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Vinnie Fisher – FullyAccountable.com
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You have found Authentic Business
Adventures, the business program,
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that brings you the struggle
stories and triumphs and successes
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of business owners across the land. Coming
to you remotely because we’re able
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to interview people nationally,
which is super cool.
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Today, we have Vinnie Fisher,
chief executive officer at Fully
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Accountable. Vinnie,
how are you doing today?
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Great, James, thanks for having me.
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I love what you guys are doing.
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And my team is excited
about all this stuff.
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And I love I love what we talked about
earlier how, like, the show went bigger.
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And so we’re happy to be a part of your
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community and share our
stories of how we got here.
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Yeah, this is we just jumped on the name
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Authentic Business Adventures,
and that’s just it’s long.
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There’s three huge words some people
can’t spell, but here we are.
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We got to just run with it.
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So I’m happy to have you on the show.
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Like I said, you got some cool books
on your on your back table there.
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Yeah.
You know, those are two I wrote.
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One of them is a book,
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The CEO’s Mindset that I wrote about
eight figure hosting company we had
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and learned that I kind of set out to sell
something that I thought was a good thing
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to sell and realized I needed
to build a big company.
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And so I kind of was a journey of me
breaking that business and what I would do
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if I was going to build
another one. And the other
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book next to is called False Prophets,
where I woke up and realized that I didn’t
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have any connection to my finances
and I was a gross revenue guy.
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And then one day realized that it’s about
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what I keep and bring in to the bottom,
not when it comes in at the top.
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And so.
Right.
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That’s funny, I used to work for a guy
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that would get so excited
about making a big sale.
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This is back in the day and all that jazz,
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and he’d sell just thousands of dollars
of memory back when memory cost thousands
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of dollars, then he’d be like, yeah
super awesome.
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And I saw an invoice or bill of lading
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really that showed what he paid for it
and then what he sold it for the like.
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Let me know if he made two percent.
Exactly.
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He had to write it out
for net 30, net 60, something like that.
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And so that Web hosting company I owned,
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it was a large Web hosting company,
and it was exactly that.
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Lots of people on the team.
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And, you know,
I had these false assumptions that we were,
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you know, Web hosting,
especially shared hosting thin margins.
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But you have customers for a long time,
so you make up for it in length of customers.
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Well, these faulty assumptions that we
were profiting about five percent when we
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were losing money at five percent
and so much flow of cash coming in.
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And these longer contracts,
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I basically almost bankrupted us
with some really faulty assumptions.
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Same thing just focused on gross revenue,
never really how to a mindset around
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focused on net revenue services,
money coming in and money going out.
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But when you look at the bank statement
on any given day,
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it looks like you’re rich
and you realize when we got to the end
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of a month or a quarter, we’d be like we
brought all this money and where is it?
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And then we’d have this like
deficit to the bottom line.
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And we always felt like this leaky bucket
we could never get a good answer to it
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except for we just weren’t paying
attention to the leaky bucket.
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And, you know, in that business
cycle now because I broke it.
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Nice that, you know,
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it’s interesting that you take
responsibility for that completely.
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Yep.
So that is admirable.
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That is rare that people, I always say you
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got to look at the top
to figure out who’s at fault.
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Right.
For anything.
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That’s right.
I built it.
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I broke it and I went on from it.
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And that was a great business
that literally we hadn’t even had a chance
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to sell it in the middle
of where it was running decent.
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And in my arrogance, I’m like,
now we’re doubling down and we’re double
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down on some of my decisions
that were blinded decisions.
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And ultimately, you know,
we we broke a company that at one point
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was the seventh largest
shared hosting company on the planet.
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And so, you know, hey, like you know
I’m thankful I without some of those
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experiences, I wouldn’t be the leader
and have the organizations we had today.
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But, you know, it was a very expensive PhD
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I’ll accept that.
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But with great humility, I would say
that that was really on on my feet.
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It was a, it trickled down from the decisions
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that I would have made
in my late 30s and early 40s.
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Sure.
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Did you, when did you start that business?
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So we started it in
in my mind in late 2009.
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But we launched it to the world
about the middle of 2010.
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And it’s really had massive growth
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at the end of eleven into twelve
into early thirteen.
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It was about the end of 12 and 13 where we
started having
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the biggest issue was my board, including
me, who was the majority control of it.
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We decided to bring a professional CEO,
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meaning we handed the ball
off for me to somebody else.
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And one of the biggest problems we didn’t
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either appreciate or realize was how
many levers I was really pulling.
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And in my arrogance,
I thought maybe I wasn’t pulling as many
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as I was or even didn’t
really understand that.
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And so when I stepped away from it almost
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immediately, we started to have a massive
decline in almost every area
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of the company and then almost 500
people on payroll at that point.
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And by the time
I stepped back in and assumed,
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like recognize control of it,
we went from about four million a month
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in revenue to a little over
about a million eight.
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And we were nose diving into that.
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And we just we were able to pull the plane
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nose back up just enough to kind of soft
crash land and sell it off for parts.
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Wow.
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So you built that thing up to five
hundred employees and a couple of years.
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Yeah.
So we had I remember in
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it was late 2010.
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We did about one month, we did a little
over two hundred eighty thousand revenue.
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We were building websites like
the Builder Wick’s version stuff before
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anybody was doing that, you know, and we
had to because nothing existed tech wise.
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So we just by nature had to build
these flat five page sites.
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So we were building the Web
builder version that you now just kind
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of click and get as part
of your GoDaddy sign up.
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Well, all the tech that didn’t exist,
we kind of created back then.
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And well, once our offer kicked into gear
where we could build that as part of your
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shared service, we went from two hundred
eight thousand the next month in.
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Almost three million in revenue.
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We had this massive explosion,
we were thousands of websites behind
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in building, we were hiring by like
20 people at a time type stuff.
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It was that kind of craziness.
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And like we were like,
where do you grab on to a rocket?
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The tale, I don’t know where you can write
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anywhere, you know,
I’d walk into the building and we’d have
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10 new stations built for customer
service and it was that kind of thing.
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Right.
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And so all during 11 and in through 12
for two years, we were just humming.
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I mean, humming.
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And we were we were so excited
about how we were humming.
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You’re that kind of youthful teenager.
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That kid thinks they can do everything.
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So we started like, what are
the other businesses we can do?
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And we got distracted.
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And during that distraction is when we
really instead of doubling down on what we
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had in front of us and become like world
class and our systems and fix the stuff we
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had to go really fast on,
we let our distraction take us into other
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businesses, meaning things that looked
kind of complementary to it.
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And we never really fixed
the core that we sped through.
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And that’s ultimately
what led to our demise.
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Oh, no.
So are you having to just plug in server
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after server
to jump with that Munchen Web hosting?
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Oh, yeah.
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So the concept of what we all call
a cloud now just didn’t exist, right?
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We built our version of that a cloud.
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So we just took, you know,
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things that we take for granted now,
like I’m not a programmer,
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but I intellectually had to,
like, get up to these things.
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You know, the idea where now you hook
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into a server and server and cloud is
basically servers helping servers manage
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load Mac, then what you did is just
provision or build up another server
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and you’d have one run is like your
master and dump all your load.
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So the other servers.
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Well, now you can separate the front
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from the back and that naturally
happens in a cloud environment.
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Well, we just made up our own
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and I remember talking to my friend
of another hosting company,
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one of these big events,
and said it would be really neat.
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We could separate those two things.
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He’s like, we can totally do that.
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And we cut a big gap in our head.
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How to separate running the data
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of running up a spinning up the power on
the front versus the power on the back.
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Gosh, we did that in the middle of 2010
into eleven before it kind of existed.
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And so we just had
to necessity bore that out.
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And we basically built up our own
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Round-Robin system, which worked as kind
of a first version cloud that is so cool.
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It wasn’t like you could just fire up.
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Amazon has three and just
ignore this loop.
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You know, we would back down like our
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redundancy was with service called
Rackspace, where we’d normally Rackspace.
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Yeah, but back then they were
either self or manage manage them.
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We just bought load from them and then we
would buy server space within our own rack
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server farm where we would just buy it
on the rack and we would kind of manage
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that rack versus another rack and when
a server broke would plug another one in.
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Now you could just share
load over the cloud.
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You wouldn’t even have to build
all that infrastructure to run it.
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Yeah, it’s just a side tangent.
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I wonder what’s going to happen with
the I.T. guys of the future that used
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to fix all this stuff,
company by company by company.
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Now that a lot of stuff is moving cloud,
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you really don’t have a lot
of smaller companies.
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We don’t have
infrastructure like they used to.
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Yeah, I actually think that, like,
if you look at what landscape’s happening
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today and we live in direct to consumer
and how the behavior of buying has really
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accelerated, kind of like
digital and Internet activities.
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I was just looking at an article
on LinkedIn about a survey that was done
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among kind of like eight hundred big
professionals who run their companies.
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And the number one thing that they spent
money on over in the last hundred nineties
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was the acceleration of digital 67 percent
of companies that accelerated their
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digital budget, meaning automation,
how to digitize things,
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how to add artificial intelligence
and automation to their companies.
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Well, that would not have been able or
possible if you go back even a season
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and I look at season in like five years
because it wasn’t here.
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But the tech is here now to help things.
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So what is going to pick up some benefits
for companies
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is going to also lead to the things we
need to automate to even retrain or train
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some workforce to support that type of
business structure we’re going to have.
[00:11:15]
So you go back five years ago,
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we wouldn’t have been able
to support that automation.
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The tech wasn’t here.
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You couldn’t even plug into bank accounts
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and get like real time pulls off
your data, how you can do all that.
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But the workforce to support that was
untrained to even support that.
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So I think this next cycle,
which probably was going to happen three,
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four or five years from now,
is being forced to be now.
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That’s cool.
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I was going to ask you
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with this hosting company.
Yeah.
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Were you pulling people
out of Akron, Ohio?
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So, you know, tech wise,
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so we use for granted things like full
stack developer,
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one of those tech developers,
somebody who basically knows enough code
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of all the things that play nice with each
other, like they know WordPress.
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I understand open architecture.
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They can plug this code with that code.
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And we just take for granted that now.
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Well, back then, as I’m aging myself 10
years ago, you had to be good at something
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like PHP, which was the primary
coding for Web site.
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And you would want a coder to do that?
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Well, we would just hire a kid out
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of school or somebody who had some
website experience building an app.
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And he or she mostly he back then would
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build and probably now true,
he’s would build in that
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code and we would support that.
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Now we want someone to be generally good
at like WordPress,
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generally good at certain design features
where they can in front and back
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and experience and have the ability
to plug into other parts.
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And the code element
pull is way different.
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So then, yeah, it didn’t exist,
so we’d hire someone and train up.
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Now it’s its global workforce.
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Our whole model for as a company
is really premised of the goal.
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Hire an expert wherever they are and you
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should have a global attitude to your
workforce and not just compromise having
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something local just because you
wanted a someone in your office.
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Sir, that is cool, man.
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You guys had to be just run by the seat
of your pants that whole time.
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That’s crazy.
You know, it’s it’s kind of like when you
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hear those stories of how Internet
companies go, like we lived it like you.
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You were like, that’s
my joke is always that.
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Where do you grab a rocket
anywhere you can every day?
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Was this entirely different challenge.
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And I think that’s what’s exciting about
some of the entrepreneurial journey is
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like Phil Knight wrote,
this book should get in there.
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He talked about the rocket growth of Nike
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and he was like every day,
woke up with this dream.
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And someday the business would be
like kind of run without problems.
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And the problem he had with that
deficit is a growing business.
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Always has a new problem.
Absolutely.
[00:14:05]
One day he got really comfortable and he
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wrote about this where his job was
to wake up and solve a new problem.
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And they hit me really big.
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I’m like, wait a minute,
growing companies just have new problems.
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And so as the leaders of these businesses,
we need to embrace that.
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Our job is to wake up and solve the new
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problem that was created by a growing
business and not dream about something
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untrue, like we’re going to someday
have a business without problems.
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That just doesn’t happen.
[00:14:34]
Now, what’s that clicked in?
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For me, the journey of running a business
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became way more joyful
and actually fun that I’m the one as
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the one of my jobs to look ahead a little
bit and not be discouraged leading
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the team through our new
problem we have today.
[00:14:52]
I always tell our employees, man,
I’m like, we are like Vanilla Ice.
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If you got a problem,
you will solve it, right?
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Because there’s no such thing,
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no such thing as a moment,
even as a person,
[00:15:04]
as you’ll never have a problem
because you’ll end up creating one.
[00:15:07]
Yeah, I mean, I have to get comfortable
[00:15:08]
with, like, learning
that anxiety is a thing.
[00:15:11]
You don’t eliminate it, you deal with it
in autumn is also one of those things.
[00:15:16]
It’s not something it exists.
[00:15:19]
And so back in the day when we were
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growing, our business started to really
work at a level where it got a little
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boring and we were making money
instead of going in and treating the parts
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of the business that need to be fixed
as a new opportunity.
[00:15:35]
I got bored and wanted to go create new
[00:15:37]
businesses and then we got massively in
mature answer to how to fix a business.
[00:15:43]
And so I’ve learned over time that boredom
is just an indicator.
[00:15:48]
It’s actually an indicator
of a good business.
[00:15:51]
And well, what I need to do with that is
to slow down, allow margin to exist.
[00:15:57]
And usually my response shouldn’t
be go create a new distraction.
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It’s fixed what’s in front
of us that is so fair.
[00:16:05]
And I think a lot of a lot
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of entrepreneurs will feel the same way
or understand that that’s the thing.
[00:16:11]
And there is always another idea for like,
oh, my gosh, we’ve got to start this.
[00:16:17]
And that can pull you away
from completely guilty of this.
[00:16:20]
That can pull you away from the things
that you should focus on.
[00:16:24]
When we launched the.
[00:16:26]
Parent that I run now fully
accountable when we launched it.
[00:16:29]
I had seven sister companies that were
mine that were our first clients.
[00:16:35]
Wow.
Now I have a portfolio of companies.
[00:16:39]
We own three other operating
businesses besides this one.
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I’m good with that.
The mistake I made before
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was I in a lot of ways was a lever
puller in those other companies.
[00:16:50]
Now they’re just investments at best.
[00:16:52]
I’m like a chairman of the board.
[00:16:54]
I don’t actually believe you should be
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having overlap of your executive teams
running companies learn from that.
[00:17:02]
But if you look back at the early days,
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I had to be honest with you that we have
these multiple business operations
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that kind of birthed out
of my distraction attitude.
[00:17:12]
Sure.
I totally understand that.
[00:17:14]
Totally.
That is probably.
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One of the hardest things of being
an entrepreneur is is really in that end
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because you want to it’s just
chasing the next thing, right?
[00:17:24]
It’s the honeymoon phase of a business.
[00:17:26]
I actually think it’s back to this
idea of anxiety and boredom.
[00:17:30]
And when I was really
anxious about something,
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one of the distressed one of the ways that
you can deal with anxiety is to avoid it.
[00:17:38]
And so would be like,
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go watch a movie or play a video game or
like go and eat some food or do whatever
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you can to drift away
from it, like avoid it.
[00:17:49]
Well, one of those ways was a distraction
[00:17:51]
as an entrepreneur, because I love and see
ideas that just go create something.
[00:17:56]
Well, that same thing was true when
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the business was working
and it didn’t need me.
[00:18:01]
I dream up the dribbles of income as
[00:18:04]
Andrew Carnegie or Carnegie would call it,
and like, well, let’s go do that.
[00:18:08]
And next thing you know,
we have four of those.
[00:18:11]
And it was created out of this theory
of distraction, not really driving deeper
[00:18:16]
what was in front of US interest in
that’s mature to notice that to become
[00:18:22]
aware that, well,
it took a few bucks losing it
[00:18:25]
in the category, that it took
some honest self improvement.
[00:18:30]
It took some self internalization.
[00:18:33]
Like I’m convinced that a house that isn’t
built on a firm foundation will fall
[00:18:38]
and it’s on a firm foundation of our
business and a small companies heartbeat
[00:18:43]
run around the leaders who create
them and grow them well.
[00:18:47]
And I did take an honest assessment
and look at that,
[00:18:50]
how while I may have been its greatest
catalyst, I also was its greatest problem
[00:18:56]
when I did those things,
like diversifying distractors.
[00:18:59]
Sure.
Interesting.
[00:19:01]
So tell me, at what point did you write
[00:19:03]
the books in relation to the hosting
company and Fully Accountable.
[00:19:07]
Yes.
So great.
[00:19:08]
Right.
So like, I have three books, actually.
[00:19:11]
The first one’s called
the best investment.
[00:19:13]
A better you.
I don’t.
[00:19:14]
I have it around in my library
and in the room or something.
[00:19:17]
But that story was real interesting.
[00:19:20]
Like I was in the shower one day and I’m
like, oh, that’s the name of the book.
[00:19:24]
And it bled out of me.
[00:19:25]
And it was the story
[00:19:27]
about me kind of finding my own self-worth
again after breaking our business.
[00:19:33]
Was I a one hit wonder?
[00:19:35]
Did I actually break the greatest
thing I was ever going to make?
[00:19:38]
And I kind of lose some understanding
of how I was fairly and wonderfully made.
[00:19:44]
Can I just bled out?
I mean, it was almost like a journey into,
[00:19:47]
like, self forgiveness,
like covering up about me.
[00:19:52]
Help me get my mojo back.
[00:19:54]
That really was a big deal that happened.
[00:19:57]
And so I wrote those three books,
one each year in a three year row.
[00:20:01]
I wrote one in twenty, fourteen,
fifteen now excuse me.
[00:20:06]
Fourteen, fifteen, six.
That right.
[00:20:09]
15, 16 and 17 where the three books.
Wow.
[00:20:13]
The fifteen was like
in the fall of fifteen sixteen.
[00:20:17]
I really started to be
excited about writing a book.
[00:20:20]
I’m like, wait a minute,
[00:20:21]
I know I can help a lot of people
in the grilling of their business if I
[00:20:24]
really honestly show under
the hood what happened to us.
[00:20:28]
So CEOs mindset became like a kind
of like tell here’s what I would do.
[00:20:34]
And based on what I did do, don’t do this.
[00:20:38]
Do some of these things.
[00:20:39]
Also, this is what worked for us.
[00:20:41]
So CEOs mindset, that title is
the first chapter of the book.
[00:20:46]
And if I tell anybody about the way before
[00:20:48]
I get any further, we created
a gift page for your community.
[00:20:52]
Oh, we’re accountable.
[00:20:53]
Dot com forward slash authentic business
adventures someone has to do is go there
[00:20:59]
and we will give you our books
for free and other materials.
[00:21:03]
We are so passionate about people
[00:21:06]
in business that we have tools
there for you, for your business.
[00:21:09]
No strings attached.
It’s all yours.
[00:21:12]
So I submitted that book
[00:21:14]
was I laid out the key part of a business
is the CEO or the leader is kind
[00:21:19]
of getting the right mindset,
switching from like being a market or
[00:21:23]
a product developer into realizing
you have a business to grow.
[00:21:26]
And when you get out that six figure phase
[00:21:29]
and into a seven figure phase,
it’s more important about fixing
[00:21:32]
the business and growing it with people
and process than it is about kind
[00:21:37]
of lighting it on fire thing to get it
to a point where you got to fix it.
[00:21:41]
So that book is all about looking
[00:21:43]
at the maturity that you need to build
around you and your business.
[00:21:47]
And then the next book was a self honest
[00:21:49]
review of what led to the growth of a back
office and me waking up in my health
[00:21:55]
company, which was after
our Web hosting company.
[00:21:59]
And so I broke our Web hosting company.
[00:22:02]
I sold it for parts I.
[00:22:05]
I always wanted to get
in the health space.
[00:22:07]
I was I was passionate about a healthy
lifestyle and using supplementation
[00:22:12]
instead of just medicine as a way
to kind of improve some of our food.
[00:22:16]
Basis was excited we launched a health
[00:22:18]
company, we came out of nowhere,
had a really good couple offers
[00:22:23]
with a face cream for women,
it was called Consumer’s Choice.
[00:22:27]
We popped we popped fast.
[00:22:29]
And it was in the middle of us growing
that business that I once again realized
[00:22:34]
that I was focused on the top line,
not the bottom line on a really good news
[00:22:40]
about that story was while we were
profiting at about eight percent.
[00:22:45]
I realized through this process of kind
of waking up one day, very juvenile,
[00:22:50]
I know this sounds basic,
but I woke up one morning and I’m like,
[00:22:53]
wait a minute, it’s not about
my what I bring in for the company.
[00:22:56]
It’s what we keep because we have these
[00:22:58]
months where we would
bring in a lot of revenue.
[00:23:00]
We were doing
[00:23:01]
about 40 million in revenue in this
company and we generally lean team.
[00:23:07]
That’s a lot of face cream.
[00:23:09]
Yeah, we were killing a man.
[00:23:10]
It was a it was a protocol, Mirabela.
[00:23:12]
We were we were the darling
like it was selling on shelves.
[00:23:16]
It was selling direct to consumer.
[00:23:18]
The offer was converting
was a good product.
[00:23:21]
And we actually had some other products.
[00:23:23]
But that was our horse.
[00:23:24]
That was the one that was coming out
[00:23:26]
of the gates with razor thin margins
in relation to what we were doing.
[00:23:30]
And so when we were growing and putting
[00:23:32]
every dollar into acquiring a customer,
I woke up and realized the company,
[00:23:37]
the way we built it, should have
been profiting at about 20 percent.
[00:23:40]
Yeah, at eight percent.
[00:23:41]
So next thing you know,
[00:23:44]
I’m like, wait a minute,
we’re losing 12 percent a month.
[00:23:47]
We’re making eight.
We’re like losing.
[00:23:49]
And all of a sudden everything changed
for me where we actually dial back,
[00:23:54]
almost half of our revenue,
made ourselves half of our size,
[00:23:59]
fixed our traffic channels where we were
overpaying for customers we shouldn’t
[00:24:02]
otherwise had, and then grew it back in
size and successfully sold that company.
[00:24:08]
But that book, False Profits,
is the journey of us figuring out how
[00:24:13]
to acquire a customer profitably and not
blow it all just to be be so fancy
[00:24:19]
of a big company without any profit margin
interest in a super.
[00:24:23]
I don’t think that’s super common.
[00:24:26]
I always think I guess it’s interesting
[00:24:28]
talking to you, because I always think
back to the website or the dotcom boom.
[00:24:32]
Yeah.
[00:24:32]
To thousands and the Super Bowl
commercials, that’s dotcom and stuff like
[00:24:36]
that, where people throw
in money hand over fist.
[00:24:39]
Some of these companies that
they didn’t have a revenue model.
[00:24:43]
Why do you see that now with investors?
[00:24:46]
I think right now, like,
by the way, that’s how all of us in direct
[00:24:51]
to consumer,
like selling off of a website,
[00:24:54]
how we’ve been trained,
do everything you can to acquire
[00:24:57]
the customer, disrupt,
sell as many, be a brand.
[00:25:01]
That’s kind of what the flow
for at least two or three seasons.
[00:25:05]
And we look at seasons as five years,
10, 15, almost 20 years.
[00:25:10]
That’s how everyone’s been acting.
[00:25:12]
Well, I’ll tell you,
I believe that we’re going to see
[00:25:16]
a proper disruption of direct to consumer
where if you don’t have profit margin
[00:25:21]
and you don’t have cash
and you can’t survive
[00:25:25]
in, I think the next correction direct
to consumer is going to be about
[00:25:29]
a profitable relationship
to acquiring the customer.
[00:25:32]
You know,
[00:25:33]
almost what we have seen because we can we
now have a lot of companies we work
[00:25:36]
with that 42 cents of every dollar
is spent acquiring the customer.
[00:25:42]
And wow, that’s a lot.
Right.
[00:25:44]
And we believe in our book,
[00:25:47]
we’ve kind of shown that depending on what
type of direct to consumer company you
[00:25:51]
are, if you spend over 40 cents on the
dollar, you’re probably not profitable.
[00:25:56]
No, you’re spending money to acquire.
[00:25:58]
And a lot of cases require your own
[00:26:00]
customer by emailing them,
sending them coupons, reengaging them.
[00:26:05]
Well, if they’re if the marketplace
of leaders in e-commerce,
[00:26:11]
if we don’t actually take advantage
of the efficiencies in the global market,
[00:26:16]
we have in a way to effectively
stop parts of our leaky bucket.
[00:26:21]
We’re going to get passed up
by the companies that are doing that
[00:26:25]
to what used to be brand disruption,
now brand survival and brand kind
[00:26:31]
of expansion, their cash and the ability
to to withstand disruptions.
[00:26:39]
If you don’t have funding coming
[00:26:40]
from the outside and you can’t
sufficiently capitalize your own growth,
[00:26:45]
I think you’re going to grow
yourself out of business.
[00:26:47]
And I think you’re going to see a
collapsing of, of course, right now.
[00:26:52]
What’s really stopping somebody
[00:26:54]
from coming in to e commerce,
from direct to consumer?
[00:26:57]
Not much.
The good news that technology is allowing
[00:27:00]
people in, but the inefficiency
of the market is going to get corrected
[00:27:04]
by people not having enough cash or
capital to withstand the growing pains.
[00:27:09]
And I think direct to consumer
is due to have that next.
[00:27:13]
Well, we experienced that six years ago
and we’ve been screaming that and now
[00:27:18]
overnight, because it is correction to our
community of like this outside force
[00:27:23]
of closing everything, I think it’s being
thrust upon us now more now than ever.
[00:27:29]
That’s fair.
That’s interesting.
[00:27:31]
Yeah.
[00:27:32]
So do you feel like the cost,
the acquisition costs for a lot
[00:27:35]
of customers
will have to go down or people will just
[00:27:39]
have to watch it tighter and make sure
they’re not just throwing money
[00:27:43]
at the wall and hoping some
of it sticks kind of thing?
[00:27:45]
One of the things we see with clients as
[00:27:47]
well as with our own companies that we’ve
caused problem with,
[00:27:51]
I’ll use the word like fear of missing
out flomo and channel envy.
[00:27:56]
So one of the problems we see with
e-commerce companies and direct
[00:28:01]
to consumer is your spread too thin
with your spend across too many channels.
[00:28:07]
So you’re on Facebook, you’re on YouTube,
you’re on tick tock, you’re on Google when
[00:28:11]
reality should be on one or two channels,
driving them deeper,
[00:28:14]
you spread your cost across too many
channels and your average cost to acquire
[00:28:19]
the customer goes up because you’ve
spread your budget too thin.
[00:28:23]
Sure, people are trying to be too broad as
opposed to narrow down and go after a very
[00:28:27]
specific audience where they can
preserve more of their budget.
[00:28:30]
I believe that’s the bigger problem than
[00:28:33]
it is about any other part of how
they’re spending their marketing budget.
[00:28:37]
That’s fair.
Yeah, you’re essentially missing a crowd
[00:28:39]
instead of drowning the few people that
would actually be your ideal customer.
[00:28:43]
Yeah, we have this thing in our head
[00:28:44]
that somehow, like, we want to be
available to a more mass market.
[00:28:47]
But you hear clichéd terms that are real,
[00:28:49]
like the niches cause the riches and dial
into your audience and all these things.
[00:28:55]
Well, we proved by math and my own journey
[00:28:58]
in business that that really
is a very true reality.
[00:29:02]
And when we think about our own company,
[00:29:04]
we are as big as we are because we dialed
in and focused on a specific audience.
[00:29:09]
And it allows us to be more efficient,
[00:29:11]
efficient with our marketing spend
and allows us to be more efficient
[00:29:15]
with knowing exactly
the audience we’re talking to.
[00:29:18]
I think that brands that really want to go
[00:29:21]
and grow beyond their own shadow
are going to have to a.
[00:29:25]
Rests this issue or they’re going
to get passed by the ones you do.
[00:29:30]
Interesting man,
marketing is so important.
[00:29:33]
That’s interesting.
[00:29:35]
You know,
we a lot of businesses rely on like
[00:29:38]
reputation care to kind of kind
of organic, rural grassroots stuff.
[00:29:44]
Well,
this idea of automation, global access,
[00:29:48]
product causation, you still have
to pay to acquire the customer on time.
[00:29:53]
The old adage, whoever can spend the most
to acquire the customer ultimately wins.
[00:29:59]
Well, there’s a point where that ends.
[00:30:01]
If you don’t have the money to live
[00:30:03]
with the growing dealing with process
improvement and adding people to your
[00:30:07]
team, you’re going to run out
of runway with your cash.
[00:30:11]
Yeah, acquisition costs of a customer.
[00:30:13]
You’ve got to keep a sharp eye on that.
[00:30:15]
I work with a guy that is
[00:30:17]
in the construction industry
and he’s trying to help contractors
[00:30:22]
get business essentially right
now in the world that we’re in.
[00:30:25]
They don’t really need a ton of help.
[00:30:27]
Yeah, exactly.
[00:30:29]
But he’s asking them,
what is your acquisition cost?
[00:30:31]
Because he’s comparing.
Sure.
[00:30:34]
And Angie’s List or a home advisor or
something like that to what he can do.
[00:30:38]
And he can do more and essentially less
[00:30:40]
because it’s better leads,
that kind of stuff.
[00:30:43]
But anyways, the contractors don’t know.
[00:30:45]
They have no idea how much they’re
spending per actual signed contract.
[00:30:50]
No idea.
[00:30:51]
And they have no idea even that like, you
know, it’s funny, Google AdWords, right.
[00:30:56]
When someone’s looking for you that got
[00:30:57]
search component,
you can spend traditionally more money
[00:31:02]
to see those eyeballs because
that person’s already kind of looking
[00:31:05]
for you as opposed to where you might be
in Facebook, where you’re just kind
[00:31:09]
of guessing and you’re not sure
if they’re looking for you.
[00:31:11]
You’re hoping that they stumble on you
[00:31:14]
might be massively expensive,
that a set of eyeballs are unqualified
[00:31:18]
eyeballs on that contractor says,
yeah, I want to have eyeballs.
[00:31:23]
Look at me.
[00:31:23]
We like, OK, which has been two, three,
four or five hundred dollars to have
[00:31:27]
that customer look at you
and they go, we have no idea.
[00:31:30]
We just want to lead.
[00:31:31]
It is exactly the issue I’m talking about
[00:31:35]
when someone really needs to dial in their
acquisition costs because actually 80
[00:31:41]
percent of companies will go out
of business for lack of cash flow.
[00:31:45]
You know, absolutely.
[00:31:46]
We we we don’t realize that we’re
statistically flat and the amount
[00:31:51]
of businesses that are closing right now
in this calendar year like we were last
[00:31:55]
year, the different sectors,
but we’re statistically flat.
[00:31:59]
You would see flat, statistically flat.
[00:32:02]
You would think in what’s
going on, we’d have more.
[00:32:06]
Well, some businesses
have thrived over this.
[00:32:09]
Oh, yeah.
[00:32:10]
And the ones that we’re going to close
probably got accelerated in their closure
[00:32:15]
because they have the cash
to withstand the hit.
[00:32:17]
Yeah, well,
we’re statistically flat on closure.
[00:32:19]
So you say to yourself,
what does that really mean?
[00:32:21]
Well, it’s back to the general
business principles.
[00:32:24]
Maybe the way the consumer is responding
[00:32:27]
is just a different medium,
but more important than ever.
[00:32:30]
Everyone else now can also
pay for their attention.
[00:32:34]
So you better start dialing that in.
[00:32:35]
Yeah, there’s an incredible amount of
competition from a marketing standpoint.
[00:32:41]
I like I have an online window company
[00:32:44]
and we’re looking at,
like you mentioned, Google AdWords.
[00:32:47]
Some of those phrases or terms are
forty some dollars a click, right?
[00:32:52]
Forty dollars a click.
[00:32:54]
Hey, we live in accounting and finance.
[00:32:56]
You know how expensive it is to have
an eyeball or get a conversion,
[00:33:01]
like I mean, maybe the lawyers have it
worse, the asbestos lawyers or whoever,
[00:33:06]
but they night like it’s
an expensive click.
[00:33:10]
But in search, if they’re looking for you,
[00:33:13]
they make that click and you
can find a way to convert them.
[00:33:16]
You’ll certainly pay more for that click
than you might on YouTube or Facebook.
[00:33:21]
Oh, yeah, because it’s a qualified click.
[00:33:24]
Yes, it’s theoretically, yes, they should
be searching for something like that.
[00:33:29]
And there’s only one reason they’re not
looking for contracting services or or
[00:33:35]
accounting because they
want to order pizza.
[00:33:37]
Yeah, right.
They’re just really bored.
[00:33:39]
Want to know how do they
get whatever works up?
[00:33:41]
Because how do I look
for a fractional CFO?
[00:33:43]
It’s just there
[00:33:45]
is no sense of that ever happening.
[00:33:47]
So tell me the Fully Accountable,
how long has that been going on?
[00:33:51]
So we open that in that kind of August
time frame of twenty fourteen.
[00:33:56]
But we’re hoping it internally.
[00:33:58]
We had a big team that was doing accounts
[00:34:00]
receivable and payable
for a health company.
[00:34:02]
Nobody could tell me the cost to acquire
my customer within your own company.
[00:34:08]
My own company.
[00:34:09]
And we were built with this
old traditional mindset.
[00:34:12]
Like two months from now we’ll close
the books and like the old way of doing
[00:34:16]
business and tech hadn’t
really caught up yet.
[00:34:19]
And I was like, that’s it.
[00:34:21]
I need to know what it cost
to acquire the customers.
[00:34:24]
So with someone in.
[00:34:25]
Customer service department,
not even my accounting department,
[00:34:28]
we set out to kind of with Excel,
solve our own problem,
[00:34:32]
and that’s what I found out,
that almost half of my affiliate traffic,
[00:34:36]
I was spending too much money
to acquire the customer.
[00:34:38]
I literally went back to the grassroots
way of figuring that out.
[00:34:42]
And then what we did is start introducing
our own tech, connecting to bank accounts,
[00:34:46]
tying software back to the real
map that was in your bank account.
[00:34:50]
And once we got better at that manually,
[00:34:53]
we launched to the world in February 15
at one of those big tech conferences.
[00:34:58]
And we’ve been taking outside
customers ever since.
[00:35:00]
Now we look like this overnight success
because of what’s happened in the world.
[00:35:05]
But back then, everyone thought we were
[00:35:06]
out of our minds,
that many this crazy good marketer is
[00:35:09]
going to open a super
boring accounting company.
[00:35:11]
Well, now, with the way global works,
[00:35:13]
doing it was like, wow,
we really need that today.
[00:35:16]
Well, you fast back 24 months ago
and people are still wanting someone
[00:35:22]
in their office who are still wanting
to do old traditional way with now
[00:35:26]
with budgets tightening up and the need
for immediate access to information,
[00:35:31]
we’re having record growth hours,
days and months that we should be having.
[00:35:37]
And everyone’s like, wow,
where’d you come up with that idea?
[00:35:39]
Well, that started back
in twenty fourteen.
[00:35:41]
And now we have this system and seventy
five people in a software we built.
[00:35:47]
But good night.
[00:35:48]
I tell you that story in 2015 and I
[00:35:50]
probably put James
to sleep with that story.
[00:35:54]
I don’t know if you would.
[00:35:55]
That’s a cool story because we’re
[00:35:58]
with calls on call the call
answering service that I have.
[00:36:01]
We’re having a similar similar growth
where people before like a remote office,
[00:36:06]
admin receptionist, whatever,
I don’t know, is a small company.
[00:36:11]
And then I get to have our number
one objection was the one you had.
[00:36:15]
It was like when someone will review
[00:36:17]
fractional CFO or comptroller full back
office, the number one objective was
[00:36:22]
always, I’d really love to have
that person in my office.
[00:36:25]
That’s gone now.
[00:36:27]
Yeah, this objection
for very obvious reasons.
[00:36:31]
Right.
[00:36:31]
One, lots of people don’t
have offices right now.
[00:36:34]
Right.
[00:36:35]
And so that’s exposed is what we say are
time, money and resources,
[00:36:39]
which is part of like our motto WINPAC,
back your own time,
[00:36:43]
take the money you have and spend it where
you can limited and get the best bang
[00:36:47]
for your buck and go where someone has
way more resources than you and experts.
[00:36:53]
So I would tell you a fractional
outsource work in back the CEO’s mindset.
[00:36:58]
My book, there’s like six real departments
of a company other than like the heartbeat
[00:37:02]
of like the CFO and the CEO
and a kind of a little founder group.
[00:37:06]
You can outsource major
chunks of your company.
[00:37:09]
Oh, you’re way more efficient
and profitable company than you ever could
[00:37:13]
be because technology and global
access have caught up.
[00:37:17]
Yeah, it’s interesting,
[00:37:20]
just from a competition point of view,
how fast a competitor could get
[00:37:25]
in the market that you’ve been working
on for four, three, four or five years or
[00:37:28]
more because the technology
is moving so fast.
[00:37:32]
Yeah, and we love it.
[00:37:33]
Like, we only know we serve
hundreds of companies.
[00:37:35]
We’re big.
We’re the biggest thing with our spaces is
[00:37:38]
someday when we serve a thousand
companies, we’re going to be gigantic,
[00:37:41]
like we want more like
professionals doing this work.
[00:37:45]
Like like the only competition
we have is what’s in our head.
[00:37:50]
And there’s so many people to serve.
[00:37:52]
There’s so much an underserved.
[00:37:55]
The reason our our phone ringing,
[00:37:56]
so much the reason why your phone’s
ringing so much is you’re meeting a need
[00:38:01]
and you were on the other side
of this, like, disruption.
[00:38:05]
And I say with great humility,
we didn’t do anything right.
[00:38:10]
We just didn’t do anything wrong either.
[00:38:12]
Like there was a line drawn in the sand.
[00:38:13]
I can imagine the governor of Ohio got
on the one hundred,
[00:38:17]
nine days ago and said, there’s this
virus and it’s on your computer.
[00:38:21]
Don’t log in.
Well, let me tell you something.
[00:38:23]
We’ve made a lot of trouble, right?
[00:38:25]
You go back X amount of days,
[00:38:27]
people like someday there’s going
to be this Internet blackout.
[00:38:29]
Locals better.
[00:38:31]
Who would have ever thought
the opposite of that is true?
[00:38:33]
Right now, the global world kicked in.
[00:38:36]
And I think that tech deployment,
[00:38:39]
I think this need to reintroduce or
for the first time introduce training
[00:38:45]
that allows for some type of efficient
support of automation is the real next
[00:38:51]
phase of business, whether
you’re local, retail or online.
[00:38:56]
We have this new version of business.
[00:38:59]
We have a new season
that everyone is getting used to.
[00:39:03]
We just happen to be
on the front edge of it.
[00:39:04]
And who would have thought an outsourced
[00:39:06]
accounting company would be
on the front of the right?
[00:39:10]
Like you would have laughed us
off the show two years ago.
[00:39:13]
I’m serious.
Like, well, in December, right?
[00:39:15]
Yeah, you’re exactly right.
[00:39:18]
And so we’re like an Internet company that
happens to get all relied on people, huh?
[00:39:24]
Yeah.
Interesting as far as through all of this,
[00:39:27]
who the winners have been and who the the
losers, not in a disrespectful way,
[00:39:33]
but I have friends that own retail
stores that are like, watch us
[00:39:38]
and we’re going to start.
[00:39:41]
And now their foot traffic
is down, way down.
[00:39:44]
And so you’re right.
[00:39:46]
Like I said, by the way, though,
in fairness, you know, businesses,
[00:39:50]
94 percent of companies never see
their tenth year in business.
[00:39:54]
So 12 years ago was when we
had this massive correction.
[00:39:58]
There were winners and losers
in that correction.
[00:40:01]
Now, a lot of that was real estate
overvaluation, borrowing of money.
[00:40:05]
But there was a massive sector of
correction in how business was operated.
[00:40:10]
Well, we’re going through
another one of those.
[00:40:12]
We are we’re going to get worse
[00:40:14]
and there’s going to be
a real big correction.
[00:40:16]
And I went taking the drama out of it
or any type of underlying feelings.
[00:40:22]
There is absolutely people on either
side of that line that was drawn.
[00:40:27]
And you’re either going to have to
[00:40:30]
improve upon what you have or completely
change what you do in order to exist
[00:40:35]
in what’s going to be this next
season of how we do business.
[00:40:39]
Mm hmm.
Yeah, it’s tough.
[00:40:41]
It’s a bitter pill to swallow
for a lot of people.
[00:40:44]
I feel so bad.
[00:40:45]
I was talking to one of my friends who’s
[00:40:47]
got a retail store, retail store, where
they all said riots and stuff like that.
[00:40:50]
Yeah.
[00:40:51]
And I’m like,
I don’t like there’s no shame in just
[00:40:55]
closing up shop for what
you’ve got going on.
[00:40:57]
It’s just the rent is expensive
based on having foot traffic.
[00:41:02]
There’s no foot traffic, at least none
that is interested in purchasing.
[00:41:09]
Right.
So it’s a it’s a tough not knowing
[00:41:13]
what will happen in a way,
the way a free market works,
[00:41:16]
regardless of your feeling about if anyone
anyone’s feeling about a free market,
[00:41:20]
we’re going to do some version of a free
market society until we don’t.
[00:41:23]
But while we have one,
what if statistically the amount
[00:41:28]
of business is closing are
statistically the same?
[00:41:31]
What’s also true are the new businesses
opening right in a free market.
[00:41:36]
The inefficiency of lack of cash
gets corrected by a market.
[00:41:40]
So the amount of new people opening up
a restaurant or a retail store,
[00:41:45]
you feel like you’re going to watch
that wave of people come in and kind of
[00:41:49]
will we have the exact
amount of those opened?
[00:41:52]
Probably not.
[00:41:53]
But will we have an efficient or
some way to address the what was closed?
[00:41:59]
Yeah, we’re going have a new improvement
to some of those categories in the way we
[00:42:04]
do it, like the market
is going to demand that.
[00:42:07]
And so, hey, my neighbor says
to me, it was really cool.
[00:42:12]
You can buy stuff online and shipped
to your house in less than two days.
[00:42:18]
And I’m like, Buddy, we’ve been doing
that for a while when you say this.
[00:42:22]
But I think that speaks to the mass
thinking, not where you and I live.
[00:42:26]
Right.
All right.
[00:42:27]
When I’ve been living in a digital
[00:42:29]
environment, we kind of take
for granted some of that.
[00:42:31]
I think when you look at like Jack Dorsey
from Twitter comes out and says,
[00:42:36]
wow, we’ve accelerated four years
of behavior in buying behavior online.
[00:42:41]
We’re like seeing e-commerce activity
[00:42:43]
that we were predicting we were
going to see in twenty, twenty four.
[00:42:46]
Well, that speaks to the habit of how
[00:42:49]
people bought things where they would
just drive over to the store and get it.
[00:42:53]
Well, since they didn’t feel,
at least at a minimum, comfortable
[00:42:56]
do it or some requirement,
they weren’t allowed to do it.
[00:43:00]
The supply chain was filled
by people going online and doing it.
[00:43:04]
So what you were like afraid before
[00:43:07]
entering your credit score
card is now becoming normal.
[00:43:10]
And so when my neighbor says yes,
[00:43:12]
the way we did it on the interweb as well,
he was one of those guys that just drove
[00:43:17]
over to fill in the blank
retail store to buy his stuff.
[00:43:21]
And now he’s like, well, ain’t that hard.
[00:43:23]
You just hit the button
and have it come to my house.
[00:43:28]
Well, if we were only having,
let’s say, a 15 percent adoption rate.
[00:43:33]
The Internet was still seen
as weird and maverick.
[00:43:36]
Well, the ad that 10 percent
plus it’s been added to that.
[00:43:40]
And when this is all said and done,
[00:43:42]
the kind of guessing pundits out
there will say, twenty five.
[00:43:46]
Thirty five percent of the buying
behavior will be online.
[00:43:50]
We are becoming more and more mainstream,
[00:43:54]
which is why the neighbor,
why he may have sounded weird,
[00:43:57]
is going to make sense because we’ve
adopted a new way to buy stuff.
[00:44:03]
Sure.
Interesting.
[00:44:05]
Man, I always think of my neighbor
[00:44:09]
anytime he sees a mail truck or FedEx,
he’s like, oh, Amazon’s here universally.
[00:44:15]
That’s been going on for years.
[00:44:16]
He’s been complaining about his wife.
[00:44:19]
And I might be the wife who does that.
Like I.
[00:44:21]
I literally don’t like going to the store.
[00:44:24]
I’ve been buying off Amazon for so long.
[00:44:27]
I feel like Jeff should name his kid
after me, but that’s up to him so
[00:44:33]
he can probably have some extras
just like, oh, that’s funny.
[00:44:38]
So how is business been going for you?
[00:44:40]
I guess pre pandemic
and now post pandemic.
[00:44:43]
How have you dealt with the growth?
[00:44:45]
You know, one of the things and it’s
the first off growth has been amazing.
[00:44:49]
I’m so thankful that I think this is true.
[00:44:52]
I think businesses that were primed
to actually take advantage of a growth
[00:44:56]
curve in this
time are the businesses that were best
[00:45:00]
positioned and had the cash
to grow properly through it.
[00:45:05]
We had both of those.
[00:45:06]
We were positioned right.
[00:45:08]
Not by our own, they doing just
by the way, this played out.
[00:45:11]
We were positioned right and we were
cash heavy, ready to go for this.
[00:45:17]
So we’ve been able to invest in team take
[00:45:20]
advantage of of sales and marketing
addition, not subtraction.
[00:45:24]
We had to tighten the budget.
[00:45:26]
What’s interesting is I think we were able
[00:45:28]
to improve on doubling down what we were
doing, not change or pivot into something
[00:45:34]
new and have to guess we
were able to just improve.
[00:45:38]
And I think that speaks
to why we were able to grow.
[00:45:41]
But one thing that I would love
to encourage everyone listening that we
[00:45:45]
did, that I would
really love everyone to do when you have
[00:45:49]
to take an honest assessment
of what you have in front of you.
[00:45:51]
I asked our CEO actually with three CEOs.
[00:45:55]
I asked each of them of their respective
businesses to go back and look at our team
[00:46:00]
and measure them by your team members
that went above and beyond the call
[00:46:04]
of duty, the ones that met the obligation
of what they have to do and the ones
[00:46:08]
that fell below the line of the basic
command of like the quid pro quo
[00:46:13]
of an employer employee
relationship we call team members.
[00:46:16]
And anyone who fell below that line,
[00:46:19]
we immediately asked them
to leave the team because they
[00:46:24]
we were we were cleaning
up the way we do things.
[00:46:26]
Right.
[00:46:27]
So you have a couple of ways you can
react to this kind of corrections.
[00:46:30]
And so what we need to do is to improve
[00:46:33]
how we were as companies and when we
removed the people below the line,
[00:46:38]
actually the ones who are at the line or
even went above filled in as we added
[00:46:43]
the new people to our team
that needed to be there.
[00:46:46]
And we’ve had a massive uptick in culture,
[00:46:48]
a massive uptick in client satisfaction
through surveys and scores.
[00:46:54]
Absolutely.
It’s been huge for us.
[00:46:56]
And I the only thing I would say
of learning from the lesson we should go
[00:47:01]
through, they have it more often because
it back in an abundant phase, 2018, 2019,
[00:47:06]
let’s be honest,
the market was thin for people to come
[00:47:09]
on your team because everyone
the brother was hiring them.
[00:47:12]
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
[00:47:13]
Find an employee in December,
November last year.
[00:47:16]
Holy cow.
[00:47:17]
This idea of having an A player got
[00:47:20]
a little bit tired of hearing because
you’re like any B can you forgive me here?
[00:47:26]
But kind of back to some of that talk like
like making sure you have the right people
[00:47:31]
on the team is probably more
important now than ever.
[00:47:34]
Mm hmm.
Yeah, I was joking with someone.
[00:47:36]
I was joking with a group,
a networking group of mine.
[00:47:39]
And it’s funny,
[00:47:40]
like, I don’t want to make this political,
but I feel like we need to open up
[00:47:43]
the border because I feel like the people
have traveled 2000 miles on foot
[00:47:48]
to the border with show up
for an interview
[00:47:51]
where the people that are like within
your city won’t show up for an interview.
[00:47:57]
Well, in this way, James,
[00:47:58]
I think now that we’ve been required
to stay home and figure out remote work,
[00:48:04]
I think leaders realize
that while we all agree that networking,
[00:48:10]
human relationship, some creativity is
very hard to duplicate remote wise.
[00:48:16]
Yeah, you can get work done.
[00:48:18]
And experts live in other places that we
we what’s been shown to us is that you can
[00:48:24]
go hire people who live other
places and excel as a company.
[00:48:28]
You can go out and hire a relationship.
[00:48:31]
It doesn’t have to be in your backyard
[00:48:33]
and it might be a better
move for your company.
[00:48:35]
I don’t think businesses would have seen
that if it wasn’t required on them.
[00:48:40]
Totally agree to a thousand times
with calls and call especially.
[00:48:44]
I can tell you that I was afraid to let
[00:48:46]
anybody out of the office
because I’m like, we can have redundancy,
[00:48:51]
we can have oversight.
[00:48:53]
It’s way easier to manage when
people are under one roof.
[00:48:56]
If somebody shows up, you know what?
[00:48:58]
If they don’t show up, you know it.
[00:48:59]
We’re remotely I just hope they show up.
[00:49:03]
Yeah, but I had my first
today an hour ago.
[00:49:07]
I had my first interview,
[00:49:10]
we assume,
with multiple candidates that were all
[00:49:14]
in different locations
throughout the country.
[00:49:17]
And I would have never happened before.
[00:49:19]
Yeah, but only then we let people think
[00:49:22]
like we’re so massively
ahead of the curve.
[00:49:25]
But, you know, we have we have
a corporate office with a hybrid model.
[00:49:28]
We have homies, people who work from home.
[00:49:30]
We just call them homies that still need
[00:49:33]
to be called
doing that since twenty fifteen now.
[00:49:37]
So when when this all happened,
[00:49:39]
it was like, oh my gosh,
what do you do about people going home are
[00:49:41]
like, OK, our corporate people are going
to have to learn how to work off
[00:49:45]
the kitchen table because they’re
not used to being at home.
[00:49:48]
But the reality of us doing interviews
of Zoome or or like having remote
[00:49:52]
interviews like this is
the way it’s going to go now.
[00:49:55]
And for us as a company,
[00:49:57]
we just double click on what
they’re working well for us.
[00:50:00]
So we just have more homies on the team.
[00:50:02]
And so, you know,
[00:50:03]
it’s and I love it that businesses like
yours and many other of my friends.
[00:50:07]
To sit like you and I are realizing they
[00:50:10]
don’t have to have someone in the office
next to them to absolutely,
[00:50:13]
really excel as a company, and
I think that’s an improvement business.
[00:50:18]
I actually think that’s allowing us to add
the best people to the team,
[00:50:24]
not someone who just happens to live in
either like Madison or Cleveland, right.
[00:50:29]
Oh, my gosh.
[00:50:29]
Just open up the doors for the the the
volume of applicants that you can get.
[00:50:35]
And just I mean,
it’s easier for us to cover a schedule
[00:50:39]
because of the different time
zones and stuff like that.
[00:50:41]
Well, it just opens up so many logistics
[00:50:44]
that the limiting one is how do we
get a computer to this new hire?
[00:50:49]
And you it’s like, how do you
have the headset with the dialer?
[00:50:52]
All work in a closed system.
[00:50:53]
And so we’ve we’ve built our own closed
[00:50:57]
system that we’ve been improving
on over these last few years.
[00:51:00]
Now, some companies had to wake
up and do that overnight.
[00:51:04]
Now, that is tough, right?
Yeah.
[00:51:06]
And they’re going to figure
it out and they’re doing it.
[00:51:08]
I’d say that business leaders listening
to it manually don’t overbuild
[00:51:13]
the automation right now
because you don’t know what you’re doing.
[00:51:16]
Just great at Lean as you
can improve as you go.
[00:51:19]
Mm hmm.
Name of the game.
[00:51:22]
That’s typical.
[00:51:23]
When are you going to tell me whether
are they records in the back behind you?
[00:51:27]
Yeah, that’s James.
[00:51:29]
Everything you see is
to make my ego feel better.
[00:51:31]
That’s all I’m saying.
[00:51:33]
Something like that over my shoulder.
[00:51:35]
These records, there’s a software we use
[00:51:37]
click funnels and we
drive leads in marketing.
[00:51:40]
And I am one of my talents,
[00:51:42]
as people would say, I’m a I believe,
a pretty decent marketer.
[00:51:45]
Well, those are awards that I won
[00:51:47]
for being able to drive at least a million
dollars in revenue through a funnel.
[00:51:51]
And then these are words over here,
because the last two years we’ve been
[00:51:56]
awarded as one of the fastest 5000
growing companies in the United States.
[00:52:00]
Very cool.
Very cool.
[00:52:03]
So what do you see for the future?
[00:52:05]
Fully Accountable.
[00:52:06]
Our fractional CFO and controller
service is exploding.
[00:52:10]
And for us, what we set out to build
before was this
[00:52:14]
back off is completely done human
part where we added tools to it.
[00:52:18]
And now I think dashboard automation,
[00:52:22]
lower dollar stuff is got a problem
because people are correcting their
[00:52:26]
budgets and they don’t have the extra
room to spend on fancy tools.
[00:52:30]
I see happening my advice to every service
[00:52:32]
provider is provide something
of a little higher value.
[00:52:36]
Where you do the work is going
to differentiate from low dollar dashboard
[00:52:40]
stuff because the market
from a standpoint of being able to buy it,
[00:52:45]
isn’t going to tolerate an extra piece of
a tool because the budgets are tighter.
[00:52:50]
And so I’m excited about where you’re
providing a service component that is
[00:52:54]
actually providing filling
in the blank for a company.
[00:52:59]
I think the business process outsourcing
category, the place where you and I live,
[00:53:04]
is even though they would have said
a couple of years ago we were due to grow
[00:53:08]
a little bit, the sectors where you and I
live are have they’ve recast growth
[00:53:13]
figures and we set to double and triple in
size on the backside of this correction.
[00:53:19]
Very cool.
[00:53:20]
That’s impressive.
[00:53:22]
That is impressive.
[00:53:23]
So just for the people, I guess
the listeners, what is Fully Accountable?
[00:53:28]
So feel accountable is a full
outsourced fractional service.
[00:53:31]
The provides fractional CFO and controller
services where we run your entire
[00:53:36]
accounting and finance office
for ecommerce and tech companies.
[00:53:40]
All right.
eCommerce and tech companies exclusive.
[00:53:43]
Yep, that’s where we live.
[00:53:44]
And my tip to you is,
as a service provider, have an audience.
[00:53:48]
You want to know our number one secret
[00:53:50]
weapon, those big of a company companies
we are is we talk to that audience.
[00:53:54]
So if that’s not your audience doing seven
[00:53:56]
figure seven figures and up in revenue,
then you don’t work with us.
[00:54:00]
Now we care about you, which is why
we created we careFully Accountable.
[00:54:04]
And we’ll help you point
you in a direction.
[00:54:06]
But you’re not going to be our client
[00:54:07]
because we only have
to speak one language.
[00:54:10]
We speak digital.
[00:54:11]
We don’t speak all the other
business languages.
[00:54:14]
And that is actually how
we have massively grown.
[00:54:17]
And I encourage that for everybody trying
[00:54:20]
to serve a business,
if you only have a few clients or hundreds
[00:54:24]
of fifty clients or whatever and you want
to double in size,
[00:54:28]
you don’t go after working for millions of
companies, focus in on the ones you do.
[00:54:31]
And I promise you you’ll
explode in growth like we have.
[00:54:34]
Nice.
That’s super cool.
[00:54:36]
Super cool.
Vinnie, what was that website again where
[00:54:39]
people can get the
right to hold accountable dot com forward,
[00:54:42]
slash your show,
authentic business adventures and right
[00:54:47]
there that will be in the show
notes will provide it for you.
[00:54:50]
You will be able to get
our books for free.
[00:54:53]
We care about you as a business, whether
you’re in e-commerce or digital or not.
[00:54:57]
Please take advantage of those.
[00:54:59]
We want to help you if you want to figure
[00:55:01]
out how to automate your systems,
how to really take advantage of tech
[00:55:04]
today, how to figure
out what to outsource.
[00:55:07]
What did not when to bring
on James Call Center and all those things,
[00:55:11]
we have those tools for you to help figure
that stuff out, go take advantage of.
[00:55:16]
That is super cool.
[00:55:17]
That is super cool.
[00:55:18]
If someone wanted to get a hold of you or
[00:55:20]
your company what would be
the best way to do that?
[00:55:22]
You can get Vinnie Fisher at any
of the social footprint’s very available.
[00:55:26]
Now, I’ll tell you, someone on
our team manages most of those,
[00:55:29]
but we’ll happily handle you if you
want to just go to we care at Fully
[00:55:33]
Accountable and write us an email
or just go to our website.
[00:55:36]
We are very digital friendly.
[00:55:38]
We have a very decent footprint
and we’re here to help you.
[00:55:43]
Cool, cool.
I appreciate it.
[00:55:45]
Well, Vinnie, thanks so
much for being on the show.
[00:55:48]
Do you have anything that you’d
like to add for the listeners?
[00:55:50]
I’d say this.
[00:55:52]
You didn’t do anything wrong if you got
[00:55:54]
massively nailed by this
line in the sand. Totally agree.
[00:55:58]
I also believe that this is required a new
season of life in business that got
[00:56:04]
accelerated to a season
we were going to have.
[00:56:06]
And I just want to encourage you,
if you’re somebody who’s living
[00:56:09]
in that middle, go reach out to people
like James, myself,
[00:56:12]
some others who are living on the front
of this because you can do it.
[00:56:15]
It’s actually not as complicated and it’s
not as automated as you might think.
[00:56:19]
And we’re just going to have a new way
[00:56:21]
where we’re going to deploy some a little
bit of tech into your companies
[00:56:25]
and that’s the new way
business is going to be done.
[00:56:28]
Yeah, I totally agree.
You know, it’s interesting,
[00:56:31]
I teach this business planning
class remotely now.
[00:56:33]
And the students are like,
who do I ask for help?
[00:56:37]
And I’m like, you ask anybody that owns
[00:56:38]
a business, they will be more
than happy to help you.
[00:56:40]
If they don’t, they’re a jerk,
forget about them.
[00:56:42]
They’ll be bankrupt in a minute.
[00:56:44]
But realistically,
entrepreneurs help entrepreneurs because
[00:56:47]
they understand that it’s an uphill
struggle almost all the time from a as
[00:56:53]
long as you’re in a power growth mindset.
Absolutely. It’s a struggle all the time.
[00:56:57]
We’re battling big business.
[00:56:59]
We’re battling rules that aren’t really
made for small business, were battling
[00:57:03]
the attention and the eyeballs
of the consumer.
[00:57:06]
We’re battling some of our own awful
decisions, we’re battling all kinds of things.
[00:57:10]
And so amen man like I’m in, our
[00:57:13]
whole culture of our company is
in the fight because I’m in the fight.
[00:57:17]
That’s true.
I love it.
[00:57:18]
I love it.
[00:57:19]
This has been Authentic Business
Adventures,
[00:57:21]
the business program that brings you
the struggle
[00:57:23]
stories and triumphs and successes
of business owners across the land coming
[00:57:27]
to you well remotely,
because that’s how we do it.
[00:57:30]
It’s more fun that way, right?
[00:57:32]
It’s the world we live in.
[00:57:33]
My name is James Kademan
[00:57:34]
and Authentic Business Adventures is
brought to you by Calls On Call offering
[00:57:38]
call answering services to businesses
in all stages across the country,
[00:57:43]
on the Web, at callsoncall.com.
[00:57:45]
As well as, drawincustomers.com
offering business coaching services
[00:57:50]
for small businesses, specifically
in the service sector on the Web
[00:57:53]
at drawincustomers.com.
[00:57:55]
And of course, the Bold Business Book,
a book for the entrepreneur in all of us,
[00:57:59]
available on Amazon and wherever
fine books are sold.
[00:58:03]
We’d like to thank you our wonderful
listeners as well as our guest,
[00:58:05]
Vinnie Fisher, chief executive
officer at Fully Accountable.
[00:58:10]
That’s fullyaccountable.com, right Vinnie?
[00:58:12]
That’s correct.
[00:58:13]
Thanks for having me today, James.
Oh, my gosh.
[00:58:16]
I can talk to you for hours, but I know
you probably got a lot of stuff to do.
[00:58:18]
And I know the radio won’t
air us much longer than this.
[00:58:22]
We’ve got,
we’ve got to keep it where it is.
[00:58:24]
So I appreciate you being
on the show, Vinnie.
[00:58:27]
The website one more time was
[00:58:28]
fullyaccountable.com/authentic business adventures.
[00:58:33]
That is correct.
Awesome.
[00:58:34]
I appreciate it.
That’s a huge gift.
[00:58:36]
Yeah, we welcome you.
[00:58:37]
We’re happy to help.
[00:58:38]
They just want to do our part to really
if we can do statistically help small
[00:58:44]
businesses,
which I believe is the heartbeat of our
[00:58:46]
free market economy,
then let’s help each other
[00:58:50]
actually, one more step of improvement
and it’ll be a great thing.
[00:58:53]
Super cool.
Super cool.
[00:58:55]
Thank you for listening.
We’ll see you next week.
[00:58:57]
I want you to stay awesome.
[00:58:58]
If you do nothing else,
enjoy your business.
