Rocking the Financial World: Building a Stellar CFO Company and Boosting Marketing Efficiency with Jim Downes

Speaker 1: 0:22

Welcome to the Unnoticed Entrepreneur. This show will tell you how to get the recognition you and your business deserve. Our guests share their practical insights and tools which you can use straight away. Your host is international entrepreneur, podcast host and author, jim James.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Today we are going to South California, southern California and I should say to Newport Beach. Meet Jim Downs. Jim, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3: 0:52

Good morning, Jim, and thank you for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Well, i'm excited to be in Southern California, even if just verbatimately. We're going to talk about the cost of chaos, because you have a business called Blueprint CFO, which is a chief financial officer. You've built this business, which is fantastic, from the ground up into now, having 20 people who are helping entrepreneurs to use data to make better decisions, but you've also built a business as an entrepreneur. Jim, tell us first of all what you do at the Blueprint CFO.

Speaker 3: 1:29

Jim, we're an accounting company in effect, but we're a different kind of accounting company because we help our clients use their current financial data to improve the performance of their business in the future. What I like to think of it as making accounting relevant, because most of the time the financial statements that a client gets put in a drawer and nobody really looks at the data to say what does this data tell us that we could be doing better? That's the whole focus to Blueprint CFO.

Speaker 2: 2:03

You mentioned before about being a rock star CFO company. When I look at your website, it doesn't look like an accounting company Normally. The Big Four, for example, is all about security and it's about taking the risks and about compliance With Blueprint CFO. You've taken a different approach. Do you want to tell us about that? Because it's a little bit more California, it's a little bit more rock and roll. Tell us about the branding and how you've decided on that. Who's doing it for you?

Speaker 3: 2:36

We use a young woman named Haley Stern as our marketing consultant. Haley has been working with Blueprint CFO since I started it in 2019. I think every company that uses a marketing consultant one thing to think about is do they really get it? Do they get what you're up to and what you're trying to do? I mentioned a minute ago we're a different kind of accounting company. When we hire new employees, we take a headshot photo of them and put on sunglasses. We put that on LinkedIn and say we've just hired another rock star accountant. Marketing is two-way in a professional service firm. It's getting new clients, but it's also getting talented people who want to work for your firm. We have young people wanting to be part of our company because we're unique and we're cool. We're a cool company. All of that partially, those are my ideas, but also Haley has been a huge contributor in making our vision, our brand vision, visible in our website and all of our marketing material.

Speaker 2: 3:44

Now, jim, forgive me, but I am going to ask you to mention how old Haley is, because I have had Charles Reid on the other show and he's in his 70s running getpayrollcom. We also had this conversation about getting out of the way as a founder and letting the next generation build the brand. Do you mind sharing that dynamic?

Speaker 3: 4:06

No, i know we're not going to talk about this, but I'm 74 years old, and so I started Blueprint when I was 71 years old, but really I started it when I was about 50 years old. But it went through a lot of iterations and I never really got it right until I came to the conclusion that the timing was right for this kind of service and I was able to surround myself with young people, like you just mentioned. That could help me make it happen, because you can only take something so far on your own. You may have the idea, but if you can't build a team of people that are talented to get it and want to do the same things that you're putting forth as a unique mission of a company, then you're not going to get there.

Speaker 2: 4:48

Jim, what was the inspiration behind the name Blueprint as well, because you've always been the visionary, but you've got young people at Haley, which is really the way to keep the brand fresh. What about the naming? Can you just share with us about that, because that also seems really on point.

Speaker 3: 5:04

So initially, seriously, i was going to call the company Strategic CFO and I still have that name. I have a company by that name. But at the time I was working with a marketing consultant and one of my former partners And we were going through discussions about how we're going to help clients And we kept saying the word blueprint. We're going to create a blueprint for the company to be more successful in the future. And I came back to them like, wow, we should call this company Blueprint. It's much more interesting than Strategic CFO and it tells the tale better in terms of what we actually are doing. So we changed the name to Blueprint and not to be blowing my own horn, but through our marketing and our ability to reach out and create a brand, we have people, clients, from all over the country calling and wanting to work with Blueprint CFO, and also CFOs that are in Florida, in Massachusetts, in different states of the country way far away from here. They're calling me and want to become a Blueprint CFO. So that's all through marketing. If there wasn't adequate marketing, nobody would even know who we are or what we do.

Speaker 2: 6:08

Jim, i think that's brilliant because that's really what the show is about. Could you just tell us about the role that your personal brand plays and the Blueprint CFO? Because a big challenge for entrepreneurs when they found the businesses is that the leads come through their networks And I really want my fellow I know this entrepreneur to know how to cross that chasm to where the brand brings in the business rather than the individual. Would you mind sharing with us how you've done that, jim?

Speaker 3: 6:39

I think maybe professional service firms are unique in that they usually do start with one person who's the brand right? I was working with a business coach at the time when I started Blueprint and I grew it from myself and a part-time accountant when I started it to about four people and we had about 10 clients And the business coach said well, jim, what you've created is a pod And what you need to do now is get another CFO and build another pod, and then build another pod and you're recent because your goal is to create a professional service firm right. So it kind of gets to what you were just saying. It wasn't just all about me, but initially, when you went on our website, it was all about me. It was Jim Downs, he can help you with your business, and so it was pointed out to me many times. You got to change your website because it looks like it's just you, but now you're really more of a professional firm. So I think it's important to honor your roots, though I mean, i think what I did we wouldn't have Blueprint if I hadn't started with my vision of what this kind of company can do for companies, but now, in order for it to be successful and to scale. It can't just be me being the face of the company. All the other people are the face of the company.

Speaker 2: 7:53

Yeah, jim, i think that's brilliant And the way that you've done that and transitioned. can we just talk about the other things that you've done? For example, you've got a podcast which you built as well. Could you share with us the strategy behind that and what you're doing with it and the rewards that you're getting from the podcast?

Speaker 3: 8:17

So the podcast idea originally came from our search engine optimization firm that is working with us to gain visibility on the internet, and they suggested that we start a podcast featuring our clients and talking about their business, their entrepreneurial journey And also, at the end of the podcast, how working with Blueprint has helped them with their company. And so we launched the podcast probably six months ago. Now. We've probably got six or seven episodes, and each one is unique and interesting in terms of how this person got into business And now they have 100 employees. They started it many of them in their garage or under kitchen table And they quit their job and started a company when they had no idea what they were getting into. But the really cool part, too, at the back end of every podcast is how Blueprint has helped them, and it help you when they say the benefits of working with our company have been for them in running their business.

Speaker 2: 9:16

So, jim, as the founder and CEO of Blueprint, cfo in Newport, south California, what do you do? How do you help an entrepreneur build a better business? through the role that you play, with sort of as a chief financial officer, as a fractional one.

Speaker 3: 9:37

So every company has financial statements. A lot of times those financial statements aren't being prepared properly. I won't get into all the details of that, but they're not prepared in a way that's properly matching up the revenues and expenses. So the client really doesn't know if they're making money or not, because the accounting is being done in a poorly or manner. Let's just say that. So you know, the first step for us is always to make sure the accounting is correct, so that we know in a particular time period if the company made money or not. And I can tell you, i had a new client came to me a year ago and he was a small company at about $2 million in revenue, and he said Jim, i don't know if I made $100,000 this year or lost $100,000. Well, that's pretty bad. You should know whether you're made $100,000 or lost $100,000. The only reason he didn't know is because his accounting was almost up. So our initial job is to get the accounting right And then, once we know the accounting is correct, we can look at the different components of the accounting. One big one which we talked about pre-show was marketing expenses. And you know how much money are they spending on marketing? Maybe they're not spending enough. Maybe they're not spending anything, or maybe they're spending more than they should and they're not really tracking the benefits of the money they're spending properly, so they don't really know, you know, whether that's money is being spent wisely or not, and so it's our job as the financial advisor to delve into that and get into the details and make sure any money that's being spent by the company is being spent in a proper manner that drives profitability.

Speaker 2: 11:13

Jim, i don't get many chances to ask someone in your position this question How much should companies be spending on marketing? Because it's the great unknown, isn't it? What's your experience? you've got 40, 50 years now running companies as CFO in the house, and as fractional Your guides will be wonderful.

Speaker 3: 11:36

So every company's different. That's hard to say exactly. You know, i always think in my mind that 10% of your sales should be spent on marketing. But we see many companies that have growing that don't spend that much money on marketing. So I just kind of wonder, if they were spending 10%, what could happen for that company? I signed up a client a year ago and they're a software as a service company And so they've been very successful, and they were spending a million dollars a year on marketing And when you looked at how much they're growing every year was about a million dollars. So they were spending a million dollars to get a million dollars of new business. And I said to the owner I said, wow, that seems crazy to spend. You're really, you know. He said well, you know, the good thing is, when we sign up a client, they'll be with us for four or five years. So it's really like 5 million, i'm getting for 1 million. And he said well, do you think it's a right number to spend a million? I said, well, i don't know if it's the right number. I do know we want it to be more efficient in the future, so we need to start monitoring this and looking at every month. How can we make that better? I know there were things that he was doing just because he was kind of talked into doing things that he wasn't really tracking whether it was working or not, and we found that out over time. So we kind of tweaked that number and got it down a little bit. But you know, many times companies are just spending money blindly without really knowing what the benefits of that marketing money is, and I think I always tell our clients that they need to track when they get a new client. Where did it come from? What was the marketing effort? Was it email marketing campaign? Did it come through your website? Was it a click through? You know? where did that client come from? Most companies don't track that information, which is kind of you know, i don't say stupid, but definitely not something they should be doing. They should be tracking where those clients are coming from and making sure the money they're spending is being spent wisely.

Speaker 2: 13:27

So, jim, that's really interesting because as a fractional CFO, it sounds as though you're almost playing the fractional CMO Chief Marketing Officer role at the same time. Are there any tools or tips that you can say to us, that you introduce to clients, to help them with that sort of trackability, traceability of revenue from the marketing?

Speaker 3: 13:53

Well, i guess the number one thing is a CMO. I mean a CRM, a Customer Relationship Management System. So most companies have a CRM I don't refer to that before, but there's Salesforcecom or Zoho. there's a lot of different ones but they don't use it properly. They don't typically keep it up, they don't use the data for anything. They check the box oh, we have a CRM, but they really don't use it for managing and measuring their sales and marketing expenses and thinking about how they can get more customers and pay less money.

Speaker 2: 14:26

Jim, is there a CRM?

Speaker 3: 14:28

I mean, when you said we're a CMO, it's kind of interesting because we know nothing about marketing. We're not marketing experts in any way, shape or form, but we do know a lot about data, and so we know there's data there that should be used to do things better, to do things in a more informed way, and that's our job is to make sure that the company's using data to run their business better.

Speaker 2: 14:50

And Jim, any tools or platforms. You've mentioned Salesforce and Zoho, I know. Are there any platforms that you recommend to your clients to use, or those are the main?

Speaker 3: 15:01

ones, so this is kind of getting into more of a custom approach, but there's a software that we use called Power BI, and Power BI allows you to bring in data from different systems to create a scorecard. So I get it, for example, for Blueprint. I get a weekly scorecard in our marketing that tells me how much money we spent last week, how many leads we generated, what the sales pipeline looks like. The data comes from two or three different systems our CRM plus our financial system And Power BI is just one kind of data analytics software that you can use, but you would need to, probably unless you had somebody in-house that can help you put those kind of scorecards together. So the cool part, though, is, once you set up the scorecard, it's all automated. So, every Monday morning, i get a scorecard on our operations how busy were people in our company and is there slack in the system that I need to fill up And also I get a scorecard on our sales and marketing, and, just like I tell my clients, that's the data you need to run your business, and most companies don't have that.

Speaker 2: 16:03

Jim, i love that. We used to in the old days call that middleware, a software that connected other pieces of software. I'm not sure I use that term very much anymore. Jim, is there anything that You know without embarrassing you know, you yourself, that hasn't really worked, you know. I like to also ask the question for shared experience of Something you tried that didn't really move the needle when it comes to getting noticed.

Speaker 3: 16:29

So There's the lots of different ways to try to attract customers. Or you could cold call, you could Do a mail error, you can do email marketing. Last year we launched an email marketing campaign and we were pretty much guaranteed results. And You know, basically what we're selling is accounting and I don't think an entrepreneur gets up in the morning and says, wow, you know, i really got to spend more money on accounting because I need to get better data from my accounting department. They didn't. That doesn't even hit their radar. So getting an email and communicating our value, you know, to a client through an email campaign is tough, and we just found that, you know, we were spending money and not getting any results. We again for similar to how we would tell our clients. We started looking at where our leads were coming from and where we were getting a new clients from, and we realized it was more Around the late relationships we had created with other professionals like bankers, cpas, insurance agents and Business coaches, and so we've transitioned more to thinking about how do we get in front of people and meet them face to face, either at a networking event, or take them out to lunch or a sporting event or something like that. So it's kind of old-school, but I think getting in front of people and having a conversation is more powerful than getting an email, because we all know How many emails we get every day.

Speaker 2: 17:55

Yeah, jim, i think that's really valuable reminder of what some people call it. It's sort of unscalable Marketing, you know, lumpy marketing, as Brad sugars of action coach called it on the show.

Speaker 3: 18:08

When we sign up, i do CFO to come on into our firm. We could very apparent that or part of the deal that they have to commit to spending a certain amount of time on business development, because most accountants don't want to do business as a fellow, but they just want to do accounting. But it's really important for us. We're more of a consulting firm, so they have to get a little bit out of their comfort zone and get out and meet people and tell the story. We did our quarterly review, how we did in the first quarter of 2023 a week ago And I told all the young people in the room. When you are young accountants that if you're in a social setting, you know Ask who's helping them with their accounting. Lo and behold, one of the Controllers actually brought in a new client this week. So You know it's just starting a conversation.

Speaker 2: 18:55

Yeah, that's kind of testable. I was gonna ask you for a number one tip, but it sounds as though, jim, if I was to ask you for the one tip for my shallow, unnoticed entrepreneurs, could you say anything else. So do you think that's it? I think that's it.

Speaker 3: 19:07

I mean, i Believe people want to do business with people they know and trust in our business because we're a professional service firm. If you're selling a consumer product, there's a different story there. But even then you have to have the customer has to trust that you're gonna stand behind your product and you know It's been designed properly and it's gonna last a while. So there's a trust factor there too. But, particularly in our industry, you're an entrepreneur and you have a limited budget of what you can spend on things And so you don't want to spend money on frivolous things that aren't gonna make a difference for your business. And there's many people out there saying, hey, give me some money and I will make your company better, and You know a lot of them don't deliver. So it's tough to develop that trust factor. I believe and I think listening like our podcast, listening to the testimonials in our podcast about Real people and how we really help, we really benefit from our service, is very powerful compared to some Random email marketing campaign coming in.

Speaker 2: 20:08

That's a lovely way to close out the show. If people want to find out more about you and Blueprint CFO, where can they find you?

Speaker 3: 20:18

Yes, so go to our newly redesigned website. It was just launched this morning, so it's Very. I think it's really a huge improvement over our prior website, but it's wwwblueprintcfocom. Or give me a call on my cell phone 949-405-5440. I'm always interested in learning about new businesses And talking about how you know great accounting can help you run your business better and make more money.

Speaker 2: 20:46

Jim Downs now, that is old school giving out your mobile phone number. That is Ladies, that is that you need a one for the thorns ringing right now. Jim, i get it. I had to go ringing off the book Talking to Jim. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, jim. Yes.

Speaker 3: 21:03

Thank you for having me was a Roy of fun chat.

Speaker 2: 21:07

It's been wonderful to go all the way to Southern California, to Newport Beach, and I envy you near Disneyland, and my daughters will be jealous when I tell we're green there today. So thank you to Jim Downs for joining me today and the unnoticed entrepreneur session, and we will, of course, as always, put his details in the show notes. And if you've enjoyed this show, do please share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur And, if you've got a chance, to rate it on your player, because that really helps to let other people know That this is a show worth listening to. Until we meet again, i do encourage you to keep on communicating and thank you for this episode of the unnoticed entrepreneur me, jim James.