CFOAF

How I Started A $100K/Month CFO Service Company With My Wife

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Byron Wolfe

Founder, CFOAF

$100K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

CFOAF

cfoaf.com

from Phoenix, AZ, USA

started January 2022

$100,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

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Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

I am Byron Wolfe, the CEO, co-founder, and face of CFOAF. I am a licensed CPA, Certified in Crypto, NFT, and Metaverse taxation and strategy, and I work to offer top-notch CFO services to small to midcap companies in expanding industries.

In addition to that, I work for 18 companies across multiple industries as of 2023 in a range of sectors, such as construction, networking, the metaverse, financial advice, content creation, 501 c3 organizations, and more, as their part-time (fractional) CFO.

Additionally, I serve as CFO for Black Tie Moving, the nation's fastest-growing privately owned moving and relocation business, and an Inc. 500 company. I am also the CFO and Treasurer of the non-profit organization, Operation Light Shine.

I joined OLS to maximize the impact of every dollar so that the team can focus on the real work of the charity. I am an avid motorcyclist have been married to my best friend for thirteen years and have three sons.

We are the only fractional CFO Advisory Firm that combines a full-partner, visionary experience with an educational and professional background in human relationships to solve gaps in any financial operations.

This enables us to connect emotionally with our clients while also working expertly toward financial and operational stability from a more dynamic perspective. Our ideal clients are small business owners with no current CFO. CFO•AF.

We dig deep to find missing funds and multiply the economic impact of each client. Because CFO•AF understands how operations affect financials, we drive profit performance with expert CFO guidance without undercutting the COO role.

We understand that success is a team effort and it requires full buy-in from all team members. We have created a process that allows for team members’ education, training, and understanding matched to organizational performance. It is vital that the tier-level success be sustainable as we move to the next tier in the growth model.

Our training is evergreen and is not dependent on our continued involvement in each step, but does set the structure for ease of management by the existing team.

CFOAF was able to hit the coveted $1M in accrued revenue in its first year of operation very quickly by focusing on its core services and over-delivering for its customers. We do not take on every client, nor do we attempt to do everything for every customer.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

My dad is fantastic. He is an Army Veteran (a pilot) who was frequently deployed. My mom was a CPA who established her own CPA firm. That captured my interest. Anything involving math comes naturally to me, and numbers fascinate me. I'm a sucker for numbers!

I'm not going to say that making money is happiness, but it does help to solve many problems and allows you to pursue interests outside of business. My first small business began when I was a teen. I hired some neighborhood kids to cut the grass and then pay them. I got the clients and then subcontracted the workers.

I founded B.A. Wolfe Powersports, a used powersports dealership from a startup, establishes all systems, policies, and controls to ensure long-term profitability and growth. We sold parts, clothing, new and used bikes, services, and warranties. Then, to maximize returns on investments, I founded MotoFlex Leasing, LLC, a short-term alternative financing option for customers.

I negotiated with third-party lenders. I was able to exit the Powersports business successfully due to the somewhat positive income from the leasing company which allowed me to move into being a full-time CFO for Black Tie Moving.

Due to my success in growing the revenue and profitability with Black Tie, I became a favorite among friends and friends of friends, frequently providing business structure and business growth knowledge to business owners and start-ups in a variety of industries.

After being invited to have equity partnerships in many of these businesses, I decided to create CFOAF and offer my experience and knowledge to growing businesses that needed the expertise of a CFO but were not yet ready to hire a full-time CFO (which can be very expensive). Growing, scaling, funding and merging are common needs that my clients are encountering.

We currently specialize in CFO services (specifically in managing all high-level financial decisions for the businesses we serve) as well as assisting our clients in minimizing their tax burden through strategic tax planning and tax credit recovery.

From business structure to cash flow, tax planning to exit strategies, we are helping our clients reach new heights in business. We are not your basic bookkeeping or accounting firm. We help you make the decisions and planning that even the savviest of business owners lose sleep over.

Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.

So the first version of our product came about by trial and error, We knew that there were several people that we could help, and we had spoken to a lot of people who expressed to us that they just didn't have clarity in their finances.

And in accounting, they didn't understand what cash flow was, or why everything in between revenue and profit was important. And so we created a model that would work for all of these businesses across several different industries.

And so through that trial and error, we're able to create a framework that allowed us to point out the metrics, the key performance indicators, KPIs that were needed for them, and we were able to present that in a way that was very easy to understand and took a very difficult concept and turned it to something a lot easier to understand had some real clarity and how it was structured and how it was able to be used to drive the decision making of the business.

Describe the process of launching the business.

So my wife and I founded CFO, AF, to help businesses and to provide the financial insight, the accounting insight that we knew so many people needed. And so we had already been consulting for several people that were within our circle within our network.

Because we were able to start, build scale, and eventually sell businesses, we had been in the entrepreneurial space for some time and found some success there. And so because of that success, people would reach out to us and they would say, Hey, can you help? And so they knew that I had a big accounting, and finance background, and that led me to help them in ways that most people wouldn't be able to do.

Most people are not as familiar with that piece of the business which is arguably not the funniest, I get that. But we do understand it. It's my background. I am a CPA.

I've been in this space for a long period of time, I have a healthy understanding of what the numbers are, where they come from, and what they help us to understand about the business so I know the metrics, the underlying numbers behind how your business operates and what they need to be for you to grow, scale, ultimately sell that company, or make it the company that you want it to be in the end.

If there are things you don't want to do, outsource those, and find systems that can do that before you get started so that you can focus on the area that you love to do.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

So what has helped us to find the clients, the customers that we want, and retain those clients and customers is constantly going above and beyond to help them in this process, we help several people that aren't even clients that aren't customers of ours, because we know that by giving back and, and helping these people that they are, in turn, going to repeat that knowledge, repeat the things that we have done to help them.

And that is going to create a buzz or word of mouth that you just can't pay for. And so by leading by helping always first without looking for what comes back, or, or focusing only on finding those people that we can help that can.

So you know, return the favor, so to speak, or come to us and pay us for those services. We know that they might not be our clients today. But they could perfectly, you know, be a perfect candidate at some point later, or they could be a potential client in the future. Or we know that business owners, and entrepreneurs, they know other business owners and other entrepreneurs.

So even if they're not in a space where we can help them in a way that is going to make that investment in their business make sense. If they're a startup or they're still in that first stage of growth, we know that by helping them they're going to tell them the people.

And so we do a lot of networking. I think that anything you can do to expand your network, and expand your circle is going to help you to get those clients in so we do a lot of networking. We speak about a lot of things.

We talk to a lot of people and are constantly interacting with people. So if you're not into that you don't enjoy that aspect of it, it's going to be hard to grow. So I would just encourage you to get outside of your bubble, go out meet people, expand that circle, and make it happen.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

So CFOAF has been growing by leaps and bounds, and we are doing extremely well. I couldn't be prouder of my team, the people that that were involved with, our clients and our customers, and our partners are crushing it.

And so their success leads us to have tremendous success as well. Because people want to be around people who are winning, and our clients and our customers are winning, that 's because of what they do. We just help them to find the clarity in their numbers, help them to find the metrics, the things that they need to continue to have that growth in that scale.

So we've taken something that they probably don't have any interest in, don't want to do, most people do not want to be in the accounting, the finance the the bookkeeping side. But we've taken that and we've simplified it. And we've helped him to find clarity there and find an easier way of doing that.

And so CFOAF, we're growing as fast as we can recruit. So we're constantly looking for solid team members to bring into the business.

Everything from the low level, the person that has the passion has the drive to do this but doesn't necessarily have the training or the certifications, or they were, you know, whatever is needed to do the higher level accounting, bookkeeping, tax, CFO services, they don't have that training, they don't have that knowledge yet.

So we're gonna take them, we're hiring at that level, we're hiring up to a CPA CFO level. So if anybody's looking to be in that space, and they have the passion for this, they want to help clients, that's what we're looking for. And those are the people that we bring into the team that allow us to continue to expand.

So would we like to expand faster? Yes, well, we do it without the right people in the place we will not so we make sure that we have the staff that we need the team that we need the FOC so to speak, family of choice, so that we can provide the highest level of service to our clients and our customers that depend on us for that clarity.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

So one of the things that I have learned through this business that I find is highly advantageous to us is focus. So we know that when we focus on and we define the metrics, we define what's needed. And then we focus on that. And we make sure that we're driving forward constantly, specifically in that arena, we can have the biggest impact.

So take my word on this, do not try to do multiple things. At the same time. There is no such thing as multitasking, at least in my world, If you are able to do that, good for you. Not a reality for me. I know that when I am focused on one particular area, and I'm crushing it in that area, I'm going to have the greatest impact. When I'm done with that I move on to the next task.

So it's very important to us that we focus where we're at, we stay with what we're working on until we get it done, that we have it built out. We create those SOPs that are required so that we're not repeating the same thing over and over again. But from that clarity, we have found that we're going to have the greatest impact on our business as well as our clients and customers.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

Google Workspace and ClickUp are the tools we use for collaboration and communication. Then, Keeper, which includes Task Management, Client Portal, File Reviews, and Management Reporting, to assist bookkeepers and accountants in managing a better month-end close for our clients. Hubstaff is another tool we use for productivity and time tracking.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

The What If Plan.

Business Owners and Aspiring Entrepreneurs have also reported that they feel Lost or Anxious when it comes to partnerships, operations, and business structure. So we designed a document to help cover just that, to help get rid of those stresses.

Out of all the common causes of Anxiety, Finances are one of the leading contributors. Now, we are no doctors, but we are experts when it comes to business finances.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

So my advice for other entrepreneurs or people that are looking to get into this space, the entrepreneurial space is to focus on things that you love or things that you're extremely good at. So if you have a high level of passion for something, and you're good at that thing, that's gonna be a shoo-in.

So create the structure, create the basis that you need to advance forward. And that item, that thing that services that good, whatever it is that you're passionate about, and you're good at, create the framework around that, find the things that you don't enjoy. And those are the things that you need to be the most solid on before you even start.

If you have a good understanding of accounting, or bookkeeping, of taxes and things of that nature. That's awesome. You're starting from a better spot. And most people are, if you don't, then find a partner or find a third party that can help you to make that happen. If you're good at dealing with people, but you don't do well with the backend systems or processes or whatever.

Find that piece and get that solved before you get started. The things that you're passionate about, the things that you love, the things that you're good at. Those are going to be the easy things, those are going to be the things that are going to set you apart from other people.

And those are the things that are going to make your new business so much more amazing than anything else you've ever done. Don't get bogged down in the details if you don't have to. If there are things you don't want to do, outsource those, and find systems that can do that before you get started so that you can focus on the area that you love to do.