EPISODE: 16

Revenue looks great on paper—but is it turning into profit you can actually use? I’m joined by Chris Ortega, CEO of Fresh FP&A, to unpack the habits and small decisions that make the difference.

We dig into the two numbers every owner should watch each week, the sneaky places profit leaks (and how to plug them), and a few simple cash moves you can start this month to pay yourself, support your team, and fund your next smart bet.

Key Takeaways:

Know your two non-negotiables: cash burn and cash runway. If growth isn’t showing up in cash, you’ve got a problem—measure both weekly.
Profit leaks hide in the timing: misaligned payment terms (e.g., paying contractors in 45–60 days while clients pay you in 90) strangle cash; renegotiating terms and using card float can flip the cycle fast.
Build the finance foundation early: people, process, and partnership first—then scale with platforms, performance, and profit optimization. That’s how you create clarity and confidence to make bigger bets.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE 👇🏻

CHRIS ORTEGA: 0:00
Here's what I tell every CEO, owner, and founder that's SB at a growing business. Profits are a dream, right? That's a great dream you had last night. Cash is that reality when you wake up. Who cares if you're growing 60, 70%, all this, and you can't make payroll or you can't make these investments? Cash is the most important metric for you to measure inside of your business.
TAM SMITH: 0:24
Welcome to Sales a Service, the podcast designed to help you change your mind about sales. Literally. I'm gonna help you change the way you think about selling. I'm Tam Smith, your host, sales bestie, and pitch partner next door. If you're tired of Rose with biceps telling you how to crush a million dollars in your sleep or battling imposter syndrome on your own, you've come to the right place. All you need to do is listen, then take action. No gym membership required. Let's get started. Are you showing up on LinkedIn but not generating leads or referrals? If you're posting and growing your network but still not seeing consistent results, the issue likely isn't you, it's your system. Most people don't realize that 5 to 15% of their LinkedIn connections could be potential clients. That means your next few sales calls could already be sitting in your network. You just need a strategy to reach them. That's exactly why I created the LinkedIn Lead Generator Challenge. It's a free five-day experience to help you turn your profile into a lead generating machine. Inside, you'll get access to a plug-and-play outreach sequence, profile tweaks that attract the right people, and a daily system for outreach and engagement that takes less than 30 minutes to follow. It's the same method I use with clients to help them build visibility, create real connection, and generate consistent pipeline, all without the sales energy. So if you're ready to show up on LinkedIn with more intention and lead with value so you can finally see results, head to studio349.com backslash LinkedIn-leads and join us. All right, let's get into the episode. Hey there, Tam here, and welcome back to Sales as Service. This month we're talking all about the money and not just in theory, but day to day under the hood of what that looks like in your business. And yes, revenue gets attention, but profit, that's what keeps the lights on. So let's get honest for a second. You're generating revenue. Great, but are you profitable? Are you just keeping the lights on? Or are you banking real profit you can use to pay yourself, give your team some breathing room, and fund your next move? These aren't questions for later, and they're not reserved for big companies with big departments. Small teams and solo pros, in fact, especially us, need to be asking them right now. Think of profit as a discipline, not a milestone. It shows up in how you price, how you scope, how you protect margin, and how quickly an invoice turns into cash you can actually spend. So today we're laying the foundation, simple, practical steps to protect margin, build cash confidence, and create room to grow. And I've got the perfect guide for this conversation. Chris Ortega, CEO of Fresh FPNA. Chris helps growing businesses build real financial clarity so leaders aren't just staring at reports, they're making cleaner decisions. We're getting into the two numbers every owner should look at each week where profit actually leaks and how to plug it, and simple pricing and packaging shifts that protect margin without spooking good clients. So grab a notebook because by the end of this conversation, you'll know what to check, what to change, and what to track. So sales compound into real profit you can reinvest. Let's go. Chris, welcome to Sales and Service. I am so glad you're here to break down a profitability 101 for us.
CHRIS ORTEGA: 3:29
Thank you so much. I appreciate this conversation. Looking forward to it. Thanks for having me.
TAM SMITH: 3:33
Well, first up, tell us who do you help and how do you serve?
CHRIS ORTEGA: 3:36
Yeah, so I'm CEO of Fresh FPA. We work with small to medium-sized businesses that are between one and about$50 million in annual revenue. Specific verticals that we focus on software, technology, retail, e-commerce, professional services, and not-for-profits are our core verticals. And we help them grow with financial clarity and confidence, including myself. I have four other fractional CFOs. Three of us are based in the US. That's my America's team. I have someone else based in London. He runs our Imea operations, which are Europe, Middle East, and Africa. And then lastly, I have someone based in Sydney, Australia, and she runs our APAC, which is Asia Pacific. She runs our operations. So we are a global fractional CFO and advisory service company that helped those SMBs grow with financial clarity and confidence.
TAM SMITH: 4:27
That's fantastic. Well, walk us through your journey. Like how did you take your experience from corporate finance to launching and ultimately becoming CEO?
CHRIS ORTEGA: 4:35
Yeah. So for me, I've spent over 20 years in accounting, finance, FPNA, and financial leadership. Before starting fresh FPA, most of my professional background, I would come in, I would be the first finance hire, build, shape, scale, and exit. I've had the fortunate opportunity of working at three different companies that I've helped them lead through acquisition. Most notably was an international marketing platform company, helped build our America's finance operations, and we scaled that business and we sold to SAP for a little under three-quarters of a billion dollars, which was the largest acquisition I was a part of. I stayed over for a year to help with the post-merger integrations of both the companies. I helped lead the finance workflows. I helped lead us to migrate our finance and become integrated inside the SAP environment. And then I found myself at a fork in the road in my career. At this point, I've I've got to the top, I've led a major acquisition, I've I've worked in small to medium-sized businesses, I worked at publicly traded businesses. I had this great, this great deep experience in helping companies scale and grow. But I realized two things. I think that goes back to my childhood. I always tell people I was a CFO before I was a CFO. Just share a little story about myself. I come from a very humble background. I grew up poor, basically. I grew up poor, single-parent background. Me and my sister were the first two in our family to go to college. And growing up, the first budget I ever had to maintain was actually our household budget. My mom, she did everything she could. She worked really hard. She instilled the hard work and discipline to go out there and get what you want. And anytime, you know, school school clothes would come around, anytime I want an event, my mom would be like, hey Chris, what's the budget look like? So I was I was maintaining our household budget. I was looking at the hours that she's working. And if I wanted$120 for school clothes, right, my mom's like, hey, what do I need to do on the budget? So she was the first CEO that I actually worked for as a CFO. But for me, I think that's been my journey. It's it's I've always had the entrepreneurship mindset. I always found ways to have me and my friends, whether it was selling candy, Halloween candy out of our lockers to make some money, whether it was shoveling snow, or even throughout my career, I was always helping when I had a full-time job. I always had a nine to five, I always had a five to nine where I would like help and just like help these small to mean size businesses, whether get access to capital or thinking about growing or how do they get access to money for friends and fundraising, how do they do some of that stuff? So I did that as a side hustle. And a little under four years ago, I took the full leap of faith and I said, man, I'm going after this and I'm gonna live out my initials, which my initials are CEO. So I took that leap of faith and been on this road of building fresh FPNA, scaling businesses, and helping small to medium-sized businesses grow. So that's a little bit about my journey personally and professionally.
TAM SMITH: 7:58
Well, I have to say, when we first connected, you know, I think finance and you know, business finance, you know, we talk about you know money and business growth and profitability, it's a gonna be an intimidating conversation. When we first connected, I mean for myself included, like I shared with you before we started rolling it, you know, it's not not what I would qualify as my strength. And I when we first connected, I felt like you are someone that I felt very approachable and easy to have have that conversation with. And uh I just like appreciate that about you. And you say, you know, talking about your mission to give SMBs financial clarity and confidence. Let's talk about what does that look like in everyday profit discipline once a business starts seeing steady sales?
CHRIS ORTEGA: 8:36
Yeah. So I think financial clarity, right? I actually had a meeting early on this week and I did a LinkedIn post. Make sure to connect with me on LinkedIn, just Chris Ortega, drop it in there. But I this question of financial clarity, I think comes down to three different things. The first thing is a lot of small to medium-sized business owners don't have the clarity around their revenue, they don't have the clarity around their profit, they don't have the clarity around their cash. So, and and and again, taking this down, that's not coming in and saying your your finance person is giving you the financial statements and saying, hey, here's what that is, right? What does that mean for your business, right? When you're growing, revenue's the number one thing. When your revenue's gonna go down to profit, profit's gonna go down to cash. So, how do you really know with clarity on your business how you're driving that towards growth? How are those impacting growth, right? I think the second thing around financial clarity is making sure you have someone that's been through that experience, right? I've gone through the fundraising, I've gone through the roads where we had multiple reductions, I've gone through the housing crisis, I've gone through the PPP, right? How are you able to have that operational efficiency, that connection to the past of your numbers, managing the present of your financials and planning for the future? That's really important for SMBs, right? And I think the third most element around what we bring for financial clarity is a trusted expert and financial partner and advisor to help you. You kind of mentioned this early in the conversation. Look, we all don't like math, right? Probably people looking at this or listening to this right now saying, Chris, when it came down to math at school, I didn't like it. When it came down to math for my business, I don't like it again. So math is math is not traditionally for small to medium-sized CEOs, owners, and founders. That's not traditionally your skill set. You may be a product-led CEO or you may be a sales-led CEO. So you're like, the numbers are the numbers, but I want to I want someone with the skills, the passion, the talents, and this is the most important for all those CEOs, owners, and founders listening, the experience. I've been there, I've done that, I've made the mistakes, I've grown businesses from 400,000 to 40 million dollars. I've gone through the reductions, I've gone through the fundraising. Like having that experience, that's what we mean by financial clarity, right? You've got someone that knows and can drive your business. You've got someone that's able to connect your financial past, present, and future. And you have a trusted, experienced financial partner and advisor and team to help you throughout that journey, right? We're not just gonna come in and say, Yep, here's your books, here's what that means, here's our monthly meeting, check the box. We wanna be part of that journey. And that's what we bring to financial clarity. And if you have those things, think about it. CEOs, owners, and founders, listen to this. You're like, man, if I have that, that is gonna give you the confidence to grow your business, right? That's gonna give you the confidence to make those investments. It's gonna give you the confidence to hire that bang up talent that you want to bring to your team. It's gonna give you the confidence to get the capital that you need to grow your business. So to me, I think that's that's a need. And it's it's a common pain that I see a lot of small to medium-sized business owners. They they're they look at their bank account, they're like, cash is there, I think everything is fine until it's not right until you missed payroll, right? And you're just like, I thought we had all this money. How are we not able to pay payroll? Right? Uh-huh. Be proactive in building that foundation and thinking about how you scale your organization. That's what we bring to financial clarity and confidence.
TAM SMITH: 12:19
Love that. And what's the simplest metric beyond revenue that can show an owner whether new sales are actually profitable?
CHRIS ORTEGA: 12:27
I wouldn't even say sales. I would say if there's two metrics that I think sales are sales are great, right? Sales is top of the funnel, revenue growing. I look at businesses all the time. Most of our businesses are growing double digit year over year, right? Because we work with those growing SBs. So the top line growth is double digits. Here are two metrics that I think every CEO, owner, and founder need to know. And I'm gonna break them down. Listeners, I'm taking notes here. The first one is you have to know your cash burn. Cash burn, very simple. Say you have$100 in your bank account at the beginning of the month, and you have$60 in your bank account at the end of the month. 100 minus 60 says you have burned in one month$40 of cash, right? Sales are great. You can be growing double digits, but if you're cat if you're burning more than what your growth is, you're gonna run into issues, which is gets to my second metric you need to know cash runway. So let's go back to the example, right? You got that$100 at the beginning of the month, right? You burn$40 of a month, and let's just say you have$200 left. If you're burning$40 a month and you have$200 in your bank account, that means you have five months of runway.$200 divided by the$40 that you are burning. You have five months of runway. Here's what I tell every CEO, owner, and founder that's SB at a growing business. Profits are a dream, right? That's a great dream you had last night. Cash is that reality when you wake up. Who cares if you're growing 60, 70%, all this, and you can't make payroll or you can't make these investments. Cash is the most important metric for you to measure inside of your business because you could grow top line, right? Let's say you grow 80%, but that doesn't come through in cash for six months. What's what's the purpose? You got the revenue, but that cash isn't coming in. Cash is everything, those are the two metrics everybody should measure: cash burn, cash runway. You should be thinking about that. When I work with our clients across the world, does the first two first two metrics we always look at? What's our cash burn, what's our runway, how does that tie out to our forecast that we've done, and what is our actual performance? Those are the two most important. And then when you get into revenue growth, which is kind of your question, right? I think revenue growth, you got to know your channels, right? Not all growth on the revenue growth is good growth, right? I always like to break down into channels, right? So maybe if you're a software company, you're looking at your new business acquisition, right? That's a revenue growth, right? But you also got to look at the cost that goes into that, the customer acquisition cost, the salespeople, the marketing. Look at the PL of your new business and existing business, right? Your existing business, you've already covered that cost of acquisition to acquire that customer. So when you're looking at that$1 to invest, that$1 of cash, and you're saying, man, my new business margin from revenue minus all the expenses is$12 off of that hundred. But I know my existing business, I could get$30,$40 because I've already covered that cost. Look at your revenue growth, not only from the growth that it has, but the overall margin of profitability, right? Factor in those expenses, factor in those resources, factor in that labor, that software. Look at that fully loaded cost to get that margin of your different verticals that are driving growth in your business. Because I see a lot of people that are just plugging money into a growth element of the business, right? Because it's growing the top line. But how is that coming through profitability, right? Revenue minus expenses, and how is that vertical driving cash in your business? You gotta look at it full cycle. Revenue growth is great, but if it's not profitable growth and it's not bringing in cash, you need to ask the question should we continue to do this? That is, and that's the element, right? That is where I think you see a differentiator of like financial clarity from a traditional finance person is just saying, hey, here's your revenue expenses, and here's the fresh perspective that we bring is saying, how does this drive our plans? How does this drive our strategies? How does this drive our execution inside the business? So to me, that's the revenue conversation, and those are those two key metrics that every CEO, owner, and founder should know.
TAM SMITH: 16:52
When you're coming in to like look at a business and to kind of determine the the health of a business, like when you first started engagement, you know, for listeners looking at talking about cash burning, cash runway, is there a percentage that where they're at that they can is good, better, best as far as like what the health of the the business?
CHRIS ORTEGA: 17:10
Yeah, this is this is this depends on a lot of different businesses, right? A lot of different verticals, right? A lot of different revenue sizes of it really not a catch-all. But here's what I say right now. If you're a growing SB and you got to take in the macroeconomic factors we're seeing right now, there's a lot of disruption. That's a whole that's that is a whole nother conversation to get on, right? There is a lot going on in not only the global economic factors, but also the domestic. If you're a US-based company, there's a lot of economic factors that are are you need at least right now. I say go look at it. Here's a practical takeaway. Every CEO, owner, and founder can take away right now. Go look at your last month bank statement, right? It'll have it on your bank statement. It'll say, here's what you started at the beginning of the month as your beginning balance. Here's what the ending balance is, right? And that difference, divide that out. So let's just, my example. Say you look at your bank statement and it says bank statement said I begin with a hundred dollars and it said I have sixty dollars, you know, eighty dollars at the end. So I burned twenty dollars, right? That means you got four more months. If you did nothing else, no more cash came in, and you continued at that burn rate, you got four months before you're gonna run out of cash. Here's my gold standard. In the if you're a small to medium-sized business right now in the environment that we're in, you want at least six to 12 months of runway right now. So if you're looking at that, you're going through doing your calculations, you popped open your bank statement, and you're like, Chris, I got three months of runway. You need to be looking at, okay, is there operational efficiencies that we can gain, right? Is there contracting we can leverage, right? Is there banking relationships that we can get maybe a line of credit to facilitate to get us that six to 12 months? Is there capital we can go access? Is there payment terms we can leverage? Is there vendors we can push back? This is where it becomes what I call the strategic value funnel. Very simple. Strategy, tactics, metrics, milestone, execution. That's a funnel, right? So if you're looking at you did that analysis, you pulled up your bank statement, you're like, Chris, I got three months of runway, right? Okay, good. At least you know that right now, right? Yeah, you know that. You know it's not gonna be surprised when you run out of cash in three months, right? Right. You saw it come out. Yeah. What are the strategies like how that's where we get into the strategies, right? What do we need to do on the cash side coming in? What do we need to do on the cash side coming out? How can we get leverage banking relationships? We'll access the capital we have out there. Is there investments that we can do? How can we accelerate either more cash coming in or how can we defer that cash coming out? That is, and this is where the fork needs to roll for those small to medium-sized CEOs, owners, and founders, right? You're like, Chris, that sounds great, but I don't even know where to start to do that. The first place you should start, bring in the gets back to the whole fractional CFO to help you guide you on that journey to say, hey guys, we're at three months. Our goal is to get to six to 12. Here's what we're gonna do in the business to drive the strategy, the tactics, the metric, the milestones to get us there on there. So to me, that is a practical way. Right now, you want at least six to 12 months of runway for sure in your business.
TAM SMITH: 20:27
It that's probably you kind of set this up, but it's talking about the the strategies and tactics and the practices that you start, you know, early in the business, what all of those still apply, regardless of what size business you grow into that would still continue. Any anything that kind of layers in on the levels of growth that you would talk about now, as far as like when you hit those kind of next levels of growth, what would you layer in?
CHRIS ORTEGA: 20:52
Yeah. When you hit those next, so I always say, like, maybe listening to the listeners right now, whatever stage that you're at, right? Some people say, Well, I don't know if I really need a fractional CFO at this point, right? Maybe you're right. But I always say, like, think about your finance organization as building a house. You go build your house, right? The first thing is that foundation of the house. The first foundation of your business is gonna be the finance, right? That you can build great sales, marketing, operations. Make sure your finance is your financial foundation is set, right? And that boils down to what I call the three foundation pillars every CEO, owner, and founder needs to know. It's three of them: people, process, and partnership. Those are foundation level pillars. When I look back over my 20 plus years in scaling and building and supporting organizations to growth and scale through acquisition from the finance perspective, those were always the three foundation pillars I had. I had the right people in the right seat, I had the right process, them, them doing the right processes, bringing the right level of business partnership to the organization. You have to have that foundation. So that's a fractional CFO, making sure look at your cash processes, looking at your processes, bringing the right level of partnership value that you need, right? Build that. Then once you get to that prey, you're like, Chris, we're growing triple digits, we we hit our first million dollars of sales. Now you're really for what I call those scaling pillars, which are three of those. That's platform, performance, and profit optimization, right? Platform being what are the tools, what are the systems, what are those platforms out there that we can yet leverage to scale, right? How do we the second one? How do we drive a culture of high performance, right? How are we driving performance in the sales, the marketing, the people, the finance organization? And then lastly, all of that drives through profit optimization, right? How are these things driving financial results in the business? So to me, build out your foundation, get the right people, get the right processes, bring in the right level of partnership value. That's your foundation to build. Once you build that, scale it with your platform, performance, and profit optimization. That's the next place you need to scale. And I tell owners, right? No matter what stage of business that you are, I know I've been there, I've done that, I know the pitfalls. I know you're like, Chris, should I start fresh books or should I start with QuickBooks? Or what should I do first, right? Like which ERP should I use, or what banking partner should I leverage? I can tell you. Think about the and getting back to this house analogy. Imagine you built you didn't build that solid foundation of that house. 10 years ago from now, there's cracks in it, it starts to weigh. Think about the time, energy, effort, and resources that you have to go back to invest in your business when you should have invested early on 10 years when you start building that house. Now you got to go back and do it. Think about how frustrating that will be for you as a business owner. Think personally, right? If you built a house and the foundation and you got to go back and fix it, think about how frustrating that'll make you feel. Think about everything that you have to go back through and fix that foundation and changes you have to make and resources. Build your foundations now, build it with a trusted expert and partner to help you throughout that process. And I think every every CEO, owner, and founder has that opportunity to leverage that that service for sure.
TAM SMITH: 24:18
And I think we tell ourselves, oh, you know, it's too soon. I can't afford to do that now. You can't afford not to. Because it's really, do you do you want to invest in that, you know, partner now and having that, you know, that right person to help you build that foundation? Or do you want to be, it's gonna cost you a heck of a lot more in the future when you're going back trying to fix the mistake versus setting up that solid foundation as you get started?
CHRIS ORTEGA: 24:40
Absolutely. I 100% agree. Build the foundations first.
TAM SMITH: 24:45
Yes. I I always say to myself, I'd rather make the investment up front than pay more down the line to go back and fix what you know I didn't, I didn't have the strong foundation set for. Where do you catch the biggest pro uh private leaks in businesses when you come in? Like what can folks watch for when they're looking at their profitability?
CHRIS ORTEGA: 25:02
Yeah, it's it's always it's always around the operations of the business, right? I see a lot of the leaks when it comes down to spin, right? In technologies, you see a lot of leaks there, you see a lot of redundancies in technology on the contracting side. You see a lot of missed opportunities there because it's just like I think what a lot of CEOs, owners, and founders, they just find themselves in the rhythm of like, hey, this worked out before, I don't need to change it. You may not need to change it, but you definitely need to make sure it's consistent and optimized, right? You may not have the best process. And I see a lot of leaks in the operational side of the business, right? I think, and it this these aren't links from a bad perspective. It's just that these owners and founders never had the expertise to look at it, right? Give you a great example. I had a client, right? When they would they would have a contract, right? It is a professional services client. When they sold their contracts, right? They would bring on either a full-time equivalent employee or they would bring on a professional consultant to help, right? When we dove in and we said, because the first two things we dive into, cash burn and cash runway, I'm like, man, you're cash burned. Like something, something's not something's off of, we're burning a lot more before we get in cash. Once we were able to look at it, their payment terms that they had to receive from their client was like net six net 90-day terms, right? So they they would invoice the client one dollar, they wouldn't get that dollar for 90 days. That was when the cash came in. But when they brought in the consultant to drive that revenue, they had the consultant paid on net 45-day terms. So imagine fact pattern, right? You just say I'm a I'm a consultant, you hire me, and I bill$25,000 of revenue, right? Uh-huh. You're not gonna get that first$25,000 of revenue for 90 days, but you pay me, you have to pay me for my work that I did to drive$25,000. You got to pay me$20,$22,000, right? So you're paying out in 45 days$22,000, and you're not getting that$25,000 that you made for 90 days. So basically, what we found out is they had two cycles that they're paying these consultants before they ever got paid. And I'm like, we need to change this. We we can't do this. So ultimately, what we did is we renegotiated and said, hey contractors, here's how we're gonna align the timing of it, right? We reached back out to the clients, we wait, we got to the process, the client was happy, they seen value, and we said, Hey, we need to change our payment terms from net 90. We want to push that to net at least net 45, net 60, right? And here's the business reasons why we need to do that, right? So, what we did is we pushed the payment timeline to receive the cash, net 45. We pushed the consultants to net 60, right? Which we completely flipped it. So now they're getting cash in faster, 45 days, right? They have a 15-day grace period before they have to pay the consultants. The kids, and here's the thing: the consultants were already used to being paying net 60. They never the the consultant never raised their hand and was like, Yeah, we just, you know, we're used to getting paid net 60. So when we had that conversation, that for them was like, Yeah, I yep, totally fine with us. Like, we love working with you, and that's great. We'll just do net 60. Easy conversation. Client, we got to net 45 because we're providing value to them, right? We made it a value conversation of what we needed to do, right? And they're like, Yeah, we love working with you guys, of course. We'll be happy to do it in three months' time. We completely reversed the whole cash situation. Now they're getting money in faster, they're having to pay. And then also with that, they were paying their consultants via cash, right? And I said, no, no, no, let's get the consultants and let you know, I'm happy to absorb the two to three percent credit card fee and we can sort that out. We actually got it to 1.5, but now we're paying those consultants on credit card, right? So, what that gives us in cash is another 30-day float. Yeah, so we went from getting 45 days to now, right? Cash is coming in every 45 days, yeah. We now extended that consultant payment from 60, you get the float on there of 30 days, to 90. Completely reversed, right? Yeah, and I share that as an example because this is the CEO, owner, and founder saying, This has just been working, this is just what we did. That is the the highlight, right? That is the difference between someone that knows where the gaps are and knows how to drive the strategies, knows what tactically needs to be executed, knows the metrics that we're measuring, the milestones that we need to have in three months, and the execution we need to drive, right? That is what happened. And the result of that, the CEO, the CEO owner and founder was like, Chris, man, I I I've been in this business 15 years and never looked at it this way. And it took a financial partner advisor like Fresh FPNA to help them through that process, right?
TAM SMITH: 30:00
I mean, just the opportunity that was just sitting there, but having a partner with the expertise that can actually look at the metrics and the data to identify that. I mean, that's huge. I mean, it was literally like just sitting there, just kind of under the surface. And it took like again, just the expertise and to understand the data and the metrics. That's phenomenal.
CHRIS ORTEGA: 30:19
I I share that as an example for all the listeners because that is a practical example of like where you can see the difference of the experience and a and a truly led CFO and strategic team that's guiding you out throughout that process, right? And we we led that, right? This was in partnership, right? Because it a lot, finance, we serve the business. I tell my team every day, I'm like, hey, the business doesn't serve us, we serve them, right? And we had we were the project lead through that. We had the the CEO as like the the stakeholder throughout that process. We got the result, and now it's just like the thing that you feel from that is like he's like, Man, this is so great. Like, I have someone that's doing this in the business. I can sleep better at night, right? And now the the And focus on what he does best.
TAM SMITH: 31:09
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
CHRIS ORTEGA: 31:12
And I I think that's where, and imagine all those listeners right now, as you're listening, imagine if you had that in your business right now. How would you go to move? How would you go this weekend coming up, right? Would you sleep better? Would you feel better? Would you have more confidence in growing your business if you had a financial partner and advisor that is executing your business on that level? How would that make you feel? Right?
TAM SMITH: 31:36
I mean, it's just it completely confidence completely changes the game when you're going into any business conversation, you know, and having that confidence and peace of mind that you have that solid foundation to go into you know every team meeting, every sales conversation. It's just it's a total game changer. Once once leadership knows they have healthy margins, it talking about scalability, what new growth bets become possible at that point?
CHRIS ORTEGA: 32:02
Yeah, I I think when so once you kind of have that foundation and you have like new growth levers, right? This is where we help some clients go through the acquisition aspect of it, right? Like that's a you're in a great market, you get to that bill versus buy, and you're just like, man, I would love to go just acquire this business. I think it complements this. So you can get into buying businesses to help supplement the growth, right? I think another thing when you get into that place is like once you build that sustainable business, another area that we kind of help clients, and this kind of goes from my team's experience that we all have. Maybe you can get more fundraising inside the business, right? Like, how do you build that motion of saying, hey, I may not be ready for a like a series A or a C level investment, but how can I work with a financial partner to help us through like friends and family kind of fundraising round, right? We help clients with that. We're actually helping a client raise their first friends and family fundraising round, right? And they were like, they're like, I never thought fundraising, I thought that was for the big companies. I never thought that was like, no, just because you can raise money if you build a great business, you got a great leadership team and it's growing, that's gonna be attractive to people, right? So, how can you think about getting extra capital inside the business to fund whether that acquisition or that investment or that new vertical or that new direction you want to take in the organization? So once you build that foundation, now you've got those opportunities to scale, right? You get like, I could go acquire, I could, I could go hire that key resource that we need in HR to lead our people operations. I can make that investment. You can place better bets, right? You can place better bets, you can place it in people, you can place it in platforms, you can place it in different ancillary products or services, you can go into new verticals, you can continue to refine your marketing. Maybe you make that investment into a marketing resource, right? It gives you the the the highlight of that is it gives you the option, right? It gives you options are on the table. And here's the great silver lining for all those CEOs, owners, and founders, right? You got someone in that seat that's like, hey, if we place this bet, here's what that means, right? If we go down this strategy, here's the tactic, here's the metric, here's the milestone, here's the execution, here's what that could drive in the business, right? You've got someone that's just like, hey, we just do it and hope it works out, right? It's like, no, here's our plan around how we do it, here's how to impact the business, right? You're not leading blind through that. So many CEOs, owners, and founders make the mistake of just say, it feels good, let's just do it, right?
TAM SMITH: 34:31
I'm kind of I think I'm one of those, right?
CHRIS ORTEGA: 34:33
Until it until it doesn't feel good, and you're like, ooh, that didn't feel good. I made it. That's where you build a rhythm around it. You're looking at the opportunities because you built a great foundation, you're looking at these different growth levers, but you're looking at it not only bringing in your expertise as a CEO, owner, and founder qualitatively, right? You're looking at it from a quantifiable perspective. You get the best of both. It may feel good, but if it doesn't financially look good, should you do it? Maybe you do. But having that element to where you're able, and this is where I get down to the confidence side of it, right? You're able to go into those decisions, not just, I hope it works out and it feels good. I think a word a lot of salespeople use is like it anecdotally feels good, right? I still don't know what that means. Anytime any anytime I hear a salesperson say anecdotally, I'm like, where's the data? Like, where's the data? Where's the data? Right. But now you have that opportunity to look at it and you're saying, okay, if we go down there, here's our plan, here's what we're gonna look at, here's a partner to kind of help us navigate. And I think this is another value prop that I think separates us, right? We're not just gonna be your financial partners and advisors, right? CEOs, owners, and founders, when they're thinking about acquisition, they're thinking about we're part of even the interview process when they bring on people. We have immersed ourselves to be business partners first, right? We want to provide value to the business. And we're gonna do that. Our expertise is in finance, but we can provide value in the sales side of it, the marketing side, connecting the resources, banking partners, insurance partners, legal partners. We want to make sure that you're not just getting a financial expert, you're getting a business value added partner, which I think is another differentiator, right? A lot of finance people, we want to feel good about our Excel and our financial modeling, which I'm not discounting that that's important, but to CEOs, owners, and founders, they don't care about that. How are you bringing value to me? How are you bringing value to my business? And I think as you as your question said, as you think about those growth levers, now you have that opportunity to place those bets and you have a partner throughout the journey that's going to help you look at those, make those pivot or persevere decisions when you're going down those investment strategies.
TAM SMITH: 36:53
You've cast such a great vision for what's possible, you know, with your business. And that was really my my goal with this conversation is like when you build that strong foundation and you bring in those right partners, like you you've set yourself up for choice and optionality. And there's there's like you said, the fundraising or you know, having the people, oh, that's not possible. I could never do that inside my business. Why not? Yeah, you know, when you build that, yeah. I mean, there's there's there's a lot of opportunity out there for small business owners when you build that strong foundational platform, you know, financing your business. Let's jump into our fast five. Your I can't live without it software or app.
CHRIS ORTEGA: 37:28
Uh I can't live out my Polar B app. It is a health and wellness app. I've been using it with my heart rate monitor every time I work out. Ironically enough, a finance person loving data. I love data on myself, on my workouts. I've been using it. I look at it. I can't live without my Polar Beat app.
TAM SMITH: 37:45
Your best advice you've ever received about sales and business development.
CHRIS ORTEGA: 37:48
ABCs. Always be curious. Not closing. Always be curious. I think curiosity is a superpower, whether you're in sales or whatever role. Always be curious. That has opened up more comfort expanding opportunities, and you'll close a lot more when you're curious.
TAM SMITH: 38:03
Yes. Yes. It's the next right question to ask, not the rest next right thing to say.
CHRIS ORTEGA: 38:09
Facts.
TAM SMITH: 38:09
Morning routine must have.
CHRIS ORTEGA: 38:11
My uh 64 ounces of green tea. I do that every morning. Sometimes on Fridays, I put some fruit in it, but I have to have my green tea. I'm not a coffee person. I know everybody listening to this. They're like, dude, if I did coffee, I'll be at like a 12 energy level. I like to keep like a 9.32 is like where I like to stay at. So my green tea.
TAM SMITH: 38:29
Your walk-on song, the one song that always pumps you up.
CHRIS ORTEGA: 38:32
Lupe Fiasco superstar. If you uh who would you say you are a superstar, then have the crowd is here in the lights on. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah.
TAM SMITH: 38:47
It's going on the playlist. If you only had one hour each day for business growth, how would you spend it?
CHRIS ORTEGA: 38:52
Helping other people.
TAM SMITH: 38:53
Yes. Thank you. That that is our that is our mantra around here.
CHRIS ORTEGA: 38:56
I would I would spend an hour of time seeing how I could use my skills, passions, and talents and experiences to help others realize and achieve greatness in their business. Because if I do that, which is that's my north star, that's my secret sauce. Everybody listening, you probably made it this far through the conversation. You're like, who is this guy? I gotta know his secret sauce. That's it. Every day I'll wake up and I'm how can I utilize my skills, passions, talents, and experiences to help others realize and achieve greatness in their life and in business. Find your North Star, do it every day. If you do that every day, everything else that you want that doesn't matter, like power, money, and all that other stuff that doesn't matter, you'll get it.
TAM SMITH: 39:36
Thank you for that. Hey, where can folks find you online, Chris?
CHRIS ORTEGA: 39:39
If you want to connect with me, if you enjoy this conversation, I'm on LinkedIn. Just type in Chris Ortega, you'll see it. I'm not, I do look like Lewis Hamilton, but you're like, that's not gonna be Lewis Hamilton. If you want to learn more about Fresh FPNA and how we can help your business grow with financial clarity and confidence, visit our website www.freshfresh, f as in Frank, P as in Paul, A as in Apple, FPNA.com. Check us out. You can learn more about us. We got resources out there about Cash Burn. We got playbooks. You can also schedule a free consultation where we can go look at your business and give you some practical insights and strategies to help you grow with confidence. So check us out and make sure to follow us on all of our socials, just fresh FPA on all socials. Thanks so much, Chris. Thank you. Thank you. I enjoy this conversation. Thank you.
TAM SMITH: 40:26
Big thanks to Chris Ortega for breaking down profitability 101 in plain language. Revenue matters, but profit is what pays you, your team, and your next move. All right. So your sales of service challenge for this week. Run a quick margin check. Pick your top three clients or projects from last month, and then jot down revenue minus your direct delivery costs to calculate your gross profit percentages. Circle anything that makes you wince. Now pick one lever. Choose a single change you'll make on the very next proposal or renewal. That could be tightening a scope or raising a rate or capping the number of revisions. I mean, I know those can get out of hand fast. And then bonus step start a monthly money recon. Create a simple spreadsheet if you don't already have one and block time on your calendar to compare what's coming in and what's going out across your business checking and credit cards. And pro tip, tech stacks, creep. So audit those subscriptions. Keep what you use, cancel what you don't. Hey, in total transparency, this is actually the first year I've done this consistently in my own business. And the confidence that comes from knowing my numbers is real. My books run through QuickBooks, but I keep a Google Sheet that mirrors the key lines so I have an at-a-glance view. If you take the challenge, of course I want to hear about it. So find me on LinkedIn and tell me your one lever for this week. And if today was helpful, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a quick review so more business owners can benefit from these insights. Until next time, remember, sales is an act of service. It's about what you give, not what you get. And when you serve well, the ROI always follows. See you next week. You've just listened to the Sales a Service podcast, the podcast to help you shift your mindset around selling. If you liked what you heard, be sure to hit subscribe and share it with a friend because we're all about more sales awesome and less sales awkward. See you next episode.

✦ YOUR SALES AS SERVICE CHALLENGE

Run a quick margin check. Pick your top three clients/projects from last month. Write down revenue, direct delivery costs, and gross profit % (formula: (Revenue − Direct Costs) ÷ Revenue). Circle anything that makes you wince.

Pick one lever. Commit to a single change on your very next proposal or renewal—tighten scope, raise a rate, add a minimum, or cap revisions (those get out of hand fast).

BONUS: Start a monthly money recon. Create a simple spreadsheet (if you don’t have one), and block time on your calendar to compare what’s coming in vs. what’s going out across your business checking and credit cards.

Pro tip: tech stacks creep. Audit subscriptions—keep what you actually use; cancel what you don’t. Optional: mirror your accounting tool in a quick Google Sheet for an at-a-glance view.

RESOURCES & LINKS

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