E05: What Is A Fractional CFO?
Struggling to get your team aligned with your company's goals?
It's probably because your mission statement feels more like an empty promise than a clear directive.
Find out why most mission statements fail and how to craft one that not only communicates your vision clearly but actually drives results and team engagement.
📒 Show Notes and Resources 📒
===========================
Want to discover what's holding your business back?
And get a customized action plan to fix it?
Take our FREE Business Assessment:
https://www.stagcoaching.com/assessment
===========================
Subscribe and Listen to the Podcast HERE:📱
➡︎YT: https://www.youtube.com/@stagcoaching
➡︎Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/business-growth-masterclass/id1741987960
➡︎Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stag-coaching
===========================
Kellen Ketchersid
Kellen is a co-founder of Stag Business Coaching, business strategist, and a systems thinker. He leverages his extensive experience in biotech and consulting to empower entrepreneurs to navigate complex challenges with strategic growth solutions.
Albert Gillispie
Albert is a serial entrepreneur, business efficiency expert and co-founder of Stag Business Coaching who has founded several multimillion-dollar companies. With expertise in optimizing operations and innovative systems, he mentors business leaders who want to unlock their business’s full potential.
===========================
Let’s Connect!
Website: https://www.stagcoaching.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stag-business-coaching/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stagcoaching/
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/stagcoaching
Twitter: https://x.com/stagbizcoaching
—————————————————————————————————————————
BUSINESS GROWTH MASTERCLASS PODCAST
Introduction
00:00 Tim Bynum:
I mean, I definitely made my fair share of mistakes starting the business from scratch. And I had only known being a W2 employee my whole life. And so branching out into something like this as an entrepreneur was very difficult for me to wrap my head around at first. So I decided that to make me feel warm and fuzzy, I needed a business partner to get into it. And that was a mistake.
00:26 Albert Gillispie:
Welcome to the Business Growth Masterclass podcast, where business growth is made simple. Listen, as we discuss best practices to streamline your operations, increase your profits, and ultimately create healthier, more stable, and more valuable companies. Hear from experts on how they grew their business.
00:45 Albert Gillispie:
Learn from their wins, their losses, and everything in between. As a business owner, do you know how to read your financials? Do you feel confident you know the story your financials are telling you about your business in real time? Today, we're interviewing my good friend, Tim Bynum with Anchor Financial.
What Is Anchor Financial?
01:03 Albert Gillispie:
They offer services as a fractional CFO to help small business owners take control of their finances and make informed business decisions. Learn how they grew their business by making their customers pain. All right, here we go, Tim. All right. Let's do it. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. We, how long have we known each other?
01:25 Albert Gillispie:
It's been four years. Dang. Can't get rid of you. Yeah. So it's been, I think it's been four years. Yeah. So let's just jump right in. Tell me, tell me about anchor financial. What do you guys do?
Small Business Fractional CFO Services
01:38 Tim Bynum:
Yeah, so, we started, I started Anchor Financial about four years ago when I met you as a way to help small business owners just have better insights into their financials.
01:48 Tim Bynum:
So we kind of started to stretch that when I first started, I wanted to be, I wanted to be a fractional CFO. And when I started getting into understanding what small businesses needed, we also realized that they needed bookkeeping and accounts payable and in payroll.
Like they needed all these things to give us the information that we needed to help be better fractional CFOs for them. And so over time we started building out a team to help small business owners with their day-to-Day financial operations, their bookkeeping, their paying their bills and payroll so that it would allow me to jump in and be a better fractional CFO for our clients.
02:29 Tim Bynum:
So that's kind of what the, that's the whole reason why we started it was to help small business owners in that area. Tell me a little bit more about fractional CFO there. There's definitely a movement. You know, kind of a fractional c-suite, whether it's a, a fractional COO or CEO or, you know, CMO.
02:49 Albert Gillispie:
So many letters. So many letters, all all the acronyms. But, but tell me what, what does that mean exactly?
02:55 Tim Bynum:
Yeah, I would say you have a lot of small business owners, a lot of small businesses that can't afford a full blown CFO, like an expert CFO that's dedicated to their business. They're a W2 employee who focus solely on their business.
Benefits of a Fractional CFO
03:10 Tim Bynum:
A lot of small business owners aren't there yet to afford that. Number one. And then number two, they just like their business, uh, but a lot of small business owners are, are their business is simple, straightforward. They don't need that. And they might not ever need a full blown CFO in their business.
03:28 Tim Bynum:
So, so a fractional CFO is somebody who is an expert in that area in, in all the things that go into somebody's financials. And then they can, they can get into that and speak into it on a project by project basis, or just, um, we're going to sit down with you every month and review all this and give you consulting into your finances and help you go through that.
03:51 Tim Bynum:
What is, what does everything mean? There's just so many different ways that a fractional CFO can plug in. But it's just somebody who's not there full time, but they're a valuable piece to what you might need. It's like, it's just another business consultant. Because that's a big thing nowadays too, is consultancy.
04:08 Kellen Ketchersid:
It sounds like something that everybody needs. At least every business owner could use at least some of what you're talking about. It's just a matter of what level, right?
04:18 Tim Bynum:
Yeah, that's right. You know, we have clients that are just getting started, And if they, if we come on with them, it just, we can see the difference right away.
Like just having the understanding of just the way their money flows in and out and what it actually means, what their financials actually mean. Because a lot of small businesses, a lot of small business owners and entrepreneurs, they get so busy in trying to be successful, trying to make their business work.
And one of the last things they think about are their financials or their bookkeeping, even what, what the, what's the meaning behind all of that.
04:53 Albert Gillispie:
I see so many small business owners that are really good at their craft or their trade. They're really good at it. You know, maybe they worked for somebody prior to that and they were so good at it, they're like, I'm going to start my own thing.
And then the business side of it, like the bigger, you know, actually running a business, isn't something we're really taught. And so that what you offer is really a, you know, a fraction of basically you're, you're buying a team at a fraction of the cost to go in and help you run a successful business.
05:28 Tim Bynum:
That's right. And we approach it from a very relational perspective. We want to be, we want to build a good relationship with that business owner, or even maybe even if they have other team members, we come in as if we are their financial operational team and help give insight where it needs, where we need to, and then help also take, make things happen, like just take care of things for them on their behalf.
05:52 Tim Bynum:
So we work really hand in hand with our clients just to make sure that their finances are in order, organized. And the reporting that we're getting from the data that we're, we're managing, we want to make sure it's accurate, it's timely, and we want to make sure that that business owner is understanding what they're seeing. So that the whole point is to make better business decisions in the future.
How I Went From Accountant to CFO
06:17 Kellen Ketchersid:
I'm going to just go out on a limb here and guess that if I had talked to fifth grade, Tim Bynum and asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he probably wouldn't have said a fractional CFO. So just curious if that's true, how do you tell us a little bit about your journey? How you ended up being, being who you are now.
06:36 Tim Bynum:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, fifth grade, Tim would not, maybe because I think a fighter pilot is, but no, when, when I was my first year in college, I took my very first accounting course. And not really understanding what I was, I was just, Hey, let's, let's try this out.
Yeah. I loved business. I mean, in high school, I really loved entrepreneurship, loved the idea of, of business and what that looked like without real, any real application to it. But once I got a step foot in my first accounting class, I knew like, I don't know, it just hit me. It's like, okay, this is, this is what I want to do.
And it was not long after that. I took my first class in QuickBooks desktop, which was a lot, is a long time ago, but so, so starting to understand systems and how they play the role of that accounting function. And I just fell in love with it and then just took off from there.
07:32 Kellen Ketchersid:
That is not most people's experience with accounting class. Was it falling in love?
07:38 Tim Bynum:
I will say though, I did hit a point in college where I've, I've actually flunked my accounting, intermediate accounting two class, changed my major to business management, graduated, and then I went back to school and finished accounting after that. So it's kind of it for me, the two are like exactly what I want. It's like business management. Put the two together. Yeah. And then accounting as well. Yeah.
08:04 Kellen Ketchersid:
Well, for all the college students out there listening, then don't give up. You can always go back. That's right. Yeah. Well, I'm just curious. What, what is it about accounting that you like so much? Cause like I said, it's not for everybody, right?
08:18 Tim Bynum:
Yeah, I think for me it was. So it was putting pieces of a puzzle together and all these numbers, right? I love numbers anyway, but like being able to, to take all this data and put it together and to produce a report that, that made sense to me. I don't know why it just made me naturally just made sense to me.
08:37 Tim Bynum:
Like when I look at the, like a P and L or a balance sheet, all the work that we put in of all individual transactions to create that, it just, I don't know. Yeah. It's like it paints a picture. Yeah. It's a picture.
08:51 Kellen Ketchersid:
That is so cool.
08:51 Albert Gillispie:
I know there's an origin story for Anchor Financial. Tell it, tell us that story.
Implementing Effective Financial Systems
08:57 Albert Gillispie:
How, how did that come about? Yeah.
08:58 Tim Bynum:
Yeah. So when I graduated college, I went to work in the cotton industry. I learned everything, anything, everything I could about cotton as I worked for a cotton gin. I became a fractional CFO, or I'm sorry, I became a financial controller at a cotton gin. I helped manage all their bookkeeping, all their accounts payable, all their, all their payroll invoicing for cottonseed, just anything and everything.
09:24 Tim Bynum:
And we created this system within QuickBooks Desktop at the time to manage the cotton ginning world in a set of books on a regular, uh, consistent basis, which had really never been done before. Whenever I left that first job, I came to Lubbock and went to work for United Cotton Growers, one of the biggest cotton gins in the U S.
09:46 Tim Bynum:
As their CFO or cotton marketer, I also played the role of like a COO and I just did anything and everything. So that's where I believe where my, just my insights into business management kind of came into play is, is in that role. And so I did that for 10 years and that industry is, is tough. On having a family and, you know, just personally, it's just hard, long hours, long hours, ginning season takes, takes a lot.
10:18 Tim Bynum:
And so I had to make a decision. Is this what I'm going to do long term or not? And so that was played in the back of my mind. And then I started getting, building relationships with producers, with farmers out there and understanding what they were. With their business, like in how, how they managed their, their business.
10:37 Tim Bynum:
And what really interested me, interested me from their perspective is they had no in, no, no real financial insight into their farming operations. So we would run across producers that were managing multimillion dollar farm operations. And they were just calling the bank and kind of–
10:57 Kellen Ketchersid:
Winging it.
10:58 Tim Bynum:
Well, yeah, winging it, looking at their bank account, hoping that they had still a line of credit for operating for the year out there and in the nature of their business, they would sell a crop and hopefully that paid, paid for their loan with the bank and they had some leftover. I mean, that was just the, I mean, it was very simplified, but no insights during the year, whether.
11:21 Tim Bynum:
What they were spending was actually going to make them a return on their investment at all.
11:25 Kellen Ketchersid:
So just flying in the dark and hoping you end up in a good place at the end. That's right, man. Exactly. Right. That's scary as a business owner.
11:33 Tim Bynum:
So that's what, when I, when I realized what that was going on, I thought there's gotta be a need out there for small business owners, like, like a farmer to, uh, to have.
11:43 Tim Bynum:
Somebody, somebody on their side, like going through their finances and just being more in tuned with the ins and outs of their cashflow and what that means overall for their operation. And so that's, so with that, and then the personal side of not really wanting to be in the ginning world forever, I decided, okay, let's do this.
The Impact of Fractional CFOs in Business Scaling
12:02 Tim Bynum:
Let's get started. So I want, so when I first started, I wanted to be a fractional CSO. And like I said before, we quickly realized. Without good data to, to be a CFO with, or even to dive into, I was not a very good fractional CFO because I didn't have anything to talk to clients about. So that's when we started building the team and helping, helping small business owners with all the other things that go into their financial operations.
12:32 Albert Gillispie:
You're a humble guy, but so, so much of what you do is, is. Unique for, you know, you're an accountant, you're a fractional CFO, but one of your strengths that I've gotten to see firsthand, I mean, you manage several, several entities for us is getting in and setting up the accounting systems. And so, you know, a lot of the time for us, it's like the first, you know, handful of months you're really organizing that, you know, invoicing payables, like that entire process, you're organizing that.
13:10 Albert Gillispie:
And then the team that you alluded to is, you know, speak a little bit about, about that, but, you know, a lot, most of that is remote and some of that isn't in the country. So that's right. So tell, expand on that portion of your team. Cause you just kind of flew over that, but it's one of the, your secret sauce.
13:28 Tim Bynum:
Yeah, that's absolutely right. Yeah. A lot of what we do is in the setup of, of what we do. I mean, we, we put a lot of time and investment into our clients at first. Setting up all those operations and making sure that we can efficiently handle the work for them. Because part of being a fractional CFO team, part of being a fractional financial operational team.
13:54 Tim Bynum:
It's to be able to, to provide that value to the client without them having the big price tag of a, of a team. And so we don't mind investing our time and resources into the first two months, like you said, however long it takes to get it. Dan on and get it perfect. And so that's what we do.
And then we have, I have really good, we call them, we call them CFOs actually on our team, really good, high level CFO people on our team employed and they're all remote, but then we have a back office team out of the country that we, we consider like financial controllers that are doing more of the day to day work for us, but all of that, none, none of our work, none of our clients work gets Passed on to the, their team until the CFOs get the operational side of it set up first.
14:46 Tim Bynum:
And we have, we built our own operating system from scratch. And we've got, uh, we've got processes in place that when we onboard a new client, it's, it's not just, uh, it's not just a turnkey type of thing. It is to some degree, but we, it just takes time. And we, we want, we want it to take time because we build that relationship.
Building Trust as a Fractional CFO
15:07 Tim Bynum:
Our, part of our, our biggest task when we bring on a new client is to build trust as quickly as possible because we are in, we are in invasive. Yeah. We have to be so that we can be successful for them. So we have to get into their bank accounts. We have to, we have to understand what these expenses mean and what you're paying money for and why we have to understand your business model so that we can set, set everything up in the right way when you're.
15:35 Kellen Ketchersid:
Yeah. I'm curious about the trust building, like with. Is it just building relationships and getting to know them well and letting them see you and I mean, I I'm sure you've also got legal protections and all that too, of course, but I mean, can you speak into that a bit more? Just kind of how you get to know your clients and build that rapport.
15:55 Tim Bynum:
Yeah. I think the first thing is any potential new client that comes on. They, before we even dig into any of their work, we have maybe multiple calls, at least one call where we just get to learn about them. We just want to know about your business. We want, we want to know their story. Yeah. We are very curious and fascinated by business in general and entrepreneurship in general.
16:19 Tim Bynum:
So even everybody on my team is just really after understanding. You know, how did you get to where you are and, and why do you have this business? Where are you passionate about? Yeah. And that just helps build that context and that story for our team, because we, I say most bookkeepers or most bookkeeping services out there, I shouldn't say all, but most of them.
16:43 Tim Bynum:
You know, you can provide a financial statement, profit loss balance sheet based on transactions that you see, and you can, you can provide that. But what we do is a little bit more, we take it to the next step. Yeah. And we want to really understand the reasoning behind why those transactions flow the way they flow.
17:02 Kellen Ketchersid:
I'll bet you notice things in the financials that somebody who's just trying to slap. Things together from the numbers they already have. I bet there's a lot more there. What do you uncover when you have that kind of depth of understanding?
17:14 Albert Gillispie:
That's right.
17:14 Kellen Ketchersid:
That's right. Yeah. That's awesome.
17:17 Albert Gillispie:
Obviously you guys do excellent work. You've worked for us for four years and we've really gone on the weeds together a lot.
So can you, can you tell us, you know, obviously protect names for, for, for those, you know, at home, but can you kind of tell us, you know, a story of when it, when it didn't go well and how you overcame that?
17:43 Tim Bynum:
Yeah, I'll start with, Oh, with me, with anchor as a business, if you don't mind. Sure. So, so anchor's business, I may, I definitely made my share, my, they're sharing stakes, starting the business from scratch.
17:55 Tim Bynum:
And I had all, I'd only known being a W2 employee. My whole life. And so branching out into something like this as an entrepreneur was very difficult for me to wrap my head around at first. So I decided that to make me feel warm and fuzzy, I needed a business partner to get into it. And that was a mistake.
18:17 Tim Bynum:
And that was something that I learned over time. And we corrected that as we got into it. But so that I think was my biggest, what my very first big, big hurdle for me was to get out of a bad business partnership. Uh, once that happened, everything got a little bit better, but then also made the next biggest mistake that most entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs make a hired family to help me.
18:42 Tim Bynum:
It's hard, I heard finding family to help me as my first employee went pretty good at first and then, you know, as you can imagine it, it just all fell apart. And so then I had to really think about, okay. If I really want this to be successful, I need to be, I need to start acting like it's a real, a real business and take it serious and hire good people. And that's, that kind of changed the game for me after, after that.
19:08 Kellen Ketchersid:
So those are both very common things to do. Right. And I mean, I feel like I've heard a lot of people say both of those things. And so if somebody was listening and they're like, yep, that's my situation right now, what advice would you offer?
How do you extricate yourself out of a bad partnership or a family situation that's getting complicated in the business?
19:30 Tim Bynum:
Yeah, I think the business partnership thing is hard. It's hard to get out of. So. It might cost, it might cost you your own resources to get out of it, but you got to think really longterm in that situation.
19:46 Tim Bynum:
And that's what I did as I had to kind of rip the Band Aid off there and just make it happen and get out on my own. I'm not opposed to having business partners, but you really got to find the right ones. So, and then family, that one, that one kind of took care of itself, you know, like kind of blew up in my face and I wasn't really prepared for it.
20:06 Tim Bynum:
It did put me behind because I. You know, I, does it somebody else to, to help? So as an entrepreneur, the first, you know, when you're first getting into it, you're the only one, then you finally get some help and you're like, okay, this feels good. And then all of a sudden that, that help goes away and now you're back to square one, that, that to get out of family.
20:27 Tim Bynum:
You know, it might be another bandaid, you know, you just pull it off as fast as you can to get out of it. If you know, you need to get out of it. And that was how that happened to me. It was, it was like, I kind of knew, yeah, deep down, let it get gut feeling. It was not a good idea, but just to, it took, I waited as long as possible. Then all of a sudden it just, it was. It was there. Yeah.
20:49 Kellen Ketchersid:
Well, you're not alone. We know that.
20:52 Albert Gillispie:
Right. Okay. So two pretty large lessons learned right out of the gate. What, what's one of your biggest wins that you've had as a company and, you know, how do you, how'd you luck into that? And I don't, not really believe in luck, but, but you know, what kind of led to that?
21:11 Tim Bynum:
Yeah, I would say one thing that really comes to mind is I, as a business owner, got into multiple operational systems. So I was trying to figure out, okay, what's the, I'm building the team. What's the best way we can manage our work. You know, everybody needs to be on the same page. And I'm so glad my team stuck with me through this, but we tried so many different things to try to manage our work and what we did that they were.
21:39 Tim Bynum:
People in the team were getting frustrated and, and like, and that's fine. So I reached out to, I reached out to a company. It's, uh, It's coda.io I reached out to them and I said, Hey, is anybody, did you, do they know of anybody that could help us build this out? Because we knew what we wanted. We just couldn't find it in the operating softwares that are, you know, you just click it out of the box, like that box.
22:05 Tim Bynum:
So we reached out, we, we, we got connected with this lady in New York. And she, and I, and my, my number one employee, we, us three spent nine months building out from scratch our operating software. With her expertise behind that, that platform and that software and knowing how that works. Yeah. And she is still my fractional COO to this day and still meets with her.
22:33 Tim Bynum:
She's amazing. So that would, that was a huge win. I mean that just having that as a cohesive operating system within our team was massive for us. It allows us, it just frees up everything for us to grow and like bring on the next client. It's not, it's not a hard task to bring on the next client. We know, we know what we're doing.
22:51 Tim Bynum:
Just plug them into that operating system. We start learning their, you know, their ins and outs. We start building that relationship and then we've got the work ready to go behind us in that system. Anyway, that's, that was huge win for us. It, it, Coda, is that,
23:06 Albert Gillispie: Is that like a no code software? It is no code software. That's so fast. That, that, I feel like that. Coding world is, I mean, it already looks wildly different, you know, from 30 months ago, I can't imagine what it's going to look like five years from now. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
23:23 Kellen Ketchersid:
Well, there's, I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there that would be curious about going down that road.
23:27 Kellen Ketchersid:
And it's like kind of scary because most entrepreneurs have no understanding of how you would even build a system out like that, right. But. It's cool to hear that you took the leap and it's just been a game changer for you. Cause I think there's probably some other people are wondering the same thing. Like, should I, should I just keep trying to cobble together these different platforms that I've got? Or, I mean, so that's neat.
23:51 Tim Bynum:
Yeah. I think the key there is finding the right people to work with you on it.
23:57 Kellen Ketchersid:
Yeah.
23:57 Tim Bynum: People that are experts in that field and, and, and, you know, it's going to be an investment of your time and money.
24:06 Tim Bynum: You know, you got to think long term on that too.
24:08 Albert Gillispie:
Yeah. Big strategic decision. Yeah. That that's such a, an important lesson for all entrepreneurs is you're going to go through people. You're going to go through different partners, different employees, different people that you think are like rock stars.
24:25 Albert Gillispie:
And most of them aren't, aren't a good fit. But when you do find the fit that fits culturally, they share the same values. They get it. They want it. And they're in the right ceiling on in your business, it, it's easy. That's right. That makes all the difference in the world. Yeah, it takes time and it took, you know, you, a ton of resources on your part.
24:47 Albert Gillispie:
You spend a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of sleepless nights, whether it's partners or families or, or whatever. Tell me, tell me what, what is one of your, what's your number one biggest. You know, issue right now or challenge right now that you need to overcome as a business owner and leader.
25:06 Tim Bynum:
I think right now for us, we are kind of, we are teetering on the line of our next growth wave, right?
25:15 Tim Bynum:
And for me as a business owner, it's finding that next high level CFO person to take us to the next level. Like I I've, we've got a good team now. And I know that. At some point, we're going to be probably maxed out on that team. And so for us to really, truly grow to the next phase of growth that we want.
I'm struggling trying to find the next CFO role, like an employee that we want to bring on again, like I'm being as picky as I possibly can, because it has to be the right cultural set. And we have to understand what we're trying to accomplish for our clients, but then also be so curious about our clients and understanding what they're doing that. You know, you'd be kind of become part of their team as well.
26:01 Tim Bynum:
So you got to, it's just, it's a very, I think of it as a unique situation for CFO to come on because they're not focused solely on one thing. They've got to be able to branch out and go, okay, this client needs this and this, this, and so it's different, but. That's, that's my biggest challenge right now is, is finding the right people to grow.
26:21 Kellen Ketchersid:
As you have grown and cause I know businesses as they grow, they kind of, the stages of what the business is in kind of change. And have you felt like your role has changed as a leader? Like how have you gone from maybe the beginning days to like where it's at now? How does your, what is your day to day look like and how's it different?
26:42 Tim Bynum: Yeah, I'll tell you when I first started hiring people, I, I didn't hire the, I didn't hire the, the most knowledgeable, like the, like the expert people I hired people that had experience, but maybe not, not like to the level of say a CFO. Yeah. So I trained them. Okay. And so my, my first. Year or so of hiring employees was a lot of handholding and holding question and answer just in, in, in putting a lot of time into helping them understand.
27:16 Tim Bynum:
Why we're doing it this way and yeah, we're not doing it this other way that that's that was, I spent a lot of time on that, but now those employees are better than me at, at what we do. And so they don't really ask me a lot of questions anymore, which is great.
27:32 Kellen Ketchersid:
Yeah.
27:33 Tim Bynum:
It occasionally comes up, but it allows me the freedom then to go promote the business, be the face of the business, try to grow the business and do some things. And I'm gonna be honest with you, I still have clients that I won't pass to the team because I, I mean, I, I still like doing that work.
I just want it to be on my own, my own terms now, you know, and if I would not, if we want to pass it on to the team, we can, but, but I will say our team is very good about helping everybody out. I mean, we jump in on anything and everything we need to do for our clients.
28:09 Kellen Ketchersid:
That's awesome. Yeah. I relate to you saying the people, some of your people are better than you. And like, it takes humility to say that, but I think some business owners have an ego that, you know, I don't want anybody in here who.
28:21 Kellen Ketchersid:
Can do things better than I can. And that's such a mistake, you know, like you want to build a team that has talents that are better and bigger than yours, you know, and I think that's cool that you are the kind of leader that, Hey, let's, let's get the best people we can, so that's right.
28:36 Tim Bynum:
As long as those employees can buy into your vision and, and, and then they become better at you, at actually producing the work for the clients.
28:45 Tim Bynum:
That's a very good recipe for success.
28:47 Kellen Ketchersid:
Yeah. It's a good clarifying statement too, because I don't want somebody thinking I'm smarter than this guy. I'm going to do it my trip. Yeah.
28:56 Albert Gillispie:
I love that. The, the job of the business owner is to build a team that can run your business better than you can.
29:03 Albert Gillispie:
Absolutely. And it takes, it takes humility to do that and takes, and that, and that's like the, you know, the science. Of accounting with the art of being a business owner and leader and, you know, continually continuing to wrestle with that and, and build something. All right. We got time for one more question.
29:24 Albert Gillispie:
Okay. Lay it on him.
Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
29:26 Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah. Well, I mean, we've already heard a lot of good stories, but if you were just going to give advice to somebody. Maybe a fresh out of college guy with an accounting degree or an MBA or something like that, you know, budding entrepreneur, what, what advice would you give them if they wanted to follow in your footsteps?
29:44 Tim Bynum: Yeah, that's good. I would say don't be afraid to get, just get busy and just like, if you're, if you're wanted to go into anything like we did, I think a lot of it has to do with understanding how small businesses in general run and what's needed to operate a successful small business. So if you can plug into a small business and not a CPA firm or, or don't go down that route.
30:13 Kellen Ketchersid:
Yeah.
30:14 Tim Bynum:
Actually get into business, you know, and, and, and understanding what a business owner's tasked to make, to make a business successful. If you can understand that part of it with the numbers behind it and have that expertise of accounting and financials, that's a very successful recipe right there.
30:33 Tim Bynum:
Yeah. I mean, that's, that would be my advice is just to get into it. What's the business owners
30:38 Kellen Ketchersid:
Don't be afraid to get busy in business. I feel like we just got our episodes.
30:42 Albert Gillispie:
I like that. I like that. Yeah. So how can we tell our listeners, how can they get a hold of you? How can they do business with you?
30:49 Tim Bynum:
Yeah. Our website is https://www.anchorfs.co/ and we are Anchor Financial Services also on LinkedIn. I believe we have a Facebook page. So yeah, I mean, you can find us there as well. Awesome.
31:03 Albert Gillispie:
Awesome. Well, man, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on our podcast. You know, our first, our first guest. So first rodeo you did awesome
To our listeners, if you got value from this podcast, if you want more, more of the same, more lessons learned in the trenches, doing real business, go ahead and subscribe to this podcast and we'll see you on the next one.
