In this episode of Money Talk with Tiff, Tiffany interviews Byron Wolfe, a CFO, to discover how small business owners can work smarter and not harder. They discuss the impact of hustle culture, the importance of maximizing profit over revenue, and strategies for outsourcing tasks to focus on your strengths.

Byron also shares insights on leveraging research and development tax credits to increase profitability. Tune in for priceless tips on optimizing your business's financial health and freeing up time for what truly matters.

About Our Guest

Byron's gift for translating the complexities of business financial principles with a focus on small businesses into easily understood communication has made him one of the most highly sought financial and business consultants. He is the Founder of CFO•AF, a financial services and business consulting firm specializing in industries ranging from construction to crypto. Byron is Chief Financial Officer for an INC 5000 company and is the fractional CFO of various companies with annual revenues from 3-25 Million. His certification in the Crypto, NFT, and the Metaverse space has led to many projects with DAOs and crypto companies and he is considered one of the first experts in crypto tax strategy. 

Byron’s true passion lies in helping small business owners expand their financial reach and success through various tools like the R&D tax credits, proactive tax plans, creative funding and high contact financial management.

Connect with Byron

Website: https://www.cfoaf.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cfoaf

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_cfoaf/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/byron-a-wolfe-cpa/

Connect with Tiffany

Website: https://moneytalkwitht.com

Facebook: Money Talk With Tiff 

Twitter: @moneytalkwitht 

Instagram: @moneytalkwitht 

LinkedIn: Tiffany Grant 

Timestamps

[05:18] Replace disliked tasks, focus on strengths, delegate.

[08:52] Analyze spending to maximize profitability and productivity.

[11:30] Optimize percentages, maximize profit, increase revenue efficiently.

[15:01] Evaluate marketing spend based on return on investment.

[18:23] Investing in tech can lead to tax benefits.

[20:23] Research and development tax credits reduce taxes.

Key Takeaways

• Work-Life Balance: Reducing workload while being profitable.
• Outsourcing: Delegate tasks to focus on strengths.
• Profit Maximization: Focus on keeping more money.
• Business Efficiency: Getting more accomplished in less time.
• Expense Management: Understanding the impact of spending.
• R&D Tax Credits: Utilizing tax incentives for research.
• Fractional CFO Services: Professional financial guidance for businesses.

Support this Podcast

Copyright 2024 Money Talk With Tiff

You know what it is. That's right. It's time to talk money with your

money nerd and financial coach. Now, tighten those purse

strings and open those ears. It's the money talk with Tiff

podcast. Hey,

everyone. I am super excited because I have Byron

Wolf on the line now. Byron is a CFO, and he's here to

talk to us about how we can work smarter and not

harder in our small businesses. So, hey, Byron, how are you?

I'm great. Thank you for having me. This is exciting. I'm looking forward

to this one, and. I'm looking forward to it, too. Before we hit record,

we were just having a ball. I was like, okay, we need to record

the actual episode, but let's go ahead and hop

right in for the people. Let's talk about how,

because hustle culture is real, and a lot of

times people are like, oh, in order to make your small business

work, you have to work hard. You have to hustle. You have to

work 60 hours, 80 hours, whatever the case may be.

So I want to talk about how we can not work

as hard, but still be more profitable. So what are some tips that

you have for us? Yeah, no, this is a great question. And

as we go into 2024,

AI is just blown up. 23 was the year of AI, right?

And so everybody's finding ways to get more

accomplished. They're using AI, they're doing more.

So the 40 hours work week that we used to

see five years pre Covid, ten years

back, that doesn't exist anymore. The expectation is this,

like 60, 80 hours work week just to keep up with

everybody else, because everybody's using Vas or using AI, they're

using apps to be more productive. And so the

expectation has gotten really high for the amount of work that we

need to put out. And so if we don't start concentrating on

really trying to find real ways of reducing that

workload, we're going to burn ourselves out. So I think that

the best thing you can do is to work smarter, not

harder. If you're trying to outwork your competitor,

you're just going to get exhausted. It's overwhelming.

So what I mean by work smarter, not harder, is we got to find

ways to outsource some of the work that we do. We got to find

ways to get more accomplished in a shorter period of

time, and we have to find ways to keep more

money. So one of the things I talk about a lot of the time, and

this is a little bit of a tangent, is that revenue is a brag

and profit is the real scoreboard. So if you're working

your tail off to make a ton of money, but you're not keeping, but like

a tiny, tiny piece of it, that's not going to be

long standing. If you're making a

million dollars in revenue but you're taking home like 50 grand,

you can go get a job and make a lot more money than that

$50,000 that you're keeping. So let's find a way.

It's impressive. You're making a million dollars in revenue. That's a great number. It's

a huge number. I love it. But let's find a way to keep as much

of that money as we can. So instead of 50 grand taken home,

let's focus on increasing that to 100 or 200, right. Let's

get those profit margins up. And so one of the best things we can do

is we need to look at what we are doing internally. What are

you doing in your business, right. And then take those and

divide those into the different tasks. So all of us have things

that we are really, really good at and we love or

we hate. We have things that we're really, really bad at, but we love them

or we hate them. So figure out what you're doing, right.

And then say, okay, I'm operations, I'm finance,

I'm marketing, I'm tech, I'm sales. Like all of these

out, build those out, those are positions. And you may be doing all of those

right now. I hope that you're not, but you may be doing all of those.

A lot of us are. If you're an entrepreneur,

you believe, well, I don't want to put this on everybody, but I know that

going up through this myself, I thought, I'm the best person for

every job in my company, so I'm just going to do it all. Not

sustainable, by the way. So find

the things that you're really good at and you enjoy. Those are

easy. Let's set those aside. We're going to keep doing

those. The things that you really dislike

but you're really good at. You probably need to hold on to

those a little bit longer. Find the things that you're bad at,

that you dislike. That's the first thing we're going to outsource.

Right. So I'm really bad at marketing. It's just not

my arena. I'm not good at it.

I want immediate results kind of guy. And marketing just doesn't work that way.

So I don't like it and I'm not good at it. So that's the

first thing that I'm going to outsource. So we're going to outsource that to the

best person possible, and then we're going to start to divide these things

out so that we have this amazing team that's really

good at the things that they're really good at. And now you can focus

on the things that you're really good at but that you really

love, or even those things that you're really good at but you don't

necessarily love. Those are going to come later. We can replace those later. But let's

get the things that you're bad at and you dislike first. The things that you

are bad at but you like

for the business. Let's go ahead and get those replaced. Because just because

you enjoy it doesn't mean that you need to keep doing something you're bad at.

And then the things that you necessarily are

really good at and you also enjoy that should be what's left over,

because that's how you're going to grow that business and make it exactly

what it is that it needs to be. What you had in mind when you

started the business, you got to get back to those roots of, like, what did

I want to do and how am I going to accomplish that? And that means

dividing some of those tasks out, finding the best team possible.

You can't grow, you can't scale. You're not going to find success all by

yourself. That's extremely rare. And I would argue half of the stories

you hear about these people that do it on their own probably had a massive

team underneath them that they're just not willing to give the credit to. And

it is what it is. So I think that that's huge.

Yes. And I just want to pause right there real quick

because that was crucial for, you know,

as money talk with Tiff was my baby for so long, I

was so scared to hand over some reins because I was like, oh,

my gosh, they're not going to treat my baby right. But once I

did, that was when I experienced the

most growth ever. So I can definitely

vouch for what you're saying. For instance,

I was not consistent with my podcast. Why? Because I didn't

like editing, so it would take me forever to edit. I

didn't enjoy it, but I was like, this is something that has to be done.

I sat there and edited every single episode until, like,

episode 70. And then I was like, you know what, tiffany?

Now is the time. But when I hired an editor, oh, my

gosh, the podcast skyrocketed. I'm able to stay consistent. Not

only that, now I do two episodes a week versus one.

So when you said outsource, I cannot

stress that enough either. Y'all get some people to help

you with some of these things that you do not like, it will make you

grow tremendously. So with that being said, what

other things should we be thinking about as a small business owner? To

work smarter, not harder. Yeah. So let's go into that

revenue versus profit, because I think that that's one of the areas that a lot

of people miss out on. So what I hear a lot, we'll talk

to businesses, and they say, I'm just not making enough money. And then,

okay, well, what are you doing to increase that? What are you currently doing that

we can work on? Well, we're out there. We're making more sales.

We're spending this money on marketing to bring more people in. And I'll tell

them, I'm like, okay, well, that sounds like revenue. Those are the things you do

to get more revenue in. What are you doing to increase your

profitability? And then there's usually crickets, and they're like,

well, they'll come back to revenue or something.

I'm like, no, specifically, what are we doing for profit?

We make sure that people don't spend too much money on their company

cards. Okay. I mean, that's good, right? It's very generic,

but what else are we doing? So we got to look at the in between.

So we know revenue is the money that comes in. We know profit is

the money that we get to keep before taxes. And we'll get into that,

too. But in between those two is your expenses. Like, what are

you doing in between? What are you spending that money on? And everybody

hates the word budget. They hate the budget. I agree. I'm

not a big fan of the budget, but I do think that you need to

look at the budget. You need to look at what you're spending so

that you can maximize that profitability. Like,

what's your return on the things that you're spending? And a lot of people

don't really think about that when I say, hey, what do you spend on

office expenses? What are you spending on pens, paper, blah, blah, blah, blah?

Oh, well, we tell them they can only spend up to this a month, a

week, whatever. Okay, cool. What's that based off of? What's your Roi

on that? If they spend $1,000 a week on office

supplies, how much more profit? How much more revenue does

that generate? I don't know. It's papers and pens. Well, you should

know exactly what is going on within your company. If you're spending a

dollar within your company, it needs to result in something more

productivity, more profitability, more revenue,

more efficient systems, like everything should have a purpose.

So you look at the big things and then I

like percentages because I don't like dollars, I like

percentages. So when I look at it, and again, I admitted I'm horrible

at marketing and I'm just not good at it, but I know it needs to

exist. So for me, looking at the dollars that I

spend would be frustrating because I don't know where they're going.

That's not something I'm really good at. But if I look at it as a

percentage, and I've set my mind frame right, I've

looked at it, my mindset is, okay, I get it. I have to spend

10% of my revenue in marketing if I'm going to continue to grow this

thing. And that's where we have found that's the maximum capacity

at 10%. It's the maximum return on the dollars.

If we spend a little more, we can make a little bit more money, but

our return is less. If we spend less, we pull in less revenue, not

as productive. We can maximize it out. So 10%, easy. This is

how many revenue dollars are coming in. 10% of it's going to be spent in

marketing. I'm good to go. It doesn't bother me, the monetary, because

I know I've worked out the key performance indicator for

that. The metric, so as you will, is

10%. So now I can say 10% has to go to marketing

and this can be as low as 1%. There's big companies out

there and they're spending 1% on marketing. And that's where they found that that's

the maximum result of that. And you might

say, well, 1% is nothing. I'm talking these are

1020 $30 million revenue companies that

don't really need marketing necessarily. Most of their marketing

goes to recruitment or brand awareness, not necessarily

bringing in customers. So they're like construction companies or excavation

or something along those lines. So if you know what these percentages

are, now we're looking at our percentages and we're just trying to keep

those in the ranges that they need to be so that the end of the

story, at the end of the PNL, that profit number has

been maximized. So if you're making that same million

dollars in revenue and you're only making

50,000 if you can adjust these numbers in the middle, and

now you're making 100,000, I say that's way

easier to double the money that you take home, double your profitability,

than it is to go from $1 million to $2

million, which, if you continue the way that you've been working,

that's what you would need to do to take home $100,000

versus $50,000. So to me, way

smarter. Let's look at what we're spending and let's maximize

our profitability. First, I'm not saying never increase your

revenue, but when your profit is maximized and you're operating at peak

efficiency now, every dollar you spend to increase your

revenue is going to result in that many more dollars that you get to

keep in that profitability. Gotcha. Gotcha. So

let's pause here for a minute, because first you said, p l

just want to let the audience know that's a profit and loss statement.

So that shows what your profit is, what your losses are. It gives

you a number at the bottom. Okay, so I just want to clear that up.

And then also, how do we back into these

percentages? So if people are listening and they're like, okay, I get it, use

percentages instead of dollars. But where are these percentages

coming from? How do I calculate what percentage would work best for my

business? Yeah, no, 100%. And I think

that you have to do some industry research first, find out kind

of where the industry is, what makes sense for that

industry, and then you have to look at your own numbers. And

so put it on an excel. If you don't have, like, quickbooks

or zero or netsuite or any of the other ones, like whatever your

accounting system is, you can always download it into Excel. Or if you're working

in Excel, you can just do it there. So you're going to take the dollars

that you spend and you're going to divide it by your total revenue, and

that's going to give you your percentage of what you're spending in total

revenue. And then those are the percentages we need to go on.

And so I always tell people, you can't change a lot

of things and know what the impact is. Right. So you need to change one

thing at a time to find out how it affects your

business. So if you want to know, hey, if I

increase this or decrease this or whatever's going

on in your expenses, do it one at a time because you need to know

what the actual effect is. So let's stick with marketing.

If we increase our marketing spend, then we

know what the revenue impact is on that particular

item because we're doing everything else the same. So if we just increase our

marketing, then we know, okay, I doubled my marketing

spend. So realistically I should be

doubling my revenue, so to speak. Right. And that doesn't always work that way. But

let's just say that that's what it is. And so we double our marketing. We're

looking for a double of our revenue. Well, if we don't see a Double, let's

say we only see one and a half times. Okay, well, then

maybe above this particular level, we've

maxed out the increase of what we can process,

what we can do. If you've doubled your marketing and now your sales team

isn't able to close as many leads because you don't have the capacity. If

you're selling a product, you don't have the product to sell. If you're selling a

service, you don't have the labor to meet that demand, then

you've spent too much in marketing right now and you need to increase

the staff or you've got to make your pipeline better so that you

have more product to sell. Right. But we know what the results

are because we see the increase in demand. If we decrease that

marketing, then it should be dollar for dollar, really with the

revenue. If we don't, then, okay, well, now we don't need to spend

as much money because we decreased our marketing spend

by 25%. But we only saw a small,

maybe 5% drop in our revenue. Well, what's

the dollars? What's our return on it? If we know for every dollar we

spend in marketing, we're bringing in an extra $10 in

revenue, but our profit margin is 10%

so that every dollar we add in

marketing, it creates that much more work.

But we're OnLy getting a one dollars return.

Well, that doesn't RealLy make a lot of sense. You don't want to work harder

to literally have the exact same return. I spent a dollar AnD

I made a dollar. That's a bad mix. Like, I don't want to do extra

work to break even. If I spend a dollar, I want to be able to

keep $2. Making an extra ten doesn't really

help us if we're going to spend nine of that $10

and we're still back to the same dollar we started with, I don't want to

work harder for the same money. I want to work harder to make more money.

And so I want to see that marketing spend be a return

on the profit, not on the revenue. I want to see a return in the

profit realm that exceeds what I spend. I want to spend

a dollar. I want to make $2 or $3 or $5, right? I don't want

to make the same dollar. That DOEsn't make any sense. You're not going to

get ahead doing that. So that's really what I'm talking about is

looking at those percentages, affecting them one at a time, affect your

marketing spend, see what happens, affect your labor. If you're bringing in more

people, how does that affect the revenue? How does it affect the profitability?

If I'm going to change out my product, I'm going to add a new product

line and we need to look at what that product is doing.

If that product is popular and it's outselling other products, that's

amazing. Like, okay, now we need to focus more attention on that

particular product because that product has a higher profit margin. And

maybe you sell a lot more of another product, but the profit

margin is horrible. You sell

10,000 of these products to make

$10,000, but I can sell 1000 of these other

products and I make 20,000. I want to sell the thousand. I want to

make more money with less work. And that's what I'm talking about when I talk

about smarter, not harder. Yes. And I

feel like I'm sitting in the church pews right now

and you know how the pastor is up there and just calling all your cards

and I'm just like, wow, I have a lot of work to do

because I know my technology spend is

up there because that is what I spend on. And

yeah, I just have a lot of sitting down and looking at my numbers and

figuring out these percentages that you're talking about.

So I completely agree and

I do feel called out right now. But it's okay.

Here's the great thing about tech, and I'm going to go super tangent,

so ride with me on this one. So here's the beauty of spending money

like on software development or any of these tech things that are coming into

play when you spend those monies in your business. You

spend the money in your business to create new processes.

If you're experimenting with things and creating

new things that are available to your clients, better ways of serving your clients, your

customers, all that stuff, all that stuff can be

redeemed for research and development tax credits. So when

we're talking about that profit number, there's one more thing underneath that profit,

and that's your profit. After taxes.

So if you make government takes 40k away

from you, then you get to keep 60k. That

stinks. I would much rather

make some tax benefits

and keep as much of that 100k as I can. If instead of

paying 40k in taxes, maybe you pay five k. Well, now you got to keep

ninety five k. And that's way better than sixty k.

So you mean to tell me all these

years of this tech addiction that I have, I could be

writing that off as a tax credit in R and D? And R and D

you all is research and development. So do tell me more about

this r and D tax credit. Yeah, no, I love it.

We all know that we can write off the business expenses

against our revenue and that leaves us the profit at the bottom, which

is good. But that big profit number that you have, hopefully it's big,

right? That profit number that you have, the government comes and they say, hey, I

want 20%, 30%, 40% of that

money. And the government, they're the gang you don't mess with.

If they say they want your money, you pay the money. Not worth writing

them on that. So then you give that money over. And then whatever's left over

is what you get to keep. The beauty of the research and development tax credit.

And there's other tax credits out there. I'm specifically talking about research and development here.

But the research and development, that's a dollar for

dollar reduction of those particular

taxes. And so if you spent however many dollars on

research and development, there's a calculation that has to go in there

to calculate that r and D tax credit. But when you're looking

at that profit number at the bottom and it says, hey, you guys owe us

$40,000, then you come back and you say, hey, well,

we did research and development, and here's our expenses, here's

our structure, here's our tax form that shows that we have

$40,000 in research and development tax credits. And the

government literally takes that as a coupon, so to

speak. And they say, okay, cool. Instead of paying us

$40,000, we're going to accept this tax form that shows you

spent x dollars that resulted in

$40,000 in research and development tax credits. And

so they're going to stamp your taxes paid in

full. And that 100k that you made, that you would have normally given the government

$40,000, you get the little stamp paid in full and you get to

keep all $100,000 that you made,

you get to keep because you offset it with these tax

credits. So you literally increased your profit margin by

40% by paying attention to what you spent

and making sure that you maximize those tax credits, specifically

in this case, in the research and development space. Very

cool. And it sounds like

it's kind of complicated.

It sounds really complicated. But that's

why you're here, and that's why a fractional CFO is important.

So if anybody's listening and they were interested in

finding out more about these r and D tax credits or finding

out more about how they can make more in their business

without working harder, how could they find you? They

can go straight to the website. Our full

disclosure, don't go to TIFF's website before you go to ours

because ours is nowhere near as cool as hers is.

But we do have a website.

I will look at mine first and then maybe go to

TIFF's so you can be like, okay, so that's how you do a website.

We do have one. It's not bad. Just comparison.

We have a website, CFoaf, so chief financial

officer, CFO and then aF. So

cfoaf.com. Or you can find me on all the social

medias. I probably need to post more kitten

and puppy videos that I get some traction because people

don't want to watch me talk about finances as much as they want to watch

puppies. But I get it. I also like to watch puppies.

But on all the social media platforms are probably the easiest way is just to

go to the website and we have a link there. You can set up a

chat with me, somebody on the team. We have some data

on some of these tax credits and some of the things that we talk about

on here. There's a link to. We have some

courses and some stuff on there. But yeah, the website is probably the

easiest, best way to find. Yes, yes.

And guys, I did not pay Byron to say that, so just

FYI. But if you didn't catch all of that, I'll

make sure to have everything in the show notes for you because this is some

good information. I plan on digging in because you all know I

have a tech addiction and now I can fully fund

it. But thank you so much,

Byron, for coming on the show today, and I appreciate all the

gems that you dropped for me and my audience, and I hope you have a

wonderful rest of your day. Thank you so much for having me. I had a

blast. Bye. Thank

you for listening, joining and being a part of the Money Talk with TIFF podcast

this week. You can check Tiff out every Thursday for a new Money talk

podcast. But if you just can't wait until next week, you can listen to

previous podcast

episodes@moneytalkwitht.com or

follow TIFF on all social media platforms at

moneytalkwitht. Until next time, spend wise

by spending less than you make a word to the money wise is

always sufficient.