CEOs Discuss How to Navigate and Succeedin the Modern World of Finance
Stevie Jones Of Profit to Prosperity
Take time for yourself. As hard as it is, make sure that you are not dedicating every minute of your free time to your business. Also, PAY YOURSELF! Many new business owners are afraid to take cash out of the...
Jeremy Kroll of K2 Integrity
Don’t assume anyone knows who you are, what you do, or what the value of it is. You’ll have to continually prove yourself. Reputation is not built over night, but it is your most powerful tool. Never stop working to...
Khalid F Howladar of MRHB DeFi
I would recommend bootstrapping until at least the first value inflection point Then — ideally when you are in need of growth capital — find a VC with a strong track history in your space coupled with a good personality/culture...
Jason Venturelli of JSV Capital
Don’t buy leads. Cultivate your marketing strategy, that’s what bring leads to you. The Lead Generation industry is filled with sharks. They’ll sell you one lead and then sell the same lead 100 times over.
Alex Amezquita of Herbalife Nutrition
Return on Investment: it takes money to make money; however, knowing where to spend that next dollar of investment is critical in decision making. Understanding return on investment principles helps to provide an analytical framework for decision making.
Rafal Andzejevski of PayAlly
Having a team of professionals: Story behind it: The problem I see with many players in alternative finance these days is the lack of actual finance experience. Imagine a restaurant run not by chefs, but by the people who build...
Christan Hiscock of Kardia Financial Group
Build your systems then try to break them. You can’t grow if you don’t have systems, otherwise you get lost in recreating the wheel every day. Then once you have great ones established, if you don’t try to break them,...
Kirk Simpson of Wave Financial
Drive customer value: Be laser-focused on your customers needs, and build for them. Don’t be afraid to stay focused on the particular type of customer that is best suited to your product or service. At Wave, we’re focused on service-based...
Jason Cesare of NEST Integrated Facilities Management
Listen, learn, and be humble — no matter our experiences, we don’t know everything. Always be open to change — nothing is constant. One of my pet peeves is hearing the phrase ‘that’s how we’ve always done it.’ Use data...
Juergen Lindner of Oracle
Plan for A, B and OMG!: COVID-19 has shown just how quickly things can turn upside down, which is why it’s important to leverage scenario planning capabilities within cloud-based business applications to run a wide variety of what-if scenarios, create...
Brandon Metcalf of Place Technology
Historical data no longer rules — Prior to COVID-19, relying on historical data and precedent was enough for most finance and business leaders to make reasonable predictions and decisions. However, given the likely uncertainty and volatility that will exist for...
Robert King of Acuity Knowledge Partners
Keep your business goals focused, rather than trying to be a jack of all trades. At Acuity Knowledge Partners, we always want to be considered the very best in what we do. We prefer to be the best at a...
David Waddell of Waddell & Associates
Be aggressively friendly! We once had a grumpy greeter in our firm. She transferred indifferent energy at best and negative energy at worst through the phone and at the door. This depleted client energy immediately. Advisors had to output twice...
Stephen King of GrowthForce
Focus on cash flow: Proper cash flow management can make or break your business. There are three reasons businesses fail: cash flow, cash flow, and cash flow. Get ahead of your cash flow. Get a 13-week forecast and have that...
Martin Moll of Breakaway Bookkeeping & Advising
Diversity is incredibly important for all the right reasons. A side benefit for companies who truly embrace diversity is the economic advantage you have over your peers. Ensuring that your team is diverse in every possible way will give you...
Scott Roelofs of RCG Valuation
Offer a quality product/service at a competitive price — Consumers are savvy shoppers now and they likely know the prices of your competitors as well as you and your quality will get referrals. The combination allows you to have a...
Jorge Sun of LendingFront
Hire smart and from diverse backgrounds. At LendingFront, we’ve made it a point to hire people from all industries, not just in lending. This gives us a broader perspective and helps us craft more creative solutions to challenges. We’re good...
Sten Morgan of Legacy Investment Planning
You are the product. I was close to quitting this industry early in my career. As I learned more about the world of finance it felt more like a product sales machine instead of an unbiased source of advice. The...
David B Armstrong of Monument Wealth Management
Know the structure of the team you’re working with — It’s not uncommon to see a big team of financial advisors in website imagery, but it’s possible that a lot of those advisors are just trying to get new clients...
Chase Harmer of PayCertify
If you can’t be first, be best — Innovating is really exciting, especially in the financial sector. Being first to market is always the goal, but it’s more important to put out the best version of your product — that...
Giuseppe Salamone of VaroTeam
Know your finances inside and out. You should review them on a regular basis, and constantly evaluate where your money is going to have a deep understanding of your costs.
Charles D. Carey of CIG Capital
Differentiate. — There are numerous financial institutions that are willing to lend, but it’s important to find a way to differentiate and make it more intriguing to the market. Then of course, it’s all about communication and extending your reach...
J. Christopher Mizer of Vivaris Capital
Be very resilient emotionally: Business in general, and finance in particular, is a roller coaster ride filled with high highs and low lows. I had a partner years ago, and he and I closed a big deal together that had...
Michael Golomb of FanVestor
Education — the world of finance is always changing. It’s important to keep yourself educated on best practices, learning from other organizations, and never get complacent.
Rich Penkoski of Deloitte Consulting
CFOs need to embrace their evolving roles as strategists and catalysts and make sure they take their seat at the table in wielding business strategy. That goes hand-in-hand with C-Suite collaboration, which must be at the heart of strategy development...
Michael Scott of Cannapreneur Partners
You’ve got to be tenacious. The finance industry, where I’ve spent the bulk of my career, is fiercely competitive. A lot of people are focused on the bottom line. Having said that, you have to understand the difference between friendly...
Bill Bloom of Bloom Financial
Be in your unique ability — I’m good at a certain number of things, and in my business, I only do those things. We have a team around us that has their own unique abilities and it allows them to...
Daniel Nadeau of Payway
It is about pausing to see how far you have come and then adjusting to see how far you need to go. Even the smallest thing can keep you going and grounded. And, if you aren’t grounded you will burn...
Kristen Keats of Breakaway Bookkeeping and Advising
I find that the clearer we are about who we are and our values, the more qualified the leads are that we get. If we are good at communicating how we operate and what we are about, it will weed...
Scott Gordon of Open Mortgage
I have invested in a number of companies, and I love to talk to entrepreneurs about their ideas and companies. I have to say that I am personally biased toward starting up on a low budget, or a bigger budget...
Shahid Hanif of Shufti Pro
…spend some time with yourself to refuel your mind and body. It might be dinner with friends and family or just reading a book alone. You might think it’s not difficult, but trust me it becomes difficult when you have...
Michael Mook of Fundopolis
You must make time for yourself. Time to think. Time to relax. Time to have fun. Time to spend with family and your furry friends. It is not the number of hours you work, but the quality of the hours...
Max Simkoff of States Title
I have a simple guiding principle: “be honest.” As a startup founder, there is a lot of pressure to have the biggest, broadest vision, so it’s easy to want to embellish things. However, if you tell people that the company...
Blair Silverberg of Capital
Broadly speaking, as an investor I’m interested in whether a founder’s business is creating or destroying value. If you’re putting a dollar into a company, and that company is repeatedly turning a dollar into eighty cents, then that company is...
Travis Hornsby of Student Loan Planner
The thing about growth is it doesn’t have to be unlimited. If you’ve grown your business to the point of $10 million in revenue and its plateaued there, maybe that’s alright. Maybe you do it until you don’t enjoy it...
Viktor Viktorov of REINNO
I have seen companies get a lot of funding, spend it mindlessly, quickly run out of cash and end up closing or selling the business for cheap. Even if you have a big budget, take time to identify ways to...
Rolands Mester of Nordigen
Take long vacations at least once per year. The finance industry is very fast-paced and people often have a fear of missing out. However, mental health is an absolutely critical component and long vacations help to balance the effects.
Gregory Kadet of UBS Greater Florida
Straight talk is important. You have to be open and transparent with the people you’re working with. And when it comes to planning, you have to make sure you do everything you can to ensure your client’s success.
Kison Patel of DealRoom
The number one principle that guides us through the ups and downs of running a business is resilience. We aim to really embody that as part of the company culture and be able to take situations, like with the current...
Richard Nordin of FA Solutions
I have personally been close to burning out once. For me, the main reason was not the workload per se, but rather an unclear mandate and expectations. It creates a frustrating dynamic in a team if you do not have...
Bradley Atkins of Modern Capital
Be thoughtful. It’s so easy to wing it when you’re good, but that only goes so far. You can get pretty good results working with your natural skill set, but to break through to true excellence you need to be...
Dewey Burke of Luxury Asset Capital
Never lose sight of the fact that you are in the business of helping people. As a lender, it’s easy sometimes to get hung up in the metrics of the business, whether it’s the conversion rate of our marketing programs...
Michael Karsa of Lido Advisors, LLC
“Do the right thing”. If you’re constantly keeping both your clients’ and employees’ best interests in mind, great outcomes trickle down from there.
Mark Zinder, Keynote Speaker
To optimize the evaluation of your company, try to normalize your expenses, boost your earnings, and increase your margins. I know that those last two go hand-in-hand, but what I mean is that the owner should try to find higher...
Brad Paterson, CEO of Splitit
I truly believe that great teams win. It’s crucial to focus on the people and culture of a customer-focused organization in order to see success.
Eric Chung of Lighthaven Capital
I think complacency is our greatest enemy. If things aren’t working out, come up with hypotheses, and test them. Think like you’re a shark and keep moving.
Erika De La Cruz of Passion to Paycheck
One of the mistakes I see is that entrepreneurs spend tons of time with their website/packaging or branding before testing to see if the market place even wants what they are offering. “Test Small” has been a rule that has...
Mike Alfred of Digital Assets Data
The bottom line isn’t always the bottom line. You don’t want to overvalue an unprofitable company, so it’s important to take a careful look at potential for growth and profit. You have to keep one eye on short-term costs and...
Wayne B. Titus III of AMDG Financial
Finally, if you want to make a difference in your community, one way to accomplish that is through charitable gifting. Charitable gifting is more than just giving money to a good cause, however. I’ll give you an example. I had...
Chuck Czajka of Macro Money Concepts
Education — enough is not enough. Continuing to learn is a mainstay of this business. Every day new ideas and products are created to help people succeed.
Tore Steen of CrowdStreet
You need domain expertise on your team, especially if you are trying to disrupt that industry. Of course, you want an outside perspective to challenge the conventional way of doing things but you also need that deep industry expertise in-house....
Victor Orlovski of Alfa Bank
The first and most important thing you should know is how are you going to make money on the customer base you paid for. Many fintech startups succeed in gaining a large customer base and great market cap, but not...
Nash Subotic of WestPac Wealth Partners
Too often people either play it too safe or take on too much risk. From my experience the younger companies are taking more risk than they can handle and the older companies are afraid of taking the risk that might...
Mary Alice Hughes and Lisa Bamburg of Insurance Advantage
If you do what is right for the client, you’ll be successful! A great example of this in our business is making sure we ask a lot of questions before making recommendations. If Joe Client wants security of principal and...
Marga Hoek of Business for Good
Reinvent yourself. It will be essential over the next decade to put sustainability at the core of your business. Engage with the new markets the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are opening. Adapt and thrive or deny and die. Often this...