April 29, 2024 • 49 mins
Jim Roche, CPA, MBA, is founder and principal of Robust Alternatives and MyCFO.
Robust Alternatives performs tax services, but more importantly consults clients to discern key performance, as well as leading, indicators. When systems consistently capture, track and report on financial & non-financial measures, leaders simply refer to a dashboard of activity & results to discern the health and direction of current operations.
MyCFO functions as a fractional/part time chief financial officer.
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Robust Alternatives performs tax services, but more importantly consults clients to discern key performance, as well as leading, indicators. When systems consistently capture, track and report on financial & non-financial measures, leaders simply refer to a dashboard of activity & results to discern the health and direction of current operations.
MyCFO functions as a fractional/part time chief financial officer.
Winning Business Radio is broadcast live Mondays at 4PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Winning Business Radio is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Winning Business Radio Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/winning-business-radio--3075598/support.
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FOURCY Radio. Churchill said, thosewho failed to learn from history are condemned
to repeat it. Kevin Helenan believesthat certainly applies to business. Welcome to
Winning Business Radio here at W fourCY Radio. That's W four cy dot
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com and now your host, KevinHelenair. Thanks everybody for joining in today.
I'm Kevin Hallanan and welcome back toWinning Business TV and Radio. We're
on W four C dot com.We're streaming live on talkfor tv dot com
in addition to Facebook and that's atWinning Business Radio, and of course we're
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available in podcasts after the live showon many other platforms including YouTube, iHeartRadio,
Spotify app well pretty much wherever youlisten to your favorite podcasts were there.
The mission of winning business radio andTV, as regular viewers and listeners
know, is to offer insights andadvice, really to help people avoid the
mistakes of others. Right. That'sto learn best practices, the how tos,
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the what toos, the what nottos, to be challenged and certainly
and hopefully to be inspired by thesuccesses of others. But you know,
virtually every successful person that I've everhad a chance to talk to has had
some form of failure in their livesand careers. Right, So while we
all have to get our knees skinnedonce in a while, I'm driven to
keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so
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we don't repeat it today. Myguest is Jim Roach, CPA and MBA
and founder and principle of Robust Alternatives. Here's Jim's bio in his thirty plus
years of professional experience, Jim,I just called you old. Jim Roach
has seen many companies that are successfulwithin their industry, great products and great
reputations. The founders are experts workingin their business. What he has also
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observed however, is that far toomany of those founders and leaders can't seem
to find the time to work ontheir business. Jim understands that every hour
a business owner spends tracking their businessas an hour less spent growing and serving
their customers. Robust Alternatives consults ownersand managers to discern key performance indicators and
leading indicators for their specific business.When a system consistently captures, tracks,
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and reports on financial and non financialmeasures, owners and managers simply refer to
a dashboard of activity and results todiscern the health and direction of current operations.
Growing profitable companies are constantly looking forcreative ways to finance expanded working capital
needs. Anticipating those needs and approachingthe bank at the idea time is more
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art than science. Robust alternatives determineswhich lenders tend to lend to, which
industries and key items to lenders needto get a deal approved. Jim's a
CPA principle of robust alternatives assisting companiesin designing and often redesigning their financial functions
to discern, capture, and trackprogress on key matrices both financial and non
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financial. Robust alternatives delivers exceptional valueas the chief financial officers, officer excuse
me for companies and a growth orturnaround wind down mode. Additionally, Jim
has been involved in high level taxplanning and preparation for the last twenty years,
where robust alternatives helped individuals and businessesminimize taxes to advanced planning and proper
structure. Jim's focus is on manufacturing, distribution, and service sector sectors where
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he analyzes the interrelation between company andowner taxation. He received dis Bachelor of
Business Administration in Accounting from the USSfrom UMass Amherst and received as MBA from
Babson Graduate School Business. He foundedhis consulting and tax practice in ninety three.
Prior to that, he has experiencewith a local two partner CPA firm,
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where experiences gained working side by sidewith a partner regional tax planning firm
focusing on clients ranging from high incomeindividuals to average American wagejourners and estate and
trust returns. Much time was spentfocusing on the tax impacts on business owners
and their families, and a nationalCPA firm where his focus was accounting and
business advisory services. Typical assignments rangefrom serving as a permanent part time CFO,
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performing due diligence and acquisitions, implementinga strategic shift of a troubled company,
preventing an auction of fixed assets bythe secure lender while creating profitable operations.
He's a long standing member of theAmerican Institute for Certified Public Accountants and
the Massachusetts Society for Certified Public Accounants. He often delivers educational and entertaining speaking
engagements on subjects like taxation, workerretention, motivation, leadership development, growth
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strategies, change management, planning,and goal achievement. And that's all the
time we have today, just kidding. Jim's married to Wendy. They have
twenty seven year old twin daughters,Chloe and Sabrina, a twenty four year
old son, Blaine, and theyresolve reside while in Franklin, mass Jim,
welcome to Winning Business Radio and TV. Thanks for being here. Great,
Thank you, Kevin. I appreciatethe opportunity. And yes, it
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does make me sound old with allthose you and me, both you and
me, both brothers. All right, So first of all, let's get
the important stuff out of the way. Tell us about Wendy. Yeah,
so, so, Wendy is goingto be thirty five year anniversary in October,
right, stated three years before that, because you got to be sure.
She tells me not to state thosestats everybody, because she says it
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makes her as well. And doesshe work? Does she does? She?
Does she? Or does she havea career? Yeah? Yeah,
she does so right now she worksat the National Seating and Mobility, which
is a national wheelchair company, andshe supports their number one sales guy who
will designed wheelchairs to to various peopleeverywhere. That's very cool. And tell
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us about your kids. So thekids we've got. My daughter Sabrina is
an ICU Hot Surgical ICU nurse atthe Brigham Wow. Cool yep. My
daughter Chloe is a yoga instructor ofpersonal trainer and nutritionist. And my son
Blaine is looking for a job asan engineer a New York City or the
region my way, shameless plug.Tell us a little bit more about that,
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maybe get lucky. So, soBlaine is a Northeastern grad. His
ideal job is a design engineer,but he's looking for some kind of engineering
that gets them close to New YorkCity. That's that's his key thing right
now. All right, So ifyou if you know of anybody who might
be looking for a gentleman like that, young guy like that. Jim's information
is coming across the crawl, andyou can reach out to me at kevinet
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Winning Business Radio dot com. Maybewe get lucky, all right, tell
us about your background. You grewup in Foxboro, Massachusetts, home of
the Patriots, now home of thePatriots. You bet you, you bet
you so yes. I'm a productof public education Foxboro High it was a
great place to grow up. Weactually had a pretty big class relatively speaking.
There were three hundred and sixty fivekids in my graduating class from there.
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It was a typical blue collar upbringingfrom my perspective. And I was
betwixting between whether I was this closeto going into the Air Force. He
was looking at truck driving school.I was looking at auto mechanics school,
and I figured U massy Amherst hada lot to offer, so I'd find
a major up there. And Iwent up as an undeclared major to U
mass Amherst. And it took metwo and a half years to actually get
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a major. I was a secondsemester junior before they finally let me into
the School of Business, and myroommate was trying the same track and he
had to go what's called bachelor's degreewith individual concentration, so he got an
accounting slash finance degree out of theCollege of Arts and Sciences. I got
into the School of Business. Hisfirst semester was a little less stellar than
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mine, so I think I madethe cut there and he did. Eisenberg.
That's a good school. Eisenberg wasa very good school. And yeah,
that was as you know, it'sa city up there, and it's
quite a big school. And then, of course my graduate work was at
Babson, which was a complete threesixty and of course I had to go
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my first semester at Babson, Iwas trying to wave out of a class,
so I had to go talk tothe burs or the registrar or somebody.
And my vision was, you mass, You're in a line for an
hour and a half, tons ofother people. And I get there and
the burser comes out and says,oh, come into my office, and
I sat down in a chair nextto the desk and had a regular conversation,
which is I guess thirty grand ayear versus public school, it says
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that's all thirty grand back then,but back then, yeah, back then.
So what were your early interests andwhat made you choose accounting? So
so so it was actually I hada bookkeeping teacher in high school, Missus
Triacas. She was the typing teacherfirst back when there was actually typewriters,
and she also taught bookkeeping, andso that just kind of clicked for me,
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and I said, you know,I understand that, and it made
sense. And then, like Isaid, I got up to UMass and
I wasn't sure where I was going, and I said, you know,
that bookkeeping kind of enthralled me,and I jumped in my first accounting class
up there, and again it justkind of clicked. So I started down
that path. And then I quicklyrealized, well, you know, they
say accounting is the language of business, and so if you understand accounting,
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you can jump into different businesses.And so I quickly got my mind set
on taking the CPA track because Isaw it as an opportunity to jump into
a bunch of different industries as opposedto get pigeonholed into one industry and kind
of, you know, living yourcareer there. So it was a unique
opportunity to see, you know,what people in different industries measure and how
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that can impact crossing industries, etcetera. So that that was exciting for
me. That's cool. When didyou know so right away CPA? My
question was when did you know youwanted to be in PubL accounting? Did
you know what that meant? Yeah? Yeah, So I didn't know what
that meant, and it turned outto be exactly what I thought it meant.
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So it was a chance to lookat some taxes and like I said,
a chance to look at a wholebunch of different industries. And so
I was in the CPA world forI think it was about four and a
half years, and then I jumpedship and went to this private company.
And it was interesting there because thatwas my first view of the opportunity of
a fractional CFO, which I didn'tknow it was called that then, But
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I just saw these two guys thatwere running this business for thirty years and
had absolutely no systems in place.Wow. I mean one of my first
conversations was who's your top ten customers? And they couldn't produce a piece of
paper that showed me the top tencustomers, and they knew off the top
of the heads number one, twoor three, but they couldn't produce a
document that showed me who their customerswere. The seventy year old. So
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there were two guys there. Onewas the engineer, one was the accounting
function, and the seventy two yearold accounting guy was involved in reconciling the
bank statement every month. And theseguys made money for thirty years, and
I just think, geez, howmuch better would they have done if they
had some numbers to guide them alongthe way. And so that's kind of
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where that kind of gelled and tookplace there. And during that time I
also went back and got my graduatedegree while I was working as well,
so knights at Babson, And thatwas an invaluable experience because for a couple
of reasons. One, you're workingwith people I was. I was about
by the time I graduated, Iwas ten years of experience. But you're
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at school during the day learning theory, and then you can go I'm sorry,
at school a night learning theory,and you can go back during the
day and practice that at the officeif you will, and figure out,
you know, what's real and what'swhat's just theoretical? So it was,
and you're working with a bunch ofother folks that are in the same spot
that you know, you're on aproject with somebody, and there the different
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industry and they're working full time aswell. So it's there was an entrepreneurial
focus on that grad degree as well, right you it was it was yep,
yep, it was. He wasentrepreneurial and entrepreneurial and entrepreneurial finance.
So I took a lot of entrepreneurshipcourses and there was some great professors there.
And again even the professors, alot of them were adjunct professors that
were running up business during the day, and some of them were full time
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professors that cashed out of their businessand so so it was great that a
lot of them had contacts and broughtin people that were going through issues.
I remember this one guy. Onecourse that was in was an entrepreneurial finance
course, and the guy's name wasMendez, and so it was Mondays and
about Mendez. And so first hecame in and spoke to us about all
the crappy was going through and hehad people chasing him because he was in
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debt here because this financing deal fellthrough and uh. And so after he
spoke to us every Monday, theprofessor would give us an update on Okay,
now the sheriff is now the deceaseand desist on that. But it
was it was quite interesting that you'relooking at real lifestyle. Yeah, so
you've had experience at small companies andlarge companies. I love your description of
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if I say this correctly, Leavehaland horwont yep yep. Labnthal and Horoat
was the number nine back when theywere a big eight back then. And
yeah, so that that was thenational experience, and it was it was
unique in that most of the bigfirms, you're either a tax person or
you're an accounting person. And theyhad what they called their small Business Advisory
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Department, which kept both under thatsame umbrella. My background before that,
I was at a two person CPAfirm. Then I was at a regional
tax planning firm, and so Ihad a lot of good tax knowledge and
to go the accounting route didn't makesense, but I liked accounting, so
to blend the two of them.Labathal was perfect for that because you were
doing both the corporate tax returns andthe individual tax returns. And certainly if
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there's a flow through it to belike an escort for an LLC where the
owner's taxes are impact by the business, it makes a whole lot of sense
to keep them together. And that'swhat labonbal did. But it was it
was great because to go there andsee some of the resources that a national
firm has, and you know,the research departments and all that other kind
of stuff, it was it wasa great experience. All right, we're
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gonna pause right here. We're gonnatake our first break. It's about a
minute. We'll be right back withJim Roach. You're listening to Winning Business
Radio with Kevin Helene on W fourCY Radio. That's W four cy dot
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(15:05):
four zero three one. Get yourfree advertising now and now back to Winning
Business Radio with Kevin helenan presenting excitingtopics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helena.
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We're back with Jim Roach, founderand CEO president all Things you Know,
All Things Bossy of Robust Alternatives.What drove your decision to get the NBA?
What drove my decision to get theNBA. I mean, I really
liked Babson and I really liked entrepreneurship, So I think it was more it
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was more of the drive to BAPSthan it was for the NBA. You
know, I small businesses and growingsmall businesses and trying to figure out how
to fund small businesses. That waskind of all my background and Babson was
a perfect fit for that, andso I think it was more about Babson
than it was the degree. AndI want you to tell folks with this
being's finalists for the Douglas Prize,given to the top three graduate business plans
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produced at BABS and during an academicyear, and tell us a little bit
about the business plan. Noh,yeah, so that was there's a course
called Entrepreneurship and the whole focus ofthe course is to write a business plan,
and so it's a group of project. And so there were four people
in our group, one of whichyou may know Kevin. A woman named
Lisa Leveck who is a group leaderof a provider's affinity group these days.
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Lisa and I were in that grouptogether, and actually I lost touch with
her for probably ten years, andwe ran into each other at a different
networking event. But anyways, sothe whole thing is you're submitting this this
it's it's a class project, andall of the instructors get together and they
grade these plans not just for yourclass grade, but to go into what
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they call the Douglas Prize. Sothere was a guy Douglas who promotes this,
who funded this prize, and soall the graduate plans go in there,
and then there are I forget howmany finalists there were, but we'll
say there was a half a dozen. My wife as like exaggerate, so
let's say that was twenty and wewere one hundreds, hundreds, hundreds,
so so so it is everybody thatrode a business plan that year. But
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then there's there's X number that getto present before a board of investors or
whatnot, and and we made thefinal cut there and our presentation ended up
being the top so the third prizethere, and the feedback we got afterwards
was it would have been better exceptwe didn't say we were going to take
over the world and roll this thingacross the universe and yeah, yeah,
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so it was a whole lot offun. It was quite a stressful project,
so as as we see in manyof our business projects. You know,
you get to eighty five percent ofyour of your time allotment and you've
only got twenty percent of the workdone. You're like, oh, how
is this going to come together?And then magically at the end it all
comes together. And apparently we hada pretty good plan because yeah, we
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ended up getting I believe it wasthree thousand I think it was ten to
five and three one thousand dollars forplan. Yeah, and well I have
it actually right here, this lovelylittle clock as well as Douglas Prize on
the front there. But cool.Yeah, yes, that was nineteen ninety
five and its still sitting right thereon the shelf. Because it's kind of
a cool thing. Love it all. Right, So in ninety three,
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you are currently working. You foundedRobust Alternatives and my CFO while you're working
full time. Did I get thatright? Yeah? Yeah, And my
CFO part came a little bit later, but yeah, okay, So tell
us about Robust Alternatives and what wasbehind the founding of that organization. And
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as I said, you did itwhile you were working elsewhere. Yeah,
yeah, So I was working elsewhere. I was. I was working in
the company with the two gentlemen thatworked at thirty years and we're trying to
sell the company, and so,like I said, that was kind of
the genesis. But it really startedout as tax and business advisory so as
to not obviously compete with my currentemployer. So I was doing some tax
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returns at night for business owners primarily, although business owners come along with a
couple of owners and sometimes a motheras well and maybe a daughter. Right,
So yeah, I started doing sometax returns because I had a whole
lot of good tax experience and Iwasn't in a tax firm anymore, so
it seemed like a natural fit there. And then, like I said,
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this one company I was at theseguys, after me being there and putting
some systems in place for them,decided that they were going to try to
sell the company. And me andthe guy that I work for, who
was technically the accounting manager, buthe was more like an operations guy.
He really didn't know any accounting atall. He was a finance background.
He was a shop guy. Sohe and I decided, Hey, let's
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put a bid in and try tobuy this company. And so actually back
up, so the company was approachedby a Nasdaq traded It was an adhesive
manufacturing company, and so there wasa company locktight down in Connecticut that was
interested in us, and they wentdown the path doing the due diligence and
trying to buy us, and thenthey had a reorg and so they prolled
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everything off the table and stopped doingany acquisitions. And then me and like
I said, my boss, decided, let's try to put this thing together.
And we ended up getting Bank Bostonto give us a subordinated loan,
and we were looking for a seniorlender and some other money. And the
general manager, who was both ofour bosses at the time, was trying
to do the deal himself, andhe ended up doing the deal before we
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did and made it clear he didn'twant to play with us. So it
was a whole lot of good experience. But like I said, that was
kind of the genesis of these guysran this company for thirty years with no
information. Let's see what we're outthere about. Getting some part time CFO
help into these companies on a fractionalbasis. That's kind of the genesis of
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my CFO side of you know,robust alternatives, like I said, started
out more as a tax planning andbusiness advisory and morphed into the CFO.
Also during that time, you becamean associate excuse me, assistant director for
B and I Business Network International,heavily involved in networking to grow business through
word of mouth. Describe that describeB and I for those that aren't familiar,
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and that assistant director role. Yeah, So B and I was a
great spot for businesses to meet otherbusinesses, get referrals. Their whole tagline
was no like and trust. Soof course you're going to know somebody if
you're going to give them some business, and you're gonna like them if you're
going to give them business. Andonce you get that trust, thing going
and you hear feedback from other people, it kind of really takes off.
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So at the time, the womanthat owned the franchise in the region,
it was relatively small and there wasprobably only maybe a dozen assistant directors on
the team, and it grew tremendouslyfrom there. So at the at the
zenith, I had seven groups thatI was overseeing just as a very part
time thing, and so it waskind of crazy. But there are groups
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that get together once a week andlike I said, they get to know
like and trust each other. Theygive a little commercial every week and they
passed business between each other, orthey listen for other people that made need
businesses. And so for me itwas it was great as a as a
as a CPA at the time,I really had my tax practice more than
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the cfo's thing going in there,and everybody needs a CPA, everybody that's
getting in the business and business tobusiness was my focus, and so it
was a great spot for a meto get business and then b for me
to meet other people like yourself.You know, I might have clients that
need help with their sales department andI don't do any of that stuff.
And if I know somebody that doesit, and we're both talking to the
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same prospects. It makes a wholelot of sense for B and I to
do that. And it was agreat business model because they didn't have any
salespeople. The people in the chapterwere the salespeople. I'll look around and
I'll say, all right, Ineed a good lawyer, I need a
good sales consultant, I need agood HR And I go out and find
those people, convince them to jointo give B and I money, which
eventually gives me money. So it'sit was a great model because it's very
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circular in nations circuits and so soyeah, it worked great. And I
was on the regional team the wayI said, working for the woman that
owns the owned if she's sold out, but owned the franchise for about six
and a half years, and Imet a boatload of people, and I
got some good exposure myself, andit taught me a whole lot about speaking
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professionally and presentation skills as well asnetworking skills. And that's where you and
I met originally. That's where wemet originally, exactly exactly, Yeah,
And because of that, I gotout to Chambers and you were pretty big
in the Norwood Chamber at the time. Yeah, it got me some great
exposure and invaluable experience. So youalso co founded a company as cfo amfonol
(24:21):
Ardent Concepts. You were there forI think you're LinkedIn showed about fifteen years.
Tell us about that company and whatthat process of starting that company look
like. Yeah, absolutely, soit was called and it was called the
Ardent Concepts at the time, andAnfanol the Sense bought them out. But
yeah, we started this company.It was the main guy. My favorite
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type of company. You get anengineer and you get a salesperson together,
and if they started a company,they need me. They need those two
guys know how to spend money anddon't know how to track it and how
to control it. And so that'sexactly what happened. So there was the
two guys there. Gordon was theengineer, Steve was the sales guy.
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Steve actually side note went to NortheasternBusiness School and me, Gordon and Steve
did a business plan competition there andI think he came in fourth or so
there with his business plan. Sothat was a completely different business. Wharton
was a crazy engineer, that hasI don't know, ninety seven patents to
his name these days, everything fromhe had a buddy in high school that
(25:25):
was, I believe, a quadriplegic, and so he developed this wheelchair that
had a racket system so the guycould recline and he can sit back up
again. And that was his firstpatent. And the company that we did
the business plan for was a dentalflossing device that we almost sold to Gortech,
which makes the glide floss, butthen nine to eleven hit just about
(25:49):
then and they were anything so that. But so then Gordon went out to
California and got into the semiconductor industryout there, and he's literally tinkering in
his basement. Came up with hiswire that had some properties, electrical properties
that was needed in the industry.And you know, this is a good
part about being an account I cantalk about what this guy's talking about,
(26:12):
but I have no idea if I'mmaking any sense. But I can count
the number of pins that we produceand tell you how much they cous.
So he came up with this wirethat he thought was the best things in
sliced bread, and so he gota patent on that and he decided to
move back to the East coast herebecause Steve and I were on the East
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coast and we launched this company andwe were in a one room office and
it was a manufacturer. And sowe had this cycle tester, which is
basically this thing that goes to allday long to test how many revolutions you
can get out of this pin.So that's running in the corner over there,
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and Steve's in the corner over heretrying to make sales calls with this
thing. In a way, wehad an air compressor down there. It
was a nightmare that we convinced thelandlord to let us put the air compression
of down in the basement, butwe had to run the hose out the
window and around the fun It's yourclassic entrepreneurial company and so and then of
course, the first product we produceddidn't do anything that we wanted it to
(27:15):
do, so we had to scrapthat and start all over again. And
entrepreneurs, Yeah, yeah, Weconvinced a bank to give us some money
and we went to our first tradeshow and worked it from the ile in
as they say, and the peoplethat paid for their boots don't particularly like
that. We had a gym bagof product, and we actually got whisked
into some pretty big boots there andpeople were looking at our stuff saying,
(27:37):
all right, this is pretty interesting, and we get some traction there.
And so then we morphed and madea different product and then started to sell,
and then we made another product andthat started to sell. And that
was my one of my classic CFOroles is, you know, I started
off as the guy that set upthe bookkeeping system because it was me,
Steve and Gordon, and then slowlyI backfilled, and I move up the
(28:00):
chain, and we hire people andI helped train them, and I move
up the chain until I move outof a job. And so it got
to the point where it grew theyneeded their own full time CFO, and
I helped them replace me, andof course I was still a founding shareholder,
so that did okay with me,and I wanted to see the company
succeed, and lo and behold,we were in it too. Our game
(28:22):
plan was, you know, wethink seven years and we'll right off into
the sunset, and seven years intoit, we thinking, you seven years
and we'll right off into the sunset. And then sun's still coming up though.
Took us more than seven years rightoff into the sunset. But yeah,
we finally half and all came alongand said, hey, we like
this technology and we want to buyyou guys. So they ended up buying
(28:45):
the company. All right, that'sgood timing right there. We're going to
take our second break right here.About another minute, we'll be back with
Jim Roach. You're listening to WinningBusiness Radio with Kevin Helena on W four
CY Radio. That's W four cydot com. Don't go away. More
helpful information is coming right up righthere on Winning Business Radio. The yp
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dot com website is your local searchengine. If you're looking for a good
restaurant, it can help you findthe right one nearby with ratings and reviews.
Or if your car breaks down,you can use the YP app to
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(29:33):
looking for something, YP local searchcan help you find it. So go
to YP dot com or download theapp to search local, find local,
and save local and Now back toWinning Business Radio with Kevin Helenan presenting exciting
topics and expert guests with one goalin mind to help you succeed in business.
(29:55):
Here once again is Kevin Helen Yeah, welcome back with Jim Roach.
He is the founder, he's theCPA MBA founder and principle of Robust Alternatives
and my CFO Jim. Before wemove on to Robust Alternatives and a deeper
(30:17):
dive there, what was your mostimportant lesson learned? Probably a lot of
them, but something that sticks outon your mind from ardent concepts, that
whole experience. So I think themost important lesson there was understand That's where
I really understood that people outside theirlane don't understand what's outside their lane.
You know, we ended up atthe time, we had probably about fifteen
(30:38):
employees, and I said to oneof my co founders, I said,
geez, you know, we reallyneed to get a retirement plan in here.
And my co founder looked at meand says, what are you talking
about? This place is my retirementplan? So I see other people over
there, yeah, And so justyou know, I was so locked into
that interested and they were so lowinto their area of expertise, So yeah,
(31:03):
figuring out that, Yeah, peoplearen't always on the same page and
sometimes I have to bring them alongslowly. That's good, that's good.
All right, tell us about robustalternatives and we'll get there. But my
CFO also, Yeah, So rightnow my practice is probably well fifty percent
what I call traditional taxes, traditionalCPA taxes and financial statements and the other
(31:23):
fifty percent. And the part I'vereally been growing as of late is my
CFO where I'll jump in and bea CFO on a fractional basis, and
that has a huge range of projects, if you will. I've got one
client right now that I'm probably spendingten to twelve hours a week with and
probably will be for the next year, year and a half or so.
(31:45):
I've got other projects where I'll jumpin and put a budget in place at
the beginning of the year for acompany and then go away and maybe come
back quarterly and review budget versus actuals. And I've got other companies where I'll
set up their initial bookkeeping system andthey have either a spouse or a bookkeeper
that are going to operate that ona day to day basis, and I'll
(32:07):
come back and tweak it as neededbasis, so it really can be just
a small project based thing, orit can be a full deep dive into
completely realigning things. I have alot of companies that I show up to
where they'll have maybe even an accountingmanager level person in place, but that
(32:28):
person is spending ninety percent of thetime doing the lower level bookkeeping work.
And I'll look at that and puta proposal in place where we can replace
that person with a little bit ofmy time and some lower level clerks,
and they'll have more full time,full time people available to them at a
lower overall cost. And that seemsto make a whole lot of sense,
(32:50):
because that accounting manager can't scale upfor investor meetings or for bank presentations and
that sort of thing, and likeI said, they're spending ninety percent of
their time doing the wrong thing.One of the one of the things that
many of my companies haven't common isthey run what's called the EOS entrepreneurial operatings.
And one of their big things isyou know, right people in the
(33:12):
right seats and so in the andwhen I've described you know, you might
have a great person, but they'rejust in way too high a seat relative
to the needs of the company there, so so that that just doesn't make
sense. I mean, no faultof theirs. They don't have the skills
and the experience to be strategic right, to make forward making decisions versus forward
backward looking right exactly exactly the thing. And so yeah, so we'll replace
(33:37):
some of those. On the otherhand, you know, I'll end up
putting myself out of a job,and in some companies that are successful,
and that's kind of a win win, But then there's other companies that like
this one gentleman that I actually justsaw this weekend. I worked with him
for twenty five years. He atone point ended up owning three Golds gyms
(33:58):
franchises. And again he was kindof a project based thing. You know,
Hi'd or have a target that hewants to acquire and jump in into
a whole bunch of due diligence,would run some modeling, would get him
a new bank loan if that's needed, would set up the bookkeeping and help
train a new bookkeeper. That's whathe needed, and then I back off
until he decides now he's going todouble his footprint, and he gets into
(34:21):
a big building project and then Iback off, and then he blows his
budget and I got to jump backin and do some work. So yeah,
it's really can be project based foran extended period of time. And
like I said, it's been twentyfive years with this guy. He moved
down to West Palm Beach area abouteighteen months or so ago, and he's
got a new partner down there,and he's largely focusing on that partner's business.
(34:45):
So he finally found somebody local.But he's been in three different businesses
and he brought me along to eachof them. I'd help him buy in
and I'll help him sell on theway out and everything in between. Excellent
talk about your team. Yeah,so my team right now. So we
do have a bookkeeping division as well, So we have Diane is kind of
(35:05):
our office manager and our bookkeeper extraordinaire. She eight years ago was a retiring
school teacher. She has a Mathewteaching background, and she just needed to
get out of the teaching profession becauseof a whole lot of issues going on
in that industry these days. Andshe was very tended of eight years ago.
And now she's like the chief cupand battle washer she can pass off
(35:28):
work and know which of our bookkeepersare going to be able to handle it,
help them figure it out, flagus when there's issues that we need
the clients input on, and soshe's great with that side of the division.
We have one, two, wehave three. One is a work
at home mom bookkeeper, and she'strying to leave us, and I don't
(35:49):
want her to leave us because sheagain, she's not a bookkeeper, which
I didn't realize until she worked forme for about a year and a half,
because she is meticulous. She's justgot that mind that she's I'll let
go of this nickel and she'll findit. And come to find out,
she's a school adjustment counselor and heryoungest just turned six and he's in the
school system and she's trying to getback in there, and I don't want
(36:10):
to let her go. So ourwork from home a bookkeeper and she does
a couple of quick books online projectsfor so. So beyond that is myself
and a partner, uh and thenthere are two other tax specialists and and
that's that's the whole crew. Mypartner also has a payroll company which is
(36:31):
out and I still call it Oxford. But the town that Treehouse Brewing is
in Central Mass, Central Man,Yeah, by wester exactly, Central Mass,
up by the up by West.Yeah, that's uh. And are
there others that work with you onthe my c FO side or is that
(36:51):
the same team? So that's thesame team. Yeah, same team.
So who are your typical clients?So? So I do like inventory a
right, So I deal with manufacturers. I deal with distributors. I also
deal in construction, which isn't reallyinventory, but they're taking parts and making
different parts. So the whole accountingfunction is a little complicated. And that's
(37:13):
what I love, you know,that being set them all over the place.
I've got the guy that I mentionedthat had the three Golds gym franchises.
So so it's really everywhere in between. But if I had a dial
in, I would say, yeah, give me some inventory, give me
some construction. And that's where Ilove to play. So how does your
client know that they need you?Well, I mean at what stage?
(37:34):
You know, what, what's happening, what's going on? Yeah, So
so oftentimes they'll come to me whenthey realize they don't really understand their numbers,
they don't have a regular set ofreporting, which getting back and talking
about EOS, that's what I loveabout EOS is they have a weekly check
in and you kind of track numbersover time, and if you pick the
night right numbers to track, you'llkind of understand where your business is going.
(37:55):
Leading indicators talk about leading indicators exactlyexactly, and they're not always financial
either. You know, they canbe number of down hours on a machine,
which which can be a highlighted problem. So that's typically that that they
don't know where they're going or somethingnew is coming up. You know,
they try to buy a different business. And I had a new client come
(38:19):
to me that their bank was aboutto throw them out because they never revolved
their line of credit, like,well, I don't miss a payment.
Well that's not what a line ofcredit is for. That's more permanent financing
and need a loan for that.But so they don't understand that the difference
is there of permanent financing versus temporaryfinancing. And you know, the receivables
go out, the loan goes up, receivals paid, the loan goes down.
(38:42):
That's what a bank likes to see. And a lot of people have
the mentality that I haven't missed apayment. Well that's that's not exactly what
they're looking for. So so that'scertainly a cause for them to get me
involved. I've got a lot ofclients that grow out of the tax side
of things into the CMO side ofthings. You know, things are going
along swimmingly. Like I said,maybe they need a new loan. Maybe
(39:04):
they don't understand the way the banklooks at their debt service coverage ratios and
they think they're fat and happy.But while they just pulled out a big
distribution for the new boat that theywanted to buy, it didn't realize that's
going to impact the way the banklooks at them. So all those kinds
of things are reasons people want towant to engage me. So they're going
to acquire, they want to beacquired. They have growth plans, specific
(39:30):
instances like that where they need muchbetter what reporting story to tell exactly exactly.
So I had one client that theylaunched a business and for probably six
to nine months it was not profitable, and they had a bank loan involved.
They became profitable, and I'm lookingat the numbers and I'm thinking,
(39:50):
all right, we need to doublethis line of credit. And the owner
comes to me and says, allright, so we're profitable. Now we
can tell the banker to go poundsand right. No, what are you
talking about. We're building inventory,we're building receivables. No, we need
the bank now more than ever.And he just had no concept. And
so you know, as as youknow, Kevin Cash is king and you
tell the bank to pound sand justas you need a whole lot of money.
(40:14):
Yeah, that's gonna be a problem. That's gonna be a problem.
So geography doesn't matter so much foryou anymore. It doesn't. It doesn't.
Although I do like to be faceto face, you know, Like
I said, even though I'm toldI have a face for radio, I
think face to face, you know, there's something when you can go visit
and see exactly how things flow.But but it isn't a constraint, certainly
(40:37):
as it has been in the past. But I'm guessing most of your clients
are Massachusetts or New England. Yeah, yeah, it's so. When I
started this in earnest to my CFO, my girls were three or four,
and I was working for a companyin Natick that most of their clients were
well their biggest group of clients wasin Salt Lake City, and then they
(40:57):
had a bunch on the West coast, and I was jumping on a plane
weights often. And yeah, whenmy kids were little, I decided,
you know what, an hour anda half drive is the most I want
to do. And so yeah,I had some down in mash Pee,
I had some up in Seabrook,New Hampshire, and not a whole lot
out west, surprisingly enough. Butbut but yeah, that was kind of
my my croux. I didn't wantto be on airplanes. And now my
(41:20):
kids have grown and they're getting onairplanes, and here I am still.
I don't know how that happened.I was I travel more now the kids
are older, but I didn't wantto be a road warrior. I did
some travel, but not so muchthat it kept me away from stuff so
good. I was able to finda good balance there. What in your
mind makes a good client, Soso ideally the best client they have to
(41:44):
take advice. You know, ifI'm going to give you some advice,
and you don't have to take itall the time, you have to listen
to it, you have to understandit, and and you have to want
it, so so if they takeadvice. I actually have a checklist of
all new clients I look at,and the number one there is they gonna
be nice people. You know,life is just too short to be dealing
with people that are miserable all thetime, and it's just it's just not
(42:07):
what I want as so, soit's somebody who's nice, it's somebody who
takes advice. Is somebody really forme who's building a team? You know,
if I'm going to be your fractionalCFO, I mean you've got to
have a team in there. Youknow, if you're a solorepreneur, you
might be a great tax client ifyou're a higher earner and you need some
of the tax advice, but you'recertainly not that CFO. You're not growing
(42:28):
the team. You're trying to doa lifestyle business or you know, you're
you're you're fat and happy and itfigured out how to be a one man
show that gives you what you need. But if you're building a team and
if you're trying to go places withyour business, that's kind of where where
I want to be. So atypical engagement on the my CFO side looks
like what. So it typically startsoff as a project based thing and and
(42:52):
we figure out what somebody needs.So so right now I'm dealing with a
guy that they don't have much structurein their whole in toy. They need
different part numbers, they need kindof a nested system. They kind of
have one off part numbers all overthe place depending on what they buy,
and it's hard to control. Soso for them, I'm going in and
(43:13):
starting with this inventory project. Ican see that they've got a whole bunch
of other things that they need awhole lot of help with that they don't
even know they need a whole lotof help with. You know, this
is going to help them get controlof the gross profit that grows. Profit
is going to lead into the well, how can we plan future grows profit?
You know, how can we do? They don't even have a budget
in place for their business, whicha lot of I see a lot of
(43:36):
times that that, you know,your typical small business owner is just looking
at my beating last year. That'sgood, Well, you need a budget,
especially if you're going in different directions. You know, what did you
plan to do? Did you doit? If not? Why not?
Is you know, should we planto do that again next year. That's
what a budget drives drives for me. So I do a whole lot of
(43:57):
budgeting processes with my clients. Andthen, like I said, it can
either roll from there. They'll decideall right, we're good for now,
you know, we don't need youfor a while, and I'll go away
and still do the tax returns andstill be in touch with them and jump
back into the next project. Verycool, all right, I switch gears
a little bit. You spent elevenyears as a member of the finance committee
for your town' that's service right.Talk about that role and why you felt
(44:21):
it was important to do that.Yeah, Well, so at the time
they were looking for people and Ihad some financial abilities, so I decided,
hey, let me jump in there. And it was the first couple
of years were incredibly eye opening.You know, coming at it from a
business perspective, you can't do thatin a lot of cases. And I'll
tell you why, because you know, I'm looking at the town's got a
(44:43):
budget problem. With a business,your revenue trails off, well, demand
trails off. You let go ofsome people you know in a town,
and especially in Franklin. Our budget. We were lucky that for years over
forty percent of our budget came directlyfrom the state because we were growing in
the formulas they have all that kindof stuff, And so the state has
(45:05):
a slowdown, some of that revenuegoes away, but demand doesn't go away.
The same number of kids to educate, you get the same number of
ambulance calls. You probably have morepolice calls because you're in a recession and
guys get busy when things slow down. And it was just a total mind
shift for me that I had noidea how to look at this thing.
(45:25):
And then the second thing was Iheard from a lot of people that haven't
been involved in how can we beneeding more money? Look at all these
big houses that we're building. Andif you do the math there, you
know, let's say the average housein Franklin pays eight grand in real estate
taxes, and so let's talk abouta big house. Let's say they pay
twelve thousand dollars in real estate taxes. Well, they're a big house.
(45:47):
They probably have more than two kidsin there. But let's say they only
have two kids in there. Eachkid costs fourteen thousand dollars a year to
educate, So they're paying twelve grand. You got two kids at fourteen,
we're already losing money. And it'sjust mind And then you've got the you
know, the roads and the DPWand the police and the fire and so
(46:07):
it was. It was absolutely mindboggling. It was good because Franklin is
technically a city, and cities don'toften have finance committees. They're more of
a town type of thing. Andin a town, the finance committee gets
very involved in town meeting and actuallypresenting the finances, and people throw out
different proposals and you got to runand change things. In a city,
(46:27):
you have a town administrator. Andwe had this guy, Jeff Nutting for
all the years I was there,and he was here for probably twenty five
years, and he knew he knewstate law incredibly well, he knew finance
is pretty good, and he waskind of principal in starting the whole budget
process. I think the finance committeewas invaluable because there were a couple of
times he tried to pull a fastone on us and you know, throw
(46:50):
throw a bone with somebody that heneeded to throw a bone to, and
it just didn't make any financial sense, and so we called them on the
carpet a couple of times. Icalled them on the carpet a couple of
times, and it's it's one ofthose checks and balances in government that I
think is needed. And like yousaid, yeah it was service, and
yeah it was. It was alot of work at times. In six
of those eleven years I was chairof the committee, and there's there's a
(47:13):
whole lot of hard decisions to goin there from from a people standpoint as
well. So what it was,I'm sure I didn't make friends with everybody
in that role, but you know, it's my job to tell the truth
there, and that's that's what Ido. Well done. Who in the
viewing and listening audiences, Jim,should reach out to you and why?
Well, so, certainly I thinkpeople that are trying to get connected.
(47:36):
You know, I think you andI are involved in a networking group Provisors,
that has senior level advisors, andif you're looking to meet people in
that realm to help you grow yourbusiness, I mean, I think that's
that's key, which going back toas you mentioned, might be and I
d's I try to let all myclients know that. You know, I'm
connected with everybody, and so ifyou need something, you know, call
(47:59):
me first. And so I actuallyhad this little old lady call me.
She was going to her fiftieth classreunion, and the conversation was like this.
She called me up and says,Hey, I know you know everybody,
and you told me to call youfirst. So I'm looking for somebody
that does wine glass etching and somephotography for my fiftieth reunion. And I
knew both those people, and thetime lead time is too short for the
(48:21):
etching guy, but the photographer madesome money at her fiftieth nice reunion.
But that's how it works, rightYeah. And for me, I mean,
they're calling me when I don't havemy handout. I'm just trying to
do them a favor, and soit makes me more valuable from that perspective.
That's so so yeah, anybody thatwants to get connected and anybody that
needs your services too. Jim,thank you so much. I know you're
really busy. You made it throughthe most one of the busiest times of
(48:45):
yr year, so good for you. But I know you're busy. I
really appreciate the time. Fantastic thankyou for having me on Kevin you bet,
and thanks everybody for watching and listening. This is a show about business
and often business challenges. If you'vegot concerns about the growth of your company,
feel free to reach out to meon Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning Business
Radio. You can drop me anote. I always say. One of
my many email addresses is Kevin atWinning Business Radio dot com. We are
(49:08):
here every Monday. Stay tuned fornext week will be Monday, May sixth.
We'll do it all again. Untilthen, this is Kevin Helenan.
You've been listening to Winning Business Radiowith your host, Kevin Helenan. If
you missed any part of this episode, the podcast is available on Talk for
Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more informationand questions, go to Winning Business Radio
(49:34):
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(00:21):
FOURCY Radio. Churchill said, thosewho failed to learn from history are condemned
to repeat it. Kevin Helenan believesthat certainly applies to business. Welcome to
Winning Business Radio here at W fourCY Radio. That's W four cy dot
(00:45):
com and now your host, KevinHelenair. Thanks everybody for joining in today.
I'm Kevin Hallanan and welcome back toWinning Business TV and Radio. We're
on W four C dot com.We're streaming live on talkfor tv dot com
in addition to Facebook and that's atWinning Business Radio, and of course we're
(01:07):
available in podcasts after the live showon many other platforms including YouTube, iHeartRadio,
Spotify app well pretty much wherever youlisten to your favorite podcasts were there.
The mission of winning business radio andTV, as regular viewers and listeners
know, is to offer insights andadvice, really to help people avoid the
mistakes of others. Right. That'sto learn best practices, the how tos,
(01:30):
the what toos, the what nottos, to be challenged and certainly
and hopefully to be inspired by thesuccesses of others. But you know,
virtually every successful person that I've everhad a chance to talk to has had
some form of failure in their livesand careers. Right, So while we
all have to get our knees skinnedonce in a while, I'm driven to
keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so
(01:52):
we don't repeat it today. Myguest is Jim Roach, CPA and MBA
and founder and principle of Robust Alternatives. Here's Jim's bio in his thirty plus
years of professional experience, Jim,I just called you old. Jim Roach
has seen many companies that are successfulwithin their industry, great products and great
reputations. The founders are experts workingin their business. What he has also
(02:13):
observed however, is that far toomany of those founders and leaders can't seem
to find the time to work ontheir business. Jim understands that every hour
a business owner spends tracking their businessas an hour less spent growing and serving
their customers. Robust Alternatives consults ownersand managers to discern key performance indicators and
leading indicators for their specific business.When a system consistently captures, tracks,
(02:38):
and reports on financial and non financialmeasures, owners and managers simply refer to
a dashboard of activity and results todiscern the health and direction of current operations.
Growing profitable companies are constantly looking forcreative ways to finance expanded working capital
needs. Anticipating those needs and approachingthe bank at the idea time is more
(03:00):
art than science. Robust alternatives determineswhich lenders tend to lend to, which
industries and key items to lenders needto get a deal approved. Jim's a
CPA principle of robust alternatives assisting companiesin designing and often redesigning their financial functions
to discern, capture, and trackprogress on key matrices both financial and non
(03:21):
financial. Robust alternatives delivers exceptional valueas the chief financial officers, officer excuse
me for companies and a growth orturnaround wind down mode. Additionally, Jim
has been involved in high level taxplanning and preparation for the last twenty years,
where robust alternatives helped individuals and businessesminimize taxes to advanced planning and proper
structure. Jim's focus is on manufacturing, distribution, and service sector sectors where
(03:46):
he analyzes the interrelation between company andowner taxation. He received dis Bachelor of
Business Administration in Accounting from the USSfrom UMass Amherst and received as MBA from
Babson Graduate School Business. He foundedhis consulting and tax practice in ninety three.
Prior to that, he has experiencewith a local two partner CPA firm,
(04:08):
where experiences gained working side by sidewith a partner regional tax planning firm
focusing on clients ranging from high incomeindividuals to average American wagejourners and estate and
trust returns. Much time was spentfocusing on the tax impacts on business owners
and their families, and a nationalCPA firm where his focus was accounting and
business advisory services. Typical assignments rangefrom serving as a permanent part time CFO,
(04:31):
performing due diligence and acquisitions, implementinga strategic shift of a troubled company,
preventing an auction of fixed assets bythe secure lender while creating profitable operations.
He's a long standing member of theAmerican Institute for Certified Public Accountants and
the Massachusetts Society for Certified Public Accounants. He often delivers educational and entertaining speaking
engagements on subjects like taxation, workerretention, motivation, leadership development, growth
(04:57):
strategies, change management, planning,and goal achievement. And that's all the
time we have today, just kidding. Jim's married to Wendy. They have
twenty seven year old twin daughters,Chloe and Sabrina, a twenty four year
old son, Blaine, and theyresolve reside while in Franklin, mass Jim,
welcome to Winning Business Radio and TV. Thanks for being here. Great,
Thank you, Kevin. I appreciatethe opportunity. And yes, it
(05:17):
does make me sound old with allthose you and me, both you and
me, both brothers. All right, So first of all, let's get
the important stuff out of the way. Tell us about Wendy. Yeah,
so, so, Wendy is goingto be thirty five year anniversary in October,
right, stated three years before that, because you got to be sure.
She tells me not to state thosestats everybody, because she says it
(05:39):
makes her as well. And doesshe work? Does she does? She?
Does she? Or does she havea career? Yeah? Yeah,
she does so right now she worksat the National Seating and Mobility, which
is a national wheelchair company, andshe supports their number one sales guy who
will designed wheelchairs to to various peopleeverywhere. That's very cool. And tell
(06:03):
us about your kids. So thekids we've got. My daughter Sabrina is
an ICU Hot Surgical ICU nurse atthe Brigham Wow. Cool yep. My
daughter Chloe is a yoga instructor ofpersonal trainer and nutritionist. And my son
Blaine is looking for a job asan engineer a New York City or the
region my way, shameless plug.Tell us a little bit more about that,
(06:28):
maybe get lucky. So, soBlaine is a Northeastern grad. His
ideal job is a design engineer,but he's looking for some kind of engineering
that gets them close to New YorkCity. That's that's his key thing right
now. All right, So ifyou if you know of anybody who might
be looking for a gentleman like that, young guy like that. Jim's information
is coming across the crawl, andyou can reach out to me at kevinet
(06:49):
Winning Business Radio dot com. Maybewe get lucky, all right, tell
us about your background. You grewup in Foxboro, Massachusetts, home of
the Patriots, now home of thePatriots. You bet you, you bet
you so yes. I'm a productof public education Foxboro High it was a
great place to grow up. Weactually had a pretty big class relatively speaking.
There were three hundred and sixty fivekids in my graduating class from there.
(07:13):
It was a typical blue collar upbringingfrom my perspective. And I was
betwixting between whether I was this closeto going into the Air Force. He
was looking at truck driving school.I was looking at auto mechanics school,
and I figured U massy Amherst hada lot to offer, so I'd find
a major up there. And Iwent up as an undeclared major to U
mass Amherst. And it took metwo and a half years to actually get
(07:34):
a major. I was a secondsemester junior before they finally let me into
the School of Business, and myroommate was trying the same track and he
had to go what's called bachelor's degreewith individual concentration, so he got an
accounting slash finance degree out of theCollege of Arts and Sciences. I got
into the School of Business. Hisfirst semester was a little less stellar than
(07:55):
mine, so I think I madethe cut there and he did. Eisenberg.
That's a good school. Eisenberg wasa very good school. And yeah,
that was as you know, it'sa city up there, and it's
quite a big school. And then, of course my graduate work was at
Babson, which was a complete threesixty and of course I had to go
(08:15):
my first semester at Babson, Iwas trying to wave out of a class,
so I had to go talk tothe burs or the registrar or somebody.
And my vision was, you mass, You're in a line for an
hour and a half, tons ofother people. And I get there and
the burser comes out and says,oh, come into my office, and
I sat down in a chair nextto the desk and had a regular conversation,
which is I guess thirty grand ayear versus public school, it says
(08:37):
that's all thirty grand back then,but back then, yeah, back then.
So what were your early interests andwhat made you choose accounting? So
so so it was actually I hada bookkeeping teacher in high school, Missus
Triacas. She was the typing teacherfirst back when there was actually typewriters,
and she also taught bookkeeping, andso that just kind of clicked for me,
(09:03):
and I said, you know,I understand that, and it made
sense. And then, like Isaid, I got up to UMass and
I wasn't sure where I was going, and I said, you know,
that bookkeeping kind of enthralled me,and I jumped in my first accounting class
up there, and again it justkind of clicked. So I started down
that path. And then I quicklyrealized, well, you know, they
say accounting is the language of business, and so if you understand accounting,
(09:26):
you can jump into different businesses.And so I quickly got my mind set
on taking the CPA track because Isaw it as an opportunity to jump into
a bunch of different industries as opposedto get pigeonholed into one industry and kind
of, you know, living yourcareer there. So it was a unique
opportunity to see, you know,what people in different industries measure and how
(09:48):
that can impact crossing industries, etcetera. So that that was exciting for
me. That's cool. When didyou know so right away CPA? My
question was when did you know youwanted to be in PubL accounting? Did
you know what that meant? Yeah? Yeah, So I didn't know what
that meant, and it turned outto be exactly what I thought it meant.
(10:09):
So it was a chance to lookat some taxes and like I said,
a chance to look at a wholebunch of different industries. And so
I was in the CPA world forI think it was about four and a
half years, and then I jumpedship and went to this private company.
And it was interesting there because thatwas my first view of the opportunity of
a fractional CFO, which I didn'tknow it was called that then, But
(10:31):
I just saw these two guys thatwere running this business for thirty years and
had absolutely no systems in place.Wow. I mean one of my first
conversations was who's your top ten customers? And they couldn't produce a piece of
paper that showed me the top tencustomers, and they knew off the top
of the heads number one, twoor three, but they couldn't produce a
document that showed me who their customerswere. The seventy year old. So
(10:56):
there were two guys there. Onewas the engineer, one was the accounting
function, and the seventy two yearold accounting guy was involved in reconciling the
bank statement every month. And theseguys made money for thirty years, and
I just think, geez, howmuch better would they have done if they
had some numbers to guide them alongthe way. And so that's kind of
(11:16):
where that kind of gelled and tookplace there. And during that time I
also went back and got my graduatedegree while I was working as well,
so knights at Babson, And thatwas an invaluable experience because for a couple
of reasons. One, you're workingwith people I was. I was about
by the time I graduated, Iwas ten years of experience. But you're
(11:37):
at school during the day learning theory, and then you can go I'm sorry,
at school a night learning theory,and you can go back during the
day and practice that at the officeif you will, and figure out,
you know, what's real and what'swhat's just theoretical? So it was,
and you're working with a bunch ofother folks that are in the same spot
that you know, you're on aproject with somebody, and there the different
(12:00):
industry and they're working full time aswell. So it's there was an entrepreneurial
focus on that grad degree as well, right you it was it was yep,
yep, it was. He wasentrepreneurial and entrepreneurial and entrepreneurial finance.
So I took a lot of entrepreneurshipcourses and there was some great professors there.
And again even the professors, alot of them were adjunct professors that
were running up business during the day, and some of them were full time
(12:24):
professors that cashed out of their businessand so so it was great that a
lot of them had contacts and broughtin people that were going through issues.
I remember this one guy. Onecourse that was in was an entrepreneurial finance
course, and the guy's name wasMendez, and so it was Mondays and
about Mendez. And so first hecame in and spoke to us about all
the crappy was going through and hehad people chasing him because he was in
(12:46):
debt here because this financing deal fellthrough and uh. And so after he
spoke to us every Monday, theprofessor would give us an update on Okay,
now the sheriff is now the deceaseand desist on that. But it
was it was quite interesting that you'relooking at real lifestyle. Yeah, so
you've had experience at small companies andlarge companies. I love your description of
(13:09):
if I say this correctly, Leavehaland horwont yep yep. Labnthal and Horoat
was the number nine back when theywere a big eight back then. And
yeah, so that that was thenational experience, and it was it was
unique in that most of the bigfirms, you're either a tax person or
you're an accounting person. And theyhad what they called their small Business Advisory
(13:31):
Department, which kept both under thatsame umbrella. My background before that,
I was at a two person CPAfirm. Then I was at a regional
tax planning firm, and so Ihad a lot of good tax knowledge and
to go the accounting route didn't makesense, but I liked accounting, so
to blend the two of them.Labathal was perfect for that because you were
doing both the corporate tax returns andthe individual tax returns. And certainly if
(13:54):
there's a flow through it to belike an escort for an LLC where the
owner's taxes are impact by the business, it makes a whole lot of sense
to keep them together. And that'swhat labonbal did. But it was it
was great because to go there andsee some of the resources that a national
firm has, and you know,the research departments and all that other kind
of stuff, it was it wasa great experience. All right, we're
(14:16):
gonna pause right here. We're gonnatake our first break. It's about a
minute. We'll be right back withJim Roach. You're listening to Winning Business
Radio with Kevin Helene on W fourCY Radio. That's W four cy dot
com. Don't go away. Morehelpful information is coming right up right here
on Winning Business Radio. Have youever dreamt of being on the radio,
(14:43):
Well, now it's your chance bea radio show guest on the number one
ranked internet radio station and promote youand your business for free. Yes you
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Call five six to one five zerosix four zero three to one now to
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(15:05):
four zero three one. Get yourfree advertising now and now back to Winning
Business Radio with Kevin helenan presenting excitingtopics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helena.
(15:35):
We're back with Jim Roach, founderand CEO president all Things you Know,
All Things Bossy of Robust Alternatives.What drove your decision to get the NBA?
What drove my decision to get theNBA. I mean, I really
liked Babson and I really liked entrepreneurship, So I think it was more it
(15:58):
was more of the drive to BAPSthan it was for the NBA. You
know, I small businesses and growingsmall businesses and trying to figure out how
to fund small businesses. That waskind of all my background and Babson was
a perfect fit for that, andso I think it was more about Babson
than it was the degree. AndI want you to tell folks with this
being's finalists for the Douglas Prize,given to the top three graduate business plans
(16:22):
produced at BABS and during an academicyear, and tell us a little bit
about the business plan. Noh,yeah, so that was there's a course
called Entrepreneurship and the whole focus ofthe course is to write a business plan,
and so it's a group of project. And so there were four people
in our group, one of whichyou may know Kevin. A woman named
Lisa Leveck who is a group leaderof a provider's affinity group these days.
(16:48):
Lisa and I were in that grouptogether, and actually I lost touch with
her for probably ten years, andwe ran into each other at a different
networking event. But anyways, sothe whole thing is you're submitting this this
it's it's a class project, andall of the instructors get together and they
grade these plans not just for yourclass grade, but to go into what
(17:10):
they call the Douglas Prize. Sothere was a guy Douglas who promotes this,
who funded this prize, and soall the graduate plans go in there,
and then there are I forget howmany finalists there were, but we'll
say there was a half a dozen. My wife as like exaggerate, so
let's say that was twenty and wewere one hundreds, hundreds, hundreds,
so so so it is everybody thatrode a business plan that year. But
(17:34):
then there's there's X number that getto present before a board of investors or
whatnot, and and we made thefinal cut there and our presentation ended up
being the top so the third prizethere, and the feedback we got afterwards
was it would have been better exceptwe didn't say we were going to take
over the world and roll this thingacross the universe and yeah, yeah,
(17:59):
so it was a whole lot offun. It was quite a stressful project,
so as as we see in manyof our business projects. You know,
you get to eighty five percent ofyour of your time allotment and you've
only got twenty percent of the workdone. You're like, oh, how
is this going to come together?And then magically at the end it all
comes together. And apparently we hada pretty good plan because yeah, we
(18:22):
ended up getting I believe it wasthree thousand I think it was ten to
five and three one thousand dollars forplan. Yeah, and well I have
it actually right here, this lovelylittle clock as well as Douglas Prize on
the front there. But cool.Yeah, yes, that was nineteen ninety
five and its still sitting right thereon the shelf. Because it's kind of
a cool thing. Love it all. Right, So in ninety three,
(18:45):
you are currently working. You foundedRobust Alternatives and my CFO while you're working
full time. Did I get thatright? Yeah? Yeah, And my
CFO part came a little bit later, but yeah, okay, So tell
us about Robust Alternatives and what wasbehind the founding of that organization. And
(19:06):
as I said, you did itwhile you were working elsewhere. Yeah,
yeah, So I was working elsewhere. I was. I was working in
the company with the two gentlemen thatworked at thirty years and we're trying to
sell the company, and so,like I said, that was kind of
the genesis. But it really startedout as tax and business advisory so as
to not obviously compete with my currentemployer. So I was doing some tax
(19:26):
returns at night for business owners primarily, although business owners come along with a
couple of owners and sometimes a motheras well and maybe a daughter. Right,
So yeah, I started doing sometax returns because I had a whole
lot of good tax experience and Iwasn't in a tax firm anymore, so
it seemed like a natural fit there. And then, like I said,
(19:48):
this one company I was at theseguys, after me being there and putting
some systems in place for them,decided that they were going to try to
sell the company. And me andthe guy that I work for, who
was technically the accounting manager, buthe was more like an operations guy.
He really didn't know any accounting atall. He was a finance background.
He was a shop guy. Sohe and I decided, Hey, let's
(20:11):
put a bid in and try tobuy this company. And so actually back
up, so the company was approachedby a Nasdaq traded It was an adhesive
manufacturing company, and so there wasa company locktight down in Connecticut that was
interested in us, and they wentdown the path doing the due diligence and
trying to buy us, and thenthey had a reorg and so they prolled
(20:33):
everything off the table and stopped doingany acquisitions. And then me and like
I said, my boss, decided, let's try to put this thing together.
And we ended up getting Bank Bostonto give us a subordinated loan,
and we were looking for a seniorlender and some other money. And the
general manager, who was both ofour bosses at the time, was trying
to do the deal himself, andhe ended up doing the deal before we
(20:56):
did and made it clear he didn'twant to play with us. So it
was a whole lot of good experience. But like I said, that was
kind of the genesis of these guysran this company for thirty years with no
information. Let's see what we're outthere about. Getting some part time CFO
help into these companies on a fractionalbasis. That's kind of the genesis of
(21:18):
my CFO side of you know,robust alternatives, like I said, started
out more as a tax planning andbusiness advisory and morphed into the CFO.
Also during that time, you becamean associate excuse me, assistant director for
B and I Business Network International,heavily involved in networking to grow business through
word of mouth. Describe that describeB and I for those that aren't familiar,
(21:41):
and that assistant director role. Yeah, So B and I was a
great spot for businesses to meet otherbusinesses, get referrals. Their whole tagline
was no like and trust. Soof course you're going to know somebody if
you're going to give them some business, and you're gonna like them if you're
going to give them business. Andonce you get that trust, thing going
and you hear feedback from other people, it kind of really takes off.
(22:03):
So at the time, the womanthat owned the franchise in the region,
it was relatively small and there wasprobably only maybe a dozen assistant directors on
the team, and it grew tremendouslyfrom there. So at the at the
zenith, I had seven groups thatI was overseeing just as a very part
time thing, and so it waskind of crazy. But there are groups
(22:27):
that get together once a week andlike I said, they get to know
like and trust each other. Theygive a little commercial every week and they
passed business between each other, orthey listen for other people that made need
businesses. And so for me itwas it was great as a as a
as a CPA at the time,I really had my tax practice more than
(22:47):
the cfo's thing going in there,and everybody needs a CPA, everybody that's
getting in the business and business tobusiness was my focus, and so it
was a great spot for a meto get business and then b for me
to meet other people like yourself.You know, I might have clients that
need help with their sales department andI don't do any of that stuff.
And if I know somebody that doesit, and we're both talking to the
(23:10):
same prospects. It makes a wholelot of sense for B and I to
do that. And it was agreat business model because they didn't have any
salespeople. The people in the chapterwere the salespeople. I'll look around and
I'll say, all right, Ineed a good lawyer, I need a
good sales consultant, I need agood HR And I go out and find
those people, convince them to jointo give B and I money, which
eventually gives me money. So it'sit was a great model because it's very
(23:33):
circular in nations circuits and so soyeah, it worked great. And I
was on the regional team the wayI said, working for the woman that
owns the owned if she's sold out, but owned the franchise for about six
and a half years, and Imet a boatload of people, and I
got some good exposure myself, andit taught me a whole lot about speaking
(23:56):
professionally and presentation skills as well asnetworking skills. And that's where you and
I met originally. That's where wemet originally, exactly exactly, Yeah,
And because of that, I gotout to Chambers and you were pretty big
in the Norwood Chamber at the time. Yeah, it got me some great
exposure and invaluable experience. So youalso co founded a company as cfo amfonol
(24:21):
Ardent Concepts. You were there forI think you're LinkedIn showed about fifteen years.
Tell us about that company and whatthat process of starting that company look
like. Yeah, absolutely, soit was called and it was called the
Ardent Concepts at the time, andAnfanol the Sense bought them out. But
yeah, we started this company.It was the main guy. My favorite
(24:41):
type of company. You get anengineer and you get a salesperson together,
and if they started a company,they need me. They need those two
guys know how to spend money anddon't know how to track it and how
to control it. And so that'sexactly what happened. So there was the
two guys there. Gordon was theengineer, Steve was the sales guy.
(25:03):
Steve actually side note went to NortheasternBusiness School and me, Gordon and Steve
did a business plan competition there andI think he came in fourth or so
there with his business plan. Sothat was a completely different business. Wharton
was a crazy engineer, that hasI don't know, ninety seven patents to
his name these days, everything fromhe had a buddy in high school that
(25:25):
was, I believe, a quadriplegic, and so he developed this wheelchair that
had a racket system so the guycould recline and he can sit back up
again. And that was his firstpatent. And the company that we did
the business plan for was a dentalflossing device that we almost sold to Gortech,
which makes the glide floss, butthen nine to eleven hit just about
(25:49):
then and they were anything so that. But so then Gordon went out to
California and got into the semiconductor industryout there, and he's literally tinkering in
his basement. Came up with hiswire that had some properties, electrical properties
that was needed in the industry.And you know, this is a good
part about being an account I cantalk about what this guy's talking about,
(26:12):
but I have no idea if I'mmaking any sense. But I can count
the number of pins that we produceand tell you how much they cous.
So he came up with this wirethat he thought was the best things in
sliced bread, and so he gota patent on that and he decided to
move back to the East coast herebecause Steve and I were on the East
(26:32):
coast and we launched this company andwe were in a one room office and
it was a manufacturer. And sowe had this cycle tester, which is
basically this thing that goes to allday long to test how many revolutions you
can get out of this pin.So that's running in the corner over there,
(26:52):
and Steve's in the corner over heretrying to make sales calls with this
thing. In a way, wehad an air compressor down there. It
was a nightmare that we convinced thelandlord to let us put the air compression
of down in the basement, butwe had to run the hose out the
window and around the fun It's yourclassic entrepreneurial company and so and then of
course, the first product we produceddidn't do anything that we wanted it to
(27:15):
do, so we had to scrapthat and start all over again. And
entrepreneurs, Yeah, yeah, Weconvinced a bank to give us some money
and we went to our first tradeshow and worked it from the ile in
as they say, and the peoplethat paid for their boots don't particularly like
that. We had a gym bagof product, and we actually got whisked
into some pretty big boots there andpeople were looking at our stuff saying,
(27:37):
all right, this is pretty interesting, and we get some traction there.
And so then we morphed and madea different product and then started to sell,
and then we made another product andthat started to sell. And that
was my one of my classic CFOroles is, you know, I started
off as the guy that set upthe bookkeeping system because it was me,
Steve and Gordon, and then slowlyI backfilled, and I move up the
(28:00):
chain, and we hire people andI helped train them, and I move
up the chain until I move outof a job. And so it got
to the point where it grew theyneeded their own full time CFO, and
I helped them replace me, andof course I was still a founding shareholder,
so that did okay with me,and I wanted to see the company
succeed, and lo and behold,we were in it too. Our game
(28:22):
plan was, you know, wethink seven years and we'll right off into
the sunset, and seven years intoit, we thinking, you seven years
and we'll right off into the sunset. And then sun's still coming up though.
Took us more than seven years rightoff into the sunset. But yeah,
we finally half and all came alongand said, hey, we like
this technology and we want to buyyou guys. So they ended up buying
(28:45):
the company. All right, that'sgood timing right there. We're going to
take our second break right here.About another minute, we'll be back with
Jim Roach. You're listening to WinningBusiness Radio with Kevin Helena on W four
CY Radio. That's W four cydot com. Don't go away. More
helpful information is coming right up righthere on Winning Business Radio. The yp
(29:11):
dot com website is your local searchengine. If you're looking for a good
restaurant, it can help you findthe right one nearby with ratings and reviews.
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(29:33):
looking for something, YP local searchcan help you find it. So go
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and save local and Now back toWinning Business Radio with Kevin Helenan presenting exciting
topics and expert guests with one goalin mind to help you succeed in business.
(29:55):
Here once again is Kevin Helen Yeah, welcome back with Jim Roach.
He is the founder, he's theCPA MBA founder and principle of Robust Alternatives
and my CFO Jim. Before wemove on to Robust Alternatives and a deeper
(30:17):
dive there, what was your mostimportant lesson learned? Probably a lot of
them, but something that sticks outon your mind from ardent concepts, that
whole experience. So I think themost important lesson there was understand That's where
I really understood that people outside theirlane don't understand what's outside their lane.
You know, we ended up atthe time, we had probably about fifteen
(30:38):
employees, and I said to oneof my co founders, I said,
geez, you know, we reallyneed to get a retirement plan in here.
And my co founder looked at meand says, what are you talking
about? This place is my retirementplan? So I see other people over
there, yeah, And so justyou know, I was so locked into
that interested and they were so lowinto their area of expertise, So yeah,
(31:03):
figuring out that, Yeah, peoplearen't always on the same page and
sometimes I have to bring them alongslowly. That's good, that's good.
All right, tell us about robustalternatives and we'll get there. But my
CFO also, Yeah, So rightnow my practice is probably well fifty percent
what I call traditional taxes, traditionalCPA taxes and financial statements and the other
(31:23):
fifty percent. And the part I'vereally been growing as of late is my
CFO where I'll jump in and bea CFO on a fractional basis, and
that has a huge range of projects, if you will. I've got one
client right now that I'm probably spendingten to twelve hours a week with and
probably will be for the next year, year and a half or so.
(31:45):
I've got other projects where I'll jumpin and put a budget in place at
the beginning of the year for acompany and then go away and maybe come
back quarterly and review budget versus actuals. And I've got other companies where I'll
set up their initial bookkeeping system andthey have either a spouse or a bookkeeper
that are going to operate that ona day to day basis, and I'll
(32:07):
come back and tweak it as neededbasis, so it really can be just
a small project based thing, orit can be a full deep dive into
completely realigning things. I have alot of companies that I show up to
where they'll have maybe even an accountingmanager level person in place, but that
(32:28):
person is spending ninety percent of thetime doing the lower level bookkeeping work.
And I'll look at that and puta proposal in place where we can replace
that person with a little bit ofmy time and some lower level clerks,
and they'll have more full time,full time people available to them at a
lower overall cost. And that seemsto make a whole lot of sense,
(32:50):
because that accounting manager can't scale upfor investor meetings or for bank presentations and
that sort of thing, and likeI said, they're spending ninety percent of
their time doing the wrong thing.One of the one of the things that
many of my companies haven't common isthey run what's called the EOS entrepreneurial operatings.
And one of their big things isyou know, right people in the
(33:12):
right seats and so in the andwhen I've described you know, you might
have a great person, but they'rejust in way too high a seat relative
to the needs of the company there, so so that that just doesn't make
sense. I mean, no faultof theirs. They don't have the skills
and the experience to be strategic right, to make forward making decisions versus forward
backward looking right exactly exactly the thing. And so yeah, so we'll replace
(33:37):
some of those. On the otherhand, you know, I'll end up
putting myself out of a job,and in some companies that are successful,
and that's kind of a win win, But then there's other companies that like
this one gentleman that I actually justsaw this weekend. I worked with him
for twenty five years. He atone point ended up owning three Golds gyms
(33:58):
franchises. And again he was kindof a project based thing. You know,
Hi'd or have a target that hewants to acquire and jump in into
a whole bunch of due diligence,would run some modeling, would get him
a new bank loan if that's needed, would set up the bookkeeping and help
train a new bookkeeper. That's whathe needed, and then I back off
until he decides now he's going todouble his footprint, and he gets into
(34:21):
a big building project and then Iback off, and then he blows his
budget and I got to jump backin and do some work. So yeah,
it's really can be project based foran extended period of time. And
like I said, it's been twentyfive years with this guy. He moved
down to West Palm Beach area abouteighteen months or so ago, and he's
got a new partner down there,and he's largely focusing on that partner's business.
(34:45):
So he finally found somebody local.But he's been in three different businesses
and he brought me along to eachof them. I'd help him buy in
and I'll help him sell on theway out and everything in between. Excellent
talk about your team. Yeah,so my team right now. So we
do have a bookkeeping division as well, So we have Diane is kind of
(35:05):
our office manager and our bookkeeper extraordinaire. She eight years ago was a retiring
school teacher. She has a Mathewteaching background, and she just needed to
get out of the teaching profession becauseof a whole lot of issues going on
in that industry these days. Andshe was very tended of eight years ago.
And now she's like the chief cupand battle washer she can pass off
(35:28):
work and know which of our bookkeepersare going to be able to handle it,
help them figure it out, flagus when there's issues that we need
the clients input on, and soshe's great with that side of the division.
We have one, two, wehave three. One is a work
at home mom bookkeeper, and she'strying to leave us, and I don't
(35:49):
want her to leave us because sheagain, she's not a bookkeeper, which
I didn't realize until she worked forme for about a year and a half,
because she is meticulous. She's justgot that mind that she's I'll let
go of this nickel and she'll findit. And come to find out,
she's a school adjustment counselor and heryoungest just turned six and he's in the
school system and she's trying to getback in there, and I don't want
(36:10):
to let her go. So ourwork from home a bookkeeper and she does
a couple of quick books online projectsfor so. So beyond that is myself
and a partner, uh and thenthere are two other tax specialists and and
that's that's the whole crew. Mypartner also has a payroll company which is
(36:31):
out and I still call it Oxford. But the town that Treehouse Brewing is
in Central Mass, Central Man,Yeah, by wester exactly, Central Mass,
up by the up by West.Yeah, that's uh. And are
there others that work with you onthe my c FO side or is that
(36:51):
the same team? So that's thesame team. Yeah, same team.
So who are your typical clients?So? So I do like inventory a
right, So I deal with manufacturers. I deal with distributors. I also
deal in construction, which isn't reallyinventory, but they're taking parts and making
different parts. So the whole accountingfunction is a little complicated. And that's
(37:13):
what I love, you know,that being set them all over the place.
I've got the guy that I mentionedthat had the three Golds gym franchises.
So so it's really everywhere in between. But if I had a dial
in, I would say, yeah, give me some inventory, give me
some construction. And that's where Ilove to play. So how does your
client know that they need you?Well, I mean at what stage?
(37:34):
You know, what, what's happening, what's going on? Yeah, So
so oftentimes they'll come to me whenthey realize they don't really understand their numbers,
they don't have a regular set ofreporting, which getting back and talking
about EOS, that's what I loveabout EOS is they have a weekly check
in and you kind of track numbersover time, and if you pick the
night right numbers to track, you'llkind of understand where your business is going.
(37:55):
Leading indicators talk about leading indicators exactlyexactly, and they're not always financial
either. You know, they canbe number of down hours on a machine,
which which can be a highlighted problem. So that's typically that that they
don't know where they're going or somethingnew is coming up. You know,
they try to buy a different business. And I had a new client come
(38:19):
to me that their bank was aboutto throw them out because they never revolved
their line of credit, like,well, I don't miss a payment.
Well that's not what a line ofcredit is for. That's more permanent financing
and need a loan for that.But so they don't understand that the difference
is there of permanent financing versus temporaryfinancing. And you know, the receivables
go out, the loan goes up, receivals paid, the loan goes down.
(38:42):
That's what a bank likes to see. And a lot of people have
the mentality that I haven't missed apayment. Well that's that's not exactly what
they're looking for. So so that'scertainly a cause for them to get me
involved. I've got a lot ofclients that grow out of the tax side
of things into the CMO side ofthings. You know, things are going
along swimmingly. Like I said,maybe they need a new loan. Maybe
(39:04):
they don't understand the way the banklooks at their debt service coverage ratios and
they think they're fat and happy.But while they just pulled out a big
distribution for the new boat that theywanted to buy, it didn't realize that's
going to impact the way the banklooks at them. So all those kinds
of things are reasons people want towant to engage me. So they're going
to acquire, they want to beacquired. They have growth plans, specific
(39:30):
instances like that where they need muchbetter what reporting story to tell exactly exactly.
So I had one client that theylaunched a business and for probably six
to nine months it was not profitable, and they had a bank loan involved.
They became profitable, and I'm lookingat the numbers and I'm thinking,
(39:50):
all right, we need to doublethis line of credit. And the owner
comes to me and says, allright, so we're profitable. Now we
can tell the banker to go poundsand right. No, what are you
talking about. We're building inventory,we're building receivables. No, we need
the bank now more than ever.And he just had no concept. And
so you know, as as youknow, Kevin Cash is king and you
tell the bank to pound sand justas you need a whole lot of money.
(40:14):
Yeah, that's gonna be a problem. That's gonna be a problem.
So geography doesn't matter so much foryou anymore. It doesn't. It doesn't.
Although I do like to be faceto face, you know, Like
I said, even though I'm toldI have a face for radio, I
think face to face, you know, there's something when you can go visit
and see exactly how things flow.But but it isn't a constraint, certainly
(40:37):
as it has been in the past. But I'm guessing most of your clients
are Massachusetts or New England. Yeah, yeah, it's so. When I
started this in earnest to my CFO, my girls were three or four,
and I was working for a companyin Natick that most of their clients were
well their biggest group of clients wasin Salt Lake City, and then they
(40:57):
had a bunch on the West coast, and I was jumping on a plane
weights often. And yeah, whenmy kids were little, I decided,
you know what, an hour anda half drive is the most I want
to do. And so yeah,I had some down in mash Pee,
I had some up in Seabrook,New Hampshire, and not a whole lot
out west, surprisingly enough. Butbut but yeah, that was kind of
my my croux. I didn't wantto be on airplanes. And now my
(41:20):
kids have grown and they're getting onairplanes, and here I am still.
I don't know how that happened.I was I travel more now the kids
are older, but I didn't wantto be a road warrior. I did
some travel, but not so muchthat it kept me away from stuff so
good. I was able to finda good balance there. What in your
mind makes a good client, Soso ideally the best client they have to
(41:44):
take advice. You know, ifI'm going to give you some advice,
and you don't have to take itall the time, you have to listen
to it, you have to understandit, and and you have to want
it, so so if they takeadvice. I actually have a checklist of
all new clients I look at,and the number one there is they gonna
be nice people. You know,life is just too short to be dealing
with people that are miserable all thetime, and it's just it's just not
(42:07):
what I want as so, soit's somebody who's nice, it's somebody who
takes advice. Is somebody really forme who's building a team? You know,
if I'm going to be your fractionalCFO, I mean you've got to
have a team in there. Youknow, if you're a solorepreneur, you
might be a great tax client ifyou're a higher earner and you need some
of the tax advice, but you'recertainly not that CFO. You're not growing
(42:28):
the team. You're trying to doa lifestyle business or you know, you're
you're you're fat and happy and itfigured out how to be a one man
show that gives you what you need. But if you're building a team and
if you're trying to go places withyour business, that's kind of where where
I want to be. So atypical engagement on the my CFO side looks
like what. So it typically startsoff as a project based thing and and
(42:52):
we figure out what somebody needs.So so right now I'm dealing with a
guy that they don't have much structurein their whole in toy. They need
different part numbers, they need kindof a nested system. They kind of
have one off part numbers all overthe place depending on what they buy,
and it's hard to control. Soso for them, I'm going in and
(43:13):
starting with this inventory project. Ican see that they've got a whole bunch
of other things that they need awhole lot of help with that they don't
even know they need a whole lotof help with. You know, this
is going to help them get controlof the gross profit that grows. Profit
is going to lead into the well, how can we plan future grows profit?
You know, how can we do? They don't even have a budget
in place for their business, whicha lot of I see a lot of
(43:36):
times that that, you know,your typical small business owner is just looking
at my beating last year. That'sgood, Well, you need a budget,
especially if you're going in different directions. You know, what did you
plan to do? Did you doit? If not? Why not?
Is you know, should we planto do that again next year. That's
what a budget drives drives for me. So I do a whole lot of
(43:57):
budgeting processes with my clients. Andthen, like I said, it can
either roll from there. They'll decideall right, we're good for now,
you know, we don't need youfor a while, and I'll go away
and still do the tax returns andstill be in touch with them and jump
back into the next project. Verycool, all right, I switch gears
a little bit. You spent elevenyears as a member of the finance committee
for your town' that's service right.Talk about that role and why you felt
(44:21):
it was important to do that.Yeah, Well, so at the time
they were looking for people and Ihad some financial abilities, so I decided,
hey, let me jump in there. And it was the first couple
of years were incredibly eye opening.You know, coming at it from a
business perspective, you can't do thatin a lot of cases. And I'll
tell you why, because you know, I'm looking at the town's got a
(44:43):
budget problem. With a business,your revenue trails off, well, demand
trails off. You let go ofsome people you know in a town,
and especially in Franklin. Our budget. We were lucky that for years over
forty percent of our budget came directlyfrom the state because we were growing in
the formulas they have all that kindof stuff, And so the state has
(45:05):
a slowdown, some of that revenuegoes away, but demand doesn't go away.
The same number of kids to educate, you get the same number of
ambulance calls. You probably have morepolice calls because you're in a recession and
guys get busy when things slow down. And it was just a total mind
shift for me that I had noidea how to look at this thing.
(45:25):
And then the second thing was Iheard from a lot of people that haven't
been involved in how can we beneeding more money? Look at all these
big houses that we're building. Andif you do the math there, you
know, let's say the average housein Franklin pays eight grand in real estate
taxes, and so let's talk abouta big house. Let's say they pay
twelve thousand dollars in real estate taxes. Well, they're a big house.
(45:47):
They probably have more than two kidsin there. But let's say they only
have two kids in there. Eachkid costs fourteen thousand dollars a year to
educate, So they're paying twelve grand. You got two kids at fourteen,
we're already losing money. And it'sjust mind And then you've got the you
know, the roads and the DPWand the police and the fire and so
(46:07):
it was. It was absolutely mindboggling. It was good because Franklin is
technically a city, and cities don'toften have finance committees. They're more of
a town type of thing. Andin a town, the finance committee gets
very involved in town meeting and actuallypresenting the finances, and people throw out
different proposals and you got to runand change things. In a city,
(46:27):
you have a town administrator. Andwe had this guy, Jeff Nutting for
all the years I was there,and he was here for probably twenty five
years, and he knew he knewstate law incredibly well, he knew finance
is pretty good, and he waskind of principal in starting the whole budget
process. I think the finance committeewas invaluable because there were a couple of
times he tried to pull a fastone on us and you know, throw
(46:50):
throw a bone with somebody that heneeded to throw a bone to, and
it just didn't make any financial sense, and so we called them on the
carpet a couple of times. Icalled them on the carpet a couple of
times, and it's it's one ofthose checks and balances in government that I
think is needed. And like yousaid, yeah it was service, and
yeah it was. It was alot of work at times. In six
of those eleven years I was chairof the committee, and there's there's a
(47:13):
whole lot of hard decisions to goin there from from a people standpoint as
well. So what it was,I'm sure I didn't make friends with everybody
in that role, but you know, it's my job to tell the truth
there, and that's that's what Ido. Well done. Who in the
viewing and listening audiences, Jim,should reach out to you and why?
Well, so, certainly I thinkpeople that are trying to get connected.
(47:36):
You know, I think you andI are involved in a networking group Provisors,
that has senior level advisors, andif you're looking to meet people in
that realm to help you grow yourbusiness, I mean, I think that's
that's key, which going back toas you mentioned, might be and I
d's I try to let all myclients know that. You know, I'm
connected with everybody, and so ifyou need something, you know, call
(47:59):
me first. And so I actuallyhad this little old lady call me.
She was going to her fiftieth classreunion, and the conversation was like this.
She called me up and says,Hey, I know you know everybody,
and you told me to call youfirst. So I'm looking for somebody
that does wine glass etching and somephotography for my fiftieth reunion. And I
knew both those people, and thetime lead time is too short for the
(48:21):
etching guy, but the photographer madesome money at her fiftieth nice reunion.
But that's how it works, rightYeah. And for me, I mean,
they're calling me when I don't havemy handout. I'm just trying to
do them a favor, and soit makes me more valuable from that perspective.
That's so so yeah, anybody thatwants to get connected and anybody that
needs your services too. Jim,thank you so much. I know you're
really busy. You made it throughthe most one of the busiest times of
(48:45):
yr year, so good for you. But I know you're busy. I
really appreciate the time. Fantastic thankyou for having me on Kevin you bet,
and thanks everybody for watching and listening. This is a show about business
and often business challenges. If you'vegot concerns about the growth of your company,
feel free to reach out to meon Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning Business
Radio. You can drop me anote. I always say. One of
my many email addresses is Kevin atWinning Business Radio dot com. We are
(49:08):
here every Monday. Stay tuned fornext week will be Monday, May sixth.
We'll do it all again. Untilthen, this is Kevin Helenan.
You've been listening to Winning Business Radiowith your host, Kevin Helenan. If
you missed any part of this episode, the podcast is available on Talk for
Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more informationand questions, go to Winning Business Radio
(49:34):
dot com or check us out onsocial media. Tune in again next week
and every Monday at four pm EasternTime to listen live to Winning Business Radio
on W four CY Radio W fourcy dot com. Until then, let's
succeed where others have failed and winin business with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio.
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