Project Capital Runway w/ Steve Beene | Ep. 99

In this episode, David and Gary talk to Founder and Consultant, Steve Beene about all things asset management. Great tips for knowing your profit split, knowing your end game and thriving for those Benjamins.

Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-beene-3320801/

sbeene10@gmail.com

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

David: 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, and I am joined today per usual by Gary Voigt. And I'm sad to say this is his last day of the podcast, because he's about to go and join cosmetology school and open a new brand of Perm only salons. Where did you come up with that editor?

Gary: 0:27

Well, I have two teenage daughters. And for some reason, all the I guess all the guys in their high school that I see you have perms. So I figured a market to tap into, you know, that big poofy front perm. big puffy?

David: 0:42

Yeah. Where they say they're angry at their forehead, they just they just know foreheads. If you're under the age of 20. You can't have a forehead anymore.

Gary: 0:51

Clearly poof horn. Yes, what?

David: 0:55

It's like a rhino but made of hair. Nice. More importantly, we are joined by Steve bean, who is the founder of s being 10 Consulting. And we're going to talk more about that in just a minute. How are you doing,

Steve: 1:10

Steve? doing really well. Thanks, guys. You

David: 1:13

cannot complain? Pretty good stuff I'm working with Gary. Is that is that?

Steve: 1:18

Are you gonna be able to use his firm service?

David: 1:22

Yeah, look at this. He's coming in strong. Oh, man. You know, this is all just a lie. It's all just a skullcap and I'm covering my big hair all the time.

Gary: 1:33

Yeah. He's Ronald McDonald type without that big poofy red afro. I'm,

David: 1:39

I am too attractive with hair. So I have to remove it so that I don't cause traffic accident. So I saw on your I'm starting to show out a little differently, because I saw on your LinkedIn profile that you are officially an expert witness. And I've never met an expert witness. So I thought I would ask you what, what is that real? What does that mean in real life?

Steve: 2:03

So I have seen on TV shows, yeah, no, there was a case in the payments industry where a large sales organization would sell their clients, let's say it's gonna be 1%. And then six months later, they were charging them 2.5%. So there was a class action lawsuit where they were trying to get these businesses refunded for being overcharged. And they needed someone who really understood credit card processing and payments. And you know, that was my business. I did MSP consulting. So I had just left. Retired is a great timing. And it was it was interesting, because I've never done something like that. And I learned a lot about you know, how class action lawsuits work and stuff like that. So it was interesting. I do it again, tomorrow, if I could, it was fun.

Gary: 2:55

Was it as cool as we see on TV with the expert witnesses? Or was it more boring?

Steve: 3:00

It was more boring. We were in a conference room. And it was, you know, a zoom call, and I was being deposed. And you know, you have to read a thriving, a big article about all your opinions. And then they tell you, you're stupid while they're going through your deposition. And you're wrong about everything. So it was interesting.

David: 3:16

I saw a thing in the recent trial with FTC versus Microsoft a couple weeks ago, or whatever, few weeks ago. And they the FTC brought on an expert witness who was getting paid. I think it was $2,000 an hour. And this guy basically made a career of being an expert witness like the that and that's what they nailed him on. They're like, you don't do anything except talk like, how are you an expert? Oh, they just ripped him to shreds, but $2,000 an hour. It's not a bad limit.

Gary: 3:47

Not a bad it's pretty good gig.

Steve: 3:49

Yeah, the opposing counsel or the counsel that I'm on my side, the opposing expert witness. That's his main job was just being an expert witness for credit card payment processing, which I didn't know you can make a career out of. But that's what he did a lot of money.

David: 4:04

I bet they get paid very well. Yes. Yeah. So tell me about as being 10 is, Am I saying that right? Is that you just stick it all together?

Steve: 4:13

You are? Yeah, it's been 10? Yeah. So um, it's a business. Yeah, it's a business advisory fractional CFO, CEO business. So I started about three years ago. In 2003. I had two other partners. We started a payments, consulting business. We operated it for 18 years. And then in 2019, we sold it to a PE firm out of Connecticut. We it was a roll up strategy for the acquiring company. So after a couple of years, I transitioned out I retired and had a couple of clients reach out ask questions, go to lunch, and one of them asked me to be on her advisory board and I was like, Well, okay, who else is on and she's like, well, you so I thought maybe I Should you formalize this a little bit, and I got in there. And, you know, I probably spent four or five hours a week, mainly on her finances, just giving her a view into the business and how it flew. You know how money was going through the business. And I was a little amazed because it's a very successful business, but she just didn't understand what her financials were actually telling her. And so I started being kind of her fractional CFO, we created a dashboard. We talked about profitability, we talked about normal stuff with the owner. And then she introduced me to a competitor of hers, which is a friend and another market, and I became her CFO. And I've got another client in the payments industry, where I'm their CFO, CFO about, you know, 810 hours a week. So it's a way to get me off the golf course a little bit, where I work 20 to 30 hours a week with three to six clients, just helping them on a fractional basis. And it works well for both because I don't want a full time job. And they can't afford a full time CFO and nor do they need one. But you know, I can come in four to eight hours a week and give them the expertise to kind of understand what's going on in the business. So

David: 6:22

when does a company need like, need a part time CFO? Like, I like we don't have one, right? We have a bookkeeper and I have a CPA? Who does? You know, but I know that one of my weaknesses as a business owner is I don't understand finance. I understand. Like, my whole business is cash. Only, like no debt, no, nothing I have, I don't have inventory, anything like that, like a lot of my business friends, where they have to buy huge amounts of stuff. I don't have to worry about any of that, right? My only thing expense I have is payroll, which is 80 something percent of our expenses, right? So I have never need that. But but my business group see 12 They'll ask me, Hey, what's the ratio to blah, blah, blah? And I'm like, what? Like, I have no idea. And so there's part of me that said, hey, I need a CFO because my wife does our bookkeeping, and she's a great bookkeeper. But she's not a CFO, right? That's not her role. That's a very different role. She knows the money coming in now make people get paid all that's wonderful. But when you ask, Hey, you know, how much money did this project make? She's she'll try. But she doesn't understand what that really means as much any more than I do. And so that's a hole for us. And so as I started my own problems, when does a company actually need to take that step? Like, how big should they be? I mean, most most smaller companies like mine, and most of the people who listen to the show, they probably don't have one, but they might need one. But what what is that tipping point? Do you think?

Steve: 7:59

You said some great words in there, I think one of them is the business owner kind of realizes they've outgrown their bookkeeper. So they need the bookkeeper to keep the books, but they need somebody to come in and help them with profitability analysis, or some ratios or pricing strategies, breakeven analysis that the bookkeeper just can't do. From a services business like yours, I typically think it's somewhere between a million to 2 million in annual revenue. And that's a good point. It's a point where the business can afford a fractional part time executive to come in four to 10 hours a week. But they can't afford a full time CFO. Typically, from the services side, I say once somewhere over 15 to 25 million, you're starting to say, Okay, I need somebody full time to deal with the banks to deal with my partners to really help me from a financial perspective. So that's kind of what I think the window is, is somewhere between 1,000,020 million in annual revenue and that's more services oriented, which is my background, too. As you said, I don't have a lot of experience helping heavy asset type businesses manufacturing construction. Mine's more on the b2b or b2c services side. That helps.

David: 9:26

Okay, that is that that's a good staple there. I'm trying to figure out this is I hate to say this, but I'm an idiot. I understand like if a fractional CTO comes in, does some ratios figure things out helps you with profitability. That's a four to 10 hour thing. What are they doing for full time? Like when you need one? I'm not saying my company just in general, you need a full time. What a CFO What are they doing all day like you're not constantly making ratios, right? What is what is their actual job

Steve: 9:58

or there's you know, There's really I think of it as three sides from from a full time CFO, they've got the F PNA, which is the analysis, side ratios, planning, budgeting, you've got the comptroller side, that's managing spend. And then you have the accounting side that's managing the books, and you've got Treasury in there. So you're managing cash flow, cash flow forecast, as you get bigger, that takes up more time. They're the ones that are going to interface with all of your bank partners, your insurance partners. I've seen CFOs recently, especially in the financial sector, getting to some of the sales side, not very often, but when they're talking with other CFOs, it's nice to have that CFO presence in the room as well.

David: 10:49

Okay, that makes sense. I

Steve: 10:51

mean, as as the business gets bigger, you know, they just tend to a lot more things, and a lot more interactions need to take place. It's more than just an annual, you know, let's get our books together and over to the accountant. And you know, how much money do we have in the bank, at the end of the month, it's a lot more planning a lot more analysis, and a lot more controls on the kosman.

David: 11:14

One of the things might, one of my friends does is he uses a software package called strat Max, which is a big company, it's 10s of millions of dollars. So they're a larger company, but he's got a piece of software. But it's, it's it's his people to like this whole business is working to create this, and has a grid. And it's basically like, you know, the classic four point grid, and the axes are profitability per client, or at least got his clients as little dots, right? Profitability versus pain in the butt. He's got a much nicer way of saying that than that. But in basically like, the bottom left corner, are the people who don't make as much money, but they're a huge pain in the butt. And anyone who drops into that he fires them. This is like, what are you doing? And then of course, top right is they're easy to work with. And they make us a lot of money. Those are your course, your dream clients, and then most people fit somewhere in the middle. And I've always thought that is that something that a CFO does, or is that I mean, that's way more than just finance and that's a pain in the butt is a relative term to all sorts of things.

Steve: 12:17

Well, you know, what, what I did with a client once, when we did client profitability analysis that we had to allocate the cost to each client. And that's where the pain in the butt side becomes, when you're allocating, I've got eight people and two people focus on this one client than the other six deal with 200 clients, you know, you're starting, you can allocate the cost share as well. So it's greater than just a pain in the butt. But you're allocating your effort to your clients or your product as best as you can. To kind of that's what that tool is doing is just trying to give you an idea of what your cost is per client. And it's the same thing we did with our profitability analysis. It's kind of

David: 12:59

like managing Gary, it takes like six people to actually get them to be productive. And then finally, we get like a, it's like a picture with some boxes and squares on it. It takes weeks.

Gary: 13:09

It trickles out slowly.

David: 13:11

Not slowly is the key word. No, no, he's really not. It's really a problem. Gary, did you have any thoughts? I don't want to steal all the thunder?

Gary: 13:21

Well, you kind of covered it when you told me. You take the analysis of how many people per client, like how many people are dedicating their time for that client? And then the chart that you were talking about David now? When does it come to the point where you can start to see, even if you don't do this forecasting, if you're a small business, and when you're starting up, and you're just taking on anybody, you can't, if you're a services business, this you're taking on anybody you can for as much as they're willing to pay you for as long as you can while you're growing. And then when you start to hit a threshold where there's new business coming in, but you're not sure if you have the time, or the people to take it on right away because of some of the older clients, legacy clients that you've had. But they might be still at a lower pricing point. Or, like, at what point do you evaluate that and come up with a comparison that that you just told us about where you evaluate the time and money and see what's profitable or not? Or if you could make that, you know, decision to just kind of I smile

Steve: 14:25

when you said the question because sometimes from a CFO perspective, they don't see they don't feel the pain that David was talking about that, you know, this guy's a real pain in the butt and all they do is they see the profit side, and they go, Oh, this guy is a great client. I think it's once you're a little more, the business is a little more established and you're generating positive net income. And you have a robust pipeline, where new clients are coming in And, and it gives you the opportunity to say, you know, maybe it's not the best use of my employees time or mind to work with X client. And you start to, you know, to fire clients here or there, or what we did is we'd have talks with our clients and kind of explain either, you know, this isn't working out for us where our teams are spending too much time for the cost. And the goal is they understand and they find a new provider, or even better, is they reduce their reliance on you, because they've, they're using you where they shouldn't be, well, they could do it themselves, or they'll either increase the price. Does that make sense?

Gary: 15:47

It makes sense. But I think that the conversation that needs to happen between the business and the client, or just the analysis of getting to that point where you can tell some of these clients that you might have had for a couple of months, or even years, like, Sorry, man, I just, we can't do this anymore, for what you're paying us and the amount of time that we're dedicating to you. But

Steve: 16:10

yeah, and so we did that in our business once once we were, you know, generating profit that we could distribute to the owners, to where we could do a little bit more than just feed ourselves. And so at that point is, I think, is when we did the analysis to say, Okay, we've got two clients that are taking a lot of our time. And, you know, the profitability is not that great.

David: 16:34

Over the last 10 years, we have fired two clients. And it is so painful. Even though you know, it's the right thing. It's, it's a big relief, though, when you you know, you do it right, when the day they're gone. Everyone on the team kind of just sighs in relief, right? Because, generally, if you're firing a client, I mean, it's pretty bad. And I think I think it's important to note, even if you're not, like, I joke that every at least service business starts, I'll wash your car, if you'll pay my bill rate, right, that I don't care what I'm doing, even in that phase, I mean, maybe you want to be a little beyond that. But putting those people into those quadrants, you don't need fancy software to do that. That's a gut check for a very long time. Like, hey, this is a profitable client, they're really great to work with. They're awesome. Put them over here, this person, I make a ton of money, but they're a nightmare. Okay? That's the bottom right quadrant, right? You're making a killing. And you're gonna put up with that person when you're early on. Now, maybe later on, you don't, but you're not gonna fire that person now. And then it's, it's even if you're pretty new, if you got someone in that bottom left quadrant pain in the butt, and I make no money. Dude, you got to cut them, even though it sounds painful. Like I've only got five clients, why am I getting rid of one right? That could give you an aneurysm but it's so key. Even those guys, the hardest one was that

Steve: 17:56

I was just gonna I agree. It's just I know, as a business owner, we had such a hard time doing that.

Gary: 18:02

I think the pipeline thing you mentioned comes into play.

David: 18:05

Well, but man, because it was revenue. Yeah. Yeah. 10 years. And I finally I think, for the first time have a pipeline, that's worth a darn. Now maybe that's my incompetence. But like you're saying we have a good pipeline helps with that. Sure. But man, when you're just getting up and running, it's really hard to make that pipeline, you don't even know what you're doing. You have no idea how to get a pipeline. It's just you going out and trying to sell something. And man, that's and again, I'm speaking purely from service. If you have a doodad and the gizmo you're selling, things get a lot easier in a lot of ways. Not always but but the hardest one to fire is the one who's really really nice. That's that top left quadrant. They're really nice, but you make no money. That's the one that's a nightmare to fire. Because every time you work on them, you're losing money, but they're great people, right? They're easy work. They're not demanding a lot. You just can't make any money off of them for whatever reason. That's the worst. I don't think I've ever fired one of those. We've always the two we've ever got rid of. We're in that bottom left corner, no money pain in the butt. But if you're in that top left, that's tough. It's tough.

Steve: 19:13

Yeah, we when we had those clients, we the ones that weren't the nice people, the really nice clients. We just had tough conversations about increased costs.

David: 19:24

Yeah, that's generally the increase your price so that you can move them up?

Steve: 19:30

Yeah, yeah, that's what we did. I mean, and I think someone would leave and think they'd get a better price. And then they'd come back, and others just understood and we're business owners about I mean, if you have a business or a business owner decision discussion, it usually goes pretty well. They at least understand your perspective.

David: 19:49

Yeah. Yeah. And they might not agree with it, but they will they understand. Right? And we have Yeah, the raising the prices we have a rule in Currently, we do not raise prices on a client more than every two years. That is a rule that we have not necessarily new clients. But new clients might be paying different things cover. So we're trying things out, sometimes the economy and the inflation and all of that pricing is weird. Everything's more expensive. So we're trying to figure out what's right for us right now. But if you're an existing client, we have a rule two years. And but even that's hard, like I have some of those clients that are coming on to that two year thing. And it's like, I had to gird my loins, right? Because these are good clients, I don't want to lose them. But I need to, I'm losing, not necessarily losing money, but my margins are shot, because their pricing is not right anymore. And that's hard. That's hard to do. But you got to do it. Right. The pricing of any product is key. If you don't, your guys are getting more expensive every year if you're at least given razor worth a darn. Right. So you've in our world, that's everything. So as we're increasing their rates, if we don't increase ours? Well, you do, right. And that's sure all this hits very close to home. But because I'm writing, I mean, our company is right in that range that you're talking about needs a CFO. And that's and I feel that I feel that time pressure, all this pressure that you're talking about. Yeah, not a full time I don't you twiddle your thumbs 30 hours a week if you tried to be pulled on here, but it is, it is important, I think, to get a feel for like, What's your most profitable client? I can guesstimate that. Right. But I don't know that. And that's where

Steve: 21:33

I know from, for the client that we did this on, she was surprised at some of the some of the results that you know, because two of them were 30% of our revenue that she was losing money on, not not profit, but revenue, because they were just so expensive to maintain. And that really surprised her. So just because she thought they were two of our best clients. And when we did the analysis, and, you know, we figured out the cost, she's just like, wow, I never would have guessed. So the other thing that was helpful for her was, you know, her seven or eight really profitable clients. She could see characteristics in those clients. And she changed her marketing and her marketing strategy and pipeline to go look for clients that were more profitable, versus you know, a bunch of what we've called the muddling middle, where they were just making a little bit of profit, but not a lot. It transformed our business. It just kind of changed of who was a good client for me, which was eye opening to her. I mean, she was surprised, like, wow, I didn't know that. Okay. I know clients like that.

David: 22:38

We went through that a few years ago, something similar. We were building years ago, we built a lot of websites, like just regular WordPress, or whatever websites. And we would work with marketing companies and stuff that they would give us their work, they would, you know, they've sold it, but they gave it to us, and we would build it for them. And we realized when we It wasn't, I mean, it was a financial thing. But it was also just the time thing, because time is money, literally in our case. And we had to make a really hard decision. We don't do websites anymore. And we do but only for existing clients. Like we have clients. We're building an app. Can you build my website, too?

Gary: 23:16

Sure. Yeah, no, it's part of an existing an ongoing project.

David: 23:19

But we don't advertise or market that we do websites. That's just not not our world anymore. But that was a big shift. Because it's like, it's theirs. They're easy to sell, right? And when they start coming in, but the time and the effort is just brutal for us. I mean, it's great business for other people, but not for us. So we had to go through a similar process to say, gosh, okay, and we didn't fire any of those people.

Gary: 23:44

Which clients and what type of clients are more beneficial for our business?

David: 23:48

So you have been doing this only for a little while, but it but it's not you're you're trying to keep it small, right, because you're semi retired, which is a cool place to be. Yeah, that's a cool play. We've met a few people on on the podcast now that are semi retired. And I think that's a really cool thing, because they're working not because they have to because they want to. They want to keep moving. I think that's a really cool thing. But you've had a really long, great career. I mean, Accenture and doing your own company for a long time. I mean, do you have any great stories of working into those become I mean, Accenture when I was a kid, kid coming to college. That was the place you wanted to work as I was as a new developer as a consultant. There were the big five at the time. I have no idea how many there are now but there were at the time. Actually, Accenture didn't exist when I was just gonna go. They were Arthur Andersen, I believe, and then they turned into Accenture. I think that's right. Yeah. And everyone knew if you graduated college, you went to work for them. They called it a burnin churn. They were going to make you work minimum 80 hour weeks, but you're going to learn a ton. And if you can get through that two years, you leave and you'll triple your salary or whatever that was always the the myth right? But you weren't there for Long time is that kind of how it works there?

Steve: 25:03

Yeah, it's definitely a pyramid. i And I have great friends from when I worked there that left after two years left after eight years I left after 14 years, one of the gentlemen who used to work for me is still there, he's probably been there 30 years, and they've all had great careers. So my point is, I don't know what the ideal jumping off point is. I think it's led it greater than two. But you know, it definitely people turn out. And, you know, this just they don't want to do that much work, or they want a client says, Hey, I've got a great lifestyle job for you. And, you know, and they don't. So, you know, the big carriers to be partner and I was your partner for a while that was fun. I learned I liked the senior manager job better, because you were doing stuff versus selling stuff. And I enjoyed that a little more. And then another partner and I left and wanted to kind of start our own own thing in oh three. And that's when we started MSP consulting. And I was lucky in that my business partner and I both had 14 years at Accenture. So we attack problems. Similarly, we commute we had similar dialogue and communication structure and how to grow a business. So that was fun.

David: 26:25

That was very cool. It reminds me, my nephew, who is like 26 or 27. He is in the middle of that burnin churn for its he's on a program or anything. And I probably shouldn't mention where he works. It is a massive consulting firm. And he is up in DC. Got an apartment, I think he said literally six blocks from the White House. Which if from what I understand, the closer you're in proximity to the White House is one a cost but it's how important you are. And he's a young guy, but he is doing things for the UN and crazy stuff. And, but he works like all the time. 80 100 hour weeks travels all over the world. And it's great when you're young man. But at some point that's just a beating. I did some of that for a little while. And I didn't last for like was ever married. When you're married and doing that you get someone at home. Good. Where are you in that that changes that? That makes that odor? What's the right word for burdensome quite quickly?

Steve: 27:32

Yeah, we always told the joke when we, when you first start, your girlfriend or wife knows where you're flying in from in the flight number and the time. A couple years later, they know what work city you're coming from. And then after about 10 years, it's just like, Yeah, he'll be home on Thursday or Friday. So you know, it's just because there's so much traveling so much effort. My business partner, I both had little kids. So that's why we left I think my oldest was four and his was two. So it was just time to, you know, build our own business.

Gary: 28:05

Since you do have the experience from building your own business as well, I'm assuming that you can carry that advice in that experience through to your current clients now. So what would be your top three pieces of advice? For anybody starting a business? Or any new entrepreneurs out there?

Steve: 28:25

Yeah, I think one of the first things I always tell people is understand your runway. So how much capital Do you have? And how fast are you burning it? So you understand when you need to start generating revenue, because I think a lot of businesses fail because they run out of cash. And then the owner has to go back and get a job so he can feed his family. So just understanding, you know, the runway, I think is critical, I think, understanding along those lines, kind of the breakeven, and I think breakeven can be by a product. So you know, you know, what does it cost me to build this? And what am I going to charge for it? And it could be as a business as a whole, like for ours? At what point? You know, what were our fixed costs? And at what point did we cover those, and then start to generate, you know, profits that we could split. I think the the other one is just and this one took me a while to understand when we first started the business, I thought it just didn't make sense to me. But, you know, start with the end in mind, understand what you what you want the business to be in the future. And it will help you make decisions throughout the process. And, you know, if you're planning to transition to your employees, at some point, you'll make different decisions than if you want to sell the business in two years, or five years or whatever that is. So, you know, a lot of businesses don't necessarily know But they should have that idea. And then every year assess it. Okay, what does the end look like this year? What does the end look? Because you're good. As the business evolves, I think that endpoint is going to change. Like for us we'd hadn't anticipated selling our business. And then about three years before we did, we started to get some people reaching out to us wanting to buy us. And so we had to kind of adjust. What's our endpoint? What's our endgame for our business?

Gary: 30:28

The finance guy goes right in with no your runway.

Steve: 30:32

I love it. Yeah, how many businesses you know how to get a job? Yeah, because they just can't feed their

David: 30:40

kids. There are so many startups who do that.

Gary: 30:43

Yeah, we ask every guest these questions. So we hear a lot of the same kind of common answers. And which is good, because then I mean, most people are getting good advice from us, because it's it's common advice. So we've heard the Know Your runway know your breakeven seven. You went right in first, though, that's all I'm saying. finance guy?

David: 31:01

Well, I think it is you cannot overemphasize the importance of cashflow. A lot of places we like, well, I've got, I've sold a million dollars this year. And you're like, but I'm gonna go out of business. Because, yeah, $1,000,000.06 months from now means nothing right now. But yeah, I gotta get paid now. And I got I got a payroll of $100,000. Right now that million bucks means nothing. And a lot of companies don't like when I was doing this on on the side, when I was building websites and stuff on the side. There's no concept of that. And that's when it's a side hustle. You don't have you lose that weight. That's the first thing I learned when I went into business for myself is that time matters. When I'm doing a side gig, and someone says, let's say I bill Gary a website for you know, $1,000. And he's like payments, that for his new printing business, bringing it all back call back there. When you, he's like, Hey, dude, can I pay you next month? Sure. It's a side gig. Sure. No problem. My job is paying my bills, my mortgage is paid. It's all good. You give me that, that that extra money that I'm doing on the side comes in? When I am running a, I'm on my own. Right? I have bills now that belong to the company, that $1,000 is now worth $500, because it got split over time. And I had to learn that the hard way, like it was just really hard. And that's why I'm not about cash. Because I have to keep track of that's the only thing that makes sense to me. I don't know how people get with much comp more complicated. It's, I don't know how they sleep. But it's just I think that's something that a lot of founders just really struggle with. And so I'm all for it. I think that should be one of the top things that every new company should be really keyed on. What if anybody wants to get in touch with you now or wants to hire us see a part time CFO or anything? How would they get in touch with you, Steve?

Steve: 33:01

I think the easiest way would be through LinkedIn and my my profile, you'll add to the show notes, I'm sure. And then my email is just Steve, the as being ten@gmail.com. Very simple.

Gary: 33:13

Nice. Yeah, we'll definitely add those being shown as

David: 33:15

being as B, E, and II. Yes. It's not like being as an butterbeans. Anyone know?

Gary: 33:23

If anybody wants to get in touch with us, or ask us any questions, leave any comments about the show, you can do that below this video. Or you can email us at Hello at the big pixel.net or reach out on any one of our social media platforms.

David: 33:35

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, Steve. It's been a lot of fun.

Steve: 33:39

Yeah, I hope it was good for you guys. I hope it's okay for a podcast. We did we met in it.

David: 33:45

It's wonderful.

Gary: 33:46

Ya know, I actually learned quite a bit coming. I'm more on the creative spectrum, or the creative side of the spectrum. And I used to freelance before I was working with big pixel. And the finance stuff was something that I was just too afraid to tackle on my own. I didn't understand it. got nervous about it. So I actually learned so

Steve: 34:08

I waited to about I think eight to 10 of your podcast and I've never heard the real your runway so I'm really disappointed. I thought that was a great I was already Oh my God want

David: 34:19

we'll give you credit when we write our book. It'll be okay.

Gary: 34:23

We'll turn this podcast information into a blog and credit you as the one who came up with yeah,

David: 34:31

there it is. There's all right. All right now No, we'll check out thank you so much. See you guys next week.