One for the CFOs

One for the CFOs

With several organizations designed to help CEOs, the Gulf Coast now has one that helps CFOs.

CFOS by Dave Szymanski | Tampa Bay Editor

Gulf Coast chief executive officers have their pick of peer-coaching groups to choose from, including the CEO Council, C12 and TEC.

But what about chief financial officers?

Safety Harbor entrepreneur Kimberly Johnson is offering them a break from number crunching and the delivery of sobering financial reports.

Johnson, along with a five-member board of Tampa Bay area CFOs, has created fiCFO, the Florida Institute of Chief Financial Officers.

The organization held its first board meeting in Tampa Dec. 12 and is in the middle of a membership drive it hopes will attract about 40 members from the Gulf Coast.

It is capping membership at 40 to keep the group more manageable. It is planning a kickoff/social meeting for next month for all Gulf Coast CFOs and will hold its first roundtable members breakfast in February.

Membership is limited to CFOs working for companies with at least $50 million in annual revenue. Annual membership costs $2,100.

For that, the CFO member would attend bimonthly breakfast meetings, each 90 to 120 minutes. Half would have speakers, others would be just for discussion on topics important to CFOs.

Johnson is aiming for CFOs in the Tampa Bay area and Sarasota and Manatee counties. Members from Lee and Collier are welcome, too, as long as they could make the seven business meetings and two socials in Tampa.

Unlike CEO groups, which are based in part on relationships for lead generation, fiCFO will be a more "knowledge intense" group, Johnson says. Topics will include refinancing, cash management, tax compliance, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, audits, accounting issues, staffing and employment, organizational structures, training and legislative and regulatory issues.

"fiCFO is not about leads, or marketing," she says. "This is more of a brainstorming session to handle the financial side of the business. It's relevant to today's issues, the things CFOs bring to the table."

Evolving idea

The idea for fiCFO evolved over the past two years. After conversations with several Gulf Coast CFOs, Johnson assembled a focus group of CFOs to find what support they needed and how a group might be structured for them.

They said they don't have time to bounce ideas off other CFOs. But they still need peer coaching.

"The key component, basically, was that if I put together the network, they would be interested," says Johnson, 39.

In March 2007, Johnson started her own marketing company in Safety Harbor called NextStep Strategies. Unlike other firms, she only takes on one to two clients per year because they outsource all of their marketing and business development to NextStep.

She has worked in marketing and business development for 15 years on the Gulf Coast and formerly ran Sun Marketing Associates in Tampa. During that time, she met many CFOs who expressed a need for a peer group.

The focus groups brought surprising information.

Johnson thought local CFOs mainly needed information on continuing education credits. Instead, they said they wanted to come together with other CFOs in closed-door meetings, trade information and learn from each other in roundtable discussions. They wanted sounding boards for ideas and views.

True to their financial roots, the CFOs were sensitive about how the new group might be described. They didn't like the word, "institute," so Johnson made it lowercase in the name, fiCFO.

"They want help to solve or find solutions," Johnson says. "They don't want touchy-feely words."

Looking ahead

Johnson needed a starting point for fiCFO, so working with her board, she picked 40 members, a group that was large enough to generate ideas, but small enough to manage and allow for cohesion.

She estimates that there are at least 169 businesses that meet the $50 million revenue requirement on the Gulf Coast, so getting 40 members will likely mean screening many applicants.

There will be other measuring sticks, including number of employees, operating budgets and other criteria.

Looking ahead, Johnson says she definitely wants to take fiCFO statewide, but hasn't thought national yet. After Tampa Bay, its next market will likely be Orlando.

Just as it did in creating the group, fiCFO will continue to talk to members to solicit ideas on getting speakers and structuring meetings. CFOs have told Johnson that unlike some CEO groups, they want very short, 90- to 120-minute meetings.

Some of the meetings will be just CFOs. Others will allow CFOs to bring their CEO or comptrollers.

"It will be all member-driven," Johnson says.

She describes the feedback so far as, "phenomenal," because of the lack of a similar group and the need for coaching during a challenging economy, among other reasons.

"This is designed to really open each others' minds," she says. "We're not learning from a book. We're learning from each other."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Organization: fiCFO

Industry: Management coaching for CFOs

Members: Five-member board, seeking 40 members

Key: Offering brief, bimonthly meetings, with relevant speakers and just enough time for CFOs to coach each other.

The fiCFO board

Here is the board of fiCFO, which helps shape policy for the CFOs organization:

Juan Figuereo, CFO of Cott Corp.

David Hitchcock, executive vice president and CFO of Syniverse Technologies

Todd Lindsey, senior vice president and CFO of Checkers Drive-In Restaurants Inc.

George Pollock, senior vice president, CFO and treasurer of Switch & Data

Wally Ruiz, CRO of SRI Surgical/Express Inc.