The Value Gap - Do or do not. There is no try.

This week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Mark Jenkins, CEO of The Gap, a platform to help accountants, CFOs, and advisors turn their expertise into scalable value-driven services.

Some of my personal highlights from the conversation include:

✅ Why clients struggle to see your worth.

✅ The sweet spot between “art and science” when selling services.

✅ The importance of systemising delivery with repeatable frameworks.

✅ Tools to turn advisory chats into valuable and commercial outcomes.

✅ And why “efficiency ≠ profit”—unless you reinvest that time intentionally.

This one's packed with insights for anyone selling services, especially if you’ve ever found yourself thinking, “I know I added value... but did I explain it well enough?”

Business Book Bonus Section:

The Grapes of Wrath: https://amzn.eu/d/4SCeJHp

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: https://amzn.eu/d/3n48q3K

Transcript

Adam Cooper (00:01.077)

Hello and welcome to the Fractional CFO Show. So today I'm joined by Mark Jenkins. Mark's a Chartered Accountant, a Business Advisor and the CEO of The Gap, a platform built by accountants for accountants to simplify and scale business advisory services. Mark, how are doing?

Mark Jenkins (00:21.004)

Great, thanks Adam, it's great to be here.

Adam Cooper (00:23.819)

Well, thank you very much for joining and good to have you. And really looking forward to this one. We're gonna be talking today about a bit about your services and what you do as a company and specifically focusing on the value gap and the value gap calculator and that framework that you use to professionals help them articulate the tangible, the financial value of their services. So this is gonna be great for anyone out there who sells services business to business.

to help explain your value and define what you deliver. So Mark, I guess to start with, would you mind giving us a bit of an introduction of how you got to where you got today? I see you're from New Zealand and started off at KPMG. So how did you get from there to here?

Mark Jenkins (01:13.016)

quite an interesting circular story actually. I was born in the UK and I'm recording this podcast from the UK on here for seven weeks and I have quite a lot of family here but my parents flew out to New Zealand as ten pound POMs quite a few years ago so I was brought up in New Zealand and decided to be an accountant from a pretty early age because I thought I was going to make lots of money doing that so

Anyway, when I was working for one of the big four, as you mentioned, I didn't much enjoy that. And so I left the industry and came back here to the UK and ran a ski chalet for a while and decided that I was never going to be an accountant anymore. Anyway, I went back to New Zealand, got married on the beach and the only place where I could, the only job I could do in the place that I was living was to be an accountant. So back to the accounting industry. I've been 17 years running my own firm, doing a lot of

quite different work. I felt like a bit of a leech where I was taking a lot of money from people for accounting services but not giving much value back. So that was the birth of advisory services for me, really helping my clients to unlock their business potential. That was my purpose statement. And so by doing that, what I wanted to do there was to help them to make more money, pay less tax and have a great lifestyle. That was my brand promise.

And then after about 17 years of that, I decided to leave the accounting industry again, sold my accounting firm, and what you know, the person that helped me sell it said, what's this content that you've been using in the advisory space? We could make a business out of that. And that was the birth of The Gap. So that was about 10 years ago. And so in the last 10 years, we've been working predominantly with accountants and bookkeepers, CFOs and coaches, people who want to...

help their clients to unlock their potential. Call that advisory if you like. I just call it adding value and building enduring relationships. And that's what the GAP's all about. we run events and conferences and educational events. We've got a platform. But that's probably enough about me. I do have this strange dialect as a Kiwi, but I do speak fluent Cantonese and we have a language at the GAP called Gapanese, which I speak as well.

Adam Cooper (03:34.663)

Excellent, okay great, great, really, really varied background but I like myself always returning to accountancy which is interesting. You can't get away can you once you start so that's great and I'm interested to sort dive into this value gap and what it is and why it matters because obviously it

Mark Jenkins (03:44.799)

Absolutely.

Adam Cooper (03:54.961)

it was prominent enough to you when you sold your previous firm to kind of hang your hat on and clearly works given the 10 years you've been running the firm. So it'd be good to understand a little bit from your perspective, how do you define the value gap?

Mark Jenkins (04:09.474)

Yeah, and it's a great point. I think if we go back a step, most professionals are not taught the art of soft skills of selling or marketing. Unless you did a, if you're doing a traditional accounting professional qualification, you might do one marketing paper, you might do one communication paper. You certainly don't, well, in my experience was we don't do many management papers.

And certainly I don't remember doing any courses on selling. And so I see this a lot with lot of professionals that I deal with across all industries is that vocationally or professionally you're taught how to do your trade or your profession, but not the aspects of running the business itself. And so when I had my accounting firm, that was what I was helping my clients to do. So a lot of my clients were consultants and other professionals and

it became quite apparent to me that I was not alone. It was not just accountants who were not given the soft skills or trained in the soft skills. And so there we have a value gap. So the first value gap is what I call the price value gap. So this is the price that you are charging for your services and the value that you are giving in return. And of course,

the definition of selling is just an exchange of value where one party gets more value on the other side and they're prepared to exchange their money for that value they're going to get in return. And for professional services it's quite difficult to define what that value is. And if you're not trained in how to articulate value, it's even harder. So then we have this disconnect where

professionals know the value that they're They don't articulate that particularly well. The customers or clients are maybe a little bit cost-averse, but they'll pay for value if they can see it, but they don't know what they don't know. And so a traditional business owner would see an accountant as someone who does the tax and the annual accounts. They wouldn't see the accountant as someone who's going to

Mark Jenkins (06:29.976)

help them to run a better business or help them to improve their profit or their cash flow. If we look at a different example, a marketing consultant, somebody might have an idea of what a marketing consultant does, but in the digital age with all the transformation that's going on, there is so much competition in that space and the price is going down, the price expectation is going down. So for a marketing professional, very important for them to articulate that value. So the gap teaches

professionals how to sell, how to do that without product pushing, how to close that value gap, how to articulate the value that they're bringing, and how to showcase how their service is going to solve a problem that their customers have. So in other words, close the value gap. So hopefully that makes sense. We call ourselves The Gap for this reason, because we work in the gap between

the kind of traditional way accountants are seen and the modern way which we want them to be seen. But any other professional working with the GAP, it's the same. We're working in the GAP between the services they're currently offering and the value-added services they could be offering by just using a different approach.

Adam Cooper (07:47.837)

Yeah, okay, that's very clear and great to understand that what I think is a very valuable service, having done that move myself from being a sort of more traditional management accountant to a fractional CFO, there's definitely the need for it. I wonder why you feel there's still the need.

And I guess what I mean by that is, you know, I've been in this game over 20 years now, you know, and that people were talking about these kind of added value services and that approach 20 years ago, but there still seems to be the need. And I agree that there still is, but I'd be interested in your perspective as to why you feel there's still that need.

Mark Jenkins (08:28.462)

Yeah, that's a great question Adam. think having been in the industry for 35 years, I know that there's been talk about this for 35 years and possibly even prior to that as well. And there's doom and gloom merchants who talk about the digitization and I think there was a study done in New Zealand a few years ago that predicted by 2030 there'd be 19 accountants in New Zealand. It was absolutely ridiculous. The point is that...

There is definitely a need, there is definitely a shift needed, but it's a niche opportunity and there's very few people taking up the opportunity. what my experience was that I went to Australia, went to one of these events that talked about value add, listened intently and invested a lot of money in a program, but the people that were running that program were not accountants. They hadn't sat in the seat. And so they didn't...

really understand. So it was actually a glorified sales and marketing event and there was a lot of help with how to sell and a lot of help with how to do marketing but there wasn't the content behind that to systemize that. You we can perhaps get into a discussion about what meetings, what are the types of meetings we need to have to bring these services to life because if we are going to close the gap between where

the customers are now in their perception of the professional, in this case the accountant, and what the accountant aspires to do, that disconnect means there isn't a demand for the services. And so I believe that advisory services haven't taken off as much as they could because there hasn't been that clear communication of what the value is. But perhaps more importantly, there hasn't been the full system to help professionals.

market, sell and deliver the content or these services. So if you look at a fractional CFO, a fractional CFO, and I'm not one, so apologies if I'm not getting this 100 % correct, but a fractional CFO has a job to do and there'll be a perception of the customer or the client of what the fractional CFO does. And if the fractional CFO wants to move into a different area, perhaps into

Mark Jenkins (10:54.124)

some cashflow profit improvement work or some business planning or maybe some help with organization structure or something along those lines. It's not traditionally what the customer would be asking for. Have I got that right, Adam? Just want to verify that that's right. Yep. Excellent. So if we want to offer these additional services, which will help the business owner immensely because the business owners are busy, they're

Adam Cooper (11:08.691)

Yeah, it's spot on. Yeah, exactly.

Mark Jenkins (11:21.986)

They're not trained in this sort of thing typically. They're typically very good at the operational aspects of their business. They're not so good potentially at the director or governance or strategic sorts of conversations. But fractional CFO to lean into that space has to re-educate the business owner of the value of that service that they can offer. And so...

they need some tools and some systems and some process to be able to market, sell and deliver that additional service. Because the first sale to that client is going to be quite hard because we're trying to bridge that gap between what the client's perception of the service is and what the reality of what that service could be.

Adam Cooper (12:11.283)

Yeah, no, that's really interesting. And you talk there about the types of meetings, the types of content that the fractional CFO or whoever is using to help market, and deliver. I guess without that, your view is there's a sort of vagueness or a lack of sort of structure around the approach, which is more hit and miss, right? So you're not,

as likely to get success in upselling, cross-selling, those additional services that will help the business if you don't follow a service like the one you're talking about.

Mark Jenkins (12:52.55)

Well, yes and no. I mean, I think there's a distinction here between what I would call art and science. So the art is your unique style that you bring, the language you use, the way you describe your services, the way you interact with your clients. And you build a good rapport with your clients. The issue is that the risk is that when you start to branch out and offer more services, if you don't have

a science to that and when I say science I'm talking about a system, a procedure, a flow chart, a process, know, pre-work, agendas, session output records, next steps, defined menu of services. If you don't have the science behind it, you don't have the structure yourself as the professional and it's often the case that the

client will perceive what you're offering in a different way to what you perceive it to be. And so again, we're going to have a disconnect. So it may be that on and I'm talking to any kind of professional here. It doesn't have to be an accountant or a CFO or a marketing or HR consultant. It doesn't matter. It's the same same principle. You'll start to offer the additional service. We've got a perception and this value gap.

Adam Cooper (14:03.531)

Mm-hmm.

Mark Jenkins (14:16.342)

issue that we've got, which is actually a communication gap in this case, not so much a price value gap, it's a communication gap. We have a disconnect again between what the professional thinks they're offering and what the customer thinks they're buying. And so the tendency without the science or without the system behind it is that for the professional to provide way too much value and give away a whole lot of value for free and they go, well I tried that and that didn't work.

because they used their art and they used their heart and they really tried to help but they didn't have the science behind it. So for me it's about having a system and a process. So if I just maybe put that into an example. yesterday evening I was doing some leadership coaching to one of my team members and I was using the GAP system. So I sent some pre-work, I had an agenda.

and the discussion was set down for an hour and in the agenda it sort of helped me to say well how much time should I spend on every section. I had an AI note taker which is part of the the GAP system as well so I knew that if I wasn't writing everything down then the AI would be capturing everything as well and then that kept me to time, it kept me on track, it was the science that I was using and

The team member on the other side was also feeling supported and it was clear she was feeling heard because she had pre-worked, she had come up with the topics. So the science or the system had helped to define the service in the eyes of me as the provider and also the customer in this case who happened to be a team member. But the principles would be the same with any sort of meeting that you have as a professional.

Adam Cooper (16:09.891)

Now that's really interesting and you may, let's dive in a little bit if you, if we can into sort of each of those steps that you just outlined. So the pre-work for example, could you just give us a couple of sentences of what you would typically use or define as pre-work in that stage?

Mark Jenkins (16:27.736)

Yeah, great. I have what I call, and this is part of the science, I have some meeting rules of the game. And so my meeting rules of the game apply across, and these are all in the GAP as well, and these apply to any meeting that you have. So every meeting should have an appointment with how long it's going to be. There should be pre-work that goes out for that meeting. There should be an agenda. There should be a

session output record or minutes of that meeting and there should be a clear purpose of the meeting and then there should be at the end what I call BAMFAM book a meeting from a meeting there should be a call to action what are the next steps we should also have actions in the in the meeting as well what are the actions that are being recorded so if we have the science that gives us all of those things then we have the

permission to go to the next step, which is the follow-up meeting or the accountability. the pre-work, let's say it doesn't matter what sort of meeting it is, every meeting should have pre-work. So if we're looking at, say for example, you're sending out some management reports and you might have, as a CFO, you might be sending out management reports every month, but not necessarily always having a meeting. So the pre-work that would go with

the management reports to help the client to see the value of having a meeting to go through those management reports would be something along the lines of what were the numbers you wanted to achieve and how did you go? What's standing out for you in your numbers? Where do you believe the business could perform better? Questions that will uncover what are perhaps the problems and challenges that the business owner has, you might as the CFO

Mentioned some of those issues as well. You might put a loom recording that goes out with that as well It just says look up just on your numbers. I see that your gross margins dropped By two or three percent and that has X amount of impact on your bottom line I can see your debtor days have gone up by certain amount That's some latent cash flow that you're missing out on and I'd really like to chat to you about that So you're giving some input

Mark Jenkins (18:51.074)

you're asking them questions, which means they have to open the management reports and actually have a look at them. And then you're dedicating some time to sit down and go through those numbers with them. It would be the same for any other professional as well. If you're providing your service, the risk is because everybody's busy that we don't dedicate the time to have a meeting. So if we don't have the meeting, we don't have the opportunity to

educate our clients to reinvent ourselves in their eyes as someone who wants to do more than just the core work that we're doing right now. hopefully that makes sense but yeah maybe I've rambled a little.

Adam Cooper (19:33.873)

No, no, that really helps, really helps bring it to life. You mentioned about the art and the heart, which I like that phrase, and particularly the art and the science. I'd be interested to understand because you've structured it really clearly about how the science works, but how does the art in your experience add to that to make it less scientific and less formulaic and more bringing your own personality into it?

Mark Jenkins (20:01.398)

Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about the art and the science in this podcast, right? So we have a science behind the way you run these podcasts, very professional. The experience that I've had on the receiving end is that, you know, we had a little briefing beforehand, you've got the technology right. So that's your science that you're using. And I'm sure there's a whole lot more that's going on behind the scenes that's making it a great science from your perspective. The art...

and the heart, the art first. The art is the distinction that you bring to this, the style that you bring. Now there are many different podcasts and everyone does their podcast slightly differently. That's their art. It's the same in the professional world. When you have a system to follow, we don't want to be cookie cutters. We don't want to say, well, this is formulaic.

we'll follow these steps and we'll say this and this will be scripted and then we'll do this and then the client will do that and then no it's not like that at all. (20.25 – 21.31) But if we only have art and we don't have science then we don't have any boundaries, we don't have any framework, we don't have any things to keep us on track and two things will happen. One, the client will get confused because they won't necessarily understand what's going on.

Two, you'll probably go over time and really end up giving value away for free. And related to that, in the third case, because you don't have a purpose and agenda, you've lost control of the meeting. You've lost control of the conversation. And so if the client raises an issue that's outside the scope or the purpose of that meeting, you're gonna use your heart. Your heart's just gonna go and say, hey, well look.

let's deal with that, that's clearly an issue for you. And before you know it, your one hour meeting is going to be an hour and a half or two hours. And if you're a CFO or an accountant, your clients would probably prefer to inject kerosene into their eyeballs and have an extra hour or hour and a half with you. So we don't want to do that.We want to have some boundaries to the services that we provide. So the science gives us the boundary and the system.

Mark Jenkins (22:18.626)

but it mustn't be rote learned, it mustn't be fully scripted. There might be some scripted lines that you think, that's quite good, you know, that language that I use, I've learned that and I'll make that my own. So the art is how you take that science and make it personal to you, make it come across in a way that is authentic, that's your true self. And the heart piece is how you...

really dial up your empathy, you dial up what it's like for your client. So thinking from their perspective, what's it like for them? Are they getting the value out of this meeting? Checking in every now and then, know, are we on track? know, is this helping you? Am I giving you what it is that you need? So, but the heart mustn't be the thing that just means you just give, give, give, give and end up giving a whole lot of value away for free. That's that distinction between.

hat, art and science.

Adam Cooper (23:18.951)

Okay, yeah, that's really clear. And I guess a follow on question from that is in terms of every client's different, right? And so presumably your system allows for flexibility when it makes sense, but as long as the structure is broadly adhered to, like how flexible do you go?

Mark Jenkins (23:37.186)

Yeah, so it doesn't matter. It depends how flexible you want to be. So in the example, say onboarding. Onboarding is something which is pretty consistent across all professionals. So if we look at our content in the gap for onboarding, it will have some pre-qualification questions. And so what are your goals?

describe what your business does, what are your goals, what are your problems and challenges that you're having at the moment. On a scale of 1 to 10, how well is the business delivered on those goals? And then what are your specific needs that you're looking for and what would you like to get out of the meeting? So there's just off the cuff, just some of the questions that are asked as part of the onboarding. Now the next piece here is that

you'll send that pre-workout to the client and they're going to raise a number of issues. So that system you're going to use will help you to stay on track as part of that onboarding. But you might not like the language that's inside of the Gap app. I mean, it's account-a-needs for, well, it's not actually, we've removed all of the account-a-needs, but it has, there will be some parts of the system that are designed for accountants. So that system,

of writing the pre-work needs to be customizable. So we can create templates in there. And this is the same for any of your businesses that you have. If you've got multiple people offering a similar service, I totally recommend you have some pre-work as part of an onboarding process or as part of any meeting structure. So the fact that I'm referencing the gap doesn't mean that I'm wanting you all to use the gap. I'm just explaining the science here. So what we want to do is then say, let's make these templates

our own. Let's work those out so that they are pretty clear we're going to be asking these questions. Then what we have is the ability to edit on the fly. So here's the template. So the GAT provides a number of these templates to start with. Most of our members take those templates and just run with them. Some of them don't like some of the language and they change the templates. And then when they use the pre-work

Mark Jenkins (25:58.19)

for a particular meeting, they'll change it on the fly for that particular meeting. So for example, that leadership coaching example I gave just before, I used a monthly coaching framework and there were two questions in there. How do you feel you've gone with your numbers and what about your KPIs? Tell me about your KPIs. Do we need to change any of your KPIs? So those are standard questions that go with that monthly coaching.

took those questions out. But I would normally use those questions. So I didn't change the template. I just edit it on the fly for that particular use case. So I think what's important is that we don't say, I can't have a cookie cutter system because I'm different. I want to be different. I want to stand out. I totally disagree with that. I think you need some science because it will help you. But that doesn't mean I want you to be a robot and do things. You can't do this with AI.

You can't do this in an automated way. Yes, you can use technology and you can use templates and you can use some software to make it more efficient for you, but you'll always have to add your art piece to it.

Adam Cooper (27:09.523)

Now that's excellent. And yeah, totally agree as well in terms of the need to have some structure and then the need to have some art. It's how we run things and I can absolutely see the value. One thing you mentioned just at the end there, and I'd love to dive in, and you mentioned at the beginning that you have AI sort of being built into your process. You have note takers being built into your process. I'd love to understand how you think about integrating sort of AI summaries.

and the technology to streamline the delivery. How have you thought about that over the 10 years? Because obviously things have changed and then how are you thinking about that going forwards?

Mark Jenkins (27:47.534)

Sorry Adam, I'm going to have to get you to ask that question again. I've just got someone who's just come to the window. I'm sorry. Just bear with me a second.

Adam Cooper (27:54.867)

No problem. No worries.

Mark Jenkins (27:59.096)

Sorry Jonathan, I'm doing a podcast at the moment.

Mark Jenkins (28:05.602)

Okay, alright, thank you.

Mark Jenkins (28:10.936)

Sorry, I thought you've got a note of where that is. Hopefully you haven't got... I was actually going to suggest that we stop and just check in. Is this giving you what you want? this... Yeah. And I'm speaking to your wider audience enough here, do you think? Yeah. Okay, good. All right. Sorry, that was it. The landlord just came to the window and he was knocking and... Yeah. Sorry.

Adam Cooper (28:13.354)

Yeah.

Adam Cooper (28:18.815)

Perfect, yeah, smell something. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's all good. Yeah.

Adam Cooper (28:31.243)

No worries, no worries. I'll just go back and ask that one again. just following up on what you said there about technology and you mentioned about how you've built in AI note takers and technology into your workflows now. And I'd love to hear how you integrate those in and how you've thought about that both over the past 10 years, given how technology is changing and how you're thinking about it going forwards.

Mark Jenkins (28:35.714)

Yeah, great.

Mark Jenkins (29:00.728)

Yeah, great question. And look, I think what's really important here is that throughout any professional should always be looking at what's the cutting edge technology. The fact that it's AI or automation at the moment, that's all well and good. There'll be something else next after this, I'm sure. We always want to be looking at how can we embrace technology to increase our efficiency and our effectiveness.

Over the years, this way of working started off with me as Word and Excel documents, flow charts, scripts. it really started with my team members sitting in on a meeting with me and writing notes furiously and then typing those up. And we had flow charts for how the system would work from beginning to end. So then technology makes that easier. When we started with the Gap, we're on our third platform now, we started off with

downloadable content that people could then customize and use themselves. And then we moved to a platform that worked over email. And then there's problems with GDPR and data protection and privacy. So we've now moved to an app. So the app makes it seamless so that the client can log in or they're accessing the content via the app rather than over email. So we've always been embracing technology and I think

Before I answer the AI question, just want to say that (28.18 – 29.03) efficiency does not equal profit. So if we use technology to make ourselves more efficient, and we must use technology to make ourselves more efficient, it's what we do with that time. If we just make ourselves more efficient, then there's Parkinson's Law, I think it is, that work expands to the time available. And so...

chances are pretty high that we will just fill up that void of time that we've used technology or software for and the revenue will not go up. So what's really important with any technology that we adopt is that that time or efficiency gain is turned into value add in some way. maybe the value add is just how you're going to reduce your working hours from 60 hours a week down to 50 or 40.

Mark Jenkins (31:24.482)

giving you some time freedom. But there'll come a point where the efficiency gain needs to be converted into some further value added either service or product or some way that you can increase your revenue. So for me, AI is just another enabler of efficiency. It's just another way of giving you some time freedom.

And then you must use that freed up time to do things differently. I see way too many professionals go to a trade show, they see the latest kit, they invest in it. We used to call it, showing how old I am, we used to call it shelf wear. So you'd buy some software and it would sit on the shelf because you didn't use to download it. And it would sit on the shelf and you'd never use it. So we never want technology to be something that people...

Adam Cooper (32:14.069)

Hmm.

Mark Jenkins (32:20.29)

buy and then don't use. There's a wonderful principle called the FGG principle. the first F stands for find out what they want. So find out what it is that your clients want. What are their problems and challenges? How can you help them more? Then the G is go and get it. All right, so if we're going to go and get it, that's the software, that's the technology, that's the piece that's going to enable us to...

to, in this case, the GAPS case, market, sell and deliver value-added services to our clients. But then we've got to do the third G, which is give it to them. Because I see way too many examples of people getting excited about technology or AI or platforms and adopting them, but actually not ever giving them to the client or not changing the way they work. So in terms of answering the question about AI, AI is just one piece of the technology puzzle

Adam Cooper (33:06.024)

Hmm.

Mark Jenkins (33:15.992)

to enable people to work more efficiently and to be more effective. So yes, we use AI, we have a note taker, it's GDPR compliant, the information's not being shared in the cloud. Some of the AI around at the moment, I'm not sure how many people are aware of the risks associated with that data being shared pretty much globally. And so our AI remains within our platform.

are investigating how we can use AI for helping assist with pulling tactics together to help improve business performance. We have pages and pages of guidance advice and notes which are all selectable but with AI now and machine learning it's possible to use the AI to enable that to be so much more efficient. So that technology will be built into the platform.

We're also looking at ways that we can use AI to record in-person meetings for about a month away from being able to do that. we're always just looking for the technology that will increase efficiency so that the professional can be more effective in the way they're operating. But I just don't want people to think that there's some magic bullet here that AI is going to solve the world's problems. It's just the same as any technology development we've had. And what's really important is that we...

enhance our human interaction, enhance our interaction with our clients, and we're helping close that value gap that we talked about right at the beginning.

Adam Cooper (34:55.911)

Okay, that's brilliant. And I love that efficiency doesn't equal profit. I think that's a very important mantra to bear in mind, because as you say, everything is driving us towards more efficiency. It's about what we do with the time that we're given. And one final question on that before we move on to our final section. I'm interested in you as your firm, how are you doing this research and development? You talked about the AI meetings.

sorry, the AI note taker of in-person meetings. How are you doing that research and development? Do you have a team or a sub team within the group that's looking at it? Are you doing it yourself? What's your process of kind of making sure that you are turning that efficiency into profit?

Mark Jenkins (35:41.26)

Yeah, look, I think that's a great question. And we're not a large organization. We've got a team of about 20 people, mostly based in New Zealand. We've got one in Australia and three here in the UK. And I'm in the UK normally a little bit each year as well. I think what's important to think about is the quote from, I think it's a Steve Jobs quote, why employ people smarter than you and then tell them what to do.

What I do is I employ people that are smarter than me. We've got a VCTO, a Virtual or Fractional Chief Technology Officer. He is super well connected, so he works within different networks. We have a team of developers in our offices back in New Zealand. We encourage them to read widely, network widely, share information. We have a number of contracted specialists as well.

We have one who's a bit of an AI specialist at the moment, so that's a turn on, turn off when we need it. But the important thing is that as a leader of a business, as the owner of the business, we need to surround ourselves with people that are smarter than us. And we need to be confident that we don't have all the answers. And just as many CFOs, their clients know that potentially they're not the smartest at their

finance function, they know to employ a CFO to look after that finance function. That doesn't mean the CFO needs to be all-knowing of everything there is to know in that business that they're working with. They just have to be confident that they don't have all the answers and that the answers exist somewhere. It's just a matter of using a network to find that. So for me, I think it's really important to surround yourself with experts. Be confident in what you don't know.

I do heaps of reading. That's the wonderful thing about technology these days. There's podcasts to listen to, there's videos, there's YouTube. You can use AI to find out what you don't know about AI if you want to. So just be open-minded and invest in yourself and invest in your team.

Adam Cooper (37:56.523)

Okay, great, great. Well, thank you very much for that, Mark. yeah, moving on to our final section, which is our business book bonus section. And this is where we ask our guests to recommend a business book or a podcast or a resource that you've found to be particularly useful and helpful in your journey and that you would recommend to our audience. So what would you recommend for the audience, Mark?

Mark Jenkins (38:20.482)

Yeah, look, in terms of just what I would recommend is that everybody needs a coach. I'd start off with everybody needs a coach. Everybody needs somebody who can help them to do better. So I have about three different coaches. part of a coaching group. have accountability there. So that helps me to move the needle and, and do things differently. And I encourage anyone who's listening to this podcast to make sure they have a coach because

you can't sell what you don't do. So if you don't see the value in having some sort of coaching or additional help, then it's going to be difficult for you to sell that to your clients. But there's quite a few books that I've read recently that I've really enjoyed. I'm enjoying some great books on software at the moment. I've also just...

Just about finished reading The Grapes of Wrath from John Steinbeck. I try and mix it up and read some books that will just take my mind completely off my work and help me to sleep. But I think one of the best books that I've read is Marshall Goldsmith's book called What Got You Here Won't Get You There. It's been around for a long time now, this book, but it just helps you to see that what you've learned up until now, and it links back to the value gap.

conversation we talked about at the beginning. The training and the development and the work that you've done at this point has got you so far but that's got you to here. It's not going to get you to there. What got you here will not get you there. Marshall Goldsmith, really fantastic book and quite a short read.

Adam Cooper (40:02.823)

Okay brilliant, we've got two crackers there, Grapes of Wrath, I love that book so happy to recommend that and Marshall Goldsmith, what got you here won't get you there. Excellent stuff. Okay brilliant, well thank you Mark and just about to wrap up, is there anything that you'd like to finish up with or where can people find you and learn more about what you're doing, what the Gap's doing?

Mark Jenkins (40:23.778)

Yeah, so we are, thegaphq.com is our website. You can have a look on there. There's a free trial if you want to have a play around with that. You can search me up on LinkedIn, Mark Jenkins. You'll see me there. Probably Mark Jenkins New Zealand will probably get the link closest to me. Or you can email me at mark at thegaphq.com.

And I will answer every email that I get so feel free to do that. Don't be shy about it. In terms of some parting thoughts, think for anyone who's a Star Wars fan out there, I just love the quote from Yoda, know, do or do not. There is no try. So don't try to do things here. Either decide to do things differently or decide not to do things differently.

There's no try.

Adam Cooper (41:23.869)

Excellent, great words to finish with. Thank you very much Mark for joining me today on the Fractional CFO Show. Really appreciate your insight, your perspective and your time. Thank you.

Mark Jenkins (41:34.407)

Thanks Adam for the opportunity. I hope that's been of value. I've certainly enjoyed having the chat.

Adam Cooper (41:40.149)

Great, thank you.