Talk Like a CFO
Ever walk into a room where everyone works in a different industry than your own? Unfamiliar words fly. Jargon. Acronyms. It’s almost like they’re speaking another language. No matter how smart you are, you might feel like you have no idea what they’re talking about.
It can be intimidating, until you learn that the long scary acronym is just a fancy name for a system you actually know well. Take NPO. In a hospital, that's shorthand for the Latin nil per os — "nothing by mouth." Say it in a hallway and it sounds like a diagnosis. When really all it means is: don't bring the patient breakfast.
And when you’re the one who’s immersed in your own particular specialty, the idiosyncratic way people talk becomes second nature. You live it everyday without thinking about it. It’s like breathing after a while.
Then one day an outsider walks in. And they might as well have walked into a foreign country. The words sound like English, but the phrasing and sentences simply don’t make sense.
This is certainly the case for business owners and their CFOs.
Little secret: you already understand the concepts the finance guys are throwing around. You know it in your bones because you built the business. You just don’t know their lingo.
Fractional CFO Matt
At Doescher Group, we pride ourselves on being “bilingual”. We can translate financial speak for our clients, cutting through the jargon, and getting our clients the understanding they need and the results they desire.
So we thought it would be fun to create a downloadable guide to help you as a business owner better understand your own CFO, controller, or accounting manager. In so many fields of work it’s not uncommon to see simple topics get overcomplicated with hyperspecialized language. It’s almost like a secret society.
The goal of our guide is to start the process of demystification.
It’s also a chance to better understand the role your financial leader is in. The biggest constraint for nearly all businesses is cash, so it’s easy to scapegoat your financial team for always being grumpy and saying “no” all of the time.
But very often they are absorbing a lot of organizational stress, because the rubber meets the road at the bank account level. If that cash balance goes negative, people don’t get paid, vendors stop shipping, and you can be out of business quickly. So sometimes a little sympathy for your CFO can go a long way. This guide will help you step into their shoes for a moment.
Our guide quickly takes you through some of the key topics that CFOs focus on, like cash, profit margins, working capital, and others. It explains what they mean, why they’re important, and includes a fun quote to drive each point home.
We hope you download the guide today and share the link around with your friends.
Don’t be intimidated by unfamiliar words. This guide will make sure you never feel sheepish about walking down to finance. You own the company. That’s your department too.
