CFOFinancialSolutions

I empower small business owners to regain control of their businesses, increase profit and get paid like they deserve.

Owner and Founder

Exelon

• Responsible for developing the 5 year forward-looking financing plan for ExGen on a semiannual basis to be approved by Treasury and Upper Management.  The plan is developed from the ground up.  This plan is used to assess the cash needs of the company at large to allow for successful operation and financing the corporate dividend while remaining in line with the liquidity ratios tracked internally and by the credit metrics rating agencies. 
• Responsible for the forecast of interest expense related to corporate debt, project financing and various other financing mechanisms. 
• Active member of the Finance Mentorship and Onboarding initiatives 
• Support credit metrics reporting and quarterly earnings call processes
• Served as the primary finance  liaison for the designing, testing and implementation of a robotics initiative 
• Led a change management initiative to enhance cash forecasting throughout the organization through a cash dashboard that presents the impact of key cash drivers over a five year period. Pitched the initiative to executives and upon approval, implemented the process into the larger biannual budget process.

Senior Financial Analyst

Synagro

• Led quarterly forecast updates of the division through analysis performed while serving as the liaison between site managers, upper management and the finance department
• Design/perform monthly variance analysis and ad hoc financial analysis for the divisional controller and the of division  
• Serve as liaison between site managers and upper management for all Capex submissions including calculation of IRR
• Led process to continuously improve the weekly forecast for all 8 sites within my division through collaboration with upper management, site managers and site admin
• Through analysis I implemented/performed over employee turnover and questions I posed to management, I directly influenced the company to implement changes in risk management strategies.
• Responsible for the close of the most complex division within the business unit
• Perform monthly balance sheet reconciliations for the entire division
• Led process to improve external audit process from the staff perspective and present to management.

Senior Accountant

Performed integrated and financial statement audits of both Public and Private Companies across multiple industries including Investment Management, Venture Capital, Healthcare (Hospitals/Insurance), Retail and Manufacturing.

Senior Assurance Associate

Arthur Bell, Certified Public Accountants

Performed audits of financial statements for hedge funds and commodity pools, examinations and reviews of historical performance records in accordance with Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) standards and examinations and reviews of internal controls.

Experienced Audit Staff

Gorfine, Schiller and Gardyn, P. A

Staff Tax Accountant

Fractional CFO in your corner. Business Advisor. Straight-Shooter.

Dan Katibian, CPA, founded CFO Financial Solutions in 2014 with a mission to empower business owners with companies of $5M+ of annual sales to get paid what they deserve, fix problems in their business before it is too late and hold themselves and their teams accountable to their goals. 

To help you accomplish this, Dan leverages his extensive experience from nearly 15 years of combined leadership in finance and accounting. 

Dan’s superpowers include helping you and your team get where you want to go and translating your company’s financials into achievable, actionable items. 

Dan lives in Baltimore, MD with his incredible wife and their 5 children and enjoys serving on the board of Chai Lifeline Mid-Atlantic and Talmudical Academy, his boys’ school.

Why I love working with people in the trades

True story. 

I was at a construction job site.

There was a fleet of about 5 trucks/bobcats that had the branding 'Charlie's Bobcats' on them. Charlies Bobcat's was a subcontractor who was working for the General Contractor on the job.

I saw a gentleman who looked like he was managing the the crew at Charlie's Bobcats.

I went up to him and asked him if he was the manager. He pointed to a shovel on the ground and said emphatically that the only thing he manages is 'that there shovel'. I walked away feeling silly.

Fast forward ten minutes. I was speaking to the General Contractor and we were discussing the price of an added service. He motioned to the job site and said he already discussed briefly with Charlie. 

I was surprised and asked who Charlie was. 

He responded by pointing to the guy who had made the shovel speech. 

Love the humility and gruffness.  

At CFOFinancialSolutions we love helping GCs and people in the trade manage their cash flow, profitability and the general financial help of the company. 

Know someone like Charlie? We'd love to meet them.

Dan Katibian, CPA

Family Business:

I've worked with many family businesses over the years. I've seen families cooperate seamlessly and work as a powerful team. I've also seen family members get deeply hurt by other family members in the business which led to resentment and at times disbanding of the business.

A few years back I was speaking to a business owner. What he said has stuck with me to this day. He began working as part of a family business. Unfortunately, the company and family had a terrible falling out and everyone went their separate ways. Arguably, he was hurt more than anyone else both financially and emotionally. He went on to create his own successful business in the same industry.

He looked me in the face intently and said, despite all the pain, there is nothing I wouldn't do to have my family by my side in the business again. Nothing can compare to having a family member as your partner. Their level of devotion, trust and passion to the business is truly unparalleled and my success would be exponentially more if only I'd still have them as partners.

This thought has stuck with me. What are your experiences with combining family and business?

Sales Drying Up and What to Do:

As a firm we have the unique opportunity to rub shoulders with business owners in different industries, in different places at different sizes.

Some are clients or perspective clients. 

Others are just people in our network.

We are hearing over and over and over about a real SLOWNESS IN SALES.

It is not specific to industry or location.

We are speaking to companies in the Tri-State Area, DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia.

In the following industries:

General Contractors-Commercial, Reno and New Builds
Commercial and Multi-Family Developers
Landscaping -Tree, Hardscape and Beyond
Wholesale Distributors in different spaces
Marketers/Website Developers
Concrete Companies
Insulation Contractors
Kitchen Cabinet Distributors
Custom Closet and Bookcases
Commercial Window Tinting

These were all real conversations.

Look at the variety of industries this has been impacting.

Keep in mind, this is just our own window to the world.

Here is what we are recommending:

1. Know Your Numbers:
a. How much do you have to sell to break-even? Make sure you include loan
payments, outstanding payables and receivables and equity draws in your
equation

2. Know Your Ability to Borrow $/Leverage Savings
a. How much lending capacity do you have from line of credits, term loans or friends with deep pockets? Keep in mind that even bank money is 10%+
at this point.
b. Do you have pockets of savings that can be used?

3. Get Lean
a. Know who you need on your staff to keep producing and who you don’t
b. This goes back to knowing your numbers. Do some scenario analysis to
what levers you can pull to get some real savings fast. This includes
layoffs, subleasing space you are renting, etc.

4. Lean in
a. You know what you are good and your inner circle. Lean in and invest.
You will need people to rely on in challenging times. This includes key
vendors, banking relationships, consultants and the people you go to for
strength and positive vibes.

5. Get Creative
a. What are lines of business that you think you can go into with minimal
investment/barrier to entry? Now is the time to begin thinking about this
and having conversations with your team.

Are you seeing this slow down? What are best practices that have worked for you?

YOUR MOST VALUABLE ASSET

What is your company's MOST VALUABLE ASSET?

Hint:

It's not on your balance sheet or on your personal financial statement.

It's not your company's brand, pipeline, key employees.

IT'S YOU. The owner. Plain and simple.

How much care and concern to you invest in your company, employees, sales, branding?

How much care and concern to you invest in your self?

Reprioritize. It's not selfish. It's integral to the success of your business.

Child’s Candy Store:

How do you pass on your professional wisdom to the next generation? One of my sons started a business endeavor recently selling chocolate to his friends at school. I had WAY TOO much fun with this. Here's what we did together:

1. Calculated the cost per unit
2. Understood our ceiling for sales per unit based on going rate
3. Calculated our expected profit per item and in total based on total units in inventory
4. Eventually resolved to take a loss on some of the sluggish movers
5. Managed Accounts Receivable as many children bought on credit 
6. Instituted controls around theft as it seems some of the candy bars may have grown legs.
7. How do deal with regulations as his parents disallowed him from selling candy to his siblings

Not sure who had a better time with it, me or him. How do you pass on your professional wisdom to the next generation?

Caveats to Profitability (Lesson 4)

We mentioned in the previous lesson that net profit is when revenue exceeds expenses while a net loss is when expenses are greater than revenue. This is important because it indicates if sales are enough to cover expenses. However, there are two very important caveats to bear in mind.
1. The expenses on a profit and loss statement do not include all cash uses of a business. Two key examples of this are owner’s equity draws and loan payments. These are both cash uses that will only be seen on the balance sheet. We will cover the reason for his in a later lesson.
2. Profitability does not equal cash flow. In fact, studies show that most businesses that go out of business do so for cash flow issues and that many of these companies are actually profitable. There are many reasons that a profitable company can have cash flow issues. These can include collection problems on accounts receivable, timing of billing collections vs payment to vendors amongst many other issues. There are many ways to solve these issues. That said, if a company is not profitable, healthy cash flow is for sure not a real possibility.

Business Owners: You know that feeling when you make a big mistake. Ya that one. What would you give to be able to go back in time and know what you know now? Depending on the size of the mistake, potentially a lot, right? 

Life is full of the unexpected. We have no choice but to do our best as the surprises are thrown to us. 

But what if I would tell you there is an incredible wealth of knowledge that you could be tapping into on a monthly basis: Your numbers!

Case in point: I've had over 5 conversations with business owners that went as follows: I didn't realize that we were having cash issues because the EIDL Loan and the PPP masked them. 

Sounds reasonable, right?
IT'S NOT! Let me explain why. This means the business owner was not reviewing their numbers but instead just eyeballing the bank account. 

If the business would be reviewing their numbers monthly, this would not have happened! [The P&L statement would have shown a loss or if the cash crunch is due to equity draws or loan payments it would have shown on the equity line on the balance sheet.]

These business owners are now scrambling to fix it. This scramble was avoidable!

Imagine what they would give to have known this 1-2 years back, which decisions they'd have made differently. 

I would love to help your business avoid unnecessary stress and heartache. 
Let's set up a process to review and understand your numbers monthly. Trust me-you'll be happy you did. 

And if you are thinking, my books are garbage-no problem. We can manage the process of hiring an external bookkeeper and setting up the books in a way that tell an accurate story of your business. 

Don't wait until it becomes an emergency. Let's talk.


Actually had a laugh out loud moment with a client today. 

A client of mine who runs a very successful business has a large wooden desk that is usually completely eclipsed by papers. 

Today I came in and it was clean! 

He said to me he used to have a coworker who once a year would literally push everything off his desk and dump it and start from scratch. {

Though he didn't follow this methodology, remembering his old coworker did motivate him to clean his desk.}

What a freeing and potentially dangerous strategy! LOL!

What are your thoughts on this approach?

Case Study: Immersions Blenders and Business Ownership 
Embarrassing Personal Story. 
My wife makes a mean Jalapeno and Tomato Garlic Dip for our Friday Night Sabbath meal. She first bakes the vegetables and then uses an immersion blender to blend the baked vegetables into dip. One week we were running slightly behind schedule and I figured I’d help. I thought to myself I’ve seen my wife use this utensil dozens of times and it seemed pretty intuitive. So without consulting with her first, I proceeded to plug in the immersion blender. Needless to say, it did not go as planned. The two pieces of the immersion blender did not piece together correctly. I ruined the dip, broke the immersion blender and frustrated my wife. 
I do not share this story to highlight my lack of cooking prowess, but rather because this dynamic plays out quite often in small businesses. 
Often, an owner will notice a delay or a problem and will try to play hero. In a rush and without sufficiently consulting with the employee responsible for the process, the owner will dive right in. And, similar to my story, the owner will typically create a mess and cause more work for the employee rather. 
Moral of the story: Business Owners, stay in your lane. You have the best intentions. However, for your sake, your company’s sake and your employees sake, do not try to dive in as most times the results will not be good.  

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