The Fractional CFO Who’ll Save You Millions

Speaker A: Majority of people say is cash. To be honest, you can only run out of cash for once. And I see so many business owners just buried a head in the sand and just hope it will get better. If we ignore it, it will go away and it will get better. Don't plan. Please plan.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the new F Word

Speaker C: 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. It's great to be joined by Pauline Healy today. Pauline, really welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Speaker A: I'm great, Colleen, thank you.

Speaker B: Well, I would love to hear a little bit about your journey into how you became CFO and what you're up to at the moment.

Speaker A: Great. And the journey, gosh, it started over 30 years ago. I think if we go back to the early days, I jumped into a YTS straight after school, I actually started college. Chores were on gay levels, hated it went into yts. Nobody in my family had ever gone to higher education before. I'm, um, doing this YTS and it was the days of the typewriter, uh, the photocopier and everything else. I want to get my, ah, A levels, had to work through my A levels and my degree had about three or four jobs. That's because I've had horses and horses are expensive. So there was this thought that you must be rich if you have horses. You're actually poor if you have horses. It's the other way around. So I did my A levels. I did a degree in international business. Never thought that I would go into accountancy, but had a few time finance jobs in my background. I've always been really good at maths and I started this role in Manchester after university. My first proper role. I used to commute from Preston to Salford Quays every day. Then eventually relocated. And, um, I probably spent 25, 30 years in corporate world working my way up. But I never saw myself as a financial accountant. And um, by that I mean somebody who just, you know, does your P and L, your balance sheet. So, uh, even though I was in industry, I was always like a project accountant. I always worked with multifunctional teams and I worked a lot with distribution and manufacturing. Companies and I suppose after 25, 30 years of doing really long hours, being on the phone to China suppliers in the morning, picking up calls from the US in the evening, working for everybody else. Always wanted to be my own boss. I always wanted to have my own business and um, it was always a plan. But you know what it's like, you get comfortable in employment. The thing that changed for me was I suddenly lost my mum M in 2020. She had terminal cancer. We didn't know she had cancer until they found it was terminal and um, was sadly lost to 10 days later. And that just gave me the kick up to get going actually in fractional because I really saw a need. I really wanted to help many business owners or the owners that are running the businesses to help them make better decisions and make more cash, more profits. But I think it was just that push I needed to get into there.

Speaker B: So you quit the big corporate job and set up yourself or.

Speaker A: Yeah, the timing was I was in an employed role and it was Covid time as well. And the role wasn't really turning out as expected. I did my due diligence beforehand, the best you do and I got in and it was completely different story. I did stick around and help out but then the business was starting to dwindle away. Unfortunately it did go into administration and I had my first contract then, so it was quite good timing. So I worked for the administrators a couple of days a week, which really helped and started me off. So it was sort of, I planned, here's a good opportunity to switch into my own business, something I've always wanted to do. And I'd landed a contract at the same time.

Speaker B: Brilliant. That's great. It's nice to have that contract as your first one when you're starting out and then I guess. How long was it before you picked up a second contract?

Speaker A: Yeah, so, uh, this contract lasted about six months. It was working with a Chilean subsidiary on um, managing the stock and the reports and everything. Uh, and that lasted six months and it did take a while. I did pick up a few business planning jobs and forecasting jobs, but it was really hot. Difficult five years ago to get the message right. You know, maybe it was my marketing, maybe the markets just weren't ready. The world had shut down, everything was social media. I had no SEO, no website. So I did pick up at the time a few accountancy clients. But my next contract probably took a, uh, good eight to nine months to uh, pick up an obvious CFO contract.

Speaker B: That was one that you more like you were looking for in terms of that actual CFO work.

Speaker A: So fraction of CFO it was. Always thought I'd have a few clients at the same time and again, quite lucky. The next contract I picked up was via somebody I used to work with. So they were looking for somebody. They didn't know if they needed a fractional CFO at the time or not. And then an issue came out of the business. I had my website up at the this time. It talked about operations, it talked about the distribution, manufacturing and international ties that I had and they had an issue with. They were software and hardware company and they had a few issues with the hardware company and they went, hey, we need you to help us with that. So I got in, really helped with the supply chain, with the suppliers, with a few field issues, with the warranty, really got stuck in and they just loved it because they'd not had a fractional person before. And it wasn't just going in there and advising. I could actually roll up my sleeve and get things done for them. And they're still a client five years later. So the amount of time I work for them has dwindled down as I've supported the teams, I've moved systems, I've changed reporting, I've upskilled the team. So my time with them is now minimal compared to what it used to be. But really happy clients and a great business to be in.

Speaker B: And it sounds like we talk a lot about niching and that's quite a scary thing to do because it feels like sometimes you're shutting the door on other work that you like to do. But obviously you have the network and you have such an experience in that area of manufacturing and hardware. How's that been for you? Have you found that that's continued like once you've got, you've been able to keep finding more clients in that niche.

Speaker A: Finding clients in that niche is quite difficult, I must admit. So with COVID LinkedIn used to be a brilliant platform. I don't know how you found LinkedIn but in the early days of me being on, after the initial 12 months, trying to figure out what I'm meant to be, did get to start getting a lot of inquiries. But they're more service business owners. I think the manufacturers and distributors that are on LinkedIn or the silent ones in LinkedIn where the service business owners integrate more. So I did have a mix of service business owners as well, which have done m phenomenal with the cash and with the forecasting and be more profitable. But when I speak To a product business owner. They are just so pleased that I understand, you know, the incotants, I understand SKUs, I understand the supply chain, I understand the China distribution network. And so if I get talking to somebody, um, in distribution with products, basically product related, they can see they get two for the price of one. But getting into those areas have been difficult. It is more word, word of mouth to getting to those areas.

Speaker B: But it sounds like you've got something really, really unique and really valuable there. I guess it's just so difficult to learn that until you've been in the weeds of it. What I'd love to ask you about, like in terms of that manufacturing area, like, I mean obviously every company is going to be different, but what are you typically looking for when you join a company? Like what are the goods? Talk to us if some people are maybe thinking some CFO is listening to this that are just thinking we're picking up a manufacturing client or they're picking up their first one. Like what are your best practices for how those companies should be running? What tools you typically use? Like where are the problems in that space? You love to dive into that area.

Speaker A: So typically I will start off visiting a walk in the shop floor if possible. I mean I do have many remote clients and it's not always possible, but if you can get to the shop floor. So if you can get to the factory, if you can get to the warehouse and ask the questions, ask the questions that sound dashed, you know, ask, ask what's the stock over there? What's what they're doing here? Understand the processes. But what's really important is understanding the production line. So let's talk about uh, manufacturing first. So understanding the production line. How is a job set? What is the bill of materials, what is the production card and how are they following the processes? This is where there's a lot of wastage and a lot of companies say they can't record the waste. When anyone says can't to me that's just a challenge. There's never a can't. There's a can. It's just having the resilience at times to actually get through and follow it through. So number one for a big win is wastage. Have a look at the wastage. Number two is stock reporting. A lot of stock reporting is poor. Okay. Um, it's not accurate. Do they often. Do they do stock counts often? Abc usually not fast moving, slow moving. Um, and what is the planning around stock? I mean I once saved a company 10 million working capital by doing Some inventory planning along with the sales pipeline. And another one is the cash cycles. I mean the cash cycles is absolutely key in any businesses are cash, but this is where they can be massive in manufacturing and um, distribution, you know, especially things are coming from, um, the far east, coming into the uk, say to then be shipped onto the US or onwards. So it's your cash cycle, it's your wastage, it's your stock, a really key component. And many people don't do cost of sales correctly in the P and ls, so that's something to look for. Is your P and L your gross margin reporting correctly?

Speaker B: And um, what about, I guess, all sorts of tools or do you have sort of go to tools for reporting and stock management?

Speaker A: It depends. Each business is usually a different ERP system. So you get some that are on stage, you get some that are SAP. I mean I did a massive SAP implementation at BAE Systems many moons ago. You've got netsuite, you've got many. So nearly every company I've gone to in my capacity interactional has been a different ERP system. So I've just been out to Bahrain and that's a very bespoke ERP system. So it's really hard to get a software that can attach on. You can download the reports and upload reports. I've used Float, I've used Spotlight, I've used Fathom, and each one does their own little bit. But a lot of the time what I do start with is Excel spreadsheet and actually work out what they want. Um, so you can import to your standard software and get a lot, but then I find you sort of make do sometimes, initially, I'm not saying it's not good enough, but initially making do, if you can do it in a spreadsheet first and absolutely work out what your variables are, what your end result is. Always start with what outputs you want and then that will enable you to tweak your software, if possible, to then report onto your Excel sheet. Does that make sense? Because a lot of people just stick with the software and it's not giving the answers and they feel like they have to live with it. And like I said before, it has to be right. You need the correct outputs.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Uh, and you've got a bunch of SaaS reporting options that we use and you can get it. The problem is you've got access to so much data that big question is figuring, uh, out what the reports you want and then working out like, can we do this? And usually you can. But the hard Part is knowing what, which ones to look at. Like what's the North Star, what are the three or four key KPIs that must have and that's the, often the missing piece.

Speaker A: And there's more and more bespoke reports coming out, isn't there like sort of software apps people are building. My husband's a Power BI architect, so I keep threatening to create my own report that resembles my Excel sheets that I can just use. And of course for the bigger companies, they can afford to get some Power BI reports. To me those are most powerful reporting you can get with your heat maps and everything else you can neutralize in Power bi. But yeah, there's a whole suite of reporting apps out there. Uh, and um, I interchange depending on what suits the output the best.

Speaker B: Are you optimistic about the manufacturing world at the moment? Do you feel like it's getting harder with all the tariffs and challenges that are of international trade? Do you feel like it's people are having to change focus or like what are you picking up from that manufacturing industry?

Speaker A: It's certainly getting harder. I mean they had two big whammies at once last budget and goodness knows what's going to come out very soon as well. So with national um, insurance increase and the minimum wage increase as well. Because a lot of business owners, you know, people say, well it was only those on minimum wage that got an increase, but a lot of business owners will then increase everybody else to keep the supervisors on that higher rate, keep the managers on the higher rate. So it really has, um, hit businesses on the businesses being hit with another half a million a year of costs because of these. So it is becoming more and more difficult, um, and this is where we're looking at our supply chain. We might import more in China, say than what we did before. As long as we're not sacrificing quality. I hear many times people saying the CFO will be happy we've got a lower price. I always say, what's the quality like? Because poor quality just costs much more money. So we're having to be savvy, we're having to streamline the supply chain. We're having to look at suppliers. We need backup suppliers as well. I mean I'm a bit advocate for buying from the uk. Um, I, um, want the say go to China, but sometimes you just have to mix to survive, you know, and do a blend of products. And speaking to someone now who always bought from a mix of UK and Poland, but they've just introduced from China as well, just to Keep the margins active. And they do export to the us, to New York. So they've been hit with the new tariffs as well, um, on that one. But luckily it's quite a unique specialized product they do. So the customers just paying it, they're taking the hit. So it's so hard, isn't it? It's such a competitive market and manufacturing UK was our glory, wasn't it? In the early days, back before our times, it was big industrial revolution. But we have got a lot of business owners that really, uh, want to do well. And more recently as well, I've seen an increase in inquiries for my services and other fractional CFOs that I speak to. And I think there's been a little bit on what the proper word is do or die. I either do something about this or we just die of death. And I think more people are just deciding, let's just get on with it. But, yeah, margins are definitely smaller than they used today.

Speaker B: When you say do or die, what sort of things that look, what. How does that look like the do or die? You say, is it like we're going to have to outsource to China or we're going to have to cut costs or we're going to have to bring in some specialists?

Speaker A: So I'm sort of seeing it as we need to bring in specialist people. A lot of time I come in and they say, but we've got a finance team and it's getting them to understand that your finance team is probably really good at what they do fully. You know, they're excellent at what they do, but they've not got the strategic and commercial outlook going forward. And, um, they're starting to recognise that. And maybe as fractional CFOs, we're getting our message out more. We are here and we're available to help and it's sort of like, well, we need experts. Let's see what these people can do. A recent conversation with someone last week is he says, oh, you're sort of my mentor. I've had a business coach before, but I feel you're more like an advisor and mentor. And I said, that's exactly right. Some people do well with coaching and some people do better with actually a mentor advisor. And I'm someone who will get stuck in as well and then help the team if I can pass it over to them. So they do a die thing. I think it's sort of been taken along. They know there's something missing, they know they can do better, but they don't want that added cost to bring in the next 13. Where now they're like, you know what, let's do it. Let's see what we can do. And, um, as fractionals, if we provide flexibility in our fees and uh, that they've not got too long of a tie in, what have they got to lose? If it's a product business, I actually guarantee that I'll find them money or profit on day one or you get your feedback. Because in product businesses it is so easy to find money. Wow.

Speaker B: Uh, talk to me more about that. Like, what sort of ways have you found people right there listening to your product business? Like, where would you start?

Speaker A: It can be the most obvious things, you know, that service or product businesses. I am not a tax advisor at all, but sometimes they've had their accountant been housed for many, many years. The outsourced accountant is just doing the ticker. And I might say something as simple, why don't you do this? X, Y and Z. You get, you can expense it for your taxes. All right, okay. That saves money. A lot of time it's through the wastage. A lot of time it's through the processes. So for one example was I was following the process from customer order to customer shipment. I was physically following the process and I noticed that the invoicing and shipment process wasn't always accurate. There was something going wrong in recording and they were sending some shipments out, uh, without invoices. So I think that customer invoiced about 60k that day, which they'd already produced and shipped out. So that's like equivalent of 120k of sales or something. Another thing can just be shipping routes or on um, duty and vat. This is where I'm talking about quick wins. I've um, just saved someone 41k. It wasn't a manufacturing, but on um, the VAT definition, I think as a CFO, we ask different questions than what I would class your high street accountants who mainly do statutory accounts.

Speaker B: I mean we've recently brought in a fractional CTO to our company and um, it's very much the same thing. It's nice to have somebody come in and look at it from uh, like a, just a bit of a higher view than we typically would be in the weed system with the tip with this or senior engineers. And you know, it's great to just have somebody like you say, can almost sort of go, have you guys thought about this or have you thought about that and stuff that when you're, when you're in the Deep in the weeds, you don't get into those conversations in the same way. So it does, you know. Have you ever found any resistance to coming in? Like people that are a bit like, who are you? You going to tell us that we're doing it wrong? Or, uh, like.

Speaker A: Well, no, because they wouldn't have signed me up, so they've signed me up before I come in. But yes, you can find resistance in the team and I think it's in the finance and I think when I've been employed in the past and you've had top name consultants come in, you feel a little bit. But I can do this, I've done an mba, I'm actually qualified to do this, you know, a near little bit resistance. So I get it. But I believe I have a lot of empathy. I'm a person of empathy and, um, I'm here to help you and, um, as long as you quickly turn it around and you save men time, you're saving them hours and they realise they're not going to lose a job or for you coming in, you're upskilling them. And a lot of time it's a big relief because they've been carrying all this burden on the shoulders and it's just really good. I find a lot of business owners and the FD they brought in, it might be a family member, it might be somebody that's worked up through the rents and, um, the only experience I have is that company and they're not doing anything massively wrong. They just don't know how to do it any other way.

Speaker B: I think having an external perspective is so interesting. How do you know if you've always done it like that? You don't know there's other ways to do it or there's other software that you can use or. Yeah, absolutely. And maybe sometimes as well, people like the opportunity for you to feedback. So can you pass this on that we're sick of doing it like this or if you just fix this, then, you know, do you find out sometimes the people in the finance team already know what it is and then just they haven't had that communication or they haven't had the opportunity to feed it back up the chain.

Speaker A: Many times I've heard the good luck. We've been trying to do this for a while now and we're just not for change. So good luck to you. But yeah, it is a relief if somebody else. It's a sounding board, isn't it? Um, I'm the ally. So when I go into a company I'm not against anybody. I'm, um, there to support the entire company. I typically work with the owner of the business, but then I really try and interact with all the heads, the departments. But when I'm following a process, you know, where I always, like, you know, from placing the sales order to getting the sales delivery in from the customer, placing the inquiry to the delivery, I try and talk to the people that actually do the processes because when you speak to them, they often do it very, very different to how the process is mapped out. And then I would turn into, um, you know, the swim lanes, where you sort of follow the process with the different departments and then you revisit it and tell you so much more again. And, yeah, they're like, please, will you let them know this is the only way we can do this. It doesn't work any other way. I've been quite lucky, I guess, that. Or is it the way I deliver? I've not had much resilience whatsoever.

Speaker B: That's great. And, you know, we talked a bit about China and I know you said you were in Bahrain also, uh, recently. Like, how do you see the Middle east playing into things and what took you out there?

Speaker A: Yeah, Middle east is really interesting because it's a place I've never been to before. I've not been on holiday to Dubai or Egypt or anywhere like that, you know, so it's really interesting. And I got the contacts Ruth and Body I used to work with before. And first of all, it was like, we need management packs, um, you know, really good management reports. Can you help us with that? And so they already had them. They just wanted to change the supplier and it was a big name producing them before. And I said, well, let's see what you've got. They might be okay. And, um, I was like, well, the reports are good, but they could be better. So I started with that and I've been helping with erp. I've been helping with a few different things. Um. Oh, you tickled cfo. So they've got a fantastic finance team and I love it because some people say, well, if they need a cfo, something's going wrong. And I say, well, no, if they've got a cfo, it means everything's going right. They understand what difference a CFO can bring and the extra efficiencies into the business. So this was a manufacturing business that does some processes to aluminium and it's great environmental impacts to them and it reduces wastage. Um, it puts more aluminium back into the mills, um, through Processing the dross. So that was really good just to actually go out and meet people because you get closer understanding. I don't have to go out and see the processes. I do like to talk to everyone on Zoom when I can, but it just adds to the difference. And you know what, uh, it's somewhere I've not been to before in the world. So even though it was a typical land, some denied come back Thursday night, don't really see much of the area except for the car ride in and out. It was really nice to learn about the cultural differences, the way of going. Very rich country, very laid back. I think the Western world is so fast paced now, very laid back. A time is around about a time and all good experience. Maybe it's going to bring more opportunities in the future. Working out in that area.

Speaker B: Sounds exciting. I also wanted to ask you, you mentioned that you were thinking of starting a, ah, community for finance professionals. Um, tell us a bit about that.

Speaker A: Um, I was working with a local university, Lancaster University, that was asking if there's any work that their IT students can work with and I thought a lot of my clients and the big thing that's growing is communities at the moment, I thought that could be a task. Let's pull together all different types of communities like Skull, Heartbeat, all these different ones out there. Uh, and let's build an app that you can have on your laptop or your phone which also takes your payments, has your website, can hold your videos. So it's like combining about four different pieces of software into one. Um, so we did that and it was all great. I'm like, well now I might as well use the app. So that's where the community thought come out. I'm the one to test it and who knows, we could roll out this platform going forward. But the thought with this community is sort of CFO mentorship for non CFOs. And my thought is, are these people that are working for family run businesses, the smaller businesses that are the finance manager, the financial controller, they uh, pass their exams, they're doing great, they want to learn about cash forecasting, they want to learn how to do better management reports, they want to learn a bit more about strategy and how to create a great budget, what sort of questions to be asking in board meetings. This will be a community where there'll be mentorship, there'll be training, there'll be upskilling. So it's not your traditional training, it's not like um, BPP training for your FEMA qualifications, but it's A place where the thought is the business will pay the fee, the monthly fee to upskill the staff and they can drop in as and when they want to. So that's the thought. It's still to launch and hopefully you'll see it soon, um, on LinkedIn and through my website and everything we'll see this launch.

Speaker B: And the idea is for people that are, yeah, so they're in finance but they're not, they haven't just had the experience. And um, it's typically maybe where they might be thinking of bringing in a fractional cfo. They're not ready to bring in a fractional cfo. They just. But they want to sort of dip the toe in the water of having that, that mentoring or not sort of third party to run something by.

Speaker A: Or the thought is here, not every company want to pay for a fractional cfr even though we offer great rates and the flexibility and um, they're missing out and the finance team are missing out. So this is sort of a, ah, step down fee wise, quite a big step down fee wise. But then I will have a community of fractional CFOs we can tap into if then they do need a little bit of added help. You know, they need somebody just stepping and do a little bit of project work from time to time. But it's about upskilling so that they can bring our experience into their day to day jobs.

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, I love it. Sounds great. I think the communities, because they build trust and because they often, you know, if there's somebody like you're vetting people and you're, you're making sure that, you know, the people that you're bringing in are trusted and it's just a fantastic resource. So it does seem like that is the way it's going. And so you're building an app that's basically that with the help of the university or are you vibe coding that yourself or how is that working?

Speaker A: So the university, they have created this app and um, I've not got a name for the app actually so you know, I'm going to test it in my own community. But it's brilliant. So this student's created it and he's going to help me, he's left university, he's going to help me commercialize it as well, to launch it and everything. But it's so comparable to, you know, I've used um, school before, I find that really great. But it's all the things it doesn't do I've got in my app to do. So like Meetings sync with your calendar, uh, if you want it to, you've got a landing page, you've got emails, you've got everything all in one place. You're not having to run multiple softwares at times. So who knows, in the future this could be something I roll out for others to, to buy the app, so to speak. So I never thought I'd do anything software related but there you go, there's the software potential but I've just so much experience and bringing others in. You know, I've been to China 19 times and I have made millions and millions of savings. What I was talking about before was in the day one savings, what we can bring working manufacturers and distis a tenfold in the millions.

Speaker B: So interesting if you're thinking of moving or even if you've got a manufacturer in China and it's the first time you've done it, you know, there must be so many things that you don't know like you say you'll pick up over the years that where you can just find those efficiencies or here's what not to do. Uh, I can't imagine you could probably write a book on that should be

Speaker A: very interesting maybe one day but just knowing what questions to ask. So when say a Chinese supply says we've got a price increase of 10% because of X, Y, Z, ask to see the bond, the bill of materials, ask to see which components have got an increase and then you can test the market on that component. Has that actually gone up or they're trying to pull a fast one? Sorry Chinese suppliers but often they'll try and mask it but once they get into the detail you can find out. And um, another big win as well is packaging. It's all about how many boxes you can fit on that container. Ah and savings can be made in reducing the packaging volume and it can be quite fundamental that one.

Speaker B: Sure it makes a massive difference if you get it right. And yeah, stuff that'd be easy not to think about we used to deal with in my previous business print and actually when you understood like you can get, if you're doing business cards and letterheads and stuff, you can get something on an A4 sheet or an A3 sheet or whatever size of thing the paper is, you can fit it in in a certain way and you can see a huge amount m of money just by the way you organize it if you know what you're doing. Whereas if you just think I just want it this size and the printer will just happily run it through what you want but not give you the most efficient price.

Speaker A: And it works with everything. I was speaking to a toilet roll manufacturer. Um, they're very big in Blackburn, which is. Is near to me, it seems to. I never knew it's tissue paper, toilet roll and everything. And the amount of dead space they have on the containers, you can imagine because they're absolutely huge rolls of tissue paper and it's about 30, 40% just because they all come on rolls and you can't make a square roll.

Speaker B: M in terms of China just on that. We've been sort of thinking about changing our car recently. Um, noticing there's a bunch of new cars hitting the market from China. They're being government funded. So like, is there an ethical issue with like or is everything kind of ultimately going to end up there and not sort be as I think more

Speaker A: and more is going there, isn't it? The cost of production out in China is far less than here. And at the moment for me, the rising cost of living all the time, the rising prices, you are going to be very price savvy. I did get an mg, an electric car ng. I didn't know it was from China, I'm not a car person but anyway, it's from either India or China, one of the huge manufacturers. And for me, I'm not a car person, I don't really care. It was on the full court and it was a reasonable price. So. But there is the ethics around it and it's without getting all political. It's like the electric cars, the lithium battery, they have to extract tons and tons and tons of material, don't they, for each battery. So people are sort of saying how environmentally friendly are they after all, you know, to actually produce. But more car manufacturers are just closing down, aren't they? All the time. Because they can't afford the wages, they can't afford the running costs. I mean the high streets after the last budget, all these big name stores were closing down or reducing their actual retail space, weren't they? They're the sort of locations just because the profits was just seeping out the door. Were you labor intensive? You go and see it. Or electricity prices where you need a lot of power, you're going to see a reduction in margin as well. Because we're the most expensive country for electricity that there is. Again, we just seem to be battling on every stage, but people are determined. I think it sees people that resilient people that care about the cash flow and plan ahead, have the resilience in the business that they can adapt to the change. A lot of the companies at the moment that are buying from overseas have got an exchange rate gain. So that's something coming in the P and L and helping the cash flow. But we all know it could be a loss again in a month or two's time.

Speaker B: Yeah, what is it? The euro's up like 14% against the dollar or something. So again, you start getting into. If you're dealing with large sums of money, that's a big gain, isn't it?

Speaker A: You really do need to be savvy about the fx. So it's not something that I want to gamble about them a crystal ball. But there's some really good brokers out that really will try and predict and they will help out with hedging with options forward buying to try and make the most. But it is, it's a bit like your stocks and shares. You. It's very hard to predict which way it will go.

Speaker B: Well, look, Paul, it's been so good to chat. Final question, you know, if there's one strategic mindset shift or skill that you'd like every SME founder to be able to adopt from learning from fractional cfo, what do you think that that is like? What's the big thing that.

Speaker A: I think what majority of people say is cash. To be honest, you know, you can only run out of cash for once. And I see so many business owners just bury their head in the sand and just hope it will get better. If we ignore it, it will go away and it will get better. Don't plan, please plan. Look where you are now and plan forward, what it might look like. Because if you've got the cash, you've got the resilience, or if you've got a plan for the cash. And don't be shy about speaking up and asking for help because I'd say at least half business owners out there have business cash worries. It hits so many people and solutions can be found. But the sooner you raise them, the better, the better the results you will get.

Speaker B: Well, you're preaching to the choir here. Thanks so much, Pauline, really, um, great speaking to you and we'll put links to the potential community when you have it in the notes, um, for the podcast and look forward to seeing how that one plays out.

Speaker A: Thank you very much. It's been great chatting with you, Colin.

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 is 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.