Secrets to superior cash flow management, with Shena Marie White

Discover how Shena Marie White overcame a tax disaster to not only save her concrete repair business but transform it into a thriving enterprise. After a shocking betrayal by her accountant, White faced the daunting task of reconstructing three years of financial records to confront the IRS. Her journey of resilience and determination didn't just stop at survival; it propelled her to a 24% profit margin and inspired a new path as the founder of Your Pocket CFO, where she empowers others to navigate their financial futures with confidence.

Unlock the secrets behind maximizing cash flow in industries notorious for fluctuating costs, like photo printing and construction. White shares her hard-earned insights into the "seven levers of cash" and how manipulating these can significantly enhance a business's financial health. From strategic labor management and supplier negotiations to maintaining strong gross margins, this episode offers a treasure trove of strategies that equip business owners to weather seasonal fluctuations and make smart pricing decisions that focus on unique value rather than competing solely on cost.

As a fractional CFO, White's innovative approach provides small businesses with the strategic financial insights they need without the heavy overhead of a full-time CFO. She dives into the benefits of this model, offering flexible support through group programs and one-on-one guidance. Learn how White's transformative experience has shaped the services at

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Chapters

• 0:02 Entrepreneur Overcomes Tax Disaster to Success
• 5:38 Maximizing Cash Flow in Diverse Industries
• 11:47 Optimizing Cash Flow Strategies for Business
• 15:46 Unlocking Business Value Through Pricing
• 22:42 Maximizing Business Cash Flow Strategy
• 26:13 Discovering Your Pocket CFO

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing, and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:18

Hello again, and welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau, and today we're joined by Shena Marie White, who is with Your Pocket CFO. I don't know if that means you have a CFO in your pocket or what that actually means, but we're going to find out. Hi Sheena, how are you today?

Shena Marie White: 0:37

I'm good and see, I want to be the CFO in your pocket.

Gary Pageau: 0:41

There you go, there you go, but you seem like a normal size person. I'm familiar with Polly Pocket, but you seem to be normal size. How does that work? How did you get to be the pocket CFO? I guess is the question.

Shena Marie White: 0:54

I'm actually not normal size. I'm like I'm closer to Simone Biles size than normal people.

Gary Pageau: 1:01

But can you do?

Shena Marie White: 1:02

backflips of beams is the question oh gosh, no, no, no beam backflips. But um, a long time ago you asked how I got into being your pocket cfo. So a long time ago I used to own and operate a concrete repair, coating and polishing company and about three years into that business I found out while driving down the road listening to the radio that my accountant had embezzled all of my tax money.

Gary Pageau: 1:31

And how did that get on the radio before you knew about it?

Shena Marie White: 1:34

So there was this radio show called the Troubleshooter and they were like hey, if this guy is your accountant, it's a real bad day for you. And I literally almost ran off the road because that guy was my accountant. It's a real bad day for you. And I literally almost ran off the road because that guy was my accountant. He was a well-known person in the area, very highly recommended for new businesses. So we had him since day one.

Gary Pageau: 1:55

And how long had you been in business with this concrete company?

Shena Marie White: 1:59

Three years at the time.

Gary Pageau: 2:00

Okay, so you were just at the point where you're actually starting to make money theoretically theoretically yeah, we weren't really making money yet but we also then.

Shena Marie White: 2:13

I mean then we owed over $70, 000 in taxes to the IRS and a lot of them were our payroll taxes. And what people don't understand is that your payroll taxes are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. So even if we had said to the IRS that we have nothing, we want to go bankrupt, they would, we would still owe it.

Gary Pageau: 2:30

Wow, so that experience. So you swerved back onto the road, safely got to where you were going, I hope right, yeah. What happened after that? I mean, you owed $70,000 in taxes, but what happened?

Shena Marie White: 2:44

Yeah. So then I was like I didn't $70,000 in taxes. But but what happened? Yeah. So then I was like I didn't. You know, then I didn't trust any accounting professionals, right, because this guy who was super highly recommended had stole all my money. And then I'm embroiled in this IRS investigation and and I didn't have any documentation either, because they were our accountants, our bookkeepers, our everything. So I had to start over from scratch with three recreating, three years of records and three years of documents and everything. And in that I just was like you know, I'm a smart girl, I have a degree, I can figure this out. And then it started me on this train of learning other things about my business and the reason why we weren't as profitable as I really wanted us to be, and so then I was able to take that business from 4% profit to 24% profit that same year.

Gary Pageau: 3:31

And actually paying your taxes.

Shena Marie White: 3:33

And pay yes, and paying the taxes.

Gary Pageau: 3:37

So what you're saying is, dodging taxes is not a way to improve your bottom line.

Shena Marie White: 3:43

Decidedly not, Though we weren't really dodging them, I mean we thought, I mean the money was gone. We thought we had paid it. So, yeah, but don't dodge taxes. And you know it's funny I talk to people all the time and they haven't filed their taxes in a really long time and they think that that's like a way of getting around it. But that actually gives the IRS more time to collect from you, not less.

Gary Pageau: 4:06

Right.

Shena Marie White: 4:07

Because of the way the statutes are. And then it's technically not illegal to not pay them. It's frowned upon and they can come lean all your stuff, but it actually is illegal to not file. So even if you have zero intention of paying anytime soon, you really need to file and don't be afraid of it, just file it. Get it afraid of it, just file it, get it out of the way and go on.

Gary Pageau: 4:27

So you ran this concrete business, which sounds fascinating, but that's not the point of our content. So how long did you run that, what happened to it and how did you get into what you're doing now?

Shena Marie White: 4:40

Yeah. So after my whole foray with the IRS and then transforming the business into actually being profitable, I just started helping friends. You know, I had friends that were like, hey, last year you couldn't buy food. Now you're going to the Bahamas. Can you, you know, tell me your secrets? Right, you know how do I go to the Bahamas.

Gary Pageau: 5:00

And so I just started helping friends and then for about five years I just strictly helped friends and helped colleagues, and then I had a mentor and she was like you know, this is what you're meant.

Shena Marie White: 5:23

I was like ha, that's true. So I started taking my first paid clients and now it's all I do is help business owners make more money with their business and then scale it and make even more money and then transfer that into generational wealth through investing.

Gary Pageau: 5:38

You said you had a mentor, but what were the things that you learned? I mean that finance wasn't your background, was it? Or was it?

Shena Marie White: 5:46

Not at all. No.

Gary Pageau: 5:47

I'm just trying to figure out what the secret sauce was, because clearly it wasn't. What you went to school for, your company was completely unrelated to finance Yep, and you had the IRS attacking you. So that doesn't seem to me like that's a recipe to get into financial consulting. I'm not. I'm having trouble connecting the dots there.

Shena Marie White: 6:12

Well, I mean, I figured it all out Right, and a lot of it was you know. So now I talk about it's called the seven levers of cash, where you have your income, so, like the revenue in your business, you have your pricing. So that's a lever. If you raise your prices, you increase your cash. Your close ratios do the same, and then you have your cost of goods sold, your overhead, your inventory, your accounts payable and your accounts receivable. So these seven things you can play with and manipulate in order to change your cash flow and your profitability perspective. And so I learned how to manipulate those and how to manage them, and now I teach others how to do the same thing.

Gary Pageau: 6:56

In our industry, the photo printing, whatever industry, right, there's a lot of moving parts because sometimes it's services, sometimes it's hard goods. If you're in a photo printing business, there's an actual inventory. There there's a finished products, but you got work in progress or you have raw materials you're converting and things like that.

Gary Pageau: 7:18

So what would be, do you think, like the first advice you give to somebody who is, I mean, again, they're not making things that are going to sit in shelves? There probably aren't a lot of accounts payable. You might have some receivables, but you know you're not really. You know you're not. So I'm just trying to figure out how we can address this to our, to my audience.

Shena Marie White: 7:37

Yeah. So I mean I would say the biggest thing for any business is cost of goods management thing for any business is cost of goods management. Okay, the thing that I see more than any other thing is people who are allowing cost creep on their delivered good.

Gary Pageau: 7:53

So just maybe the the paper itself costs more or which is exactly what's happening right now the the cost of photographic paper is going up and, and to your point, a lot of the people are just eating. The cost of photographic paper is going up and, and to your point, a lot of the people are just eating the cost.

Shena Marie White: 8:06

Yes, and that erodes your gross margin. And especially, you know if you're thinking about maybe selling your business at some point. One of the little known targets that a potential buyer looks at is your gross margin. And how are you losing, Are you gaining on that? So are your prices, keeping up with your hard costs of your goods. And I see this all the time. Like I work a lot in construction and I see this all the time in construction Labor rate. You know, spending too much on overtime, overtime is a margin killer.

Shena Marie White: 8:44

If you avoid overtime at all costs. I would rather people hire 10th labor than overtime because it might be somewhat more expensive but it's not going to be 150% of the cost. Really looking at those and seeing if you can negotiate with your supplier, so maybe can you buy more. Or, like one of the things I did with my concrete company is I agreed to buy even in the slow times, so I put money aside to buy product when I knew I didn't need it, because I was going to need it months later and I would house it and so that way I can get a better price year round.

Gary Pageau: 9:23

And concrete doesn't go bad. It's not like produce.

Shena Marie White: 9:27

Yeah, Well, yeah, yeah, I mean so for each industry. You have to think about it.

Gary Pageau: 9:33

Well, I mean photo paper is a lot of the same way right If you store it properly you're not going to have an issue typically.

Shena Marie White: 9:38

Exactly yeah. So can you you know, if there's seasonality, can you buy more? If there's seasonality, can you buy more. Or is there certain times that maybe your supplier is getting ready for a big push and they need help out? So you can say, hey, I'll buy more today to help you out, but you're going to give me a better price on?

Shena Marie White: 9:57

it so just really negotiating with your suppliers, looking at them as partners. A lot of times people look at their suppliers as like the mall, like you walk in and there's a price and you either pay it or you don't. I look at it like a swap meet, like the price is there, but we can always negotiate. It's negotiable.

Gary Pageau: 10:16

Sure, sure, sure. You raise an interesting point about seasonality because, like in the photo print business, it's wildly seasonal and most of the profits come in the fourth quarter. When people are buying, you know, photo gifts, they're buying wall decor, they're buying photo books and all that I mean it's, it's, it really jumps in fourth quarter. A lot of the businesses, don't, you know, maybe aren't profitable quarter by quarter, but they make up for it in the fourth quarter, which is a lot of businesses, to be honest, right Now. You touched on some of the labor that I thought was interesting. Most people would say because it's so busy, I'm going to have my trained people work more, maybe work a little overtime, and you're saying that's not a great idea.

Shena Marie White: 10:58

I mean. So if you have specific things that you're trained people can do, then we have to focus on having maybe them doing only what they can. That can destroy a floor. But I have a temp pushing the slurry, so then I can, instead of having two trained workers on one team, I can have one trained worker, one untrained worker.

Gary Pageau: 11:32

Right.

Shena Marie White: 11:32

The allocation of your humans. Ok, we know we're getting in this busy season. Where are the places we can place temps and then maybe split our full-time train in half, so then we have two shifts or something like that.

Gary Pageau: 11:47

Just being a little more open, different ideas okay, so you like, because, like I said, I know a lot of people do higher temps for big seasons right, especially like another segment is the volume photography market, like where people do school pictures and spring and fall are busy so you have deep snow, but then again also you're balancing that too with you know these are people who are not necessarily vested in the day to day of the business. They're just there to collect a temporary job and you know, like you said, you don't want them doing performing key functions. No one's been performing key functions.

Shena Marie White: 12:20

Exactly, yeah, but I think you probably have more lower level tasks that you probably want to give your business credit for. So just really focusing on having your key people do the things that they are 100% needed and then having other people doing the other things to balance out your labor costs.

Gary Pageau: 12:43

You know, we've always heard the phrase cash is king, right, and you know that sort of thing. So you know, clearly, you know that's the lifeblood of any small business and so, in addition to looking at pricing, what are some of the things people could be doing on that? Improving cash flow.

Shena Marie White: 13:01

Yeah, I mean so looking at their pricing, but then looking at their revenue and looking at their accounts. Receivable is a big one that I see people not getting paid on time because, you can't pay your bills with your money sitting in other people's bank accounts right so just making sure you're getting paid properly and on time.

Shena Marie White: 13:23

And then your cashflow management. Like I with my clients, I make a cashflow document where it's literally week by week, by week and we plan out where their bills are Right Certain bills, you know, like rent and stuff like that that always happens at the same time Right. Plan that out and then we can put in how much they're making every week and see if there's any reds or holes where they need more cash. And then we can also see big weeks where maybe we can siphon off some of that cash and put it away for those low seasons. So it's really just being proactive and intentional and not doing bank balance accounting.

Gary Pageau: 14:01

We always say someone has a great fourth quarter right and then, oh my gosh, cash is piling up.

Shena Marie White: 14:07

Yes.

Gary Pageau: 14:09

I mean, what are some of the short-term things people can do to maximize the value of that cash? I mean, you always hear about you know, hey, I'm dropping into a CD for 30 days. Is that kind of stuff really worth it?

Shena Marie White: 14:43

I mean it can be. So I like to take like a month's worth of overhead because I like to have 12 months of cash on hand at all times. But if you take a month's worth of your overhead and you put it into a 12 month CD and you do that every single month for a year, then every month you'll have a month's worth coming available to use.

Gary Pageau: 15:03

Right.

Shena Marie White: 15:04

And you can use if you need to or not, you can put it back in or you top it up so that it's you know your new level, and then you're getting that interest every month right okay, now, that strategy takes a while. Obviously, it takes a year to put into effect, and it assumes that you have a year's worth of cash that you can utilize that strategy for. But if you can, then why not?

Gary Pageau: 15:28

yeah, because I just think you know that is one of the challenges for businesses, because for in in the photo imaging space, because it can be so seasonal. Sometimes you know every month is great and the fourth quarter is a bonus, or sometimes it's like, boy, the fourth quarter better get here or we're really in trouble. Right, so it's, it's one. It's usually one of those two things, right. So you just kind of. So I think managing cash is definitely a challenge for a lot of the folks yeah, you always want to have reserves no matter what because,

Shena Marie White: 15:55

reserves give you so much ability to do so many things, so it's like, hypothetically speaking, say, one of your biggest competitors comes up for sale if you give reserves.

Gary Pageau: 16:04

You can buy them out right that would be awesome, right, but you can't if you don't have that right, let's swing back a little bit to the, to the pricing things, because that's one of the things where I think, um, every business, whether it's a photo business or your local coffee shop, struggles with because you don't want to be constantly raising prices even though our material costs, at the very least, are going up. And, like you know, recently here in Michigan they just raised the minimum wage, so that's going to have ripple effects all around. Even if you pay your people more than minimum wage, you're still going to ripple to everybody else. So, understanding every industry is different. Right, not everyone can get a 23% margin or like you did, or whatever, but what are some of the resources or places people can look to determine, like, what's a great margin for the my class of business?

Shena Marie White: 16:54

and there's a lot of online stuff. But I.

Gary Pageau: 16:56

You can't trust online.

Shena Marie White: 16:57

That's what I'm talking to you well, I would say a lot of it depends too on your own hard costs and soft costs and your industry average pricing. So go and do some research on your competitors. How much are they charging for these services? And then yourself okay, if I'm charged that much, what are my margins? And you know, like, maybe they're so low and you're like, how are they even charging that?

Gary Pageau: 17:26

Which is again very typical of our industry.

Shena Marie White: 17:28

Yeah, so then you have to look at okay, am I going to sell on price? Or am I going to sell on something else? Right, because if you just choose not to be a price competitor and you're going to sell on value, then it's a completely different sales proposition, and then your price really depends on the value you're giving, and so you can make it anything you want.

Gary Pageau: 17:51

And that's really where a lot of the people are coming down on it. They got to enhance the value part of the equation because you know there's a lot of low cost providers in the print space for a lot of reasons. I mean, they're buying their paper by the truck loads or train car loads in many cases, and they've got efficiencies up the wazoo, but for whatever. So you got to compete against that.

Shena Marie White: 18:14

Yeah.

Gary Pageau: 18:15

So value is one of those words everyone talks about but no one really seems to come up with like a definition of like what is a great value. Now, understanding you don't know a lot about the photo space, when I see your pictures on your walls and that's great. So, as as a person doing that, how would you, how would you recommend somebody look at their value and and to communicate and share that?

Shena Marie White: 18:41

I mean, it depends on your customer. I think your customer will tell you what they want I think a lot of people they don't talk enough to their clients right for me.

Shena Marie White: 18:52

You know, if I'm talking to somebody, I ask them like what, what matters to you, and they'll give you all the answers. So if you just do more research, market research, into your own clients and what matters to them, right, they will tell you. It's like, for instance, you know, which I noticed in the photo? But when I had my concrete company we specialize in sealant and the market rate for sealant for concrete patios was like a dollar 25 a square foot. We were selling it at three dollars and fifty cents a square foot and people would be like what, how? It's? Because we were using a completely different sealant, because things that I know knew the client wanted. They didn't want it to be slippery and they didn't want to have to do it every year and they wanted to stay nice long term so we found a system in a sealant that looked nice and shiny.

Shena Marie White: 19:40

It lasted for years on end and added on slip to it so it wasn't slippery. And so then when I go to them and I say, hey, I have all the things you said you wanted. They're willing to pay the premium because it's what they wanted. I didn't decide, like I asked them hey, what do you want, Right?

Gary Pageau: 20:00

And that's where I think that's some great advice, because I do think a lot of the mindset in the photo space is production oriented. Heirloom picture that's printed on great canvas in its frame. What is the real value of that, you know, up to the consumer yeah, exactly, it's the same thing, like with strategy.

Shena Marie White: 20:33

You know people all the time oh, I'm a strategist, I have a great strategy. Well now, any strategy will work if you don't know where you're going you first have to decide where you want to be, to know what strategy is right to get you there. It's the same with pricing and value. You have to know what value you're trying to give and what the value the client wants before you can determine the rest of it.

Gary Pageau: 20:58

You know you're not talking like a CFO, you're kind of talking a little marketing speak and things like that. But what's interesting I think what you're trying to to connect is, you know, the marketing and the product choice all that does impact your financials more than anything.

Shena Marie White: 21:13

They're not separated at all everything impacts the, the P-and-L right, everything it's the pnl and the balance sheet. Your financial statements are telling you a story. You just don't speak their language, and so that's why I love what I do, because I've learned how to speak that language.

Gary Pageau: 21:39

You kind of missed the concrete business, though I feel you kind of there was your, you felt really strongly about it.

Shena Marie White: 21:45

You know I loved it and honestly it's kind of funny. It's yet to be determined, but it might be coming back around to me here soon, oh.

Gary Pageau: 21:55

Did one of those competitors go out of business. You're going to scoop them up. Is that what happened?

Shena Marie White: 21:59

So yeah, so my old business. I exited during, uh, divorce and so, um, I have. I haven't been in that business for a while, but I've been been looking at different opportunities to buy a business here and there's been one in an ancillary industry. That's there you go and we're we're toying with.

Gary Pageau: 22:18

So it's still in the very early stages of thought, but well, it'll be interesting to see how you would have you know know, since you've been consulting in this how you can apply that process to a completely different business in an ancillary field.

Shena Marie White: 22:31

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, and I work with so many different businesses that it'll be interesting to kind of have it go full circle a little bit full circle a little bit.

Gary Pageau: 22:43

You know, one of the things I, when I talk to different people like yourself who are like not in the industry, but they have insights to share, I always hear from people well, you know, but that's different, but that's not me, and I think what people need to recognize is about 80% of basic business stuff apply to everybody oh, yeah, yeah, I mean honestly it's.

Shena Marie White: 23:05

It's a different widget, but at the end of the day it's all the same, because it comes down to you know what are your costs, what are your margins, what's your overhead, how are you getting paid? All these things, and that's the same. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. That's, that's just business, that's just math. And yeah, I um, you know cash hits every single part of your business. So I always look at myself as kind of like a holistic cfo, because all the things aren't working together, you're not going to have the cash you want at the end of the day.

Gary Pageau: 23:41

So let's talk about your business. The fractional CFO I mean, I keep seeing this thing, you know, all over LinkedIn. I'm a fractional. This, I'm a fractional that. And I don't know if that means like you've broken your leg and it's fractured, but what does that really mean? So if someone wants to engage someone like yourself to help them out, what does that mean other than the fact that you're now invoicing them?

Shena Marie White: 24:10

Yeah, you know, like a CFO is there to give you really amazing insight into your cash and how to make it better and how to change things to make it better. And then I also have gone through scaling up certification, so I have that behind me too, which is all about scaling your business. But with that, you know, fractional means that instead of paying me as an employee and you know hundreds of thousands of dollars that a chief financial officer costs my rate is very reasonable for a smaller entrepreneur, but they still get that same amount of insight.

Gary Pageau: 24:44

Right.

Shena Marie White: 24:45

You get all the good without the giant bill. They have a much tinier bill. But they still get full use of my brain and experience.

Gary Pageau: 24:52

So explain the full use part, cause that's the I mean, that's the part I do. I mean. So how much time? I guess when it's fractional right? So I mean theoretically, 40 hours a week is typical, or looking at a couple hours a week. I mean I'm just in terms of, I'm trying to figure out can someone really be a CFO on a fractional basis for most business? I mean, it seems to me like you could write him. If you've got a CPA and some other things, you know, bookkeeper and some other stuff, the person doing the strategy could certainly be on that basis. But what kind of timeframe are we looking at there?

Shena Marie White: 25:25

I have a group program that obviously is group. So it's once a week we have calls and anybody can ask questions. That's in that program and then my one-on-one most of the time is every other week meetings to go over monthly statements and then-.

Gary Pageau: 25:42

So you're actually going through the things right. You're online looking at their financials and saying why are you releasing this vehicle at $5,000 a month? That's crazy. You know those kinds of conversations.

Shena Marie White: 25:54

Yeah and then. So, yeah, we meet every month to go over their, their actual financials from the last month, and then we have another meeting to kind of strategize other future endeavors. So what do we need to do? What do we need to change? Where are we at? You know, we have a quarterly goal. Where are we at there? All of those sorts of fun things?

Gary Pageau: 26:13

Great. So where can someone go to get more information about your business and the things you do? Because I think it's cool.

Shena Marie White: 26:22

Yeah, I think it's cool too. I love it. They can go to my website, www. yourpocketcfo. com, and all of my fun information is there and a great training and then how to contact me if you're interested in more information and there's a free profit calculator. There is, yes, who doesn't want to calculate their profit.

Gary Pageau: 26:45

There you go. Well, that's always good to know. Well, thank you, Shena, for your time. It's been wonderful and I'm shocked to see you're actually a full-size person so that's awesome.

Shena Marie White: 26:53

I mean, I'm not quite full-size, Well you're fractional. I don't even have full-size hair, I don't even have full-size hair.

Gary Pageau: 27:05

Anyway, thank you so much and talk to you again sometime.

Erin Manning: 27:09

Yep. Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.