Finance and the CEO

In our premiere episode, I was joined by Richard Carpenter, CEO of Bladonmore, the specialist stakeholder communications agency.

In our wide ranging conversation, Richard and I dive into the dynamic relationship between the Finance team and the CEO.

Some of my favourite parts were:

✅ How job profitability is a team sport;
✅ The financial metrics Richard can’t live without;
✅ How Richard looks at the business post pandemic;
✅ Insights into successful budgeting and forecasting;
✅ Some pearls of wisdom around recruiting and retaining staff.

Richard's Business Book recommendation: Thinking Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman - https://amzn.eu/d/iiaqYIC

Where to find Richard: 
Web: https://www.bladonmore.com/contact/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bladonmore/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bladonmore/

Transcript

Welcome to the Fractional CFO Show with me, Adam Cooper. Each week we talk with experienced operators in the marketing and media space to understand how they work with their CFOs and get some tips and tricks that you can use to help improve your finances, profits and cash flows. Before we dive into the episode, I have an exclusive offer for you. Are you struggling to manage the finances in your business? Want to start on the journey to take control so you can reach your financial goals? Of course you do, and we have just the thing for you. A free financial assessment of your business. To claim your free assessment today, visit our website at www. accfinancesolutions. com. It's a limited time offer to get personalized insights. into your business. So don't miss out on this chance to take control of your financial future. Now let's get on with the show. Okay, so today I'm here with Richard Carpenter, the CEO of Blade More, the communications agency, and we're talking about how agency finance teams can best support the CEO. Richard, welcome to the Fractional CFO Show. How are you doing? I'm good. Thanks. Thanks very much for inviting me. Very good. Thank you for being here. So I guess we'll start by, you've had an interesting career, obviously starting out as a journalist and then moving across to corporate comms. Would you mind giving us a bit of an overview of your career so far? Yeah, so, um, I started out as a journalist, as you said, a business journalist and worked for a range of national newspapers, and then also specialist magazines, particularly in, uh, finance. So I became increasingly involved in writing about, uh, institutional investors and, uh, the like, and indeed investor relations and investor communications, and then switched from that. To running my own agency around, uh, after September 11th, when I realized that no one wanted freelance journalists for a period of time because all the advertising got cut. And, uh, so I then started doing some messaging work on behalf of companies on the other side of the equation and then worked on the agency side ever since then. Excellent. Yeah, as you say, a bit of a journey and I'm sure starting your own agency and that initial entrepreneurial jump was, uh, was quite a challenge. Yeah. Yeah, and I think it, but it, the upside of that is that particularly when you're starting something in a challenging economic environment, it makes you focus on cash flow. It's kind of important. Uh, it makes you focus on winning work. It makes you focus on understanding what charge out rates you need to do in order to make sure that you're hitting the right amount whilst also allowing enough time to win new business, all those sorts of things. And then that's useful when you then Uh, I then moved from that into, this is my third agency now, three, three other agencies situations whereby I was either running teams or running the agencies themselves and, um, I mean, it's not quite the same as running your own thing when you're, you're a sole operator, but there's, you know, there's some lessons you take from that into running a, um, a bigger agency that, uh, become important and, and still stand. Great. And I should, at this point, say that we've actually worked together before. So, uh, we, we worked at Merchant Councils together and that was actually one of the reasons I was excited to have you here. Because I remember when we first worked together, you had a very clear focus on how you felt finance and business should work together. Uh, and it... Yeah, more of a proactive partnership, uh, approach than, than some others that I've experienced. So it'd be great if you could tell the audience a little bit about some of the challenges that you face as ACEO and how finance can help you face those challenges. Yeah, well, look, from my perspective, if you don't take an active interest in the financials as ACEO, you're not doing. the full part of your job. Yes, you can be setting the strategy. Yes, you can be driving the thinking behind the business and the culture and all those things are incredibly important. At the same time, all of those things have an impact on the financials and you're going to get judged on how your financials are performing. So you need to have a decent understanding of the financials and what makes them tick, what makes them change, what drives them. what you can measure in order to change the way the business is performing, um, and, and look, look at in order to change the way the business is performing. Um, uh, you know, I'd like to stress, I'm not an accountant. I don't pretend to be, I don't want to be. Um, and no offence, Adam, that's your job. I'm taken. But like, um, you know, it's, it's, it's important to have an understanding of the sorts of things that. People like you and, and teams are talking about so that you can interrogate it properly. You know, I would rely on finance teams to put the numbers together and give me updates and, uh, and raise trends. That's what I'm particularly looking for, you know, what's happening here. what, you know, and, and give me ratios to look at and things that, that perhaps I won't even have considered and say, this is happening here, have you seen this, have you, you know, and then I can then interpret it and think about it. That's not my job to put those numbers together and I don't want it to be. At the same time, I want to be able to analyze them and think about them and think what do they mean and what could we be doing differently in order to impact them. Equally, I've always used forecasting. quite heavily to see how we need to adjust and pull various levers throughout the course of a year in order to achieve the financial goals you want to achieve at the end of a year. Um, and I think for, you know, small and mid sized agencies such as those that I've been running, That you, you know, you, you can get things very wrong very quickly unless you are looking at it on a regular basis and updating your forecast. So that's not a case of setting a budget at the beginning of the year and then sort of forgetting about it. It's a case of regularly. updating your forecast. So for at the moment, we do that twice a month, um, on a formal basis. We're probably looking at it a few more times than that, but on a formal basis twice a month, uh, and getting other teams to be interested in it as well. So whether they be a project managers, account managers, they, you know, everyone's got a part to play in delivering the financials. And at the end of the day, we're a business. Um, we're here to deliver a financial performance. It's not that we're a charity. We need to make a return for shareholders, me included, and, uh, you know, and deliver that for, yeah, that's the whole point of being a business. Yeah. Okay, great. Lots to unpack there and actually touched on a few areas that I wanted to ask you about. I guess the first one you said about you interpreting and thinking about the business, that's... you know, often something that other CEOs will perhaps not look for from their finance partner. Some do, some don't. Uh, so I'd be interested to hear your view on how important it is for you to, to get that, uh, the numbers, accurate numbers, of course, but also to receive analysis and insight from your finance team. Or, or is that something that you prefer to do yourself with? ensuring accurate numbers from finance, but not necessarily that additional analysis and insight. No, I think the analysis and insight is always welcome and always useful because, you know, when you're not a financial expert, you're looking at numbers and you're interpreting them in your own way. At the same time, there will be other things that perhaps somebody who is a trained accountant could look at, or a finance director, um, or some form of strategic finance commentator can look at numbers and say, okay. Have you seen this? Have you considered this? I've noticed that, I don't know, cost of sales is going up quite considerably at the moment. Uh, we think the reasons behind this are X, Y, and Z. Can we have a look at that? Yeah, so, so, a range of different, cause, cause there's certain things that I'll focus on within any set of management accounts, but I won't necessarily look at every... minutiae. Um, so if there's something happening behind the scenes, I want the finance team, or in particular the most senior person within the finance team, to flag it to me and go, this has changed, this is changing, we think this is a trend, this isn't just a one off. Um, the decisions we took back in March, say, are now having an impact here, here, and here. Um, is this what you wanted? All those sorts of things. So, um, uh, we currently have a, you know, a management meeting, um, whereby, well, so management meetings twice a month, but we have, uh, finance as a sort of key part of that once a month, um, So we're looking at financials both of those meetings, but the sort of analysis of them is done at one of them and, uh, whereby we're interrogating the updated forecast, we're asking our finance team what's going on, looking for trends, looking for that sort of analysis, and looking for that input that I mentioned earlier. And you mentioned about, you know, finance coming in that once a month doing the analysis. Um, how do you work with finance when it comes down to more detailed decision making? So, for example, if you're looking at, you know, continuing or discontinuing a product or a service or, um, you know, looking at profitability on a particular client or a job, and let maybe, let's take that as an example, job profitability, how would... Uh, how would you expect your finance team to help you understand and improve job profitability? I'd expect as much as possible. Um, uh, and, um, well, I mean, we're currently, um, changing our finance system at the moment or just change the finance system and then also changing our project management system so that, um, we get more insights into that side from the business. Um, we were finding that we weren't getting. Deep enough insights within jobs within projects, um, that might be running over, say, a six month period as to where we were on the project. Yeah, and there's lots of things that feed into that. There's things like, you know, timesheets. There's a whole range of stuff that are the challenges of any agency. Um, but then the end output of that is, you know, numbers and financials. And so if you're not keeping an eye on them, you can go awry. And I think, particularly on longer running jobs, which have... You know, reasonably tight margins, you want to make sure you're, um, not getting out of kilter, say three months into a six months job, because it's very difficult then to pull it back. Um, if you're not abreast of it halfway through, and, um, so I would expect that the, some of that is done by the systems you're using. And, and hopefully the information that, say, project managers or others are putting into those systems. But some of it is also then done as an analysis by the finance team that is then pulling that, those numbers together and creating graphs or quick dashboard like, um, reports back to you so that you can analyze it without having to trawl through. Every flipping job, um, on my train on the way home or something like that. So, um, uh, yeah, it's Yeah, and that that is a that's a product of um, the the client services teams and the finance team working together in order to put provide information to the management team so they can make decisions. And you touched on and something I think is really important is teams working together to own the finances rather than just the finance team. And I think it's important, therefore, that, you know, there's a partnership between finance and the leadership team and that everyone's aware of their sort of consistent objectives. So I wonder And you mentioned about your finance meetings, and maybe that's where you do it. But how do you ensure that finance and your finance team more broadly are aware of your objectives as a leadership team, as a company, and remain sort of in line with those? Uh, it's all about communication. I mean, we're a communications agency, but it doesn't mean to say one always gets communication right internally, as I'm sure you're aware. Um, We chat regularly, you know, I chat two or three times a week about various aspects of the financials with, uh, the head of our finance team, um, he and his colleagues give input on a regular basis, um, he comes to those finance meetings, um, the wider team, uh, um, giving input on what's happening. We have, you know, cash, cash flow reports, debtor reports, all those sorts of things, and we're then constantly feeding back to those teams and, um, chasing in unpaid invoices, because that might then, I mean, most of the time that's not me, but it might eventually come up to my desk if, um, it's been, you know, out, um, unpaid for a significant length of time, um, and then we then escalate. So, you know, There's a range of the day to day cash flow aspects of financials and then the longer term planning and longer term, uh, strategic thinking behind the financials and the finance team has to work across all of them, but then working with the management team to make sure that they're adhering to the overall goals of the business. I mean, some of that is, for example, on recruitment. At the beginning of the year, we'll... We'll plan for what we think our growth might be. Optimistically saying growth. Uh, uh, yeah, so there's a bit of optimism there right from the start. So you're planning that in, but then you're thinking, how are we going to deliver that growth? Realistically, you're not going to jump by, you know, in our type of business, you're not going to jump by 20 percent without employing some extra people in order to deliver some of that. So you can't just put 20 percent revenue growth in without any costs associated with it. It would be nice if you could. So you, you're then planning in hires at various points of the year to manage or map against that expected revenue growth. And obviously you're putting in Some some ways and means to achieve that revenue growth as well, but but so you're then hiring behind it And if that revenue isn't then mapping out throughout the year for some reasons such as a few years ago kovat or You know, there's geopolitical issues or economic issues in the country or interest rates going up whatever it might be so you're plans at the beginning of the year haven't necessarily mapped out, well then you're then adjusting your cost base, um, within your accrued recruitment accordingly. So, what, what we would do is accrue for various, um, uh, planned recruitment and then we're taking it out if we've decided we haven't hit the revenue targets in order to allow for that recruitment. Now, um, That should be something you're looking at on a regular basis in tandem with your finance team and, and planning for, you know, and if things are going absolutely sweetly, you then begin to make the recruitment accordingly to back up the increase in revenues. If they're not going so sweetly, you can then take out those, um, accruals and, you know, you're, you're dropping back down a bit, but you're not hopefully impacting your bottom line quite as much as you would be if you hadn't put any of those in in the first place. Mm hmm. And you mentioned there about regularly reviewing with finance and we talked about budget being a live document. How frequently do you review that? Because, you know, that can be quite a time consuming exercise. So, what's your sort of normal rhythm of that? So, me personally, probably once a month. Um, but, uh, we have two formal reviews of the forecast every month. Um, but I probably don't get involved in it until... It's presented to me at the finance meeting. Um, I might get involved in some of the minutiae, or, um, or if there's a bigger client coming, or if there's, you know, so, uh, or if we're having a tricky month or something like that, then I'd probably be a bit more crawling all over it. But, but mostly it's, it's sort of once a month from my perspective. Um, but then you've got other people feeding into that behind the scenes. So from our client services team, we'll be updating their forecasts, and that then gets agglomerated. if that's a word, by the finance team or via the system into the financial forecast. And what we tend to do is, you know, further out we'll be guesstimating at the likely revenues and within the closest three months we'll be sharpening them up and making sure that we're closer to reality, uh, you know, in the month you're in. Hopefully, not always, but hopefully, you pretty much know where you're going to be in the month. You sometimes get some surprises, both negative and positive, but, but you're broadly knowing where you're going to be in the month, and then the next month out... You might be 80 percent certain, the next one out, you might be, I don't know, 60 percent certain, and then, then, then it, then it, Oh, you know, further out, it then, um, declines slightly in terms of your certainty. And we're, we're a business that operates with a mixture of, um, retainer type income and project based income. So, you know, the retainer... Type income is obviously easier to map against, um, or there's greater certainty on it, um, the, the project based is, is more guesstimating, but you get used to what people are doing. You look at trends, you look at what we call run rates, we look at what's happening out there in the market, we think to ourselves. Okay, we're doing X, you know, pounds per month. Let's project that forward as well, but take into account that, I don't know, August, lots of people go on holiday, so we'll take a percentage out for that, or the same for December, because December, a lot of people go to parties, or have Christmas, and that, yeah, um, all these, all these things that can impact various months, and then, so then you're formulating a forecast across the, the year. based on prior experience of previous years based on current run rates as well and You're adapting that and changing it as you go so that you're That just brings you closer to a final number for your year all the time because you're adding up those totals And you're moving towards that so the ideal should be that by the end of year. You know you're not really being surprised So there's nothing worse, I would imagine, than planning a budget at the beginning of the year, getting to month 12, and then going, oh, that hasn't mapped out. And, and I joke, but I have seen businesses that do that. And they, you know, and then they're massively surprised that they haven't hit their targets because they haven't been amending their forecast throughout the whole year. They've just been, and then they've got some significant, um, you know, gap between their beautiful budgetary expectations and reality. So. No, absolutely. I think it's critical that it, you know, it's a living breathing document, if you will, and it's got inputs from the various teams and you're continually updating it. Otherwise, as you say, it risks becoming obsolete as soon as you've actually done it. Um, one thing you touched on earlier that I'd like to just circle back on was about You know, the difficult times that we've all been through over the last few years with the pandemic and the economic times that we're living in at the moment, did you find that your way of planning and approaching and the information that you looked at changed or the frequency of information changed as a result? And has that any of that stuck since since the pandemic or since things have calmed down slightly? No, I think that, you know, the biggest shock of the pandemic was the shock of the pandemic itself, you know, it's like, it was in those first, you know, looking back to sort of March 2020 to, um, probably, you know, end of April, May, those first six weeks were Yeah. Yeah. And I think it wasn't just us, everyone around the world was like, what the heck is this? You know, and it's just adjusting to new ways of working, it's adjusting to not being in the office together, it's adjusting to all these sorts of things that impacted the business around that time. I mean, we were very lucky that, um, you know, by sort of the June time of that year, things had settled a little bit and, uh, um, we actually, we ended up having a record July. So, so, you know, sounds, sounds awful, but, but actually. We sort of got back to normality, I think, by the June, to some extent. Now, having said that, that was a significant change in one part of our business, which was face to face, you know, we do face to face training of CEOs and CFOs, and, uh, and other sort of board directors, both for media and for presentation work. And, um, Historically, 90 percent of that had been face to face. And a lot of the people we were training didn't even know that Teams or Zoom existed at that point. So then getting them to be willing... You know, willing purchases over, uh, virtual situations is, is, you know, was a challenge at that point. It sounds mad now, but it was a challenge. And, um, so that, that had an impact on our business. But I think, you know, to go back to your original question, you know, the biggest challenge was that huge initial impact and risk. Well, luckily we're in, you know, we've always kept a sort of... Rainy day working capital pot if you like in the bank, so we had Um a reasonable amount of money to rely on should should things totally slow and no invoices go out at all Uh, thankfully we weren't ever in that situation, but you know, you could could have foreseen it. And I think a lot of companies and agencies around that time, particularly in sort of late March, early April, like, what does this mean for me? What does this mean for our business? Um, so, you know, how, how has it changed us? It's probably changed our risk analysis a little bit. It's probably made us probably even more cautious a little bit on cash retention. Um, you know, you don't know what's around the corner. Um, uh, and You know, you've seen since then, there's obviously been the impact of Ukraine, there's the current impact, uh, in, in the Gulf and Middle East, um, so, you know, all those things, those, those surprises happen, and it's just how are you planning for them, and how are you reacting to them as a business, um, uh, not just economically, but in terms of how you, present yourself as well and deal with the issues as well with clients. So, I mean, I think, you know, the biggest learning from COVID for us is probably, um, diving even deeper onto the cash flow side of things. Um, making sure that you're protected, uh, against large scale surprises as far as you can ever be. Uh, and, um, Probably being even more cautious about signing your next, um, yeah, your next, uh, uh, rental agreement and, uh, and I'm thinking, yeah, because, because that's obviously changed massively in terms of whether people are, you know, fully in the office or not, and we're currently on a sort of hybrid working environment, but. Uh, yeah, we, we just, um, signed an agreement, uh, here in London in December 2019 for a, for a ten year rental with a five year break. Uh, I think there's another break in between, but like, but, yeah, it's a bit like, phew, what have we done? Um, uh, but, I mean, it's fine. We're still in the office now and we're using it very well and like, um, but you suddenly realize you might not be in the same position one month down the line, well, how are you going to change? How are you going to get out? So it's sort of a risk management aspect more than just a financial thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Understood. Understood. Um, you touched on it earlier, just in terms of, you know, and in your last response regarding sort of the information that you look at on a regular basis and, you know, whether that's charts or graphs or ratios or whatever. What are the sort of the metrics that you regularly receive and can't do without? What are those key metrics for you? Key is, you know, revenue and profit. This is like the basics. Um, you know, cost of sales. Um, so we look at sort of revenue, gross profit, direct overheads, contribution of each part of the business to that gross profit. Um, so split down by, um, we have tiny little divisions. So what, what do they mean? Like, how are they operating? How do they contribute? Both separately, but also together. Um, uh, then look at things like payroll costs as a percentage of gross profit. Um, look, look at that sort of aspect. debtors, as I've mentioned, number of days, all those sorts of trends. Look at the percentage. Of, um, our top 10 clients as a relative to our overall, um, so, um, you know, are we becoming overly reliant on any one or two or three or four clients that, you know, it's never a good thing to have to, to being too heavily reliant on, on, on just, just a couple of clients. Um, I mean, I, I'd say those are probably the main things, um. That's a good list there. We look at, yeah, there's a whole bunch of other, stuff like time issues, a whole range of other stuff and utilisation and stuff like that. But those would be the main aspects of things that we're looking at regularly. Uh, and then if you're drilling down into it a bit more, you get into some sort of like smaller, as I say, utilisation things and things like that. But I often think that some of the, I mean you can drill down into numbers, but all those numbers will be determined by the quality of the Uh of the information that's getting put in and i'm not having to go to finance teams here, but but some of that other Um, information will be determined by the wider agency such as timesheet completion and you can then make false interpretations of job profitability purely because somebody slammed eight hours a day onto one particular job because they don't want to feel that they're not doing a decent job on it and so they're filling in their timesheets wrongly if you like and then that skews stumpers. So, so, hopefully that doesn't happen too often, but it's just being aware of the information that you don't take it as an absolute fait accompli, you have to question the information that you're being presented with and understand. Why it's saying that? Absolutely. And I think that's something that I always stress with the teams that I work with is, is it directionally correct And don't let perfect be the enemy of good because you're always going to have some information that's questioned. Uh, it's important that the leadership team collectively sort of agree that the information is right and then agree to move forward in that direction rather than waiting until every time sheet is in, because it's never gonna happen. I mean, there's other things I might add that we look at on a wider and longer basis that we're not looking at every month. So things like average client spend, you know, trends over a period of time. Um, I mean, it's pointless looking at that on a month by month basis for our business. But on a, you know, yearly basis, it begins to show interesting, more than anything, like, are you putting your prices up and all those sorts of things. Yeah, so, so, but... It's looking at trends in that respect and then you can see whether what you're trying to do strategically is having an impact on the numbers and I think that's where factors such as average client spend might come into it. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I guess the sort of final area I want to focus on is around the team, talent and skill set. And, you know, obviously that's something that's close to my heart as I've started this business and, you know, thinking about building finance teams. virtually and in person and what that mix and make up is or should be from your point of view, having run three agencies, as you say. Um, what is it that drives the size of the finance team in your experience? Is it the size of the organization, the number of staff, the total revenue, the geographic reach? What have you seen that has sort of worked best for your businesses? Probably all of the above. I mean, I think, um, geography can, can complicate things a little bit because You might have different regulations or different needs in different markets, um, certainly in my previous role where we had several hundred people and split across different continents. You needed different, um, finance inputs across each of those continents. Um, we manage it more on a unified basis. At the moment, we're smaller. We're like, you know, 50 odd people split a little bit across the globe. And so, um, we've managed at the moment. And I say at the moment to keep everything UK based, um, but there will come a time if our US business continues to grow in the way that it is that we will, um, need probably some, some accounting input on a, on a day to day basis out, out in the, uh, in the States and North America as well. I, I think that's quite a key determinant because, because that can be impacted by. As I say, just different accounting needs and understandings. And I think, you know, but it might be that in the first instance, you can get some freelance help rather than taking on additional team members. I mean, you also, the size of the team also goes back to minutiae, such as, you know, how many like basic administration things, such as how many, you churning out a load of invoices at, you know, for relatively small amounts, and then you've got to fight to get that money back in, then that's going to require more team members than if you're putting them out at significantly higher levels and more infrequently. purely just in terms of actually the doing of things. So there's a little bit of that as well. But I think there's also, you know, you need different levels of understanding within a team. You need somebody who can perhaps, you know, a more junior level who can actually just, um, do some of the. More grunt like work, I don't want to denigrate it, but actually, you know, there's putting numbers into spreadsheets, there's getting things done, and then you need more interpretation, probably at a mid level, and then more strategic interpretation at a more senior level, so that you're then getting the input you need as somebody running the business. So yeah, there will be I mean you highlighted a range of factors probably all of them count, you know in your question It can be geography. It can be the number of people you've got it can be where you're located It can be you know, the type of business you're running a range of those things I don't think it's just talking to the team, but also understanding What you're trying to do with the business and how what you're trying to do also impacts things. It, I should also add that having a really good finance system massively helps. Changing your finance system probably massively doesn't help, uh, in my experience, as, uh, um, at the time of change, but hopefully it will change things. Going forward, um, and, uh, I know you've been through that a few times, Adam, as well, but the, the, you know, it's, it's painful when you're making that change, and every system promises it will be the best system since sliced bread, and, and, none of them are, um, they've all got their pros and cons, um, but going through that change is, is obviously takes quite a toll on, on the finance team, and you probably need extra help around that sort of time, but then, once they get up to speed, hopefully with a better system, it can be a massive help as well. Definitely, definitely short term pain for longer term gain. Absolutely, um, I think, as you say, it's every system promises the world is going in there again, like back to your previous answer around directionally correct is going to improve it. It won't deliver everything, perhaps that They say they will, but it's going to improve things. And so it's going in with your expectations, uh, scoped out clearly. Absolutely. Uh, and I guess final question from my side, just around more broadly, uh, in terms of hiring staff, um, yeah, whether that's finance or non finance, uh, you know, do you have any tips that you can offer our audience on how to recruit and retain the best talent, particularly given, you know, the challenging employment marketplace that we see at the moment in the UK? I'd say the absolute key. Well, first and foremost, you've got to be able to pay decent salaries and, and, and all bonuses and, uh, salaries and bonuses. Um, uh, you know, a lot of agencies in our sort of space wouldn't pay bonuses. We've always tried to plan the business so that we're planning. to allow that in, so we're accruing for them, and we only take them out if we had really sort of bad performance accordingly, so we'll adjust it, but like, uh, so, so we, we plan to try and pay them. Um, so, so I think having a good remuneration structure is, is, is fundamental, obviously. Um, at the same time, having a great culture is... I'd say, you know, very, very close second to that. And, and, uh, um, uh, people you can recruit, you know, with great remuneration structure, but you can't retain unless you've got a good culture. And, um, uh, in my experience, people, you know, even if they're being paid great. Just if they hate it, they don't stay and and rightly so and and so it's trying to create that That good cultural environment whereby they can thrive their career can grow so putting You know some form of career ladder in so that they know that they're moving forward Making sure that it's an environment that's inclusive and allows people to prosper whatever their background and You know Knowing that you've created some sort of purpose and vision for the business as well, all good stuff. You know, we'd say this to our clients, but it applies just as well to us as well, as agencies. Um, you get all of that right, you know, and doing all of that takes something in itself. It's, you know, making it a good, hard working but fun environment is kind of crucial and that way word gets around in my mind, you know, it makes it easier to recruit people because people ask people what it's like to work there and so forth as you, you know, get to be a sort of reasonable sized agency, um, so you recruit people with that sort of those sorts of basics, but you hold on to them by making the other stuff better and stronger and, and asking them as well, you know, what do they want from an agency? What do they want from, uh, an employer? And then taking that into account. Excellent. Lots of great advice there. Thank you very much. And I guess just to finish up now, we, we have a section that I'm calling the business book bonus section, where we're asking our guests to provide us with a recommendation for the audience of a business book, or, or, you know, it could be any kind of business content to be fair, to make it a little bit easier, uh, that's helped you during your business career and that you would recommend to the audience. So slightly on the spot here, but what business book or other content would you like to recommend Richard? I must say, I'm not a major business book advocate. I think some of them are, like, just sort of gurus making their own money and good luck to them, I wish them well. But that doesn't mean to say, now that said, there's some also some really good advice out there and, you know, you need to just choose carefully. And probably the one that I will remember the most is probably, is one called Thinking Fast and Slow. Um, which... Came out ten or so years back, um, and, uh, it, I remember it because there's a chunk in it about, uh, it's just different ways, it talks about different ways in which your brain works. And I like that psychology and I like, I like things like that and thinking about how people interpret information. And that to me is really interesting, has always been interesting. Talks about how you can frame information in different ways to get different results. And, and I love that sort of thing and I think I use that. That, that type of thinking a lot in my work all day, every day. Um, it's not to say that I don't turn to other sources as well. I do, you know, I probably read the EFT and, uh, and, um, yeah, other media on a regular basis as well and get lots of input from them too. But, um, yeah, um, from a, from a business book perspective, that's probably where I'd go to. Excellent. Well, we'll put a link to that in the show notes. Thank you very much, Richard. Is there anything that you would, uh, you would like to say before we wrap up? No, aside from thank you for inviting me. Uh, look, you know, from my perspective, you know, as I said at the start, you can't be a good chief executive without having a good understanding of the numbers. Don't have to be somebody who's looking at numbers all day every day But you need to have a broad understanding of them and can interpret them when when things are shown to you and put in front of you and so I think any good CEO would be taking an active interest in it, even if they're not, you know, um, going to be, uh, uh, the next, uh, you know, accountant, nor should they be. But, but, uh, you know, it's just understanding... what you're being asked to look at, taking an active interest in it, because that will help you run the business as well. Absolutely. Well, thank you very much, Richard, for joining me on the Fractional CFO Show. Really appreciate your insight, your perspective, and your time. Thank you. Thanks very much, Adam. Thank you. The Fractional CFO Show is a production from ACC Finance Solutions. If you like this episode, Please subscribe, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, or rate us on Spotify.