S2E28: The 7-Layer CFO: Why Marketing, Sales, and Finance Need Each Other

Stacie Sussman sits down with Phil Nahajewski, fractional CFO and founding partner of Florida CFO Group, to expose what most marketing leaders get wrong about financial conversations. Phil brings seven distinct layers of experience across Corporate America, nonprofits, tech startups, and SMB fractional work — and he’s here to prove that brand investment shows up in the exit check. If you’re still fighting for budget in the wrong language, this episode is your wake-up call.

The Multiple Is Where Marketing Lives

Most marketing leaders walk into budget conversations armed with impressions, clicks, and MQL counts. Phil reframes the whole game.

• Company valuation is EBITDA x the multiple — and the multiple is driven by brand quality and customer loyalty
• Marketing owns both of those drivers. Finance just hasn’t been told that story yet
• The CMO who speaks CFO gets the budget. The one who doesn’t keeps fighting for scraps

The Bright House Story: Brand ROI You Can’t Put on a P&L

Phil was inside Bright House Networks when they launched a brand-new name with zero market recognition. Every marketing leader needs this case study.

• They secured naming rights to the UCF stadium and sponsored the Tampa Bay Lightning’s first-ever Stanley Cup run
• None of it was cleanly attributable on a P&L in real time
• When the company sold to Charter, the exit multiple told the whole story — brand investment showed up in the check

Attribution, Context, and the Danger of Siloed Metrics

Phil keeps a running timeline of internal and external factors alongside results — because results never live in a vacuum.

• A campaign doesn’t succeed or fail in isolation. Context is part of the data
• “What we have here is a failure to communicate” — when functions silo, everyone looks successful on their own scorecard while the business quietly bleeds
• Vanity metrics let everyone feel good while the foundation cracks

AI, Fractional Talent, and the New Operating Model

Phil has built a personal AI agent team — each one named, each one with a distinct role.

• Second Phil (strategic thought partner), Orgy (organizer), Mori (values keeper, inspired by Tuesdays with Morrie), Draper (marketing agent, named for Don Draper)
• His take: AI doesn’t replace your time — it creates new things worthy of your time
• On fractional talent: small and mid-sized businesses don’t have to wait to access experienced financial leadership. Fractional levels the playing field

Key Takeaways

• Valuation language is marketing’s most underused weapon. EBITDA x the multiple — and the multiple is yours to move.
• Brand investment shows up in the exit check, not always the quarterly report. The Bright House story proves it.
• Siloed metrics are a slow leak. When every function wins on its own scorecard and the business still struggles, the problem is alignment — not effort.
• AI reveals character. Those who use it with transparency and generosity build leverage. Those who don’t fall behind.

Resources + Links Mentioned

• Florida CFO Group on LinkedIn
• CFO Coffee Talk Podcast (Season 5, Episode 100)
• Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
• Cool Hand Luke (1967 Movie) — “What we have here is a failure to communicate”

About The Guest

Phil Nahajewski is a fractional CFO and founding partner of Florida CFO Group, a network of 35 CFO partners across seven Florida markets. He brings seven distinct layers of experience spanning Corporate America (Burroughs, Unisys, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks), nonprofit leadership, tech startups, SMB fractional work, AI integration, and what he calls the Enlightened Fractional layer. Phil also hosts CFO Coffee Talk, now in its fifth season and 100th episode. He helps business owners get the financial clarity and strategic partnership they need to grow — without waiting until they can afford a full-time CFO.

About The Host

Stacie Sussman is the Founder of RevUp Advisory, a revenue operations consultancy that helps CMOs at $30M-$50M B2B companies fix broken marketing and sales systems from the foundation up. With 17 years in sales management and a front-row seat to what actually breaks inside scaling companies, Stacie brings both strategic vision and hands-on execution. She’s also the creator of StacieSussmanTeachesAI.com — an AI education platform built for experienced business leaders who are ready to stop watching the AI wave and start building with it.

Connect With Stacie

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staciesussman
- Substack: https://staciesussman.substack.com/
- RevUp Advisory: https://www.revupadvisory.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hey B2B leaders! Feeling stuck in your growth journey as you've exhausted all your plays? Tired of doing things the same way and not seeing results? I'm Stacey Sussman, your host, and this is C-Suite Strategies, your podcast for the explosive business growth you've been chasing. We'll bring you conversations with industry visionaries who've truly mastered the art of scaling businesses. This isn't just theory, it's what we live and breathe every single day. Get ready for game-changing insights that'll transform your approach to business growth. Whether you're a seasoned C-Suite executive or an ambitious founder, we've got you covered. C-Suite Strategies is your backstage path to reaching that next level of business. Follow C-Suite Strategies now and let's make this your new reality. Hello, Pod Squad. We are so excited to have you for another episode of C-Suite Strategies. We have an amazing guest today, Phil Nahayeski. And we are so excited to bring this conversation to you. The topic today is the seven-layer CFO: why marketing, sales, and finance need each other. Phil has spent 35 years in the CFO seat, everywhere from multi-billion dollar corporations to tech startups to owner-led businesses. He's working as a fractional CFO with growth-minded SMBs. And he self-proclaims himself the seven-layer CFO, which we're going to get into. So we're super excited to have you today. Phil, say hello to our pod.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Hey, pod squad. Thanks for having me, Stagey.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Amazing, amazing. So, as you guys know on our pod squad, if you've listened to other episodes, we all believe that the relationship between marketing sales and the finance is just so important. And the businesses I believe that don't do well have this siloed. The businesses that do do better have this in alignment. Alignment obviously takes a little bit of work. But Phil, before we get into the nitty-gritty of what that even means, talk about yourself. Tell our pod squad what you've been up to and why you're here. His career is no less than impressive. So listen up, guys.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Well, Stacy, I'm impressed with you because you pronounce Nahayevsky right, and you are a great podcast so they're watching your episode. So I'll try to live up to the high bar and high standards you set. I call myself the seven-layer CFO. My wife calls me a seven-layer dip. It's because my career career has evolved from corporate America where I started, working for multi-billion dollar companies like Burroughs, Unisys, Time Water Cable, Bright House Networks for three decades. Along the way, I added a layer when I was asked to help rescue a nonprofit as a board member that was in financial distress, and really learned that helping nonprofits was not only good for the heart, but it gave me the appreciation for really how much can be done with delivering outcomes in tight budgets. That affected me and my my uh corporate world uh was the stories I can bring to help uh motivate uh operations to operate lean with a mission mindset. Love that. So I did get experienced the glory days of uh computer mainframes in the 80s and cable TV in the 90s and 2000s, but glory days don't last forever.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

That's why they're glory days too.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

So when the uh glory days of cable TV was were wrapping up, and they I got a nice enough separate package where I never had to work again financially, but psychically, I really I learned after three weeks of doing housework and honey to-dos that uh I had to uh get out of that hell and find a place to work. So that's why I went to work for a nonprofit. Then I met someone who had a fascinating tech startup that helped me catch this tech startup bug. So I, for the last dozen years, I've been helping about a dozen different tech startups as investor, CFO, uh, helped fundraise for a few. And I was actually at the Florida Venture Forum in St. Petersburg where I met one of the partners in the Florida CFO group seven years ago, and I learned about this fascinating group that was different than most CFO groups. This was not an agency, it was not a franchise. It was just an affiliation of very experienced, talented CFOs who enjoyed freedom, flexibility, and fellowship. And uh I thought, well, I'd love to be part of that brain trust, and that the business has grown. We now have 35 partners, 30 of them are active, and we're in seven markets all across Florida. So I picked up a couple of layers lately. I picked up a layer called the AI layer.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Ooh, our favorite.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

I hired an AI coach to personally train me. And Kevin Connor, if you're listening, thank you so much for uh being uh such a high-quality coach that not only trained me, trained a dozen of my other of my partners because I couldn't stop talking about him uh to my partners. And uh that has upped the level of my game, amplified my experience in a way that uh makes me want to postpone retirement for a while because I want to use all this great stuff I'm learning.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Love that.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

There's another layer I picked up that I call the enlightened fractional layer. And this is how we met Stacy through uh uh Fate and Quosni at Fractio. Correct. Hers was one of the startups I was advising, and by the way, she's presenting at Florida Venture Forum in Miami later this month. And her uh we uh were strategizing then how to get traction for the software she was building, which was all about creating a platform, workforce management platform for the fractional world that no longer built by the hour but was building by outcomes and the value they produce, uh which I believe is the future with AI kind of obliterating what does an hour mean anyway. So we started a podcast series called the Enlightened Fractionals because uh in my journeys over the past 10 years as a fractional CFO, uh working for five to ten businesses a year, I realized that I got exposed to a lot of fractional talent, not just finance, but sales, marketing, human resources, operations, cybersecurity. Uh some good, some not so good. And what I have been noticing lately is a lot of the positive comments I've been getting from my clients are not about me, but the people I introduce my clients to because my Of course I'm going, Stacy, what am I? Chop deliver, but now I realize that people like you and I have that uh ability to to uh kind of scour the world of talent out there where business owners are focused on running their business, they're not uh seeing what we're seeing. So that is a really high value layer that we provide in our in our travels. Oh, and then the the the seventh layer is is the fact that I'm in this brain trust of 35 really talented CFOs that gives me the ability to uh tap into experiences I didn't gain myself firsthand, but now I have secondhand access to it. But I just feel so blessed that all those things that have accumulated in my life for the past 35 years have just uh made me that seven layer CFO.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

I love that. I love that. So just go through one more time the seven layers. You don't have to give the explanation, but give the seven layers again. So it's all of everyone's on the same page.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

All right. Corporate, nonprofit, uh, the tech startup world, the SMB world, uh being in the Florida CFO group, brain trust, becoming an AI expert of sorts, and the enlightened fractional layer. Those are the seven things I bring to the party.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

I love that. I love that. And I feel like the plethora of experiences, you know, deep, vast, and being able to find what you need. I think that's an amazing skill set that I feel like a lot of people don't necessarily have. So I love that you're doing that. So what we focus a lot for Evisory is, you know, the marketing and sales alignment. And we always talk about how we love our CFO friends because, you know, numbers, checks, imbalances, et cetera. So if you've been in a million companies and seen it all, where do you see sort of the breakdown between marketing, sales, and finance? Like what's the big sort of patterns or disconnects that you're seeing within the industry just because you've seen it so big at billion-dollar companies and then nimble with SMBs or nonprofits?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Yeah. I I think I'm seeing the breakdown less because of uh. I think that there is early in your career as a C-level finance person or marketing person, you might be focused on your function more than the overall team and not realizing how the the pieces are so critical for each other that you uh really need to uh yearn for each other's success. I mean, as a CFO, having been through ups and downs and knowing how much better those ups are, uh, anything I could do to help the sales and marketing effort succeed, I'm all behind it. Because I know what it feels like what I have to do as a CFO to get budgets to balance and uh retain cash flow efficient to run the operation, it's not fun. It's much more enjoyable to work side by side with the marketing people, to allocate the right resources, to uh fund their creative ideas, fund the sales effort the right way, and uh then it becomes a great team experience that the uh the more senior C-suite executives know how to uh make happen and uh we relish it.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Yeah, I but I mean, like I said, I believe that when these functions work in tandem, and I always say there's no I in we, and we work as actually a we and a team, the collective company ends up doing better and no one's knocking each other down. I know you're saying you have, you know, TV experience. I came from like a publishing background, and I feel like back in the 2000s, I'll say, and I'm sure you can go past that, it was a lot of we're the best sales team and we're the best marketing team, and we're the best finance team, and we're the best research team. But there wasn't when I at least started incorporate this shared collective of everyone working together. And I feel like obviously that has changed over the past two plus decades. But I think that's a huge shift in businesses that wasn't always a thing. So, do you have any examples where you felt like that could have probably been done better in the past, but maybe the times hadn't caught up with what it was back then?

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Yeah. I I I I would credit Patrick Lencioni for helping people see the light on uh that if you're in a C-suite, over half your time you gotta be wearing your team leadership team a hat and helping each other succeed. The five diff the functions of a team was a great uh fable that uh told that story very well. And I think after that book came out, people started realizing, you know, I I I'm not just leading my function. Because if when people had that tunnel focus on their function, there you can succeed as a sales and marketing organization, but have the business fail. You can succeed as a finance organization, has a business fail. It's it's not a competition amongst the functions. All boats rise with with a high tide, all but boats are gonna be in trouble uh if uh they're beached.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Yeah, I love that quote. That's amazing. Awesome. So when folks are coming to you, let's call it sales leaders, let's call it marketing leaders, and they want to buy what I call like the shiny pen penny syndrome. You know, they want to buy a new tech stack, a tech tool. Marketing wants to invest in a big temple sponsorship or an event, but sometimes they feel like they can't, you know, justify the end of that. So I feel like, how do you want folks to really come in and sort of evaluate? Because we do a lot of rebup advisory on attribution and kind of saying you spent 30,000 on this campaign. Did what's the ROI? What did you get back to the company? I feel like that is the better way of justifying new budgets and way to kind of pull out from your PL. But what do you think about what that looks like from a CFO perspective?

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Yeah. Two thoughts come to mind, Stacey. One is the whole team's got to understand the strategy, what we're trying to become. And the more that we're all aligned and we have a common view based on very simply presented financials. I believe in simplicity because that the simpler it is, the easier. And I'm talking about the simplicity on the other side of complexity. Uh how you get that dialogue going where everybody gets the numbers. That's I think what the superstar CFOs do is they are able to uh help everybody feel uh what we feel as uh uh masters of understanding the ins and outs of the financials. And that way you're not fighting over the uh allocation of funds. Uh you're all trying to see how we can make all the pieces fit together. Uh but attribution is hard because there's so many factors that affect the results of a campaign or or initiative. Some internal, some external.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

You know, I uh know that we is early in my career. I thought I was working with some marketing geniuses at Time Warder Cable because the numbers are able to bring. But uh, you know, 1992 cable rate regulation. A little bit about dropping rates down, but there's actually a clause in that cable rate reg that said cable companies must install their customers in four days. Our product was so hot, people were chasing our trucks down the streets because they wanted ESPN and MTV and HBO that was new and exciting. And how good of a salesperson do you have to be when people are chasing down your trucks? And what's it say about Best Job. If the people are complaining, I can't get your product fast enough. I need a regulation to make sure that happens. That says a lot about the the uh uh what was being delivered. Uh so attribution-wise, do we say that great success was because we had great market campaigns? Well, you know, there's a story alongside of the campaigns. And so whenever you do attribution, you have to what my approach is uh I'll keep a timeline where I will try to not only have the numbers, but my awareness of everything else going on inside the company, outside the company, inside the industry, all the factors that that could affect the results, so we have a more holistic view because it's never going to boil down to just the numbers. There's gonna be some difficult to quantify factors that are going to either uh cause uh you to ride with the current or against the current.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

I love that. And so when these leaders are coming to you as a follow-up and they're asking for, let's say, budget approval, obviously I would hope the good ones are coming to you with numbers and justification. But what are some of those hard to factor kind of pieces? I would assume like market conditions, industry regulations. What are you thinking around that front?

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah. Well, even bigger than and broader than that is uh uh understanding that the market cap or the valuation of the business is not just based on EBITDA, it's based on the multiple. The multiple is based on the quality of your brand, the quality your customer loyalty. Those are things that will warm the cockals of an experienced CFO's heart if you're saying uh speaking in terms of these marketing programs, have the potential to elevate the brand, increase customer loyalty. Because we know, as uh those of us who bought and sold companies, that those are two things that truly affect the total value of the company, not just the bottom line. So it's the valuation is always a multiple of also always a calculation of the uh EBADA times the multiple.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

So yeah, uh we're big fans of uh uh strategic brand investments, and I've seen some good ones. We've uh we launched the Bright House brand after the spin-off from Time Warner, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with the story. You might because you've been part of the new house family for a while.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

We had to launch a brand new uh brand from day one that was had zero recognition.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

No easy feed. I've been there.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

But some of the moves that were happened in uh Tampa, timing was such that the brand was being launched during the first time this Tampa Bay Lightning was ever in the Stanley Cup playoffs. So we brought everybody in the uh stadium a shirt that's a gold bolts on the front and the back, it had our brand new logo alongside the Tampa Bay logo, and it was such a feel-good moment because the first time ever in history we're winning the Stanley Cup. And now it was just awesome they launched a brand with that kind of feel-good. And then in Orlando, we got the naming rights to uh the UCF football stadium, the brand new stadium they built. So we always called Bright House Stadium by us. Now, didn't work out perfectly because the nature of the architecture was that when the students jumped up and down, the stands would be bouncing. So it was known as the bounce house, not the bright house. We go, wait a minute, wait a minute, we pay a lot for the neighborhoods.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Most CMOs I talk to aren't failing because they lack strategy. They're failing because nobody ever fixed the foundation. So they keep hiring and they keep adding tools, they keep firefighting and marketing and sales. They're still not talking to each other, but we wish they would. That's not just a people problem. That's really, in our words, a foundation problem. And once you fix it, the impossible starts looking very impossible. If this sounds like your business right now, DM me the word foundation on LinkedIn, search Stacy Sussman, and let's talk about what's actually going on in your business.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

We know Major Wanna, maybe we should change the name of our company to Ballot's House, but uh now we uh stuck with Bright House. Um But but you know, those kind of brand investments, hard to get attribution on from a perspective. You but you know that down the road when the companies had an amazing multiple when they sold out to charter, down the road, those branding investments had to pay off. Not in the bottom line, but in the uh size of the check that the owners got when they sold a property.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yeah, that's brilliant. I feel like those are marketing geniuses that helped come up with those kind of partnerships that are thinking outside the box. I think everything we do now is very digital and everything has attribution, but we're talking, you know, big partnerships that are in person, in stands, in stadiums. That that's brilliant. And obviously, if it's a new stadium, a first-time Stanley Cup, like that's just like hitting the marketing trifecta, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

A little bit of luck involved, but uh you know, sometimes it works for you, sometimes it doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yeah, totally. So let's pivot a little bit from to infrastructure, because that's one of our favorites. I feel like the infrastructure of investments that you know CFOs want to make to and you want to improve these things. But what are some of the infrastructure investments? And let's talk more on like the SMB side that folks kind of need to have their ducks in order to be successful. Because I feel like when we work with these tens of millions of dollars of companies that are in that growth trajectory but are still rocket shipping, I find that they don't always think about the investment in the infrastructure because sometimes they're just going so fast. So talk to me from a CFO perspective about what infrastructure should look like.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Great question, Stacy. And uh I'll cover the whole spectrum because last night I spoke in an event AI salon, St. Pete, Tampa. Right. And one of the other speakers talked about was from was from the uh investment firm Raymond James. Speaking of naming right naming rights, Raymond James Stadium is where Tampa Buccaneers play. But uh that uh St. Petersburg-based firm uh has a one billion dollar budget for AI.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

I talked to the the uh uh exec that uh was smoking afterwards, and he told me how uh Brittany when they zero based it came out to 984 million. So they said we gotta find another sixteen million to spend on it. I think AI, of course, is the infrastructure of the future that even small businesses should uh work toward. One of my clients uh had a business owner that paid the uh AI coach I was I was I hired for myself last year fifty grand to train. create ten AI black belts across the organization in this SMB. So everybody from CEO to the receptionist learned how to use AI to get a lot more done. And I think that's the kind of infrastructure investment that's going to make the biggest difference going forward. I don't know from my AI training that things change so fast you need to be uh not just going to a training program, but built building a a rigid discipline of staying at top of things because it's a fast changing world that uh if you uh skip a week you might miss something big.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Yeah I feel like last week's big story I think Clawbot but it's a it's a Yeah I was just gonna say Clawbot just came out and I feel like there's so much that's coming and then once Clawbot comes out the other ones are going to come out with other things. So it's just fascinating. What did what was one of your big takeaways from your AI training that you apply to the CFO function? Because we use AI at Rev Up Advisory a ton. I feel like we have a small Nimble team we make ourselves a lot bigger with AI we're rating agentic AI bots for clients what from a CFO perspective do you have you applied to it because it would just be interesting to hear.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Yeah well now I'm gonna give a little bit of my talk from last night which was uh somewhat humorous because I I've given my agents names oh yeah of course I talk about how I I tell my story how I was an identical twin and for the first 16 years of my life I was constantly with my twin brother constantly competing against him love him we had fun but I couldn't wait not to be a twin anymore so I turned 16 I bought a motorcycle started heading in different directions went away to college we never lived in the same city and I achieved my mission of not being a twin and then agentic AI comes out and I create myself a twin second Phil. Second Phil is my agentic CFO strategic thought partner and together we research analyze strategize develop KPIs automate things and no he amplifies my ability as a CFO in a big way I saw the other I saw an interview with uh Jensen Wong from NVIDIA where they asked him what are you going to do with all your time when AI does all your work for you and he just laughed and he said you know as good as it is to automate things away it's even better at creating new things worthy of you to invest your time in. That's been so true for me because I my calendar's never been full or my project list has never been longer the second agent I created was an organizer called Orgy because I like how Orgy keeps me organized and of course I like saying hey I got an Orgy that's my the third the uh agent I created was Maury because I've always loved that book Tuesdays with Maury that's one of the best I I went to University of Michigan so I have a dear place for Detroit. You know this album yeah Miss album yes so um the uh Maury's brings to light the importance of loading your values into AI because it it's great that AI amplifies your professional part of you but uh can you get to amplify your better angels? That's uh powerful and my fourth agent is a marketing agent. I want I want to have a marketing partner in AI and I call him great uh Draper.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

So imagine a slide of me and a and Don Draper side by side with the with the tagline with a tagline that says and here's my other identical twin that's so great well if you haven't heard and I didn't but someone told me the bots have started a Reddit thread and are making fun of the humans. This happened a couple of weeks ago depending on when this episode airs this might be old news but the bots have started Reddit threads and are making fun of us humans. So I think values is a very interesting one that you hit on because I think that's what's a little bit I'll say missing in the AR world the the values the human connection the interaction and I don't think AI gets that right but they can obviously be the Maury and the Draper and the Orgy and everything.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

But it's it's interesting that the bots are ta taking a life of their own I would say so that's a fascinating very interesting that Elon Musk uh had state SpaceX by XAI because I don't think remember the movie 2001 Space Odyssey when the when space travel and AI merged it did not end well in the movies.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Well we might be headed there Phil I don't know what this is going to look like in the future amazing that yeah super fascinating I mean we're big proponents of AI we use Claude we use GPT Gemini perplexity etc I have also been playing with our brand voice and our tone in Claude specifically a lot of our marketers love Claude specifically we have friends that are doing commercials and photo shoots now in AI. So instead of you know our conde nested we would send them on location to South Africa and the whole team etc and and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars I'm sure they can actually take you to you know a studio get a thousand pictures and then sort of like recreate them into different locations around the world and keep the integrity of the product or the clothing et cetera so it's in my opinion fascinating because we're at the cusp of incredible lightning speed innovation but I think the values and ethics and sort of what we stand for as people is where I think the lines personally get very blurred.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Yeah I used this line yesterday Stacey you know they they say golf reveals character I think AI reveals character, right? Because there are those who use it with that transparency and generosity and that reveals their character and there are those that don't and that reveals their character.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Yeah I agree. I say a lot of pleases and thank you to my AI agents but I apparently not everyone does but I try to err on the niceties with my AI because I find that they're helping me and so if they're helping me it pays to be pleasant in my mind.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah I I think it's important that we train each other. I think one of the other values I provide to my clients is as I invested in AI training number one number one I always transparent about when I have AI do work that helps the client I I I say this is from AI. Help me review it for hallucinations. But then also I I try to share that knowledge with people who maybe have not had the benefit of pay for a high cost trainer like I have. And spreading that knowledge is a good team building thing but also so good for the business because it's the best way for us to squeeze costs out of the business is get AI to automate things and lessen the requirement to have to hire up to keep track of the key pace with the growth.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yeah I mean we do a lot of business intelligence for companies we're doing a lot of Salesforce and HubSpot and we're looking at a lot of data and numbers and I would say first it's like is the data actually accurate and they have good hygiene. I mean no one's ever at 100% but are we tipping in the 70s, 80s, 90% that's step one. And then two is we show folks in the C-suite visibility into patterns, trends year over year, month over month, quarter over quarter. And so with AI we're able to not only build that in a CRM in a system really easily but we can help tell this narrative and the story of what that looks like really easily and that is predictive of the business and a lot of our folks are looking for that multiple that you've been talking about. And so it supercharges that faster and helps them, you know, move much more nimbly important stuff. Yes. I'll have two more questions. I would say one is where is it that folks lose credibility with CFOs? Because I think we're all talking but we're talking a lot about alignment and everyone works together and my friend from South Africa singing from the same song tree is what her expression is in South Africa. But where are places where these C-suite executives marketing sales leaders sort of lose credibility with the CFOs and what can they do better? Because you know this is learning for everyone here.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Yeah in fact we're to quote quote a movie cool handluke comes to mind what we have here is a failure to communicate when things down it's because we're not talking with each other.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

So I'm a big believer in frequent meaningful commun uh conversations that we all at our heart have uh the business's best interests in mind it we should be able to align our approaches our knowledge our skills I think uh it's just a matter of having more frequent meaningful communic uh communications with each other yeah I feel like I've been learning a lot about psychology in the past couple of years because when you start getting into the C-suite and having conversations with these you know high-powered high stressful executives there's a lot of psychology that comes into change mindset, change leadership, business transformation. And I think it's just like fascinating how much of psychology comes into leading and growing like a really great business. Is that your way of seeing there's a lot of whack jobs in a C-suite well I think there's a lot of I'll say unresolved past experiences that they need to sort of resolve for themselves in order to move forward and make this company the next big success. And we talk with our executives very intimately which I'm sure you do. I feel like we get to know them very personally not just professionally and we want to be trusted advisors which I'm sure you want to be and that takes you know going at it with them at a different level of business at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

Trust is so important.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

Yes. All right so as we're wrap if there is any piece of advice you would leave our C-suite and pod squad with besides all of the great seven layers what advice would you tell folks that are sort of in the trenches doing this every day, got to keep going, want the multiple, want the exit what would you say to those folks?

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Well there's a lot of small and mid-sized business owners that still think they have to wait to big to get experienced financial leadership. But the emergence of fractional talent is a anabler for you to tap into some great skills, knowledge without that you need on your way up, not wait till you get up to get there because you might never get up there without it. So be open-minded about how you can add fractional talent to your team because there's a load of good talented people that can do wonders for the small and mid-sized businesses. If you need help finding them reach out to me I I can connect you with the right partner in the Florida CFO group but also I can connect you with some of the right fractionals that I've met and along my travels.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Yes and if our folks want to get in touch with you or they want to follow you or you are on LinkedIn podcast tell us all Phil where where can everyone find you well you would should follow if you're a small business owner or mid-sized business owner, the Florida CFO group LinkedIn page I'm trying to get my podcast game up to yours but by the end of the month we'll have had our 100th CFO coffee talk.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

And not only do you have great coffee talk content but we got uh great uh blog uh articles and good updates on what we're doing out in the community so please follow the Floor to CFO group page on LinkedIn uh I'm probably on there too much so it's easier to find me on there but I have 34 other really excellent partners that also deserved uh the attention that uh of small business owners because uh you know for every jack there's a Jill for every small business owner there's a fractional CFO.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Love that awesome well thank you Phil for coming on today this was such a great conversation we really appreciate it to our pod squad we hope you've been here through the whole conversation listening to the end Phil's thrown some really awesome knowledge and you never know your next big business breakthrough may be an episode away thank you so much. As we wrap up this episode of C-Suite Strategies I want to express my sincere gratitude to you our listeners for tuning in and engaging with our podcast. Your commitment to business growth and operational excellence is what drives this podcast forward. A special thank you to our guests today for sharing their valuable business insights and experience. Your wisdom is a gift to our audience and we're honored to have had you on our show today. If you enjoyed this episode we'd be thrilled if you follow and subscribe to the podcast. Your help supports us to reach more ambitious business leaders just like you. And if you didn't enjoy it well I guess I'll see you never this is your host Stacy Sussman, Chief Revenue Officer at RevUp Advisory signing off