Interview with Josh Aharonoff

One of the things I'm most excited about for this email series is providing access to other business owners in Finance.

Everyone is building a business in their own way, often with unique strategies.

Having a diverse perspective helps us all grow.

Let's get into it...

Editors note: responses are mostly verbatim, but may be slightly edited for formatting or clarity.

Give us a short career background -- where did you start, and where are you today?

I started my career in big 4 (KPMG) for the first few years, then started my own startup for another few years that sadly never succeeded. Then I worked at a consulting firm providing Finance & Accounting support before going off on my own to start Mighty Digits in June 2019.

What's the "elevator pitch" for your company? What exactly do you do?

We do Finance & Accounting support for startups - we take away as much work as we can from the founders so they can focus on the bigger picture.

Are you currently working on your "solo venture" part-time or full-time?

If full-time, please tell us when you knew it was time to go all-in and leave your "regular job" behind.

Full time - I was fortunate to receive the offer of a life time: the role was a fractional VP of Finance for 20 hours a week, at the same salary I was getting paid working 40 hours a week. The best part? They guaranteed a minimum 7 month contract. It was a no brainer to take the position and build out what is now Mighty Digits!

Do you have anyone on your team (like partners, employees, subcontractors, etc.) or are you going it alone?

Started alone - we are now a team of 25!

Who is your ideal customer/client?

Ideal customer is an early stage startup (Series seed or Series A). SaaS startups are the most common that we work with, but we work with all startups throughout all stages.

Step-by-step, walk us through how you acquire new leads

My process for acquiring leads when I started out was outbound email prospecting. After I got 10 or so customers, I started getting more and more referrals.

Now, my process is to build more and more partnerships. Here's what I do specifically:

Step 1: Define who your ideal customer persona is. I used to think that was anyone who would pay me money...big mistake. You have limited time & resources to reach prospects, and it needs to be as narrow as possible to maximize your chances of conversion.

Step 2: Research them - ensure your message is relevant, and IMO, include something personal in the email so that they know you're not just some bot.

Step 3: Set them up on an email campaign that will send a series of emails, usually 3-6. The software will mark them as complete upon response, or if the campaign ends.

What has been the single-most impactful thing that has helped you grow your business?

Don’t charge hourly, and get your clients on a recurring auto-debit. Take away the pain of making them pay you, and get paid BEFORE you do the work!

What do you know now that you wish you knew when you first started?

Develop an easy to understand pricing model that is fixed price, has tightly defined scoping, and covers how your pricing will increase as your clients needs scale. The more you can layout at the start of your contract, the less friction there will be as the engagement grows.

What advice would you give to someone thinking about starting their own finance business?

It’s an exciting life, but also a real stressful one. Be OK with having multiple “bosses”, getting messages at all hours of the day / week, and having to juggle a lot. If you thrive in chaotic environments - you’ll do great!

At the end of the day we're all motivated by something. Why do you do what you do?

1. There's so much to learn by being a CEO, and to me that's the best part. Knowledge is the most powerful piece in anything.

2. Money. I wish I could say I'm running an altruistic venture for the sake of only adding value to others, but that would be a lie. I hope to make enough money so that I never have to worry again about it, and can eventually retire, spending my days learning new things at my own leisure.

If I think I might be a good customer (or just want to learn more), how can I get in touch with you?

A few ways:

1. You can email me to say hi at [email protected].

2. Check out my content on LinkedIn.

3. Check out the MightyDigits website.

Action Items

One of my favorite parts of Josh's interview is this quote:

Why do I like it so much? Because I do the exact opposite. I charge hourly with no scope.

This sheds light on the entire point of the interview -- everyone does things differently and the largest value I can bring you is a diverse perspective -- one of many data points you can use on your journey, because they are all different.

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this "interview edition" of The Finance Solopreneur, more to come!

That's it for today. See you next time.

—Chris

How I Can Help Further...

As finance professionals there's one thing we all have in common -- our financial modeling skills need to be dialed.

If you need to refresh or sharpen your modeling skills, you can learn to build the exact models I use with FP&A and Private Equity firms around the world.