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Key Question:

A:

As we have learned in the past, business owners can keep up to about $3 million in annual revenue in their heads. Meaning, we can understand where our sales are coming from and where are expenses are when we are dealing with $3 million or less.

Q: What was Scott's revenue when he decided to hire a CFO for his operation?

A: He said he was probably at about $8 million in annual sales when he hired a CFO and now admits he should have done it sooner. We business owners tend to have marketing, sales or product development as our background, so we neglect the accounting and financial infrastructure. Perhaps we think of a CFO as a high-paid CPA and that is not at all correct. While most of us depend upon a CPA for accounting systems, a CFO is more engaged in cash management and is an integral part of the visioning team.

Think about it

Is this a "what comes first the chicken or the egg question?" Should you check out the availability of CFOs by the hour in your community? should you hire a CFO now?

Clip from: Country Supply

Ottumwa, Iowa: Meet Scott Mooney, the founder of Country Supply. Scott has over 450,000 customers throughout the USA and in several countries generating over $17 million in annual sales. Since the taping of this episode of the show, Scott sold his company to a global business. He got that unexpected knock on the door and an offer he simply could not refuse.

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Country Supply

Scott Mooney, founder

PO Box 369
Louisiana, Missouri 63353

Visit our web site: http://www.countrysupply.com

Toll Free: 800-637-6721

Business Classification:
Distribution

Year Founded: 1984

Hire a CFO Sooner Than Later

CHRIS: Tell her to go ahead and finalize both sets of financials (Country Supply and TackOptions.com).

HATTIE: You're $17 million in revenues today, right? At what point did you hire a CFO? I mean, were you at $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, $4 million, $5 million?

SCOTT: Full-time on staff, it seems to me like we were in the $8 million range probably.

HATTIE: Yes, you're like five million too late.

CHRIS: They come in bundles of 80 but we need to buy them in inches --

SCOTT: I'd have done it -- should have done it a lot sooner than what we did. But he actually keeps track of projections. We sit down and project each year what the sales are going to be. And he can break it down on a weekly basis, and he does it in advance based on our mail plan of how many catalogs we're going to sell. And he keeps close tabs on that every day.

CHRIS: Did you run out of that yellow slicker?

SCOTT: We keep really close tabs on cash. We keep really close tabs on inventory. We operate with our inventory as close to just in time as you can and still fill orders so you know if there's an inventory issue because of the fact that you ship down to nothing and you'll be out of it for several hours or a day. So that really keeps our inventory really clean.

Key Idea: Hire a CFO Sooner Than Later

Key Question:

Think about it

Clip from: Country Supply

Country Supply

Hire a CFO Sooner Than Later