We recently connected with Casey Haynes and have shared our conversation below.
Casey, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Would you say you are more focused on growing revenue or cutting costs? We’d love to hear how you think about these two critical drivers.
As a fractional CFO with a wide array of exposure to different industries and business types, I can confidently say that it is always more important to grow revenue rather than focus on cutting costs. You will never fix or grow a business by focusing on cutting costs.
Firstly, let me preface this position with highlighting the importance of controlling costs, being operationally efficient, and being resourceful or “scrappy” as values and goals of any company. My perspectives and advice focuses on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Fortune 500 companies operating at mass scale follow different rules of success than private industry SMEs.
I will say I’ve seen plenty of poor decisions involving over-spending or inefficient spending. Some founders balloon up their spend way too early without considering their runway. Analyzing cost creep and spend impact related to operational efficiency and performance should be a routine exercise.
Having said that, cutting costs will never save a business or create growth. You can always cut costs, even if it’s painful or creates constraint on the business. You cannot always generate revenue. For that reason this is what is a true sign to a company’s ability to grow, rebound, stay alive, or generally operate sustainably.
As a matter of fact, this is how I’ve seen many clients and potential clients come to me. They’re over-spending, they have cash flow problems, and they think they need a CFO to manage their financial operations better. Then often I get integrated and quickly find it’s not their financial operations that is the problem and they’re operating as lean as possible, but it’s the fact they’re lacking marketing and sales effectiveness or they never had it to begin with. They actually needed a CMO or CRO or an actual produce/service that the market wants.
Many businesses might have a cool product or idea, but have not figured out their revenue growth strategies yet. It worries me to see businesses raising money and bringing on investors before they’ve learned how to properly market and sell their product or business. The stakes are higher, from cash burn to investor relations, when you have people’s money invested. Are you willing to gamble on the idea you can figure out how to sell your product AFTER taking someone’s money?
At the end of the day, generating revenue isn’t as easy or simple as cutting costs. For this reason, growing revenue will always carry more weight than cutting costs.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am a sustainable growth catalyst and trusted financial adviser to the most ambitious entrepreneurs. I am the founder and CEO of Compass CPA, PC.
I am a detail-oriented financial expert and advisor, with a keen sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. I’ve built a career based on a passion for identifying new opportunities, thinking outside of the box, creating system and process efficiencies, utilizing best-in-class technologies and providing key performance analysis, creating a vast and valuable network of professional solution providers and trusted business allies, and developing strategies to help make smart business decisions that lead to sustainable growth.
As a CFO who is a jack-of-all trades, I am an achievement leader who is a financial guru and agent of change. I help founders, executives, and business owners of all business types take their companies to new levels through detailed and complex modeling, scenario and growth strategy planning, process development, and networking. With my financial expertise, I help companies raise seed and series capital funding rounds, create business plans and financial models, overcome stagnancy, and/or generally strengthen their financial functions.
Not only am I a CFO, but I am an advanced tax planner and advisor. I’ve helped wealthy individuals save millions in a single year and I help everyday entrepreneurs and individuals optimize their tax situation. As a CPA and CFO, I cover a lot of ground, allowing me to provide a comprehensive and holistic solution for all things finance, accounting and tax to my clientele.
I’ve earned my MBA and BS in professional accounting from West Virginia University. I am currently located in Bend, Oregon, where I lead Compass CPA. I am an active CPA in the state of California and Oregon.
My goal is to forever grow. I actively pursue my health and happiness through music, traveling, camping/hiking, amateur photography, snowboarding, biking, exercising regularly, reading, and maintaining a great social presence with family and friends.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
There are two core books that I have all my employees read or listen to that I believe cover so much ground on working with people and running or being part of a successful operating business entity.
1.) How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I read this so long ago and have come to rely on it’s principles and fundamental ideas. At the end of the day there’s a lot of personalities in business. People react differently in different situations. There are ways to work with people in every situation. If you can bring yourself back to the universal principles of handling people, getting them to like you, finding win/win situations and being a leader without being offensive then you’ll be able to accomplish big things across individual encounters and across teams/organizations. It’s a core lesson in emotional intelligence that applies to your personal life and business life.
2.) Traction by Gino Wickman – Feels a little cliche now to list this but I can’t help but feel there’s no need to spin off what are core fundamentals which books like How to Win Friends & Influence People and Traction both cover. These are universally accepted and applied concepts, ideas and methodologies that can work in many circumstances involving human interaction and the performance in small or large-scale organizations. I do believe that businesses looking to implement EOS should be adaptable to how it can be applied within their organization. I’ve seen people who practice these methods so rigidly actually that it has inverse effects. However, applied adequately for each business the EOS method of operations can produce huge results, unified organization vision, and production issue and problem solving. Every manager should read this book.
Any advice for managing a team?
Once again, this might sound cliche but it’s true. Have fun! People perform the best when they like what they’re doing and even having fun. Get the right people in the right seats and give them work that stimulates them, challenges them, but also is fun for them to do. Yes, not everything is all fun and games but the more it can the more you can accomplish. Isn’t it fun when you’re good at something? If you get people into the right seats that bring out their strengths, they’ll flourish and have fun doing so.
Treat people with respect and bring good energy to the table. Be a problem solver, don’t just identify problems. Give people your attention and the time they need to be successful. Investing in people pays back dividends in a growing business because that business if typically only as good as the people are in it. Happy people produce more energy which produce more results and progress. I want everyone on the team to feel they are important and empowered to take ownership of their respective domains within the business while always presenting people with opportunities to grow.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://compasscpa.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/case_eyesoftheworld/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/compasscpa
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseyhaynessf/
Image Credits
n/a