Jon Morris built Rise Interactive from a solo operation to one of the largest independent digital marketing agencies in the world, scaling it to nearly $40 million in revenue over 16 years. He started with prize money from the University of Chicago's New Venture Challenge in 2004 and rode the wave of digital advertising's explosive growth.

Today, Jon is the founder and CEO of The Fiscal Advocate, where he serves as a fractional CFO for professional service firms. In this episode, Jon shares his "double wind" framework - the idea that success comes from having wind at your back in both your service offerings and your client selection. He explains why picking high-growth industries and rapidly growing clients matters more than raw talent, discusses the future of AI in financial planning, and reveals why structured data is the key to unlocking AI's potential. Jon also opens up about the challenges creative agency owners face when forced to become entrepreneurs and why getting into the financial weeds separates great CEOs from the rest.

Want to learn more about Jon Morris's work? Check out their website at https://www.fiscaladvocate.com/.

Connect with Jon Morris on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmorrisramsayinnovations/.

Think you'd be a great guest on the show? Apply at https://podcast.allies4me.com/podcast-guest/.

Want to learn more about Craig Andrew's work at allies4me? Check out his website at https://allies4me.com/.

Key Points & Timestamps

• 00:00:51 - Jon Morris introduced: founder of The Fiscal Advocate, former founder of Rise Interactive (scaled to $40M over 16 years)
• 00:01:57 - Jon's agency origin story: started with prize money from University of Chicago's New Venture Challenge in 2004
• 00:02:14 - Rise Interactive's three core services: digital media, analytics, web development
• 00:02:37 - The role of luck and timing: being early to paid search when billions in TV ad dollars shifted to digital
• 00:04:27 - The "wind at your back" analogy: Jon's half-Ironman experience biking into 25-30mph wind, then with it. Industries matter.
• 00:06:35 - "Double wind" explained: wind in your service offering (e.g., AI right now) PLUS wind from clients who are growing rapidly
• 00:07:30 - Case study: Rise's largest client grew from $500M to $20B market cap; Rise's fees grew from $60K/year to millions
• 00:08:12 - Competitor insight: Silicon Valley agencies won Facebook, LinkedIn, Airbnb early - client growth drove agency growth
• 00:09:48 - Discussion on AI disrupting SaaS business models and Google's search dominance
• 00:12:29 - What The Fiscal Advocate does: bookkeeping, FP&A, resource planning, strategic planning for professional service firms
• 00:14:12 - Why financial data matters: the difference between being data-driven vs. flying blind
• 00:15:30 - Resource planning as the most critical element for service businesses: avoiding over/under-servicing clients
• 00:17:18 - Two types of clients: cash-distressed companies and plateaued growth companies
• 00:18:06 - The challenge: many business owners (especially creatives) hate financial details. Jon's response: "If you want to be an entrepreneur, learn to be a great entrepreneur."
• 00:21:38 - AI and finance: Jon built "Luca," an AI CFO copilot. But output quality depends entirely on input data quality.
• 00:23:42 - Critical insight: AI can't answer "what percent of revenue goes to sales and marketing?" if payroll is one bundled line item
• 00:24:46 - Will AI eliminate jobs? Jon: "I don't know." Historical pattern: new tech eliminates some jobs, creates others. Open question: will new jobs pay as well?
• 00:27:37 - Craig's insight: AI is not good at human connection. Proof point: OnlyFans exists because people pay for human connection.
• 00:29:42 - Jon shares how to reach him: LinkedIn, fiscaladvocate.com, or jon@fiscaladvocate.com. He works with $5M-$30M professional service firms focusing on three KPIs: annual growth rate, profit margin, and cash relative to monthly overhead.

Transcript

00;00;05;20 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment in my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;13
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on this show.

00;00;51;15 - 00;00;57;18
Craig Andrews
Today I want welcome. Jon Morris is the founder and CEO of the SQL advocate.

00;00;57;21 - 00;01;09;18
Craig Andrews
His engine BI platform is designed to give CEOs clear visibility into their numbers, profitability, cash position, and strategic opportunities.

00;01;09;21 - 00;01;28;10
Craig Andrews
Jon Laws launched his first agency in 2004 with prize money from University of Chicago's New Venture Challenge, and he spent nearly 16 years scaling it from a solo operation to one of the largest independent marketing agencies in the world.

00;01;28;13 - 00;01;29;18
Craig Andrews
Now he helps clients,

00;01;29;23 - 00;01;31;05
Craig Andrews
and provides accounting,

00;01;31;13 - 00;01;39;09
Craig Andrews
and advisory services, basically help folks make better decisions. Jon, welcome.

00;01;39;11 - 00;01;41;14
Jon Morris
Thanks, Craig, for having me here.

00;01;41;17 - 00;01;45;23
Craig Andrews
Well, first off, I got to ask you about, you know, so I have an agency and I'm a little bit aimless.

00;01;45;23 - 00;01;48;22
Craig Andrews
The, That's amazing.

00;01;48;27 - 00;01;50;28
Craig Andrews
So as a marketing agency.

00;01;51;01 - 00;01;53;16
Jon Morris
I was with digital marketing agency.

00;01;53;18 - 00;01;57;17
Craig Andrews
Very cool. Was was there like one area you specialize or one?

00;01;57;19 - 00;02;14;01
Jon Morris
So initially we focused on paid search. Yeah. And then we expanded to all of digital media. So paid search, programmatic affiliate SEO, social media, social media didn't exist. By the way, when I first started my agency. Yeah.

00;02;14;05 - 00;02;17;22
Jon Morris
Which was kind of crazy to think about. And

00;02;17;25 - 00;02;19;16
Jon Morris
then we went into web development.

00;02;19;20 - 00;02;20;28
Jon Morris
We had an analytics departments.

00;02;20;28 - 00;02;26;04
Jon Morris
Our three primary services were digital media analytics, web development.

00;02;26;07 - 00;02;35;22
Craig Andrews
You know, and so much of that was new. I mean, when I hear Gary Vee talk about, you know, Google AdWords, he was like one of the first users of Google AdWords when it was cheap.

00;02;35;25 - 00;02;36;10
Jon Morris
Yeah.

00;02;36;13 - 00;02;37;08
Jon Morris
So

00;02;37;10 - 00;02;43;11
Jon Morris
and the fact that it was new and the fact that it was so measurable was a big part of my success.

00;02;43;14 - 00;02;47;17
Jon Morris
I would love to take a ton of credit. And just to say was my brilliance,

00;02;47;20 - 00;02;53;26
Jon Morris
there was, you know, a lot of luck of being in the right place at the right time.

00;02;53;28 - 00;03;21;10
Jon Morris
So there were billions and billions of dollars being spent on linear TV advertising, and that was all moving to digital media. Not all of it, but a large portion of it was moving to digital media. And the demand for people who were sophisticated digital marketers was far outweighing the supply that existed. And so that, you know, if I started rise today, it was called Rise Interactive.

00;03;21;13 - 00;03;25;21
Jon Morris
I don't think I'd be nearly as successful as I was when I started in 2004.

00;03;25;24 - 00;03;29;04
Craig Andrews
Do you know Brian Gettys?

00;03;29;06 - 00;03;33;14
Jon Morris
Is it Brad Gettys or Greg?

00;03;33;17 - 00;03;36;26
Craig Andrews
Maybe I'm I it's been years since I've talked to him a big,

00;03;36;26 - 00;03;38;21
Craig Andrews
Google AdWords guy right there in Chicago.

00;03;38;21 - 00;03;39;11
Jon Morris
Yeah.

00;03;39;14 - 00;03;42;06
Jon Morris
I believe I've met him before. I'm not close with him now.

00;03;42;08 - 00;03;43;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah.

00;03;43;19 - 00;03;46;12
Craig Andrews
And. Yeah.

00;03;46;15 - 00;03;57;06
Craig Andrews
You know and and know, like, so many things in life. Yeah. There's an element of luck. I mean, yeah, listen to Joe Rogan. He just lucked out and got a sitcom early in his career.

00;03;57;09 - 00;03;57;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah,

00;03;57;28 - 00;04;02;23
Craig Andrews
but it's not luck alone. There's, there's, there's luck plus talent.

00;04;02;25 - 00;04;03;16
Jon Morris
Yeah.

00;04;03;19 - 00;04;08;07
Craig Andrews
I mean, there's, you know, maybe you're lucky and you were born into the right family, and you,

00;04;08;10 - 00;04;19;20
Craig Andrews
you know, you you can spend, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars figuring out how to build businesses. And people keep giving you money until you eventually figure it out. That's happened at least here in Texas.

00;04;19;23 - 00;04;21;15
Craig Andrews
But the,

00;04;21;18 - 00;04;23;26
Craig Andrews
but there has to be a certain amount of talent.

00;04;23;29 - 00;04;26;27
Jon Morris
So let me let me take a step back a little bit.

00;04;27;00 - 00;04;32;04
Jon Morris
It was I use the word luck, but the reality is,

00;04;32;07 - 00;04;50;01
Jon Morris
it was purposely thought about about going into an industry that's fast growing. You know, talking to you before this interview, I mentioned I did six triathlons and two marathons in one summer. Yep. And my very first half Ironman, by the way, I only did two.

00;04;50;01 - 00;04;55;13
Jon Morris
So it makes it sound like I've done a ton of, but, you know, my my very first one of my many that I've done,

00;04;55;16 - 00;05;07;07
Jon Morris
I had a 28 mile bike ride on one road out in Mattoon, Illinois, which is basically farm country. I turned around and then went back 28 miles. So it's a 56 mile bike ride.

00;05;07;09 - 00;05;09;29
Jon Morris
I normally would go about 20mph,

00;05;10;05 - 00;05;32;17
Jon Morris
for my bikes. Right? The first 28 miles I went between 6 and 7mph. On the way back, I went 35 to 40mph. And the reason why was there was wind going between 25 and 30mph. So I was biking directly into the wind for the first half, and then I had the wind at my back for the back half.

00;05;32;19 - 00;05;48;13
Jon Morris
And the reason why I bring that up is, is probably one of the most important things that is not talked about enough, which is if you are going into an industry with wind at your back, you can make a lot of mistakes. And,

00;05;48;20 - 00;05;54;23
Jon Morris
and you're still going to grow. If you go in an industry that is shrinking, I don't care.

00;05;54;23 - 00;05;58;04
Jon Morris
You know how smart you are or how talented you are.

00;05;58;07 - 00;06;11;13
Jon Morris
You can't beat the wind. And so I spent a lot of time thinking about where is the wind blowing and how do I make sure that I'm steering both the services I offer and the clients I go after?

00;06;11;16 - 00;06;15;16
Jon Morris
So that I'm going in high growth areas?

00;06;15;19 - 00;06;19;22
Craig Andrews
That's such a brilliant insight, and I love that analogy.

00;06;19;25 - 00;06;27;26
Craig Andrews
And just honestly, I'm sitting there, I'm thinking through, what am I working on? My fighting the wind. Wind at the back. If you've really challenged me.

00;06;27;29 - 00;06;35;14
Jon Morris
Yeah. So I, I call it double wind. So the first type of wind is the services that you're offering.

00;06;35;17 - 00;06;54;00
Jon Morris
You know, I do a lot of annual and quarterly planning. Every single company I've talked to, 100% success rate is talking about incorporating AI into their business in some way, that this is the year that they're going to figure out how they leverage AI.

00;06;54;02 - 00;07;14;00
Jon Morris
Yeah. So if you just want to think about where the wind is blowing, you know, are you thinking about a solution that offers helping people with AI in some compare, you know, capacity? And then the second thing is the clients that you win, you know, our largest customer, it rides,

00;07;14;03 - 00;07;21;29
Jon Morris
went from a publicly traded company with a $500 million market cap to a $20 billion market cap.

00;07;22;01 - 00;07;30;08
Jon Morris
When we first won them, they gave us $60,000 a year in fees. When I left, they were giving us millions of dollars a year in fees.

00;07;30;11 - 00;07;45;08
Jon Morris
Now there are three things that happened that allowed us to get that. The first one was they grew rapidly. If they didn't grow rapidly, they would never be spending millions of dollars with us.

00;07;45;10 - 00;07;56;01
Jon Morris
Right. The second thing was we did a really good job. And so they kept us. We went through five CMOs. Now, the third thing was,

00;07;56;04 - 00;08;12;09
Jon Morris
and this is a, I think, in my opinion, a rare this particular company had insane loyalty to their existing vendors. It was very hard to unseat us, you know, and, you know, I had a competitor of mine that grew faster than me.

00;08;12;09 - 00;08;34;01
Jon Morris
And I can say one of their biggest differentiators was that they were headquartered in Silicon Valley, and they won these companies. They were startups at the time. One was called Facebook and then was called LinkedIn. Another one was called Airbnb, and I was about 23 and me. And so they because those companies grew so rapidly, they grew really rapidly.

00;08;34;03 - 00;08;39;25
Jon Morris
So that's what double wind is. You have wind in your service offering and you have wind with the clients. You wind.

00;08;39;27 - 00;08;44;13
Craig Andrews
Makes a lot of sense. You know.

00;08;44;15 - 00;08;49;16
Craig Andrews
There's something I'd love to explore with you. And it's not necessarily finance, but it ties into what you're talking about.

00;08;49;18 - 00;08;51;16
Jon Morris
Yeah.

00;08;51;18 - 00;08;56;14
Craig Andrews
I'm looking at the, you know, the some of the major,

00;08;56;17 - 00;09;10;03
Craig Andrews
let's just call marketing platforms, CRM platforms. And I'm wondering if their business models can be viable in five years. And, you know, tying in, I,

00;09;10;06 - 00;09;13;01
Craig Andrews
I just I've gotten fascinated by this thing called,

00;09;13;01 - 00;09;20;04
Craig Andrews
call box, which is a pre-configured version of Open Call, which is like a personal assistant.

00;09;20;07 - 00;09;29;03
Craig Andrews
And looking at them like, I wonder how many things that, you know, folks are paying, you know, 1200 and $1,500 a month subscription.

00;09;29;05 - 00;09;29;26
Jon Morris
Yeah.

00;09;29;29 - 00;09;48;09
Craig Andrews
Where if they had just a basic CRM plus one of these call boxes, it could go in and it could do all the automations. It could help them figure out the leads to work. It could do all these things. And, you know, basically nuke, you know, a $35 billion company.

00;09;48;12 - 00;09;52;27
Jon Morris
I mean, look, you've seen a lot of the SaaS companies getting hit, you know,

00;09;53;05 - 00;09;57;02
Jon Morris
in Wall Street recently for that very reason. There's a lot of fear about that.

00;09;57;05 - 00;10;10;02
Jon Morris
The question comes down to, you know, I, I don't know if the winners today will be the same winners tomorrow. You know, they've built this moat and that's what you're talking about is can that moat,

00;10;10;05 - 00;10;10;29
Jon Morris
be eliminated?

00;10;10;29 - 00;10;19;02
Jon Morris
And I think the answer is potentially yes. Yeah, but I do believe that there will be new moats. You know what I mean? That I don't know what we are yet.

00;10;19;05 - 00;10;21;02
Jon Morris
That will get formed.

00;10;21;05 - 00;10;52;04
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, in an example, you know, people were recently talking about, you know, how we, you know, need to break up Google. They're an unstoppable monopoly. I'm like, they're not they're not unstoppable. They can be, said, you know, within a generation and people are like, no, that's impossible. And the example I go back to, I said, you know, in the late 90s, they were saying the same thing about Microsoft, and they dropped they drug Bill gates in front of Congress, and Bill Gates and Congress said something that he got ridiculed over.

00;10;52;04 - 00;11;11;00
Craig Andrews
And he said, look, yes, we're very dominant in the market because we work really hard, but make no mistake, and one generation, we could be unseated. And they just ridiculed them for that, saying, that's impossible. And the irony is, when he made that statement, there was a little known startup in Mountain View, California called Google.

00;11;11;02 - 00;11;37;24
Jon Morris
Yeah. New moat. Exactly. And, you know, look, I mean, then OpenAI came out. Now Gemini's getting market share. But you know, OpenAI and ChatGPT has been that big threat to Google's core revenue stream. You know, I use I use some type of alum, whether it's Gemini or ChatGPT more than I use Google's core search. Now.

00;11;37;27 - 00;11;53;24
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and I think that that trends only going to increase. I it's rare for me if I do a search, it's usually so I can bring up the prompt to launch the LM.

00;11;53;26 - 00;11;54;05
Jon Morris
Yeah.

00;11;54;05 - 00;12;01;00
Jon Morris
Exactly like you want to. Now I'm just going to Gemini, Google google.com. I'm not even going to Google anymore. Yeah.

00;12;01;02 - 00;12;25;13
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well and so let's go ahead and pivot to finances and yeah I mean I got kind of a tough question. I'll just throw it on the front end. Yeah. One of the things that. And let me see if I have this right. Basically what you do you help businesses jobs that years have clarity in making decisions to understand kind of deep little nuances in the books.

00;12;25;17 - 00;12;29;13
Craig Andrews
So why don't we start there, tell us what you do and then then come back with a question about.

00;12;29;13 - 00;12;35;22
Jon Morris
AI, about that. So typically I take over the finance department for

00;12;35;25 - 00;12;54;02
Jon Morris
marketing agencies, tech service agencies and any other company in the professional service room. So my expertise is people, but B2B companies that sell time, you know, and there's a few different divisions. So there's a bookkeeping division which is like invoicing are AP payroll month and closed.

00;12;54;05 - 00;13;01;13
Jon Morris
There is something called a and this might be an oxymoron, but this what I consider the fun part of finance, which is,

00;13;01;16 - 00;13;06;21
Jon Morris
monthly insights cash flow analysis, budgeting and forecasting.

00;13;06;24 - 00;13;10;18
Jon Morris
Then there's a third component, which is resource planning,

00;13;10;21 - 00;13;13;09
Jon Morris
which is really making sure that you have,

00;13;13;12 - 00;13;20;22
Jon Morris
real understanding of the people who are assigned to services and assigned to clients that you're not overstaffed, you're not understaffed.

00;13;20;22 - 00;13;25;21
Jon Morris
And then lastly, we do strategic planning. So those are kind of the core offerings.

00;13;25;24 - 00;13;28;18
Jon Morris
So now give me the hardball question.

00;13;28;20 - 00;13;35;17
Craig Andrews
Well, and so let's before we go there, why is that important and why how does it help the CEO?

00;13;35;19 - 00;13;37;07
Jon Morris
So,

00;13;37;10 - 00;13;44;18
Jon Morris
break it up into a few different areas. So on the bookkeeping side, if you don't get your invoices out, you're not going to get paid. If you don't have. Good.

00;13;44;18 - 00;13;56;28
Jon Morris
You're not going to collect your cash. If you don't have good payables systems, your vendors are gonna shut you down. So to me, it's kind of like a lights on, you know, not very strategic, but crucial component to your business.

00;13;57;00 - 00;14;12;17
Jon Morris
Month and close, which is part of bookkeeping, is actually very strategic. The faster you close your books and the more accurate is, the faster you can make decisions about your business. So that's but group one group to the side.

00;14;12;20 - 00;14;19;02
Jon Morris
This to me is do you want to be data driven or do you not want to be data driven in terms of your decision making?

00;14;19;05 - 00;14;28;20
Jon Morris
And it's really a crystal ball. You are looking into the future and trying to make sure that you understand, you know,

00;14;28;23 - 00;14;33;13
Jon Morris
do I need to cut expenses because I have a cliff coming up and my revenue is going to be taking a dive.

00;14;33;16 - 00;14;38;10
Jon Morris
Is something working really well on my sales and marketing? I could put more money into it.

00;14;38;13 - 00;14;48;21
Jon Morris
And so, you know, every everybody has to make decisions by having a really solid financial planning and analysis group and a,

00;14;48;24 - 00;14;57;19
Jon Morris
we can make it so that we can take the leap of your decision and make it a smaller leap. The likelihood of success is higher.

00;14;57;22 - 00;14;59;08
Jon Morris
You know, I grew,

00;14;59;11 - 00;15;03;28
Jon Morris
I grew rise from, you know, zero to almost 40 million in revenue in 16 years.

00;15;03;28 - 00;15;30;24
Jon Morris
And in a big way that I did that was that I had the data to understand if my sales and marketing was affected, if I was profitable enough. Am I growing my cash? I understood what KPIs to look at. I understood the benchmarks to look at. So that's the second bucket. The third bucket, which is resource planning, is probably the most important aspect to running a service based company.

00;15;30;26 - 00;15;33;09
Jon Morris
I can't tell you how many people,

00;15;33;12 - 00;16;07;11
Jon Morris
are way under servicing or way over servicing their customers, or when or they're hiring people that they don't need to hire because they don't. They're not assigning people to a specific client in a specific service in an intelligent, effective manner. You know, just just last week, I was talking to a client of mine and we were looking at, you know, he wants he wants to generate $150 an hour to got a fixed retainer, and he was supposed to deliver 30 hours worth of work in the month of February, and he delivered 80 hours worth of work.

00;16;07;13 - 00;16;27;28
Jon Morris
And it turns out that it was one employee that was going rogue and was spending way too much time on the account. Well, rather than generating $150 an hour, the person generating 60 to $70 an hour. And so that's where the resource planning becomes so important. And then lastly, the strategic planning. Everyone has a strategic plan, whether they know it or not.

00;16;28;00 - 00;16;49;26
Jon Morris
It's what you spend your time and your money on. But if you can stop for a moment and really think about where do I want to be long term, where do I want to be this year? What am I going to focus on for the next 90 days? You can make sure that now you get back to your your financial plan analysis, that you're budgeting for the things that are really impactful and budgeting both time and money.

00;16;49;28 - 00;16;52;09
Jon Morris
So that's a little bit about the why,

00;16;52;12 - 00;16;54;25
Jon Morris
I would say, you know, just so as I ramble, I'll

00;16;54;25 - 00;16;56;13
Jon Morris
just add two more points here.

00;16;56;15 - 00;16;57;11
Craig Andrews
Yeah. No, go for it.

00;16;57;11 - 00;17;18;00
Jon Morris
Go for it. So the first one is I generally deal with two types of companies cash distressed, meaning that they are just trying to figure out how to make payroll. And the second one is they've grown and you hit a plateau and all of a sudden you don't know how to grow anymore. Financial insights will help you solve both of those problems.

00;17;18;02 - 00;17;23;13
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. So here's the challenge that I'd say is a lot of,

00;17;23;13 - 00;17;25;28
Craig Andrews
a lot of business owners,

00;17;26;01 - 00;17;39;05
Craig Andrews
some are dyslexic. You know, the loss is in the medium's in small, medium sized business. There's a lot of people that have learning disabilities. And that's why they they just found their way into that business. I'll give you an example of a big one.

00;17;39;07 - 00;17;44;26
Craig Andrews
One 800. Got junk. You've probably heard of them. Yeah. They're nearly $1 billion business. And,

00;17;44;26 - 00;17;50;04
Craig Andrews
Brian Scudamore, who founded that, he dropped out of college his second day because, you know,

00;17;50;04 - 00;18;06;05
Craig Andrews
he's dyslexic and everything was all jumbled up in his head. And so a lot of business owners, they just. The details get painful just going into all those painful little details.

00;18;06;07 - 00;18;30;15
Craig Andrews
How can how how do you make it accessible to them so they can just say, okay, here's here's where you need my input or here's what I need to do, you know, to move on. And let me just kind of give an example. There's somebody who works for me now. She'd work for me before I quit for a while and then came back and she came up to me one day and she starts talking and I'm listening.

00;18;30;17 - 00;18;47;04
Craig Andrews
And she said, once she's done talking, I said, so basically you're saying there was a problem, you identified the problem, you fix the problem, and you're just here kind of updating me, and I don't have anything I need to do. And she said, yes, once you you're just amazing. Yeah. And she is amazing.

00;18;47;07 - 00;18;48;10
Craig Andrews
But the,

00;18;48;10 - 00;18;49;04
Craig Andrews
her name is Elena.

00;18;49;10 - 00;18;51;05
Craig Andrews
I think she hung the moon.

00;18;51;08 - 00;18;52;29
Craig Andrews
But the,

00;18;53;02 - 00;18;59;09
Craig Andrews
you know, a lot of business owners just don't want to get into the details. And what you're describing feels detailed.

00;18;59;11 - 00;19;24;29
Jon Morris
It's incredibly detailed. And I think it really depends on the size of your company. If you're a one person shop with very little revenue, you are probably going to have to get into the details if you want to do it. And I'll go into that a second. If you're a $20 million company or, you know, $1 billion company, you probably have a finance department that's taking care of all the details and giving you their insights for you to make your decisions.

00;19;25;01 - 00;19;48;06
Jon Morris
At the end of the day, you know, I'll give you an example. Let's talk about a company. And they lost, you know, a good chunk of their revenue. They just lost a big client. So, you know, they don't necessarily want to go through all the math and all the details, but they do need to know how much money they have to take out of the business, how much cost they have to take out to make sure that they stay profitable,

00;19;48;09 - 00;19;56;05
Jon Morris
or they can make a strategic decision and say, you know what, I'm comfortable losing money because I have such a great pipeline that I'm going to go win these new clients and I'll I'll

00;19;56;05 - 00;19;56;09
Jon Morris
be

00;19;56;09 - 00;19;58;22
Jon Morris
able to absorb that. But,

00;19;58;25 - 00;20;04;07
Jon Morris
but they need the data to make that decision, and somebody has got to put that together for them.

00;20;04;10 - 00;20;05;09
Jon Morris
But,

00;20;05;11 - 00;20;27;01
Jon Morris
you know, if you don't put the detail together, there's a likelihood that you're going to make a really bad decision that could cost you growth or cost you money, you know. So but I will tell you, because I'm six years, you know, sold rights in 2020 and six years into this new job of being a fractional CFO.

00;20;27;03 - 00;20;48;07
Jon Morris
You are correct. You know, I deal with a lot of marketing agencies and a lot of marketing agencies. There are creatives, and they didn't start their business because, like, I can't wait to run the finance department. You know, they start the business because they're amazing creatives and they want to build beautiful, creative things. And then all of a sudden they realize, I have to be an entrepreneur.

00;20;48;10 - 00;21;06;14
Jon Morris
But here's my response is, if you want to be an entrepreneur, then you got to learn how to be a great entrepreneur. You know, everybody who starts a business most likely doesn't start it because they want to run a business. They most likely start it because they're passionate about something. They think they could solve a problem, right?

00;21;06;19 - 00;21;20;04
Jon Morris
And at some point you no longer get to solve that problem. You get to run a business. And getting into the weeds and getting into the details, I think, is what makes someone great at being a CEO.

00;21;20;07 - 00;21;37;29
Craig Andrews
So and here's kind of circling back to I. Yeah, one of the things I love about I is I can ask it to sort through all the details and come back with recommendations.

00;21;38;02 - 00;21;38;20
Jon Morris
Yep.

00;21;38;22 - 00;21;43;21
Craig Andrews
And and so for me, it feels like the best of both worlds.

00;21;43;24 - 00;21;49;18
Craig Andrews
Now I I'll just say I'm not quite there on my, my finances, but when I look at other things,

00;21;49;21 - 00;21;52;14
Craig Andrews
I can go off and say, all right,

00;21;52;17 - 00;21;57;09
Craig Andrews
I'm considering these various things. Please help me. Please help me make this,

00;21;57;12 - 00;21;58;26
Craig Andrews
decision all of a sudden.

00;21;58;26 - 00;22;03;14
Craig Andrews
Yeah, I have something that can digest infinite amounts of information.

00;22;03;17 - 00;22;04;26
Jon Morris
And really fast.

00;22;04;28 - 00;22;25;07
Craig Andrews
Really fast. And make judgment calls. And so I'm wondering, is, is the future is the future of financial dashboards for CEOs going to be something that has just a few numbers and then a little chat box where they can, you know, chat and ask for input.

00;22;25;09 - 00;22;32;27
Jon Morris
Whereas as I mentioned before this, we started the podcast. You know, I've built this called Luca, which is named after Luca Pacioli, the founder of accounting.

00;22;33;00 - 00;22;45;06
Jon Morris
An I CFO, copilot. And I do believe the world is headed that way. But what I'll tell you is the outcome is only as good as the data that you give it.

00;22;45;08 - 00;22;47;09
Jon Morris
Yeah. You know, I'll just give you an example.

00;22;47;16 - 00;23;05;29
Jon Morris
A typical professional service firm. The average spends 8% of their revenue on sales and marketing. So if you ask, you know, Gemini or ChatGPT or Cod or whichever tool you use, you know what percent of revenue do I spend on sales and marketing? Well,

00;23;06;01 - 00;23;12;27
Jon Morris
if all of your payroll is bundled, which is typically what I see, you'll have one line on this payroll, but it's your sales and marketing team.

00;23;12;27 - 00;23;42;16
Jon Morris
It's the team that does client work. It's your CEO. It's everybody. The album's not going to be to answer that question. It's got to take that payroll and identify all the salespeople and all the marketing people and move it into that marketing bucket in order to answer yes. Now there is a need, if you want to get the most out of your AI platform, to organize the data so that the platform can actually answer the questions.

00;23;42;18 - 00;23;49;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah, now. And that's really it's really insightful, you know, as

00;23;49;19 - 00;23;51;25
Craig Andrews
you probably saw the same article. There was a,

00;23;51;25 - 00;23;59;20
Craig Andrews
developer who published something on LinkedIn saying basically all of our white collar jobs are over and,

00;23;59;23 - 00;24;11;18
Craig Andrews
and I there's sort of a structural thought in back in, you know, the late 90s when they were trying to dismantle Microsoft, my belief was no, leave them alone.

00;24;11;20 - 00;24;32;01
Craig Andrews
You know, the free market works. It will sort itself out. I didn't know how. And, you know, a few years ago when people were talking about dismantling Google, I said they're not to they're not going to hold their dominant position. Somebody will take their spot and they're like, how? And I say, I don't know, I just know I trust system.

00;24;32;03 - 00;24;44;01
Craig Andrews
And another one of those places where I just trust the system is I, I don't think technology technology will eliminate job titles. It won't eliminate jobs. I don't believe,

00;24;44;03 - 00;24;46;10
Jon Morris
My answer is, I don't know.

00;24;46;13 - 00;24;56;18
Jon Morris
Without a doubt, there are jobs that existed before, you know, the personal computer came along that don't exist anymore, right? I mean.

00;24;56;20 - 00;24;58;22
Craig Andrews
I put that in your job titles.

00;24;58;24 - 00;25;00;02
Jon Morris
What? Yeah.

00;25;00;05 - 00;25;20;20
Jon Morris
And what I would say is there are few things when a major technology like AI comes around, that new jobs will absolutely be created. And the historic view has been that for every job loss, there's been a new job created.

00;25;20;23 - 00;25;27;15
Jon Morris
But then we had to figure out is, does that new job have the same value and pay the same compensation?

00;25;27;18 - 00;25;46;16
Jon Morris
So want it? Do you have the same number of jobs and then two to the jobs, you know, provide, you know, a successful rich, you know, middle class or does it create a whole bunch of jobs that are, you know, manual or, you know, low,

00;25;46;19 - 00;25;48;11
Jon Morris
low pay jobs,

00;25;48;14 - 00;26;01;01
Jon Morris
that people can't support their families? And so you have to analyze both the job creation, the job loss, and then the compensation changes as well that come along with it.

00;26;01;04 - 00;26;02;05
Jon Morris
Yeah.

00;26;02;07 - 00;26;07;23
Craig Andrews
Now Elon's on the extreme. He believes all these jobs are going to be lost. And everybody's going,

00;26;07;26 - 00;26;11;29
Craig Andrews
nobody's going to have a job. And we'll just get distributions from the bottom.

00;26;12;05 - 00;26;17;00
Jon Morris
Well will turn into a socialist state, because that's the only way that we can support humans.

00;26;17;03 - 00;26;17;22
Craig Andrews
That.

00;26;17;24 - 00;26;22;01
Jon Morris
I've heard multiple people had that argument. Yeah.

00;26;22;04 - 00;26;46;06
Jon Morris
But I also, you know, going back to I forget I was talking to someone who, you know, was talking about programmers and how there was some new technology that came out that allowed people to program much faster. And the idea was that every programmer was going to lose their job because you don't need as many programmers, because you could program faster.

00;26;46;08 - 00;27;01;14
Jon Morris
Well, it actually exploded and create a massive amount more jobs, right? Because now all of a sudden, you can build all these things at such a fast rate that they're like, I want to keep going. I want more people, I want more features, I want more stuff. So I think it would be interesting to see the next 3 to 5 years.

00;27;01;14 - 00;27;04;15
Jon Morris
The true impact.

00;27;04;18 - 00;27;09;22
Craig Andrews
Well, and one of the things that you were talking about was structuring the data.

00;27;09;24 - 00;27;22;13
Craig Andrews
You know, I, I see a huge human element in that, you know. Yeah. So, so that the I can go in and mind the mind the data in a meaningful way to that particular business.

00;27;22;15 - 00;27;23;18
Jon Morris
Yeah.

00;27;23;20 - 00;27;37;20
Craig Andrews
You know, talking about marketing, I, I my personal belief is AI is not good at human connection. Yeah. I have a salacious example proof point of that. If I was human connection, there would be no,

00;27;37;20 - 00;27;40;08
Craig Andrews
OnlyFans as a viable business model.

00;27;40;10 - 00;27;41;06
Jon Morris
Yeah.

00;27;41;08 - 00;28;08;13
Craig Andrews
You know, the vocabulary is not Shakespeare. It's limited vocabulary. But there's something the human provides that provides an element of connection that removes loneliness for someone. Now, I'm not advocating the business model. I think, yeah, I think we need to fix our human connections rather than, you know, go buy it online. But the buzz I see things. There are things that humans can do uniquely well.

00;28;08;15 - 00;28;11;03
Craig Andrews
And,

00;28;11;05 - 00;28;27;02
Craig Andrews
and so I do see that place. And I hadn't thought about the perspective of, you know, I can't just throw AI a bunch of data and say, tell me what means that some level of structuring, maybe I can, but the more structured the data is,

00;28;27;05 - 00;28;34;23
Craig Andrews
if I'm hearing the right the or, the more valuable the insights I will be able to get from that data because it's structured.

00;28;34;25 - 00;28;54;14
Jon Morris
Yeah. Doesn't matter if you give it one line and I spend, you know, $500,000 a month and that's all they know about you is how much you spend. And then you're like, I lost a client. I need to cut my expenses by $10,000 a month. Where should I cut? Why does I have any data to any granularity or ability to give you any insights?

00;28;54;14 - 00;28;57;15
Jon Morris
Because it doesn't have enough information.

00;28;57;17 - 00;29;21;20
Craig Andrews
That's such a brilliant insight. You know, I think we've I think we've just thrown this broad cloth over I am hey, it's good you're all this stuff out. And I think that's such a brilliant insight. Is we still need we still need somebody involved that can help structure the data, to enable an AI to come up with the insights.

00;29;21;22 - 00;29;23;07
Jon Morris
Yeah.

00;29;23;09 - 00;29;32;22
Jon Morris
Now, my get at some point where there's some tool that can structure the data faster than a human can, you know. But I don't think we're there yet. Yeah.

00;29;32;24 - 00;29;33;16
Craig Andrews
Well,

00;29;33;19 - 00;29;42;06
Craig Andrews
and so let's, let's wrap up with this real quick. How do you help businesses and how can they contact you?

00;29;42;09 - 00;29;50;18
Jon Morris
You know, so we typically work with companies between 5 million and around 30 million in revenue. We have some larger we have some smaller,

00;29;50;21 - 00;29;57;16
Jon Morris
we only work with professional service companies. So people who are on B2B selling their time,

00;29;57;19 - 00;30;09;05
Jon Morris
we focus on three KPIs. Your annual growth rates, your profit margin. So your annual revenue growth rate, your profit margin and how much cash have relative your monthly overhead.

00;30;09;08 - 00;30;13;04
Jon Morris
And people can reach out to me on LinkedIn and follow me.

00;30;13;07 - 00;30;18;27
Jon Morris
They can go to fiscal advocate if I see fiscal advocate.com.

00;30;18;29 - 00;30;23;20
Jon Morris
We have a great resource section. I have an e-book there. This podcast will be up there.

00;30;23;23 - 00;30;28;16
Jon Morris
And then you can email me Joanne at Fiscal advocate.com. I'd love to hear from you.

00;30;28;19 - 00;30;32;22
Craig Andrews
Jon. Thanks for coming on Layers and Legacies. This has been amazing.

00;30;32;24 - 00;30;43;27
Jon Morris
Craig, thanks so much for having me. I've been really a lot of fun. Yeah.

00;30;43;29 - 00;31;05;21
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Ally's for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this

00;31;05;21 - 00;31;07;16
Craig Andrews
episode on social media.

00;31;07;18 - 00;31;30;28
Craig Andrews
Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend, or posted on the socials. If you know someone who would be a great guest. Tag them on social media and let them know about the show, including the hashtag leaders and legacies. I love seeing your posts and suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content to make sure you don't miss anything.

00;31;31;00 - 00;31;39;05
Craig Andrews
Please go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up. Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me.

00;31;39;05 - 00;31;49;14
Craig Andrews
It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Ally's for me.com. Or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.