Finding Financial Solutions

Finding Financial Solutions

SOURCE: GO GILBERT! MAGAZINE DATE: 09/21/2011 Businesses in the spotlight Finding Financial Solutions: Jerry Mills uses his expertise to give corporate-level financial support to small and mid-size businesses By: SUSAN LANIER-GRAHAM In the mid-1980s, Jerry Mills was a manager at the accounting giant Arthur Anderson & Company in Phoenix. He examined the market and found a very real gap in support for mid-market companies. Mills realized that businesses often fall into traps in a time of growth because of the inability to manage cash flow effectively. While that management job falls to the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in larger corporations, budgets don’t usually allow small and mid-sized businesses to fill that role. That’s where Mills knew he could help. In 1987, he launched B2B CFO to offer financial and management solutions to small and medium-sized companies. “Every company needs a CFO, but not every company can afford one. Our model makes it possible,” Mills explains. “Just as a company doesn’t need a full-time attorney, it doesn’t need a full-time CFO. We are there when they need us.” He adds that his company strives to provide customers with a sophisticated service at a cost they can afford. What began out of his home two decades ago now has more than 174 partners across the country, servicing more than 550 clients with combined annual sales totaling $5 billion and employing 30,000 people. For the second year in a row, Inc. magazine has named B2B CFO to the Inc. 500/5000 list of fastest-growing companies in America. “To be awarded this, especially during a recession, is quite an accomplishment,” Mills explains. “It’s also...
Borrowing From Friends And Family: 5 Things You Need To Know

Borrowing From Friends And Family: 5 Things You Need To Know

SOURCE: Huffington Post (Los Angeles,CA) AUDIENCE: 30,067,627 DATE: 09/30/2011 By: Geoff Williams For a lot of startups, money is tough to come by. So it’s not surprising that many fledgling entrepreneurs think about borrowing from the Bank of Mom and Dad or floating their business plans by college buddies. In fact, borrowing money from friends and family is the most common method for raising startup capital. But getting a business loan from your friends and family can’t help but become personal — and there are countless horror stories out there to prove it. That said, there are also plenty of successful entrepreneurial stories that begin with conversations at the Thanksgiving table or the local bar. How can you approach this tricky topic and ensure that your personal relationships do not suffer? Here are five things you need to know. 1. Money will impact your relationships. Not that you haven’t considered that. But it’s worth really thinking this through. If you can’t pay back the money your friends or family loan you, or if you take it and then don’t communicate with them, you could lose your relationship. And while you may be right if you’re thinking, “Mom would never disown me,” or, “Chuck and I have been friends since third grade,” the respect they have for you could take a hit. “Make sure that this loan doesn’t put the family member or friend in a hardship,” urges Lisa Baskfield, a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accounts’ National CPA Financial Literary Commission. “It’s similar to investing in the market. The person loaning the money should be okay...
B2B CFO Ranks in Arizona’s Top 25 Fastest Growing Comapnies

B2B CFO Ranks in Arizona’s Top 25 Fastest Growing Comapnies

B2BCF0 RANK: No. 23 on the fast-growth list FOUNDER AND CEO: Jerry Mills HQ: Phoenix FOUNDED: 1987 EMPLOYEES: 197 partners across 39 states and four full-time employees in Mesa  REVENUE INCREASE, 2009-10: 46.5 percent Q&A with founder Jerry L. Mills How do you maintain fast growth through the years? Maintaining steady, fast growth has been a matter of setting goals and then working diligently to build an infrastructure that supports our team and allows us to achieve our goals. It is also a matter of constant evaluation and making periodic adjustments to the process of the goal achievement. For example, when new technologies become available or when a process can be improved, we need to always adjust our course — first direction, then velocity. How does growth become a part of your business culture? I review my goals weekly. I also leverage the expertise and help from a personal coach who goes over my goals with me and helps me augment and expand them, causing me to stretch and grow at all times. I go over our goal achievements each month with the staff so the team will constantly have our progress in front of them. Making sure everyone knows the direction and the goals is crucial to our success. Looking out 12 months, what is your greatest obstacle to continued growth? I see absolutely no obstacles that will impede our ability to achieve and meet our...
Firms prove even the corner office can be outsourced

Firms prove even the corner office can be outsourced

SOURCE: LONG ISLAND BUSINESS NEWS Firms prove even the corner office can be outsourced CFOs-for-hire fill gaps created by downsizing DATE: 09/12/2011 By: CLAUDE SOLNIK Marc Palker has been the CFO at Mr. Bar-B-Q for a year, but it hasn’t been a fulltime job. Palker, who has worked full time as a CFO for more than a half-dozen firms, is a director of CFO Consulting Partners, which provides interim and part-time chief financial officers who help with financial reporting and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, among other duties. He spends one to 1 Vi days a week at Mr. Bar-B-Q and works at other companies on other days. In what may be outsourcing’s newest trend, CFOs increasingly are working part time or an interim basis for small and midsized companies. “It works well for us because we don’t have the need for a full-time person,” said a spokesman for Mr. Bar-B-Q, an Old Bethpage distributor of barbecue tools. “He does reports, consulting, gives opinions.” While some firms bring in former CFOs to do work accounting firms – as much as traditional CFOs – might do, CFO outsourcers argue they typically provide a different perspective. CFOs typically help with strategy, deals and sometimes with compliance as well as leading financial operations. “Everybody in our firm is a former CFO,” said Alan Tepper, senior managing director at CFO Consulting Partners. “People at accounting firms never in the shoes of CFOs would provably approach the assignment differently.” Downsizing has both fueled demand for interim CFOs and placed many talented CFOs on the market. “A lot of people left the traditional work force by choice or...
A Cash Crisis

A Cash Crisis

SMALL TALK MAY 17, 2010 Colleen DeBaise answers an entrepreneur’s question about when to call it quits Q: I’ve owned a small clothing boutique for three years. I weathered the economy, but now a construction project that will last three months has blocked foot traffic to my business. This is killing my cash flow so much that I had to delay paying my rent and my sales tax. When do I call it a day? —Susan, Burlingame, Calif. A: Fighting for survival is never easy, but keep in mind: If you don’t pay sales tax, the state could shut you down. When that happens, “you lose control—and that’s even more frustrating,” says Jerry L. Mills, founder of B2B CFO Partners LLC, a Phoenix firm that provides part-time chief-financial-officer services to small businesses. So, direct any reserve funds toward the payment of taxes as a first step in getting out of an already bad situation. After that, place a call to your insurance agent, and see if your business owner’s policy includes business- interruption insurance, which generally kicks in when natural or man-made hazards threaten your company. And while it’s best to avoid legal action, you might consider contacting an attorney to see if you have any recourse against the party—be it the city or a next-door neighbor—who’s jackhammering. Given the situation, you might also be able to negotiate a lower rent from your landlord, especially while construction continues. As far as deciding whether to close up shop, you should perform a simple cost-benefit analysis, looking at whether the positives outweigh the negatives if you remain open for six more...