Sara Daw is Group CEO of The CFO Centre.
Can you tell us a little about your background and your company?
I graduated from Oxford University with a Chemistry degree and then became a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte. However, it was when I started at L’Oréal that I finally looked up from a spreadsheet. Working in industry made me realise there was more to life than finance, so I decided to embark on a full-time MBA at The London Business School to find out more and learn about all aspects of business, management, and strategy. On completion it was the investment banks who wanted to hire me. After all, I was a CA with an MBA!
However, I really didn’t want to go back into corporate life. By this time, I was married and had started a family. I just couldn’t see how I could bring up my children and combine being mum with having a corporate career – I wanted more flexibility, variety, and control over my life so that I could be with my daughters for part of my week AND have a fulfilling career for the other part of my week. It was the need to find a solution to this problem that brought me to consider going the self-employed route and becoming a part-time FD as it was called back then, now more commonly known as a fractional CFO.
This was a brand-new concept that was just emerging in the early 2000s. The idea would be that I would offer my CFO services on a self-employed basis to SMEs who recognised they needed the skillset but didn’t want, didn’t need, and couldn’t afford it full-time. I would work to build a portfolio of local SMEs for 2-3 days per week in this way, perhaps a day a week for one and a couple of days per month for a few others. Then the rest of the week I could spend with my young daughters.
What inspired you to start your business?
Once I got going as a fractional CFO, I realised that I wanted to be part of a team. I started looking around for others working this way and found Colin Mills, who had started The FD Centre (later rebranded to The CFO Centre) a few years earlier. He was seeking freedom from corporate life and was busy building his portfolio of SMEs to work with. We met up, and I liked the idea of The FD Centre so I joined him. I built up my portfolio of three clients rapidly within six months and even managed to continue growing my family as I had my third daughter in the first few years of starting out on my new career.
Over the years, many more CFOs have gravitated towards us. We have built The CFO Centre into a global business, with over 750 fractional CFOs, working across 18 countries providing the fractional CFO skills that matter most to both SMEs and larger organisations whose Group CFOs need extra support to get everything completed on their never-ending to-do lists.
How did you create awareness for your brand?
Early on, and still today, we adopted a direct marketing approach to develop a series of marketing channels using a ‘test and measure’ philosophy. The idea was to spend the minimum amount to give a channel a legitimate test to win a new client and do more of what worked and change what didn’t. This way we quickly worked out networking and leveraging our personal contact bases were routes to market, as were building partnership relationships with other organisations also serving our target market. Google pay per click was also a good source, as was very targeted PR and advertising. We didn’t have any budget for brand building in the traditional sense, our brand was down to our relationships on the ground with our partners and our immediate network.
What strategies helped you secure funding and scale your business?
We have never had any outside funding. We have always funded our growth out of income. Being accountants (!) we designed our business model carefully to ensure it had a positive working capital cycle and built a business that didn’t need significant capital outlay. Having cash flow and profit generated solely out of income means we have always had to be creative about how we expand using low-cost routes and it has forced us to make some difficult choices about where we do spend our money. It was hard at times, especially, in the early days of scaling, but I’m grateful for the discipline it taught us and now wouldn’t have it any other way!
What have been your biggest successes so far?
Becoming a national UK business back in 2008 and then starting our global expansion, first to Australia, back in 2009, followed by South Africa in 2010, Canada in 2011, and many other countries thereafter have been significant milestones. The CFO Centre is now the longest established and largest fractional CFO business in the industry.
In 2011 we also branched out to create a community of businesses under The Liberti Group brand to deliver fractional C-suite services in other disciplines including Marketing, People, and Sales.
We have continued our global expansion most years and we were even able to start in Germany using a completely remote model during the pandemic.
What challenges have you faced, and how did you overcome them?
The pandemic was a very difficult time for everyone. When we were first put into lockdown, many SME business owners, particularly those who were new to our services, wanted to pause working to keep costs down – as a result, we started to lose business. We believed this was a huge mistake because understanding your finances and navigating the disruption caused by the pandemic with careful financial planning were key to survival for most businesses. We discussed this as a team and brainstormed how we could encourage businesses to work with us. We made the decision to reach out to the entire SME market and offer to help with a variety of free-of-charge services. We also let our existing client base know that they could work with us as much as they needed without fear of their fees increasing above normal levels – basically, we took an abundance mindset and let our market know we were there for them and would do whatever it took to help them get through the pandemic in the best shape possible. The result was that we started having many more conversations with business owners and working with them to secure their future.
What are your plans for the future?
At The CFO Centre, our purpose is to be a life-changing business by defining and delivering the numbers that really matter to business owners and CFOs by bringing them together. I think it’s important to highlight that, of course, you would think that these numbers are the financial ones; the profit, the revenue, the headcount, the company valuation, and so on.
These are important and ones we as CFOs can directly impact. However, there are generally other ‘numbers’ that sit behind these that are the true driving force for business owners and for our CFOs who support them.
For example, take the business owners that have brought re-usable drinking bottles to market and are determined to eradicate single use plastic from that sector. Clearly, the number that really matters to them is zero! We want to change the lives of at least one million business leaders, their people, families and ourselves by helping them achieve the numbers like these, the ones that really count.
To do this, we aim to penetrate our current geographical markets further and then going forward we will continue our global expansion by adding at least one new country each year. In 2025, we will be starting in Dubai.
What advice would you give to aspiring female entrepreneurs?
I think women can sometimes question themselves to the point which stops them aiming high. I know I certainly did, and I still catch myself giving my inner critic too much airtime. However, I found working with a coach to really get to know myself, develop my self-awareness, and understand my triggers has been transformational. It’s a lifelong journey and will always be work-in-progress but I wish I’d done it years ago!
What are your top three tips for entrepreneurial success?
I think having a mindset of belief in what you are doing is number one. I never lost belief in my north star; it was just a case of figuring out the best way to get there.
Together is better. Whatever you do, get the right team around you. Having people who you can trust with you every step of the way, to pick you up when things get tough and to celebrate successes with, is invaluable.
It’s all about relationships. The ability to give and build deep, trusting, and abundant relationships with your customers, partners, team and other key stakeholders will always serve you.
Who are five people who inspire you the most, and why?
I have three daughters, all adults now, who inspire me greatly, particularly with their maturity of perspective about the world of work, their ability to set boundaries, and be clear about what works for them. I certainly recall life feeling a lot more chaotic in my twenties!
We have also been hosting a Ukrainian family since the war with Russia began in 2022 and I am inspired daily by their resilience. They have been displaced to a foreign land and don’t know what their future holds. It is a constant reminder to me to be grateful for what we have.
A remarkable businesswoman I met on a flight many years ago. She took pity on this late-boarding person carrying a baby, offered me a seat and a big smile and we got chatting. It turned out she was a portfolio non-executive director for a number of large retailers. She planted the seed that eventually led me to The CFO Centre.
And lastly there’s Taylor Swift. I think she is extraordinary. She has created a phenomenal community of devoted followers, broken barriers, and record after record.
What are your favourite inspirational or motivational quotes?
The one I remember often is by Maya Angelou: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.
Where can our readers connect with you?
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saradaw
Website: https://www.cfocentre.com/gb/
