Leading Finance in High-Pressure Environments

Speaker A: The challenge is more how you tell a story with those numbers, how you explain to investors, this is where we are now. There's what we want to get to in five years and this is how we're going to do that. And that's typically supported with numbers, facts and figures. And that's not something that you would get from accounting staff or a bookkeeping service.

Speaker B: M welcome back to the new F

Speaker C: Word podcast where we talk finances in business. I'm your host, Colin Hewitt, founder and CEO at Float.

Speaker B: We're so glad to be back for season three.

Speaker C: And this season we've got some great guests that are going to bring a ton of value. We'll be diving further into how fractional CFOs add value, what financial clarity actually looks like, and what systems and apps are leading the way. New guests, sharper conversations.

Speaker B: Let's get into it. Hey, I'm delighted to be joined today by Frank Overtum, who is a long serving fractional CFO and is working for a very exciting company today. Frank, it's really good to have you. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker A: Thanks Colin. Great to be here. Thanks for the opportunity.

Speaker B: Well, look, why don't you give us a little bit of. I really want to talk about what you're doing at Gravity. I think that's the most exciting company that I have seen in a long time and I, uh, definitely want to try it at some point. So, but, but maybe you can give us a bit of a background as, as how you ended up there, a bit about the journey to reach that kind of position and a bit about how you got into that job as well.

Speaker A: Sure. Well, my background is in finance. I trained as an accountant with PwC and spent a few years in consumer goods, Kellogg's in pharmaceuticals, in retail, and then more recently in technology and technology company working for a big US multinational that is the leading player in car data. And I had an opportunity to effectively retire a little bit earlier. Uh, it was consolidation through different levels and at the end the regional roles were being changed to global roles. So I thought this time to try something new. One of my friends was looking to set up a fractional execs business called Fractional Execs. And this was a great opportunity to effectively do the, I guess the best parts of your old job, uh, on a, on a kind of part time fractional basis. So that's how I originally became a fractional execration and have a number of clients including Gravity. Um, as you mentioned, we'll talk about that some more later. But you know it's been a great and exciting opportunity. So the best of the old job, I would say, and doing it in a more flexible time.

Speaker B: That seems to be the general theme that everybody's saying is that, uh, some people miss the excitement of the real involvement. But it sounds like it's possible to get that when you get the right company, you can still get that excitement even, uh, though you're working fractionally.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I think it will never be quite the same as being there, you know, nine to five, five days a week. You missed buzz and little bits of information that go on. So you are slightly playing catch up, if you like. But with all my fractional customers, I would probably speak to them. You, uh, know, at least once a week for one of them, I chair a weekly trading meeting. So that ensures regular contact. You hear what's going on, you look at the numbers. So it's not like a sort of you rock up for one day a month at the end of the month. It's more of an ongoing, the opportunity

Speaker B: to move into the gravity role. Did that come through the fractional website connection?

Speaker A: Absolutely. I mean, what you see with a lot of smaller businesses, SMEs looking to expand is they're missing an element of experienced senior, uh, execs that have been through the journey and can help advise them on the next step. So either starting, you know, very small and scaling up, or you already have, uh, an operation and you're looking to scale it to a next level of growth. And the fractional exec is just a great way for companies to tap into that expertise at, uh, literally a fraction of a cost. You know, if you're doing one to two days a month, that's kind of 5 to 10% of the cost of employing somebody full time. So imagine how many, you know, if you have budget for one senior exec and you could have five or 10 of them at fraction of the cost, you know, how much more powerful your business can be, how much experience you have at your fingertips to help you expand and.

Speaker B: Yeah, so tell us a little bit about how this role came into being and we people audition for it in that role.

Speaker A: Or so I think the, um, you know, typically here it's uh, another case of expansion. You'll find that, uh, many smaller business already have an accounting or a bookkeeping function externally sourced. So they can tell you at the end of the month if you've made a profit or a loss, but not how. Uh, and they can't also say, you know, what's the next 12 months? Likely to be. And typically they don't have things like sales pipelines and how you translate that into a forecast. And that's where a fractional CFO can come in. So understand the numbers, analyze the business, look at the key drivers, put that into a model that is clear, simple, easy to understand. You can work with the management team and then also with investors. It's a credible piece of work. It's something that somebody externally with some gravitas has had a look at. It's not, you know, sort of a high level calculation that when you start poking at it wouldn't really stand up to scrutiny. So I think that's the case that uh, you know, number of businesses, including Gravity, they're on the uh, verge of further expansion and they're looking to get that kind of senior management experience in finance and other areas as well. And that's how the role came about.

Speaker B: So for those people who haven't heard of them, Gravity is a company commercializing jet suits, uh, for humans. So it's the ones people may have seen with the jets that come out of the arm that make it look like an Ironman suit. And Is it a UK company?

Speaker A: It is a UK company, yeah. UK company, UK invention and. Yeah, very exciting. If you go onto YouTube, you can see the uh, videos, uh, the history of Richard Browning trying it out, uh, in his backyard to you know, a sort of professional suit that you have now for entertainment purposes. So you and I can go and try one on and have a go at flying or for professional purposes as well. So it's, you know, it's very exciting. I think it's one of those things where when people say, what company do you work for? If you show them a sort of 30 second YouTube clip, then it's very easy to understand.

Speaker B: Yeah. And as your role as a cfo, obviously a company like that, uh, has a big vision. Where do you sit in terms of trying to enable that, in terms of trying to say, hold on a sec guys, like maybe we should, you know, try and get a few units sold locally first? Or is it kind of like shoot through the moon and let's try and get a, uh, government contract to put these into deployment. What's the kind of, how involved do you get in the strategy?

Speaker A: There's, I think that one of the characteristics of a good cfo, fractional or full time, is, you know, they have a good understanding of the business, they understand what it needs, um, to be successful, they have understanding of what the market looks like, how quickly that market could Be penetrated. What's in the sales pipeline? You know, what's a realistic short term prospect? What's something that might take years and years and years. So, you know, you're very much involved in the business. One of the companies I worked with before would call the CFO role, actually a cfoo, you know, chief financial operating officer. Uh, so it's, you know, very much they're running the drills, they're running the processes. They're making sure that every week you look at the sales pipeline, you challenge the sales organization on their deliveries the previous week, what's planned for the coming weeks and months. So it is a very operational commercial role. And that's the same as gravity as any of the other clients that I work with and any of the businesses I've worked with before. So it's about having a, um, you know, realistic expectation. I guess you're understanding what's your market size. So if you thought everywhere they do, I don't know, skydiving, you could have a jet suit. Try and get some statistics on how many centers there are across the world. If you look at things like search and rescue, you know, how many search and rescue organizations are there around the world, or professional services, military application, shipboarding, where are there a lot of ships in the world, where a lot of ports. Um, so you can quickly make an estimate of how many people are in those areas and those disciplines. You know, how many suits would you need? So, you know, that's your kind of total addressable market. And then how quickly can you penetrate that? Sometimes these things take a long time. The procurement process is challenging. Yeah, rightly so. It needs to, you know, there's serious bits of kit they need to ensure that they're all safely made, they're tested, robust and so on. So. But these things do take time and it's trying to get a sort of feel for, you know, how quickly that sort of marker penetration ultimately can be executed.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And in terms of competition as well, is there anybody else doing something similar? Do you, uh, have technology? How does that work?

Speaker A: It's pretty unique technology. We're not aware of anything that's close competitor. You look at drones, you see sort of pictures of flying taxis, but it's not quite the same. It's still very difficult for technology that runs on batteries. Batteries are very heavy to get them airborne, plus the weight of the human, plus flying longer period of time. I mean, gravity is experienced also with battery electric powered suits. But it's challenging. So at the moment we don't think there's anything else comparable on the market,

Speaker B: but you must have to take quite a long view. And like you say, in terms of the time to get to market, it's different to, you know, a piece of software that you can iterate and build on. It's something that's taking. How long does it take to get a suit manufactured?

Speaker A: We've got suits at the moment. You can try them out tomorrow. You can go down and book a slot and get flying suits and have had for a number of years. So certainly on the entertainment side, the Dubai races, as you can see on YouTube, they're real suits, they're up and running. So there's plenty of suits available. I guess the bigger challenge is if you had a, you know, massive order come in, how quickly could you scale that up? So if we needed 100 suits in, uh, uh, you know, three months time, you know, that might be a slight challenge. But if it's sort of gradually ramping up, that's okay, we can deal with that.

Speaker B: Has this sort of tariff world, has that affected you guys much in that?

Speaker A: I think not yet. There are customers outside the US that we're pretty close with deals or have concluded deals with. And I think in the US we would consider manufacturing locally. So we have a facility out there and, um, we can source, or we could build them, uh, source the components and build out there. So there may be a small tariff element. Shouldn't be an issue for not being able to sell them.

Speaker B: And is there the sales then? Is that a. Is that the big on new one is really building out a sales team and trying to scale a sales team boots on the ground?

Speaker A: I think. Yeah. So the sales team we have, the contacts we have also it's, I think probably getting through the whole procurement process and the time it takes to be an approved supplier gets budgets approved. That is probably the biggest challenge. And I think once, you know, you have a number of suits in operations, you know, you could point to the practical experience that will make life easier. That's probably the biggest challenge at the moment.

Speaker B: Fascinating. It's an exciting prospect. And is the. Do you get involved in the board meetings? Are you sort of in at that level?

Speaker A: Absolutely. So we would have monthly meetings, weekly meetings in some cases, and then strategy meetings, you know, periodically, every sort of three to six months. So, yeah, absolutely. The fractional CFO role is, uh, very much part of the leadership team.

Speaker B: Yeah. Is the big vision then of this company, do you think it's going to stay relatively niche in sort of entertainment space or do you think it's potential, uh, to go into other areas and will it company build out into other areas?

Speaker A: I think the, if you looked at the sort of opportunities, particularly across defense sectors and the professional sector, as we'd call it, they're huge. Right. So if you assume that, I don't know, 1% of special forces worldwide might end up with a suit like that, that's a huge number. The market is potentially enormous. We think the applications, use cases are very compelling. And then on the entertainment side as well, I mean, I think people enjoy the opportunity. It's something completely different that's not offered anywhere else. So I think there's significant opportunities in that as well. So I think could be a huge opportunity.

Speaker B: That's exciting. And do you think at some point, uh, it will need a full time CFO to come in and replace or do you think how do you see that playing out?

Speaker A: Sure, I think if it all takes off as planned, be great to have a full time cfo. That would be a real success for the business. So absolutely. That's all about growing and scaling. So that'll be exciting when that day comes.

Speaker B: Have you been through that process before in any of your other gigs? Has it come to that point where you've seen a point where it's time to replace and say, guys, you need to somebody bring somebody full time in here?

Speaker A: Not yet is the short answer. Um, I think the other opportunities, you know, for existing people in place and this is about kind of helping them to expand and grow. So that's one where, you know, you might see it as more of a temporary assignment, but certainly there is a lot of Runway. And if you can recruit a good team to help you grow the finance organization as you, as you grow along, then those people, that person may end up leading the organization and being CFO themselves, you know, that'll be exciting. Further development.

Speaker B: Were there gaps to fill when you came in to the. What do you typically tend to hire? I mean, a lot of times CFO say to me the books were a mess or you know, when you did a controller or there was no CEO, so I was playing that role. What do you typically find when you come into a company?

Speaker A: What I found typically is that that they're generally good operations people and that you have an accounting function that delivers accurate but basic materials. Right. Basic financial numbers. So, you know, suppliers get paid, customers pay you, payroll gets done. You know, that's a fairly straightforward exercise and there are a lot of external bookkeeping companies that can help with that. So that Tends to not really be the problem. The challenge is more how you tell a story with those numbers, how you explain to investors this is where we are now, there's what we want to get to in five years and this is how we're going to do that. And that's typically, you know, we're supported with numbers, facts and figures and that's not something that you would get from accounting staff or a bookkeeping service. You know, they'll give you the kind of basic health needs of in finance that uh, like I said before, the do your tax returns, payroll, which is important and great and clearly if that goes wrong then you're facing a different challenge. But in my experience that's not really been the major challenge.

Speaker B: And tell us a little bit about just changing direction slightly in terms of fractional execs. How's that going? Is that growing? Is it just. Does it have a group that, is it staying sort of similar size or how are things going there?

Speaker A: The fractional execs business I think is going very well. Feel free to have a uh, look at the website Fractional execs. If you Google that. Ian it started small. Alan Giles, the founder, set that up, was also from a big corporate background and decided that he wanted to do something different and set up the organization initially, you know, finding people who can join the team. So that business is really around almost kind of a full management service. So if you wanted not just finance but you wanted sales, you wanted engineering people, product people, HR people, you know, um, there's a raft of uh, people who can do that. You know one application where I think that was particularly successful is if in a business that had a great product erp at the core of it, wanted to set it off as a separate company but didn't want the senior management distracted by the separate company. So you know you can hire in almost a whole management team from someone like fractional execs and they could really help with somebody obviously who knows and understands the business to run and grow that without the distraction. So that would be another great use case for fractional exec offering. They've expanded to your question. I was just going to say.

Speaker B: So it's not just CFOs, it's whole um, team. The whole C suite.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And just to kind of add. There's also now an international element to fractional execs which started in the UK and now has offices uh, in the us, Canada, the Middle East, South Africa. So it is expanding a wider network. You know, as you have customers, clients who want to grow internationally. If you can support them on that journey with local resources in those countries, you know, so much the better.

Speaker B: It makes a lot of sense. And if people were thinking about moving into fractional role, is it some is our uh, organization they would just approached and say, hey, keep me on your books or.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I think, you know, it's always worth having a chat with Alan or some of the other members in the team to hear straight from them how they've enjoyed it. Alan himself was also working as a fractional role. His sales and marketing expertise. So he's a sort of. Has been a player manager as well. He can also get that experience. It's exciting. I mean some people are potentially, um, choosing it as a portfolio career. Right. So you know, instead of working five days a week for one company, you could work one day a week for five companies. It ends up being the same in terms of number of hours, but potentially, you know, very, very diverse. And you have a lot more flexibility when it's you working with a number of different companies and just working for one. So it's exciting.

Speaker B: Are you tied in once you're working with them to not go like not independent contract for anybody else or how does that work?

Speaker A: If they introduce a client, then that's the relationship. But again fractionals can be approached directly. It would be unusual, I think for. To have a kind of sole link with one organization. Absolutely.

Speaker B: I was speaking to a fractional CFO recently who was with a relatively uh, large organization and uh, didn't have it was looking for more work, um, but couldn't take it on because they weren't. It was part of the contract is when you work for this organization, you can't work for anybody else. So that's not the case for this one.

Speaker A: Okay, well, needs to renegotiate his contract. But I think it's what's reasonable. So it depends on how the client I guess is sourced. Right. So if it, it's sourced through the, the fractional agency, then it's only right and proper that they retain that relationship. But if it comes through a different route then. And then typically you would contract with them for a number of days. Right. So they then provided you can still meet those days and you're not sort of overloaded with. With other work from other then I think that's okay. You know, it's really up to you as to how much you want to work ultimately. Do you want to do one day a week, two, three days a month? A bit more, a bit less that's the beauty of the role generally.

Speaker B: And I saw you're also working for a company called Book My Garage. Is that still something that is active?

Speaker A: Yeah, very much so. It's a very exciting company. It's the leading marketplace for, um, car servicing. So if you typed into Google Car service near me, this would be one of the first ones that come up. You know, it's a great service. It's a rated garage that will provide that at a very reasonable cost and you could book it straight online. So you, you go on, you type in your reg and your postcode, you click a slot and job's done. So it's a great offering. It's, it's successful, it's market leading and it's doing very well. Growing very significantly year on year and expanding so long may continue.

Speaker B: Brilliant. Yeah, that's. No, I'll definitely check that out. Yeah. And in terms of. That's a very different type of company. Have you. Is that, uh, what's been, like, what are some of the, how would you contrast some of the challenges in that one? Is it more fundraising or.

Speaker A: No, I think that was more established company that is growing, growing rapidly and looking to scale. So, you know, a slightly different phase to say, say Gravity or some of the other companies that I've worked with. So the challenge, how do you continue to make it grow and be more successful, you know, penetrate the market further? What additional services can you offer? So, you know, recently, in addition to car servicing, there's also car repairs, so body shops, if your car's been in an accident, it's maybe not serious enough for a, uh, full repair, but it's got damages and you want to just have that done. Smart repairs. Then again, that's a service you're offering, so it's looking how to make that interesting and fresh all the time and, you know, provide new innovative offerings there, you know, very exciting.

Speaker B: Um, and in terms of things like KPIs, then for that you'd be looking at things like cost of customer acquisition. Are they advertising budgeting? I mean, that must be a huge part of it. I haven't seen any TV ads yet, but maybe there's, there's radio ads that

Speaker A: are very, very targeted. A lot of it is, is online advertising, because that's a tried and tested method for Book My Garage and indeed many others who choose to market in that way. So, yeah, things like bookings, booking volumes, number of garages, garage on the network. Those types of KPIs are absolutely critical to the business. A lot of Garages do have spare capacity and also sometimes franchise garages have good opportunities. So it doesn't have to be a, uh, you know, local garage, it can also be a franchise. Uh, garage is important part of the business. So it's a very wide offering. Yeah. Looking to continue to grow with those metrics and offer new services and new products.

Speaker B: What do you feel, how do you feel about the economy in general at the moment? Are you feeling this is a time to scale up and obviously we're just about to have a budget that doesn't look like it's going to be hugely favorable. You've been around for a while. What are your thoughts on how to approach this?

Speaker A: Sure. The businesses you work with, you know, obviously not immune from the overall economy. So people are feeling more cash strapped, there's less money around through higher taxes. You know, that's going to have a kind of an indirect impact. So I guess some of the sectors are going to be more impacted than others. But uh, things like car servicing, you're still going to need to service your car, you're still going to need to have an mot. So that's going to continue to be a requirement. And in terms of jet suits, in terms of the applications and the sectors that are impacted, they're probably a little bit less directly impacted by the um, you know, the taxes that have been raised last year and are likely to be raised this year. But so I would say it's generally more of an environmental context. Overall, less money around, make people more nervous, reluctant to invest. But there will continue to be sectors of the economy that will grow well in spite of the additional burdens.

Speaker B: Uh, and in terms of if somebody's thinking about choosing maybe hiring a uh, CFO for the first time, and they haven't done that yet, what would you say, how should they approach? Because if you've never hired before in that role is obviously a chance to get it wrong. So what would be your advice to finding the right.

Speaker A: In some ways it's no different to advertising or recruiting for a full time cfo. You know, it's a business partner. You know, the fractional CFO typically is, um, not necessarily an interim position. So you're with the business for the foreseeable future. So it's not, you know, come in six months, we've got this massive change project and then you leave. It's a much more long term relationship. So the business people you work with, the CEOs, the leadership team, will have a kind of similar long term perspective. In that sense, it's probably no different. What should they look for? Be open, spend some time with the fractional cfo, uh, to have them understand the business, let them ask questions, let them speak to the leadership team, get them to understand the business. What are the KPIs, what existing management reporting do you have, what things are important and then get a sort of agree gender for how you can build on that and how you can develop strategic plans. But typically fractional CFOs who've worked in different industries, different countries, you know, we'll be used to working in that sector. Yeah, it's a very, very specific sector experience. But they'll bring a very broad perspective of different customers in different industries, in different stages of development. It's invariable that be able to add value and bring some of that perspective back to I'd say almost any business in any sector.

Speaker B: And on the flip side, what would you say if somebody, One piece of advice for somebody thinking about moving to taking on a uh, becoming a fractional CFO for the first time as a

Speaker A: fractional cfo, or is it a CEO hiring a fractional? The first.

Speaker B: No, I would say moving if you're in a full time role and you're thinking of moving to fractional.

Speaker A: Clearly the challenge with a fractional CFO is by what it says on the tin, right? So you're not working full time. So either you've got to decide you're happy to work part time or you need, you know, sufficient number of fractional roles to, you know, make it almost full time. And you know, it may be challenging if people say, well look, you know, you haven't done a fractional role before. How do I know you can do a fractional role? But think about it, think about what you would do as a fractional cfo. Particularly more, let's say the analysis and the strategic advice part and things that you wouldn't do. So you're not phoning up people, chasing debts or paying suppliers or managing payroll or all of that. And so I think you can develop a very credible argument that says, look, you know, you don't need somebody there full time for all of that. What you want is the experience and the advice. And you only need that, you know, one day a week or two days a month, whatever the number is. And then, you know, you realize that you're signing up for a time commitment that is roughly of that magnitude. But if you still got mortgage, uh, to pay and other expenses and it's difficult to go from full time to fractional unless You've literally got five or six lined up then that may be a little bit of a stepping stone. So that a little bit of word of caution. But you know, for me it was very happy and where I was in my career, in fact, it's just sort of perfect balance at the moment of still having enough free time to do the kind of things you didn't have time for when you were working full time, yet still keeping kind of intellectually engaged and stimulated with, you know, very exciting customers in very exciting points in their, uh, development. So I would say, you know, best of both worlds. It's sometimes difficult to put a price on that, but it's something definitely worth considering. And how much more free you feel.

Speaker B: No, I was going to ask you. I guess some people, if they're in that mode, they could jump from the frying pan into the fire where they're just running after they're doing even more mud work because they're getting pulled between one client to the next. How have you managed to keep a boundary where you, you have that free time you're not getting sucked into?

Speaker A: Yeah, and a good question. I think typically the, obviously every business has deadlines. That is important. But I tend to find that SME sectors perhaps a little bit more flexible than the huge corporates you had to report on working day, whatever, three or four and you have to have your forecast and have to be done to the nth degree. Typically in smaller medium sized businesses it's slightly less time critical. So I think as long as you can commit to um, you know, replying within a reasonable period of time, you know, whether it's one day early or one day later, I guess doesn't really, you know, make a huge amount of difference. So I think there's a sort of inbuilt flexibility there. I think, you know, if you took on, I don't know, 10 fractional assignments, uh, or very, very high number, you may find it a little bit more challenging the scenario that you were describing. But certainly if you know there is some flexibility in your diary, you can maybe give up some of the social activities that you were planning and do a morning of work and then move that to another occasion. So I think provided there is a little bit of flexibility in the diary, it works very well.

Speaker B: Yeah, it sounds great. I suppose some people maybe don't like if they've never had that kind of capacity or that free time, you know, have you find having a bit more space, what have you done with that space? How do you fill your, your time when you do have a bit of free time, Sure.

Speaker A: I enjoy cycling and tennis, as to bit of golf, other things, hiking, going around the UK and bought a camper van, for example. So all of these things that you might have wanted to have done before but you know, you just couldn't because you were working full time all of a sudden, you know, you can. So I found it pretty easy to um, fill the spare time. It's nice to have a balance. I think there are some people who say, you know, I was working full time, then I retired, I did nothing, you know, and it drove me crazy and I went back to full time because. But I think there is still so many, you know, exciting things to do, non work things to do. This is a great opportunity to combine them. So like I said, tennis, cycling, golf, you know, it's very quick. Your diary can fill up know very quick. You could do that all day long, five days, seven days a week even if you wanted to.

Speaker B: No, absolutely. It sounds fantastic and um, it sounds like you're having a good time, which, you know, I imagine leads into the work as well. If you're enjoying your life and you're going to show up in a different

Speaker A: way at work, it's the best of both worlds. As I said before, you've got the flexibility to work when you want to and then do free time things when you want to. By and large, it's rare that there is an absolute clash. Occasionally there's a clash, that's fine, but in a typical month you won't find too many clashes that can't be overcome. So I highly recommend it.

Speaker B: Brilliant. Well, look, Frank, it's been so great chatting and really wish you all the best and hope I get a chance to try out one of those gravity suits soon. So thanks so much for coming on.

Speaker A: You're very welcome. Thanks for having me. Uh, it's been great talking to you and I hope it's been informative for you and all your listeners. Have a great day.

Speaker B: Thanks. Frank.

Speaker C: Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the new F Word.

Speaker B: I hope you enjoyed it.

Speaker C: 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 love 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.

Speaker B: See you in the next one.