Exit-Readiness Starts with Cash Flow

Speaker A: Today we're speaking with Laura Linden, the founder of Feisty fd. Someone who doesn't shy away from telling it like it is. I love Laura's passion for financial literacy, particularly for female entrepreneurs. She's on a mission to demystify financial management, approaching it not as intimidating math, but as a language that anyone can learn to decode with the right teacher. In this conversation, we dig into the nuances of preparing business for due diligence and why having a record of cash flows can often be overlooked. We discuss when corporate financing finance advisor should be brought into the exit conversations and, um, the common valuation mistakes she's witnessed across multiple deals. We also talk about gender effect and how it can show up in entrepreneurs, uh, and how this often plays a role in attitude towards risk. Laura is a great, authentic voice in the industry and I really think you'll enjoy this one. Let's get into it. Welcome to the new F Word podcast where we cut the fluff on business finances and lift the lid on the new F word, the fractional finance revolution. It's a game changer for small businesses. I'm your, your host, Colin Hewitt, co founder of Float cash flow management for Xero on QuickBooks. We believe that really understanding your business finances makes all the difference in the world and having a strategic partner like a fractional CFO is the key to unlocking that. So join us as we dive into personal stories and actionable insights from forward thinking finance leaders and seasoned entrepreneurs to discover why fractional finance leaders have become an irreplaceable part of small business leadership. Hey, it's great to be back, um, for another episode of the New F Word. Laura, uh, so good to have you. Um, I know we've, we've had a, a few conversations here and there and I've been seeing a lot of your content recently and really enjoying it. So welcome. Good to have you. How are you doing?

Speaker B: Thank you. Good to m. Be here. Yeah. Good, thank you.

Speaker A: Um, well, like, why don't we start off by just telling, telling us a little bit about how you got into becoming a fractional CFO and how's it been? I think it's been 12 years.

Speaker B: Yeah. Which makes me feel really old. It was more of a necessity thing than a, than an actual active choice for me, which I think is quite different from a lot of, um, current fractional CFOs. So as you said 12 years ago, which, um, at the time we called it portfolio work rather than fractional work. And I was sort of a level down from where I am now. So I was kind of doing fractional work, financial controller sort of level work and it was pure necessity when I had my children um, because I wanted to keep working um, even when they were young and that was the only way to get flexibility then. You know part time work is a lot more available now but at the time that was really the only way to get into having m. A more flexible working pattern. So it was um, yeah a real necessity choice but I just absolutely loved it. Having done five or six years in really big retail corporate environments I absolutely loved that switch into really small companies, really entrepreneurial, um, CEOs and business owners and just getting really dug into the strategy and I think being able to see the whole big picture and really help those businesses get to whatever growth plans they were going through rather than just being one piece of the pie. I just absolutely loved it so just stuck with it.

Speaker A: And I think you said to me earlier you wouldn't, you wouldn't go back. So. But there must be some elements of uh, like in anything like in a regular job you've got the certainty but maybe not the diversity. Like what's the hard part, um for you of the, of the, what are the good, what's the best part? What's the hardest part?

Speaker B: I think the hardest part is the, the constant um, thinking about the next, the next client or the next role because they're all sort of, they've all got ah, an end point to them. They're not ongoing things because there'll be projects like helping people gear up for an exit or help helping them get funding. So you're always thinking about where's the next client coming from. So you can't ever just sort of switch off and solely focus on the work that you're doing. You're always thinking about revenue generating and marketing. So it's, it's like running your own business whilst helping other people do the finances in their own businesses. So that's, that side's really hard work. But I think once you get into a flow of it uh, and you get into some good networks and good communities the work starts to sort of come to you. So it becomes less of a, less of a task and more of a just kind of keeping things. But I also think there's no real certainty anymore. I don't really feel like even if I had a permanent full time job that there's ever really a guarantee or certainty. There's so much volatility in the markets. I don't know if I would ever fully Rely on one job and not feel like I had to constantly be sort of keeping those conversations, um, going anyway. So it's hard work, but it's not something I necessarily see as a bad thing. But I think the bit I love most about it is how much variety I get. Not just for me, because I love having lots going on and having lots of different clients going on. The experiences I get from having seven or eight clients at a time is huge. You know, the, the, the number of jobs I've done and clients that I've worked with. Most people won't do that in their entire career, let alone in the period of five years. So I see so much by working with so many different companies and I can take all those learnings from early stage companies and later stage companies and help people who are at different stages and I can see different tech, different advisors, different ways of working. I get um, relationships going with people in different countries, tax advisors, and it's just all really great information that I can use with other clients. So I love that side of it and I think clients benefit from that massively as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that too. That was, um, I find that when I had my agency, that was the bit that kept it really interesting. Just constantly getting into different business problems. I um, think that is one of the great things of being in that side. It made me think what you're kind of working on your own, right? You don't have a team of people, it's just you. And what happens when you go into uh, a business that, that doesn't have some of the other financial control or bookkeeping or you know, how do you, how do you deal with that? Do you uh, have you ever turned people away or set or do you recommend specific people? How does it typically work?

Speaker B: So it's normally, it'll normally be a company who's got some sort of finance person in house, whether that's a bookkeeper or finance manager or something. Sometimes it'll be an ops person who's kind of doing some bits of finance, but it's not their, their skill set. Um, so there'll normally be someone there in some capacity or they'll have an app outsource function, um, that they'll have been using for a few years and as maybe they've outgrown it and they want to bring it in house. So there's normally something there already and if there isn't, those are kind of my two options that I would normally go to. If it's a really rapidly growing company who are going to need someone in house in the next six months anyway, I would go straight to that. Whereas if it's someone who's in startup mode or they're really early stages and they, they don't need and they can't afford someone in house, I would much rather put them in an outsourced capacity where they can have access lots of different people at each layer. So they can have a person or a group of people who do their bookkeeping, a group who do their payroll, a group who do their credit control and then they get access to all those, those little sort of expert pots and then I kind of just put it all together and act as the, the conduit I guess. And um, that sort of connects from their outsource to their in house and I. It works really well up to a certain size that works so well and it's such good value for money. But I think you get to a certain size where it's just, it's not quick enough. You're not getting um, the responsiveness that you need from an outsourced function and that's the time to bring it in house.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, um, absolutely. What, what I was going to ask you was how I know you sort of, you sort of specify a bit into exit strategy. Is that something that you just find your way into or is it something you've been interested in? Or do you typically look for clients that are thinking about exiting or how does that work?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I do specifically look for them now, but the first, um, the first couple I did were just purely incidental. The first one, their FD unfortunately left them mid exit. So I just kind of went in and helped guide them through um, that rocky period. And the next one I was just working with them and they were approached about an exit. So it was, it was really incidental to start with, but I absolutely loved it and I now actively seek them out because is, it's so juicy. I love all the commercial buildup and I love getting in there a couple of years before they're ready to exit because you can really start to shape, um, and make some huge impact on those exit value, not just with figures with, with lots of different pieces. So I love that bit, absolutely love it. So I now actively seek it out and I'm uh, I've actually got two new clients that I've just started working with who are both heading towards exit in the next few years. It's just. And not everyone's going to get there, of course. There's going to be some that are going to miss. But I think it's the tangible nature of it where you've, um, sat with a business owner and said to them, right, what is your exit plan? What do you want to get out of this? And you sit with them and you reverse engineer it. This is what you want in your pocket by the time you exit. Let's get back to. This is the financial position we need you to be in when we get there. Here's where we are now, here's the roadmap. And then actually taking them on that journey. It's so rewarding when you see these people who've spent 10, 15 years building a business to actually get them to the point where they have that couple, uh, of million quid or whatever it is in their pockets. It's. It's just. I love it. It's so rewarding.

Speaker A: Well, uh, I'd love to. I'd love to dive into that a bit in terms of, you know, what have you seen? Do you typically work with an advisor? And do you. Are you kind of playing some of that role? Or do you have somebody come in and manage the process? Or you. Do you have a fir that you typically go to and recommend. Talk to me about, you know, the process. When you, when a company comes to you and says, like, now's the time we want to exit, just because there may be some businesses that are listening to this or CFOs that haven't gone through that process yet and they're, you know, be great to hear your take.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, um, one of the biggest things people sort of not necessarily overlook, but forget to think about is if you've got someone like me or a finance director, even a financial controller in your company or working in your company with you, you still need a corporate finance house, even if you. So there was one company that I helped to sell who already had, um, a buyer lined up. It was a client who'd approached them about it. So that was, um, lined up. So we didn't need to go and do the whole beauty parade thing where you get put in front of PE houses and trade buyers and everything. You don't actively go to market, but still having someone to manage that process is so important. So I've worked with, um, a guy called Mark Kingston I've worked with twice, um, through two different firms actually that he's been at and he's now a third firm. Um, so I think it's Oppenheimer he's with now who, um, he specializes in the Recruitment sector, which I do a lot of work in, in terms of him actually communicating between the client, my client, and the buyer is so. It's so valuable, it's so expensive, but it's so valuable because he's, um, acts on your behalf, whilst I can sort of act as the conduit and I can translate it all for my client, who's the business owner, and explain it all to them and help them understand it. I can put color behind all of the conversations to say, this is why that's happened. Here's what we've done to control that. Mark's there on the client, the buyer side, negotiating, and he's pushing them for more and he's maximizing the exit value. So his input was incredibly important. Even if you had that buyer lined up, and if you don't have the buyer lined up, these people sort of, they put all the pitch decks together, they put you in front of the right potential buyers, they talk about you in the market. They're so well connected that even though you're probably gonna sacrifice somewhere between 20 and 30% of the actual consideration that you're paid, it's so worth it because nine times out of 10, you probably wouldn't get to that place without that sort of person.

Speaker A: 20 to 30%. Yeah, that's a, that's, that's a lot.

Speaker B: I know. Uh, it's a big old chunk. I would say take that. This is why I love reverse engineering stuff. So you, you take the value that you, as the business, um, owner want to have in your pocket at the end, you've then got to add on fees. So I would put on something like between 25 and 30% to cover corporate finance and legal, because legal costs are expensive. Just having someone drawing up the sale and purchase agree all the legal stuff to do with transferring ownership, if there's any new entities that need setting up, all that sort of stuff, I would go. And it's probably a bit heavy, but go heavy. Then you've got to think about, is there anyone else that you need to incentivize, like other, uh, shareholders within the business, team members, cfo, um, there might be some senior salespeople that you want to incentivize. So you've got to take. Add their bit on to then get you to your actual figure, which you've then got to pay tax on. So you've got to account to that to then get you to a number that is, that's the valuation that we need to get for the business. You then think, okay, for recruitment, for example, you'd use like a four or five times multiple of the ebitda. So you can then work out what your target EBITDA is, then look at where you are now and you just kind of do the pathway between the two. Um, but if you don't think about all those costs, you might be sitting there thinking, well, I've got 2 million EBITDA. I know I can sell for about four times. That's 8 million. Great. Actually, in your pocket is probably less than half of that. By the time you've done the tax, the fees, you've shared it with other people. So you've got to do that, the exercise of going backwards, otherwise you're going to get a hell of a shock. When you get to that end point, you actually end up with half of what you expected to do. Sounds really depressing and negative, and I'm not being negative at all. But I think that's a really important step that people don't always do. They don't think about. I think people are shy about it as well. They're shy about saying, I want 8 million quid in my pocket, but that's exactly what I need to know. And I don't care how disgusting that number is, I need to know what that is so that I can do that exercise and figure out where we need to target. Otherwise we're just fluffing around for three years and not really knowing where we're going.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, I think it makes a lot of sense to have the path. And like you say, I'm just curious because certainly I was chatting with a friend who was asking me the same question and he was saying, should I do it myself or should I work with a corporate finance house? And I wonder, like you say, if, you know, there's an industry and there's typical multiples, like if it's 4x EBITDA, uh, so you've got an idea of what you're going to get. So what's the corporate finance person? Are they going to add more than 20 to 30% value on top of that? If there's already agreed value, do you think they can come in and maybe, uh, get you like, five or. Have you seen people try to do it themselves and mess it up or.

Speaker B: You know, I've never seen. I've never seen anyone do it themselves. I've done it the other way around. So I've worked with companies where we've acquired other smaller businesses and we've not used someone because I've just Done the due diligence? I think it depends. You know, there's probably examples where if you're already private equity backed, for example, and you're pro equity is selling their share, ah, they're probably well connected enough and have their own internal capacity to do it themselves. But I'll give you an example that um, one of the companies that I helped to sell most recently as part of the negotiations, you obviously talk about normalization adjustments. So things that you adjust your EBITDA by to make it a um, more reflective position as if the buyer owned it. So it's kind of repositioning it. So anything like um, restructuring costs, redundancy things, anything to do with COVID if it was during that period, you strip all that out because it's not normal operational costs. They're kind of one off, ad hoc things that don't reflect the business. So part of what Mark, um, the corporate finance guy did was negotiating those normalization adjustments and negotiating the earn out period. They had a three year earn out period. He negotiated the, the target numbers that we had to hit. There's all sorts of little bits like that that I just, I don't think we would have got anywhere near the numbers that we got without his involvement. Obviously I had a huge amount of impact as well, but I don't think we would have got anywhere near that valuation because of how he positioned us. Even though it was a client and they knew us, how he positioned us with them, I don't think we would have got. So I think he more than earned his fee. But I'm sure there's situations where you're not going for numbers anywhere near that big or it's a very, I don't know, like an Amazon brand agency or something. There's probably only a very few buyers that would look at them and it's maybe nowhere near the numbers that we're talking about. So it might be simpler. But I would, I would always have a conversation with a corporate finance house just to see, I mean there's no pressure and they only get paid if you get paid. Um, so if you've got earn out figures and you don't hit them, they don't get their numbers. So it's within their interest to make it achievable for you. So I, I don't know. I think it obviously depends on your appetite and how much you're willing to, to give away and how comfortable you are with those sorts of fees. But you know, it's not that different to the legal fees. You end up paying as well. It's all just stuff that you need to factor in.

Speaker A: Mhm. Yeah. Well, what, what do you see businesses doing wrong when it comes to exit? You know, what, what, what are the things to watch out for?

Speaker B: Obviously due diligence is a massive one and not being prepared for it is. It's not insurmountable, but it makes it really difficult if you're not ready for it. So if you don't have a data room ready with all your employment agreements, all your key supplier agreements, clients, all that sort of really core data that they're going to ask for, they'll also want to look at the last one. I did. We looked back five years worth of management accounts, um, and we had to have full reconciliations between the statutory and the management accounts, which we had. They had to, they wanted to see five years worth of cash flows. Again. We had, I think a massive thing people don't do is having historic cash flows. Um, and you and I talked about this before, I think if cash isn't a problem, um, people tend to just ignore it and think, well, it's not a problem. I've got funding or I've got invoice financing or whatever, so I'm just not going to pay any attention. I'm going to focus on the sales and the revenue and the profits. But when a buyer comes in, they want to see your cash flows because they want to see that you've managed the business well. They want to see not just have you not nearly run out of cash, but if you had a surplus, have you done something decent with it or have you just sat on it? Um, because if they can't see that, that's going to raise questions in their heads about how have you managed the business, how have you done this operationally if you're not actually focusing on these really important things? To a couple of businesses that I've spoken to recently, I've, I've gone in, had the conversations, they want to get ready to exit and I've said, okay, can I see your cash flows? Oh, we don't do that. And I'm like, okay, we, we kind of need to fix that one pretty sharpish. And they can show me all the P. Ls and the balance sheets which all look really healthy and going in the right direction. And I. If you just put your buyer's hat on, of course you want to see what they've been doing with their cash. Have they been looking at it? Have they just been winging it? Because if you've been winging it. What else is going on under the scenes? And then they'll start to dig further. Um, so not having all that history that shows you've been managing the business really carefully, that can really slow things down with the due diligence process because they'll start digging further and then they want more information. It just takes longer and longer so that not being prepared and not having those historic records, it can really slow things down.

Speaker A: And can't you just get that, can you just get that historical cash flow view out of something like Xero? Does that not have that in by default?

Speaker B: It does, but it's not. I mean you must have seen it. It's all right, isn't it? It's not great. Particularly if you've got multiple entities or you've got multiple bank accounts and different currencies. It's not necessarily going to show a really strong picture of what you've done to control your cash, what you've done to maximize anywhere you've invested, you know, even down to fx. How you've been hedging that just demonstrates that you've been doing it carefully and mindfully and you've been managing the cash well. And I mean Xero is great. It's a great package for small businesses but it's not great at ah, bringing out really good consolidated reports that structure it in a way that positions your company how you want a buyer to see it. So I think there's always work to do on top of what comes out of Xerox.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've just interviewed um, Michael Wood who is, who's the CEO of Translucent. Have you, have you heard of that product?

Speaker B: No, I haven't actually.

Speaker A: It's um, it's all about multi entity, um, reporting m and consolidation.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's loads of them about now. There's more and more coming on which is great. It's definitely a gap.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, because do most of the companies that you're um, on still, are they still trying to do it like multi entity zero or are they making the jump to something mid market? Like how do you find that?

Speaker B: No, um, most of them are still on Xero, QuickBooks, um, they're the two kind of um, main suspects and I get why, because quite often before I get in there, it's not necessarily someone who is finance trained who's been doing the invoicing and things like that. So it needs to be something that's user friendly and at the point that I come in they don't really have the appetite to Change to a bigger software, a bigger um package. Whereas as soon as the buyer comes in they immediately switch them over to something different. Um and I think for the cost that it is it's a decent package and you can kind of move things around and make the reporting better. But there's always still you know consolidating in Xero and um, Excel or using Power Bi to compute, combine them or some kind of bolt on like um, you were just talking about and there's, there's more and more of those coming out and they bought Xero bought one didn't they recently?

Speaker A: Um, yeah they bought Sift.

Speaker B: I forget what it's called. Sift. That's it. Yeah. And that, yeah there's, there's still a lot of that going on outside of 0um because they just don't want the hassle of having to change and I get that. And um, it's quite costly as well isn't it? Doing that change and right before you're looking to exit. That's a big thing to take on. So it's not necessarily something I would suggest doing at that point anyway.

Speaker A: Yeah I think we're going to see the world. Our view is we're going to see an increasing view where the reporting just gets better and better. So you can use, you can just plug in whatever software you're using into a suite that will actually just give you the reports that you need. And we've just uh, actually released consolidation on a float. So yeah uh, that's been something that we've been getting a lot of requests for. Is like that multi entity cashflow consolidated view.

Speaker B: Yeah I think for cash it's even more critical because um, with a lot of small businesses they're not on big banking platforms and a lot of them are on multiple different bank accounts as well. Because a lot of my clients have European um, presence and US presence and there's not, there's a couple of banks like HSBC and um, Chase Business do a ah, kind of global platform but they're not great at showing you everything in one place. So quite a lot of my clients will have like a high street bank for their financing and their funding and overdraft and they'll have a, one of the kind of challenger app banks for their current account and then they'll have multi currency and then they'll have a US on a different bank because um, there's a lot more different banks available in the US So you can't see it all in one place. So that makes it even Harder to pull everything out from multiple different bank accounts, multiple different currencies to consolidate it. Also stuff like that with, with Float is amazing. It's so needed because we can't as small businesses we can't access the huge platforms that like the corporates do. So things like that for small businesses are great, I think.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's really exciting for small business just to be able to, to get those kind of, to get access at a fraction of the cost, you know, um, makes a lot of sense.

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And anything like that that takes from a fractional cfo, anything that takes away that really drudgy work that you have to do that isn't really adding value at the end point, it's just taking time. That's so important for us to be able to have those things that uh, take that away and then we can add more value on the strategic side.

Speaker A: Well look, let's shift gears a little bit because I know I wanted to talk to you about the work that you're doing with women in business. That seems to be an area that you're moving more into, is that right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah it is. Yeah. It's sort of um. A couple of people have asked me this week what sort of inspired it and my go to answer is my daughter. But I also think there's an element of it that is me getting older and um, caring less about what people think. I don't know if that's part of it, but my daughter's a very um, free spirited, sings, plays rugby. She's not a kind of traditional girl and she's not, she won't fit into a corporate world at all. She's far too free spirited so I can never see her sitting at a desk. And it sort of made me think very differently because I sort of adapted to corporate world. Um, and I've just kind of, it's worked for me because I have a logical brain and I can kind of adapt to different environments quite easily. There's a, a lot of kids, more and more kids, um, particularly girls who are, they're just never going to fit into that working environment. It's not going to suit them, they're not going to be happy with it. Um, and I'm seeing more and more young women starting their own businesses which I think is amazing. Absolutely brilliant. I love that there's so many more um, small businesses coming out because it's so good for the economy, um, and it's great for people to do their own thing um, and build something of their own. Rather than just doing the 9 to 5 and climbing the corporate ladder. And there's so much that I think women particularly miss out on in terms of financial literacy. I think all of us miss that. We're not taught it at school. We're taught Pythagoras theorem and whatever else which we all need to be able to add up and things like that. But they don't help you run a business. We're not taught to read P Ls and balance sheets and understand what those things mean and how they all tie together and how they help us run a business, business. So it's hugely lacking. And I think the way of work is changing massively. People aren't, you know, I think my kids aren't going to do a corporate job. They're going to have multiple jobs like I do. I, I just see the way of world, the, the working world going that way where everyone does lots of things instead of one and more businesses starting. And without that financial literacy, I think people are just going to get it really wrong. There's so much kind of, you see all the um, influencers, I hate that word, influencers on LinkedIn and everywhere and kind of encouraging people to do your own thing, follow your passions, all those things, which is great, but they don't know how to run a business. Nobody does until they're taught it or they learn it the hard way. And I can see all these people starting businesses and just getting it horribly wrong, running out of cash, which we both know is the prime reason why businesses fail. And there's so many more women doing this sort of thing now, starting small businesses. And I think we have even less access to financial literacy. It's just something that I think we're still getting over the fact that it was a traditionally male thing to manage money. Um, and it's also, it's still, I mean even men, I think it's still seen as quite a crass thing to talk about, to talk about money and how we manage our finances and how much money we have. We don't. It's all very stiff upper lip British, isn't it, when we don't talk about money. And for women I think it's even worse because, uh, we're still kind of evolving out of that traditional relationship thing where the men deal with the money and the women look after the children. And I really want to help women understand it a bit more, break it down for them so that they know what they're getting into, they know the red flags to look out for because the reality is women are actually really good at this stuff. We're really good at looking at things logically and planning. So they just, I just want to help them not be scared of it, not be worried about being honest about what they're trying to go for and not being put off by it. Not seeing finance as maths and thinking, well, I'm never going to understand that because I'm dreadful at maths at school. It's more to me, what I'm trying to get across to them is that it's more like reading, uh, a foreign language or that's how I see it anyway. It's like being able to decode things and see patterns in things and see what it's trying to tell you about your business and what it's trying to. What it's trying to alert you to. Because that data driven decision making for me is the businesses that succeed are the ones that follow the data. So I'm trying to make that more accessible to women because most of them are running small businesses. They can't afford a fractional CFO at this point. So I'm just trying to break it down for them. So I've written a book which will be probably released in October. Um, and I'm writing a load of training packages that will be on an app, so people will be able to just do it at their own pace. Um, it's got gamification in it, so it's quite interactive and keeps it interesting. And it's not, you know, I'm not trying to teach people how to be accountants. I'm just trying to lay it out and spell it out for them so that they can make some better decisions and be more informed and also have more bold conversations with their accountants because they'll still have someone doing their fat returns for them. I want them to feel confident asking questions and saying, is this the right thing for me? What about this? Could we do this and not feel stupid asking those questions? Sorry, I waffled on a bit then tonight.

Speaker A: No, that's great. Like, um, there's a lot in that high. How are you? Obviously. What's the book called?

Speaker B: Hasn't got a name yet. Um, it's kind of written, but it doesn't have a name yet because I keep coming up with names that I don't like.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: Tbc.

Speaker A: All right, tbc. In terms of, uh, how, how are you connecting with them? Is it, Are you doing. Is this, Is there sort of. Yeah. How can people find out about you? How is that? Is it like an online. Is there an online community? Is there a website is.

Speaker B: No, it's all, it's all still bubbling in the background. So I'm, I'm Quite active on LinkedIn. Um, just trying to put as much, um, content out as possible because I also want to put free content out there that people can read and just little snippets, tips, things not to do in just some fairly straight talking language. I'm sure you've seen a bit of it. I swear, quite a lot just because I want to make it accessible. So I'm sort of building that up in the background, trying to be more, um, present on things like Facebook and Instagram. But it's just so alien to me because it's not. I don't know, it feels like a young person's game. But the app, once I get closer to finishing with that, I'll put some more content up on that. But the book kind of follows a similar structure to the modules in the app. So there's kind of different chapters, but the book weaves stories through it. So it's got. So I'm quite a big believer that you can split companies into different pathways. So companies who are building to sell, companies who are building for some other reason than to sell some sort of legacy, whether that's, you know, people who are trying to kill cancer or coming up with some kind of, um, new tech, things like that that aren't necessarily looking an exit, but just trying to, to build something that's a legacy and then a third lane which is, um, lifestyle businesses. So people who are just literally trying to make enough money to live how they want to live. And I've worked with companies that fit into those three. So I've sort of taken, um, an example case study in those three buckets and weaved it through. So I'll talk about, um, profit and loss accounts, how to understand what they mean, um, what the different areas are, what they're telling you, ratios, all those sorts of things. And then tell a story about each of the case studies to help them understand how it impacts you. Um, so those stories are kind of weaved all the way through the book. Um, but that's very much aimed at women. Um, the book, whereas the, the training, anyone who wants to learn about finances can dive into it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. What do you feel like is the typical. Do you feel there's a difference in approach to how a woman, a man, run businesses? Do you think? Uh, you know, have you seen that

Speaker B: m. Men are much more, um, risk on, um, I think they're much more likely to just go for something and be, um, confident about it. And women are much more likely to think and plan and strategize, which I think we, as women sometimes see as a bad thing. We think of it as being cautious, but actually we're just planned and measured. Um, and I'm not putting everyone in these buckets. It's not a sweeping statement. But generally, if I go into businesses, they are owned and run by men. I'm the only woman sitting in the boardroom. And they are much more. I don't want to use the word aggressive because that's got a negative connotation to it. But I guess aggressive is the right word in terms of what they're going after. They're much more confident and aggressive to go for the things they want and less afraid to fail, I guess. Um, whereas women are much more cautious. But I see that as a really good thing, that we are more likely to think and plan. We're more likely to budget. We're more likely to look at our cash more often. And I want women to feel more confident about it, because I think a lot of times women are coming out of either a career break from having children or, I don't know, having looked after elderly relatives or things like that. We're much more likely to have taken a career break for some sort of caregiving responsibility. And it does make you feel a bit like you're out of the loop or like you don't necessarily have anything to offer. And I want to change their mindset on that, because I think we always have something to offer. We always know something that other people don't know. And people can always learn from our experiences. Uh, even if that was in caregiving, you know, you could maybe you've looked after your elderly father who's been dying of cancer or something. Other people are gonna go through that. If they can learn from your experiences in that and how to manage it for yourself as well as the person you're helping, that's really valuable. And I think quite often women just think that because they're not corporate, they don't have anything to offer. And I want to change that, and I want to get them to think differently and see some value in what they can offer and then turn it into a business. Um, because I also. There was a whole, um. Was it the Rose review? I think it was called the government review. They did where they looked at, uh, how much, um, the economy would benefit from more women running businesses. It was something like 250 billion, I think it was, that could be generated by women running businesses. So that's huge for the economy. And I also think it's um, I mean this is a totally anecdotal in my opinion, but I think women with wealth are more likely to invest it in things that benefit society. They're more likely to look at philanthropic things, um, invest in, I don't know, homeless shelters, things like that. They're more likely to, to reinvest in things like that than men are. So there's so many benefits to it that I just want to try and break down some of the walls and some of the barriers that women are feeling.

Speaker A: That's brilliant. Yeah, absolutely. I mean I was, there's a group in Scotland that I was, um, recently speaking to, I think they're called Mint Ventures and they, it's kind of like a woman first, the group, Woman Investing Woman. Um, and you know, some of the companies they were telling me about, you know, were. Sounded amazing and I think it's great to see some of, like to see that support network because sometimes you can also get the impression that it can be quite, you know, dog eat dog world and you know, people climbing and backstabbing and that's, you know, that, um, that's not necessarily the way it is, but it does feel like when, like, yeah, when women start supporting each other, there's, there's a huge network of potential there that, that is really waiting to be unleashed, which is very exciting.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's so, uh, it's so powerful and there is, it's funny you saying that. Actually I was talking to a group that I'm in this morning about there is still some gatekeeping going on. There's, there's a lot of women who are just pulling everyone up with them. You know, they've achieved something massive and they're just, they want to help others come up and there's. But there's some other groups who are still quite closed off. Um, so there is still some gatekeeping going on, but it's becoming less and less. There's a lot more of us wanting to help each other and wanting to talk more about what we're experiencing, help each other, give advice. Um, so I think it is changing and it's, it's incredibly powerful. When you get into the right sort of networks and communities, the support is amazing.

Speaker A: I know we talked a little bit about the world of AI and you know, that's something that our kids are going to be coming up with. You know, actually I've got a daughter who's um, hopefully heading off to university, you know, in a couple of months. And we were just saying like, make a budget for me, you know, and it was actually pretty good. You know, it came out. And you know what, help me think through the cost that I'm going to need to live at university and break that into a monthly cash flow. What's been your experience of how's your world been changing in the last sort of 12 months in, in terms of what you're seeing? This, uh, this new world that we're moving into.

Speaker B: It's really, it's really interesting. I, um, I go backwards and forwards with it. Um, because I obviously start. I've started using it myself quite a lot. I use it for like, generating ideas and things, um, generating frameworks if clients want to work with frameworks. I find it really useful for things like that. And I've started kind of, um, customizing my own AIs when I'm going through, just so that it learns how I work and what I like to do and started playing around with taking some sort of simple tasks that I do and getting it to do them for me. Um, I'm nowhere near good at it yet. I'm still learning it all. But it's, it's so I can see it making such a huge impact on my life and how I work because there's so many things that I'll, you know, I'll sit with a client and I'll. A new client and I'll type notes while we're talking or I'll get an AI to type notes. And then I take it and I put it into a different document that's sort of formatted. That gives us, um, a priorities list of how we're going to attack all the things that we want to do over the next six months and prioritize it into urgent next level and all these sorts of things that I can teach AI to read my documents and do that for me just by, um, showing it the output that I want and here's the input and as long as you give it enough information, it's, it's great. So that that side of it is hugely transformative. But I've, I've still got this little. Because it's so new and it's so un. Unknown really. It sort of worries me a little bit what jobs it's going to eradicate because it's all over the news, isn't it, that, you know, don't bother being an accountant because that job won't be there in the future. And I can genuinely see, like, bookkeeping roles being completely wiped out. And the thing that worries me about that is that's the sort of job that women do. You know, women do bookkeeping and they do admin heavy work. So what does that mean for, um, women in the workplace in the future? It probably means that we're gonna have to evolve the jobs that we do. And it does make you a bit nervous, doesn't it, of what does it mean for the future of work? And if I think about it too much, I get quite stressed about it because it is just gonna wipe out a lot of boring, laborious tasks which none of us want to do. But they're tasks that a lot of people do as their main job. So what does that mean for those people and those jobs? So I have to just kind of bring myself back and think, you know, this has happened before. You know, my great grandmother worked in a factory packaging things, which is done differently now. It's done by machines. The world evolved to that. We'll have to just evolve to this as well. I think if we don't, we're just gonna end up with massive job loss. It's a bit of a rabbit warren. You end up going down there, don't you, when you start thinking about what does it mean for my kids, jobs and the future of work. Um, but I think we've got. It's here and it's great in some capacities, so we've got to adapt to it. And I just hope that how we work and the jobs we do will evolve with it and new jobs will come up.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think my take on certainly on the bookkeeping one is interesting because my wife's a bookkeeper, um, and she's just going through actually a qualification at the moment. And I think, you know, it wasn't that she needed to do the qualification because she's really been, you know, using all the tools for years. I'm very familiar with them, but it's. What it's done is. It's just given that, uh, another level of confidence into the terminology. And some of it feels quite outdated. But the principles of bookkeeping, knowing that allows you to then have the confidence to then think about, well, I'm not missing something and what else could I do with that? And so maybe I can be more productive and I can work for more clients or maybe I can come up with better ways of doing things. I, uh, think there's still room for creativity to come into that world. Or you Know, maybe I spot patterns of behaviors that clients are getting wrong and what I do is I add this extra layer on top of that. But yeah, I think if we continue to be creative like you say, you know, you had to come up with the idea to, you know, can you connect it to your docs automatically so that you keep removing steps and keep making yourself more efficient so you're able to come in at the strategic level and like, yeah, maybe lower level jobs will be, you know, like there's no question for me. Taxi drivers, um, there's. With autonomous vehicles. That's going to be an area that definitely eats away at jobs. But then I guess the opportunity is.

Speaker B: That scares me. Imagine getting in a driverless car.

Speaker A: Have you seen the videos of the people doing it in San Francisco? Yeah, yeah, but I think that's the thing. It's like it will become, once it becomes mainstream, it becomes normal and people just get used to it. But I think that the question is, you know, what is it that you do? Do you own a, uh, fleet? Do you, you know, do you become a guide, uh, like a tour guide and do something which is much that a robot does. People don't want from a robot. Like it's a different type of service. I don't know. But I think, yeah, I think that's great. Interesting to hear what you're. How are you using? Are you. So you're using ChatGPT and are you creating custom GPTs within that uh, service? And then have you connected it up to like, is it actually able to read into your like documents? And how have you done that?

Speaker B: It's taken me a really long time because I've had to uh, talk to it a lot and tell it how I work and what I'm trying to achieve. And the more inputs you give it, the better it gives you outputs wise. But it reads my documents and it's then I've then had to change some ways of inputs for it to get the outputs I want. So it's quite an investment of time to get it to do exactly what you want. But once you've, once I've got that piece right, I can literally just upload the document that's my notes and it will give me the output which would take me a day, which is a day I can then be doing something revenue generating or doing some marketing or something like that. So it's freeing up a ton of time. And that's just one thing that I've attacked because it's something that I hate doing. It's just writing up notes into a nice format.

Speaker A: No, absolutely. I think we're even seeing it like in the team, if you've got somebody who is like, struggles with writing, like that's not a thing. But they're actually quite happy to speak and they can verbalize. You know, there's tools. We started, um, offering a tool called Whisper Flow, which allows you just to hit a button on your keyboard and type into any application. So that's been a, that's been a real interesting one for people who are more m. Like verbal. Yeah. And even I've been finding things like getting it. Like there's a tool, um, called speechify that allows you to read. So if I, if somebody sends me a document, I don't like reading it, but if I have, if the computer reads it for me in the voice of Gwyneth Paltrow, then that's like a nice um, easy way for me to follow along. Um, or Snoop Dogg is another one.

Speaker B: Um. Oh, uh, my God, that sounds hilarious. I think I'd go for like John Cleese or something.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure they're going to be

Speaker B: more someone really posh and British. Just giggles.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's really funny. Yeah, it is, it, it's an exciting, it's an exciting time. But I think in terms of finance, are you, have you, have you tried on a thing, finance, you release it or is it more just selling those kind of creative tasks?

Speaker B: No, I've been talking to um, I think just putting myself out there a bit more recently on LinkedIn. I've had a lot of people coming to me to talk to me about my experiences as a fractional CFO and things that I find frustrating and would like solved. And a lot of those are AI developers who are specifically looking at finance related things, particularly within the FP and A sector. So they're looking at pulling data from multiple sources and um, and producing really good reporting. Um, so I'm getting a lot of people talking to me about stuff like that which I haven't dug into myself because it's way over my skill set. But there's obviously a lot of that coming.

Speaker A: I think it's been so interesting talking to you and I think it's great what you're doing with um, the women in business stuff. So yeah, hopefully if we can help with that, uh, you know, that, you know, be great to stay in touch and yeah, I really, really look forward to seeing your more of your content and I think obviously the stuff around cash flow, very relevant for us so brilliant. Well, let's leave it there. Thanks so much for coming on and I will speak to you soon.

Speaker B: Thank you. Great fun.

Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the new F Word. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember, expert financial advice shouldn't be limited to those with just big budgets. You can access the same level of advice for a fraction of the costs thanks to this fractional revolution. I believe that every growing business needs to know how much a game changer this can be. So if you loved the episode, please consider subscribing to the show. It'll help us keep doing what we're passionate about. And feel free to share this episode with others who might find it useful. Finally, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn. See you in the next one.