Q: What is Mentoring?
A: Mentoring means guidance to aspiring as well as existing entrepreneurs to progress in their business and life by experienced and qualified professionals who also shares their knowledge and experiences . Mostly the entrepreneurs come from non-business background and those who come from business family background both face challenges of growing their businesses due to their mindset barriers, increasing competition, lack of experienced and highly qualified professionals etc. This creates extremely high risk of poor / delayed decisions and risk to manage the execution of decisions. Mentors train or advise you to handle these two risks.
Q: What is CFO services?
A: Chief Financial Officer (CFO) means the person who handles the finances and the stakeholder communication of large companies. After business scales up at very large scale these positions are absolute must but what if the company is not scaled up but aspire for becoming big company. During this process the small companies esp MSMEs need people of experiences who have handled this process of scaling up and have managed finances at all scales from small to very big. Those who had this experience and now want to offer their services to small players to achieve the big scale for example preparing business plan and also to medium and large scale companies to drive several strategic initiatives where they need experienced people on short duration or for specific projects for example implementing ERP, preparing for merger/ exit.
Q: Should I take Mentoring or CFO Services or both?
A: Ideally if you are less than 100 crore revenue Mentoring is more suitable to you, beyond that CFO Services is better option. Our Mentoring service excludes CFO Services which can be picked up as per need basis. With mentoring, the entrepreneur identifies several areas to improve upon. While executing on those areas if entrepreneur has a team that cannot handle it, then the entrepreneur may request for specific CFO Service. For example entrepreneur want to improve on customer acquisition and wish to start CRM system then he can take specific CFO service to implement/ hire/ develop the CRM.
Q: When should I take Mentoring?
A: If you have positive answers to following questions then you are ready to take Mentoring
a. Do you have fire in your belly to grow the business to level that can create great impact?
b. Do you have a mindset to learn from qualified and experienced professionals/ Mentors?
c. Are you ready for Entrepreneur Performance Review (EPR)?
Q: When do I need Mentoring?
a. you have crossed 1000 days and the business is still not ready for scale up
b. you have become a self-employed person where the ownership and management is same and with this set you are not able to scale up
c. you have not grown on top line at more than 8% since last 3 years with stable after tax profit?
d. in your market territory you do not have more than 5% market share or you do not know the market size
e. you have not yet gained ability to retain and or grow the market share i.e. always uncertain about top line
f. you are in age 50-60 and do not have any exit plan
g. you have more working capital challenges than long term financial challenges
h. you have no working capital challenges but you are stuck up in small size for last 2 years
i. above are only for illustration and example , there are so many and cannot be listed.
Q: How much time it takes for Mentoring?
A: It needs minimum 1 hour per month to as high as you need depending on how much fire you have in your belly to reach your goal.
Q: How much does Mentoring Cost?
A: It totally depends on the stage at which you are and the frequency at which you want the service e.g. monthly fortnightly, weekly. Every entrepreneur has different set of challenges. To make it easy we do not charge for the first meeting. To gain maximum from this first meeting please take prior appointment and come with your past 3 yrs (less if new company) and current year financials, your business profile, your business plan if any, CMA data if any. Services Details
Q: How much does CFO Services Cost?
A: It totally depends on specific service and the duration/ frequency at which you want the service e.g. monthly fortnightly, weekly, project based. Every entrepreneur has different set of challenges. To make it easy we do not charge for the first meeting. To gain maximum from this first meeting please take prior appointment and come with your past 3 yrs (less if new company) and current year financials, your business profile, your business plan if any, CMA data if any. Services Details
Q: I want CFO Service but do not understand where to start?
A: The best way is take 3 months CFO Services for diagnosis. Your knowledge about your business is definitely needed. Fact finding and in depth analysis is a part of diagnosis. You should involve relevant people as may be suggested by the CFO service provider in the fact finding and analysis process. Remember that the team also get exposure and sense of belonging to the process. Diagnosis is much beyond financials and numbers. Please read other sections of the site for more clarity.
Q: I am not sure what should I expect from the CFO service provider?
A: The very reason of doing diagnosis is to know and understand what the business need rather than what you want. Diagnosis will focus on prioritizing the challenges.
Q: I have done diagnostic what next?
A: Now you should focus on top 3 to 4 challenges emerged from diagnosis. Understand the resources needed in terms of people, fund, time, regulatory etc. to solve the challenge. Create a strong project management capability (focus on the project without disturbing your routine activities) to ensure full commitment to bring everything in place to solve the challenges and measure implementation progress each day at fixed time. Engage CFO services to conduct such meetings weekly.
Q: So many things are coming up and I am finding it difficult to manage with small team, what should I do?
A: Review your approach in question 3 and prioritize again, take one challenge at a time. This is exactly why CFO services are generally used once a week or fort nightly on regular basis. Nothing wrong in changing priorities as long as you are at least solving one challenge at a time. This is also a phase where you may feel the need of Mentor. If your CFO service provider has rich qualification and experience background also take his help for Mentoring. Now his role will be wider and you should be prepared to delegate some tasks that you and the CFO service provider was handling (by this time reasonable understanding is formed to set the business model right).
Q: I am also facing equally important multiple challenges e.g. I want funding also and I want to expand team also, how should I handle it?
A: These situations indicate gravity and the best thing is to work together with the CFO service provider/ Mentor. Commitment and patience is very important at this stage and focus on business model need to be monitored (review, act, feedback, act, review) as fast as possible.
Q: I just want to expand, my business model is simply not scaling up and margin is squeezing, what should I do?
A: Go back to question 1 and restart from diagnostic. Don't start with bias that everything is right but business is not scaling up. Any bias at this stage will prevent you to think out of the box. In every business periodical diagnosis is must till you have robust team with excellent enterprise performance management system in place.
Q: I am clear, I want to exit, what should I do?
A: Make your business attractive. If you think the buyer can have advantage which is currently your disadvantage, it may work. The best way is to take CFO services to understand the valuation implications, prepare information memorandum, talk to prospective parties, hold meetings etc. as once this process starts you have to set your expectations and that should be reasonable, otherwise the deal will never happen.
Q: I am established player in India, now I want to go global, how can I do it?
A: You will need CFO services to steer this process. This will need preparing business model, financial models, legal issues, international bench marking, possible M & A options in India as well as overseas to match capacity vis a vis market potentials etc. etc.
Q: Our company just does not have properly defined processes and structures, how to do it?
A: Use this as an opportunity to clean up everything. First decide what is the story at top, is ownership and management mixed? if yes resolve the governance issues. Take help of seasoned CFO service provider/ Mentor.
Q: I want to build my Business Intelligence systems/ Scorecard/ MIS, how?
A: Today BI, AI, digital strategy and several other things are buzzwords do not get fancy about it. Chew as much data as you can produce quality information. Do not try to build it on fragile data gathering people and processes structures. Go for CFO service provider also qualified and experienced in IT like Databases, ERP systems, Data Warehouses, Project management certification etc. Remember more than 90% IT projects fail. The best way is to do a feasibility study with CFO service provider.