In this episode of the CFO project podcast, we answer your questions around incorporating advisory services to your practice.

Welcome to the CFO project podcast. Today we're talking all about adding advisory services to your practice to help me with the discussion, I've invited Tim Woodward of Berlin Health on. The reason why I invited Tim on is because he's also a member of the CFO project, and he did just that. He added advisory services to his practice. Tim, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Adam, appreciate being here. Yeah, I'm really excited to talk with you today. I mean, you you just joined the CFO project about a month ago and you've already added you've already added what, $60,000 worth the worth of revenue? That's correct. Yep. Just about a month ago. And did that in about nine days or so. Tell us about what you were doing.

Tell us why you wanted to incorporate advisory services and tell us how you got that 60,000 revenue. Yeah. Yeah. So Tim Woodward with Blend Wealth, I own, a wealth management firm and also an accounting firm. And so we kind of co-brand together under Blend Wealth. So there's four of us. And so we kind of provide personal CFO services.

And last year we added the accounting division. Kind of wanting to add more business CFO services. And we started with the accounting, which is like bookkeeping, payroll, business tax returns and personal tax returns for kind of a flat monthly fee. But when it came to our actual CFO services, it was kind of like just ad hoc. Clients would have a problem.

Have a question? We had printed financial statements. I kind of mark them up with pen and pencil, get to the answer, and then ultimately help the client. But it wasn't systematized. And so we got to a point where one of our current clients referred us to another prospect, and that prospect come in, and they had about 15 million of revenue, about a 4% profit margin.

And it was very clear they needed a system, and they wanted someone who had a system who could provide clear direction. And so that's where I started, scrounging around, my wife, who's also a partner in the firm, she's she's kind of more of a visionary. I'm more the implementer, more the details guy. So she started consuming lots of podcast and found you and the CFO project, and she said, Tim, you got to take a listen here.

I listened, I was thoroughly impressed. Scheduled, a right fit meeting joined and immediately over the weekend started watching the videos. Did some office hours with your partner Jeff, and then a week later presented that and one won the business. Wow. What? What? Just curious. What? Was there any one thing that you knew that was the reason why they weren't they bought.

Like, was it one thing that you presented to them? Yeah, I think the visuals, the fact that your system kind of allows you to clearly present the story and really tell the story. At the end of the day, no one except US Certified Financial Planner, Certified Public Accounts, no one wants to go over black and white PNL statement except us.

Everyone else just wants a pretty picture painted to them with visuals that they know how to take that data, that story, and make actionable decisions with. And that's what your presentation allowed me to do. I'm fully convinced I could have done the work. I'm also fully convinced I would not have won the work, because I would not have been able to present it as clearly, as concisely as how you recommend.

Yeah, totally. I mean, it's all about it's it's all about how you present things and position things to the prospect because they're not we all have to remember they're not accountants, they're not financial people. They don't want I mean, accounting is a totally different language. They don't want to talk accounting. No. And it's funny. So I, I presented to them, the financial assessment and it was so you see that moment where like what they felt in their gut they knew was true but had no way to prove it.

And so when you showed them the day like, yes, this line item is completely out of whack for your business structure. They're like, I knew that, I knew it, I couldn't put my finger on it, but I knew it and now that you've confirmed it, like I know not only you found what we knew, but we know you're the right person to it because you you showed it to us very clearly.

Totally. And I also think that kind of thing helps build trust in the minds of the business owner, because they're thinking they're looking at you thinking, right, this person's a financial professional. And they now understand my problem in my business. I want them to help me, yes, fix my problem. I now the mentally and psychologically, I think they're assigning trust to you in that moment.

So when you finally present the the fee that you're going to charge, it's it's an absolute yes. Let's do it. That's exactly what happened. So my presentation to the prospect was on a Thursday morning and they said, hey we're thoroughly impressed with this. Thank you so much for your time. We're going to huddle up and next week we'll be back in touch with you.

And I said, hey, that's fine, thank you. Reach out anytime if you have questions. Two hours later, they were reaching out saying, we're ready to join right now. Let's can we just going. And so we started on Friday. That's awesome. Well congrats. Thank you. We have a we have a few questions. And so let's get started.

So what's our first question? Sarah wants to know when deciding whether or not to add advisory services to your practice, what made you decide to do it? Oh, that's a good question, Tim. What what made you decide to add advisory services? I mean, I think Advisory Solutions is is at its core, it's about relationship building. Right? So we could do tax returns for clients and we could talk to them once a year, see how their kids are once a year and provide value once a year.

But but that's becoming more and more commoditized. If it's not already. And so by having an advisory solution where you get constant touch points throughout the year, you're constantly building the relationship, constantly building trust, constantly providing value. It's really a win win for everyone. It's a win for the clients because they have now a trusted, CFO advisor.

And it's a win for you because because you're allowed more opportunities to provide value throughout the year, you can provide a higher fee, which is good for your business and ultimately good for your family. So, I mean, there's really no downside to offering advisory solutions in my opinion. Yeah, I would agree with you. When I when I first started doing this about nine years ago, I actually had a business and a completely different industry and I wanted and then before that I was an accountant for several years, and I started talking to people in my industry and realized that they didn't understand their numbers.

Yeah. So I just offered help to these people and these these business owners are like, yes, absolutely. And that morphed into an advisory service. And it just I completely agree with what you said. It's you're providing value. You're getting recurring revenue on a regular basis. Like I could have offered, you know, accounting or, you know, bookkeeping or other types of services to business owners, but that's not really what they want.

These business, these people that I was talking to, they wanted help, advice. Yeah. On how to have a better business. They already trusted me. So I was like, oh, well, what are your thoughts on me just meeting with you on a regular basis? I didn't call it a CFO service, but that's essentially what it morphed into. And they were like, absolutely, let's do this.

And then I needed to call it something. I was like, all right, let's where we're now. This is a CFO service. But they it didn't matter what I called it. They just wanted the help. Right. And I think just being more proactive like it, it almost prevents, dumb decisions from being made, like, because they know that you're going to touch base with them regularly and they feel there's almost like, permission to reach out now and ask questions versus going at it alone or kind of watching the TikTok finance, people are more proactively reaching out.

They're more proactively getting help. You're allowed to kind of steer the ship a little bit in a more optimal manner with, you know, in partnership with the business owner. And then what we have found, too, is like when it comes to tax time, tax returns now are an administrative function. We are not getting to know our client in January.

We are not getting the updates in January. We already know them. We already have the updates. We've already talked about the tax strategies. We've already done the, financial planning from a CFO point of view, and now it's just entering data in the software and completing the return. And it's a very easy administrative task having advisory services on our practice.

Totally. And the other thing is I completely agree with you. And if you if you just offer tax or just off for bookkeeping, it we have to remember that it can be intimidating for a business owner who's not a numbers person to ask questions, because I don't even know what questions to ask. But if you were there advisor and the entire meeting was dedicated to helping them, they're more free to ask questions to you because they're not having to be forced to ask accounting questions.

And there's a big difference there. No, I was just saying, when you can find out what someone's dreams are and then map the numbers to those dreams, it's a completely different experience. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Everybody listening. If you haven't already, sign up for our five minute weekly email with practical tips for accountants and bookkeepers to escape. The accountants trap, go to the CFO project.com/newsletter.

All right. What's our next question? Michael wants to know. I know I need to add advisory services to my accounting practice. However, unlike my accounting services, I don't really have systems in place to ensure it's efficient for me and my team. What would you advise me? Oh, that's a good question. We get that question a lot because these accountants and bookkeepers are comfortable doing accounting of bookkeeping because they have systems already there.

They're just it's a process, but they know they need to add advisory services and they're scared about not having a process. So what would you advise? Yeah, Adam, you've probably heard the same. There's nothing new under the sun. So there's really, there's really no need to go recreate the will if if a will already exists and it's, it's affordable to kind of adopt that system.

So when we were looking at all of our possible solutions for, partnership, we found the CFO project. We love the system, we love the price. And we we found that, you know, we could adopt your system and start implementing that immediately. And that lowered the barrier of entry for us to start adding CFO advisory services, because I know for our prospect, I could not have built a system and delivered it nine days to that prospect to win the business if it was left to my own devices.

And so being able to like, just partner with the CFO project, immediately consume your material and systems and implement it flawlessly to win that client, it's just there's really no better way to do it. There's no need to, like, go reinvent everything, bump into all the speed bumps that you've already ran into, and solved. So I think partnering with the CFO project has been, critical to our success and adding CFO advisory services to our practice.

Yeah. No, I appreciate you saying that. And, you know, the the systems that we teach are not just my systems. They're not just Jeff Systems. They are a combination of of what we've tested and worked over the well. We've tested and proven to work over the past several years, and we continuously test things like we have. We run so many tests throughout the year, every year to make sure that we're teaching, like you said, a, a system, a process, a wheel that just works.

And, and, I completely agree with what you're saying. Why? Why reinvent the wheel? It doesn't make sense. Yeah. I mean, I love the videos. You guys have made things so seamless, so easy. And then, it it really was a flawless presentation. So hats off to you and your team. Well. All right. Thank you, I appreciate that.

I think one thing that that makes this, this whole thing that we teach and then other thing like other, other systems is that we really try to put the end user, the client in mind and everything thing we do, because at the end of the day, they're going to hire us and they're going to keep us around as the CFO advisor.

And so we have to everything we do have has to be revolved around them, not us, them. And so everything about how we present what an advisory service is to them, to selling the service, to providing a service has to be very intense, you know, and that's something that we've thought through a lot to make sure that that is a intentional process.

Hey there, Adam Levine with the CFO project Podcast. Are you an employed accountant or bookkeeper that would like to start an advisory service on the side? Well, we have a free training for you called Side Hustle CFO, where we'll show you how to start a business on the side, offering CFO and advisory services to small business owners. We conduct this training every Friday at 3 p.m. eastern and 12:00 pm Pacific.

Go to the CFO project.com and click on free trainings to register. Excellent. So what's our next question? Margaret wants to know. I'm struggling with selling my advisory services to clients. I know they need this service, but I just can't get them to understand what I do or why they need me. What advice would you give me? That's a good question, Tim.

You know, take a shot at it. Yeah. I mean, I've been working with clients for the last 15 years, whether it's personal CFO services or business CFO services, I have yet to find any client that walks in the door completely optimized. In fact, usually the ones that think they are optimizer in the worst shape, they just don't know what they don't know.

So, I think everyone needs to. It is it is, I think everyone needs advisory services. You do run into subsets of the market where some people see value and some people only see price, and sometimes, if anything cost anything, it's hard to convince the price oriented, prospects to buy because they just think everything, they can do themselves better or free.

And so you just have to realize, like, you can't reach everyone. But for the, the vast majority of the market, they either see the value or you can show the value and you can allow them to get from where they are now to where they dream to be, and a much faster roadmap than they can do themselves. And I think that is very easy to show someone.

It's very convincing. I think really on, on the advisor side, it just takes the confidence to know that we can do that for them and present it in that way. But, yeah, I think everyone could use advisory services whether they know it or not. Yeah, totally. And I think the main reason I completely agree with what you said, I think the main reason for that is that we have to remember that business owners own a business that literally puts the food on their family's table.

That's right. It is their income. And we're not talking about side hustle or hobby businesses or, you know, I have a day job that I sell on Etsy or whatever. We're not talking about those business owners. We're talking about business owners who owned businesses doing between a half 1,000,005 million annual revenue. These are businesses where this is their full time income generation thing, and it must work.

So when somebody like us, somebody like Tim or myself comes along and says, look, I'm going to help you have a growing and successful business, they're going to pay attention because just like Tim said, their business, they're most people are open to advice, advisory services because they want the advice, because their business is not a hobby. Yeah. And I would also add that I think a lot of, I don't know, Margaret or her situation, but a lot of bookkeepers and accountants approach selling advisory services from an accounting standpoint, and I think that's the wrong way to go about it, because most business owners don't care about accounting as much as we think they should.

Just like you don't need to know how your engine works in order to drive a car. You just need to understand the dashboard. Yeah, it's like the equivalent of you know, I want to work on your car, and I'm going to explain to you how to how the engine works and what's wrong with the the different parts of the I'm not a car guy, as you could tell, but I'm going to explain to you the different parts of the engine and all that.

You're going to bore the person to death, and they're not going to go with you. Instead, if you said, look, I know what the problem is, and I'm going to make it so that this on your dashboard, it improves. Let's you're ready to go. They're going to say, of course, you got to make it simple and easy. So Tim, as we start to wrap up, any last minute advice from somebody for somebody that is maybe thinking they want to add advisory services?

Yeah. I learned this early in my career. When you're faced with something you don't know how to do, like, you just have to make for progress. You just have to take that first step. And so if you're on the fence and you're like, I know I need to do this, I don't know how to do it, it's fine.

I think partnering with the CFO project would be a perfect partnership for you. And then from there, you just have to take a step like, and you start doing it and you start doing it. And before you know it, you're like, I'm doing CFO advisory services. Like you're you're you're not going to not get there if you just move forward every day.

And some days, some days will be small steps, like you'll meet with several prospects and maybe they don't want to take an introductory or right fit meeting, and that's fine. But the point is you're out there, you're getting the reps in, you're having the conversations, you're honing your message. You're finding your niche. And you will find, like the more reps you put in, just like if you go to the gym, like you will get stronger, you will become a stronger, more confident, wiser, and you will find more success.

So you just have to to get off the start line and take that first step forward. That's all you have to do to be successful at this, I love it. I couldn't say it better myself. Tim, thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, thank you for having me. And anybody listening, if you haven't already, sign up for our five minute weekly email with practical tips for accountants and bookkeepers to escape the accountants trap, go to the CFO project Comm forward slash newsletter.

See you next time on the CFO project podcast.