In today's episode of the IC-DISC show, I sit down with Dan Corredor, the owner of Strategic CFO, to discuss how his firm is revolutionizing the accounting landscape through near-shoring in Mexico. We explore Dan's journey starting in Colombia and arriving in Houston, where his bilingual skills have helped Strategic CFO carveout a unique niche.
Our conversation reveals how Strategic CFO blends accounting expertise with innovative strategies to strengthen businesses from the inside out. Through insights on US GAAP, technology, and building capable teams, Dan shows us why accounting is about more than compliance - it's about fostering strategic growth.
Near the end, Dan offers us personal anecdotes about cultivating early savings habits and his culinary interests. Our discussion provides a blueprint for navigating accounting challenges with an international perspective and strategic foresight to propel businesses higher.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
- Dan Corredor's firm, Strategic CFO, is leading a cost-saving revolution by near-shoring back-office accounting services to Mexico, significantly reducing costs compared to traditional US-based services.
- Strategic CFO was acquired by Dan Corridor in 2017 after the passing of founder Jim Wilkinson, and Dan has continued to evolve the company while maintaining its legacy.
- We discuss the importance of differentiating between bookkeeping and accounting, where bookkeeping involves recording transactions and accounting involves analyzing and interpreting financial data according to US GAAP.
- We highlight how an effective accounting team can steer companies beyond outdated systems, and how technology is transforming financial statement preparation.
- Dan emphasizes the symbiotic client relationships that result from a combination of coachability and strategic foresight in financial matters.
- There's a discussion about the challenges in the US accounting landscape, including talent shortages and wage inflation, and how near-sourcing with Mexican talent offers a solution.
- The near-sourcing model involves Mexican employees supervised by Texas-based controllers, ensuring quality control while offering CFO-level support to US companies.
- We touch upon the personal side of Dan Corridor's journey, including the importance of early financial savings and sharing personal culinary favorites, to connect with the audience.
- Strategic CFO brings a unique international perspective to each client they serve, emphasizing their hands-on approach and operational expertise.
- We wrap up with anecdotes and stories that provide insight into the practical application of financial strategies and how companies can scale efficiently with the right accounting support.
LINKS
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Dan Corredor |
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dave: Hi, my name is David Spray. Welcome to another episode of the IC-DISC Show. Today, my guest is Dan Corredor, the owner of Strategic CFO. Strategic CFO is like many virtual CFO service companies, except that Strategic CFO has an interesting twist that they implemented a little over a year ago. They use what Dan calls near-shoring similar to offshoring, but done in Mexico, where it is very near, and we go into great detail about how they have developed a model that allows for providing professional grade back office accounting for 60% less than a traditional US-sourced solution. There's a lot of great ideas in here, whether you're looking at developing a professionalized accounting group or not. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. Good morning, Dan. Welcome to the podcast.
Dan: Good morning David. Thanks for having me. My pleasure, my pleasure.
Dave: So where are you calling in from today? What part of the world are you in?
Dan: So we are in Shurgland, texas, which is a suburb of Houston, houston, gotcha.
Dave: So let's so. You're a native of Houston.
Dan: No, I was actually born in Bogota, colombia, in South America.
Dave: Okay.
Dan: My family moved to the States when I was a baby about six months old, grew up First 10 years in Ohio, moved to Houston area in 1976, and we've been here ever since.
Dave: Oh wow, Did y'all speak Spanish at home then?
Dan: We did. That was my first language. My dad always said speak Spanish at home and I don't care what you speak outside of house. We learned English outside the house when I went to school and we still speak Spanish today, and my kids do as well.
Dave: That's awesome. I'm so jealous. My heritage is German and both of my grandmothers were born in the Dakotas in German communities. They only spoke German until they started school, but then they married non-German guys and then it was during World War II where, you know, speaking German was kind of frowned upon, so we lost the language. I'm always jealous of you truly bilingual folks, and bilingual with no accent in either language, because I'm assuming your Spanish has a nice Colombian accent.
Dan: Right, it's pretty good as well. Yeah, it's certainly paid off. I really think that I've gotten a couple of jobs I've had in my career because most of the time I spoke Spanish and could be in Latin America.
Dave: That's awesome and good for you for keeping it going to the next generation. I'm told that's easy to kind of let it slide.
Dan: Especially as kids grow up, you know, get a little bit older and they start talking back in English and we have to kind of remind them. But it works. You know, my kids are not 20 and 21, and they both are fluent Spanish and English.
Dave: That's awesome. What a great skill set to launch them into the world with.
Dan: Yeah, we're proud of them.
Dave: That's great. So you end up in Houston at some point, at least when you went to college.
Dan: Yes, I went to University of Houston, got an accounting degree there and I started working in Houston in oil and gas production first, and then oil and gas services. So yeah, it's always been in Houston, except for two years in Dallas and then almost about four years as an expat in Mexico.
Dave: So other than that, always based in Houston- Okay, yeah, I tell people you go through it's like the stages of grief. I tell people that like it's the stages of Houston, right, like when you first get here at least this is what I went through you hate it. There's like it seems like an ugly city. It's flat, you know the traffic, the humidity in the summertime. Then after a while you start to tolerate it and then at some point it kind of gets in your blood and if you ever move away you're like, wow, I really miss that place. That place has got a lot going for it.
Dan: Yeah, I've always enjoyed it. You know I've always liked the Houston area and love Texas. Houston has been great. I love the climate, except for these January February days where you know we made it up in 32 degrees. I don't like that. But I don't mind. It has grown a lot. The last few years has experienced a tremendous amount of growth.
Dave: Especially where you are. Yeah, I remember when Sugar Land was the middle of nowhere, the country it was nothing.
Dan: It was nothing. I remember going to school elementary school we'd go to private school, st Thomas Memorial, and I'd tell kids where I live and I thought I was crazy. You live where you know, but it was only a 30 minute drive back then, so I know.
Dave: Well, let's talk about strategic when. When did you become involved in strategic CFO? When did you acquire it?
Dan: So I acquired the business in October 2017. The business has been around since the mid 90s. The founder, jim Wilkinson, was a colleague of mine and I actually met him in the 90s and it was ironic. I met him because my brother-in-law and his family hired Jim Wilkinson back in 96 or 97 to help him on a project as a CFO and my brother-in-law said, hey, you got to meet this guy. He's a really nice guy. You know, in Houston is your area. So I met him back then and you know, jim and I had similar backgrounds in regards to the type of things. We worked on our personalities, so we would do lunch and breakfast, you know, quarterly or every six months. Over the years Never worked with each other or for each other, but we'd networked a lot and we'd run into each other. We stayed in touch. We even referred business back and forth to each other, so that you know Jim is the founder and started this business, started the brand, did a great name, developing the brand, the strategic CFO, and he started our online business where we sell a membership subscription and some coaching workshops. Jim was very much a strategic coach. He loved the academic side of accounting and operations. He was very involved with the entrepreneurship program at the University of Houston, so all that really strengthened the business.
And, unfortunately, jim went to bed one day in 2017 in the summer and didn't wake up and passed away. So it was really sad. I unfortunately didn't hear about his passing for two or three months afterwards and I was not able to attend his funeral, but I heard it was a beautiful funeral with, you know, a thousand people. So that was Jim. You know he was a network, he had lots of friends and you know so when he passed, I was at a company called Opportun and I was a restructuring group and I was finding an opportunity to love that firm. They've done a great job over there.
But when Jim passed, you know, I thought to myself. You know, I've always been, you know, kind of un-perno myself. I've always had the back of my mind wanting to do something on my own. So when Jim passed, I approached the family and asked them what are they going to do with the firm? And they really didn't have a plan of action. So they put me in touch with their attorney and, make long story short, I acquired the firm in October 2017. And it's been great ever since. This is a year six. I can't believe we've already been here six years and we've had a great firm, great growth. We've got really good people. The brand continues to build and strength and it's a well-known brand and I meet a lot of people that a new Jim you know, and they go yeah, I knew Jim, you know, and congrats for taking over Jim's business.
You know, so to me it's a privilege to take on his legacy.
Dave: Yeah, no, I really like Jim. I think the last time I had dinner with him he had a restaurant I forget where it was in West U that he liked to go to and we'd had dinner or drinks probably after work one day, but that was about a year before his passing, and also like you. Well, no, I think I did hear about it, but I was out of town, I was in, I was out of state and was not able to make the funeral. But same thing I heard. Yeah it was well attended.
Well, I'm glad that you reached out to the family because I'm sure they were. His wife was likely in shock from the whole thing. And so that probably worked out well that there was somebody that she knew him had a clean relationship with. So that's great. So talk to me about who are the companies that you all are best set up to serve what's really your sweet spot and who you really can add value to Right.
Dan: So people ask us what are the typical companies you work on and boy it's a wide range Our clients, our smallest clients probably seven million in revenue, and our largest client is literally a 13 billion public and trade company.
Dave: So it's a wide range.
Dan: Now what's right down kind of the middle of the fairway? It's that typical entrepreneur or family owned business that started small and grew and is now doing 40, 50, 80 million hours in revenue and they need to professionalize the back office. It's the companies that started with very basic financial statements and cash reporting and things like that and have bookkeepers and then they move on and now their bank or their partners or investors somebody or the business owner needs professional financial statements. So we professionalize the back office, we professionalize your financial statements. I always explain to business I have this same discussion almost every single day with business owners there's a difference between bookkeeping and accounting and everybody knows bookkeeping. Everybody does bookkeeping. Bookkeeping is entering transactions into a system. You enter a PAR, you push a button, generate a report. That's bookkeeping. We don't do bookkeeping. We don't do that clerical, administrative entering transactions. We will do it as support staff, but we do accounting. We apply accounting principles based on US GAF to those transactions and it starts with everything on the P&L and everything on the balance sheet. You can go to line by line and there are some accounting principles that apply to each one of those transactions. Perfect example Yesterday I was at a client meeting.
It's been a fairly new client and they have a lot of manual processes and the transactions on the bookkeeping side. And we said, hey, we can automate this and then all you're going to need is the controller and the accounting manager. And his response is wait a minute, but if you automate all this transactions, I don't need anybody. And I was like well, you're automating the bookkeeping, you're not automating the accounting. Somebody has to apply the knowledge of accounting principles to all those transactions to make sure you have the right P&L and the right balance sheet. But if you just do the bookkeeping, then all you have, in whatever accounting system you're using, is transactions in a system that are really meaningless because you don't have the right margins, you don't have the right assets, you don't have the right liabilities, because you're not applying accounting principles.
So oftentimes we find ourselves as a firm educating and coaching the business owners on what is accounting. Why do they need financial statements based on US GAAP? It's not just for the public and credit companies that are trading on the Dow Jones, it's not for those billion dollar companies Every business if you don't have the proper financial statements the financial we call it financial tools, because it's more than just financial statements. If you don't have good financial tools, how do you make decisions in your business? How do you know what projects are making money and not making money truly based on accounting principles, not on a cash basis? So we have to often educate them.
So our ideal company is one. Well, one is the entrepreneur or business owner that wants to listen, because we have some that they don't know what they don't know and they think. I had one business owner not too long ago, probably four months ago, telling me that these financial tools and financial statements are just purple unicorns. I was like, okay, so if somebody doesn't want to accept the fact that I've been doing this for 32 years and we know what financial statements are and how they improve your business, if that business owner thinks that they know more than we do, we can help them. If they don't want to be coached, if they don't want to listen, we can't, and we've run into those.
We've run into business owners that they think they know everything. They've run their business 20, 30 years, which they run very well. They have good widgets that they make, but they don't know anything about financial statements or accounting principles. So that's the ideal client when it's coachable when it allows us to bring process and procedures and US gap so that they can have not only good financial statements, which are all historical in nature, but also what do we do with that data? Now we have to interpret that historical information, forecast it, analyze it, look at margins so that the business owner can make better decisions about the future. And we that's hence our name, strategic CFO we always want to think strategically. What do we do with that data? To interpret it so that we can properly forecast and know where the business is going and keep it financially healthy. The balance sheet and the P&L are going to describe to you the health of the business and we want to make sure it stays healthy. So that's the ideal client.
Dave: So it sounds like yeah. So it sounds like really it's. Companies are kind of a victim of their own success. You know, companies who have, I mean, a $5 million company who stays static for 20 years, you know probably can't add as much value, but that $5 million company that quadruples in revenue over five to 10 years, where they outgrow their accounting system, their processes, the team. It sounds like that's where the opportunity starts, with you all.
Dan: That's right. That's right when they want to grow, they want to professionalize the back office, have professional finance savings. Now there's a lot of companies do what we do and since I bought the firm, I've always thought how can we differentiate ourselves? How can we really stand out and bring something to the table? So initially, the first five years of voting the business, I thought that you know we're and it's true, we are very different because we do have a tremendous amount of operational experience. Myself speaking, I've been CEO of companies with as many as 2000 people. I've been general manager of business. When I was in an expat in Mexico, I was general manager for that business after first being the CFO. So we've got tremendous, got tremendous operational experience. I've been interim CEO for one of our clients as strategic CFO. We have that operation, and operations and accounting always have to talk to each other, Sure, but about a year and one month ago, year and two months ago, we really came up with a differentiating factor where yeah.
So we, you know I've always been against outsourced accounting and I've been asked previously if we do outsource counting. I've always said no and I don't want to do it because the companies that exist today that do the traditional outsource accounting. I have two main problems with them. Number one is that they are very far removed from the operation. They are located somewhere else. They never said foot in the business, so there's not that connection with operations. Number two is that those companies do outsource accounting. They're working on 10 other clients at the same time, so the business doesn't really get the biggest bang for their buck, and that always bugging as being an operating guy.
So, out of a need, one of our clients who came to us said Dan, we love y'all, we love these two people you have here. They're doing a great job, they find us. They finally got us professional accounting, financial statements and these tools and we budget and forecasting all this stuff. But we can't afford you because we're charging U of S rates and we have to charge US rates. We have to pay our people good wages, fair wages. We have to have a little margin in it. We're not going to become millionaires out of this, but we have to have a margin. So I told the owner. I said you know what? You're right, you can't afford us, you're too small. They were seven million in our business. So I went to the drawing board and came back a couple months later and we have developed now a product called mirror sourcing. Mirror sourcing is outsourced accounting, improved and on steroids. We took those two things that I don't like, which is far removed from the operation and working on multiple clients at once.
So what we've done with mirror sourcing we will hire an accounting team and it's it starts. It could be a team of two kind of the typical model. It could be one, it could be 10. We actually have one that's 20, but the typical model is a controller and accounting manager. We hire them. They're dedicated to your business and they are on live every day. They only work for you. They are on teams.
You go to the group and teams and join a meeting. You're talking to your accounting teams, like having them down the hall Monday through Friday. So that that eliminates that they only work for you, they're not working for anybody else. Number two the onboarding of that team and quarterly visits are on site. So the business owner, the operating team, the clerical staff. They get to know the accounting team because the onboarding is there and on according to the basis. They fly in and they sit there and they do a quarterly review review with you and they're usually there three to five days with you at the office, working with you, hand in hand. So now you start developing that relationship. Now you have a connection between the accounting team and the operations and it's dedicated team and we're able to offer that at a 60% savings. That's six zero, wow, that's huge.
Yeah, because the team happens to be located in Mexico. Now why Mexico? Mexico? I spent four years in NexFAT there. I got to work with all the big four firms, got to establish a good network over there in Latin America and Mexico and Columbia and other places. There are very strong professionals. And let's just talk about accounting. The accounting professionals. The accounting professionals that we hire usually have big four experience. They work for US companies. They're all bilingual, they speak very good English, they all know US GAAP and they just happen to work remotely for that period of time between their visits and the wages and economy in Mexico is much different than US.
A controller in the US will easily a qualified controller. Let me start with that, because I've seen people labeled controllers that aren't. A qualified controller is the $150,000 person in the US. An accounting manager is going to be $85,000, $90,000 person. In the US. You're spending with benefits and 401k and taxes and everything else. You're going to spend over $300,000, $350,000 on just two people for a small 10 million dollar business. That's a big pill to swallow, sure, we realize that. So we've brought that cost down. So for $12,500 a month, which is less than half of what you'd pay here, you get a team of two qualified professionals dedicated to your business that are providing this professional accounting.
We started this out of a need with one company we're up to 10 and we had a very. I have got a contact at a very large public-traded company and I was telling her about this over dinner. She came back to me a couple of days later and she goes you know near source thing you told me about, can you scale that up? I said absolutely. Make long story short. We've opened up an office in Monterey, mexico, only for this publicly-traded company of 13 billion and we now have yeah, we now have I think we're at 22 accounts and that's probably going to be over 30 or 40 accounts because again, any business will benefit from reducing costs.
So this large public-traded company is shifting some accounting rules and it could be AP accounts, payable accounts, receivable fixed assets, inter-company cash applications, whatever the needs are. We're able to provide that a huge savings. So with that we've developed near source and it's a successful model. It applies to any business anywhere in the US but we're able to finally bring professional accounting the work done remotely but it's on-site business every three months for 60% savings. So that's a new differentiating factor for our firm at strategic CFO and we think that's going to really take. It has taken off. We think it's going to be a change, game changer for us and our future as a business. We'll continue to do everything we're doing.
We're not leaving that, but we're just adding to our revenue stream.
Dave: That's really. I really appreciate the innovation of that, and it also just seems like the college students just are not enamored with entering the accounting profession right. There just seems to be staffing shortages and whereas it seems like these countries outside the US there's a greater enthusiasm to do the work.
Dan: Yep, there's a large pool. There's a large pool there. You're right. I heard numbers as high as 30% less enrollment in accounting in colleges over the last couple years than historical. So there are less people entering the accounting profession. A lot of them have retired. A lot of people have simply left the accounting profession.
It can be grueling, it could be long days and long month ends and long quarters, long year ends. So people have found other ways to make a living and that means it's supply and demand. That means the ones that stay in place, that are controllers and account managers. The wages they're demanding higher wages because there's less of them and there's high turnover. That's.
The other thing is that companies, if they hire us in our near sourcing team, if there's tone or turnover, that's our problem, it's not the company's problem. We will fill in a role, fill in a position, if somebody leaves the near sourcing team and we have such a large stack of resumes that we're able to do this quickly. So now we've got now over 30, 35 accounts in Mexico working for us and we hope to double that number in 2024. So we are going to have a very large pool. We have a formal legal entity, we've got Bank account in Mexico, we've got any in Mexico. Payroll in Mexico. We're paying our taxes in Mexico, so it's all legit. It's all meeting all the guidelines and labor requirements that we do in Mexico. But even with all that, we're able to save US businesses a tremendous amount of money.
Dave: That's awesome, and I was just reading about a new Department of Labor ruling making it even more difficult for companies to have contractors. There's always this desire by the federal government to have as few people classified as contractors as possible, and it seems like your model avoids those issues as well, because these aren't even US contractors. Right, that's right.
Dan: That's correct. Yeah, they're all our employees but they're through a Mexican entity that we have down in Mexico. I failed to mention that. Each team is supervised by one of the controllers we have here in Texas. That controller is available if the client says, hey, I need to see somebody tomorrow. You know, all right, fine, controller myself can the car and go see the client and a month end all the. We have quality control.
The controller here in Houston reviews a month and reports, meets with the team several times during the week. So the controller usually supervises three or four teams and that's how we're splitting it up. So the controller is busy full time. We'll continue to hire local controllers in Houston because we need more supervisors and are supervising these accounting teams in Mexico. So we do have local support and, being the strategic CFO, our specialty is CFOs, so we actually bring that to the table also. So a company, by signing up with us for the near sourcing, yes, they get the team, but they also get the support of our firm at the CFO level. So I've attended many bank meetings, many business owner meetings you know, strategic meetings with business owners because they are our clients and we're able to provide that CFO support by them joining our near sourcing model.
Dave: Now I really, I really love that and I, you know, our clients tend to be similar to yours, you know, except all of our clients are privately held. You know median annual revenues probably 60 or $75 million, and so here's a question so there's obviously a cost to professionalizing the back office accounting function.
Dan: What are?
Dave: some of the financial benefits to having more. So, as I mentioned, there's a cost to professionalizing your back office, right, but I'm sure there's also financial benefit. What are some of the financial benefits that you've seen from companies who do upgrade their accounting function, the quality of their financial statement? I mean, I can imagine some benefits, but what are some of the benefits you've seen?
Dan: Great question and oftentimes a new business owner that I meet will ask me the same question. So my response is if you do not do this, if you do not spend money on professional accounting we call US GAAP accounting whatever books and records you're keeping are wrong Period they're wrong. The most common example is cash basis account. If you manufacture widgets or you install something or you have contracts and you do not have the professional US GAAP accounting, you do not have a true picture of your margins Period Because it's cash basis. The world we live in is a world of accrual accounting and I don't want to get into accounting and accruals and all that, but it's a timing difference. The easiest example is an invoice and a counter-sealable. That is, in essence, the most basic example of an accrual. We have a timing difference. That's the economy we live in. Unless you sell the company that does not need professional accounting like we provide, is the guy who has a hamburger stand and sells burgers for cash and receives every day, for example, a little bit bigger than the hamburger stand or hotdog stand. We really can't help. For example, a fast food business that's point of sale. They sell a burger and fries and they collect At the franchisee level. At that small business level, they're not going to benefit from US GAAP accounting. Now the company that owns them and has multiple franchises will, because they've got accruals, they've got vendors and they've got this and they've got that and they buy machines the cash basis transaction. In the most simplest explanation, if I sell you something for cash and I don't have any inventory and I don't have any receivable or any payable or anything else, and I don't buy equipment, they don't need us. But that's a tiny business. That's what the US government calls a micro business. The companies we deal with are not micro businesses. The company we deal with have employees, they've got insurance, they buy equipment, they have inventory or they have complicated services or they have contracts that go over 30 days.
There's some nuance and by not having professional accounting, you don't have a good financial statement. If you don't have a good income statement, how do you know your margins? How do you know what you really have? How do you know if you're losing money? By having them, not only do you have good reporting tools, but we've also increased your enterprise value.
I've had several investment bankers tell me over the years that the difference between having the professional accounting versus not is at least a multiple of one of enterprise value. That's huge. If you've got a business that does a million dollars of EBITDA, that's a multiple of one. We just added a million dollars of value by bringing a professional accounting to your business. Not only does it help you in the short term which is running the business, because now you understand your margins and you're able to forecast and plan your cash flow and determine if you're going to reinvest in your business but we're also adding value on a long-term basis enterprise value those are the benefits and we're never going to cost you that added value that we bring to the table. We're not going to cost you a million dollars a year, but we're adding that value and what about Most business owners?
Dave: will listen yeah and I can also imagine that, let's say, their bank starts requiring reviews or audits. I'm guessing that the audit fees by the accounting firm are probably going to be less if you're providing them professional financial statements that are gap basis already.
Dan: That's right. So if somebody, first of all, I would recommend that everybody go through an audit because it's just good to have. But if you're required to have an audit, yes, an audit firm which we do not do audits we're not a CPA firm, but an audit firm will come in and do an audit First of all, they cannot complete an audit if you don't have professional accounting Right. So what the audit firm is going to tell you is you need to hire somebody, get your books and records per US gap so we can audit you. Otherwise, we're going to audit you and you're going to have a qualified opinion because you don't meet any of the accounting principles. And the audit firm cannot do that service for you because they get conflicted out.
Dave: They can audit their own work. 30 years ago, I think they had more latitude.
Dan: Yes, yeah, before my prior employer, enron, before Enron in 2000,. You know, the Sarbanes Oxley was formed. A lot of accounting principles were changed at that time. I think it was at that time that it was required that if you have to split your services, if you're going to be auditing, you can't be consulting and you can't be auditing your own work. So, and we've been hired by companies that are going through an audit, and audit firms have contacted us and said hey, I have a client, here's what they need help on to get their books and records to this professional level. And we are hired by the client. The audit firm comes in later, after we're done, and they can complete their audit and we're able to save us some money by doing that.
Dave: But yes, I know that makes sense. What do you enjoy most about your role with the company?
Dan: I love dealing with businesses that trust us and I've got, and most of our clients do, 95% of our clients do, or 99. We may have one or two that don't believe yet because we're still new, but I love getting involved with the business owner or business owners that trust us and they allow us to deliver over time. Because it takes time, it doesn't happen overnight. It'll take three or four months to develop a relationship. It'll develop six or eight months to finally get things really where they're seeing the deliverables. But I love seeing the transformation and we've got many examples in our firm of transformation where a company started with no financial reporting that was accurate to really good financial reporting and cash flow forecasts and budgeting and financial models where we interpret that data and everything's working. So watching that transformation is very rewarding. That's what I love the most and I love dealing with business owners on the operating side where we can add value as well.
Dave: Sure, yeah, no, I can certainly relate to that. Well, I can't believe how fast this time has flown by. I've just a couple of kind of fun questions for you. Are you ready for some outside the box questions? Bring it on, I love it Awesome. So let's say you could go back in time and give advice to your 25 year old self. What advice might you give to your 25 year old self with the benefit of you know, the last few decades?
Dan: If I were to go back to my 25 year old self, I'd say start saving money early. And that's what I tell my children. We had a discussion over Christmas In your early 20s. Unless you're really smart and talented and I wasn't you don't understand the time value of money and compounding interest.
Dave: Yeah.
Dan: Like you do now. And if I literally told my kids to go for Christmas, we had this exact same discussion. I said you know, take 25% of your paycheck and put it away in some account that you're never going to touch, yeah, don't even think about it. And by the time you're 50 or 60, you're going to see a huge nest egg and it's going to feel very rewarding. That's something I would do differently. I was.
I got married late, you know, I was 34. So I worked hard. In my 20s I was already working for very large companies in nice positions controller roles. In my time I was 30 controller roles. So I was busy with making good money but also spending money, you know, getting the nice. I was really focused on getting the nice car, you know, traveling and, you know, not so focused on planning ahead and planning a family. Then I stumbled onto my beautiful wife and said, oh my God, I got to get married, you know. And then you know, soon after, kids, and then you know the house, and then but so anyway, that's the long response I would say early, mid 25, start saving early.
Dave: Okay, yeah, I see I read a study once that said and it was a crazy number Like if you saved a certain you know amount of money you know call it $10,000 a year from the time you were 22 until you were 30, and then you stop saving, you never saved again. You'd have more money, like when you were 65 or seven. Then if you started saving at like 40, and you saved that $10,000 a year for 25 years, like you'd end up with less money than saving for eight years early on, which just demonstrates that whole time value of money. I think Einstein said the compound interest was the most amazing invention in the history of the world, or some crazy thing.
Dan: It's crazy that the effect on that dollar saved early on is huge, you know, and I think I would do that different.
Dave: Okay, well, here's the last question. I guess I have one and a half questions. I have the last fun one and then the last one will just be if there's anything we did and you covered, that we should have but the fun one is barbecue or Tex-Max barbecue. Okay, that's usually the most common answer. I stole that question. We helped Chris Hans, like the managing partner, and Boiler Miller. We were able to help them launch a podcast, and that's one of his standard questions that I've copied. I find it to be a fun question.
Dan: It's a tough one. I almost said Tex-Max it's a tough one, or?
Dave: I guess I should have asked you barbecue Tex-Max or authentic Colombian food.
Dan: Yeah, I'd still go with barbecue or Tex-Max. Yeah, club with food is okay. I find it to be a little bit blander, but it's okay, that's good, I'm gonna knock it. My Colombian friends will hate me, but I don't know. It's good.
Dave: Well, is there anything that I didn't ask you that you wish I?
Dan: had. Well, maybe you know one other comment that I'd like to add about our firm, which is a little bit differentiated. Facts is, we have a lot of good international experience, not just myself, but my managing director, oscar Pinoe, cindy Dinn. They both have tremendous audit and international experience, oscar also interesting. If we haven't made it, let me tell you Oscar's story. We actually met in a small town in Argentina 23, 24 years ago when we were both at Weatherford. I hired him when I was in at Weatherford as controller for Latin America and he was an accountant that I hired. He ended up staying at Weatherford for 20 plus years, did very well, grew throughout the.
You know the ladder at Weatherford and he left Weatherford a couple years ago and joined our firm. But we've got tremendous international experience, tremendous operational experience that could also add value to companies.
Dave: So okay, well, yeah, that is great to know. Well, Dan. And then, if people want to learn more about the services, what's the best place to learn more Best?
Dan: place to go to is our webpage, strategiccfocom. There's two C's in the middle there strategiccfocom. Or just call my cell phone. You know I don't mind people call my cell phone 713-501-7481. But we're still small enough that we touch every client I do. I like meeting all our clients and spending time with them. We're very involved with all of them. Myself and our managing directors are available to any one of our clients at any time. So yeah, we'd love to continue Jim's legacy and continue to build this firm.
Dave: That's awesome. Well, Dan, thank you again for spending time with me today. I know the listeners are really good. Thank you, David. More and especially this near sourcing model. I think that's really intriguing, and I hope you have a great day.
Dan: Thank you very much, appreciate your time and thanks for having me All right.