Navigating Your Career Path: Exclusive Insights with Nate Littlewood

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Nate Littlewood, a career expert who specializes in helping individuals build and sustain fulfilling careers. Nate shares his personal journey and reveals key strategies for overcoming common career obstacles, from job transitions to personal growth. Whether you're just starting out or looking to level up in your career, Nate’s advice offers practical steps to take charge of your professional path.

You can find him on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanlittlewood/
https://www.futurereadycfo.com/

Transcript

Nate Littlewood 0:00

The first is some level of financial frustration. And this usually materializes in that there's disappointment or frustration about the amount of time, effort, or maybe revenue that the business is generating, and the finance, you know, the financial or profit and cash flow outcomes that we're achieving from that. So these are commonly founders who might not be paying themselves enough, right? They could be, you know, worth a two or three hundred thousand dollar a year employee to someone else, but they might be paying themselves, you know, 70 or 80 grand. Or maybe they're not paying themselves consistently.

Davis Nguyen 0:36

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Wynne, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight-figure career coaching businesses myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Pedro Stein 1:08

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm Pedro, and today I'm joined by the founder of Future Ready CFO, Nate Littlewood, who supports early stage purpose-led founders in e-commerce and CPG achieve their business and financial goals. Unlike other CFOs in the space, they've walked the walk by bootstrapping their own e-commerce business and spending nearly a decade on Wall Street with a global investment bank. Through content courses and one-on-one coaching, they're on a mission to make finance education more accessible for startup founders and put an end to finance being the number one reason startup businesses fail. Welcome to the show, Nate.

Speaker 2 1:58

Thank you very much, Pedro. Great to have uh great to be here, and thank you for having me.

Pedro Stein 2:03

Oh, it's great to have you, and I can almost tell you have your own podcast just by the way you you guys are great to have you, okay.

Nate Littlewood 2:12

I that's that's okay on the other side of the microphone.

Pedro Stein 2:20

Exactly, and I it it shows nice, okay. Um, and before we get into what you do now, I I like to rhym a bit, you know, get back to the origin story because every coach has that moment when they look at the life and they're like, you know what? I guess this is what I'm doing now, right? I'm I'm a coach. So when was that for you, mate?

Nate Littlewood 2:42

Yeah, well, that moment for me was probably about four years ago. Um, and there's a couple of important steps to get back to that point, which uh which I'll break down for you if that's okay. So I've been working on what is now future ready CFO for about two years now, which is a fractional CFO consulting business, which basically means I work with a number of different startup businesses and their founders, uh helping them solve strategy and finance type problems. I truthfully never really saw myself as a coach or mentor for most of my life. And you know, if you'd told a 20 or 30-year-old version of me that this is what I was going to end up doing, I'd be like, what the hell are you talking about? Are you mad? That's you know, never gonna be what I do. But here I am. And I guess the the stepping stoneslash real eye-opener for me was a couple of years that I spent before this working with a New York City-based accelerator program called Food Future Co. So we basically specialized in helping early stage founders get ready for their first round of institutional investment. And I initially walked into that, you know, just as a volunteer gig. You know, I'd had a few years' experience under my belt by that point as a founder myself, and I thought, hey, this would be a good way to network, meet some interesting people, but quickly became the lead mentor for the entire program. And what was a real eye-opener for me is just how much I enjoyed working with and supporting other founders. I was like, this is actually really fun. Um, you know, I love you know supporting people through difficult decisions. I have a bit of a knack for taking complicated, chaotic situations and distilling them down into simple frameworks and you know, clear, clear next steps. And yeah, it was it was honestly starting that role was frankly more out of self-interest. I thought, hey, this would be a you know good environment to network in and meet some cool people. But what it really did for me is open my eyes to the whole world of coaching and mentoring, which frankly I'd never really thought too much about up until that point in in my life.

Pedro Stein 4:56

Interesting. The networking, how naturally you get that leadership position, you know. Now I'm curious because there's always a shift at some point, right? When when you start from I'm helping people to I'm building a real business around coaching, around this, you know. So when was that for you, you know, when you you saw that the potential for an actual business?

Nate Littlewood 5:20

Yeah. So I had a um maybe a slightly unusual way into the CFO slash coaching place. And frankly, over the last couple of years, this has been a huge source of imposter syndrome to me. I am sitting here today as a fractional CFO, but candidly, I've never been a CFO to anyone before, um, you know, offering my services as a fractional CFO. So there's been many a time, especially in my first year or so of doing this, where I was like, who the heck are you to be, you know, coaching other people on finance and numbers stuff? Like, you've never been a CFO before. Like, how are you qualified to do this? But looking a little bit further back into my career, there's I guess two important chapters that that got me here. The most recent one was basically being the founder uh or co-founder and CEO of my own e-commerce startup. So I wore the CEO hat. I wore the CFO hat, I wore the operations hat. I was head of HR, I got into marketing, I got into product. Like you name it, I've dabbled in it within you know a startup environment. And although I never gave myself the CFO title in there, that was really what I was doing inside my own company. I'll be completely honest with you, Pedro. I don't think I was that amazing as a CEO in my own company, but I do think I was a pretty good CFO in my own company, even though that wasn't the title that I had. So, you know, I had six or seven years experience basically running and managing and operating one of these businesses of my own. And I think that firsthand experience is a real differentiator compared to the other people who were now offering, you know, fractional CFO type services, because I've walked the walk. Like I know what it's like to be stressed about payroll next month. I've you know had to run around at the last minute figuring out how to finance the next purchase order because we didn't have enough money in the bank for it. Like all the you know, cash flow and money dramas that my clients are going through, I have lived them firsthand. And so I know what it feels like. I know you know how they get themselves into these situations, and I know where they normally look for solutions to get out of them. The other relevant chapter here is before getting into the world of startups, which for me, I guess was about a decade ago now, I spent roughly the first 10 years or so of my career working on Wall Street at an investment bank. So I started in Australia, spent a couple of years in Canada, uh, eventually got moved down to New York, which is where I am now. But, you know, through a near 10-year stint working on Wall Street at an investment bank, you get to understand the world of finance, you know, pretty well. Like I understand how finances work, how businesses are valued, uh, and how you know money moves around through these entities. So the way I put it to people is I essentially Venn diagrammed my way into what I'm doing now. I understood finance, I understood what it's like to be a founder. I said, okay, these are the two big chapters I have in my life. What happens if I overlap them a little bit? What's at the intersection? I thought, huh, founder, finance, like I like coaching. Maybe I should explore this fractional CFO thing. And, you know, there'd been a couple of other fractional CFOs that had started popping up on my LinkedIn feed, and I was like, huh, that's interesting. Let me follow this guy, learn more about what he does. I actually reached out to one or two of them, had a conversation, and that was actually how I got some of my first clients, right? Uh, he was already in business, he already had clients, but he had some clients which weren't a great fit for his company. And he said, Hey Nate, you know, why don't you take care of this guy? Um it can, you know, you can make a little bit of income from it. So that was um, yeah, kind of how I how I got started with this.

Pedro Stein 9:13

Interesting. I love the fact how open you are about being, you know, had having that imposter syndrome. Um, I think that's a key asset. I always say this on the podcast being vulnerable is a key asset for a true coach. But and usually at this point, I try to understand if you have niched down, right? But which you did. So I that's already dialed in. We know it's the e-commerce and the startups. So my real question for you is like, how did you felt, you know, about the consultant slash coach? Because I'm hearing CFO, which is usually a consultant position, a C-suite level, but I'm also hearing the true coach down there somewhere, you know. So, how did you end up tying those together to package a service? Does that make sense?

Nate Littlewood 10:03

It does, and for clarity, I have latched on to the label fractional CFO because it happens to be the best commonly used description of what it is I do. But if I can be honest with you, I don't fully recognize myself or see myself as a fractional CFO. I, yes, part of what I do is numbers, finance, data related, but the other part of what I do is kind of coaching, mentoring, and advising. And I frankly, you know, sometimes wonder whether I should rebrand myself as a co-founder on demand. The the way that I use numbers is I kind of see the finances, the numbers and data as an extremely powerful tool to help orient ourselves. It's very useful for understanding where we have a problem in a business, where we have an opportunity in our business, and where the numbers are kind of pointing us in terms of strategy. But once you've figured out where you need to go, the next step is implementation and you know, figuring out actually how to act upon this. And you mentioned my niche, which you're correct, it is e-commerce and CPG founders, but it's actually a lot more niche than that. I only work with businesses that are doing seven figures of revenue, not six, not eight, seven. And what most of my clients have in common is they're at this interesting stage in their evolution between a post-product market fit. So they've got some traction, they've got a, you know, usually two or three years worth of sales. This is more than just, you know, an interesting idea that we're kind of at the point where, hey, okay, this has got some legs, but they haven't yet evolved into what we'll call like a real scalable business. So none of them have complete organizational charts, right? There's all, you know, all of them have got key C-suite roles that are missing, which means that they're all figuring out like how to build these functions inside their business. Do we use an agency? Do we use another fractional? Do we do a part-time hire, full-time hire? You know, what does the org chart need to look like in marketing or operations or whatever? The other thing that they all have in common is that they're all figuring out what their systems and processes and SOPs should look like. And so a big part of what I'm doing is essentially helping them go from post-product market fit and you know, two or three million in revenue to a real scalable company that has got the systems and tools in place to actually scale successfully, scale profitably, and you know, go on to be a successful business.

Pedro Stein 12:39

Okay, interesting. Now, let's picture this. I'm one of those businesses, right? I'm at the seven-figure mark and I am your ideal client profile. So how would I eventually find you, you know, marketing-wise?

Nate Littlewood 12:55

Well, I think before you go looking for me, it's worth understanding that there's commonly two pain points or two types of pain points that you're probably experiencing. The first is some level of financial frustration. And this usually materializes in that there's disappointment or frustration about the amount of time, effort, or maybe revenue that the business is generating, and the finance, you know, the financial or profit and cash flow outcomes that we're achieving from that. So these are commonly founders who might not be paying themselves enough, right? They could be, you know, worth a two or three hundred thousand dollar a year employee to someone else, but they might be paying themselves, you know, 70 or 80 grand. Or maybe they're not paying themselves consistently because they're prioritizing other things from a cash flow perspective. Or maybe they're generating millions of dollars worth of revenue, but none of it is landing in the bank account at the end of each month, and they're like, WTF, man, like what's the point of all this if I'm not making any money from it? So that's category one or pain point one. The other is, I guess I would describe it as decision overwhelm. And the way that people experience this is there's you know 20 or 30 different priorities and shiny objects that they're thinking about. It might be launching on TikTok shop, launching a new product line, hiring an operations manager. Like there's dozens of these different ideas that are usually floating around in a founder's head, but they don't know which they should actually do. And so what happens is that they try to do everything. And during the onboarding process, I commonly have to say to them, listen, when you tell me you've got 20 or 30 priorities, what I hear is you've actually got none. And if you have zero priorities, then you're not really making meaningful progress on any of these things. So I have a number of frameworks that are used to help founders get from a list of 20 or 30 down to two or three. And these two or three are going to be the highest impact growth and profit levers that we can possibly identify. And I'll then work with them to basically build out a custom action plan to make progress on these, you know, two or three priorities. And all this is kind of done under, you know, within a bigger picture goal or vision to realize whatever their financial priorities may be. For some of my clients, is that they want to have an eight-figure exit. For others, they just want to be able to support their, you know, the kids and the family with a steady, stable income. Others just want to have a lifestyle business and they, you know, don't really need the money and they're doing it for you know other motivations. So everyone's a little bit different in terms of the financial priorities that they have. And what we're doing here is trying to take small incremental steps bit by bit in a strategic and controlled fashion to get us from wherever we start, which is you know, some aspect of the financial outcomes is not really working for you, to over here, which is yeah, we're starting to get some real traction. We're nailing it, and we're getting the outcomes that we want.

Pedro Stein 16:03

Hmm. Okay, I'm gonna jump on that onboarding boat, you know, the onboarding process you you mentioned. And you also kind of mention a custom action plan based on priorities, right? Which I think it's very interesting. Now, picture this uh I'm the client, right? I'm just being on boarded. So I want to understand what that experience would look like for me now, you know, the structure of working under your business.

Nate Littlewood 16:28

Yeah. So the onboarding phase for the CFO services usually takes about three months. And there's three main priorities or three main frameworks that we're going to go through. Uh, the first is what I call ROI or return on investment, a fairly you know financing number. But return on investment basically tells us what are we getting back relative to the investment that we made. So if we invest, you know, a dollar, we get two dollars back, that's 100% ROI. Okay. So in a business context, what I'm doing is looking at each of these different priorities and ideas, trying to quantify what each of them could mean in terms of the profitability of the business, and then comparing that to the cost of achieving that outcome. So let's say we are looking at a conversion rate optimization project, and we, you know, look at where our conversion rate is now, we look at what our peers are doing, and maybe we come to the conclusion that if we could fix conversion rate, that would drive an increase in profitability of, say, you know, $300,000 a year. Then we can ask ourselves, well, what's it going to cost us to actually do that? We might need five hours a week of the founder's time. We might need to hire a $5,000 a month CRO agency to help us optimize the site. And maybe we need to do that for, I don't know, six to 12 months, right? So we can map out roughly what the cost is and we can compare that to the profit upside, and then we can get a sense of what return on investment looks like. The other thing we can do with those inputs or numbers is understand what is the capital at risk, which basically means if in a scenario where this project went belly up and we actually don't get any of that $300,000 because we fail, what have we lost? Right? What's the downside? What is the capital or financial investment that's at risk here? And in this case, it would be, you know, agency costs times you know six to 12 months plus five hours a week, time, you know, whatever that math is. So that's number one. And usually, you know, the thinking about ROI and materiality of each of these opportunities is a really good way to just broadly put things into buckets, and you can quickly say, yeah, this is freaking interesting, or no, that looks like a complete waste of time. It's really not going to move the needle for us. So maybe we'll put that towards the bottom of the list. The second framework I use is a bottleneck analysis. I'm sure of you and everyone listening is familiar with the concept of a bottleneck, but in a business context, we can apply it many different ways. So uh we could apply it in an e-commerce context, thinking about traffic running through a website. You start with website visitors, a certain percentage of them convert into customers. When they become customers, they have an average order value. If they come back as customers again, then they have a repeat purchase rate. And so all of this kind of determines the flow of profit that's generated through a website. And in any flow, you know, a highway, your you know, morning routine, and the the flow of traffic through a website, like everything has got a bottleneck, right? It's a tight you know constriction point which is determining how how much you can get through the system. So, you know, we uh try to identify where these bottlenecks are in the business because by definition, the highest bang for you your buck that you can get in any business is removing that bottleneck. So if we can double the conversion rate, we double the number of customers that we generate. Um, one of my customers is actually experiencing an operations bottleneck at the moment. We have increased ad spend, which has grown revenue so much, so quickly, they're growing at like 100% year on year right now. But we've grown so quickly that they've basically run out of capacity to ship orders. They physically do not have enough hands in their own warehouse to pack boxes. And so we've had to throttle back the ad spend so that they can keep up with packing boxes. And we're now figuring out okay, how are we going to remove this operations bottleneck? So that's the framework too. The third framework is really about skills alignment. So I have this uh this model that I borrowed from a guy named Sahil Bloom. He calls it the the zone of genius framework, I think, if anyone wants to Google it. But it's basically two axes which look at how skilled or competent you are at a certain activity and what level of energy does it give you. So you can imagine, like an XY graph, there's kind of four quadrants here. In the top right is where we have the zone of genius, and these are tasks that we're very, very good at, and they give us a lot of energy. So there's obviously four other quadrants here, but what I am looking for is tasks and inputs that the founders are genuinely, you know, really, really good at. It's important to realize here that my clients are generally businesses with like two to ten people. We do not have Amazon.com talent pool sitting in the back office. We do not have experts in absolutely everything floating around here. We have a very, very small team and by definition, a very, very small set of competencies and skills, things that we're really, really good at. And part of my job as the co chair is to put the right balls in front of the founders that they can actually kick into the goals. It doesn't serve anyone if I put a 30 pound bowling ball in front of you and tell you to kick it 200 yards. In other words, you know, if you're a numbers guy and operations guy and I tell you to launch a project that optimizes ad creative for Facebook, you're just going to break your toe on that. You're going to fall flat and you're going to suck at it. So it's it's we need to be very, very careful to find the right projects for the right founder and the right team. So we've got ROI, which is kind of hardcore finance numbers crunching. We've got bottleneck, which can be applied a number of different ways, and we've got skills alignment, which is picking the right projects for the team that we have access to. So through those true three frameworks, which we usually cover in the first two or three months, that's how we get from 20 or 30 different ideas down to two or three. You know, at this point we know what we need to do and what we should be prioritizing. And we then have a process to actually, you know, percolate that down through the team and get the right people with the right KPIs, you know, making the right moves every week to make progress on these on these goals.

Pedro Stein 23:04

Okay. I find that interesting, but I want to dive into the coaching side. Let's say I'm Pedro, I'm a difficult client. Okay. I'm like, you know what, Nate? Yeah, the operation sounds like a problem, but I think they're they they're just not working enough. Uh, I don't think they want to do it, you know, and you start noticing that Pedro, the client from hell here, is actually needing coaching, and you need to navigate him or me through a difficult conversation, right? Because we are talking about frameworks, which are great, but I'm trying to understand when does uh Nate Littlewood, uh, the coach steps in and have that cover difficult conversation, how that that how that plays out.

Nate Littlewood 23:49

Honestly, I would say it's almost every call I'm having the coach mentor conversations. I mean, every single one of my clients is a first-time founder, they're a first-time CEO, and they're all having doubts. And, you know, like I mentioned before, they all have imposter syndrome about some aspect of their business, and they're thinking to themselves, am I the right person to be doing this? Like, am I really qualified? Like, I've never done this shit before. I don't I don't I don't know how to run ads or managing a team or do it do any of that. So, you know, five finances and numbers can be a harsh and confronting topic to a lot of people, and a lot of people, you know, are very intimidated by finances and numbers. And a huge part of what I'm doing is figuring out how to package the messages that finances are given that the financials are giving us into a way that is digestible and understandable for these founders. I'm trying to show them how we can take this financial information to actually make their life easier, how to relieve stress, how to give them more focus and clarity. At the end of the day, how to get them to sleep better at night. So I'm really helping them see that this stuff, this finance stuff isn't something to be intimidated by. If handled correctly and understood properly, it can actually be a strategic ally, which makes your life a lot easier as a business owner.

Pedro Stein 25:25

You know, Nate, that's a very interesting framework you presented me. And also the fact that you have the coach in peace happening every day, right? When you connect with uh your clients. So one thing that I'm very curious about, and I think you could serve our audience, is you know, you mentioned imposter syndrome twice. So I want to tap into that, you know, because every coach has that has that moment and they're like trying to package their work, figure out their pricing, you know, and that's a very self-worth path, you know. Am I charging too much? Am I charging enough? So what I want to understand is how do you think it, you know, about today, about the the pricing aspect. And were there any lessons along the way that shape how you landed where you are right now?

Nate Littlewood 26:13

Yeah, interesting question. Um, I guess there are two or three important steps that I've been through here and phases. So the first thing I did was understand what other fractional CFOs are pricing, so that I knew kind of where the market was at. And I looked around, spoke to a few others, and understood that you know, most of my peers are charging, you know, three up to maybe $8,000 a month. So I was like, okay, interesting. The next thing I had to do is look at my ICP, which is a little bit on the earlier side, and usually, you know, businesses without as much capital and profit. And so I had to think about, hmm, you know, uh maybe I need to figure out ways to adjust this down a bit to make myself a bit avoidable, uh a bit more affordable. And, you know, one of my first priorities is just, you know, figuring out how to get an offer that my clients could afford. There shortly after that, there was a phase where I was like, you know what, price doesn't freaking matter right now. Um, profit and numbers aren't my priority. I just need to get in the reps. And I was, you know, for on a lot of jobs in the first year or so, I was bidding extremely aggressively just because I knew I needed the practice. Like I didn't have, you know, yeah, history, I didn't have a client portfolio I could talk to. I was like, I basically just need to pay for experience here so that I can understand how to actually do this. And I did some, you know, extremely low-priced uh deals like sub $2,000 a month while I was getting things ramped up. What I've done more recently as my business has got closer to capacity and I've been able to be a bit more selective is I've introduced an audit offer that comes between you know new prospect and lead and me actually talking about you know my retainer services. The audit offer I position as this is like taking your business to the doctor for a financial health checkup. I'm gonna take your blood pressure, your cholesterol level, all your vital signs, and I'm gonna come back in a week and tell you what's up with your business, and we'll go through it together. So I now have this template, I plug their financials in and I put together about a 20-page report that's looking at their profitability, some of their, you know, website efficiency metrics, the balance sheet, cash flow, and so forth. Now, this is really good for the frankly, I think it's a great deal for the client because they get 20 years worth of experience looking at their business. And what I deliver at deliver to them at the end of the presentation is you know, three to five priority actions that they could take. I mean, the doctor's probably going to tell you to, you know, eat less junk food and you know, do some more steps or work out. What I tell you to do is okay, you need to focus on this margin, that ratio, and this number here. And basically, the the last slide in this deck is uh basically a profit waterfall that shows where are we at today in terms of the profit that you're generating? What is the impact of my top three to five ideas to increase the profitability or cash flow of this business? And where could that get to? So the client walks away from this with a pretty good steer on what is possible for their business and a few prompts about where they could go. And they're entitled to walk away with that and never talk to me again. What it does for me though is it allow it gives me a really good opportunity to find problems for my client and position the value that I can deliver, right? I did one of these a couple of weeks ago and I found like five or six hundred thousand dollars worth of value and opportunities for this client. I was like, okay, like if you hire me for a few grand a month, like this is the opportunity that I'm gonna be going after. So back to my ROI analogy, it's like, okay, my retainer service here in the context of this $600,000 a year that I'm gonna try to help you achieve is pretty freaking high. Like, there's not many other things in your business that are gonna give you this type of ROI. So that's where I've gotten to now. I don't know if it's perfect. I suspect you have uh far more thoughts on this topic than I do. If you've got any feedback on comments on that, I'd I'd love to hear them.

Pedro Stein 30:33

Well, that's a wild topic. I've seen I've talked with coaches here in the show that told me they hey, don't look at anyone's fees. And I had people there were like, hey, I looked at the uh the market's fees and I doubled it just out of confidence. And I had people just like you, they're in the middle term, you know, they're in the the middle of it. It's like I looked at it, I had some idea where I should be charging, but that was just a benchmark. So I don't think there's a right or wrong answer at the end of the day, it's how you feel more comfortable with, you know, and I would emphasize the fact that you needed the reps, right? I think that's crucial because I'm also a coach, right? So whenever I'm in a coach coaching session, or I'm gonna bring back my first client, I've learned so much, you know. I had this entire plan that I was gonna do, and he kind of destroyed it with a low self-esteem answer, you know, and I was like, Oh, and then we're gonna do X and Z and Y. And he's like, you know, man, I'm not, I'm just not interested. I'm like, oh my god, here we go. You know, so um I think the raps are crucial. Okay, I would say you're totally right on that, at least that's my opinion. Now, Nate, I'm curious where you're taking all this, right? Looking ahead, where do you see the business going? Are you thinking about scaling, hiring, or is there a next step you're excited about?

Nate Littlewood 31:50

Well, this is gonna be an embarrassing question. You're asking the guy who helps other companies and founders with their financial planning what his own plan is for the future. Um, okay, so the truth, the truth, the most honest answer I can give you is that I am looking for a uh lucrative and comfortable kind of lifestyle business here. I I don't want to give you the impression that I'm wanting to work whatever, you know, 15 hours a week, but I want this to be a full-time gig. But I I have zero aspiration of growing this beyond, you know, 10, maybe 12 people. Um, a full business for me would be maybe I don't know, three fractional CFOs, a couple of bookkeeper accountants, maybe two or three marketing people, and an admin or customer success type person. Like that's it. I really do not want to grow my business to more than you know 10 to 12 people. Part of that is because I've had a taste of what it's like to be a CEO, and I know that there are parts of it that I am okay at and that I enjoy, but managing huge groups of people and all of the HR issues that come along with that, it's just doesn't excite me. Like I don't enjoy it. I I'd much rather have a small, tight team, and you know, even if it that means I'm giving up you know longer term upside, I don't care. I really don't care. I'm you know, I'm just wanting to make a comfortable salary here and you know have as much impact and help as many people as I can, and that's kind of the the ultimate goal for me personally.

Pedro Stein 33:29

I find that so funny. I'm sorry, because I I've talked with coaches in the podcast and like I'm in scaling season, I'm gonna hire a VA. And you're like, I don't, I'm not, I don't want to grow, I just want 10. And you're like, do you see the difference? Like the coaching space is so wild. I think it's because you're in that space, the e-commerce and the the scaling there, it's like aggressive, right? So you're you're looking at yourself, oh, only 10, but that's a freaking lot in the coaching space. Okay, that's not not a few people now. Of course, whenever we're aiming towards the next chapter, there's always something you're refining in the present, right? So, what are you currently trying to improve or tighten up in your business right now?

Nate Littlewood 34:09

So the main things I'm working on right now are expanding my product offering. So I've recently hired a bookkeeper so that I can offer accounting services, and that means I'm building out a whole set of SOPs and ways of doing things and you know, standardized onboarding experiences for clients. The other big thing I'm, you know, like everyone, I guess, that I'm I'm navigating now is AI and figuring out which of these crazy AI horses should I tie my wagon to? Should it be Gemini? Should it be Claude? Should it be something else? I don't know. And figuring out what is the right balance between AI automation and humans. I mean, a few months ago I actually started through a headhunter, started a search process for a financial analyst to build, maintain, and you know, roll over financial models for me. But I've recently been dabbling with doing large parts of that process using AI, and it's it's not perfect, and like I'm not getting the outputs that I want quite yet. But it's like, holy smokes, this is crazy. Like, we're probably not that far away from me not actually needing a financial analyst, and I can just plug these instructions into an AI and it can do it for me. And you know, what does my business look like if I can have a hundred dollar a month Claude subscription rather than you know paying thousands of dollars a month for a junior financial analyst? So, you know, I'm I I suspect like a lot of people figuring out how to incorporate AI into the business. Yeah, I could talk a lot more about that, but uh they're they're the big two, you know, adding new products and services and figuring out AI.

Pedro Stein 35:55

Interesting, especially with the AI, right? It's so such a hot topic. Now, if someone listening wants to connect with you or follow your work, Nate, where can people find you and connect with you?

Nate Littlewood 36:08

Absolutely. So the best place is LinkedIn. I am fairly active there, posting pretty much every day. My name again is Nate Littlewood. I should be pretty easy to find. The other place is, of course, the website, which is futurereadycfo.com, or one word. There you can find customer testimonials. There's a whole lot of freebies downloads, and of course, if you want to learn more about the different services I offer, there's uh information there as well.

Pedro Stein 36:35

You know, based on the chat we had today, some some things really stood out to me. You know, I would say, first of all, that vulnerability at the start, you know, the imposter syndrome, being a CFO, I and and figuring it out. And should I even carry that title, you know, and the positioning, how you did it. It's like at the end of the day, I understand the targeting, you know, and it it makes sense to to be as a CFO, which makes sense, but also your background. But I love the fact that there's always some piece of coaching that is out there, you know. You're not a consultant, I can tell. I mean, as much as you can uh be a consultant, you have all the background, there's also the coach out there, you know. And I would say the framework, the ROI, the bottleneck and skills alignment, that's totally consultant. And when I asked you how do you solve that, and you're like, Oh, every day I have to deal with the coaching dilemma, the coaching help to sell them the vision so they can understand what's the true intention behind it, you know, and and last but not least, I would say your ICP or ideal client profile, not having the organizational chart uh ties up perfectly with who you are or you were in the past. It sounds like you're serving yourself, you know. You were the guy that was wearing all the hats, you were the guy that had skin in the game, that was running everything by himself. And now you're like, you know what? Been there, done that, I can help these people, you know. So this is my long way of saying that I appreciate what you do, and I appreciate you being here and sharing so openly today. It was great having you on.

Nate Littlewood 38:19

It's been great being here.

Davis Nguyen 38:20

Thank you so much for hosting. That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe to YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This conversation was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. To learn more about Purple Circle, our community, and how we can help you grow your business, visit joinpurplecircle.com.