With 25+ years’ experience working in corporate boardrooms as a CFO, CEO and Chairman, I’ve had plenty of hands-on experience of driving business growth in the real world, often in inhospitable market conditions.
In fact, I like the inhospitable market conditions best.
There’s an old Warren Buffet quote: “When the tide goes out, you can tell who’s been swimming naked”.
Well, it’s also fairly easy to look like a financial genius when the economy is just peachy. But introduce a recession, or double-digit interest rates, or fierce international competition coming out of nowhere, then it’s a lot harder.
I don’t mean to boast, but some of my greatest successes have been at the hardest economic times.
There are always opportunities
When the news is full of gloomy headlines, it’s easy to think there are no opportunities for your business, and you just need to hunker down until the storm passes.
Ironically, those can be times of great opportunity. When people retreat to their shelters, just hoping to get by, they also miss the golden opportunities that come along.
Working with the right CFO makes all the difference. In the toughest of economic times I have:
- Steered a business to sector-leading profitability in a cut-throat commodity market (largely by not playing by the “rules” everyone else played by, and developing a premium-priced service clients paid double the “market rate” for).
- Grown a business 3x in under three years in the teeth of a major reduction in income by successfully cracking a previously-untapped market with explosive growth potential.
- Reduced unit costs by 58% in a heavily unionised industry which had a history of not welcoming changes in working practices.
- Achieved a 3x growth in revenues while improving workforce productivity 2.56x, meaning three times more sales at almost zero extra cost.
- Battled for top-line sales growth against ultra-cheap international competition and ended up doubling sales in the teeth of competitors 20, 30 or 50% cheaper by focusing on delivering results our cheapskate competitors could never hope to match.
The CFO experience you need, when it really matters
Over my career, I’ve worked in a wide variety of sectors including advertising, financial services, printing, engineering, law firms, real estate, utilities, B2B services, technology (both software and hardware), ecommerce, renewable energy, construction and more.
So odds are I’ve got experience in your sector, or one very much like it. But I also bring experience from other sectors, meaning you get the benefit of someone who understands the challenges facing your business while, at the same time, bringing a fresh approach and experience from other sectors too.
Given the in-depth and personalised nature of my fractional CFO services, I have very limited availability for new clients. To check availability and find out more about the process, we need a 1:1 chat because personal fit is just as important as technical skills in this arena.
Delivering low-cost, low-risk, high-return results
In our time together, we identify where the opportunities might be hiding inside your business right now and map out a 90-day plan to deliver the low-cost, low-risk, high-return opportunities that pay off fast and give you a “war chest” for making bigger moves further down the line.
I’ll also explain how I work with business owners like you as a fractional CFO to deliver even greater results in the next 12 months using my Powercycle approach to delivering exceptional results fast.
To make a start, get in touch here and tell me a little more about your business.