Introduction:

Many CEO’s and small/medium business owners do not have a Board of Advisors, or Board of Directors to help hold them accountable and direct the business towards the ultimate goal of monetization with an exit strategy. If the business cannot afford a full time CFO, a part time CFO with a broad based business experience can be that ‘Trusted Advisor’. Ideally the CFO who is the ‘Trusted Advisor’ not only has financial experience, but operating experience as well to provide global insight to issues facing the business.

The Value Add:

The CFO who becomes the ‘Trusted Advisory’ to the CEO delivers results-driven, professional counsel and solutions for complex situations. The key benefits for the CEO and the organization having a ‘Trusted Advisor’ include:

Are You a CxO?

Do you wear a lot of hats? How's that working for you? Most business owners and CEOs tell me they don't like it. But they are convinced that performing a constant juggling act is a requirement of the job. You're the one who has to make sure the business keeps moving forward and will do anything at any time to make sure that happens. That's true, but more effective ways exist to reduce the number of hats you wear so you can focus on growing the right things for your business. 

"Managers are there to do things right and leaders focus on doing the right things" -Warren Bennis

Words seem to have less and less meaning these days. They seem to morph into different meanings faster than ever before. The words we use and the language we adopt, as a company and in our profession, take on different meanings over time. At any given snapshot in time they become part of our culture, the way we do things. Over the last few months as I was starting my new company, it struck me how many organizations have tried to call their customers something other than a customer. Seem I hear the word “client” used a lot. Also seems like a lot of organizations call their organization a “firm”. I got to thinking, how does that make my customers feel when I call him a client? How do they feel when I call my company a firm? So I asked them.

The responses I got were surprising. My customers don’t like to be called clients. It makes them feel like they are in a doctor’s office, or in a CPA firm’s office, or in a lawyer’s office, most of those relate to negative experiences. They indicated to me a negative reaction to the word “firm” as well. They said that firm means, rigid, unmovable. So I right clicked on firm and got these synonyms: hard, unyielding, stiff. I suppose one could see how accounting firms, psychiatric practices and law firms, want to come across that way. They tend to be a bit elitist in my opinion. A top-down approach to working with customers – like “we are better than you and know more than you” feeling when sitting at their firm.