Building Your Multi-Million-Dollar Practice

We are reaching the end of our series about fiscal management for the 7 major business sectors, with the banking and financial service sector being our last public sector. In this episode of "Building Your Multi Million Dollar Practice,"  Peter M. Vessenes will discuss how banking and financial services get their own division and why the financial services sector represents safety for consumers. 

Today, we are continuing our discussion of the different sectors of business, and covering services, something that accountants and advisors hold near to their heart. The service sector can be broken into either value-added service or goods/products as a service. In this podcast, we will tackle some of the common hurdles many entrepreneurs and their advisors have when building and creating succession planning for service-based businesses.

As we continue to break down the different business sectors, it's apparent that each sector has different factors that need to be considered when advising and building future growth opportunities for different company types. In the last episode we discussed the technology sector, and in this episode we're covering the energy sector! Energy is a massive industry, it's one of the largest sectors due to its influence on the whole global economy. Listen to this episode to learn the 3 most important challenges energy companies must overcome in order to grow.

In the past few episodes of "Building Your Multi Million Dollar Practice" we've been breaking down the different sectors of businesses and what accountants and advisors need to know to help them grow. Today, we are discussing the technology sector. Technology has become such a crucial essential in every day life, and it's not a sector we want to overlook. The first step in advising for cashflow forecasting and fiscal management needs is to differentiate the types of technology. In this podcast, we will cover the different segments and indicators to help you discover the secret to helping your tech companies.

In today's episode, we are discussing the agriculture sector. No matter what type of farm you advise, predicting cashflow is always your biggest challenge as agriculture is a risky business when it comes to forecasting.

There are 7 basic private sectors of business that each come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages when it comes to fiscal management and cashflow forecasting. Our last episode started breaking down the 7 basic private sectors by covering discreet manufacturing. In today's episode of "Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice," we will be covering process manufacturing. This sector is made up of companies that create products from raw materials.

To better understand the businesses you advise, you must first know the specific challenges affecting them. There are 7 basic sectors of business that each come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages when it comes to fiscal management and cashflow forecasting. In today's episode of "Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice," we will be covering discreet manufacturing. This sector is made up of companies that create inventory by assembling pre-made components. Where process manufacturing takes raw materials and builds from them, discreet takes established components and combines them into a final product.

We all want our business and the businesses we advise to thrive and be able to overcome hurdles, but how do we plan for all of the roadblocks and inefficiencies that can happen? Peter M. Vessenes, founder and CEO of ProfitSee, has outlined 8 key disciplines that affect EVERY business in his book, "Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice." In our last episode we covered fiscal management and the client experience. This week we will tackle the 6 other disciplines that business owners and their advisors must be attentive to in order to be successful. 

No matter which sector you service as an accountant, there are 8 disciplines that ring true for every business. Today we will dig into the 2 most important of the 8 disciplines, fiscal management and client experience. Peter M. Vessenes, CEO and Founder of ProfitSee, joins us to discuss how you can help your business clients through cashflow and fiscal management services. 

This episode was inspired by some of the things we heard while at Xerocon San Diego in June 2019. A major topic of the conference was advisory, and while it has become increasing popular to talk about this opportunity, there aren’t many resources dedicated to putting a plan into action to take it on. So Brooke Roberts and James Tobin sat down to talk about what advisory means, six specific cash flow drivers accountants can monitor to kick-start their services, and some examples of what this looks like in an actual business-accountant relationship.   If you have questions please contact us at support@myprofitsee.com or learn more at www.myprofitsee.com

Earlier this year, I attended both the Accounting Business Expo in Sydney, Australia and the Omie Summit in São Roque, Brazil. And what I found was that the global accounting industry is so connected, and the challenges that financial professionals are facing tend to be similar around the world. This episode digs into how you can find your path to your full potential by embracing changes in the accounting world, redefining what “CFO Level Services” are, and scrapping the assumption that you are inherently trusted by your clients.  This episode covers a lot of information and cites some sources. If you have questions, please contact us at support@myprofitsee.com and if you're interested in seeing my sources, you can read the article here: https://academy.myprofitsee.com/path-to-your-full-potential

As cloud-based accounting is adopted, we are subsequently seeing cloud-based applications growing in popularity. But, what are these changes doing to the roles traditionally held by accounting professionals? In this episode of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice, CEO and Founder of ProfitSee, Peter Vessenes, speaks on actions your firm can take to go beyond automation and truly start providing CFO level services for your business owners. Learn more at www.myprofitsee.com

Growing services revenue is imperative for today’s accounting firms, but it is not an easy change to make. The core of advisory is the ability to have proactive conversations with your clients and to help them understand fiscal management. On this episode of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice, we listen to ProfitSee’s Director of Australian Operations, James Tobin, discuss how to create more value when you can’t create more time. This session was originally presented at the Accounting Business Expo in Sydney. Learn more at www.myprofitsee.com  

Globally, we’re seeing a trend of many accounting firms making a push towards providing more value-added services to their clients, even during their traditional busy seasons. But as they make this push, the question arises of how to train their staff to move forward on the same path. In this episode of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice we’re going to dig into the step-by-step process of training your staff. Learn more at www.myprofitsee.com

The global trend in accounting is to be focusing on the future. Accountants and bookkeepers have more tools than ever before to provide future driven insights and actionable outcomes for their clients. In this episode we will discuss how real-time data and automated reporting enables you to create efficiencies in your practice, have proactive conversations with your clients, and focus on the future. Learn more at www.myprofitsee.com

Welcome to another episode of “Building your Multi-Million Dollar Business.” James Tobin, the Director of ProfitSee Operations in Australia, joins us today to discuss “Who’s answering your phone?” After calling multiple accounting firms and seeing their general phone protocols, James shares some of the opportunities that were missed, which ultimately could have brought on new clients.

We had such an energized response to the last episode that was filled with coffee puns, so we wanted to bring you another episode that talks about how to make your practice brew-tiful. Let's dive into how to pick a beta client, the length of the trial period with this client, and how to introduce the price. We want you to have confidence in charging for your services.    To learn more, go to www.myprofitsee.com   

This special episode will be bringing you a new flavor on advisory, brought to you by Brooke from ProfitSee. We're going to be discussing how fiscal management and advisory services go hand in hand and how you can leverage this information to solve the money problem for your SME clients.    To learn more, go to www.myprofitsee.com 

On this episode of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice we’re discussing how to charge for your services, how retainer based billing increases the value of your services to your clients, and why hourly billing should be a thing of the past. Learn more at www.myprofitsee.com

On this episode of BYMMDP we're going to tackle the question, "How do you get over the fear of the sale," when it comes to talking to your clients about the services you provide.  Accountants and bookkeepers are not usually in a traditional sales role, but what's unique about this situation is that you already have the most important aspect of the sale: the business owner's trust.  Learn more at www.myprofitsee.com

Welcome to another episode of Building Your Multi Million Dollar Practice. Last time we discussed why your business clients absolutely need advice. In this session we’re diving deeper into what it Moving to Advisory means for you and your firm., and how you can leverage tools to create value for your clients. Learn more at www.myprofitsee.com  

On this episode of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice we talk about why your clients need advice, what types of information matters most to them, and how you are the right person for the job.   Learn more about leveraging the cloud to provide advisory services that make a real difference at www.myprofitsee.com

On this episode of Building Your Multi Million Dollar Practice you’ll hear from ProfitSee’s CEO and Founder, Peter M. Vessenes. As we continue to dive into defining Fiscal Management, we will be discussing the three key components and how real-time data makes it easier for you to provide your small and mid-sized business clients with services that will help them reach their objectives.   Learn more at www.myprofitsee.com

In this segment, part three of “What is Fiscal Management” we’re going to look further into what the fundamental objectives of fiscal management are, and why this is important to businesses. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at support@myprofitsee.com or find us on the web at www.myprofitsee.com

Last time we learned that Fiscal Management is always future driven and the goal is to increase the rate of return for the businesses through leveraging assets, strategic planning, and increasing efficiency. While traditional services tend to look at historical reports, like last month’s P&L and Balance Sheet, now, thanks to advances in the industry, accountants and bookkeepers are now able to build the future for their clients through providing additional services.     Fiscal management is building the future by effectively planning for change, budgeting for growth, reinvesting capital, and reducing risk.   Plan for Change A change in a company could involve new markets, new products and services, or shifts in existing plans. Planning for change involves thinking outside the box and Fiscal Management is truly planning for change. Budgeting for growth It takes money to make money! You have to include the capital needed to create the opportunity in your plans, otherwise there is no room to move towards growth. Reinvest Capital It’s not enough to just have the money; you need to know what is next. You need to know how to spend the money and when to spend the money. Does the business need to create a test market to validate the changes? Do they need to start on a small scale and then roll out to the full market? Reduce Risk Even for exciting opportunities, you need to make sure you’re avoiding risk. Planning for change and opportunities in a way that mitigates risk means that the money needs to be set aside in such a way that even if the opportunity fails, the company will survive.   Learn more at www.myprofitsee.com

There is an understanding that bookkeeping and accounting firms need to move towards providing and growing the value-added services they offer their business clients. But what are value-added services, really? Businesses will always need tax, audit, and compliance work, but there is much more to be offered. Fiscal Management is always future driven and the goal is to increase the rate of return for the business through leveraging assets, strategic planning, and increasing efficiency. Traditional services tend to look at historical reports, like last month’s P&L and Balance Sheet. These do give us a good idea of what has been going on, but now with cloud technology we have access to real-time data to understand what is happening now. We can use that information to plan for future growth, risk, and opportunities.

Episode 7 of Building Your Multi Million Dollar Practice is our last session that digs into each KPI specifically. It is split into three parts and covers Debt to Equity, Interest Coverage, and Fixed Asset Turnover ratios. This ratio looks at the net value of the fixed assets and how many sales can be generated through the fixed assets. This is most valuable for a company like a manufacturing plant that owns the equipment. When there’s a higher ratio, there tends to be a higher efficiency, but you have to understand how depreciated the fixed assets are and how efficient a sale is that comes from using those assets. The Formula: Total Assets / Fixed Assets

Episode 7 of Building Your Multi Million Dollar Practice is our last session that digs into each KPI specifically. It is split into three parts and covers Debt to Equity, Interest Coverage, and Fixed Asset Turnover ratios. This determines how easily a company can pay the interest expenses on outstanding debt. For this calculation, you look at the earnings before interest and taxes divided by the interest expenses. The lower the ratio, the more the company is burdened by debt expenses. This is important because for certain types of businesses where you have to pay for the raw materials, like a butcher shop or grocery store, there can be a lag between when they have to pay and when they get paid. These businesses can often run into trouble with making payroll during these periods. Knowing the interest coverage ratio for these companies helps you to advise your clients in these situations on creating cash reserves. The Formula: Ebit / Interest Expense

Episode 7 of Building Your Multi Million Dollar Practice is our last session that digs into each KPI specifically. It is split into three parts and covers Debt to Equity, Interest Coverage, and Fixed Asset Turnover ratios. The Debt to Equity Ratio is typically used as a way of measuring how much the company is using debt to finance growth or new strategies against the total equity value of the company. The Formula: Total Liabilities / Shareholders Equity

On this episode of Building Your Multi Million Dollar Practice, our Director of Australian Operations, James Tobin, sat down with Aaron Lane and Kyle Jenkins from Nav CFO in Sydney to talk about the real impact of providing their clients advisory services and how ProfitSee has helped them improve their processes and grow the value they provide. “What ProfitSee brings is a real time reporting that can look backwards and forwards. A lot of the software solutions we looked at previously basically just looked backwards, and if they look forwards it’s in a really rudimentary way,” explains Aaron Lane. Don’t just take our word for it; Listen to this episode to learn how Navigate Virtual CFOs are truly succeeding at becoming their clients’ personal CFO, and how cloud accounting and tools like ProfitSee make it easier.  Learn more about their practice, or contact them at https://www.navcfo.com

Episode 5 of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice focuses on digging into KPIs that measure Profitability and how they impact your clients and your advisory services. We already went over a few of these, so now we’re going to focus on Revenue Per Employee, Cost of Goods Margin, Expense Margin, Net Worth, and Gross Margin. This is one of the top five KPIs for advisers to be monitoring because gross margin indicates the percentage of each dollar a business retains after expenses directly pertaining to the cost of the good or service sold. This is something you can monitor on a trending basis as well as periodical. The Formula: (Revenue + Cost of Sales) / Income

Episode 5 of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice focuses on digging into KPIs that measure Profitability and how they impact your clients and your advisory services. We already went over a few of these, so now we’re going to focus on Revenue Per Employee, Cost of Goods Margin, Expense Margin, Net Worth, and Gross Margin. The Net Worth KPI is fairly easy to define, but what is important to understand is that this shows a lot about the state of a business at any given point. Advisers also understand that although Net Worth can play a factor in the Valuation of the company, it is not necessarily directly correlated.  The Formula: (Total Assets – Total Liabilities)

Episode 5 of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice focuses on digging into KPIs that measure Profitability and how they impact your clients and your advisory services. We already went over a few of these, so now we’re going to focus on Revenue Per Employee, Cost of Goods Margin, Expense Margin, Net Worth, and Gross Margin. An Expense Margin is when you take all the expenses of the business and compare it to the business’ revenue. What is important to understand about this KPI is that a business with a higher expense margin is not doing as well as one with a lower expense margin. This metric becomes very valuable when you are able to compare it to similar businesses in the same sector. By benchmarking against others you can help them improve performance, grow profitability, and increase revenue.  The Formula: -1 * (Expenditure / Income)

Episode 5 of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice focuses on digging into KPIs that measure Profitability and how they impact your clients and your advisory services. We already went over a few of these, so now we’re going to focus on Revenue Per Employee, Cost of Goods Margin, Expense Margin, Net Worth, and Gross Margin. Cost of Goods Margin measures what percentage of revenue will go to cover the cost of goods sold within a business. This calculation can be dependent on how the chart of accounts is structured and should take commissions and other factors into account. This impacts your advisory services because it is important to be able to determine what the actual cost is for a sale. The Formula: -1 * ( Cost of Sales / Income )

Episode 5 of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice focuses on digging into KPIs that measure Profitability and how they impact your clients and your advisory services. We already went over a few of these, so now we’re going to focus on Revenue Per Employee, Cost of Goods Margin, Expense Margin, Net Worth, and Gross Margin. In some cases, the Revenue Per Employee KPI is really important. For businesses that depend a lot on labor, it is critical to understand how much revenue is being created per employee. This allows us to evaluate the cost associated with each employee against the amount of revenue that needs to be generated from them. The Formula: (Revenue / Employees)

Episode 4 of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice is all about understanding KPIs that measure Profitability and how they impact your clients and your advisory services. There are 7 separate profitability KPIs , but in this episode we’re going to go over three, with more to come next time. This means that we can discuss each metric in depth. This KPI can be more industry specific. If the business you are working with has a high cost of equipment and there is a lot of it, like a manufacturing business, there is a certain cost of the asset. Now something to be aware of, if the company is mature and the assets, like the manufacturing equipment, have fully depreciated, then the ratio will look very high. Also remember a business that does not have a lot of assets, like a services based business, the return on the assets would look larger.  The key to using this KPI is looking at the balance sheet and the general framework of the industry sector your client is in.   The Formula: (Net Income / Total Assets)

Episode 4 of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice is all about understanding KPIs that measure Profitability and how they impact your clients and your advisory services. There are 7 separate profitability KPIs , but in this episode we’re going to go over three, with more to come next time. This means that we can discuss each metric in depth. What this means is that if there are earnings, or pre-tax profitability, after preferred stock dividends are paid, but before common stock dividends are paid out, this measures how well the company uses this gross pre-tax profitability to reinvest in the company to grow. Now this KPI is commonly looked at for publicly traded companies, but it also is incredibly important for smaller companies. A goal of companies of every size, from small businesses up to large corporations, is growth. And growth requires reinvestment of capital. If a small business does not plan for growth and the cost attached to growth, the business will become stagnant. The formula: (Net Income / Shareholders’ Equity)

Episode 4 of Building Your Multi-Million Dollar Practice is all about understanding KPIs that measure Profitability and how they impact your clients and your advisory services. There are 7 separate profitability KPIs , but in this episode we’re going to go over three, with more to come next time. This means that we can discuss each metric in depth. The Operating Profit Margin KPI shows the company’s efficiency at controlling cost. Strong ratios indicate they are very good at containing cost. On it’s own it shows a snapshot view, but when you look at it in conjunction with the current ratio it gives much more value.  The formula: (Sales + Cost of Sales) / Net Sales

Episode 3 is split into four parts; each segment will be discussing a different Liquidity KPI. You'll learn about how that metric impacts your client’s business and what it can do for your advisory services. The Current Liabilities Ratio is a measure of all debt and obligations of a business due within one year against total liabilities. While this isn’t the most popular KPI to monitor for liquidity, it is still important to understand this does impact the company’s bottoms line. The formula: (Current Liabilities / Total Liabilities)

Episode 3 is split into four parts; each segment will be discussing a different Liquidity KPI. You'll learn about how that metric impacts your client’s business and what it can do for your advisory services. A company must be growing, because a company that is static is actually dying. So understanding the Working Capital KPI is critical to understand. The formula is: (Current Assets – Current Liabilities) Companies with a lot of working capital are able to handle growth much easier. Companies with a negative ratio here may lack the funds for growth, or may need a to find additional capital from investors or shareholders. Knowing what your clients’ Working Capital Ratio is allows you to understand how to best help them grow.

Episode 3 is split into four parts; each segment will be discussing a different Liquidity KPI. You'll learn about how that metric impacts your client’s business and what it can do for your advisory services. The Quick Ratio is a way of measuring a company’s liquidity and its ability to meet obligations. The basic calculation is: (Current Assets - Inventories) / Current Liabilities. Since this KPI takes inventories into account, is more valuable for companies that manage inventory; like a hardware store, grocery store, or clothing store. So Quick Ratios will be valuable for specific type of business, and are a good indicator of the immediate strength of that company.

Episode 3 is split into four parts; each segment will be discussing a different Liquidity KPI. You'll learn about how that metric impacts your client's business and what it can do for your advisory services. The equation for the Current Ratio is relatively simple; (Current Assets / Current Liabilities). But what this means is that if the current liabilities exceed the current assets, the company will have a problem meeting short term obligations This KPI is important to monitor because it’s a simple means of determining the strength of the company and their ability to pay short term debts. It’s an excellent way to help your clients what their finances look like today and where they’re moving towards in the future.

Forecasting your clients' future isn't easy - learn how to create a more profitable future for your clients through advisory services and True Break Even. You should listen to episode one to fully understand the difference between traditional breakeven and True Break Even, but it boils down to accounting for growth, opportunities, and risk.  So how can you multiply your clients’ profits? Help your clients build their True Break Even Determine the percentage of True Break Even that makes up unchanging expenses Use scenario tools, like ProfitSee, to use the growth money to reach the increased revenue target

One of the most common questions we receive is “what is breakeven, really?” Most people believe that breakeven means nothing more than the monthly revenue that will cover expenses. Now this sounds good, but it doesn’t really work that way. Why? Well not all bills are paid on time, so you have to taking aging receivables into account, and you can’t forget about seasonality trends. Listen to this podcast to learn from ProfitSee's CEO & Founder, Peter M. Vessenes on how to calculate True Breakeven and help your clients account for growth, risk, and plan for a successful future. Learn more and download the PDF with the formula instructions here: 

Learn business tips and insights from Peter M. Vessenes’ over 30 years experience in corporate turnarounds, acquisitions, mergers, and helping thousands of small and mid-sized businesses improve profitability. Since 1983 Peter has served as a high-level corporate adviser, and founded ProfitSee in 2008. He is the author of two books, The Golden Rules of Economics: The Real Way Out of America’s Financial Crisis, and Building Your Multi-Million-Dollar Practice. Now we’re taking his industry expertise and putting it into a podcast!