick with a CFO. I'm helping guide them on their strategic growth from their financial perspective.
[00:03:55] And maybe for the audience, this is talk through the different rules here, because people talk about bookkeepers, people talk about controllers, people talk about accountants, people talk about CFO is just tell us a little bit about what those different rules mean, why and when you need those different roles and then how the CFO role is really different from all of those and how that kind of ties more into strategy and overall business management and business planning versus just kind of entering checks and reconciling accounts.
[00:04:23] Absolutely. So they're usually the first hire in this space. Is it an accountant or a bookkeeper? We'll start with the bookkeeper aside for the moment, because that's internal. That person bookkeeper role is obviously supposed to just make sure everything is recorded. Everything in the business has to be recorded somewhere. And this is a very crucial one, which we've often seen is one which is kind of abused the person company physically abused.
[00:04:46] No, no, no. I mean, all of that is coming to you haven't listed battered, but. Yeah.
[00:04:52] And you asked them to do too much without the proper guidance. Many very often because the business owner doesn't have a data to begin that. So that bookkeeper is asked to do quite a bit. And when we very often come in, we'll see things which are just done wrong by the bookkeeper level in their folder or not. It's just certain things are done incorrectly on the fly comes to recording certain.
[00:05:12] That's everything that's come up for you. I mean, I just kind of curious what things you've seen in terms of, you know, just fundamental mistakes or or. Is that an operating a business leader if they don't get right in the beginning?
[00:05:23] Oh, absolutely. Properly recording obligations. Breaking it down with an interest and principal or interest for principle. So little things like that. We work with one company where this is a little bit more extreme, obviously, where they just simply stop doing. Bank reps were quiet about six months before I started talking to them because a bookkeeper did not know how to enter into their system. The Amazon Reserves were to record that they just up the bank regs about six months before I got there. Yeah, that's right. And she didn't have anyone she could turn to complain. And the business owner, his know programmer engineer at that background. I think there are a lot of things like that.
[00:05:58] We're just making sure that knowledge. Well, is there someone that they can do without. They have questions that they can actually get answers to do. Because very often, if they don't know where to go, there is to be something wrong.
[00:06:10] Yeah. So that's bookkeeper. That's just keeping the records, making city of Entries for everything is happening in the company from a financial point of view. Talk to us a little bit about how accounting. I'm kinda curious how a bookkeeper typically works with an accountant. Why your accountant is not your bookkeeper and why your bookkeeper is not your accountant. Talk to me about that a little bit.
[00:06:30] Sure. So your accountant. Most businesses, when they start to have some type of accountant, usually somebody they know or someone that gets referred to them. That personality is there to make sure their taxes are paid correctly for the most part. When you're first starting out, that's usually the first role of that accountant. Now, one point, one challenge we very often see business owners take is and they'll give their accountants or directors, but their accountant will just take their directives and try and make it fit instead of actually being proactive in guiding that business owner and where they should go when it comes to a tax strategy perspective. Well, you work with the company, for instance, where their business owner, Young, Inexperienced, becomes a business. She built a very successful business very, very quickly. But he told his accountant that he doesn't want to pay that much taxes. Well, no one really does. But what the accountant didn't tell the business is that there are ramifications if your returns are always showing, you're not really making all that much money. As he and he couldn't get a real line of credit from a bank as in back with cash flow issues. Leader, I'm you making sure that it can be a true business partner and someone you can actually work with is really, really important. You have the right value for that professional relationship. That accountant, as well as more of the tax planning side, obviously want to pay less taxes, but there are ways to do it. That's still a pretty picture for your company.
[00:07:41] Yeah. Yeah, I've seen that happen as well. Like you you know, you've had great five great years of not paying a whole lot of taxes, but then you go to get a line of credit or or you go to a transaction like you. You have an opportunity to sell the company. And someone looks at the boxes, says, well, I shouldn't pay a lot for this thing because it's not making money, you know. Well, no, but it really is making money, trust me here, as game of what's the value of the business.
[00:08:01] Absolutely. So the right professional really helps guide that because we have ones where it's just simply not the way it works in relationship. We see where, you know, they're not consulting their account on equipment purchases. What? What? Well, we work with a client where I asked him, you know, he's actually purchased land from the Facebook account, but he tells me, why should I speak to my accountant? It's not time for me to go say, okay, great thing. Let's call your accountant. Let's find you a new one. And he's saying, I think there's 30 or 40 thousand dollars just by buying in December instead of January.
[00:08:29] Yes, exactly. Yeah, pretty depending on which year you put it into and what the tax liability is out there.
[00:08:35] And so then talk to me about a trawler because I think this comes up a lot. How how does a controller work? What is that function and how does it fit with some of these other ones?
[00:08:42] Sure. So the controller differentiating crewman, bookkeeper, the bookkeeper is more and what we refer to as, you know, there are three layers in your finance function, years of support function, your operation on them, you're strategic to the bookkeeper and your accountant. Play more of a support function. Just to make sure things are recorded, things are filed. So you have some fat strategy, others on the accounting side. The controller's role is really move more into the operational and that's where how processes actually work within an organization usually falls more on the controller side when it comes to how bills are paid, how it all is always in Baghdad. It's their responsibility to maximize what the company has when it comes to things like role. Put simply, is probably more of a keeper than most people, you know, which is make sure as much money as possible comes in and as little as possible goes out the top four.
[00:09:28] Exactly.
[00:09:29] But, you know, when it comes to, you know what, they should have a better sense of where the profitability of the company is, how house are and things actually locally that organization, cash flow management, the U.S. should call on the controller level.
[00:09:41] Now, what we very often seen is that those get mixed up with the bookkeeper or somebody who is a controller ends up in a fire hose.
[00:09:49] And that's one of the things that can get a little bit different than break down a little bit. Yeah, because they'll have certain information or certain perspectives on how certain things are supposed to happen. But the CFO stepping into that role to differentiate it a bit to see if those values really at the strategic level. Very often they may get down to the controller level to help with certain things, but you very rarely see a controller step up, move forward with a strategic plan. You have seen a few and they're real. It's really great when you do see if it do come across. But it is difficult and that's why the lines are usually a little bit worn around that that controller level is more. Put simply, is probably that it is the best way to find that responsibility in a growing organization. Cost savings, so those types of things like that, those will typically fall under the control as well.
[00:10:31] So then let's talk about the CFO role and win what it entails when a company typically needs to consider, you know, some some level of a CFO role, either fractional outsourced or internal. And what does that CFO do? Who do they work with? What what are the goals of having a CFO, a good CFO in place?
[00:10:49] Sure. So more broadly speaking, that will of that CFO is, as I mentioned, at the strategic level. And that'll come across in a few different areas. That's when it comes to developing goals and strategy for the organization as a whole. And helping map out the activities to help me achieve that process. We work with the company where they had gone very successfully. Now, you know what? We started talking them as I got the great where are we trying to go now? And it was adding a certain number to top line revenue over the next three years.
[00:11:16] So we at we worked with our company to identify what are the activities that they need to do to help them achieve that. And for that particular company, it was they need to hire five salespeople over the next six months to achieve that goal, up 1 revenue.
[00:11:28] Have the operational throughput, the handle that we were able to assess, that we're able to go through something like that. So that was helping identify those actual activities to help them achieve their goal. And that's really when you start seeing that CFO is, for instance, if you want to add to that growth, which areas of your company are more profitable and where should you be focusing their efforts on growth? Because just adding up on revenue sounds really good, but not committing to your growth.
[00:11:50] There's not a lot about that.
[00:11:53] And we've run into that absolutely a lot when it comes to making those types of decisions and firing customers that are not profitable. And we run into that a lot.
[00:12:02] And even when there are significant portions of overall revenue. But being able to assess those costs accurately. It's not just the direct cost, but the indirect cost that our involvement there as well that will allow you to take those steps to helping you achieve your goals.
[00:12:14] Yeah. Yeah. What's that? Information becomes crucial. It's just actually running sessions this week with the company. And we are kind of digging into who is their best customer and who should go and get more of who's who should they sell more of it. And one of the things I ask them is, okay, well, who's your most profitable customers? And they can often do it kind of gross margin level or they can figure out, okay, well, what are the direct costs that I have with this client? But then we start asking about, well, how much time does it take, you know, of your operations, folks like how invoicing, you know, is it a pain and do they keep sending it back?
[00:12:45] And you've got to spend a lot of time, you know, coming up with new cost breakdowns or something like if you really start mapping your contributing operational costs over a cost to, you know, by client fairly quickly, some of these clients become actually not profitable, then you're better off just firing.
[00:13:01] Oh, really, really does. We literally had an example of that where Wal-Mart was actually one of our customers at one time and they're a legacy client and have to get Walmart, have to get Walmart. If by market are 25 percent of their revenue and the conversation they're thinking about, as you mentioned, they're able to get there. There are gross margin numbers like this. They are profitable of an era. Sure. How much of your time, how much of this different people's time and how much of this family going through? Look at those salaries to the equation as well as the percentage of that. And when you start putting in all of these information, Walmart recently was not profitable.
[00:13:31] And even though it was 25 percent of their revenue being there, that they have to let them go in order to continue to grow and achieve their goals.
[00:13:38] Well, then it goes back to one of the reasons actually actually, you know, at least consult with a CFO, you know, early in your business process is making sure that your your data entry and the information you're capturing, whether it's financial time, things like that, making sure that you've got a captures in such a way that you're actually able to do that analysis, because if you're just dumping of dumping all of your expenses into a general expense category, when really they probably need to be mapped to project codes or, you know, client codes so that you can figure out really what is your net profitability on a client by client or a project by project basis. If you don't have that data, it's really tough to do it retroactively.
[00:14:13] Absolutely. That goes back to the old adage, you know, what isn't tracked can be measured.
[00:14:17] We can track information, as you know, you can make that decision to know no way you can make the decision based on that. You can measure your results without it. So absolutely, we get involved in designing those systems. What would work what wouldn't work within need to track? What could go on working with the company recently? Was it OK? We want to grow. We have three avenues of growth and it sounds good. Are you tracking the effect of those three different avenues inside your company currently?
[00:14:37] No. So how do we actually measure that? Do we have to come up with a way of saying, look, these are the three channels of revenue. This is how we're going to track each one to track the efforts we're putting into growing? Each one of these are going to track the results?
[00:14:48] Yeah. And I think that it's more than just the checks that you write and the credit card purchases and things like that. It's it's your time. It's time that you're putting into because basically time has money around. Like if you're here, if you're spending time on something, that's a resource that you need to manage. And the other one I constantly run into is when they kind of figure out how much time an individual is spending on an account and they do it as a percentage and they do it as 40 hour weeks. But then I talk to the person, I say, how much do you work? And I typically work 55, 60 hours. I'm like, okay, what's what's going on? 15, 20 hours. And they're just they're not really capturing that there's a you're losing information around what it's really costing you. And they may say, well, look, but I pay this person's salary. You know, I'm not really paying for next time. And generally, I say, look, you're paying for it one way or another. Right. Whether you're paying for it, you know, in terms of the bonuses you have to give or, you know, if they leave and you've got to rehire somebody because you've overworked them. Mean, those are costs that are going to come up some day in some shape or form. So you better capture it now. So you really have a good accounting of what does it cost you do these projects and work with these clients?
[00:15:50] Absolutely. And tying that specifically to a service, when we work with working with the managing partner of a law firm where I basically told them was like, look, if we change over the way your price internal processes work to free up between three and four days per month, you know, just get out there. And so you're managing partner of a law firm there, the rainmaker. I think that if we do that over the next six months, what do you think you can generate any came up with a number and was a pretty high number because he's really, really good at what he does. And I said, great, if we come up with these are what it will cost you in order to do that. That becomes a much clearer conversation. This is how much a question is how much you think you can generate. Let's go do it. And that's really what it came down to. And he clear his goal within one month of that. Once we actually implement those changes on the operational level.
[00:16:30] Yeah. Well, I guess I think that's a good a good strategic CFO. Well, it will help you set up those things so you can make those decisions and hopefully be more profitable and increase revenue. So talk to me a little bit about some of the other challenges you see, particularly on service based businesses when you're coming.
[00:16:45] You mentioned law, you know, professional services, you know, other other service based businesses where, you know, people's time or people are a core part of the value that's delivered.
[00:16:56] What are some of that kind of challenges, mistakes, missed opportunities that U.S. companies, when you come in and work with service based companies.
[00:17:03] So very often we very often seen the issues that really comes around the quality of people that they choose to bring into their into their organization. Especially now with such a talent pool that this ends up settling for talent. And, you know, when you're talking about things, other people, the revenue drivers of your firm and you have some people operating at this level and other people or are here, it really creates a very big problem for the continued growth of that her. And this is especially true when you're talking about everything is so new. Even the growth trajectories here. And suddenly they hit a wall and they don't understand why. And it really comes down to a skills gap very often where it's just everybody people are here and everyone else is here. Yeah. You're going to hit that wall. You're going to plateau when you get to a certain level because you don't have unless the player is above the right level. Yeah, that's probably one of the most pervasive I've seen.
[00:17:53] And the answer is usually, well, we needed the person and they understand that. But the Harvard, I believe. But that's one of their ETF case studies where a toxic employee has a has a more of a detrimental effect than a star employee actually adding. So settling for talent is really, really one of the probably the biggest stumbling like Justin many service, which in this case is because there are people who are very good people, are that what's driving their business? And they settle for talent.
[00:18:18] Well, and you said it it's typically it's a they're under the gun. They've sort of hijacked or they're working on a future project and someone leaves or they need a resource and know they've got to get a player on the field. And so they they make kind of a battlefield hire, you know, which is short term. Yeah, I get it. But, you know, a couple of months down the road, a year later, they're now saddled with a C player in an organization called the one stat that I like. I can't reveal where I'll find the source for it. But the performance is always an issue rather than the productivity of C players is obviously very low. But the thing that I find being the big reason and the one that I end up quoting that that really drives a lot of leaders in terms of making better decisions is that the number one reason E players leave a company is because they have to deal with C players. So it's not it's not really the the C players lack of performance. That's the issue is that if you lose if that C player in the business causes used to lose in a player, that's where the pain is. And, you know, making those decisions personally, making it higher is as the the solution to it ultimately. But, you know, if you do end up having a C player, the real reason to take a take action sooner rather than later is that you don't want to risk losing your employees.
[00:19:27] Absolutely. Well, one other area we typically see, you know, challenges in the design of certain classes of organizations and that being by the pope instead of by design, like the way from profit is actually corporate information as well. That's where we did it, because this is where we were and now we're going to here. So we're just kind of evolved into that.
[00:19:45] So if you take a step back and say, well, this doesn't really make sense.
[00:19:49] And the best example I have of that to work for the companies that they can for six weeks, they send out an invoice after they finish the project. You know what that does to a company's cash flow? I mean, budget rule. Yeah. And it happened because basically they're in their process where they have to go through six different departments in order where they can send that up. Yeah, they've got to sign off on it.
[00:20:06] Yeah. And so I started looking into why why is this why give me to go to six different departments? And the answer was that there was a they were a fraction of their size. One person had all six responsibilities and a person you suggested wouldn't say no. And as the company grew very. Actually, they. But now you. They took the responsibility and created this responsibility goes to the theme and the theme and the theme and the theme that we have to go through all six of them before someone would actually sign off with another input.
[00:20:32] So we we we design that process so that within five days. But that's a very typical one we've seen. We're not reviewing internal processes and procedures. It's a very big stumbling block because actually that's something we both do.
[00:20:45] Yeah. I'm curious about. I mean, one thing that I run into a lot with business, certainly service based businesses is kind of pricing and pricing strategy.
[00:20:54] How any anything that you've seen or models that you've seen people take in terms of how how to figure out how to price products, services, programs, you know, think how to go to kind of go from. Well, this is what it cost me in terms of the labor or the people involved versus this is what I should charge the client for. Any any thoughts or ideas or suggestions you can give people either in terms of figuring out really what your costs are? Because I think that's a challenge. But also figuring out that, you know, how to actually go to a pricing model or what are some strategies around how to price services when it when you go to market.
[00:21:29] Sure. So it usually comes down to when it comes to pricing, strategies are very often say, let's start with the end result. What profit do on make what or what your net profit. And usually try and start with that and better gross because there are so many factors that play into that contribution margin and those operating losses involved and tackling the net.
[00:21:45] That's where you're really at the start because we work with companies that were operating on 12 percent gross margins. And guess what was the overhead was 12 percent. If you're not starting with the net and your pricing is going to help you make any money. I think that then that result, a lot of it comes down, goes, okay. This is where you want to be at the end of it, when you have to kind of work backwards over here and to come up with that number. And if that number that you get to is something that none of your clients are going to pay, then obviously there's an issue there you need to figure out that requires a little bit more deeper understanding. Yeah, because you have to start with the numbers where you're trying to where you're trying to get to and then work backwards from there to say, okay, this is what the said. All this is here with regard to the pricing structures, we have seen companies get very creative and actually create more problems than they were trying to solve with the pricing structures. I'm a big fan of simple things that absolute simple, as universal as across the board as you can because you're always going to have that one person, the organization getting quite understand the combination of that particular pricing issue and you're going to have to deal with that later. So I think as simple as possible across the board.
[00:22:42] Yeah, yeah. I've seen I've seen projects quickly go unprofitable because someone inadvertently give a discount on something that they shouldn't have because of, you know, the nature of the project.
[00:22:51] I like I like that idea of kind of starting with the end in mind. I think a lot of companies kind of figure out, OK, well, they're kind of preset and then they figure out what it costs and whatever is leftover is profit or loss doesn't. And I like that idea of reverse engineering, of saying, hey, likeable, what's our target? You know, we make trying to make 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent net, you know, and then figure out, OK, well, well, given that given what our costs are, you know, where do we need to price to be able to have that in the, you know, in our hands at the end of the project? And then, you know, if we can't if we're if we're not getting that if we can't meet that price, well, we've got to figure out how to increase the value so we can get that price or change our expense model where we need to figure out how to lower our cost to be able deliver that same thing to the customer. Yeah, I think too many people end up, you know, profit is just an end function rather than a target that they're thinking about and planning on.
[00:23:39] It's also very much an understanding that very often it's the one thing that equation is when you're changing the price. What is the effect of changing that number at the end? And there's very often a miscommunication between those two numbers. Oh, sure. If I just had this number over here, then this is going to go up like that low. What else is involved in making that conversation? And that's why you need to have both, you know, both beginning and the end in mind when we're creating your place. Yeah.
[00:24:01] Yeah. I think the one thing that I certainly have found a lot of companies or a lot of leaders founders years and it happens maybe 20, 30 percent of the time. They're just hesitant to increase prices. And I don't think it's a function of they're worried about they're going to lose the sale and things like that. I think one thing that I've I've found is pushing people on price as much as possible, meaning that they're typically under charging at some level. And so even if it's if you can increase price by 5 percent, even if you lose a client or two, because because an increase in price drops directly to profit rate, assuming that all other all other expenses are the same, it hits directly to profit. You can often make up a couple of lost clients by increasing price just because you're you're adding so much profit to the bottom line for everyone else. And I think a lot of people leave money on the table.
[00:24:48] Absolutely. That's almost universally from what we've seen almost universally. And I'm talking about across industries, across sectors now, almost always leaving, quite leaving money on the table because they don't understand their pricing structure, how it affects put and the actual dynamics in the marketplace. Exactly your point, though, slight increases and put in place so much more to the bottom line than keeping more customers. So just make sure you understand that and understand those relationships.
[00:25:13] The strategy with the whole revenue is vanity, profit, insanity. Cash is king, right? It is. Really. Go and sure. You. Others, those things fit together.
[00:25:21] Some clues in terms of, you know, companies that have, you know, thought about hiring a CFO for actual CFO, you know, someone like you. What are the what are the things that they should be looking for? Things they should keep in mind. How do the interview how do they select a good partner? What's the process you recommend people follow? Questions that they ask.
[00:25:40] Criteria that they use, for starters, that, you know, we would always recommend that there has to be someone who's actually held that level of responsibility and role in their past.
[00:25:49] So that is one of the key things we've seen very often. They don't because they're price conscious. They don't want to pay that much for that level of experience. So if you put someone in that role who hasn't really done it before, you're not getting what you need very often from the value of that strategic level. If you haven't, whether that person has an answer to the CEO, have an answer for the board, hasn't had the analyst possibility in their past, then yes, they may be great, wonderful, brilliant people. It's just the level of experience that gets there paid on a level of experience that you should be paying for. The short of that, you're not getting the value.
[00:26:23] No, I think you're getting a lot of it is you're paying for the experience of having been through that process or ideally having gone through the process as a company, you know, double your size. So you actually have some went and lay out a roadmap of saying, well, you're here now twice. What you're out right now looks like this and this is at the steps. And here all the problems are going to run to and here's hoping to get through.
[00:26:40] Absolutely. So we very often seen that need to come up. It's interesting.
[00:26:44] It's not a dollar amount revenue. It's more of an evolution of a company when we see that meet ups.
[00:26:49] Yeah, that's interesting. It's like a cat and our magic number of clients or people. Sure.
[00:26:53] I've seen it happen that 500000 revenue and I've seen it not happen until 50 million of revenue. Really, it depends how the company is built, how the CEO, how the management team is set up as to when that evolution needs to happen to bring in that level of experience and expertise.
[00:27:06] And very often they'll see these challenges come up when they hit that wall. They hit that plateau. And it really just there's a skills gap in at that level as those how you address those skills gap. The best way for the company.
[00:27:19] And when you start an engagement or when you start working with a company, what does the process look like? What are the what are the first things you do ongoing? How do you interact?
[00:27:28] Often you're meeting with them, as I mentioned, or we see that level. But of course, that's a port operational, strategic. Very often when we start with companies, we actually start with the support because that's kind of our foundation research and making sure the books are done and done right. Because we can't make any decisions for people that if it's not going to work. And that's one of the first things will tend to look at the power of the captain of the organization to just to make sure that the information we're looking at is actually accurate.
[00:27:50] That's also one of the ones we look for, for making sure the risks of the company is correctly managed. It becomes the insurance side or a general business where 72 an item, the things that are happening in their industry. That's usually where we'll start. And there's also usually some type of pressing need when somebody calls us, which is obviously being addressed right away, that it's cash flow or internal systems and processes and simply some type of problem going on or they're no longer profitable. And they don't understand why these are typical types of challenges when we get word in, because what we start working with regards to how often we are, we're working with clients that really go back.
[00:28:23] Some of them were there half a day every other week. Some of them were therefore needs. It depends what's going on or what they need us to do and how we can help do that.
[00:28:31] If people want to find out more about you, about the CFO center, what's the best way to get that information?
[00:28:36] Sure. So our site is www.TheCFOcenter.com. I can be reached at Nelson.tepfer@thecfocenter.com for any questions you may have.
[00:28:46] Great. I'll make sure that those links and your email is in the show notes here so people can click there and get that nothingness. A bit of pleasure. I was love talking strategy, particularly finance and companies. I think it's one thing that people don't think people get afraid of. Unfortunately, I think they're not spent enough time. And so I think we can bring a lot of good stuff, lot of good value for the audience. Thank you for taking the time.
[00:29:05] Absolutely. Thank you very much.
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