New Founders Finance Considerations

In this episode, I’m thrilled to be joined by Chris Lang, the Founder of Flash Partners Limited, a company that provides in-sourced finance functions for small and medium sized companies in the marketing communications industry. 

In this conversation, Chris and I explore what new founders and startups need to consider from a finance perspective and provide some tips and tricks that startups and small businesses need to consider around finance.

🌟 Some of my favourite parts were:

✅ Chris’ mantra that cash is king and how it is the unexpected bill that can often be a company’s downfall;

✅ How running both a 12-week and an annual cash flow forecast will help to manage those short and longer term cash flow bumps in the road;

✅ The signalling that HMRC are making that Corporation Tax will be coming payable more frequently than the current annual payment dates;

✅ How it is the company stage in its life and growth cycle that determines the complexity of a business’s systems, processes and management reporting;

✅ The importance and need for timesheets as soon as you have people employed to work on client work, so you understand what is going into what you are selling 

Business Book Bonus: https://mooreks.co.uk/annual-survey/

Transcript

Adam (00:04.908)

Okay, great. So today I'm here with Chris Lang, who is founder at Flash Partners Limited, a company that provides in -sourced finance functions for small and medium sized companies in the marketing communications industry. Chris, welcome to the fractional CFO show. How are you?

Chris Lang (00:20.9)

Thanks very much Adam, yes I'm very good thank you, it was a nice sunny day today for once so it's all great.

Adam (00:26.572)

Yes, indeed. Excellent. Good stuff. Good stuff. So today we're going to dive into what new founders and startups need to consider from a finance perspective and hopefully provide some tips and tricks that startups and small businesses should consider around finance. So Chris, to start with, would you mind giving us a bit of an overview of your career so far? How did you end up starting Flash Partners?

Chris Lang (00:50.852)

I started out.

working in industry and trained in industry and marketing communications specifically and actually qualified whilst working for an advertising agency many moons ago. And then not long after that, I was looking for another opportunity and thought I spotted a gap in the market in terms of people being able to access skill sets. There were plenty of part -time finance directors around who were really good at what they do.

but.

generally don't want to get their hands too dirty. I have to say that hand on heart because that's me these days. And a lot of really good bookkeepers around are really good at ending up the historic numbers and making sure that returns are done. But for a lot of new companies, new and growing companies, the important part is in between those two where management information is put together but more especially budgeting, forecasting, cash flow, management forecasting is done. And that's generally done by financial controllers. And at the time, and I think it's probably

probably still true at the moment. Not that many people are willing to do that on a part time or what we now seem to call fractional basis. So I decided I would start a company that provided that service. Realized there was a bit of a trick to it and started to employ people and spread myself further and expand from there.

Adam (02:12.492)

Excellent, excellent, very good, very good. And it's interesting to hear, you know, you and I have quite similar backgrounds. So it's obviously interesting to have this conversation with someone from a similar perspective. So that's great. Oh, I hope so, I hope so. I guess to start from the beginning and obviously the objective with this conversation today is to talk about and provide some tips and tricks for new founders, new startups and what they need to consider.

Chris Lang (02:23.908)

Yeah, we must be doing something right, Adam.

Adam (02:42.124)

from a finance perspective. So maybe going to the very beginning of the process and setting up the company correctly, it'd be interesting to get your view on sort of what startups need to consider around how they set themselves up at the very beginning.

Chris Lang (02:59.396)

I suppose the first thing is do they want to be a limited company? Are they actually going to be doing something that makes sense to them to be a limited company? Or could they continue just being sole traders? The difference being that being a sole trader means a lot less admin in terms of filings with Companies House and HMRC. You just add up how much you've taken in income and...

anything you've spent business -wise and you put that on your self -assessment form. The flip side is that you are fully liable, the whole point of the limited bit of a limited company is limiting your liability so that your exposure in general is limited to the value of the company in essence. So I suppose that's the first place to start is to think, you know, is that what I'm going to do? If you're going to be employing people then I strongly suggest a limited company is the right way forward. But if you're just

going to be advising and consulting on your own. It may well be that being a sole trader is better, especially not buying much kit. It's less demanding from an admin perspective. And then I suppose once you've made that decision, it's about how you go about making sure you have everything else in order. If you're...

setting up with other people, agreeing who owns what and who does what is obviously a contentious, can be contentious thing. It's really important to get it right from the start. It's a bit of a challenge changing that further down the line. If there was uncertainty, there was another way of going and that's doing a limited liability partnership, which is a slightly different structure. I'm not...

to get into that at some stage, but I'm going to concentrate more on limited companies I think Adam, if that's okay with you. So yeah, so then once you've decided who's going to own what, what percentage ownership there's going to be, I think the next bit is probably the bit that people spend the most time on, and that is trying to decide on a company name. For some reason it's just...

Adam (04:58.348)

Mm -hmm.

Chris Lang (05:17.38)

I mean I suffered from it myself when I started out my own company. I was trying to avoid the obvious things like the Lang & Associates or Chris Lang & Company and all that kind of stuff. It doesn't sound quite right. I landed on Flash accounts as it was previously, mainly because Flash is my family nickname. Realising it was a stupid name for a company, I thought well I'll do that. And then when I thought something better in a month's time, it's not hard to change it. And of course, I haven't in 17 years. So it is often the bit.

that people, especially if people are in the creative sector, spend quite a bit of time mulling over. But just so everybody's aware, it's a filing of a form to change a company name. It's not a massive deal to do it. There's a company resolution and likes, but it's fairly straightforward.

So that's the first bit once you've got the name. It's then about getting the actual company set up. And actually it's a relatively easy process to do online. I have formed quite a few companies over the years and the vast bulk of them I have done through an online portal that I use. The company I use is called Your Company for an information which obviously they're not part of the creative sector with a company name like that. But it's reasonably straight forward.

and they lead you through what you need in order to get the right information. I can give you a quick idea of the kind of information you're going to need, like the full company name, the name of the shareholders, importantly as it appears on the electoral roll, that's a really important thing, the address the company is going to be registered at, and as a little aside, you can get virtual offices. We've got organisations that will allow you to have your company registered at their address. It's quite a popular route.

these days given a lot of people have dispensed with offices. The name address and nationality of the directors and shareholders of the company. The occupation of the directors and if you don't know just put director, it's all company director, it's not that big a deal.

Chris Lang (07:26.18)

And then there's some security items, like the first three letters of the name of the town's birth and mother's maiden name. And often parts of their national insurance number are asked for as ID security, date of birth, and ownership percentage by person. And those are the basic bits that you will need in order to get that part of the process going. So I think I hope that... Sure.

Adam (07:52.044)

It's a quick question or... yeah, yeah, no, that's great and just a quick question in terms of the setup process and the address and the confidentiality of the information that's shared because I know that some people are nervous when they're setting themselves up, they don't want to share their personal addresses. Is there the requirement to share your personal home address or can it all be through a virtual office, even the sort of details around the directors?

Chris Lang (08:22.468)

You can have what's called a service address that is the same as your registered address and that's the way around it. You still do have to give a home address but it was quite a while ago now they changed, they used to appear on the registrar in public records but that's now changed so you can nominate your service address to be the company's registered address. So it does do that, I understand the nervousness around that but that usually gets around that problem.

Adam (08:50.796)

Okay, okay, great. And so we've touched on the sort of the details around setting up the company in terms of financing the company. And, you know, there's obviously the conversation around debt financing and equity financing. Is that something that you've come across and is that something that you advise your clients on?

Chris Lang (09:13.22)

I do occasionally, although I must say in my particular field the barriers to entry in my area is the price of a laptop normally. So it's not a particular challenge often. But I have helped people try and source some kind of finance if they want to grow great guns. I've also known founders to put some of their own money in as a start -up fund. But in essence that is probably a bit of work in capital. A lot of companies will start up

off with a couple of laptops and that will get them going until they start generating a little bit of cash.

Adam (09:50.796)

And then on the equity side, obviously, you obviously have a partnership as the way you've described it. And we're going to talk about limited companies today. But in terms of if you want to go down the route of having multiple shareholders, what are sort of the key considerations there at the setup stage to ensure that you've got equity available to you for options and other sort of distributions down the road?

Chris Lang (10:17.636)

I think one of the biggest watch outs is actually distributions, is actually dividends. It still is slightly more efficient to pay dividends, not much and that won't last for long.

people often get caught out by not quite grasping the fact that a dividend is issued per share, so you can't actually vary the amount you pay people in dividends for each class of share.

It has to be paid out in line with people's ownership. Let's not say there aren't ways around it. In my particular company we have a couple of levels of different shares. You're allowed to issue dividends per class of share. So you can get round out by having different classes of shares. But it is very important to understand the fact that if you're going to go down a route where the shareholders are entitled to different amounts of distributions or dividends,

then have to make sure that's either in line with their percentage ownership or they have a different class of share.

Adam (11:28.044)

Got it, got it. Okay, interesting. And one other thing that I've come across and I'm sure you have as well is with startups and small companies, they're not always aware, you know, it might be the first time that the owner has been responsible for some of the compliance issues, you know, in terms of, you know, submission dates with Companies House and HMRC. What...

What do you advise for your clients in terms of keeping an eye on ensuring that they hit those dates, that they're aware of when their company accounts need to be submitted or when their tax returns need to be done?

Chris Lang (12:02.628)

I very much suggest diorizing those as soon as you possibly can, making sure you've looked into them all. HMRC will give you quite a lot of nudges in terms of what you have to do. Sometimes companies' house don't do quite as much, just for everybody's sake.

Adam (12:13.868)

Mm -hmm.

Chris Lang (12:21.476)

company's house you need to file a set of annual accounts for the company nine months and a day after the end of the company's financial year. But you also have to do an annual confirmation statement which confirms the owners and shareholders of the company using roundabout the anniversary date of the company's formation.

So those are the ones that are a bit challenging. Fact returns are quarterly and when you register for VAT you can nominate which quarters you want to report on. PAIE is monthly.

has to be done pretty much as soon as you pay anybody, you have to report that electronically to HMRC. Then corporation taxes, the payment is due nine months a day after the year end and the tax return is due 12 months after the end of the accounting date, accounting period, financial year end.

Adam (13:19.788)

Great, okay, very comprehensive, thank you. And I guess, yeah, I was gonna say that was very impressive. That was unprompted as well, very good. I wanted to change tack slightly and talk about specifically the services that you and your firm offer to startups and small businesses, because not everyone listening will be familiar with outsourced finance and the benefits. So, yeah, what...

Chris Lang (13:23.044)

I'm glad I remembered them all Adam.

Adam (13:46.924)

to start with, what are some specific examples of the most common finance functions that are commonly outsourced and what are the benefits of those?

Chris Lang (13:57.508)

Well, I think, aside from these normal statutory things of doing payrolls and VAT returns and the likes, I think it's more about making sure that there's really good, solid financial information available. And in order to get that, there has to be a process behind it in terms of...

gathering the data in essence, getting the invoices from the suppliers and as often as not putting them onto a system, making sure the sales invoices have gone out, making sure there's a process for making sure that the money from sales invoices actually comes in, making sure suppliers get paid. All of those functions are massively important to getting to a point where you have solid, good financial information on a regular basis, normally on a monthly basis.

to make sure there's information available to actually run the company. I think that the main aim of our company is to make sure that people know exactly where they are, but more importantly, have some idea of where they're going. And that is the crucial thing of having some kind of forecast information, hopefully a planning tool that can be used in order to help people understand the impact of decisions on their year -end profitability.

And more importantly, at an early stage, is cash flow management and planning as well. The worst thing you can do is run out of cash. It kills the company quicker than not making profits. And it's often from unexpected bills. Some of your bills are going to be annual, like your corporation tax bill. Knowing exactly when that's going to be paid, really important. But also knowing if it's going to be an issue, the more...

notice you have of that the easier it is to solve. It's really difficult solving that if it's a last minute, go and run out of cash next week thing. But if there's a few months down the line it gives you an opportunity to research all the options and as often as not as long as there's profitability somewhere on the horizon there's a way of getting through little bumps in the road. But the more foresight you have of that the easier that is.

Adam (16:09.004)

Okay, great. A couple of questions on that. In terms of the planning and the cash flow planning, do you recommend a cycle that the business should process from the outset? So do you typically run with a 12 -week cash flow forecast from the off or is it monthly? Is it something that comes down the road? Could you tell us a little bit more about how you ensure that those businesses don't run out of cash?

Chris Lang (16:36.996)

I would prefer starting with a 12 weekly forecast. I have to admit, Adam, unfortunately, a lot of the companies I come across have already started out and are already a little bit down the road and there's already a need for some urgent action. So as often as not, you're working on at least a weekly cash flow just because it will take that level of management.

Having both of them can also be useful as well. Having a 12 -week e -cash flow means you can be really tight in terms of understanding where your cash is going to be on a near daily basis. But having a monthly cash flow that's spread over 6 to 12 months helps you with avoiding those bumps that come along every quarter or year. So you've got that in your pocket as well, just so you can manage the big outflows as well.

Adam (17:25.708)

Yeah, and you mentioned there about making sure that you've got your transactional information on a system. And I presume, I know I do, I've come across companies that don't always have a system. They're often using a variety of, you know, sources of information and then putting them onto a spreadsheet or sometimes not even that. So is there a process that you go by?

where at the beginning of your engagement with them that you get their information onto a common system or platform that you use or do you offer some flexibility and continue down the route that they've gone down if it's workable?

Chris Lang (18:05.22)

We use a few different systems. We're happy to work with whatever, if it's a known software system. There are ones and zeros that's not particularly challenging as long as they're pretty well put together. The worst thing is not having one. That's the real challenge is not having a system. There are now quite a lot of requirements from HR and MRC especially and going to be increasingly so where there is a requirement.

for information to be reported digitally, namely at the moment VATA and PAYE, there's a requirement for those things to be reported and therefore having a system that does both of those things is important, or two, we use a different payroll software. But corporation tax is coming and we've been warned quite loudly that it is coming and it's going to mean that we're going to...

stop doing annual payments of corporation tax and have more regular payments. It's not far away. I suspect two or three, maybe four years down the line we'll be doing that as well.

Adam (19:13.036)

Okay, interesting. I'm sure some of our listeners will not have heard that, so that's good to give full warning on that.

Chris Lang (19:20.516)

Yeah, it's going to be painful as they all have been, but it's just the direction of travel.

Adam (19:27.468)

Yeah, now I think you can understand why and it makes sense as well, so but it's good that they give good warning.

One question I have in terms of, because you mentioned some of the services that you offer your clients, but I presume there are services that you don't offer and you partner with. So could you tell me perhaps some of the partners and areas that you partner with to offer associated services? So do you have sort of legal partners or HR partners or people in other business service areas that you will refer business to? And how does that work to provide a sort of end -to -end solution, if you will?

Chris Lang (20:04.388)

Absolutely, it's part of the partners in flash partners is having partner companies. So we have specialist tax advisors, taxes is a specialist subject. You know, much like doctors have specialist brain surgeons and the likes, tax people are not saying they're brain surgeons, but they're a different, they're a different specialism. Corporate financing as well. There's quite a few people like, I would...

assistance in with corporate financing just because they have their fingers on the pulse of that a little bit more readily. Lawyers, yep, got plenty of those. HR. Having a broad network in what I do and I suspect you're the same Adam, is a very important part of the arsenal I think we need to bring as fractional finance people. We're usually...

more towards the first port of call rather than the last port of call and lawyers are needed but not needed quite as often so making sure that you can recommend somebody as and when the need arises is really important. Especially HR with a company starting out there are many HR pitfalls and making sure that you have those covered is really important.

Adam (21:24.396)

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think one of the things that that leads us onto is how you work with companies as they grow because obviously, you know,

everyone knows that you need to, when you're setting up a company, you need X, Y, Z, you know, it's broadly known, but then some of the added value stuff that we do as, as fractional finance people, uh, you know, the, the, the management information you mentioned before isn't always known. And so how do you take your clients on that journey? How do you ensure that as they grow, you're, you're able to, to change their mindsets, I guess, and introduce them to other more sophisticated,

areas of management reporting, management information, say for example, key performance indicators or more detailed management accounting. Could you just give us a bit of an overview of that?

Chris Lang (22:15.684)

It's always an interesting challenge. You don't want to go in with everything at the absolute outset because it does overwhelm people.

a lot. It's important to try and avoid using big fancy words as well. Get people used to what they need to know, what's really helpful to them to know. And as they grow, the need for things like KPIs and lights becomes more necessary, often with a company.

Starting out a lot of it will be done not nicely by feel that you can see more of a company when it's small you can you can understand what people are working on whether they are truly busy or not whether they are being productive and efficient You can see that a lot easier. It's when you start getting to the eight nine ten People that starts becoming more of a challenge and that's the time you need to put a few more systems processes in place and have a few more

processes that give you an indication of the company's well -being and efficiency and productivity and that continues as a company grows.

It's not necessary when you're a four or five person company. I see no point in doing things that are not necessary. That's not useful. But there are definitely times when these things become useful. And also if people here on the Great Vinyl want to see things like KPIs, they'll obviously explain to them and introducing them a few at a time. In the creative world there's about three or four decent KPIs and then there's a lot of other ones.

Chris Lang (23:59.812)

that are actually pretty relevant. And just trying to steer them towards the ones that are really important and try to steer them away from the ones that are actually just a waste of time. Death of days is not, you know, just look at your dentist book and if it's looking messy it's bad. You don't need to know what the death of days are. Collect the cash. It's not going to help you much.

Adam (24:22.732)

There's definitely a benefit of keeping it, what's it, kiss, keep it simple, stupid. I think it's definitely a mantra that most small businesses can live and die by, right?

Chris Lang (24:28.548)

Absolutely.

Chris Lang (24:33.252)

Absolutely, and I've seen people being able to do that very well and I've seen people not be able to do that at all. It can be the interesting challenge.

Adam (24:44.78)

Absolutely, absolutely. And I'll be interested in your view of how you take them on that journey.

vis -a -vis the actual frequency that you're engaging with them? Because obviously, you know, yourself like me, we don't, we're not full -time employees. We're not in there all the time. And, you know, when you're a full -time employee, the owner or the CEO can come and knock on your door and come and have a chat with you and get some insight. How do you manage that rhythm of engagement with the owner, with the CEO to ensure that you're able to educate them on the KPIs, to take them on that journey, to get them visibility on the finance information without

needing to be in the room. What's that frequency and how does it work for you?

Chris Lang (25:26.724)

because it's often...

a matter of having regular contacts as often as not with myself. It's surrounding the release of management information, which is usually on a monthly basis. And that's usually my catalyst to get a meeting in the diary to go and talk to people. For others in my team, that'll be weekly. They'll be doing cash flow meetings and billing meetings on a weekly basis and payment runs and the likes. It's very important for me.

us that there is an efficient flow of these things rather than payments made all left right and centre and the like. It's also not a very efficient way to run a finance department if I'm totally honest. In general it doesn't matter whether it's fractional or not. So it's generally around that and that then gives you a flow. It's not to say that people can't contact me as and when and I'm always going to pick up the phone if somebody calls but...

That is how it works and then you fill in the gaps as when needed.

I think also the companies I work with do understand the fact that I also work with other companies. They are aware and they do understand that there are pools on my time and if I'm not getting back to them it means I'm sat in a three hour board meeting and there's a bit of a challenge trying to deal with too many queries in the middle of one of those. But I think generally trying to make sure that they understand the need for a regular flow of information.

Adam (26:37.612)

Mm -hmm.

Chris Lang (27:00.964)

getting him in that habit of, right, it was this time of the month so it's time for us to sit down and have a chat about how things are going.

Adam (27:08.652)

Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of the, as you say, creative businesses are quite, quite specific and unique, not the most complex, but they do have complexities. And I'm thinking particularly around particular, you know, clients where they're working on projects that might be sucking out time from the team. And how do you ensure that, you know, particularly at the beginning of a company's life, where they're wanting to bend over backwards for clients and the CEO or the owner.

might be encouraging that. How do you ensure that time isn't wasted? Are there any KPIs or reports that you try and get in front of the board or the owners earlier rather than later to highlight that?

Chris Lang (27:50.308)

Yeah, it's really important that these companies sometimes feel that they don't want to start off by doing things like time sheets. Which is fine when it's just you and a business partner, that's understandable. But the moment you have other people working on it and you're paying salary for those people and you're trying to get money in to cover those salaries, then unfortunately there is a requirement for it. It is.

in our company are selling time. So not understanding what time is going into what you're selling is always going to make a challenge. So I think making sure you have systems in place to monitor that time and report back on it is really important and especially making sure that is definitely linked to what you're charging the client, which is the bit that occasionally gets a little bit lost. It's fine saying, right, you've got two days to do this bit of work, but if what you've got in the budget is

half a day, then it's not. I see this often with, more so with design companies, where there isn't necessarily a link. At the amount of time you're briefing somebody to do something, and the amount of time you're actually going to charge a client for it. So I think I do try and encourage an understanding of that connection, and reach me early on to try and make sure that there is a grasp of the fact that you can end up, you know...

spend a lot of time designers.[27.14 – 27.44] Designers by their nature are perfectionists and they will work on a design and keep working it until somebody says stop and it's just their nature. So I think you know trying to make sure that there is an understanding there is a stop point and after that point they're not actually creating any value. The client doesn't value it anymore and the client definitely isn't going to pay for it so it is literally just spending time that doesn't.

add any value other than to the designers mind of a beautiful thing.

Adam (29:48.076)

Yeah, indeed, it brings back memories, that certainly does. Oh, and it actually takes me on quite nicely to my next question, which is about...

because you've obviously got a huge amount of expertise and knowledge in your area and particularly in creative and working with creative companies. What do you feel is the necessity of having that expertise and specialist knowledge as a finance professional with your clients versus working with clients from other sectors or from other industries? I know your area of expertise is that, but do you look outside of that and how do you sort of weigh up that equation?

Chris Lang (30:26.148)

I think it is important as you progress in your own career to have some kind of specialist knowledge. I think that it is really important. Rather than trying to be a generalist, I think you can add a lot more value by being a slightly more specialist and you can do it.

often with relative ease compared to somebody who doesn't have that experience. I'll give you an example of an advertising agency I turned up at, I think about seven years ago. They had a very, very expensive ex -PWC person coming in. They were losing a fortune. When I turned up, they'd lost a million pounds in the eight months to the year to date. And they didn't really have a million pounds to lose. And they were trying desperately to work out what in their bank account was their money and what in their bank account wasn't their money.

Adam (30:50.188)

Mm -hmm.

Chris Lang (31:17.796)

This chap had gone through a process of literally trying to unpick every transaction in the bank account over a six or eight month period and hadn't gone anywhere and it's no real surprise. Actually the problem was the question was wrong and he didn't have the experience to understand the question was wrong. I pulled off a balance sheet and I said that number at the bottom is yours. There you go, that's your answer, that's your, whatever it is, that's your money. The rest of it is nonsense, putting things apart.

that's the wealth of this company right there. So he didn't quite grasp the fact that that was enough for those people. I could go into the intricacies of it and we all know that, well accountants know that it's not as black and white as that, but in essence that is the supposed wealth of the company. So just having that specialist knowledge, they immediately gave him some...

comfort of the fact that somebody was able to turn around to them and confidently say, you've asked the wrong question and the answer is this, the question is this and this is the answer and it means you're actually okay as long as we can stem the flow of losses, then that immediately struck a chord with them. I'm glad to say I'm still very much working with that company at a very senior level.

Adam (32:31.276)

That's a great anecdote and it brings me on to the next question around length of engagement. You mentioned there that you started that or you went in there seven years ago. And obviously some of the challenges that we face as sort of outsourced finance functions can be that a client grows to a size where they feel the need to bring something in -house or they feel the need to hire a full -time.

employee to manage certain areas. How do you deal with that? Do you face that? Do you find that your clients stay with you and don't outgrow you or do you take them on that journey and help them transition?

Chris Lang (33:08.804)

There's definitely a stage of a company's journey. I've always felt that we are a stage. As often as not Adam, what people do is they go to a traditional high street accountant or somebody that helps with their self -assessment returns and they form the company and they start it up and they start doing the first few VAT returns and the likes until they realise that's not their skill set. And...

There's a gap between when that is a good idea and works and when people need full timers.

And that's the gap that I feel we fill is exactly that gap. So in terms of engagement and length of it, our longest client has been, what, over 10 years? But we've had ones that are shorter and as often as not. There's two reasons why they start becoming clients. That's because they either get too big and do need full timers. And as often as not, it's me that's actually...

same to them, we get them to that stage and we need to be prepared for it or we're helping them to sell themselves in which case quite often the finest partner is the first team out the door.

that happens, which is fine. I knew that right from the start. It's my job and my company to fill those gaps. But you do get to be part of an amazing journey. I'm glad to say that my founding clients were able to start my company in 2006. Two of the three owners of that company are now current clients.

Chris Lang (34:41.604)

and so sort of like 17, 18 years they've come back and say Chris we're starting another venture, can you help us with it?

Adam (34:41.74)

Great, great.

Adam (34:51.532)

That's brilliant and it must be so satisfying to have people come back in that way over such a long period of time.

Chris Lang (34:58.916)

It really is such a nice thing to do and it's a nice story for the team as well and you know this is our direction. We help companies, we help as part of their journeys. The company sold to Publises in 2014, no 2011. They sold to Publises in 2011. So they obviously have their own journeys, you know, beyond that. Being part of that process is something we ought to enjoy.

and know the fact that it will be an end at some point, but we will have helped them on their way.

Adam (35:33.004)

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Just final question before we start to wrap up around cultural fit, because you mentioned there, and there's obviously been a real cultural fit between you and a sort of alignment of values, if you will, between you and those original clients and those repeat clients. How important is that? And do you, I guess, follow on question, do you use that as an assessment yourself when taking on new clients about their cultural fit with you?

Chris Lang (36:02.66)

I think cultural fit is massively important, especially in the industry we're in where it is a people industry. We're not adding up widgets here. It is about people and their livelihoods. So I think it is a...

absolutely happy to admit the fact I haven't always got it right. You know, sometimes it just doesn't work out and you have to be honest and admit it and it's like anything else. You just got to understand the fact that it's not right and do your best to change it in a way that's sort of like calm and measured and correct.

I think you get a feeling when you meet somebody about whether or not there's going to be a fit and I think that informs that initial conversation and the chance of there being another conversation. I think it's a natural filter that comes through that as well. I have probably pitched for ones where I thought I'm not 100 % sure about whether this is going to fit or not. In general, they don't actually end up becoming opportunities. I think it becomes very natural. The flip side of that is...

as often as not you meet somebody that you do actually really get on with and that becomes immediately apparent that you are able to help and contribute and help them in their journey and that is always really great. And of course referrals, there is always referrals, referrals are just my favourite way of doing things, it is the most heartwarming thing when somebody else says go speak to these guys, they are not bad.

Adam (37:35.692)

Yeah, yeah, no, definitely, definitely. That's a great point to finish up on and move on to the final section, which is our business book bonus section. And this is where we ask our guests to provide us with a recommendation for the audience of a business book or to make it easier any business content that has really helped you during your business career and you would recommend to the audience. So Chris, what business book or other content would you like to recommend?

Chris Lang (38:05.444)

My recommendation would be Trade Alliances surveys.

not necessarily a book but having a feel for what is actually going on in the industry and the wider industry is really important. A couple of examples would be the Moore Kingston Smith annual survey which is important, they're really useful. But other ones like the Design Business Association do an annual survey which is great, the Alliance of Independent Agencies.

All of these ones give really important information about things like the salary levels, utilization rates, and charge rates, really important. The charge rate ones are especially important on a specific scale like the Design Business Association. If you're trying to defend against a procurement team trying to, you know...

reduce down your rates, you can say well, not only is this the right rates for us, but also here's a report that comes from the Design Business Association of a survey of their members that says that's what they're charging as well. So therefore, there's your benchmark. And with procurement people, it's all about giving them the answers so they can tick their boxes. That's it. They've done benchmarking. They're happy. So to me, it's more important to keep in touch with those kind of things than a specific book or publication.

Adam (39:31.628)

That's great. And we'll put links to some of those in the show notes. That's really useful. Thank you very much. And is there anything, Chris, that we haven't covered that you'd like to say before we wrap up or where can people find you if not?

Chris Lang (39:44.324)

Well they can find us at our website which is flash -partners .com I'm always happy to have a chat, I'm always willing to. You'll find that I will chat more if you pay me in beer. It's always a useful way of getting to open up a little bit. But I genuinely like helping people, as does the rest of my team. We genuinely enjoy helping people, so we can be of help. Even if it's a half hour chat.

that you just have a specific problem you want to talk about. I've no issues with having that conversation over a coffee or a beer and just helping out and wishing people on their way. And if they want anything more, they can come back and talk about more specifics and a specific agreement going forward from there.

Adam (40:31.18)

Excellent, excellent. Well, good stuff. Well, thank you very much for joining me on the Fractional CFO Show, Chris, and really appreciate your insight, your perspective, and your time. Thank you.

Chris Lang (40:39.588)

Thank you very much, Adam.

Adam (40:43.532)

Okay.