
Multiply Your Success with Dr. Tom DuFore
You’ve worked hard to build your business and now it’s time to grow. Join Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team, each week as he interviews leading entrepreneurs, executives, and experts who share their misses, makes, and multipliers. If you are a growth-minded entrepreneur, investor, or franchise company, then this is the podcast for you. Big Sky Franchise Team is an award-winning consulting firm and its consultants have advised more than 600 clients, including some of the largest companies in the world. Tom has the unique perspective of the “franchise trifecta,” by being a franchisor, a franchisee, and a franchise supplier.
Multiply Your Success with Dr. Tom DuFore
279. Stop Chasing a “One Report” Unicorn—Cassmer Ward, Founder, Nexagy
How are you reviewing and looking at your company financials? Do you look at them? Our guest today is Cassmer Ward,who shares with us insights to stop chasing "the one" financial report you must have as a leader.
TODAY'S WIN-WIN:
Stop chasing the “one report to rule them all."
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- Schedule your free franchise consultation with Big Sky Franchise Team: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.
- You can visit our guest's website at:
- Attend our Franchise Sales Training Workshop:
- https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/
- Connect with our guest on social:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassmerward/
- https://www.youtube.com/@NexagyEducation
- https://www.tiktok.com/@cassmerhward
- https://www.instagram.com/cassmer_ward/
- https://www.facebook.com/CassmerWard
- https://x.com/cassmerward
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Cassmer Ward is a Financial Executive and business educator with over 20 years of experience in accounting, operational strategy, and entrepreneurship. He works with clients across industries to uncover the key drivers of growth and financial health. As an adjunct instructor at Queens University’s McColl School of Business, he’s known for translating complex business concepts into engaging, accessible formats including his book How Much Does It Cost to Make a Donut? and an online “Netflix-style” entrepreneurship course. With a background in Accounting, Management Information Systems, and Strategic Leadership, Cass combines financial acumen with creative problem-solving to guide both business owners and students toward smarter decisions and sustainable growth.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
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The information provided in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, legal, or professional advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any business decisions. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host, Big Sky Franchise Team, or our affiliates. Additionally, this podcast may feature sponsors or advertisers, but any mention of products or services does not constitute an endorsement. Please do your own research before making any purchasing or business decisions.
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I'm your host, Tom Dufour, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, I'm wondering how you review your financial statements and if you have one financial report that rules them all, the one that's a must. Well, our guest today is Casmere Ward, who shares with us insights about the one financial report you must have as a leader. Now, Kaz is a financial executive and business educator with over 20 years of experience in accounting, operation strategy, and entrepreneurship. He works with clients across industries to uncover key drivers of growth and financial health. He's also an adjunct instructor at Queen's University's McCall School of Business. He's known for translating complex business concepts into engaging, accessible formats, including his book, How Much Does It Cost to Make a Donut in an Online Netflix-style entrepreneurship course? With a background in accounting, management information systems, and strategic leadership, Cass combines financial acumen with creative problem solving to guide both business owners and students towards smarter decisions and sustainable growth. You're going to love this interview, so let's go ahead and jump right into it. I know there will be a lot of folks that fall in that range that end up listening to this podcast. So it'll definitely be relevant to them. It's hard not to ask about AI integration here, but with AI automation, all of these things coming forward, especially with administrative type tasks, is the need for accounting and these types of services. Do you see those things going away and relying on these types of technology?
Cassmer Ward:Well, you know what? Like AI, oddly enough, is something we're banking on in the new year. And when I say that, everybody's saying, oh, I'm investing heavily in AI because that's the future. And what they're doing is they're trying to scale down their operations so it's much more run by AI. However, the opportunity we're seeing is AI is a great tool. Okay. It is, it can provide insight, it can gather a lot of information really, really fast. We see it a lot with people that use QuickBooks. AI's been in there for years. You can set up rules where it automatically identifies things and automatically starts sorting things. And if everything were to stay constant in everything from business, life in general, AI might be even more impactful than it already is. The problem is, is things aren't consistent of life or business in general. So people think AI is like, I don't need somebody to think through this anymore. AI will do it. AI will only do it based on what's been done in the past. Really, what happens is when you set it up, you're literally taking your hands off the wheel and letting it take where you want. So we got self-driving cars right now, right? Tom, have you ever been in a self-driving car?
Tom DuFore:I have not. No, I have not been yet. I know a few folks who have, but I'm not one of them at this point.
Cassmer Ward:So at this point, would you jump in one and just take your hands off the wheel? Do you feel that comfortable? If AI, it's all it's got everything built into it, but it's just not there yet. It would be irresponsible to do it. So the opportunity that we're seeing, especially in the accounting world, is while we'll use it as a tool to make our operations better, it can provide overall outlines and some insight. But at the end of the day, it can't tell you how to do it. It can't actually apply strategic initiatives, operational execution, and all that. So a lot of people can say, hey, AI, if you were my CFO, what would you do here? And it would spit out a variety of information. It's like, okay, help us execute it. Well, all it's going to do is give you all the information so you can go do it yourself. You know? Again, great information. Where this has lined us up on the services we provide is over the years, I meet with any entrepreneur that has finance and accounting issues. And my general pitch is I will tell you everything I need, I can. And if you can go do it on your own, more power to you. Go be a billionaire. Best of luck to you. But the question is, is are you going to do it? And at the end of the day, they need a butt in the seat to help get the work done. So, Tom, there's a million things. How to build a deck, how to create your own app, all the things like we AI provides all that information, even the internet, to do to get there. At the end of the day, are you going to sit down and do that? And can you do it any faster with that information that someone's already done thousands of times?
Tom DuFore:I think that's very well said. It's a tool that comes into it, right? Even thinking about the iteration and transition from QuickBooks desktop to QuickBooks Online, right? I mean, even just that transition, however many years ago when that started, and just kind of part of the evolution of changing. And I think your comment on if all things were consistent and constant and never changed, but this is not a set it and forget it type of a deal. The business is evolving every day, every week, even for a small business, they're changing weekly, monthly, quarterly at a minimum with what's happening.
Cassmer Ward:One customer late pays you can throw a whole cus the whole, you know, month out of whack for a small business. AI can't predict whether or not that customer is going to pay you on time. It's going to make an assumption based on what the current terms are. Who follows the terms, you know?
Tom DuFore:We work with a lot of entrepreneurs, successful business leaders, people who are running companies that are going to be tuning into this. I'll ask us from a couple different perspectives. The first is just thinking of that successful owner or founder that's leading a business. How do they kind of go through and start assessing, well, when do I need a bookkeeper versus a controller versus a CFO type guidance? Is it all of it? Is it some of it? How do you kind of help advise people in sorting through that?
Cassmer Ward:Businesses need bookkeepers. They literally need someone to enter the information into the accounting system, finance software, even if you don't have that into an Excel spreadsheet, right? And you'd be surprised how many long operating businesses do just that. But literally, it's just collecting the data so you can turn it into information that you can make decisions from. Okay. So as you gather that, we all get our bills. We get our ATT bill for our internet, we get the rent bill for our office. All of that comes in. But organizing that data and figuring out how that needs to come in, a lot of bookkeepers can do it at a very low level. But then what happens is a business owner is like, okay, I've got all the data. I need it turned into information. And that's where you start looking in the senior controllers, senior accountants and controller level to say, this is the format. And I always say, you know, with your financial statements, Tom, what do you need to look at to understand the health of your business? You know, well, I want to know what my income is. I want to know what my cost of goods sold are, my cost of services, I want to know what my overhead is. Well, let's start providing that structure for you. And in that, how detailed do we want to get? Do we want to have it, you know, we can have office supplies, we can have labor, we can have labor that is production related, we can have office labor, we can break all those different pieces down. But how would it be structured to where you could look at it and make a decision as quickly as possible? Sometimes you see with this, whether it's a bookkeeper or even some controllers, they like to categorize everything. I had one client and I still give them a hard time to this day. They had a special category for birthday cards for office birthdays. And they spent $40 a year on birthday cards. I'm like, why, why are you breaking this down? Like, are we literally, are we gonna have a budgeting session based on birthday cards? And they were like, well, we just thought we'd want to know. I'm like, let's, you know what? I don't know what you're gonna do with that information. Let's talk about the numbers where you're gonna make that, you know, those decisions. And then from there, also your PL, your balance sheet doesn't have to have all the data at a minute level for you to make decisions. You can use classes, dimensions, locations, products and services. A lot of people try to create the one report that rules them all in their PL. It's like, no, no, no, no. That's the health of your business and what you're doing to generate wealth. Overall, if you're wanting to look at business lines, product lines, customer services, break down the customer, let's set up separate reporting. Do not try to set up reporting. So a controller spends time helping develop that structure. That way they can say, here's the information. This is what happened in all these areas. CFO looks forward. What are we gonna do with that information to get out there well, well, well in advance to get where we want to go? We're a $5 million company, we want to be at $15 million. We're gonna need more people, we're gonna need more customers. We can't get those customers in this market. And building a plan, a financial plan that gets you to reach those goals, the CFO is much more strategic and operational rather than backwards looking like a controller would be, if not even a bookkeeper.
Tom DuFore:That helps clarify. And I know even in running my own business, I've run several businesses over the years. And just having that clarity on the role that each one of those plays, sometimes when you're talking to different service providers or people you're speaking with, sometimes it runs together. It's unclear exactly what they're going to be doing and helping you through that. That kind of leads me to the next thought or idea that I was thinking about is how this pertains to franchising, is that's the second perspective I was gonna be looking from. And franchisors are one of their very important jobs is to support franchisees and to help give them advice and suggestions. But generally, they're not bookkeepers, they're not controllers, they're not CFOs. They're gonna provide some coaching and support along the way, of course. How have you worked with different businesses at varying life stages, right? Where some might be in a high growth, some might be mature, some are maybe just starting, but they're projecting and growing quickly, you know, and you might have a whole bunch of different businesses in each of these different categories, much like a franchise system might. How would you maybe advise or recommend handling that diverse amount of businesses and different stages that they might be working in?
Cassmer Ward:So I would love to tell you, Tom. I'd be a billionaire if I could say the only way to do that is through good accounting and CFO and controller work. I will say, while I always do think that's important, what franch what franchisers need to do in order to get people to line up is provide that the opportunity and the the vehicle they're offering in their franchise will provide value. Ultimately, it's going to provide a return on their investment. Okay. Now, we could, you know what, Tommy and you could have a gossip session about all the franchise oars that are literally just trying to get their fees out there, get people in some commercial real estate, and sink or swing. There's a million of those. There's stories out there of these franchise oars that they build a huge network and end up with a bunch of franchisees that can't make any money off of that. Okay. Those are the bad practitioners, good franchise oars, the ones that stick around for not two years or five years, but 50 years are the ones that have something that says people want hamburgers, french fries, and all that. They want a quick turnaround, they want an easy location and all that. They want something that people will continue to buy into, that customers, that the demand is there, and identifying the marketing and you know, the demand that will help drive that business. Okay. So figuring all those pieces out, I would say, for a franchise or is their key asset what they're selling. At the end of the day, what measures whether or not they're right is how well they're measuring their accounting and finance. And I would hope, as a franchise, or if I sold you, Tom, a franchise, I own an engineering company as well. If I were to sell you a franchise of that, I know exactly how, you know, what an engineer needs to bring in, how to get in front of people that will want your engineering services and do that. I can provide all the metrics on that. I can tell you what group meetings in your area you need to go to. I need all the tools. I can provide all the templates for you to do that. It is one of those things that's so great about franchises, is it is the list, it is the to-do list. Do all of these things and you should be successful. You know, you use your accounting and finance, you know, divisions to measure whether or not the output is coming from there, maybe tweak a few things along the way. But that is really the uh proof of concept right there that what I've been sold is providing the return they promised me when I bought into it.
Tom DuFore:You've worked with a lot of clients and businesses over the years. And I'm just curious if you've seen some consistent blind spots or some consistent maybe trouble areas that you've seen clients generally bump into when you see these types of things.
Cassmer Ward:Overall, uh I spend a lot of my time in the education arena of what accounting is in finance. Talking about accounting right off the bat, not all accountants are the same. And I'm not talking about skill level, but I'm talking about areas of expertise. So, you know, a lot of people like the gold standard of an accountant is being a CPA. You know, I've got my CPA. I can't tell you I'm any better or worse off for it. Uh, it's something I was proud to get. Prepping for it was the real hard work. But going back to engineers for a second, with engineers, they all take their CPA, it's called the PE, professional engineering's license. But you have electrical engineers, you have mechanical engineers, civil engineers, you name it. There's, you know, when they go to get their PE license, they take the exam in their discipline and they end up getting their stamp to become a PE, right? Engineers are very specific. So whether while they all have their PEs, you don't see electrical engineers saying, oh, I'll do mechanical engineering work and all that. The accounting world is completely different. You have tax accountants, which there are, you know, that's what most people think accountants are are tax accountants. I pay someone to do my taxes. My mom to this day still thinks I'm busy every April because I'm doing everybody's taxes. I gave up that fight many, many years ago. But the truth of the matter is there are tax accountants. There's auditors, there are practitioners, practitioner accountants. And then the world where I spend my time in is managerial accounting. So, like I told you, Tom, if you said, hey, Cass, will you do my taxes? I'd be like, No, I do a really bad job. But there are a lot of accountants, and I'll be honest, some of the biggest uh offenders of this are these accounting firms that offer audit and tax that say, oh, we're gonna provide these consulting services. And they get into bookkeeping, they get into these to where they don't have industry experience, they don't have managerial experience, they don't know how to run a business outside of an accounting firm. And it would, you know, it would be no different than me saying, I'm gonna do those taxes now. I'm gonna do that auditing. So what have the the the a lot of business owners, they get a tax accountant set up as like, I've got my accounting team, they're set up. They don't. They have their tax person set up. And they probably have somebody that does a great job at taxes. But when it comes to bookkeeping, they don't care about what categories it's going in. And it's not that they don't care about it because they're out to get you. To do taxes well, they just need to make sure everything is recorded so they can do good tax returns. Not, is it in a way where you can provide reporting on customer sales reports, product lines, margin? None of that in tax world, that means nothing.
Tom DuFore:Very interesting and very helpful for sure. I want to go back to a part of the conversation when you're talking about the reporting and the various types of reports. I found that that interesting. Have you found in your work and working with different industries, different clients, running your own businesses, is it generally maybe a handful of reports that an owner or leader kind of focuses in on, a few of these to help them in their decision making? Do you find that I'm just trying to get a sense of is a owner that's listening in, right? Are they saying, well, boy, I look at my PL and my balance sheet, and that's about it. What am I missing out there? Are there 10 other reports I ought to be paying attention to? Or so you know, everybody starts with the PL.
Cassmer Ward:And honestly, you all get everybody gets into business to make sure that they can make money. Like, no problem. But making business decisions based off of that, if I told you, Tom, you're profitable by 10% or $10,000, whatever you want to call it, you know, your question is is like, okay, great. But but what where does that drive you to move next? And what if I told you that, you know, your revenues up 10%, your net profit is down? Well, we can start drawing some comparisons. Like you're doing more work, but you're making the same amount of profit. Like now you're working harder to make the same amount of money. So what happens is that's where a lot of business owners that don't have a strong financial or accounting background, are like, well, what do I do next? Well, here's the question: is this more because of a raise in overhead? Is this more of a raise because your margins are getting thinner? Where do we need to look next? And do we need to look at overall margin or do we need to look at margin per project or per job or per widget? You know, one of the things I've always seen, like with construction companies I've worked with, I've worked with a lot that they'll lose money at the end of the day. And the owners or managers are like, how are we losing money? We make a profit on every job we did. But I'm like, yeah, but you never cover your overhead. You never cost, you know, cover the cost of your marketing, your office, and all of these things. You've got a volume issue. The only way to get over there is a volume issue. And then sometimes, in order to get that volume up, you need to invest a little in the overhead just to get there. So your overhead number goes up even as you're growing volume. To say that there's key reports, it really is looking at what you're trying to accomplish and kind of zeroing in on where I can make a difference? Can I make more on margin? Do I know how to drive sales? As an accountant, I'm bad at sales, I'm bad at marketing, but I know how key it is. Like I know where I need to spend my dollars so somebody or the right people can help drive sales to get into our business. Those are investments I'm willing to make from there. Then in order to make sure they pay off, we start tracking our month-over-month sales growth. We take a look at maybe we don't even look at the dollars. We just take at the look, the number of new clients coming in along the way. And building that metric, the the metrics that help you decide whether or not something is working.
Tom DuFore:Very, very well said. And what's a great way for someone to find out more about you, your company, what you're doing, or your services?
Cassmer Ward:Yeah. So uh honestly, I've got a unique name. My name is Casmer Ward. I'm sure the spelling will be on the episode in and of itself. But if you go to kasmerwar.com, that will lead you to my book, to me. It will also lead to my company, Nexegy, which is at Nexegy.com. And that's where you'll find out all kinds of the services we provide, everything from accounting services, fractional CFO services, fractional controller. And not only that, you'll find a link to my YouTube channel, which we go over a lot of this stuff in detail. So there is everything from lectures to the managerial classes I teach to the entrepreneurships class I teach to the business case interviews I do with other entrepreneurs that are used as business cases in the master's program I teach at.
Tom DuFore:Well, Kess, this is a great time in the show, and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question we ask is Have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
Cassmer Ward:You know what's funny, Tom, is every miss I've gotten has been the best thing that happened to me. It started all the way back in college. I remember in order to help, you know, offset tuition, make a little extra money, I applied to be an RA. There were 30-some candidates. Let's say there were 34 candidates, 30 open positions, slam dunk. Everybody, like, you'll be great at this, you'll do this. I was one of the four that did not get chosen. Opportunity came up uh six months later, applied again, didn't get it. Finally got it on my third one that year, got RA of the year award, literally, really kind of learned everything I needed to be a good RA, which I will be honest, I'm sure a lot of people out there is like RAs do work, or you know, there's anything there, but it was something I'll be honest. My experience as an RA was probably very instrumental in the management skills I learned, how to deal with people, how to collaborate. Getting it right off the bat, honestly, probably was one of the best misses off the bat. Same thing. I've at one point, uh, as much as I uh I'm passionate about accounting, I'm a passionate about entrepreneurship, applied for a university to be an accountant faculty. Applied three times, never got it. Looking back at it and what the life of a faculty member at the university would be, I would not be where I am today. And I probably would be doing a lot more administrative work than I would be teaching. And I think, you know, as disappointed as I was at that time, best thing that could have happened was that miss along the way.
Tom DuFore:Let's talk about a make or two, a highlight, something on the other side.
Cassmer Ward:So here's the thing that probably would people would call a miss along the way. Last job I got, I was fired from. It was a job that I was starting as the company was growing, I was disagreeing with management and did not feel comfortable ethically with what they were, the direction they were going. I refused to do, you know, anything I found questionable. And I remember going home at every day being like, I just wish they'd fire me. I just wish they'd fired me. I was just a big ball of stress. I am an accountant. I am not anybody that would say, go start a business. You know, it's it's too risky, it's it's a lot of work. I mean, you know, I'd never make that choice. When I was eventually fired, it was weird how much I dreaded it, how calming it was. It was like, oh, thank God it finally happened. I was able to leave. Their top three engineers left and said, we start an engineering firm up. We'll all be partners. And I like because they asked me to do it, I was a business owner within 30 days of leaving that company. And then from there, kind of caught the bug and said, Hey, you don't need me full-time to be your CFO. We're not that big yet. Let me go do this on a fractional basis. So ultimately, one of my big makes was getting fired and kind of getting pulled into it by other people. Now, while anybody that reaches out to me today that says, Hey, I want to start a business, I'm still like, hey, a lot of risk, likelihood of succeeding is very small. Don't do it. I've now done it six or seven times. So I'm a hypocrite at the same time, but it is one of those things that, like, I would have never made that choice on my own out of the gate.
Tom DuFore:That story you share reminds me a lot of what I hear just in the franchise world, why a lot of folks who maybe aren't ready to jump in and start their own business, they end up in a downsizing, a corporate merger, or something like that happens, that they lose their position, but they don't quite want to be an independent entrepreneur, kind of jumping into it on their own. So they'll kind of make that bridge right in franchise, somewhere more in the middle there with a little bit of help. Well, the next question we ask every guest is have you used a multiplier to multiply yourself professionally or personally or any business you've run?
Cassmer Ward:Working with so many companies over the year, like I've always talked to owners, and I'm like, we need to figure out how to find the next, you know, the next Tom. So you can elevate your game and they can take out your duties. And literally building out models for every hire we do, we are able to, you know, bring somebody else on board along the way. And for every person that you bring on, you've got your revenues got to go up to this level, unless they're a support level. And I did it over and over for all these other clients. And then I was complaining about work one day to a client, and he's like, Well, why aren't you doing the things we did? Why aren't you bringing people on? And I kind of felt called out on it, like, you know, and as I told you before, Tom, I'm a hypocrite. Can tell everybody else what to do. Don't know if I can take my own advice. I brought in some peers. I literally ran through the same exercise I did, realized for every 40,000 I spent on staff, I could bill out another 110,000. And I was like, okay, well, I proved it mathematically. Actually, doing it's a whole other thing. I took the leap and did it. And I've done it again and again and again. Now, at some point, you hit a level where you're like, okay, now I've got to build, you know, I've got to fulfill demand. I've got to, you know, I'm building capacity. It's that constant balance of capacity versus market share. So I, you know, try to keep continuing to balance that. But we've done that to build out our team. It's funny how you can do it for everybody else, but you're the last one that uh you do it for.
Tom DuFore:Well, the final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?
Cassmer Ward:In a broad sense, I would say success to me would be being able to do what I want to do. You know, I want to do whatever the heck I want to do. When I realized what made me happiest in life, it was I like helping people. And I know that's a very generic answer, but you know, where can I help people most? How can I have the biggest impact? And I, you know, Tom, you might ask me to say, hey, can you help me move? And like, I could help you move. Like, there's better uses of my time, probably better uses of your time. But where could I help you to where it would have an impact on your life, you know, and really do that? And I will tell you about, you know, is I even running a practice when I realized we started using metrics of client success and client impact rather than revenue dollars, number of clients, and all that, that's where I got a lot happier. And all the other stuff worked itself out on its own. But that's when I was the most happy. And the team I've built around that is the same way. They love that the the our clients are like, oh my gosh, Elizabeth, you're a part of our team. Like, you know, we love that. Summer, Kathy, Jonina, all everybody on our team, like we get, you know, ingrained in their team that it feels like we're sitting with them 24-7. And there is a part of we all want to be valued, you know? So, you know, by providing value, having an impact there has been very, you know, important to us. And at the end of the day, that's what makes us feel successful, is literally providing value in a way that it's accepted. And I'll be honest, there are, I don't want to say exceptions. There are times it's not a good fit. There are people that don't want that, you know? And if we can't provide a resource that will have an impact or something that, you know, you're not ready to take that next leap. We run into companies that their accounting's a mess. They just don't want to spend money to fix it. It's like, well, then the pain's not big enough there for you. You know, then if we alleviate that, it probably doesn't mean that much to you.
Tom DuFore:Very well said. Thank you for sharing. And as we bring this to a close, and before we go, I'm just wondering if there's anything you are hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet.
Cassmer Ward:When it comes to like running a business, in the entrepreneurial world, we get fed all of this. You got to scale up, you got to get your multiples up, you got to be ready for exit. I'm gonna 5x, I'm gonna 10x, I'm gonna do all these different things. Being an entrepreneur can be really lonely. And even with your successful friends that work other places, they don't understand the pressure and the loneliness of what it is to sometimes be an entrepreneur. The way I always look at it is we all want to, we all have our Everest, we all have our mountain to climb. There is no one step to get to Everest. It's thousands upon thousands of small steps. And maybe you look at getting to the next base camp and really looking at that, you know, I talked to a couple people in my podcast along the way. If you could just work on getting 1%. Better every day or every week. Well, that's exponential growth over time. It does not need to be in the next month or the next year. You know, I don't need to be a 1 million and be a $10 million company next year. Like, do all of the things. And usually the ones that, you know, just like climbing Everest, if you go too fast, you're going to get altitude sickness. You know, businesses do the same thing. Take your time so you can sustain the climb and not end up getting, you know, stalled along the way.
Tom DuFore:Kaz, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. And let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is when Kaz was talking about AI and its impact on business. And what I like that he said is AI makes some assumptions that things are just going to stay the way that they are. But the reality is things are always shifting and evolving and changing. So while AI is a supportive and helpful tool, it's not the only tool. There will still be a need for support experts and advisors along the way. Takeaway number two is when he talked about defining the difference between a CFO, a controller, and a bookkeeper. And I kind of looked at this as past, present, and future, where a bookkeeper is looking past, it's looking backwards, a controller is present looking at the right now, and a CFO looks forward. I thought that was a great little summary. Takeaway number three, I love the little bit of advice and nugget he gave for franchise oars. And I loved how he said that a franchise or needs to provide value in the business model itself, to help the franchisee create marketing, sales, a playbook, sustainability, growth, systems, proven processes, et cetera, and help the franchisee there. Certainly on the finances, as he said, helping with accounting bookkeeping on the back end. That's nice to have, but the main focus should be to add value for the franchisee. And now it's time for today's win-win. So today's win-win is when Cass talked about people and founders and leaders that he works with that talk about trying to find one report to rule them all. He said that doesn't really exist. You've got to find what works for you. And chances are it's multiple reports pulling different data and information into one place. So I thought that was a great nugget that there's not this kind of holy grail of a destination for one financial report. And then I think coupled with it, as you begin analyzing your data and financial metrics, that reminder that CPAs come in all different specialties. Just because someone's a CPA doesn't necessarily mean that they're a tax professional or that they're an expert in your industry. I think that was a nice little reminder. So finding that right CPA to help you find that right report or set of reports in evaluating your business. And so that's the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at BigSkyFranchise Team.com where you can schedule your free, no obligation consultation. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.