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The Top 3 Recommendations (To Improve Cash Flow and Value) From a Fractional CFO

Matt Putra is the Fractional CFO at Eightx, where they help brands optimize cash flow, plan for growth, and be more resilient — but more importantly, they provide brand owners with the tools to stop stressing about their business! He is the Co-owner of Keep Nature Wild, where he promotes volunteerism and responsible outdoor recreation through trash cleanup. Matt is the Chief Financial Officer of Little and Lively Clothing and Fikse Wheels. Previously, he was the Chief Financial Officer for the Community Forward Fund, Vice President of Finance for New Market Funds, and Vice President of Finance for New Commons Development.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[03:20] What is the primary focus of a fractional CFO?
[07:48] Matt Putra talks about his team and how to predict cash flow for future planning
[13:50] Matt details client conversations about the economic future
[18:24] Why you should invest in financing options during times of growth
[22:07] How messy bookkeeping may be holding your brand back
[26:26] Matt explains the process of making a business plan

In this episode…

As a business owner, how can you stress less and forecast your cash flow so you’re still scaling? Sometimes your business plan doesn’t always follow the chronological order you set. What can you do to add value to your brand?

Matt Putra is seasoned in having conversations about scaling brands. While the nature of entrepreneurship may come with risks, many people feel challenged when it comes to reserving their cash flow. But if you’re looking for ways to grow, Matt recommends following these three things: be cautious with fixed costs and additions, finance when you don’t need it, and maintain regular bookkeeping.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Matt Putra, Fractional CFO at Eightx, to discuss critical steps entrepreneurs need to take toward success. Matt talks about future planning for cash flow, investing in finances during times of growth, and bookkeeping as a business plan. Stay tuned!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by MyAmazonGuy, an Amazon agency to help level up your PPC, SEO, Design, and manage your entire Amazon catalog.

This episode is also brought to you by Quiet Light, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. They provide trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations. So, your Quiet Light advisors aren’t your everyday brokers — they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on its website. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light offers the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email [email protected], or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:07

Hi folks. It’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley 0:18

Hey folks, Joe Valley here, welcome to another episode of the Quiet Light Podcast. Today’s podcast is sponsored by My Amazon Guy. I know Stephen Pope, the founder personally, you may have seen him all over YouTube sharing free educational content. If you need someone to level up your PPC, SEO, design, and manage your entire Amazon catalog, check him out at MyAmazonGuy.com Great stuff on YouTube that he does for absolutely nothing. It’s free, great educational material there, you got to check it out, do a search My Amazon Guy, or MyAmazonGuy.com. Okay, on to today’s podcast, wow, we are talking to a fractional CFO guy’s name is Matthew Putra, or Matt Putra, from a company called the Eightx. And we go over a number of different things that are critical to online entrepreneurs doing let’s say a million or more in revenue, the million or more really, when you get to that size, it’s time to really start thinking deeply about cash flow, preparing your business for getting lines of credits from lenders, banks, whatever they might be, and perhaps even an eventual exit or deciding Are you going to scale up your staff and your overhead? And what is your capability to do that if things go great if they go terribly, or if they go just right. That’s what a free fractional CFO does. And Matt goes into it in detail. We talked about a little bit about his background, but then talk about what he does to help companies get their hands around their cash flow their forecasts and things of that nature and how it helps them scale up. So let’s take a listen. This is Matt Putra. From Eightx.co. Here we go. Matt, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. How are you?

Matt Putra 0:35

I’m great. Thank you so much for having me.

Joe Valley 1:39

It’s awesome, man. Glad you’re here. Whereabouts in the world.

Matt Putra 2:15

I am Vancouver, Canada.

Joe Valley 2:22

Okay, I’m down in the southeast part of us. And for the folks listening today. Can you give a little bit of background on yourself and what you do over there at Eightx?

Matt Putra 2:31

Absolutely, yeah. So we’re fractional CFOs. We have a team of CFOs, vice presidents and financial analysts. Basically our goal is to help e-commerce owners scaling businesses with more cash and less stress. We do that with top notch financial planning, scenario analysis, risk management. And just making sure that we’re steps ahead of where you need to be and watching the future for

Joe Valley 2:56

that. Managing Cash Flow with less stress that just seems like an impossibility for most entrepreneurs and myself often included in that. Yeah, well, we’ll dive into that for the purposes of this podcast, why don’t we start with what the heck is a fractional CFO? What do you do? What do you do with clients who need you?

Matt Putra 3:17

Absolutely. So I mean, who needs me, I would say anybody doing or who needs one, somebody like me is anybody doing a million and above, I would say in revenue could benefit from a fractional CFO, what we do is, you know, basically, you’re gonna get the benefit of someone who’s worked at the high level, what does the CFO full time, but they’re going to work for you between, you know, two, four days a month to two days a week, when you’re at a million bucks a year, I would say you want someone that’s going to two to four days a month, up to getting up to 60 million 100 million, you could probably get away with someone that works for you to three days a week, and you get the benefit of someone who’s been around the block made all the mistakes, and so they’re not gonna make the mistakes now on your behalf. Basically, what do we do? Primarily, our focus is cash and profit optimization. From there, you get the universe of anything else CFO can do contract review, hiring, planning, goal setting, financing, raising money, kind of all that investor reporting, we can do everything most of us.

Joe Valley 4:13

Okay, so if I have a full time bookkeeper, or an outsize bookkeeping firm, I would still keep them if I’m hiring a fractional CFO, is that right?

Matt Putra 4:23

Most of the time? Yes, a bunch of us have bookkeeping divisions. When I would say if you’re talking to CFO who has a bookkeeping division, I would suggest moving bookkeeping to them, just because then they can work hand in hand with a bookkeeper that’s that’s reporting to them on a daily weekly, whatever basis. But if by no means do you have to switch most bookkeepers out there are talented, your CFO is only going to make them better. And we work well with other

Joe Valley 4:48

bookkeepers. Okay, my first thought is, man, this sounds cost prohibitive. We’re getting a CFO and it’s been a very high level of large organizations. And now they’re going to look at my p&l. Now it’s going to take me a lot of time to work with them and get them to understand how much it’s going to cost me and how do I get my positive return on investment? And can you talk about that a little bit?

Matt Putra 5:10

Sure. So in terms of costs, I’m very, very transparent, you can go to my site, there’s a calculator, you’re going to be paying anywhere from two to five grand a month, depending how big you are based on your revenue only in terms of the cost of your time. So we have now figured out basically how to minimize the cost of your time. So what we do is we have a list of questions. In the beginning, you answer a lot of questions around a bunch of phone calls with us as we get on board. But I would say that’s not more than 10 hours in the first two months, to really get us to understand, we dig into your QuickBooks, we dig into Shopify and all your channels, talk to your bookkeeper, talk to your accountant, we do all the work to get us on board ourselves, and the things that we need you for what is what do you want the next couple of years to look like? Who do you want to hire next? And those are pretty lightweight questions, lightweight phone calls,

Joe Valley 6:01

what do I want to hire next? Why would I see a fractional CFO firm be involved in that? Yeah, well,

Matt Putra 6:07

I mean, if you’re, well, I mean, cash optimization, right? So if you’re at a certain level, and you want to hire two people, Well, what I’m going to do is, I’m going to add those two roles to our financial plan, and check, can you afford it Cash Wise? What does it do profit wise, and then I’m gonna come back with a recommendation saying, hey, you know, could you wait or go ahead and do it? Because it’s can be a leverage point for you.

Joe Valley 6:30

Okay, so if I wanted to increase my net income percentage from 23 to 26%, is that something that a fractional CFO is going to dive into? And say, you can do it this way? Or you’re not going to be able to do it? Or how’s it work?

Matt Putra 6:44

100%. I mean, this is part of the thing is, you know, we’ll, we’ll look at a year and we’ll say, Okay, this is where we are, where do you want to be? If it’s 23 to 26? We’re gonna say, okay, great. From what we can see, here are some levers. Here’s some things to dive into, on your side with your ops team, let’s say, we’ll help you figure out what is are the roles that you don’t need? Are there fixed costs that you don’t need? Could you offshore certain costs? There’s so many ways we can help? And sometimes the answer is it’s not going to work in the near term.

Joe Valley 7:15

Well, that’s that’s an okay answer, right? It’s, we often talk to clients that want to exit for a certain amount, and we say, we can get you there. Just not yet. Exactly. You got to stick around and do something. So you gotta be honest with them along the way. Talk to me again, about the experience of your folks like at what level of education do they have? What level of I mean, were they CFOs in private organizations? Are they expert bookkeepers, and CFOs? Just talking to

Matt Putra 7:42

staff so we’re a small team. So I was the CFO for a private equity group and private lending company for a number of years. Just didn’t didn’t want to do the corporate rat race anymore. So I left that. We have another CFO who was a forensic auditor, who’s been doing bookkeeping and controllership and CFO work for many, many years, more than more than me, actually, our Vice President worked just this summer, he switched to us from a $50 million a year e-commerce company before that he was at $120 $120 million mining company, and he led the financial planning departments for both of those companies. My Financial Analyst was AIG, Emerson, Citibank alumni. So we really look for people that are multidisciplinary, but also like really, really good.

Joe Valley 8:27

Okay. All right. So one of the big struggles that, as you know, most online businesses have, and if we just talk about e-commerce, actually it’s could be could be content, or SaaS businesses or even agencies is predicting cash flow. Sometimes it’s very hard to do. And you know, if growth goes, you know, off the charts, trying to keep up with inventory really diminishes the cash on hand, how do you? How do you plan for all of that, what kind of worked as a fractional CFO to help manage that, do the forecasting and have the owner, you know, stress a little bit less and be able to, you know, make sure that they’re able to take enough money out of the company to feed their family?

Matt Putra 9:07

Totally. So anyone that tells you that they can predict what cash flow looks like next year, probably like, how we do it is we look at a number of scenarios. So at the most basic, we’re going to have a forecast that looks at next year, it’s going to be probably the most likely occurrence. So revenue is going to be let’s say, 10 million, okay. And profit will be, let’s say, million. That’s our base case, it’s the most likely scenario, it’s the one that’s based right off of the numbers to see here, then we’re going to look at a worst case. So what if the CPAs go horrible? What if the cost of goods goes up? 10. So that case is going to look something like well, maybe you’re doing 7 million, and what does profit look like? If revenue comes in at seven? Then we’re going to look at a best case. The best case could be 15 million, but that means then you have to buy a whole bunch more inventory. So we’re going to test these three centers euros at minimum. The other thing we’d like to do is we’d like to test the best case, inventory purchasing plan with the base or worst case revenue plan as a new overbought inventory. What does that do your cash flow? Can you withstand it out of the margin suffer or not? And what we need to do is come up with what we’re willing to bet for next year or the year after. So, you know, if you bet in the best case, that doesn’t happen, way overbought inventory. So can you afford to do that? Or can you not, if you can’t, we might need to dial back. That might mean, you sell out here and there. But it’s a conservative way to make sure you don’t run out of business, like you don’t run out of cash. And you can survive, fight again next year, next year.

Joe Valley 10:43

As part of that process, do you work with the owners of the business to determine what their living needs are livable wage, something that it’s taken me, you know, I’ve been self employed for over 25 years now. And part of the challenge of being self employed is you know, your income goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down, and you just take distributions now. And you take whatever you can salary wise to benefit, you know, so you know, it’s paying self employment tax and get some money into Social Security, if it is going to be around by the time we all retire, setting, you know, figuring out and setting what a livable wage would be, I think is it’s done sound like it’s hard. But it feels like it’s hard. It’s been hard for me over the years over the decades at this point. Finally, I’m at the point where I know what it is. And if I just said that, what do you do you work? So you do work with the owners of the business to set that dollar amount, you know, on a monthly basis, and then you work the cash flow after that, because that’s an expense, it’s going to be above the above the profit line, right?

Matt Putra 11:45

Yes. So sometimes distributions, dividends, sometimes it’s it’s wages. We don’t we don’t work with them, like on a personal financial planning level. But we will we’ll try to figure out like, what do you want to take from the business? We will put that in the forecast? Okay, great. And we’ll leave that in through these scenarios. And we’ll see. Does one of these knock your earnings out of where you want them to be? If so, are you okay with that for a time period? Or are you not? If you’re not, then we scale back the forecast, we figure out another way to make it work. A lot of what we do is personalized to an owner. So some owners, you’ll know this to are happy to take risk, happy to happy to work off their savings for three months, and some are not. And so in our case, we we work with them to figure out what they’re willing to risk. And of course, I’m usually the Chicken Little in the conversation saying hey, I don’t think you should do that. I don’t think you should risk this today. Sometimes my job is to be a bit more Cavalier when the owner is very conservative, and to say, hey, you have a really big cash reserve, you can take market share with this. But it’s all based around personal preference and trying to figure out the owners risk tolerance, basically,

Joe Valley 12:56

let’s talk about the current economic environment, then, you know, you’re talking about cash flow projections best case, worst case, you know, middle of the road, and and if you’ve built up cash reserves, take market share, what are your conversations like with clients now that may or may not be worried about a further economic downturn in in the next six to 12 months?

Matt Putra 13:20

So if I’m talking to someone who’s not worried at all, I’m being Chicken Little in that conversation. So I’m saying, hey, you know what, like, we have no idea. So you should be conservative. So I’m advising caution with adding fixed costs and salaries. I’m advising, generally small bets to term small is relative to what the company can do. It’s also relative to the owners risk tolerance. But generally, I’m advising caution, I wouldn’t suggest anybody buys inventory based on their best case right now. But it’s, you know, at the end of the day, if if someone wants to make a big bet, I’m going to be there to model what it looks like and model the downside. And I’ll be there for them if it doesn’t work, and try to figure out a way out of it. But typically, I’m advising caution to those that don’t see a problem in the future. Conversely, go ahead. No, no, no,

Joe Valley 14:15

let’s hear the converse part.

Matt Putra 14:16

So conversely, if someone is like, there’s gonna be a huge problem. I gotta sit on all this cash. I’m saying, well, we don’t know there’s going to be a big problem. So let’s make some calculated bets. I have two clients in mind that I’m thinking of when I say this. They have strong cash reserves, they’ve managed their fixed costs and manage the payroll. This is the time to make the calculated bets. This is the time to try new things to market because as everyone stops spending, if they do, then they’re now as they innovate, and how they you know, market and how they do their product. They’re going to come up out of any problem we have better off than if they didn’t test at all.

Joe Valley 14:54

Yeah, it’s it’s an interesting time for many companies trying to figure out you know, what, what cash flow is going to look like? In the next six to 12 months, building up cash reserves is something that a lot of folks I’ve talked to, over the last few months have done. But in order to do that, and this seems like it would be a simple task. You know, it’s the, I think it’s best to probably pick a how many months cash reserves do I need in case things fall off cliff? Yep. Believe it or not, though, I feel like a lot of people have challenges doing that. Why do you think that is?

Matt Putra 15:33

I think part of it is the nature of entrepreneurs. I think we’re all risk takers, in general, we see upside are optimistic. And, you know, and for those reasons were successful. But also for those reasons we can chip on our own strengths, I think. So when you look at rose colored glasses all the time? Well, bats can cause problems, because it’s not always going to be a good outcome. So that’s why I think it’s hard for people to build reserves. It’s just it’s the nature of the game and nature of who we are entrepreneurs.

Joe Valley 16:06

Painful, I tell you, we’ve we’ve made a point of doing it this year, in the last 12 months, I mean, and then you’ve got to account for the fact that you didn’t distribute that money, but you’ve got to pay the taxes on those earnings as it’s, and you know, given the calendar year 2022. And what happened in the market, it’s probably best that we held our money and, and use it for other purposes. All right, let’s delve further into cash flow. Sure. Hey, you know, what are you know, without hiring a fractional CFO firm? What are the top one to three things you’d suggest people do to really get a better handle on on their finances and cash flows?

Matt Putra 16:48

Absolutely. So the number one, and this relates to I’ve worked with now, I don’t know, 20 year, companies, and I’ve talked to hundreds more, the happiest founders that I know, have been very cautious about adding fixed costs and salaries. There, they have the stress of a lot of work. But they don’t have to worry now about cash flow. And they can think about how I’m going to take market share. And this is the number one thing that I’ve seen is people that are cautious with fixed costs and salaries are the happiest in the three years, I’ve been doing this as a fractional. That’s what I’ve seen. So that’s number one. Be just go ahead.

Joe Valley 17:24

Yeah, and let me address number one before we get to number two here. And I love to give personal examples. So Quiet Light, historically, we’ve been around since 2007. Historically, we had no fixed overhead, literally no fixed overhead. Because our advisors got, you know, they earned a percentage of the transaction setting get paid salaries in 2021. You know, we had to scale up or, you know, we grew by 85% over the previous year, and we grew 55% For the last five years in a row. So we had to scale up people wise, because we needed to support a larger team of advisors, we felt the same, that we scaled up a bit much with people, and we’re trying to, you know, get the right people in the right seat and be more efficient with it. But I completely agree with happy founders that have low fixed overhead because it takes that stress and concern away without meeting payroll and things of that nature. So 100% Agree.

Matt Putra 18:24

Totally, that’s the way we do it too. Like, we will wait, I won’t hire for a role until that role is covered by revenue. I mean, honestly, it causes it’s a lot of work to do it that way. But I don’t have to worry about cash. So number two, I would say is go get financing when you don’t need it. So when people wait till they’re like, oh, shit, this order I gotta pay for I gotta finance it. And then we’ll it’s like, well, it’s too late. Or now the banks can’t move as fast as you need. Or, for example, they’re like, Hey, we’re going to invest in growth. And what that means sometimes is is adding payroll, which would reduce your net income. But what they should do is go get the loan first, while their net income is still 20%, or whatever the number would be. Because when the bank looks at a couple of years of good profit, they’re more than willing to give you the money now, whereas if you wait and you hire those killers, let’s say to grow the business, then your net income was 510. The banks are less willing to lend. So I will say this time and time again. Go get money before you need it, and you can get the best terms that way too.

Joe Valley 19:29

Okay, I agree. 1,000%. I was playing golf with Uncle Walter folks. And he’s been my mentor for about 20 years now. And he said the same thing to me out on the golf course. He said the best thing you can do is get a line of credit set up before you need it. Now being the smartest person in the room, I didn’t do that. And in 2010 I sold my last e-commerce business and didn’t set up A lot of credit, I had close to a million dollars in equity in my home, and I had money in the market, but didn’t want to take any money out of the market because it was trending down. So I sold my business, plenty of cash, plenty of equity, plenty of stocks and bonds. And I went to get a line of or a home equity line of credit, just on my house. Yep. And it was a local bank, they know me, I know them great relationship. And they’re sorry, Joe, I’m sorry, you don’t have a job. Like, you’re kidding me. Like, no, these are the rules, you don’t have a job, you don’t have any incomes. And we’re not going to give you a line of credit on that house. So I’ve waited too long. And there were there were opportunities that I missed out on. Because I wasn’t going to take cash out of the market, I wasn’t going to use my proceeds from my sale. And I wanted to use a line of credit on my home, which was the intention. That’s why I put so much down, mainly because I’m an entrepreneur, and I don’t know, you know, what things are going to be like, but critically, critically important. For those out there listening to this going, Yeah, I’ll get to that Sunday, Sunday is going to be here. And it’s a way late, get a line of credit set up, we actually have a partners page with a number of lending opportunities or options for you go to quietlight.com/partners. And there’s some for acquisition, lending, there’s some for inventory lending and things of that nature as well. local bank, if you if you can build that relationship, sometimes I think it’s the best option for girls, and you’re setting it up well in advance

Matt Putra 21:26

all day that I have with the local bank, I 100%. Agree, get that relationship, get a small line of credit. So you’re used to working with the credit team, so they know you so you, they get reports. And then when you need the big one, then they’re there. And they’re primed to present.

Joe Valley 21:41

Yeah. 100% agree on that, too. So we’re two for two. What’s what’s number three here?

Matt Putra 21:48

This might sound counterintuitive, but regular bookkeeping, regular bookkeeping. And so when when COVID first kind of popped off the early days of my business, or helping people arrange financing, I wanted to just help entrepreneurs get money, I talked to probably 400 People in six months. Didn’t number one reason they couldn’t access government support loans, whatever, they didn’t have their books ready to go. Number one reason. So this is number three, because if you don’t have bookkeeping, the books are not ready when a bank or ask or when you need it. Or even let’s say you can’t look at your financials and know how you’re doing. There is no way for you to manage. And if you don’t have bookkeeping, a fractional CFO can even help you. Unless you let them do the bookkeeping to, you’re just blind, you’re blind. And so you have you can’t be blind, you are

Joe Valley 22:35

preaching to the choir, if I had a voice that I could sing with, I would do it now. I’ve been preaching this for a decade or more. You know, we recently were approached by somebody that would like to sell their business to Quiet Light. And you know, they had one year of financials in an Excel file, we were like, Do you not know who we are? Do you not know what we do? Do you not understand what we’ve been preaching for a decade? And you come to this come to us and want to sell your business with this little financial information? Yeah, absolutely not, it makes, it makes you be able to get lending easier, but you’re gonna wake up Sunday, and you’re gonna be tired, and you’re gonna want to exit hopefully, you’re not gonna wake up and decide to exit. As I say, you want to sort of get trained and learn to exit and do it at your own time in the future when the value and time is right for you. But you’re not even going to get out of the gate if you don’t have clean financials. I give examples in the book about it was guy named Bob, he was like 49 years old, his goal was to retire at 50 and become a minister. And he had, you know, a decade worth of financials in an Excel spreadsheet. And we went out to market one under loi twice, and it fell through twice just because if the buyers lacked confidence, no confidence in the details. He took the same data that hired a bookkeeper finally, and put it into QuickBooks, spit it out. And it’s the same information just exported from QuickBooks. It was right. So the history that the Excel files were right. Yep, QuickBooks was right. But having it there in QuickBooks just installed much more confidence in buyers. We ended up reversing the process, ended up with three offers and went through, let them go through the due diligence files the data room, and then we were going to and then we closed within two weeks of deciding on which one which was kind of a nice process, but it closed and it closed for $50,000 more because the financials were in good shape and the offers got more competitive, beautiful. So the number one thing I think owners can do in terms of maximizing the value of their business, reducing stress and getting peace of mind is building the business so that it’s you know, something that can be viewed from an out Side party with confidence, you’re instilling confidence in potential buyers and investors and bankers that are going to loan you money or buy your company. And you want to make sure they feel fully confident in you and your business. So that they’re going to stroke a bigger check or more downpayment or lend you money on a line of credit that you need to continue to grow are high people. So I am 100% on board with all three. So I’m glad we didn’t, we didn’t plan that. But I totally agree. Perfect, totally integrated. Okay, any other any other thoughts or wisdom that you’d like to share with the audience in terms of, you know, the benefits of fractional CFO work or things that they can do to further improve the value of their business? Or put in a position? Would they be able to hire somebody like your your team more readily?

Matt Putra 25:46

Yeah. So I mean, if you don’t hire a CFO, what I would say that you could do is do some form of planning. So even down to as simple as, print out your QuickBooks, month by month, profit and loss, and then type in your estimates to the to the right over time, and then find out your net profit would be just even that will will put you ahead of other folks. And there’s Are there tools out there like float app is one Fathom is one, and they can help you with the scenario planning a bit more automated, but do any form of planning and one of the reasons why as we know the plans don’t work out the way you make the plan. However, when you make a plan, you can look back and say this is what I wanted to do. This is what I thought would happen. It did or didn’t happen. But why? So I hired this role, and they didn’t, you know, sales didn’t go up. Why is it OKR thing? Is it a personality thing? It allows you to go back and dissect the past and figure out what happened. If you’re looking at, you know, like I say the the ways to grow, or get to a point where you can work with the practical CFO, again, bookkeeping is huge. Get a good bookkeeper, get them sending you stuff every month, look at it, you know, target gross margin for like a brand selling items 60% for an agency, could be again, I wouldn’t say 60% is great. 5040 is okay, if you can minimize your your like admin costs. But those are the those are the key things.

Joe Valley 27:18

We’ve talked about bookkeepers here, let me give a shout out to, again, that partner page are quite like QuietLight.com/partners. We’ve got eight bookkeepers that we’ve worked with consistently over the last 15 years. We trust and respect them. Everybody on the team at Quiet Light gives feedback on a quarterly basis, we send out a survey to the 15 advisors about the folks that we’ve got there. And if there’s enough negative stuff, we just kick them off and remove them from it, but quite like to accomplish those partners that will help you audience in terms of finding a good bookkeeper. If you’re convinced now that you need one. I would say that we probably need to add a section to this for fractional CFO, when you think

Matt Putra 28:03

that I think that’d be great. There’s a lot of really good folks out there, including yourself, including myself. Yeah.

Joe Valley 28:10

Awesome. Well, this has been great. How do folks reach you? I know they can probably go to Eightx.co. But is that the best approach? or is there other ways that you want to reach out to have

Matt Putra 28:21

if you want to chat get in touch? I would say LinkedIn is a great opportunity. So so find me on LinkedIn. Send me I accept all my connection requests. And then your last

Joe Valley 28:31

name for the audience.

Matt Putra 28:32

Yeah, that’s Putra. So P as in Peter, U T. R A. So Matt Putra. Look me up on LinkedIn. Send me a DM. I will have lots of chats with people through DM. Lots, we will reach out just for a coffee and a hang. I do that as much as I can. I even will give advice short stuff if you need it. If you comment on my posts, I’ll answer most questions. I will sometimes create new posts off questions I get. So yeah, LinkedIn is a great place to get in touch in the short term. And if you want to like meet that you can go to my site and book a call. But even LinkedIn is probably still passing that.

Joe Valley 29:08

Excellent. We’ll put those up in the show notes as well. Thanks, man. Appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us and appreciate your wisdom.

Matt Putra 29:15

Thanks so much for having me.

Outro 29:18

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 And the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast, subject or guest, email us at [email protected] Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.