Paul Banks: 0:29

Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of MarketPulse Pros and Pioneers. This afternoon I'm going to bring to you something a little bit different from our previous guests and I'd like to welcome Paul Whiteley to the show. Paul, thanks for coming on.

Paul Whitley: 0:41

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. It's my opportunity to meet new people and share servant leadership to anyone that I

Paul Banks: 0:49

Absolutely, I like it and it helps you've got a really cool name as well, so I like that. You're the second Paul, other than I, that we've had on the show and we all think alike, we've all gotten on well, so it's a good sign. I like other Pauls. For those of you who were watching along at home, if you've not met Paul before, he's a seasoned Chief Financial Officer and Transformation Technology Leader, with over 30 years of experience across lots of different industries, from retail to manufacturing and SaaS as well. So as the Managing Director of C Suite Support, Paul specializes in helping businesses achieve exponential growth through strategic, financial and operational planning. And his expertise ranges from CRMs to business development and turnaround strategies. Paul's passionate about mentoring, coaching business leaders on improving processes, reducing expenses and driving profitability. And I think anybody who's listening along or watching along at home, Paul, will immediately see that the experience that you have whilst you're not technically a marketer in job title, you have a wealth of marketing experience behind you. So thank you very much for coming along and offering to share some of that with our audience. So it's a privilege.

Paul Whitley: 2:02

Very much for having me on here. And part of that, the background of one time I after a year working with the company became the CMO and then ultimately general manager and then 18 percent compounded growth per month for 48 months, ultimately growing a 6 million company to 180 million. I learned how to market to a degree. Now I am an expert on marketing. No, but I'm an expert on finding people that know how to market. It's like the old thing, you don't have to know everything. You just need to know where to go get it. So I, I enjoy marketing. And what I got out of all of that is I enjoy working with people. Helping people, helping companies grow more than I like looking at spreadsheets. I go to sleep myself looking at spreadsheets, much less talking about them.

Paul Banks: 2:48

but I think that's the crux of it, right? And I think that's what separates good marketers from great marketers is Their curiosity about the human condition and why people do the insane things that we sometimes choose to do around behavioral science and neuroscience. And, you can take a scientific angle on it, but the basic fact is anybody who's good at marketing. is capable of understanding people and being curious. And I think that's fair to say that's a key skill for your job as well, right? But I think that's the,

Paul Whitley: 3:18

It absolutely is. And one of the cliche sayings that when I was in retail business, selling products, marketing to the public it was always a joke that, 50 percent of my marketing is working. Unfortunately, I don't know which 50 percent it is. You're out there, you're spending the money, you're trying to get it going and one of the things of the more current data processes and AI and things of that nature. As you're able to start drilling down, finding out where those came from, how they got there. And if you're not using those tools now and you're working with people like yourself to take that AI and dive down to where you're going. You're lost. You don't know where it's coming from. You're in trouble.

Paul Banks: 4:03

that's the need to have that external support at times. And I know there's a lot of business owners who are watching this who would love to be able to afford that external support and they're not quite there yet. So we, the point of the podcast is to offer two things is either support to businesses. who aren't ready for hiring external support in and still DIYing themselves. How can we help support them, give them ideas as to what marketing they could or should be doing, as well as help them decide when's the right time to bring in that external support. And so I guess just to rewind a little bit then, Paul, because we've jumped straight into how you help businesses, but I guess there's a long career there that we've not really touched on. And I don't want you to spend too long on that, but if you could just give us the top line information as to what led you where you are right now?

Paul Whitley: 4:49

The first part of my career was with a 5 billion company. A corporate controller over a thousand locations, finally, after 4 years. And then I went into the private sector for the business I just mentioned. That was a retail company. My wife explained to me that we'd just gone through 60 days of snow, she's going home. Dallas was home. That was my cue that I was either going to commute from Dallas or I was going to change. So I got into the private sector at that point. Got into a business, loved it. We were in the process of taking it public when our business failed due to our lender going under during the SNL days. SNL scandal days back in the 80s. So at that point somebody that, figured I could borrow 87 million, I might be able to lend it. So I went into the lending world, learned how to be a lender, how to be a credit manager. And for 15 years, averaged a little over a hundred million dollars a year in production. And it all came from learning how to build CRM. In 1996, that was a, it wasn't even coined at that point, but a guy with a little company here in Dallas, Built it out in DBase, ultimately into SQL bolted it on to a contact database manager system, and did in 1996 what Salesforce and HardHat does today. It worked. I've used that same process, same program. Installed seven different CRM systems, database administrator and four. So I went back to get my master's in e commerce and internet technology. So I'm a geek, which is unusual for all of that gray hair you see there. And then ultimately the last lending company I was with was a hedge fund. It failed in 2008. I probably don't have to tell you what happened in 2008, but there's about 245, 000 of us out there being riffed by financial services companies. So I pivoted. I became an interim CFO for many of the companies I've loaned money to, from 5 million to 200 million dollar companies. And did that for a while, and then ultimately I ran into a little guy here in Dallas when I started up a network group. I figured, okay, there's a lot of other people out there doing the same thing I'm doing. They're fractional, or they're, they don't know what's fractional because that term hadn't been coined yet. But they're trying to work with small companies and doing consulting and etc. Met with, and he had CFO for 10 companies. I met with him, he's probably about your age, Paul. I looked at him and I've got a cryptic sense of humor and I said, hey, what's the deal that you can't keep a job? And he said, what do you mean? I said, you've been a CFO for 10 companies already? He said, no, I'm a CFO for 10 companies now. Really, how do you do that? I had him speak at my network group, had about 60 people there, and the morning we met, the light bulb flickered, but it didn't turn on. When we met and he went through the process that he did for finding clients, how he went about building his business the light bulb turned on when he got through, I stood up in front of the guys and I said, you didn't hear what he said, if you didn't understand what he said, you need to circle one more time with him because if this is the future of our business, again, Fractional wasn't there. So at any rate, ultimately, very quickly, Fractional became part of the term. And as Fractional just means I work with the company three or four days a month instead of eight hours a day. So that's where it started. I started the network group here in Dallas. We have about 440 members here now. And then last year, I joined C Suite Network and brought my council group into their council group. And now we have a council with 20, 000 members of C Suite Network. Our reach and frequency has gone out and improved and then, as at this point marketing has become more of my focus than doing spreadsheets. I want to grow a business. We have 12 employees. We do this for 50 plus companies. Love it. I, so I'm going to tell you that probably 25 percent of my week. How do you get better? How do you grow? How do you deal with what's coming your way?

Paul Banks: 9:00

It sounds like a good deal of the success that you've had so far, Paul, has been largely down to the ability to build relationships and network, right?

Paul Whitley: 9:08

Absolutely, virtually all of it is. Only last year did I start going outbound, really outbound networking into the LinkedIn arena and Facebook and other things to try start building it. We work with companies to help them get ready for sale. And one of the first things we talked to them about is the Switzerland factor. How much of your company is dependent upon you? If you've got a great company, but all of your client relationships with you, it just devalued 40 to 50%. So if you're the rainmaker, or if you're the relationship person in that company, you just cut the value of your company in half. I the light bulb again turned on, I said, okay, I've been advising companies on how to do this for 15 years. My management team, we've done a little over 300 merger acquisition transactions on the buy, sell, or sell side. And we've advised companies forever, be it a 2 million company, or a 15 million company, or even bigger. Okay. To go along with these things. I'm going, wait a minute, you haven't done that yourself. I started with the outbound marketing, we hired a marketing director to start running it brought in my helpdesk guys, managers and presidents, vice presidents, to help improve the tendency upon me, possibly, just like I've done for lots of other companies. Now, that's why you and I are talking.

Paul Banks: 10:58

I tend to come across two camps of business owners whilst we're doing this podcast and in my general networking. And there are those who firmly and resolutely like I do and like you do stand behind the power of their network and Know how to leverage that network almost into perpetuity, right? There's an old myth that eventually your network will dry up. It will if you don't tend it and cultivate it properly. But, there are ways, means, processes, opportunities to expand that network almost consistently. Over time, and it can, as you've done, drive that. And then the other sort of businesses that I come across are those that have yet to see the fruits of that networking. And it's like going to the gym. They've been a couple of times this year and it wasn't for them, so they're not going to do any more. And therefore it doesn't work because I've never seen any results from it. And it's quite frustrating to see, there's a lot goes into your market mix, but I have a lot to vouch for in the networking and relationship space.

Paul Whitley: 11:56

You hit on a couple of things, and one of my jokes when I'm talking to somebody is when you go into a party, the guy standing against the wall checking to make sure his shoes are tied is your CFO, or your attorney. Neither one of those guys really know how to market themselves. They're introverted. They work with head down trying to get things done. And I am a unicorn CFO. I can't tell you, I started that way, but at running a company and, I had 1200 employees and 800 salespeople and being the sales manager along with that I had to get over myself and just get out there. Not pridefully, just with humility, get out there and say, okay, what do we need to do? How do we need to do it? I can't tell you everything to do right, but you can help me find out what you're doing. Let's get best practices and get me, get these things going. So if a person's going out to network, you're going to have to kiss a lot of frogs and a little cliche to find Prince. So you're going to have to go to your network, back and forth, get on the internet, get on Facebook, get contacts that you can interface with, and that'll talk with you. That's it. And one of the cliches that you and I talked about earlier is, I'm willing to give, and sometimes I'll get, so I'll try to help others somewhere. It's going to come back. So most of my working time right now that's not in marketing is in servant leadership, trying to help guys coming into the business, trying to help companies that are getting started that kind of work. And, I love going to the company in a 30 second sidebar. About three years ago, I went into a company that was for sale. They were running out of money in September, and they figured out that they were going to run out of money in December. We went in, saw they had tools, turned them around, hired people in the company. 15 months, 15 months later, we sold the company for 29 million cash. Somebody that knows what they're doing, working with somebody that's willing to make the changes they need, and turn around a company, or make a company that's good, better. So listen, network, find those people that can help, and guess what? Lead came from a network group, from somebody that says, Hey, I know somebody that might be helpful for you. And I went in there to do the quality of earnings. I wasn't going in as a CFO. I just went in there to help them transact the first 6 million sale, which would have been basically paying off all their debt and no money to the owner, instead of 15 months later, 29 million in cash. And that's a turnaround. And we have lots of stories like that. And there's other CFOs out there like me that do

Paul Banks: 14:30

So I'm going to ask a question then, as a CFO who's got that unique experience of being heavily involved with sales and marketing as well. How, what's your advice for businesses that want to align their financial planning alongside their marketing goals? Cause I know that's one of the big backwards and forwards in most businesses, marketing. Got the handout, we need to go to this expo and you've got this conference. We need some advertising. We need some more money. We need more. And then you as the CFO, it's your job to make sure that you don't run out of runway and everything's going smooth and we stick to the plan. So how do we balance that in a growing business?

Paul Whitley: 15:05

It's going to come down to return on investment. If you don't have the tools to know what worked and what didn't work, you're back to that 50 percent of your money is working and 50 percent is not. And with companies like Javelin and other companies that are out there, they can help you identify those issues. With AI, you can trace down with all the analytics of Google and other things that you can work with, you can find out where they're coming from and what the conversion rate is. It's like more recently with me, with new marketing director, we're getting significant hits on our website. But I'm not getting a conversion rate at the rate that I think is appropriate for it. So guess what? looking at the website. What do we need to do better? And one of the things I will tell you and anybody out there, read a book, because how to build a story. If you haven't read the book, Everybody needs to know that the owner of the company is a hero you want that hero to succeed. But you got to figure out what that hero needs to succeed and then hopefully be the guide that can help him accomplish what he needs to do to succeed. So find your niche. Find what you can do to help a company do it, learn the tools that you can do to get that ROI, because if that company is spending money, that CFO needs to know how productive that money was spent, and if it is, he's going to say, spend more money there, and less money here, let's get the return. Return on investment, it's, everybody knows it or should know it, but if you spend 1, 000, You gotta get 10, 000 back on it, or, some kind of an equation that urge a return.

Paul Banks: 16:50

I guess it's incredibly useful for a CFO to have a good working knowledge of most departments within the business, especially marketing, I would say, what about that situation that comes up where marketing, I want to spend money on something that doesn't deliver tangible results in the near future, but it's a long term strategy that there's lots of lagging indicators for, and yet it's essential for the long term business growth.

Paul Whitley: 17:16

The CFO should be a global leader, so he's in there to look at the future, and if the future of that long term play has substance, has legs, has the ability and definition, then he should support the bulk of it. You should challenge whatever is not having, walk before you run, get in, get your feet wet, get going, and then build from there and build that continuity, but to go out blindly and spend money on something that somebody else did, but you've never done, it goes back to that yeah, I can get 300 hits on my website a month, but if they don't turn into new clients, it's a number, it's not a value, so they've got to turn into clients. That's the same thing with that. And, most companies particularly small companies, and I'm going to say virtually everybody that's watching this podcast, they don't have 10 years to have something come to pass. They have 12 months for it to come to pass, maybe. And many of them have three to four months. They need to turn. So their first effort is, what am I going to get now to survive and thrive over the next 90 days? So that I can repeat and do more the next 90 days. That's where we come in and we're looking and it's not that we know everything we're challenging you and for you to know what you're doing. And if you can't explain what you're doing, I'm not going to approve the invoice.

Paul Banks: 18:42

I guess it's a lot like working with a coach, right? You're not necessarily there to have the answers explained to you. You're there to have somebody ask you the right questions so that you can unlock the answers that you know, or that you can come to.

Paul Whitley: 18:55

That is right. You're absolutely right. And that's one of the things. If you go out on and you can ask these questions. I just happened to put together a package here. Small companies don't have the money for all the expertise they need. So for them to use outsourced resources for marketing, for advertising, branding, accounting operations, things of that nature, it's a known factor, and I went out to get this from somewhere else. I'm going to give you some stats, only because it came in this presentation I did for somebody. With fractional support, this is Baines and McKenzie, and this is not me talking. Revenue growth with fractional support, two to three times faster growth. Profitability, 33 percent higher profitability. Survival rate, 70 80 percent will survive 5 years, whereas 50 percent or less without it. Access to capital, needless to say, virtually every client we have needs money. And with our lending background, mine particularly we have money from seed money, to second round, to going out for bank money, to hard money, to hedge fund money. You need money, and you've got anything that's worthwhile, you can get your money. Scalability, one and a half to two times faster. Customer acquisition, working with you to get 20 to 40 percent increase in acquisition, and 25 percent higher retention. Those are not my words, go out on chatGP and ask those questions. Fractional people, if you can pay 3, 000 instead of 15, 000 to get good advice that you can use in your company, why not? So that, that's the whole fractional part time consulting business is that. But you've got to find the right person. You've got to find somebody who has experience. I attend, all of the guys that I refer into my companies are, they have a business and they have a track record. None of them are single shingles so that we actually get results out of it, and that's why we keep'em on our bench.

Paul Banks: 21:01

So coming back then to the technology that you mentioned at the beginning and you're right. It's interesting to talk to a CFO who has a, an interest in technology, right? Because most CFOs I know are very adverse to technology because it costs them money. So to rewind back to that.

Paul Whitley: 21:17

So,

Paul Banks: 21:18

What's the next big thing, the next big trend that you're really excited to see grow into the marketplace that's really going to help smaller to mid sized businesses grow?

Paul Whitley: 21:26

AI is obviously everywhere, so that's, I'm not saying anything new there. We're incorporating it in our reports. But not just to pull the numbers, but to try to take the trends of those numbers and provide information of this is where we need to go. We just signed a contract with a company that is big data AI, and they just signed a contract with the AICPA. That means they, they're going to have access to do reporting for the AICPA for all of their clients, whichever, CPA sign up for it. And those clients are going to get an enormous amount of review. Analysis, and more importantly, what this means. What do you need to do to change this up, or reduce that down, or whatever? And we literally just signed a contract, we're taking it out to all of our clients. And I, we were the beta test site for another company that about three years ago, helping them build out their analysis platform. And JP Morgan, a year and a half ago, bought it for 20 million. Needless to say, these guys know the members of that team that we worked with. They came to us and said, okay, you help them. We want to build this out. We're technology geeks over here, but at the same time, we're more than concerned about using that technology to help the company get better. And one of the other things that I highly promote is Entrepreneur Operating System. It is the best tool that I've found so far, that is a reasonable cost to get into the underbelly of a company. If they use it, and use it correctly, and we're all integrators, we get in to see what's going on in the company, which tells us what seats are filled correctly, and what seats need to be replaced. What areas are strong and what areas are weak, and that's how we can be a global CFO and not be a controller. A controller brings in the financial statement, drops it on the CEO's desk and says that what's happened, see you next month. CFO come in with it and said, okay, that's what happened. This is what we gotta do to change or improve or do whatever we need to do with that. And that's, in a nutshell, that's the difference between a controller and a global CFO.

Paul Banks: 23:38

I love the analogy there and I love that, I love the idea of what the controller does. That's, it made me laugh. What's one thing that really gets you on your soapbox that businesses do that they should do less of with regards to marketing? What's one thing that just maybe never works, doesn't work or has stopped working and people doing it all the time and it really grinds your gears?

Paul Whitley: 23:59

Spending money with companies that don't have a track record is one of the problems, obviously. But many companies don't know what to do. Do the research to see what's working. It's video, podcasts, things of that nature is probably the strongest communication that is available out there between company and they've got to be short. I'm not going to sit and listen to a 30 minute video unless it's really interesting to me. But I'll sit and listen to a two or three minute one. So we do podcasts with CEOs two to three times a month. And we'll have that video out there. There's total video. All right, done, go. But then we're going to take that thing down into smaller videos to where this is interesting to him. But it's not interesting to her. And if there's a nugget of information in there, how to market, hopefully they'll take that, but I'm finding that, so many companies are out there trying to sell leads, whatever, you've got to filter through that, but you've got to market, let's go back to market. If you don't go out, I would highly in, in courage to work with podcasters, influencers. Those are two of the market leaders right now. You know on LinkedIn, if LinkedIn is probably the best business tool, you don't sell on LinkedIn, you build relationships which come back to where you started this. Your company is going to be built and retained on building those relationships. And that's networking. A lot of that networking has to come in person, but a lot of that networking is introduced by a relationship that you meet on LinkedIn. And then y'all get together, have a conversation, or you get into a group with it, and then you get to meet people of like minded, you have to go out and be involved. You can't sit in your office 40 hours a week and think people are going to come to you. Now you can communicate with people, but ultimately you have to build that relationship with them. It comes down to what this whole podcast is about. Introducing new people to new people, so they can say, Is there something that's worthwhile to me? Do I want to connect with that person? How do I want to deal with that? So that's why when we do podcasts, we turn back around and put it out to all 20, 000 members of C Suite Network. for listening. I put it on LinkedIn and, it's one of those give to get. I'm not asking for their business. I'm trying to see if there's something I can share with them to help them. That builds relationships.

Paul Banks: 26:26

I guess networking, a lot of the time I see people refer to it as something that people either naturally have or don't have. And I, my two cents on this is I'd like to disagree with that. I think it's something that you can learn to do and do well as long as you come to it from the right frame. And it, I was naturally quite shy, quite introverted. I'm a bit of a tech geek. I don't naturally engage in talking to people a lot. I have a small social circle, believe it or not, at home. And over the last five, six years, I've learned. to network. I've learned how to build relationships. I already knew how to build relationships. I've learned how to do them at scale. I've learned how to do them faster. I've learned how to but all of that was driven

Paul Whitley: 27:13

I

Paul Banks: 27:18

nor demands from my side of things. So I think if you're one of those business owners that are out there saying, networker, but I'm not a networker, so I'm just going to carry on doing what I'm doing. You need to call bullshit on your own strategy. Because you can do it, you just don't want to do it. You don't believe in it enough to give it a try. Paul, it's been a fantastic episode. I've loved having you on the show and I realized we could probably go on for we'll have to have you back. I need to have you back on the show in a few months time because we've got so much more ground to cover.

Paul Whitley: 27:47

appreciate it. Totally appreciate it. Thanks for connecting. And just like this connection, people reach out to Paul. He he has good information. He has good connections. This is a relationship factor here.

Paul Banks: 28:01

Thank you very much, Paul. And if people want to reach out to you, how is the best way to contact you?

Paul Whitley: 28:06

The company is called C SuiteSupport, and our website is c suitesupport. My email is pwhitley, my first initial, last name, P W H I T L E Y, at C sweet support. Google the name, it'll come up thanks to our marketing director, we'll come up pretty high in the rankings. If there's something you need, something you want to help your business get better, grow it. Or you just want to ask a question about how to do that. Like I say, probably 25 percent of my time is working with people that I've just been introduced to by somebody that has a question, need, or desire.

Paul Banks: 28:43

Awesome. I love it. And I will add those links into the show notes as well. So people don't have to go looking for them. So scroll down, have a look at the description. It'll be there for you. Don't worry. Thanks for your time, Paul. Really appreciate the conversation and thank you at home for coming along, watching the show or listening to us. I know you will have gotten a ton of information out of this episode, so please don't forget, give us a subscribe, drop a rating on the show. It all helps to get us in front of more people who, like you, just need that bit of support. Thanks. See you next week.

Paul Whitley: 29:13

All right. I just put all the information in chat for whoever reaches out to you. So thank you. And I appreciate your time

Paul Banks: 29:19

Take care. Bye bye.