96: Built to Sell – The Financial Strategy Behind a Great Exit

Behind Their Success: Episode 96

Paden: Hello everybody. Welcome to Behind Their Success Podcast. I'm Paden Squires, the

host, and today we have on Sal Tirabassi Sal is a seasoned financial strategist, fractional CFO

and private equity investor. With over 25 years of experience guiding high growth companies,

he's raised over $400 million for startups, served on boards of industry leaders, and is a

renowned for helping entrepreneurs achieve financial clarity and scale.

Sal, good morning. Welcome on Behind Their Success.

Salvatore: Hey, glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Paden: Yeah, absolutely Sal. So give us kind of like the, the, the high overview is like what, uh,

what's Sal do right now?

Salvatore: right now I run a business called CFO Pro plus Analytics, and it's, basically an

outsourced, strategic CFO services business. a lot of people call the actual work sort of

fractional CFO work. Um, and, but ours is, um, we're [00:01:00] a boutique service, you know,

private equity grade capabilities and we.

Start. We make sure that the client is engaging on the strategic CFO work, and as part of the

analysis that we do, while we're working on a, a scope of work, we can fill in other layers of the

finance and accounting stack with our own team to give them like a full permanent part-time

service that save them money, but gives them very, very high value.

I say it's like all the meat, no fat

Paden: Yeah.

Salvatore: of.

Paden: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I mean, you know, especially, you know, you say

you're working in, you know, companies that are growing up and maybe potentially looking at

private equity deals or, or whatnot, that that's, that's so crucial when you're going down that type

of path as an entrepreneur of man, you better have your stuff together when it comes to

financial.

Right. So can you speak to that a little bit of like, I, I guess just like, okay. Lots of entrepreneurs,

you're, you know, probably listening and have the, the dream of, you know, exiting their business

someday. [00:02:00] Can you just kind of speak to like why it's so important to have those

financials buttoned down?

Salvatore: Yeah. Well,

there's a bunch of different directions I can go with that question, but when it, when you're

thinking about specifically, like I'm here. point A and point B is I want to sell my business or sell a

majority of it, or bring in an investor who's gonna buy equity in my company.

one of our key themes when we deliver our service, there's three, everybody gets us a, a

customized product, offering from us. But they all have three key themes. One is single source

of truth on data. Two is equity value creation, and the third is due diligence readiness and due

diligence readiness, is related to getting to point B.

And the reason that you need to have your numbers buttoned up is that, the historical actuals

need to be explainable and transition into a very [00:03:00] reliable, robust forecast. We'll

demonstrate the value creation that can happen in the business. When the new investor comes

in and, and they're in, they're in there in a very serious way looking at these numbers because

they're basing, you know, their whole decision, at least from a number standpoint on it.

Obviously, they really want to know the management team, understand what systems you're

using, figure out what other issues there are in the company. But the numbers are the. Main

platform that they build the whole investment thesis off of. And it's not like halfway is not gonna

get you there. 80% of the way is not gonna get you there.

You know, if you wanna be locked down. And what I always tell my clients is. Your due diligence

readiness needs to be so good that they are impressed with what you're showing them because

they see a lot of companies, and most of the [00:04:00] companies are not giving them the level.

You know, they might be at 80% or 90%.

We're gonna get you to a hundred percent and build a whole story around it, and they're gonna

feel really good interacting with you, and that really creates. a good connection point for the

relationship to build from, because you automatically get into, like, this is like a trustworthy

group. Um, they know what they're talking about, they understand the ins and outs of their

business.

They can explain it to me, their financial projections reflect it. Um, so, so that, that's really why,

why it's, it's

critical.

Paden: Yeah. Yeah, like ultimately if that's your plan, right? Like, you know, getting out in front of

that as soon as possible is, is obviously ideal. But like, you know, as a, you know, as a guy that

works in, in, you know, a similar type space that. You know, I, I see people, you know, that are

bringing to me maybe potentially acquiring businesses or, or just evaluating, [00:05:00] you

know, businesses, uh, for people.

And man, it's so hard, there's so many mom and pop businesses or whatnot, right? Like, and

it's, it's just a total, uh, it's a, to, it can be a total disaster from financial standpoint. And, and you

know, me trying to advise my client on like, what. You know, is this a good deal or, or maybe

should you pursue this or not?

I'm like, I have no idea. I don't have any good data. Like, it's probably doing okay, but like we,

you know, like I, I, I can't functionally even tell you what maybe this thing's worth, um, because

there's nothing there or very there.

Salvatore: yeah, yeah. I could give you a, a good example of that. This was a, uh, an

engagement I didn't get. so a, a friend of mine runs a lower middle market investment bank, and

when he found out this, one of my college roommates, when he found out what I was doing, he

said, Hey, I, I, his strategy is he plays the long game with these family owned businesses.

He gets in pretty early with them to develop a relationship for a [00:06:00] sale. And he says, a

lot of the times I get in there and it's exactly the situation that you're talking about. You can look

at the tax returns and you can see that they're making money and you know that you, if you

back out certain, um, owner operator expenses,

Paden: yeah. Owner discretionary expenses.

Salvatore: Yeah. You know, it looks, it looks good, right? And you can look at a few years, but

when they go to the, to the accounting, um, and ask for a forecast, it doesn't, it, it doesn't exist

or the accounting is, so he, he called me in on a situation that was, it was kind of like a family

owned, sort of, let's just call it like an industrial business.

And I think the owner was like in his seventies and the kids didn't want the business and

he had a like. I wanna say like retirement

age bookkeeper who had been there for like 25 years.

Paden: Difficult, so

Salvatore: And, and my friend told me, he is like, yeah, they haven't closed the books in a year.

And, and I [00:07:00] said, well, how much money is the business making? And, you know, they

were, they were, you know, his back of the envelope was like, I don't know, like six or $7 million

a year of ebitda.

So really healthy

Paden: Yeah, a nice business.

Salvatore: Um, and you know, the proposal was basically like, look, if you, your point B is

probably 12 months from now, we need to get in and like refine your systems. Get all your books

closed, do all your reconciliations, and also in the meantime, build you a financial forecast that's

gonna resonate with the, with the investment community.

So that's an example of one where you know, the bankers like throwing his hands up and

saying, this could be a really great outcome, but there needs to be like professionalization. Of

finance to get to the other end. Um, and, I don't even know what ended up happening with that

deal.

He since sent me another, he sent me another one that actually called me back and said, you

know, we, we, we want to get this done, you know, [00:08:00] can you come in and help us

figure it out? So we're actually working on a proposal for that

right now. But,

Paden: I think it's just, you know me and you live in the financial space and there's, you know,

there's other, pillars of each business, whether it's marketing or sales or whatever. And it's, it's

really just like raising your game to be professional in all those areas, right?

Like, it's like, hey. we've run this on the back of a napkin, you know, not tracking any data

whatsoever. And, and that's great. And, you know, ultimately, you know, you're making money

and you know you're doing okay. But like, um, for anybody to come in and give you any kind of

value, um, for your business, like, you gotta, you gotta play the real professional game.

You gotta stop being right.

Salvatore: Yeah. But the other, the other thing too that I would just throw out is, so with the first

deal that I didn't get. They thought it was, the owner thought it was too much money. Now, if you,

if you look at the fees are actually very reasonable. But if you look at the amount of the fees and

Paden: The ROI you're gonna get.

Salvatore: can get one [00:09:00] more turn on ebitda, if you can go, let's say it's a 5 million

EBITDA business and a, a sloppy looking company is gonna get priced at like four times.

So now you've got a $20 million. Check that they're willing to cut you to buy the business. We

come in there, you spend, you know, over the course of a year, you know, before you sell you in

a situation like that, let's say they might spend like $20,000 a month on something like that,

maybe a little bit more. Now they go from a four to a six x. So now they go from, now they sell it

for 30. So just by cleaning it up. They can go from a four to six multiple, they made $10 million

on a,

Paden: on a $200,000 investment

Salvatore: investment. Right? I mean, it's just, it just, it just, and by the way, the reason that you

go from four to six times, multiple is not just because the books look good, it's [00:10:00]

because

you also. Can keep more

parties at the table because there's a lot of, a lot of investors who just do not want to deal with

the hairy situation. So you're, you're effectively eliminating, you know, maybe like three quarters

of the buyer universe because they just don't even want to deal with you.

Paden: Yeah.

the messy financial records are just, you know, one piece of the po I mean, it, it speaks to

probably, there's probably a lot of problems

Salvatore: Right. The layers, it's like layers of issues. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. So.

Paden: So, you know, um, Sal, you've, you've, you've helped, you know, a lot of startups raise

up.

Whole lot of money. Right? Um, you know what, what's the biggest mindset shift? Founders or,

you know, owner operators, they need to make, you know, when, when seeking capital like that.

Salvatore: I think if they've got conviction about their growth plans, I think the biggest shift and

they've got like a compelling story with compelling numbers [00:11:00] and projections and it's a

good team. I think the shift for them is like. So that's a positive situation where you know, a deal

can get done. I think the mind shift for them is maybe the best partner isn't gonna pay you top

dollar,

but this firm, is gonna be living with you for like the next five years and they are really gonna be

in your business and. You want people that you like, you know, and that you, you can have a

mutually trusting relationship with. So if they're paying you 10% less than the next guy, but you

know in your gut, they're just better, a better fit. You need to make that mind shift and not think

so much about the short term value.

Paden: Correct.

Salvatore: Um, uh, that's a big, that's a big mind shift. I think that, you [00:12:00] know, if you're

in a position where it's more challenged and you're not sure if you could raise money, then the

mind shift is like, okay, well how much dilution am I willing to take to, to get somebody to invest

in this?

Um, and. that's the other mind shift. If you're in a kind of middling sort of situation that looks

pretty good, but you know, or maybe, maybe a good company, but just in a sector that's kind of

out of favor, in order to attract the capital, you gotta like really lower the price or go in with a

lower price and you gotta get comfortable with that.

So those are like the two big mind shifts. They're always related in my view. There are other

things, but they're generally related to

valuation.

Paden: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you kind of made that, you know, kind of comment, I

guess, you know, the importance of the right partnership there. Right. And, and, in my

experience, I've done, you know, small partnerships, you know, here and there on all, all kinds of

deals. But, you know, I've had some amazing partnerships.

I've had a couple really, really bad. Ones and it is like, you [00:13:00] know what you say, taking

a little lower valuation, but knowing for the next five years, you know, I got somebody I like, I

know somebody that's on my team, somebody I trust, you know, somebody that I'm comfortable

with. Um, you're gonna build that business so much better and faster with a partner like that.

Um, that, that, you know, that 10% haircut or whatever you say you count will pale in

comparison to the actual, you know, results that you get from that. Right.

Salvatore: Yeah.

Paden: So, you know, as you guys do, you know, somewhat like fractional CFO services, how

do you approach building, financial clarity and confidence for business owners, um, especially

business owners? Like you say you go into some of these cases where they're not numbers

people or, or think they're not numbers people.

How do you approach trying to build some confidence and clarity in that space?

Salvatore: usually the quickest way to do it is we start. Or as part of, one of the first things that

we build out for them is a 13 week cash flow where we look at [00:14:00] their weekly cash flow

and it's, it's easy for them to understand it's money in, money out, but we organize it in a way

where we can project out the collections over the next like 13 weeks.

And the 13 week cash flow model is like, uh, it, it, it comes outta like. Corporate finance and

restructuring, it's like a very standard

Paden: right?

Salvatore: approach Yeah. That everybody uses to look at like, what's gonna happen in the, in

the next 13 weeks. And that's easy to understand. It's easy to update. It gives you, it gets your

head wrapped around all the ins and outs very quickly and how they change over time.

it gives owner operators a sense of like, what's the difference between a prepaid. Expense and

a, non prepaid expense. It looks at, um, debt service payments, if they have any. Am I only

paying interest? What is, if I have to make a principal payment, when is that gonna happen?

Um, and also gives them [00:15:00] like immediate visibility into like the cycling of their

receivables if they, if they're in a receivables based business. There's a lot of decisions that you

can start making off of that. Like for example, if it's a receivables based business and part of

their cash outflows is inventory payments, you know, we could immediately think about, okay, do

we wanna bring this, um, client to an asset backed lender who can put a working capital facility

lend against their receivables and against their payables to improve their cash position? It

becomes very black and white for the owner when you do it that way. a step after that is really

building like a more, uh, uh, robust forecast, which would be like a monthly forecast. That we

would then be reporting actuals against. And then that gives them a lot of clarity.

It's like, okay, you know, we're, we're, we're 60 days in. We've run the, the, we've cleaned up a

bunch of stuff. We're, we're on a [00:16:00] weekly cadence with the cashflow model. Every

Monday we look at what's gonna happen for the week, and now we're closing the books for the

second time, and we're gonna report against a monthly budget that we put together with your

input.

That is part of like your five-year projection, that that level sets a whole lot for them. and I think

also if they're going through constant liquidity crises.

Paden: Yeah.

Salvatore: I think it relieves some of the burden of that because it gives them a lot of visibility,

you know, over the next few weeks, and they know what has to happen in order for

it to all work.

Paden: I love that, you know, a cashflow modeling thing, right? Because, you know, ultimately

you're running, that's what runs your business off of, and, and. you see some of, a lot of these

smaller companies, say like a construction company or somebody that carries massive amount,

you know, or significant amounts of inventory or whatnot or, or, you know, job costs.

cash flow is so important, right? Like your front money, money's coming and [00:17:00] going.

Significant amounts of money is coming and going and, that's a situation that you'll see a lot of

like. It smaller, I would say mom and pop type businesses, but in by, when I say mom and pop, I

mean they're doing significant revenue, call it 5 million bucks or whatever, but like, they can't

see the future, they can't see the cash flow.

You know, none of that's forecasted and that, you know, they could be making a million bucks a

year and like being constantly liquidity crisis is, and, and running outta cash and scrambling all

the time.

Salvatore: Right,

Paden: And, and, and when you have this forecast, it allows you to know what you need to do

well in, in advance so you can prepare for it, right.

Salvatore: It sucks up a lot of brain cycles too for the leadership. You know, if they're. He

constantly got in the back of their head like, I need to make payroll. My, my top three vendors

are calling me up for payment. that's just a lot of, wasted energy that you can kind of control.

And then you also have like, obviously payroll.

You gotta [00:18:00] make payroll. But even if you have like some clients that are, uh, so some

vendors that need to get paid and are nagging you, you at least have a story to tell 'em.

About when, it's gonna happen. You know, you could say, Hey, actually I can't do it this week,

but on, you know, the 18th I'm gonna be able to pay you, or whatever it is.

And you know, because you actually see it with your own eyes

Paden: Yeah,

Salvatore: and you Yeah. And you can, you, you're risk adjusting like, okay, these two things

need to happen before the 18th in order for me to pay this vendor, and they're definitely gonna

happen. So

Paden: Yeah, you can put at least a good probability on it, right.

Salvatore: Yeah. You know, like, or they're like 90% likely to happen, and if they don't happen,

here's how I'm gonna

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Paden: So, Sal, can you share a moment when, a strategic, pivot you might have helped a

business with, kind of just [00:20:00] made all the difference for the company.

Salvatore: Yeah. Yeah, I, um,

this is a little bit of a work in progress right now, but, we, try to be good financial. Operating

partners to the leadership of the team. So we're not, we don't excuse ourselves from

conversations about like what's actually happening in other parts of the business because one

of the be benefits that we bring to the table is that.

We have, a lot of businesses that we see and what works in a business that could be total, two

businesses could be totally different, but there could be a functional thing that you've learned

from one that applies to another. And so I have recently, and this is a change that they're going

through now, I have a, a client, said we have a client that it's a, a business where they have to

do customer outreach. and one of the big problems that they face when they do customer

outreach, so these are people that are like in their database. They're allowed to call 'em and

[00:21:00] they need to interact with them.

It's, it's part of delivering like the service. And part of the issue that they have is that they've got

these, Pretty, advanced call center operators who are, it's not like, just, looking at A-A-C-R-M

and answering questions. they're actually advising these, the customers.

So they're pretty well paid compared to what you would consider an average call center worker.

So their time is, very costly and. One of the issues they faced was contact rates. So like they're

busy picking up the phone, trying to make contact and they don't make contact. So they hang up

and then they go to the next one, and the company is specialized in delivering a service.

They're not specialists in running a call center. So we recommended to them that, Hey, look, you

have permissible purpose to call these people, so you should bring in an auto dialer. And just

have your [00:22:00] queue of workers

Paden: Yeah. Ready to answer? Yeah.

Salvatore: and they're just ready to answer. And they were, they were kind of like, you know,

someone mentioned that once before, but we didn't really like, internalize what it meant.

And we explained to them like, yeah, you, you can have no one calling and wasting their time

calling. They're only gonna answer when somebody's ready to

Paden: You like triple productivity by doing that.

Salvatore: Exactly by doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and part of the reason that we got into this

was that we were going through some financial modeling with the whole team and there were a

lot of complaints about utilization and how expensive it was, and we just zeroed in on like, Hey,

you, you already have a call center calling system.

the vendor you have probably has an auto dialer. Call them up tomorrow and ask them what it's

gonna cost to implement it. And so that was the route that they went. So that's like a, a

functional pivot that we had people do.

Paden: So, [00:23:00] obviously, a bunch, of listeners, at least have the dream or the idea of,

you know, exiting their business someday. Right. Building it up and getting in a position and

exiting that.

what's your process for evaluating whether a business is, you know, ready for either like rapid

scaling or getting like, you know, outside investment to really grow that company?

how would you evaluate their business if they're ready to be sold or like, what do they need to

do to get to that

Salvatore: yeah, yeah. So, a key part to raising capital or selling the business is demonstrating.

Repeatable, reliable revenues, including like collecting on those revenues. And so even if you

go earlier stage, there's this concept that a lot of people talk about in the venture world, which is

demonstrating product market fit.

And that could be, Hey, I, went through this seed stage. I, I have a small team. We've built this,

cool application or whatever it is. And I've got. [00:24:00] 25 clients that have bought it and

continue to pay for it, that demonstrates repeatable revenue and that you've, you've built a

product that fits into a need that the buyer recognizes that they have. If you go to more mature

businesses, what I tend to look for is, stickiness of contracts. Are your customers coming back

and buying from you over and over again? if they do cancel on you and leave are these real

rational reasons that are not related to like the fundamentals of your business. And then also on

the revenue side, um, concentration of revenue.

Paden: No.

Salvatore: So do you have one customer that's like 80% of your revenue? That's gonna be a

tough pill to swallow for an investor. It's just like way too much risk. because obviously you could

just delete that client and it would all of a sudden you'd be losing

Paden: totally different company.

Salvatore: So, [00:25:00] um, and then, you know, with the client stickiness, it's also like their

consistency in paying you do you have really good collection rates, which demonstrates like.

You've got, reliable service that they, want to pay for. They're not actually going outta business

themselves. So they're in kind of like a stable category of, of clients. you know, that's a key

aspect. and then in terms of like demonstrating value to the next set of investors that come in,

whether they're full on buyers or putting money in, I really like to look at the repeatability of the

cost structure and the scalability of it, and also be able to tell a little bit of a story of about, about,

hey, here are like two or three other things that the business isn't doing.

Paden: Mm-hmm.

Salvatore: that it can do, that will more value for you in the future.

Paden: Yeah.

Salvatore: because, 'cause it's not [00:26:00] all about, just like necessarily the same thing over

and over again. Particularly if you're dealing with growth investors. I think if you're dealing with

like lower middle market buyout funds, you know, they are, they can get more comfortable.

Yeah, they're, probably looking more for the consistency. They put a little bit of leverage on the

business. They also know that they're gonna make improvements. To the business, to make a

return. but the growth equity investors who maybe are coming in to buy like 20, 30% of your

business, they're gonna wanna know that there's some other optionality there that could

potentially give them an an even better return

than they were expecting.

Paden: yeah, yeah. They're, need to tell them a story of how, like, you know, as we grow this,

how you continue to unlock efficiencies and, value and, and you know, grow and improve the

business.

Salvatore: Mm-hmm.

Paden: So, kind of, you know, turning the conversation a little bit, Sal to, um.

People that haven't even started up their business yet.

What's one piece of advice you'd give to somebody that's even just looking to go into the

[00:27:00] entrepreneur space? About to kick off? What? Like in any piece of advice you'd give

to somebody you know at the beginning when they're just launching their business.

Salvatore: I would say a couple things. One is, we're in a, an age of technology where there's a

lot of like inexpensive tools that you can use to leverage your time better.

Paden: Yeah.

Salvatore: AI and just

Paden: Huge. Huge. Yeah.

Salvatore: Claude or something like that to do stuff for you is, is an example. So it takes a little

bit of investment upfront, but if you've got certain repeat tasks that find interfere with your

dedicated time to like acquiring customers, refining your product, working with your key team

members.

and, you know, find tools that help you automate some of that stuff outta your day.

Paden: Yep.

Salvatore: like a great, a thing that I, I use a lot are, AI note takers on video calls.[00:28:00]

Paden: Mm-hmm.

Salvatore: They give me a tremendous amount of operating leverage in terms of like

highlighting what the key points of the conversation are, tasks that need to be done.

also just taking the transcript, putting it into, uh, Claude and then having Claude just do

something with it for me. those are, good examples of it. I can give you, I can give you a real

example that I did yesterday, like,

Paden: yeah, yeah. Let's hear it.

Salvatore: yeah. So I had, um, We were on a call with a client that wants to, has a, a new

operating role that they need to put in to basically work on their revenue management.

They have a lot of transaction volume and they have a bunch of traps in place that catch issues

as they arise, but they don't have like one person who's like overseeing it and basically. Doing a

daily report to the executive team about here's the flow of revenues into the business in the last

[00:29:00] 24 hours. one person on my team specifically have a lot of experience, building out

this kind of a function in our previous jobs. So we were educating them on what needed to be

done. the person that they chose to do it understood the accountabilities and just kind of like

gurg, regurgitate out like all of the traps that they have and, but didn't have like an organized

view of how it's all supposed to go down.

So I just took, we had a long conversation about it. She sent a bunch of notes about their

different systems. I took all of that and I handed it to cl, to I put it into Claude, and I said, I'm

building out a new revenue assurance function for a company that does high transaction

volumes. Here's a transcript of the conversation with the team about what needs to be done.

Here's an [00:30:00] email memo with all of the systems that they currently have in place. write

me an outline for a daily report that the head of Revenue Assurance can use as a template for

reporting on this on a daily basis. And

Paden: Would you have the answer in a second?

Salvatore: 60 seconds later, I've got like a template. I put it into a Google Doc so I can edit it

and it had like.

It had like 90% of what I needed in it, you know, and I moved things around. It even had little

charts with like red light, green light, yellow light, you know, all of that stuff. so there's

opportunities to do that, to leverage your time better,

Paden: Yeah. I'm so excited, you know, about AI and all the tools and stuff, like we've, we've

been massive, you know, we've been trying to implement it in every aspect of, you know, of my

firm. But, you know, some of the coolest things we're doing with it right now is like, you know, me

and the leadership team have a space, you know, where we, we all interact in [00:31:00] inside

perplexity is what we use.

But, With that you can attach files and, and whatnot. So like, ultimately, we put all our workflows

and SOPs and everything into this workspace. Well, anybody has ever has to do, it's just query

of like, okay, what's the next step in this process? What do I do need to do next? And it's just all

right there.

You know, AI can read all the documents and just, you know, you wanna talk about training new

hires, whatever. it'll tell you how to interact with customers based off our core values and our

mission and our vision. Like what is expected of you. Right. like, and we're just at the edge of

like beginning to pull with this and, and you're right.

Like the AI note takers, you know, I have them on meetings For me, I love it because. I don't

have to remember anything. Like I can sit here and just interact with you and connect, you know,

and, and I'm not having to write notes or try to remember, you know, some piece of data that you

gave me. Right. I get off a meeting. Those AI notes, they go straight into my CRM system, which

is also layered with ai. Um, I [00:32:00] can pull up anybody in my CRM system and up in the

right corner, it'll gimme a little paragraph of like. If you read that, anybody can pull up a contact

in my CRM, read the little paragraph and kind of know what's going on with the client, um, or the

last interactions.

And it's all just a synopsis right there, which is just mind boggling what you can do with that

information.

Salvatore: Yeah, Um, to your question, so I think the tools definitely could help an entrepreneur

leverage their time better. And then I think more from a, from a practical standpoint, some

people did not develop these plans 'cause they need to build a lot of technology or something

like that, and then it, it becomes a different model. But if you're in a business model where you

can go out and get revenue right away, really prioritize that, go do that because the exercise of

doing that is going to have.

Aside from bringing cash in that you can then leverage and use for things to continue to build

your business, you're also gonna learn a lot about how to talk [00:33:00] to the clients. what are

the features of, what you're offering that they most like? you get the story down.

You, you understand the mechanics of what you need to do, and. It forces you to also like think

further ahead in the business so that you, if you get the next one and the one after that, and the

one after that, you have to start planning like, okay, well now how do I

Paden: You start causing operational problems, right? And you're to fix those, right?

Salvatore: But you need that. You need that in order to grow, right? And so I would say, If you

can get the revenue. Get the revenue. I, I can give you another story. This isn't one of my

clients, but this was somebody that I met at a, um, I'm part of a, a group of operating executives

and we had, they had an annual conference and I met a young entrepreneur there who had just

raised some money and she had a business that was, basically customer acquisition. and she

was coming from the technology side and she was [00:34:00] struggling integrating her

customer acquisition funnel, her front facing, like, I'm gonna face the world, bring people in, and

have them choose different vendors that are on my backend to take a service.

Paden: Yeah.

Salvatore: She was very concerned about integrating the vendor's availability platform.

Like this is when they have time slots open for this service, integrating that into her front end so

that when the client comes in, they're looking at like a live availability. Right?

Paden: Mm-hmm.

Salvatore: And she had like. Burn through some capital and she was struggling with the

integrations like the, the people who wanted to be on her platform just didn't have the time to put

the effort in. And I said to her, I said, how quickly do these things [00:35:00] sell out? She's like,

well, some sell out their availability very quickly, but most don't. I said, so would any of your

investors complain? would any of the founders complain if you weren't integrated and you didn't

have integration, but next month you generated a hundred thousand dollars of bookings?

No. No one would complain.

Paden: happy.

Salvatore: I said, so then why are you, why don't you do. a half step where you just get a bunch

of Google sheets and have somebody on your team call once a week to get the availability and

just plug the Google sheet into your front end. And if occasionally there's like an overbooking,

you just figure out how to deal with

Paden: Yeah. Yeah, just deal with the problem.

Salvatore: Because you need to get the revenues in because what the reason these guys are

not moving quickly is they have no idea how many bookings you're gonna send

Paden: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. when you generate all [00:36:00] the bookings for 'em,

then they're much more likely to just jump on board

Salvatore: Right. And no one's ever gonna complain

when you're bringing

Paden: Yeah, yeah,

Salvatore: So, I mean, you know, and, and by the way, if you start drinking from a fire hose,

okay, that's a high class problem, you know?

Paden: Well then you got the resources to figure it out though

Salvatore: right. So that's why I say, you know, focus on, if you can generate the revenue,

generate the revenue, don't worry about delivering like the perfect product.

Worry about

Paden: yeah.

Salvatore: if you're delivering the value, perfection is not, gonna make you. Get more revenue

or necessarily make you get more

revenue or allow you to charge more.

Paden: Absolutely. I mean, it's, it's, that just kind of perfection or whatnot, you know, stopping

you from, from just perfectionism, I guess, you know, stopping you from just pushing forward.

you know, I love the idea of yeah, let's generate as much revenues as we can and we can figure

out all the problems with set [00:37:00] revenue.

Right?

Salvatore: Yeah.

By the way, she did see me the next day and said that she had already had a meeting with her

team to pivot to some version of like Google Sheets and assigning. Someone on the team to be

the relationship manager who would keep everything updated manually so that they can go and

push for more bookings.

Paden: Yeah. and that's amazing. And, what I would just point out to listeners there is like. The

value of, I know you said you met her at a conference or something, but like the value of, once

again, not trying to do any of this stuff in isolation. Right. Doing this in relationships and, mentors

and, and networking and conferences and, and stuff like that allows you to, you know, that girl

had a problem, didn't know how to solve it.

Talk to Sal, um, Sal's just like, oh, well, why don't you just do this? Right? And it to her, that's

mind blowing. But like, it's the value of like being around people that maybe are steps ahead of

you or, or, or, or just from different industries and different experiences and like, you know, you

can have the biggest problem in the [00:38:00] world and they just look at it for a second and

just say, well just do this.

Salvatore: Right, right, right. It can be very isolating to be the sole decision maker you know,

having other good people around you that you trust is definitely beneficial.

Paden: So, Sal, I got one last question for you. looking back to the beginning of, you know, your

career, your journey, your, you know, your business, you've started, if you can go back and give

yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Salvatore: I would say that, definitely

pay attention to, the quality of the conversations that you're having with your team. be kind and

be direct.

I probably generally I'm, good coverage in both of those areas, but when you're really like going

fast quickly and the businesses just flowing by you, it could take you a little bit of like just

regrouping yourself in order to like, maintain that mantra of [00:39:00] communications.

Paden: Yeah.

Salvatore: you just need to kind of remind yourself of that. Um, and I understand that now as

like a, a fact that I try to always reel myself into.

Paden: Mm-hmm.

Salvatore: But I learned that whereas if somebody had told me that years ago, I would've

probably used, I would've used, would've used it a lot more, or

at least I would've reminded

Paden: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's something, you know, your typical kinda high

driving, you know, high autonomous entrepreneur, you know, that's the typical profile. you're

right, like you gotta be careful that you're not just like running by or running over your team or,

just running so fast or creating so much chaos.

They don't know what's going on. You're not communicating with them. Yeah, so that's, I mean,

that's, that's just great advice. Sal, this has been a great conversation, man. Anything you'd like

to leave the listeners before we sign off

please tell them, what's, the best way they can connect with you, get to know more about you or,

or.

Salvatore: Yeah, you can,

um, check us [00:40:00] out@cfoproanalytics.com. you can also just google my name and, hop

to my LinkedIn page, to learn a little bit more about me. Um, but if you go to our company site,

you can check out the rest of our team. there's some really cool calculators that we have on

there. If you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to. Figure out equity dilution, or customer

acquisition costs. We've got some simple tools there that can help you do that. and there's a lot

of, you know, good content on there about, issues that small business owners and

entrepreneurs face and kind of how we kind of advice that we kind of give in our blog posts on

those types of things.

So, but yeah, definitely feel free to reach out if you, if you think we can help

you, we'd love to hear from you.

Paden: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome Sal. Well I appreciate you coming on. It's been a

Salvatore: Paden Nice meeting you. Thank you so much for the great questions.

Paden: Absolutely, buddy. Well listeners, we'll catch you next time.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you found it valuable, please rate,

review, and share it. That is the best way to help us build [00:41:00] this and reach more people

as we're trying to accomplish our goal of help creating more healthy, wealthy, and wise

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Or going to padensquires.com on the website and social media. We're always sharing tips of

personal growth and there we can actually interact. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks guys.