James Sheehan, CFO Consultant with CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen)

0:04 Churchill said, those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Kevin Hallinan believes that certainly applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W4CY Radio. That's W4CY. com. And now, your host, Kevin Hallinan. Thanks, everybody, for joining in again today. My name is Kevin Hallinan. Welcome back to Winning Business Radio and TV. On W4CY. com. We're streaming live on Talk4TV. com. And of course, we're on Facebook. That's at Winning Business Radio. And we're live on YouTube as well on our channel. And after the show, you'll see us on any platform where you consume your podcasts. That's iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple. Again, wherever you view your podcast content. Now, the mission of this show, as regular viewers and listeners know, is to offer insights and advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others, to learn best practices, right? The how-tos, the what-tos, the what-not-tos, of course. And I hope you're going to be challenged and inspired by some of the successes of our guests.

1:13 Those are consultants, coaches, authors, advisors, founders, owners, entrepreneurs, people with expertise. Now, virtually every successful person that I've had a chance to talk to has said, some form of failure in their lives and careers. So I always say, well, we all have to get our knees skinned once in a while. I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it. I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses to grow, and that's from solopreneurs to small and medium-sized companies, all the way up to the Fortune 50. I've seen some of those companies win and to varying degrees, I've seen some of them fail. I've had the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the highest performing people around and with some who probably should have found other professions. In my own businesses, I've had lots of success, but some failures as well. So I like to think I've learned a lot from those experiences.

2:02 So yeah, you'll hear from me a bit, but really I want you to hear from our guests. And today is no exception. Today is Jim Sheehan, Chief Financial Officer Consultant with CLA, which is Clifton Larson Allen. Here's Jim's bio. Recognized as a results-oriented senior financial executive with extensive experience scaling organizations, Jim serves as a trusted advisor, team builder, and strategic business partner for his clients. He possesses sharp financial management, strategic planning, and operational leadership skills and is capable of quickly assessing and ensuring predictability in financial management and profit improvements. Jim has a proven track record in building ambitious professional teams, having managed human resources, information technology, legal, and facilities. He's had extensive experience, M & A experience, as well as private equity, venture capital, and debt financing.

2:54 He's known to partner well with board members, management teams, and staff. He has over 35 years of experience and industry, both in business and industry, including 20 years as a CFO at a number of small and mid-sized companies. professional services and technology firms, supporting them from startup and in some cases to exit. He has broad experience in strategic and operational leadership, strategic planning, budgeting, cash management and forecasting, P & L, IT operations, treasury and staff building and development. He's assisted clients in the development of business plans and fiscal budgets, technology selection and integration, banking relationships and fundraising, KPI development and reporting and strategic planning with executive teams.

3:37 He holds a bachelor's of business administration in accounting from St. Bonaventure, and his professional affiliations include guest lecturing at MIT Sloan and UMass Boston MBA programs. He is a former member of the Town of Medway Finance Committee, member of the UMass Boston Entrepreneurship Center Advisory Board, and served as the treasurer for Zigbee Alliances. Jim resides in Midway, Mass., is married to Joyce, and they have three adult children. Sydney is 27, and twins Mike and Paige are 23. Jim, welcome to Winning Business Radio and TV. Thanks for being here. Hey, Kevin. Great to see you. Thanks for having me. Oh, I'm so glad you could take the time. I've been looking forward to this for a while. All right, let's start with the important stuff. Tell us about Joyce.

4:23 So Joyce and I have been married 28 years now. We actually met at EMC. EMC acquired a company that I was working at, Epic Systems. And I went to work for EMC. That was the controller at Epic Systems at the time. And when they acquired us, we rolled us in and I went to work for EMC as their North American controller. Down in Hopkinton. And Joyce and I met there. She was working at Human Resources at the company. And again, we met at EMC and A few years later, we were married. And as you mentioned, we've, you know, three grown kids now. So it's been great. Well, tell us about the kids. I know, it does.

5:04 39 years for us this year, believe it or not. Wow. Congratulations. Thanks. Or the comedian who said, yeah, I've been married for 25 years. Five years to her. All right. So tell us about Sidney and Mike and Paige. Yeah. So Sidney. She lives in Boston. She works at TJ Maxx, TJX and Natick. She went to UNH about five years ago and she's in a merchandising program. She just became an associate buyer. So she's starting to travel and does purchasing for, I guess. Their tabletop divisions. So anything that goes on a table, plates, dishes, everything like that, she does merchandising. Again, she was in Portugal and France and headed to Germany a couple months, so they travel around the world to buy product.

5:57 Very cool. My wife envies it. Her ideal job would be doing that. Bring me home something good for the Thanksgiving Day table. That's right. And the twins. Yeah, so Mike and Paige. Paige, actually, she graduated last year from UMass. UMass Amherst was in Eisenberg. She works for Bank of America, living in New York City. She's been there for a year now, loves it down there, loves the city. Mike just finished up school, exercise science. He's actually looking at some options now between grad school and working. So everybody's doing. Well, knock on wood.

6:38 Cool. I have some connections in fitness, so you can talk about that. And I didn't go to Ashenburg, but I did go to UMass. Always a connection somewhere, right? Well, it's funny. You know, and probably some other friends I know that have gone to, you know, went to UMass, you know, years ago, as they said, it was kind of a safety school. It's not a safety school anymore. Oh, no, it's not easy to get into anymore. In fact, believe it or not, this is dumb, but it is what it is. It's where I knew I wanted to go. It's the only place I applied. I applied to the engineering program and got in. Good for you. I mean, I would have figured something out if I didn't get in, but yeah, my sister was there. She was loving it. So yeah, it's a great school. She loved it. Great experience. Has a lot of friends from there. Um, somewhere in New York now with her, you know, they're working for the company. So it was great experience. Great experience at UMass.

7:24 All right. Tell us about your background. You grew up in New York. So New York. Yeah. Um, town called Johnstown is about an hour West of Albany. small kind of blue collar town, a great place to grow up though. Kind of everybody knew everyone at the time, stuff like that. Uh, got out there, went to, as you mentioned, went to St. Bonaventure for college, which is out South of Buffalo. If nobody knows where that is. So, uh, it's in sunny only in New York. Uh, we are in the heart of the snow belt. You would get two, three feet of snow, but never canceled class. Just one of those hardy, hardy bunch out there. Yeah. I went to, I went for accounting. Um, Kind of always just got involved in accounting when I was in high school. I had some really good math teachers. Math was kind of one of my better subjects.

8:11 Enjoyed it. We actually had a really good business teacher who was an accounting major and kind of gave me his first exposure to accounting. So when I was looking around, I decided to go the accounting path and looked at a few schools and ended up at St. Bonaventure. What was it about St. Bonaventure that attracted you? Yeah, I think part of it was the size. It was a small school. There was only 2,800 kids, you know, undergrad at the time. One of those places that just, you know, I knew a couple of friends that had gone up from our town. They had a really good accounting and finance departments, you know, so it was going to get a good education. It was a drive versus a plane ride. It was like a five-hour ride, you know, so a little bit of a hike, but it was something that wasn't a plane ride away. And I just wanted kind of that small school, you know, experience. And it worked out. It worked out great.

9:04 And some of my best friends today are the people that I met there at school. A bunch of us lived off campus. And we still keep in touch today. I had a lot of fun, played intramural sports, played rugby in college. So it was great. Great experience. That's something I didn't know. What's that, rugby? Yeah. Yeah. That's a cool sport. Yeah. It's a great sport. Yeah, it's a club sport, you know, but it's, you know, it's the only sport where you play the game, you beat the heck out of each other. And then at the end, you stand around and drink beer together with the other team. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. Now, St. Bonaventure goes to, I mean, they're good in basketball certain years, right? They've been in the tournament.

9:45 Yeah, they've been to the NCAAs, I think as early as recent as probably five or six years ago. They've been to the NITs. You know, Bob Lanier, you know, Bob Lanier was the most famous, you know, Bona basketball grad. He was back there in the seventies. Uh, they went to the final four that year. Um, But, yeah, Bonner's always has a good program. They're a Division I school. They're the third smallest Division I program in the country. They play in the Atlantic 10, so they play with, you know, I think UMass was in there, but I think just moved out to the MAC. But they play in the A10, so they travel a lot of schools up and down the East Coast here, University of Rhode Island's in it, Duquesne, a bunch of other ones. So, yeah, good quality, you know, sports. They have baseball, though, are the ones that are still Division I, but kind of small Division I program.

10:35 Catholic college? Yeah, Franciscan. Franciscan, okay, yeah. Yep, yep. The priest walked around with the brown robes and the ropes, you know. We had one priest. He was tough. He was an ex-Marine. He was a Franciscan. He wore sandals year-round. Yeah. Snow, weather, doesn't matter. He wore sandals to class every day. Wow. All right, let's go through your career a bit. Okay. It looks like your first roles were as a controller with Epic EMC and network integrity. I almost said that wrong. So tell us a little bit about those. We've got a few to get through and I can spend a ton of time, but I want to get a sense of things you've learned along the way that you take into your work now. So give us a sense of the early days there.

11:18 Yeah. So, you know, again, I think I've said this before, you know, I was really fortunate to work with some great executive teams, CEOs, investors, you know, private equity and VCs, uh, It really got involved, you know, working for small companies. I always joke. It's like, you know, the job is only three inches deep, but it's six feet wide because you're doing everything. You know, you wear a lot of hats. You have a lot of responsibility, a lot of departments. You don't have a lot of people around. So you get to touch everything. And I think anybody, you know, earlier in their career, it's a great experience because you do get to touch everything. You get your hands involved in it. You get, again, some good, you know, managers above you to teach it to you. But you get to touch it all, you know, and so you do get to that experience, kind of a broad-based experience. And so I got to learn, again, just the basics of accounting.

12:09 You know, you come out of school with book education, but how does that apply in real life, you know? How do you do a journal entry? How do you close the books? You know, what is, how do you read a balance sheet or a P & L? You know, what do the numbers really mean? And those are things that you kind of learn as you develop. Throughout your career and you start working your way up. And really getting to know businesses. You know, as I'm first going in, you're thinking, okay, my job is an accountant. I'm going to sit there. I'm going to do journal entries all day, and I'm going to pay some bills. But to really get to know the business, you've got to get out and you go talk to. The engineering department. You go to the manufacturing floor. You talk to the marketing team, the sales team, and really understand what the business is doing because seeing numbers, the numbers are great, but what's behind the numbers? And so starting out, again, I had some great bosses who kind of, led me in that direction of this is how you should learn the business. Don't just sit at your desk and do accounting all day. Get out and go talk to people. Sit in on meetings. And I was fortunate that they got me involved.

13:08 In that, you know. So, and his mentor, you know, this guy, Elliot Katzman at Epic Systems, who was phenomenal, you know. And Elliot, to this day, we're good friends and stuff like that and very successful, you know. CFO and investor, and he was in private equity in D.C. So, well, you know, really established. And a successful individual. And he kind of took me under his wing and taught me some things, you know, because he had worked in private companies. He had worked in public companies. And really, that makes a big difference. Was EMC private when you got there? So EMC was a public company. So I was at Epic Systems. And Epic was a basically D.C.-backed company, venture capital-backed.

13:50 And we were basically developing storage devices. We had small storage units that had software proprietary to it. I remember the name. Yep. We basically, you know, we're growing the company. And, you know, we were doing work with storage technology, kind of throwing some old company names out there out of Colorado. And we were working with IBM and EMC. You know, we were in Marlboro at the time. And EMC was right down the road in Hopkinton. And we were starting to get some interest there. from these other big companies about acquisition. And I think EMC real, their competitors are theirs. And they realized, okay, they got technology. They're up the street. We need to get these guys. So they actually approached us and ended up, you know, buying us the first year they kept us independent, you know, so we kept everybody still in Marlboro.

14:38 And then around that, after that first year, they started integrating people. And that's where, again, like I moved to Hopkinton, started working there. They folded our engineering team in sales and marketing teams. Uh, and it was good. I ended up staying there for another three years. Uh, at the time EMC was a public company. Yeah. So it was a different role, but in North America, it's operations. We had about a billion dollar in revenue. So significant difference from a, you know, $ 25 million revenue company. Yeah. So again, a great other, another great opportunity and chance to learn new things, to learn more of consolidated, you know, and how does a public company get the financials ready for reporting. And being a billion dollars of operation? It's, it's different. The scale is different.

15:19 Um, but again, just another learning experience along the way, uh, kind of throughout my career. And then I really kind of got the itch to get back into startups and the jig guys who started two of the three founders of, um, Epic basically started to know the company and I basically went. To work for them. That's big systems. Yeah. Yep. And basically, you know, so we got back into the startup world and, um, Did that for a few more years and then kind of, you know, moved on to the next one. So it's been a fun run, you know, kind of growing in small companies. And every one was different. Every one, the teams are different. The investors are different. The markets are different.

16:01 So as soon as you go in the door, you got more experience because you understand the bigger picture. But you got to relearn the business again because the business is different. The customer base is different. Yeah. How they sell or how they market is different. As you know, being, you know, a sales professional, like how do you position it in the market? How do you sell it? Who's the buyer? You know, do you sell direct? Do you go through channels, all those kinds of things. So for both or both. Yeah. Yeah. You know, in partnerships, obviously a big deal, especially when you're a small company, you want to partner with some big companies that can get you in to their customer basis. So it's a, every, every company was new and every company was different and expanding and it's new teams. And new systems.

16:42 And, um, but again, you got to learn, you got to expand your kind of your knowledge base, you know, and also at that point you're starting to develop other people coming up through the teams. Cause by then I was a controller and a CFO. And so kind of building teams and hiring teams and it, uh, it gives you a chance to kind of pay it forward a little bit of, you know, kind of now I'm going to hire people and I'm going to expose them and pass on what I got to learn from, you know, the people that I worked. For in the early days. Yeah. The joke is Stan. I taught him everything. They know not everything I know. Right. Everything, you know, not everything. That's right. That's right. All right. Hold that thought. We're going to take our first commercial break. Everybody will be back with Jim Sheen in about 60 seconds.

17:29 You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Hallinan on W4CY Radio. That's W4CY. com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. Bestian Wealth Management is family-owned for two generations. They take pride in thoughtful financial planning and wealth management with a family feel for your closely held family business. Bestian Wealth Management focuses on deep planning, integrating your business planning with personal. They will help put your money to work and your mind at ease. Go to bestianwealthmanagement.com for more information. Advisory services offered through Commonwealth Financial Network, a registered investment advisor.

18:15 Join the Bastian family and let our family advise your family. That's bastianwealthmanagement.com for your complimentary initial consultation. Have you ever dreamt of being on the radio? Well, now is your chance. Be a radio show guest on the number one ranked internet radio station and promote you and your business for free. Yes, you heard it, free. Business advertising right here on w4cy. Com. Call 561-506-4031 now to get booked on one of our shows. That's 561-506-4031. Get your free advertising now.

18:59 And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Hallinan, presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind, to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Hallinan. We're back with Jim Sheehan. Jim is a consulting CFO, I like to say. Hope that's okay. That's perfect, yeah. We're going to get into that, but just for the moment, tell us about that role. Just define that role. You work for CLA, however. Yeah, so I've been at CLA for five years now. And a consultant CFO is basically working in what we.

19:41 Call the CAS practice. And basically it's our outsourced accounting services division. As most large public accounting firms have, they have tax, they have audit, they have wealth management, and then some have consulting. And so basically what we are, basically myself and others in the group, is we are an outsourced accounting team. So I'll be basically an interim or part-time CFO for a company, whether they can't afford or do need somebody full-time. I'll help them out on a part time basis. Others, it'll be I'm there on an interim basis because maybe their CFO retired, left the company. They got to do a search. This could take three to six months. I'll go in and help fill that gap for those period of times.

20:23 And there are verticals you specialize in. Yeah, my background, a lot of it is kind of tell from prior, you know, between technology and services companies is really where my background is. And I head up our professional service practice here in the New England area. And myself and another gentleman basically manage the technology practice as well in CLA. All right. I did want to talk about Demantra because there's an interesting cross section again there. We did. You may have heard me say that we did a lot of training for Oracle over the years. I think we trained Oracle for about. I don't know, 12 or 13 years during, I think, the time that that acquisition took place. I remember the name. So we trained all the inside people.

21:05 We didn't train the field reps, but all across North America, some overseas, but mostly North America. I've traveled to pretty much every sales hub of Oracle. And I remember the name. So who knows? We may know some of the same people, too. We might. Yeah. Yeah. Demantra was a case we were a data analytics company I joined there back in 2002 we just finished up a company startup that just didn't make it but one of the VCs there an Israeli venture capitalist was an investor in a prior company and was also an investor in Demantra and reached out to me when they were looking to kind of build up their accounting team so I went in as basically head of FP & A to start There was somebody in the CFO role at the time and they were looking to make a change.

21:56 So after several months, I ended up moving up to the CFO role. And it was a data analytics company. We basically would help design companies to figure out as far as packaging, where to put product on shelves, where's the most efficient, where's the best return, whether it's high on the shelf, it's low on the shelf, it's on an end display, positioning, different things like that. So basically we worked with a lot of companies in the commercial space that we're putting products into grocery stores, into drugstores, different places to come up with basically analytical information and data versus just gut feel of where's the best place to put this on the shelf.

22:36 And we ended up selling to Oracle, as you mentioned, back in 2006. And at the time, like I said, companies growing, they bought us really for the analytics. And to this day, 20 years later, the Demantra product is still a product in their line, basically as part of their CRM solution that they sell. And there's still, there's got to be 25, 30% of the team is still there 20 years later. A lot of retired have moved on, but a lot of them are still there. So the employees are still at Oracle. So kind of measure, that's the measurement of success of a successful deal. So what did you learn from that? experience going through that?

23:20 I mean, that's a huge acquisition, going to a company like Oracle. I mean, there aren't many as big, right? Yeah, the process was, the process actually was a lot of fun. It was long, it was a lot of hours, but it was a lot of fun. They obviously being, you know, multinational, top tier company, You know, they did a lot of research. They did a lot of depth into our software code, making sure that, you know, the code was clean, that there was no third-party products in there that, you know. Royalties could be due. They dug down into everything, you know, but kind of managing the process, working with our lawyers. We had two sets of external lawyer law firms we were working with. We had bankers that were brought in to help fund the deal. So I kind of– you know, my role was to, yes, provide information– front demand to our numbers, but more kind of be the quarterback, you know, just kind of managing, communicating with the bankers, communicating with the lawyers, you know, the public accounting firms who were doing audit work on and stuff like that.

24:19 So was that, was it ever in doubt? Uh, every day's an adventure. It was, you know, there was days when, you know, negotiations go sideways for what one reason or another. Um, and, but it took us about, it was about a three month deal. We finally got it done. That's actually early March. We were done in June. And then basically it took about, you know. They left everybody because they have a big facility up in Burlington. Yeah. We were in Waltham at the time. Yeah. And they left everybody in Waltham for about six months and then started moving people up to the Burlington location. Yeah. So I would have met some of the sales guys.

25:02 Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I was dealing with like my software cats who was, you know, kind of co-CEO with Larry Ellison for a number of years. She was heading up their integration and M & A team because they had a whole basically just M & A division of the business. So I worked with her and her team. Then he moved over to Ember Corporation, now SVP and CFO. Yep. Yep. Again, kind of same thing. I stayed through the integration at Demantra through the summer and, you know, took a couple of months off and then same thing. Basically one of the VCs that was involved in Demantra was also had connections with Ember. And so they brought me in there as a CFO.

25:49 Then you had other CFO roles, edX, Shorelight, OpenExchange. any specific things you want to mention that you learned along the way in those three companies? Yeah, I think, you know, Ember was a completely different company. It was a semiconductor company. So learning a hardware space, EMC, obviously, you know, Epic days was hardware, but not as complex as a software semiconductor chip. So basically went to China. We had our fab work done in China. So I went to Chengdu, China a couple of times, work into the fab, go to the fab, which was really interesting and. Our development team was out of the UK is where our software engineers were. But working that again, it's a different business because it's it's manufacturing, it's cost of sales, it's supply chain different than software. And again, same kind of thing. We ended up selling that company after six years to Silicon Labs out of Boston, Texas. Same kind of thing, though. You know, the deal took this one took a little over four months to do. Same kind of thing was kind of got the quarterback, the deal, working with the partners, working through the deals. And it's fun. I think that that's the fun part. You know, it's a lot of work, but that's where the it's like practicing. And then you go to game on a Sunday. That's the game on the Sunday, you know, doing the deals.

27:09 Yeah. And then edX. When I left Ember, I was fortunate enough, our head of marketing, his brother-in-law, Anant Agarwal, who heads up, was the CEO, is still the CEO of edX. Anant headed up MIT's artificial intelligence and computer science lab. Brilliant man, obviously. He helped start edX. And edX was funded, a combination between Harvard and MIT, funded the money because it was set up as a not-for-profit company. But so I went in there as their CFO. Again, it was a not-for-profit, which was a little different. But at the end of the day, they were building a software platform to host courses. So they were one of the first ones really out there hosting online classes. And now probably every university, you know, 90% of universities in the world have their own platform, host their own.

28:03 edX is still out there. They partnered with a couple of different companies, still have relationships from the best universities in the world. I did that for about three years and then got recruited out to this company, Shorelight, which was basically, again, same thing, kind of just getting ramped, venture capital backed. And they basically were working to build a platform, but basically to recruit. International students to go to U.S. universities. Fast track, you know, when I joined, we were just under a million dollars. When I left at the end of five years, we were over $ 130 million in revenue. 700 employees. Uh, we had partnerships with 30 plus universities around the country. Uh, we had teams around the world, uh, cause at the time it was pre COVID. Um, so a lot of energy, a lot of Chinese and Indian students coming to the U S to universities, uh, when COVID hit, obviously slowed down the traffic there. The company was trying to get ready to do an IPO and basically had to put it on the back burner. Um, And so a little while after that, you know, I ended up leaving the company. You know, we couldn't get the IPO done. It was kind of going on autopilot because it was going through COVID.

29:15 So it changed a little bit. But great run again, working with, you know, Tom Dretler was our CEO. Tom's still there as CEO today. Great guy, really smart, really well building teams. Again, all of it has been fun. I've worked with some really, really fortunate, you know, really good people as far as the CEOs and the investors. So, What was it about the CL at your current role, right? That, that had appealed to you because it's a different role. Yeah. You know, still in your, in your wheelhouse, but it's now you're helping others versus your internal clients. Yeah. You know, it is, it was interesting because when I was in, When I left the last company, I was like, I want to do another startup.

29:58 I want to do something different. I kind of just did a couple things on the side by myself for six to nine months to see what I wanted to do. I met a friend who worked at CLA. His company, he was at Bloom Shapiro. CLA bought in 2020. He had reached out to me and said, hey, you know, you're. Kind of hanging out. What are you doing? Blah, blah, blah. We're looking for people. I'm like, Talked to him, this whole county of consulting, and I figured, oh, I'll do it for a year. So I figured I'd get through one year, see how it goes. And now five years later, I'm still here. It's different. There's no question about it. As you probably know, Kevin, working with multiple companies, you wear different hats. But every company has a different need and a different challenge, which.

30:47 Makes it enjoyable. But basically you're there to do most cases that do a job. You're like, you have a lane of what you're brought into. Right. Right. Which personally, I enjoy that. I miss not being in the trenches with a team and being part of an entire team within a company. But at the same time, as. You get a little bit farther in your career and you have experience, it's a chance to kind of share and, you know, give back. And ideally it's, I've got a few gray hairs from the work, and if I can help somebody avoid a few mistakes I've learned along the way, and God knows I've made mistakes along the. Way, it's rewarding and it's fun. And you get to meet a lot of different people, a lot of different companies. I've been really lucky to get paired up, work with a real variety of companies since I've been at CLA. My first project was the New Jersey Food Bank. This was during COVID.

31:44 Yeah. And basically helping them, um, you know, the warehouses were the only people in the warehouses, everything where people that were there to move the food, but basically to try to get food out and stuff. And I was doing the accounting remote from here in Boston for the New Jersey office. But I did that for almost a full year. My first year at CLA, I was on that account for full time for a year. Um, And then finally, they started building their own team as they got more funding from the state and federal government. They started bringing in their own internal accounting team. But then I started going to where I had two or three clients at a time. And again, got involved in software companies, professional services, law firms, architectural firms.

32:29 As we were saying before, everyone's a little bit different. You know, they're all different. got different needs and challenges. I like the variety as well, but at the end of the day, a lot of, yeah, you see that all the time. And, but a lot of them, a lot of the same challenges, you know, it's like, they're all, a lot of it is a question of sales. A lot of it is a question of tracking information, you know, and getting, you know, going in and working with the CEOs of developing KPIs and building forecasts and building, um, budgets because a lot of them it's like well we know what we did last month and we know what we're going to do this next month it's like well what about six months from now or a year from now or two years from now uh we don't look that far ahead well you should you should think about.

33:12 That what do you want to be where do you want to go you. Know i'm going to make those decisions today and what about the decisions you make today if they're not strategic right. Yep and just putting it on paper yeah the visual effect of having them see that it's like oh i didn't think about that where's where's the money going You know, and this is where you get investing to make money and start thinking about where's the right place to invest the money. What's the return going to be? How are we going to measure that? I want to come back. Let me take a break here. I'm going to come back and I'm going to ask you about some of those measurables in a minute. So I'll be back in just one more minute. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Hallinan on W4CY Radio. That's W4CY. com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio.

34:06 Best Gen Wealth Management is family owned for two generations. They take pride in thoughtful financial planning and wealth management with a family feel for your closely held family business. Best Gen Wealth Management focuses on deep planning, integrating your business planning with personal. They will help put your money to work and your mind at ease. Go to bestgenwealthmanagement.com for more information. Advisory services offered through Commonwealth Financial Network, a registered investment advisor. Join the Bastian family and let our family advise your family. That's bastianwealthmanagement.com for your complimentary initial consultation. The YP.com website is your local search engine. If you're looking for a good restaurant, it can help you find the right one nearby with ratings and reviews. Or if your car breaks down, you can use the YP app to find the closest repair shop. Or maybe you're just looking for something to do on a Friday night. Well, it has great local coupons for all sorts of things in your area. No matter what, when, or where, if you're looking for something, YP Local Search can help you find it. So go to YP.com or download the app to search local, find local, and save local.

35:18 And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Hallinan, presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind, to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Hallinan. We're back with Jim Sheehan. I can talk. Consulting CFO with CLA, Clifton Larson Allen. What are some of those measurables? I mean, beyond the obvious, what are some of the measurables that you really help people understand? Yeah, you know, and it varies a little bit, as you know, Kevin, it varies a little bit depending on what type of business it is. You know, professional services business, if you're a people business, you know, employee utilization is a big one. What's the billability? CLA being one of those, you know, in our practice here, we measure it the same way.

36:09 And it's a question of, at certain levels, You want somebody who's going to be 70% or 80% utilized. Other people, they may be doing some biz dev, they may be 50% utilized because. They're spending time doing others. That's a big one within any professional service firm. And it kind of gives you that indication, okay, as you reach in certain capacities, utilization, okay, I got to grow my business. I got to hire more people. And having. a lens into the future a little bit about what's coming in tracking who's busy, what level of skill. Sets are busy. You can help plan and grow and make some investments in hiring decisions in the future. Technology, hardware businesses, you know, there's again, cost of sales is big. You know, inventory turns are big depending on what you're making, you know, product wise margin, you know, and is right now and, Companies that are impacted by the tariffs out there, if they're getting materials brought in from overseas and other parts of the world, they're battling with that. They're trying to figure, okay, my costs are going up. How much can I pass on to my clients?

37:14 How much of a margin hit can I take, you know, today and still be, you know, successful and profitable? So that's a big one in that kind of space. You know, cash, any small company, cash is king. Yeah. Cashflow and understanding what cashflow is going on. So DSO, you know, day sales outstanding is when you invoice your clients, how long does it take them to pay you? And you track and measure that. Same on the flip side on accounts payable. How quickly do you pay your bills? A lot of companies, I think they want to make sure they have good relationships with their vendors so they pay quickly. And helping part of that process too is managing the going out the door and Try to line it up similar to how quickly it comes in, if you can, you know, so you're not taking a cash hit.

38:03 You know, current ratios, things like that on the balance sheet, you know, current assets, the current liabilities kind of gives a strength picture of what's going on. Debt ratios can kind of give an indicator of, okay, what's the strength of the company? How much debt do you have? Borrowing money. I've helped a lot of clients recently borrow money or get lines of credit in place. And a lot of the lines, they'll say, well, we don't need it right now. This is the perfect time to get it. Right. The rates are the best, right? The rates, but just people are willing to lend to you. Banks will lend to you when you're doing really well, when you don't need the money. When you need the money, then they don't want to lend you or they're going to make it a lot harder and make it a lot more expensive. So put investment vehicles, you know, debt vehicle lines of credit and stuff in place when.

38:51 You're doing well and you don't need it. And you manage the terms to cost you a little bit of money, but it'll be there for that rainy day. Basically, you know, as far as other ratios go. You know, it's really a question of, like I said, just depending on the type of the business, the forecasting and projection, you know, what percentage of your business do you spend. On G & A? What do you spend on sales? What do you spend on marketing? What are you spending on R & D? And every, am I right that every industry has some benchmarks? Not exact numbers, but some benchmarks, right? There are benchmarks, yeah, and they're for different scale. And as we all know with AI today, whether it's Copilot or Clon, that information is readily available. You can pull it down and you can drill down as deeply as you like to. But yeah, all those tools and all that information is out there to help you make those decisions. But really building out a balance sheet in a P & L environment is really the starting point, you know, so they can, one, they can see historic and then just going ahead. Where's it going? Especially with cash flows, you know, cause there's always going to be peaks and valleys, especially companies that are have that are not maybe more B2B that maybe have big.

40:04 Deals, but they're going to be bumpy versus a, you. Know, B2C, which is going to be more of a consistent flow each month. The cashflow needs are different. So you've got to kind of plan and how am I going to, you know, if I know I've got big deals coming in Q4, how do you get through the summer and how do you get through Q3 if those are lighter periods? You know, either you've got to manage your spending down or you have some kind of, like I said, investment deal going in place to. Get you through those dips. And so that's where planning really gets you prepared. So what are the most important things for a smaller business, right? Smart people, but they're not sophisticated when it comes to financial statements. What are the most important things there? Like if you were to find, I can imagine these guys are out there, right? Small business, great at what they do, not as sophisticated financially as a larger organization. What do you need them to understand about their financials? Most important.

40:57 Yeah, I think 90% of. Companies, it's cash flow, understanding your cash flow. Again, how quickly do you collect money? How quickly does it go out the door? How much are you going to need? to make investments and grow, whether it's a capital investment. I need a building. I need to get more space. I got to build product. Or human capital, more people. Yeah. How do you fund that? And understanding what those cash needs are going to be. And as you get a little bit more mature and you're generating positive cash flow, then it's a question of, okay, how do I become more efficient? you know, my margin, how do I make my margin better? Like getting my cost of goods sold down.

41:37 But really having the information there to track it. And a lot of small companies, again, their systems are not that sophisticated to start with. So it's really a question of helping them get their accounting system set up right, having the right information go. In so you can get the information out on the back. And that's where I usually have a conversation at the very beginning is like, what reports do you use to measure business today? And Some have them, some don't, you know, but okay, if you don't, okay, well, what do you need? All right, well, let's figure out how do we get to that information? And it all starts on what data in versus data coming out. So how do we capture that data to come in on the front end? Can we get the information you need so we can get the reporting on the back end? So those are, they sound simple, but those are really to provide the tools so that management teams can make decisions, give them the right information to make decisions. And I think that's where I can add the most value to companies is to provide that information to them.

42:36 And then once they get it, help them interpret it. Like reading a balance sheet, you know, what does it really mean and what is their current ratio? And, you know, my liabilities are big and my equity is low or my equities, you know, I've flipped upside down for some reason because, you know, I keep losing money and my, you know, I have a long, you know, carry on. So understanding how to read the financials is a big one too. Same with, you know, P & L. How do you read a P & L? And then try to teach the rest of the C team when you get the chance. So they understand and they get the reports. So just that, not just the CEO and the investors, but it's each, each department within a company, what do they need to help make the right decisions?

43:17 So, so you indicated, I know you're talking about New Jersey, but do your clients, are they mostly in Massachusetts? Do they come from other States? Does it really matter? Great question. No, they're all over the place. So I've got one client in Boston who I spent a fair amount of time with today. They're a managed services company. I've been with them three or four months. I got a new company out of Portland, Oregon. They are a spinoff. They're basically kind of out of a PBS public radio, public television channel out there. They're basically spinning off. They've developed some software for other public broadcasting channels to use that they're starting to sell. So, again, it's kind of a startup mentality that they're getting funded.

44:02 And I got a law consulting firm down in Georgia. So they're everywhere. You know, I kind of, as you know, today's world being online, you can do video calls and be agnostic, you know. And so the downside is I don't get to see people face to face, my clients very often. But at the same time, you know, I can support clients anywhere in the country. Now, most of your business comes word of mouth in some way. Yeah, we get a lot of leads from existing clients. I get, you know, working with you and your provisors, you know, leads from there or other, my network, you know, from the past, whether it's law firms or insurance brokers, different people out there.

44:43 But a lot of it is word of mouth. Yeah, you know, CLA as a company has. Not done a lot of advertising and marketing until the last three to four years. So they were kind of, you know, an unknown, you know, $ 2 billion company out there. I know, crazy. They used to say regional. They don't say that anymore. No, they're definitely not regional. Yeah. There's 120 some offices, 9,500 employees, about 2000 or excuse me, 2 billion in revenue. Yeah. So it's a, we're one of the top 10 firms out there now. I noticed that too. That, that, yeah, that surprised me. I knew they were big, but that surprised me. Yeah. So when I got introduced to them, I didn't realize they were that, you know, that significant to be honest. So.

45:27 Yeah. We have a friend who, uh, runs the municipal practice. Okay. Chris, you know, Chris, Chris, um, I won't say his last name just for his sake. Yes. Yes. He's in brain, the brain tree office, I think. Okay. Yep. I know what you're talking about. We have a couple, we have a, we have a few Chris's in the area, but yeah, we have a big, like they have a CLA has really does private companies really don't do public companies per se. Um, So, but we have a big not-for-profit practice here in New England and across the country. We do a lot of state and local government work. Yeah. That's what he's part of. Yeah. My, basically the work that I'm involved in, like I said, is really the professional services and technology side.

46:10 Yeah. But we have basically individuals, I have peers of mine that are experts in each individual area, whether it's not-for-profit, state and local, manufacturing, life science. Yeah. So we line up by vertical so that we put the right skill set in there as far as somebody with expertise from that space. What does a typical engagement look like? You said some of them are interim, short-term, long-term. What's typical and maybe what are some of the exceptions? Yeah, so, you know, so like this is one example of a legal consulting firm out of Georgia. We are their outsourced accounting department. So... I'm there. I work a couple hours a week. We have a controller who's there a fair amount of time. We have two staff accountants. We've been their outsourced accounting firm for 12 years. This engagement I mentioned, this managed service company here in Massachusetts, same kind of thing. We are basically now have taken over to be their internal accounting team.

47:13 And so we basically, we are their full outsource group. And we'll bring in the right resource and skillset, whether it's assistant controller or a controller or a senior accountant to do the work that's needed. So you're paying, you're paying at the rate that should be. Done for whether it's accounts payable, accounts receivable, or, you know, CFO controller work. But the engagements, a lot of times those will go on for years. But these interim part-time ones, for me, most of the time they're three to six months. And what's your bandwidth? How many clients can you support? So I got probably, I got three clients that I actually put in a fair amount of time with. And then structure-wise, I have another several clients that I only.

47:55 Work an hour to a month on. Just kind of oversee, you know, take a look at the financials at the end of the month to review and work with the team. But really from a real hands-on, three to four is about the max, depending on the number of hours. We're like out of time here. I got just one, actually two questions left. Okay. Who in the listening and viewing audiences should reach out to you and why? Yeah. So any company out there that's, you know, that's growing that needs help with their accounting, whether there's been a change recently or they're looking for maybe a change or just, you know, an improvement and service they can provide working with a larger firm. So anybody, and again, personally, the professional service or technology-based companies, but I can talk to anybody, whether you're manufacturing and stuff like that, and connect you with the right person at CLA if I'm not that person.

48:47 So you're not replacing their account. You're not doing their taxes. You're not doing their filings. You're doing all the. Me personally, no. I don't do that. But we have a tax team who. If they wanted that, yeah. If they wanted. Yeah, we can introduce them. A lot of our clients that we do consulting for, we do do their tax work. Full disclosure, we cannot be their auditor and do consulting. Yeah, yeah. Those are the two worlds. You can't play it together. But tax, we can't. Or wealth management, we can't have people, smaller LLC firms. Wealth management, okay, that's something to think about. And the best way to contact you is, I know your phone number and email address have gone over the crawl. Yeah. May make it one more time. They're right there. Okay. James.sheehan at claconnect.com. Probably the easiest way. And there's your phone number.

49:32 Just email me and I'll reach out to you. We set up a call and And I can try to help understand what you're looking for and see if we can help you. Great. Jim, this was great. It was fun. Glad to have you. And sorry it took so long to get you here. Oh, Kevin, I really appreciate it. I had a lot of fun today. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, everybody. All right. See you soon. Very soon. And thank you all for watching and listening. This is a show about business, both successes and challenges. If you've got concerns about the financial part of your business, please reach out to Jim. If you've got concerns about the sales effectiveness of your company, whether your team is you, it's small or it's large, and you're in Massachusetts, or if you were referred by one of our clients and you'd like to learn more about implementing Sandler in your business, contact me at go.sandler.com slash KJH. That's my website or email me at kevin.hallinan at sandler.com. If you're outside of Massachusetts, I can connect you with a strong trainer or you can visit sandler.com and find that as well. At Sandler Training, we develop sales teams into high achievers and sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. We're not right for everybody.

50:38 Just like Jim said, we'll have a conversation. We'll figure it out. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Thank you to everybody. Thank you to producer and engineer Juan for another job well done. Join us again next week, Monday, October 26th. We'll be joined by Sarah and Andreas Apostanopoulos. I practice this. Apostolopoulos. There we go. Founders of Harris Hearth, a micro bakery, kind of cool company dedicated to naturally unleavened bread. They're entrepreneurs and they're very interesting. Until then, this is Kevin Hallinan. See you then. You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host, Kevin Hallinan. If you missed any part of this episode, the podcast is available on Talk4Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more information and questions, go to winningbusinessradio.com or check us out on social media. Tune in again next week and every Monday at 4 p.m. Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on W4CY Radio, w4cy. com. Until then, let's succeed where others have failed and win in business with Kevin Hallinan and Winning Business Radio.