October 16, 2025 • 32 mins
You’ve done the work. You’ve climbed the ladder. So why does the CFO title still feel out of reach?
Kevin Appleby, COO of GrowCFO and mentor to hundreds of finance leaders, reveals:
• The 3 invisible blockers keeping smart finance pros from stepping up
• Why “imposter syndrome” shows up right after your promotion
• What most people get completely wrong about becoming CFO
• The mindset shift that separates future execs from spreadsheet managers
🚨 This isn’t theory. Kevin’s helped hundreds make the leap and he's breaking down the playbook.
🔗 Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn
or learn more at growcfo.net
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_03 (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of CFO
Chronicles, The Secrets BehindSuccess, where we bring you the
top strategies and insights fromthe most successful fractional
CFOs and accounting firm owners.
Joining us today is KevinAppleby, COO of Grow CFO and
mentor to aspiring CFOs.
With a background in financetransformation and cost
reduction, Kevin has built aseven-figure business and is
(00:22):
dedicated to giving back andhelping the next generation of
finance leaders.
Get ready to learn from the bestin the business as we dive into
the secrets of success withKevin Appleby.
Kevin, thank you so much forjoining the podcast all the way
from across the pond, close toNewcastle, I believe you were
just telling me.
Today he said is a pretty bigday in England with uh the
(00:44):
Champions League starting.
SPEAKER_00 (00:46):
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me as aguest, James.
I'm thoroughly looking forwardto our chat.
But yeah, here in Newcastle,it's a big day.
Uh football, or soccer in yourlanguage, um, is very, very big
in the northeast of England.
Um my team, Newcastle United,have qualified for the Champions
League, and we're playingBarcelona at home tonight, so
(01:07):
it's a big, big day.
SPEAKER_03 (01:08):
Amazing.
And you're coming on a CFOChronicle.
So I mean, I don't know howthose stack up on the calendar,
but I would guess relativelyclose.
Joking, um, obviously.
Um, let's dive right into it,Kevin.
I'm super excited to pick yourbrain.
Can you tell us a little bitabout your background and and
(01:30):
how it led to becoming a mentorfor aspiring CFOs?
SPEAKER_00 (01:34):
Well, background, and while my title in GrowCFO is
COO, that's really because Itend to do the techie and the
more systems bits of thebusiness, while Dan, our
founder, tends to have more of atendency to do the sales and
marketing type things.
But we're both accountants,we're both finance guys, both
(01:57):
from the big four.
Uh, Dan was an equity partner inKPMG.
I was a principal consultant inKPMG.
Sorry, I was a print need to cutthis bit a little bit.
Uh I was a principal consultantin PwC uh before moving on to be
a director in other smallerconsultancy firms.
(02:20):
So my client ended up being theCFO, effectively, or the finance
director.
That typical project would be uhfinance transformation, some
sort of systems replacement, um,could be better budgeting, could
(02:40):
be cost reduction, or I couldend up simply being the the
finance person on a much moregeneral project.
And what that led me into doingwas talking to a lot of CFOs and
a lot of the team members in thefinance team, and quite often
you'd be you'd be building thebusiness case to make some sort
(03:01):
of change, and you'd be askingthe finance team, well, what
does that activity cost you todo?
And they'd give you a blank lookand say, We don't really know,
Kevin.
That's not a line in the generalledger.
So we'd go and do what we'dnormally do in such a situation.
We'd go do some activityanalysis, we'd work out what
(03:22):
people and resources were goinginto whatever it was we wanted
to know the cost of, and we'd becoming up with some numbers.
And I was quite surprised by thelack of ability in finance teams
to do that sort of thing, tounderstand the real cost of
things, to be able to link costsand revenues properly.
And budgeting was the same.
(03:43):
Quite often we'd go into aprocess of blowing up the
budget, doing zero-basedbudgeting, and the skills that I
was finding clients to do thesethings, which I regarded as
pretty basic, they didn't have.
So I ended up before COVID camealong in the classroom teaching,
planning, but planning,budgeting, forecasting, cost
(04:04):
reduction, zero-based budgeting,all of those things to finance
teams in the classroom, as wellas still doing some consulting.
And it got me into an area thatI really enjoyed.
I really enjoyed telling peopleabout these things and seeing
the light bulbs go on.
Um, joined forces with Dan,who'd already been setting up
(04:28):
Grow CFO in its very first oneor two months.
And really, since then, we'veworked together because Dan was
attempting to build a network offinance leaders.
I wanted to bring some of mylearning to an online platform
because at that point classroomteaching just didn't work
anymore.
And so working together, webuilt Grow CFO.
(04:52):
We discovered reasonably earlyon that there was a big
community of folk who were wantto be finance leaders.
They might already be the numberone in finance in their
business, but they didn't feelas though they were in the CFO
role, and they wanted to knowhow to get to CFO.
(05:14):
And over a course of time, we'veevolved in Grow CFO, what we
call the future CFO program.
So it's helping these folk tosay, how do you get from where
you are now to getting you intothat first CFO role?
And indeed, what once you get tothat first CFO role, you're
there.
What do you do in your firsthundred days of CFO?
(05:36):
So that's cut to turn a simplequestion into a very long story.
That's how I got involved withmentoring um future CFOs.
SPEAKER_03 (05:46):
I love it.
I appreciate it going into somuch depth.
What what do you notice is thebiggest gap or like that first
hurdle that aspiring CFOs noticewhen they make that leap from
their current position tobecoming a CFO?
SPEAKER_00 (06:03):
Yeah.
We've done a fair bit ofresearch on this, and actually
we've we've got a list of ten,but I haven't got the list in
front of me, so don't ask mebeyond the top three.
SPEAKER_02 (06:14):
No words.
I was I was only going for one,but if we can get three, that's
even better.
SPEAKER_00 (06:18):
But number one, every almost every new CFO seems
to suffer from impostersyndrome.
SPEAKER_03 (06:28):
Interesting.
SPEAKER_00 (06:29):
Number two reason is it's very similar, it's lack of
confidence.
Number three is task overwhelm.
And flip back to well, whyimposter syndrome, why lack of
confidence?
And one thing that we found isthat actually only people that
(06:50):
are actually good at their jobever suffer from imposter
syndrome.
It's a very strange thing aboutit.
The people that should have theimposter syndrome and actually
no good never seem to sufferfrom it.
SPEAKER_02 (07:00):
They have all the confidence in the world, even
though they're not aware thatthey're struggling.
SPEAKER_00 (07:05):
Yeah, so no, you are head of finance, you're the
internal face of finance.
You're probably spending halfyour week with your nose buried
in a spreadsheet.
And you're taking those numbers,you're talking to people inside
the business about them.
(07:25):
Okay, a lot of it's routine, alot of it's following that
drumbeat of month end, quarterend, budgeting season, whatever
it might be.
You move to CFO and suddenlyyou're not doing the number
crunching anymore.
Somebody else is doing that foryou.
So that's first step out of yourcomfort zone.
(07:46):
Second step out of your comfortzone is you know the external
face of finance.
Okay, you're not talking muchinside the business anymore,
except to the rest of the Csuite.
You're talking to investors,you're talking to customers,
you're talking to suppliers.
Oh, and then somebody's saying,be the co-pilot of the CEO.
(08:09):
A lot of CEO CFOs end up withmore than the finance function
to run.
Think about that.
Typically, where where's thefirst CFO position going to
arrive in a company?
It's not gonna be in the smallorganization, it's gonna be it's
not the startup, it's the scaleup.
So scale up, lots of stuff needsto be done, and you don't have a
(08:31):
head of everything.
So who picks up all the jobsthat nobody else wants to do?
It's the CFO generally.
So the CFO is head of estate,head of legal, head of
procurement, quite often isresponsible for IT.
So you've got this whole breadthof things that the CFO role is
(08:54):
is kind of picking up andprobably has very little
background experience in.
So no wonder that people feel alack of confidence because
they're being asked to do awhole load of stuff that's hey,
I never never passed my exams inthis.
Back in the good old accountancyexams, you learnt where the
(09:15):
debits and credits were, youlearned how general ledger
worked, you learned some companylaw, um, you learned some
management accounting.
Did anybody ever teach youstakeholder management?
Did anybody ever teach youpeople management?
Um and you you are uh generallyin that first CFO role pushed
outside your comfort zone.
(09:36):
So you're feeling prettyuncomfortable because you've
never done this before.
SPEAKER_03 (09:41):
Yeah, it makes sense.
SPEAKER_00 (09:42):
So the imposter syndrome comes from, oh, I'm
gonna get this wrong.
Somebody's gonna find out.
Well, actually, fairly natural.
SPEAKER_03 (09:53):
Sorry, go ahead, keep going.
SPEAKER_00 (09:55):
And that lack of confidence.
Well, I'm not quite sure what Ishould be doing here because you
know you you haven't got perhaps10 years of experience of doing
some of the things you're nowbeing asked to do.
You've you've kind of got tolearn it as you go along.
So that transition from fromhead from controller, head of
finance into CFO, it is a major,major step change.
(10:18):
So, not surprising that thebiggest challenges are imposter
syndrome and lack of confidence.
SPEAKER_03 (10:25):
So, how do you help your I guess your students, your
your clients who are coming in,those you're mentoring, how do
you help them overcome those,for lack of better words,
limiting beliefs?
SPEAKER_00 (10:41):
Uh, one of the things we do in Grow CFO is
we've got a team of mentors.
Um it's quite normal these daysto have a C-suite coach.
But we're saying, hang on aminute, you don't actually want
a C-suite coach, you want amentor who is uh an experienced
CFO who's been there, done it,and got the t-shirt.
(11:04):
Okay.
Uh a coach would kind of talk toyou about the problem you're
facing and almost get you tosolve your own problem by
talking it through.
The experienced CFO mentor wouldbe taking a bit of a different
approach and be saying, ah, Ihad that problem once.
Here's what we did about it.
Or I've found by experience thisworks, no, and bringing this the
(11:29):
new CFO on that way.
So where they've gotuncertainties, where they've got
potential doubts about what todo, that experienced mentors
there at their shoulder to helpthem along.
SPEAKER_03 (11:42):
Interesting.
That's cool.
Yeah, that the additionalsupport, I can see how that
would go a long way.
I've I've personally invested inmentors and coaches, and um it I
certainly wouldn't be where I'mat today without making that
investment.
So, again, for anyone listening,I've said this before in
episodes, it highly, highlyrecommended.
It's just it's a launch pad toget ahead.
So you just avoid all of thoseditches that someone else has
(12:04):
already hit and learned from.
SPEAKER_00 (12:06):
Absolutely.
And a key thing about mentoringis if you decide you want a
mentor, well, you've got to findthe mentor that's right for you,
which is why we don't we don'temploy any of our mentors
full-time.
Because rather than have a smallteam that you could fill a diary
with, we want to offer a biggerteam to say, find the right
(12:26):
mentor for you, because thechemistry is so important.
Do you get on?
Does that person have the rightbackground?
Like no, if you're deep in SaaSB2B, do you want a mentor whose
background was retail?
Probably not.
Yeah.
If you're in in the financialsector, we've got mentors that
(12:51):
are very experienced in thefinancial sector.
You want somebody whoseexperience is relevant, relevant
to you, and you want a chemistryon a personal level, somebody
you can get on with.
SPEAKER_03 (13:04):
What do you say to those who look at having a
mentor as a coach, and there'sdo you still believe that I
guess stigma that it comes froma place of weakness compared to
a place of strength?
SPEAKER_00 (13:20):
Um I think we're getting away from that,
actually, James.
I think what we tend to find isthat actually the people that
identify that they need a mentorare quite often the strongest
people around, anyway.
So they're definitely not weak.
(13:41):
Often the weaker people mighttake that view that the the need
for a mentor is showing theirweakness, and that it's it's
actually quite wrong.
But I think these days mostpeople realize that having a
coach, having a mentor is quitenormal, and as you say, it is
the way to accelerate things.
SPEAKER_03 (14:01):
Yeah, 100%.
Um Kevin, when you were growingup, is this what you envisioned
you'd be doing as a career?
Like tell me, tell me a littlebit about what your what your um
childhood Kevin thought he'd bedoing in the future.
What was your dream as a kid?
SPEAKER_00 (14:19):
I remember childhood Kevin.
I I must have been about 13 or14, and I was off school, not
for not particularly well.
And my dad was a childaccountant, effectively a CPA in
the United States in publicpractice.
Small firm, just two partners.
(14:39):
Uh member of the same institutethat I'm now a member of.
And I was wandering around thehouse, pretty bored, and there
was a pile of accountancymagazines on his desk at home.
I sort of picked one up andstarted flicking through it, and
I saw the adverts at the back.
And at the time, all of the bigheadhunting firms, the way
everything was done back then,was through paper advertising
(15:01):
and very old-fashioned stuff.
They were advertising thesefantastic jobs in overseas
locations with salaries thatlook quite eye-watery.
And I thought, there's probablysomething in this.
But as time went on, actually, II moved away from that thought
in that that original thought,oh, be an accountant, be able to
go for those.
And dad said, Well, yeah, be anaccountant, it's a great
(15:23):
qualification in business, youcan do anything with it.
So I did an accounting degree,which would have given me nicely
some exemptions from theprofessional exams to get them
done a bit quicker, but thenleft university with the
feeling, oh, the last thing Iwant to do is be an accountant.
So I applied for all thesemarketing jobs.
(15:46):
And there were a couple of bigcorporates that were doing the
standard, what we call in theUK, the milk round around the
universities, doing theirrecruitment thing.
And I'd applied to them to jointheir marketing teams.
And suddenly I ended up on aninterview.
And then passed the interviewand found myself on a on a panel
(16:07):
at their head office orwherever.
And each time, oh god, Kevin,you're you're not on the on the
on the final piece formarketing, you're on the final
piece for finance.
And I suppose didn't get eitherof the jobs because I was not
prepared.
Probably showed that I wasn'tparticularly enthusiastic at
(16:29):
that stage.
Then I thought, perhapssomebody's trying to tell me
something here.
And I ended up doing the logicalthing at this point and going
joining a firm of accountants inpublic practice and qualifying
as a member of the Institute ofChart Accountants in England and
Wales.
So to answer to your question,as a youngish person, no, I
(16:51):
moved away from this thought offinance completely.
But I knew as soon as I wastraining to qualify that I
didn't want to stay in publicpractice, I wanted to be in
industry.
So literally the day I passed myexams, left public practice and
moved briefly into the insuranceindustry, but then ended up
(17:11):
spending 10 years in thechemical industry.
Nice with what was then ICI,which was number one in the FTSE
hundred.
So pretty big organization andmoved up through there.
Uh and really, career from thereto where I am now was never
(17:33):
planned.
And people talk about plan yourcareer.
Well, hey, you never know what'saround the corner.
And the the business that I waswith in ICI was sold.
Uh was sold to a German company,BASF.
And because I was a Europeanbusiness accountant, two-thirds
(17:55):
of my job went to Germany on dayone.
And I ended up doing somepost-acquisition stuff to make
the business work.
And I ended up they acquiredanother business, this time from
Zeneker, who had recentlydivested from ICI, uh, and
helping BSF onboard this thisother business.
But it was pretty clear I didn'thave a job in BSF.
(18:19):
Okay.
Did I ever plan to be amanagement consultant?
No.
The my assistant in theaccounting office said, Kevin, I
know you're looking for jobs.
I've just seen this.
Coopers and Librand arerecruiting management
consultants.
It sounds like just the sort ofstuff you you you like doing.
Fine.
(18:39):
I'll fill an application for meand see what happens.
Never mind.
Three months later, I'm on theinduction course at Coopers and
Librand, who had just becomewell, who had just about to
become PwC.
Never planned to be a managementconsultant, but I was suddenly a
management consultant.
And the next thing thathappened, no, for a large part
(19:00):
of my career as a managementconsultant, I worked in the UK
public sector, not the notprivate business, which again
was a complete accident.
Uh last big project I did in thechemical industry were we were
looking at capital spares on theplant because huge multimillion
dollar asset.
How do you keep it running?
(19:21):
How do you keep it fixed?
Well, you're going to keep a lotof spare parts in.
So I don't I looked at thepolicy the policy, the
stockpile, and everything likethat.
So I'm on the induction dinnerand in Cooper's.
And the resource manager says,Oh, Kevin, uh there's not much
kicking off at the moment.
You might have to sit on thebench for a couple of weeks
before we find your project tojoin.
(19:42):
Tell me a little about whatyou've been doing.
I said, Well, yeah, chemicalinterest.
I've just done this capitalspares project, Gary.
Oh, funny you should mentionthat.
We've got a project going onlooking at capital spares for
the British Army.
I'll give Alan, the projectdirector, a phone call.
And my next day, Alan rings me,talks about what I've been
(20:05):
doing, tells me about thisproject in the army.
Kevin, would you like to comeand join the project till
Easter?
My mistake, I never said Alan,which Easter?
Three years later, I'd become adefence consultant by accident.
A lot of accidents.
(20:25):
And I I I remember one of whatwe were doing, the the the
British Army, in fact, theentire UK public sector at the
time, didn't do accruals.
Did purely cash accounting.
There wasn't a balance sheet.
The the UK government at thetime forced all of the public
sector to go into properresource accounting and have
(20:47):
balance sheets.
So suddenly the the military hadto work out how do you put all
of this stock onto the balancesheet?
How do you put all these assetsonto the balance sheet?
And we were doing Army AssetsProject, which was literally how
do we take the stock and assetsof the army and put them into
the into the into the books.
(21:08):
And there's some great warstories from there.
Like at the time, Sun AccountSystems Union, which became
Oracle, um, we were putting intheir fixed asset register.
We were the biggest singleimplementation of Sun Account
fixed assets in on the globe.
And we set it away, trying itout for the first time, doing
(21:29):
the monthly depreciationcalculation, and realized very
quickly it was going to takethree weeks to do the
depreciation calculation.
At which point, Alan, my projectdirector, was saying, give me
the list of assets and thespreadsheet, I'll do it by hand.
No, Alan, you've missed thepoint there.
So that little stories likethat, no, and working out have
(21:50):
we got all of the assets in theasset register?
So there we are, we've gotwhat's in the army systems, but
and worked out what to put inthere.
But then we've got a copy ofJane's Defense sitting on the
desk as well.
Oh, Jane's Defense says weshould have nine AS90s.
Why are there only eight in theasset register?
SPEAKER_03 (22:10):
Interesting.
SPEAKER_00 (22:11):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (22:12):
Well, Kevin, I'm I'm really curious.
I want to switch gears just alittle bit here.
I want to hear a little bit moreabout um, not to I guess maybe
pun intended here, but how howare you guys growing Grow CFO?
Like, let's quickly talk aboutthe marketing strategies that
you guys deploy, um, that youand your team deploy to continue
(22:35):
to grow Grow CFO.
SPEAKER_00 (22:37):
We have a fantastic marketing team.
Zoe Cooper and her people aredoing all of the marketing for
us.
And it's a tough call becausethere is a lot of noise out
there.
Um things that used to work stopworking.
We've got to change attack allof the time.
(22:59):
Um, but we're looking to get asbigger penetration on social
media and on email that we can.
Email still works.
The open rates and so on areprobably lower than they ever
used to be.
But what are we doing?
And there's there's several bitsto the Grow CFO business.
(23:20):
There's there's Grow CFOmembership.
We've got a platform that's fullof courses, self-serve courses,
and some of them are livevirtual classroom courses.
Uh, you get access to them allby being a Grow CFO member.
And they're they're aimed atCFOs and finance members of the
(23:42):
CFO's team.
So a great way, if you're a CFO,to get your team, make sure
they're trained up, is by theteam membership.
Um, so one of the things we'retrying to sell are memberships.
Okay.
And we're not directly marketingmemberships anymore.
Back in the early days, and wedid uh the founder members offer
(24:05):
to get the initial bunch in, wedid Black Fridays, things like
that.
Now we're at that stage thatthere's enough word of mouth
around that know about us.
A lot of what we're doing from amarketing point of view is is
awareness.
But we realize that everythingwe did in the early days was
(24:26):
geared to selling individualmemberships.
SPEAKER_03 (24:29):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (24:30):
To grow a business like ours, you've got to sell a
lot of individual memberships toget bigger.
So the the change in tack thatwe've had is we're saying, well,
actually, we're we're very muchfocusing on corporates.
SPEAKER_03 (24:44):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (24:44):
Not not big corporate, not your big listed
companies, uh, because they'vegot so much already set out in
terms of training for people.
What our core market, I'd say,is scale-ups and the middle
market.
And talking to the the learningdevelopment people, to the
(25:05):
finance people, and saying, youknow, we'll do your package for
your finance team and we cancover things off.
And we've got things built intothe the the training um
materials, such as the there'suh there's a boot camp for FPA.
SPEAKER_03 (25:24):
Okay, nice.
SPEAKER_00 (25:25):
Seven two-hour workshops over uh a week, one a
week, something similar forfinance business partnering.
So we've got things that we cango and offer teams of people to
do.
Okay.
And really, in terms of growingthe business, marketing the
business, that's been the shift.
So talking to corporates asopposed to individuals.
SPEAKER_03 (25:47):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (25:47):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (25:48):
You mentioned um you have a great team, there's a lot
of different companies outthere.
What would you recommend toother firms when they are
looking for a partner to workwith when it comes to their
marketing?
Like what are some of the Iguess traits or criteria they
should be vetting for?
SPEAKER_00 (26:10):
You've got to look for somebody who understands
your business.
You've got to look for somebodywho understands the sort of
client you want to go for.
Like I've always had this thingaround professional services
firms that you go to theirwebsites and they tell you we're
this, we're that, they talkabout their values.
Well, hey, every professionalaccounting firm has this set of
(26:31):
values, every set has this setof ethics.
What they traditionally neverdid was actually told the client
what the benefit was for theclient of working with them.
Why would you choose us overanybody else?
What's the benefit for you?
So I think you've got to havethe marketing firm, the
(26:51):
marketing team, that know how totake that approach and know what
the pain point is that theclient is suffering, what the
ideal client is suffering, andreally be able to talk to that
pain point.
SPEAKER_03 (27:03):
That's awesome.
Um last question for you here,Kevin.
This has been really insightful.
What's the best piece of adviceyou've ever received?
SPEAKER_00 (27:17):
That's a tough one.
Best piece of advice.
Um I think the best piece ofadvice is just do it.
Don't ask for permission.
Say sorry later if you if youget it wrong or you step on
somebody's toes.
Go for it.
SPEAKER_03 (27:38):
Just Nike, just do it.
SPEAKER_00 (27:40):
Yeah, just do it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Don't go around asking forpermission to do it.
Say sorry when you do it.
When if you if you didn't havethe permission you thought you
had, say sorry afterwards.
SPEAKER_03 (27:50):
Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
SPEAKER_00 (27:52):
Yeah, and we have a saying in my part of the world
in north northeast England.
Shy burn shy bans getting out.
Now, a lot of that is in inGeordie, which is based on
Viking, but it's basically shychildren get nothing.
SPEAKER_03 (28:11):
Yeah, I like that.
SPEAKER_00 (28:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (28:14):
It's it sounds like uh the squeaky wheel gets the
grease.
Yeah.
To a certain degree.
SPEAKER_00 (28:19):
Indeed.
Yes.
SPEAKER_03 (28:21):
Yeah, awesome.
Kevin, this has been fantastic.
How can how can the listenersget in touch with you, continue
the conversation, learn moreabout Grow CFO?
SPEAKER_00 (28:31):
Uh well, I'm on your podcast, James, but I've got my
own, and I think you're gonnaguest on that as well in a week
or two.
SPEAKER_03 (28:38):
Yeah, looking forward to that.
SPEAKER_00 (28:40):
Tune into the Grow CFO show, which is a a huge
mixture of uh our alumni, ourmentors and trainers, sometimes
some of our tech partners, twoof the latest technology.
It's a whole mixture of thingsthat are interesting for CFOs
and finance teams.
So have a look on there.
Go to the Grow CFO website,www.growcfo.net, and you can
(29:04):
become a free member of GrowCFO, uh, which will get you onto
the mailing list.
You'll see everything that wedo, you'll get the regular
weekly newsletter, and we do acouple of times every month, we
do free webinars.
And anybody can come along andjoin a gross join into a grow
CFO free webinar.
SPEAKER_03 (29:21):
Awesome.
We'll make sure we put all thoselinks in the show notes in the
description so people cancertainly take advantage of
that.
Kevin, again, thank you so muchfor coming on, sharing all of
your insight.
And I I can't wait to jump onand meet with you again in a
couple weeks for for yourpodcast.
SPEAKER_00 (29:36):
Brilliant.
Looking forward to it, James.
Thank you again.
SPEAKER_03 (29:38):
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of CFO
Chronicles, the secrets behindsuccess.
I hope you found value intoday's conversation.
As we wrap up, I'd love for youto do two things.
First, make sure to subscribe tothis podcast so you don't miss
any future episodes.
If you enjoyed today'sdiscussion, please rate and
review the show.
It helps others discover theinsights we share here.
(29:58):
Second, if you're ready.
Ready to take your business tothe next level and attract the
high-end clients you deserve,head over to
accountingleadsnow.com or clickthe link in the show notes to
book your strategy call.
It's time to position yourselfas the advisor your clients
need.
And don't forget, you canconnect with me on LinkedIn to
stay up to date on what'shappening in the world of
accounting and financial growth.
(30:19):
We've got exciting topics comingup, so stay tuned for the next
episode of CFO Chronicles.
Until then, keep pushingforward.
Your growth is just onestrategic move away.
SPEAKER_01 (30:30):
Thanks for listening to CFO Chronicles, the secrets
behind success.
We hope today's episode providedvaluable strategies to help you
attract more high-payingclients.
Be sure to subscribe, follow,and share with fellow
professionals.
Connect with us on LinkedIn andleave a review or comment to
join the conversation.
(30:50):
Your feedback helps us bring youthe best insights in finance and
marketing.
Until next time, keep strivingfor success and unlocking your
business's potential.
Welcome back to another episode of CFO
Chronicles, The Secrets BehindSuccess, where we bring you the
top strategies and insights fromthe most successful fractional
CFOs and accounting firm owners.
Joining us today is KevinAppleby, COO of Grow CFO and
mentor to aspiring CFOs.
With a background in financetransformation and cost
reduction, Kevin has built aseven-figure business and is
(00:22):
dedicated to giving back andhelping the next generation of
finance leaders.
Get ready to learn from the bestin the business as we dive into
the secrets of success withKevin Appleby.
Kevin, thank you so much forjoining the podcast all the way
from across the pond, close toNewcastle, I believe you were
just telling me.
Today he said is a pretty bigday in England with uh the
(00:44):
Champions League starting.
SPEAKER_00 (00:46):
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me as aguest, James.
I'm thoroughly looking forwardto our chat.
But yeah, here in Newcastle,it's a big day.
Uh football, or soccer in yourlanguage, um, is very, very big
in the northeast of England.
Um my team, Newcastle United,have qualified for the Champions
League, and we're playingBarcelona at home tonight, so
(01:07):
it's a big, big day.
SPEAKER_03 (01:08):
Amazing.
And you're coming on a CFOChronicle.
So I mean, I don't know howthose stack up on the calendar,
but I would guess relativelyclose.
Joking, um, obviously.
Um, let's dive right into it,Kevin.
I'm super excited to pick yourbrain.
Can you tell us a little bitabout your background and and
(01:30):
how it led to becoming a mentorfor aspiring CFOs?
SPEAKER_00 (01:34):
Well, background, and while my title in GrowCFO is
COO, that's really because Itend to do the techie and the
more systems bits of thebusiness, while Dan, our
founder, tends to have more of atendency to do the sales and
marketing type things.
But we're both accountants,we're both finance guys, both
(01:57):
from the big four.
Uh, Dan was an equity partner inKPMG.
I was a principal consultant inKPMG.
Sorry, I was a print need to cutthis bit a little bit.
Uh I was a principal consultantin PwC uh before moving on to be
a director in other smallerconsultancy firms.
(02:20):
So my client ended up being theCFO, effectively, or the finance
director.
That typical project would be uhfinance transformation, some
sort of systems replacement, um,could be better budgeting, could
(02:40):
be cost reduction, or I couldend up simply being the the
finance person on a much moregeneral project.
And what that led me into doingwas talking to a lot of CFOs and
a lot of the team members in thefinance team, and quite often
you'd be you'd be building thebusiness case to make some sort
(03:01):
of change, and you'd be askingthe finance team, well, what
does that activity cost you todo?
And they'd give you a blank lookand say, We don't really know,
Kevin.
That's not a line in the generalledger.
So we'd go and do what we'dnormally do in such a situation.
We'd go do some activityanalysis, we'd work out what
(03:22):
people and resources were goinginto whatever it was we wanted
to know the cost of, and we'd becoming up with some numbers.
And I was quite surprised by thelack of ability in finance teams
to do that sort of thing, tounderstand the real cost of
things, to be able to link costsand revenues properly.
And budgeting was the same.
(03:43):
Quite often we'd go into aprocess of blowing up the
budget, doing zero-basedbudgeting, and the skills that I
was finding clients to do thesethings, which I regarded as
pretty basic, they didn't have.
So I ended up before COVID camealong in the classroom teaching,
planning, but planning,budgeting, forecasting, cost
(04:04):
reduction, zero-based budgeting,all of those things to finance
teams in the classroom, as wellas still doing some consulting.
And it got me into an area thatI really enjoyed.
I really enjoyed telling peopleabout these things and seeing
the light bulbs go on.
Um, joined forces with Dan,who'd already been setting up
(04:28):
Grow CFO in its very first oneor two months.
And really, since then, we'veworked together because Dan was
attempting to build a network offinance leaders.
I wanted to bring some of mylearning to an online platform
because at that point classroomteaching just didn't work
anymore.
And so working together, webuilt Grow CFO.
(04:52):
We discovered reasonably earlyon that there was a big
community of folk who were wantto be finance leaders.
They might already be the numberone in finance in their
business, but they didn't feelas though they were in the CFO
role, and they wanted to knowhow to get to CFO.
(05:14):
And over a course of time, we'veevolved in Grow CFO, what we
call the future CFO program.
So it's helping these folk tosay, how do you get from where
you are now to getting you intothat first CFO role?
And indeed, what once you get tothat first CFO role, you're
there.
What do you do in your firsthundred days of CFO?
(05:36):
So that's cut to turn a simplequestion into a very long story.
That's how I got involved withmentoring um future CFOs.
SPEAKER_03 (05:46):
I love it.
I appreciate it going into somuch depth.
What what do you notice is thebiggest gap or like that first
hurdle that aspiring CFOs noticewhen they make that leap from
their current position tobecoming a CFO?
SPEAKER_00 (06:03):
Yeah.
We've done a fair bit ofresearch on this, and actually
we've we've got a list of ten,but I haven't got the list in
front of me, so don't ask mebeyond the top three.
SPEAKER_02 (06:14):
No words.
I was I was only going for one,but if we can get three, that's
even better.
SPEAKER_00 (06:18):
But number one, every almost every new CFO seems
to suffer from impostersyndrome.
SPEAKER_03 (06:28):
Interesting.
SPEAKER_00 (06:29):
Number two reason is it's very similar, it's lack of
confidence.
Number three is task overwhelm.
And flip back to well, whyimposter syndrome, why lack of
confidence?
And one thing that we found isthat actually only people that
(06:50):
are actually good at their jobever suffer from imposter
syndrome.
It's a very strange thing aboutit.
The people that should have theimposter syndrome and actually
no good never seem to sufferfrom it.
SPEAKER_02 (07:00):
They have all the confidence in the world, even
though they're not aware thatthey're struggling.
SPEAKER_00 (07:05):
Yeah, so no, you are head of finance, you're the
internal face of finance.
You're probably spending halfyour week with your nose buried
in a spreadsheet.
And you're taking those numbers,you're talking to people inside
the business about them.
(07:25):
Okay, a lot of it's routine, alot of it's following that
drumbeat of month end, quarterend, budgeting season, whatever
it might be.
You move to CFO and suddenlyyou're not doing the number
crunching anymore.
Somebody else is doing that foryou.
So that's first step out of yourcomfort zone.
(07:46):
Second step out of your comfortzone is you know the external
face of finance.
Okay, you're not talking muchinside the business anymore,
except to the rest of the Csuite.
You're talking to investors,you're talking to customers,
you're talking to suppliers.
Oh, and then somebody's saying,be the co-pilot of the CEO.
(08:09):
A lot of CEO CFOs end up withmore than the finance function
to run.
Think about that.
Typically, where where's thefirst CFO position going to
arrive in a company?
It's not gonna be in the smallorganization, it's gonna be it's
not the startup, it's the scaleup.
So scale up, lots of stuff needsto be done, and you don't have a
(08:31):
head of everything.
So who picks up all the jobsthat nobody else wants to do?
It's the CFO generally.
So the CFO is head of estate,head of legal, head of
procurement, quite often isresponsible for IT.
So you've got this whole breadthof things that the CFO role is
(08:54):
is kind of picking up andprobably has very little
background experience in.
So no wonder that people feel alack of confidence because
they're being asked to do awhole load of stuff that's hey,
I never never passed my exams inthis.
Back in the good old accountancyexams, you learnt where the
(09:15):
debits and credits were, youlearned how general ledger
worked, you learned some companylaw, um, you learned some
management accounting.
Did anybody ever teach youstakeholder management?
Did anybody ever teach youpeople management?
Um and you you are uh generallyin that first CFO role pushed
outside your comfort zone.
(09:36):
So you're feeling prettyuncomfortable because you've
never done this before.
SPEAKER_03 (09:41):
Yeah, it makes sense.
SPEAKER_00 (09:42):
So the imposter syndrome comes from, oh, I'm
gonna get this wrong.
Somebody's gonna find out.
Well, actually, fairly natural.
SPEAKER_03 (09:53):
Sorry, go ahead, keep going.
SPEAKER_00 (09:55):
And that lack of confidence.
Well, I'm not quite sure what Ishould be doing here because you
know you you haven't got perhaps10 years of experience of doing
some of the things you're nowbeing asked to do.
You've you've kind of got tolearn it as you go along.
So that transition from fromhead from controller, head of
finance into CFO, it is a major,major step change.
(10:18):
So, not surprising that thebiggest challenges are imposter
syndrome and lack of confidence.
SPEAKER_03 (10:25):
So, how do you help your I guess your students, your
your clients who are coming in,those you're mentoring, how do
you help them overcome those,for lack of better words,
limiting beliefs?
SPEAKER_00 (10:41):
Uh, one of the things we do in Grow CFO is
we've got a team of mentors.
Um it's quite normal these daysto have a C-suite coach.
But we're saying, hang on aminute, you don't actually want
a C-suite coach, you want amentor who is uh an experienced
CFO who's been there, done it,and got the t-shirt.
(11:04):
Okay.
Uh a coach would kind of talk toyou about the problem you're
facing and almost get you tosolve your own problem by
talking it through.
The experienced CFO mentor wouldbe taking a bit of a different
approach and be saying, ah, Ihad that problem once.
Here's what we did about it.
Or I've found by experience thisworks, no, and bringing this the
(11:29):
new CFO on that way.
So where they've gotuncertainties, where they've got
potential doubts about what todo, that experienced mentors
there at their shoulder to helpthem along.
SPEAKER_03 (11:42):
Interesting.
That's cool.
Yeah, that the additionalsupport, I can see how that
would go a long way.
I've I've personally invested inmentors and coaches, and um it I
certainly wouldn't be where I'mat today without making that
investment.
So, again, for anyone listening,I've said this before in
episodes, it highly, highlyrecommended.
It's just it's a launch pad toget ahead.
So you just avoid all of thoseditches that someone else has
(12:04):
already hit and learned from.
SPEAKER_00 (12:06):
Absolutely.
And a key thing about mentoringis if you decide you want a
mentor, well, you've got to findthe mentor that's right for you,
which is why we don't we don'temploy any of our mentors
full-time.
Because rather than have a smallteam that you could fill a diary
with, we want to offer a biggerteam to say, find the right
(12:26):
mentor for you, because thechemistry is so important.
Do you get on?
Does that person have the rightbackground?
Like no, if you're deep in SaaSB2B, do you want a mentor whose
background was retail?
Probably not.
Yeah.
If you're in in the financialsector, we've got mentors that
(12:51):
are very experienced in thefinancial sector.
You want somebody whoseexperience is relevant, relevant
to you, and you want a chemistryon a personal level, somebody
you can get on with.
SPEAKER_03 (13:04):
What do you say to those who look at having a
mentor as a coach, and there'sdo you still believe that I
guess stigma that it comes froma place of weakness compared to
a place of strength?
SPEAKER_00 (13:20):
Um I think we're getting away from that,
actually, James.
I think what we tend to find isthat actually the people that
identify that they need a mentorare quite often the strongest
people around, anyway.
So they're definitely not weak.
(13:41):
Often the weaker people mighttake that view that the the need
for a mentor is showing theirweakness, and that it's it's
actually quite wrong.
But I think these days mostpeople realize that having a
coach, having a mentor is quitenormal, and as you say, it is
the way to accelerate things.
SPEAKER_03 (14:01):
Yeah, 100%.
Um Kevin, when you were growingup, is this what you envisioned
you'd be doing as a career?
Like tell me, tell me a littlebit about what your what your um
childhood Kevin thought he'd bedoing in the future.
What was your dream as a kid?
SPEAKER_00 (14:19):
I remember childhood Kevin.
I I must have been about 13 or14, and I was off school, not
for not particularly well.
And my dad was a childaccountant, effectively a CPA in
the United States in publicpractice.
Small firm, just two partners.
(14:39):
Uh member of the same institutethat I'm now a member of.
And I was wandering around thehouse, pretty bored, and there
was a pile of accountancymagazines on his desk at home.
I sort of picked one up andstarted flicking through it, and
I saw the adverts at the back.
And at the time, all of the bigheadhunting firms, the way
everything was done back then,was through paper advertising
(15:01):
and very old-fashioned stuff.
They were advertising thesefantastic jobs in overseas
locations with salaries thatlook quite eye-watery.
And I thought, there's probablysomething in this.
But as time went on, actually, II moved away from that thought
in that that original thought,oh, be an accountant, be able to
go for those.
And dad said, Well, yeah, be anaccountant, it's a great
(15:23):
qualification in business, youcan do anything with it.
So I did an accounting degree,which would have given me nicely
some exemptions from theprofessional exams to get them
done a bit quicker, but thenleft university with the
feeling, oh, the last thing Iwant to do is be an accountant.
So I applied for all thesemarketing jobs.
(15:46):
And there were a couple of bigcorporates that were doing the
standard, what we call in theUK, the milk round around the
universities, doing theirrecruitment thing.
And I'd applied to them to jointheir marketing teams.
And suddenly I ended up on aninterview.
And then passed the interviewand found myself on a on a panel
(16:07):
at their head office orwherever.
And each time, oh god, Kevin,you're you're not on the on the
on the final piece formarketing, you're on the final
piece for finance.
And I suppose didn't get eitherof the jobs because I was not
prepared.
Probably showed that I wasn'tparticularly enthusiastic at
(16:29):
that stage.
Then I thought, perhapssomebody's trying to tell me
something here.
And I ended up doing the logicalthing at this point and going
joining a firm of accountants inpublic practice and qualifying
as a member of the Institute ofChart Accountants in England and
Wales.
So to answer to your question,as a youngish person, no, I
(16:51):
moved away from this thought offinance completely.
But I knew as soon as I wastraining to qualify that I
didn't want to stay in publicpractice, I wanted to be in
industry.
So literally the day I passed myexams, left public practice and
moved briefly into the insuranceindustry, but then ended up
(17:11):
spending 10 years in thechemical industry.
Nice with what was then ICI,which was number one in the FTSE
hundred.
So pretty big organization andmoved up through there.
Uh and really, career from thereto where I am now was never
(17:33):
planned.
And people talk about plan yourcareer.
Well, hey, you never know what'saround the corner.
And the the business that I waswith in ICI was sold.
Uh was sold to a German company,BASF.
And because I was a Europeanbusiness accountant, two-thirds
(17:55):
of my job went to Germany on dayone.
And I ended up doing somepost-acquisition stuff to make
the business work.
And I ended up they acquiredanother business, this time from
Zeneker, who had recentlydivested from ICI, uh, and
helping BSF onboard this thisother business.
But it was pretty clear I didn'thave a job in BSF.
(18:19):
Okay.
Did I ever plan to be amanagement consultant?
No.
The my assistant in theaccounting office said, Kevin, I
know you're looking for jobs.
I've just seen this.
Coopers and Librand arerecruiting management
consultants.
It sounds like just the sort ofstuff you you you like doing.
Fine.
(18:39):
I'll fill an application for meand see what happens.
Never mind.
Three months later, I'm on theinduction course at Coopers and
Librand, who had just becomewell, who had just about to
become PwC.
Never planned to be a managementconsultant, but I was suddenly a
management consultant.
And the next thing thathappened, no, for a large part
(19:00):
of my career as a managementconsultant, I worked in the UK
public sector, not the notprivate business, which again
was a complete accident.
Uh last big project I did in thechemical industry were we were
looking at capital spares on theplant because huge multimillion
dollar asset.
How do you keep it running?
(19:21):
How do you keep it fixed?
Well, you're going to keep a lotof spare parts in.
So I don't I looked at thepolicy the policy, the
stockpile, and everything likethat.
So I'm on the induction dinnerand in Cooper's.
And the resource manager says,Oh, Kevin, uh there's not much
kicking off at the moment.
You might have to sit on thebench for a couple of weeks
before we find your project tojoin.
(19:42):
Tell me a little about whatyou've been doing.
I said, Well, yeah, chemicalinterest.
I've just done this capitalspares project, Gary.
Oh, funny you should mentionthat.
We've got a project going onlooking at capital spares for
the British Army.
I'll give Alan, the projectdirector, a phone call.
And my next day, Alan rings me,talks about what I've been
(20:05):
doing, tells me about thisproject in the army.
Kevin, would you like to comeand join the project till
Easter?
My mistake, I never said Alan,which Easter?
Three years later, I'd become adefence consultant by accident.
A lot of accidents.
(20:25):
And I I I remember one of whatwe were doing, the the the
British Army, in fact, theentire UK public sector at the
time, didn't do accruals.
Did purely cash accounting.
There wasn't a balance sheet.
The the UK government at thetime forced all of the public
sector to go into properresource accounting and have
(20:47):
balance sheets.
So suddenly the the military hadto work out how do you put all
of this stock onto the balancesheet?
How do you put all these assetsonto the balance sheet?
And we were doing Army AssetsProject, which was literally how
do we take the stock and assetsof the army and put them into
the into the into the books.
(21:08):
And there's some great warstories from there.
Like at the time, Sun AccountSystems Union, which became
Oracle, um, we were putting intheir fixed asset register.
We were the biggest singleimplementation of Sun Account
fixed assets in on the globe.
And we set it away, trying itout for the first time, doing
(21:29):
the monthly depreciationcalculation, and realized very
quickly it was going to takethree weeks to do the
depreciation calculation.
At which point, Alan, my projectdirector, was saying, give me
the list of assets and thespreadsheet, I'll do it by hand.
No, Alan, you've missed thepoint there.
So that little stories likethat, no, and working out have
(21:50):
we got all of the assets in theasset register?
So there we are, we've gotwhat's in the army systems, but
and worked out what to put inthere.
But then we've got a copy ofJane's Defense sitting on the
desk as well.
Oh, Jane's Defense says weshould have nine AS90s.
Why are there only eight in theasset register?
SPEAKER_03 (22:10):
Interesting.
SPEAKER_00 (22:11):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (22:12):
Well, Kevin, I'm I'm really curious.
I want to switch gears just alittle bit here.
I want to hear a little bit moreabout um, not to I guess maybe
pun intended here, but how howare you guys growing Grow CFO?
Like, let's quickly talk aboutthe marketing strategies that
you guys deploy, um, that youand your team deploy to continue
(22:35):
to grow Grow CFO.
SPEAKER_00 (22:37):
We have a fantastic marketing team.
Zoe Cooper and her people aredoing all of the marketing for
us.
And it's a tough call becausethere is a lot of noise out
there.
Um things that used to work stopworking.
We've got to change attack allof the time.
(22:59):
Um, but we're looking to get asbigger penetration on social
media and on email that we can.
Email still works.
The open rates and so on areprobably lower than they ever
used to be.
But what are we doing?
And there's there's several bitsto the Grow CFO business.
(23:20):
There's there's Grow CFOmembership.
We've got a platform that's fullof courses, self-serve courses,
and some of them are livevirtual classroom courses.
Uh, you get access to them allby being a Grow CFO member.
And they're they're aimed atCFOs and finance members of the
(23:42):
CFO's team.
So a great way, if you're a CFO,to get your team, make sure
they're trained up, is by theteam membership.
Um, so one of the things we'retrying to sell are memberships.
Okay.
And we're not directly marketingmemberships anymore.
Back in the early days, and wedid uh the founder members offer
(24:05):
to get the initial bunch in, wedid Black Fridays, things like
that.
Now we're at that stage thatthere's enough word of mouth
around that know about us.
A lot of what we're doing from amarketing point of view is is
awareness.
But we realize that everythingwe did in the early days was
(24:26):
geared to selling individualmemberships.
SPEAKER_03 (24:29):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (24:30):
To grow a business like ours, you've got to sell a
lot of individual memberships toget bigger.
So the the change in tack thatwe've had is we're saying, well,
actually, we're we're very muchfocusing on corporates.
SPEAKER_03 (24:44):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (24:44):
Not not big corporate, not your big listed
companies, uh, because they'vegot so much already set out in
terms of training for people.
What our core market, I'd say,is scale-ups and the middle
market.
And talking to the the learningdevelopment people, to the
(25:05):
finance people, and saying, youknow, we'll do your package for
your finance team and we cancover things off.
And we've got things built intothe the the training um
materials, such as the there'suh there's a boot camp for FPA.
SPEAKER_03 (25:24):
Okay, nice.
SPEAKER_00 (25:25):
Seven two-hour workshops over uh a week, one a
week, something similar forfinance business partnering.
So we've got things that we cango and offer teams of people to
do.
Okay.
And really, in terms of growingthe business, marketing the
business, that's been the shift.
So talking to corporates asopposed to individuals.
SPEAKER_03 (25:47):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (25:47):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (25:48):
You mentioned um you have a great team, there's a lot
of different companies outthere.
What would you recommend toother firms when they are
looking for a partner to workwith when it comes to their
marketing?
Like what are some of the Iguess traits or criteria they
should be vetting for?
SPEAKER_00 (26:10):
You've got to look for somebody who understands
your business.
You've got to look for somebodywho understands the sort of
client you want to go for.
Like I've always had this thingaround professional services
firms that you go to theirwebsites and they tell you we're
this, we're that, they talkabout their values.
Well, hey, every professionalaccounting firm has this set of
(26:31):
values, every set has this setof ethics.
What they traditionally neverdid was actually told the client
what the benefit was for theclient of working with them.
Why would you choose us overanybody else?
What's the benefit for you?
So I think you've got to havethe marketing firm, the
(26:51):
marketing team, that know how totake that approach and know what
the pain point is that theclient is suffering, what the
ideal client is suffering, andreally be able to talk to that
pain point.
SPEAKER_03 (27:03):
That's awesome.
Um last question for you here,Kevin.
This has been really insightful.
What's the best piece of adviceyou've ever received?
SPEAKER_00 (27:17):
That's a tough one.
Best piece of advice.
Um I think the best piece ofadvice is just do it.
Don't ask for permission.
Say sorry later if you if youget it wrong or you step on
somebody's toes.
Go for it.
SPEAKER_03 (27:38):
Just Nike, just do it.
SPEAKER_00 (27:40):
Yeah, just do it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Don't go around asking forpermission to do it.
Say sorry when you do it.
When if you if you didn't havethe permission you thought you
had, say sorry afterwards.
SPEAKER_03 (27:50):
Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
SPEAKER_00 (27:52):
Yeah, and we have a saying in my part of the world
in north northeast England.
Shy burn shy bans getting out.
Now, a lot of that is in inGeordie, which is based on
Viking, but it's basically shychildren get nothing.
SPEAKER_03 (28:11):
Yeah, I like that.
SPEAKER_00 (28:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (28:14):
It's it sounds like uh the squeaky wheel gets the
grease.
Yeah.
To a certain degree.
SPEAKER_00 (28:19):
Indeed.
Yes.
SPEAKER_03 (28:21):
Yeah, awesome.
Kevin, this has been fantastic.
How can how can the listenersget in touch with you, continue
the conversation, learn moreabout Grow CFO?
SPEAKER_00 (28:31):
Uh well, I'm on your podcast, James, but I've got my
own, and I think you're gonnaguest on that as well in a week
or two.
SPEAKER_03 (28:38):
Yeah, looking forward to that.
SPEAKER_00 (28:40):
Tune into the Grow CFO show, which is a a huge
mixture of uh our alumni, ourmentors and trainers, sometimes
some of our tech partners, twoof the latest technology.
It's a whole mixture of thingsthat are interesting for CFOs
and finance teams.
So have a look on there.
Go to the Grow CFO website,www.growcfo.net, and you can
(29:04):
become a free member of GrowCFO, uh, which will get you onto
the mailing list.
You'll see everything that wedo, you'll get the regular
weekly newsletter, and we do acouple of times every month, we
do free webinars.
And anybody can come along andjoin a gross join into a grow
CFO free webinar.
SPEAKER_03 (29:21):
Awesome.
We'll make sure we put all thoselinks in the show notes in the
description so people cancertainly take advantage of
that.
Kevin, again, thank you so muchfor coming on, sharing all of
your insight.
And I I can't wait to jump onand meet with you again in a
couple weeks for for yourpodcast.
SPEAKER_00 (29:36):
Brilliant.
Looking forward to it, James.
Thank you again.
SPEAKER_03 (29:38):
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of CFO
Chronicles, the secrets behindsuccess.
I hope you found value intoday's conversation.
As we wrap up, I'd love for youto do two things.
First, make sure to subscribe tothis podcast so you don't miss
any future episodes.
If you enjoyed today'sdiscussion, please rate and
review the show.
It helps others discover theinsights we share here.
(29:58):
Second, if you're ready.
Ready to take your business tothe next level and attract the
high-end clients you deserve,head over to
accountingleadsnow.com or clickthe link in the show notes to
book your strategy call.
It's time to position yourselfas the advisor your clients
need.
And don't forget, you canconnect with me on LinkedIn to
stay up to date on what'shappening in the world of
accounting and financial growth.
(30:19):
We've got exciting topics comingup, so stay tuned for the next
episode of CFO Chronicles.
Until then, keep pushingforward.
Your growth is just onestrategic move away.
SPEAKER_01 (30:30):
Thanks for listening to CFO Chronicles, the secrets
behind success.
We hope today's episode providedvaluable strategies to help you
attract more high-payingclients.
Be sure to subscribe, follow,and share with fellow
professionals.
Connect with us on LinkedIn andleave a review or comment to
join the conversation.
(30:50):
Your feedback helps us bring youthe best insights in finance and
marketing.
Until next time, keep strivingfor success and unlocking your
business's potential.
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