Pam Prior – Book Journeys Author Interview – Mar. 16, 2017

On this episode of Book Journeys, Vice President for The Author Incubator, Jenn McRobbie, interviews Pam Prior, author of Your First CFO: The Accounting Cure for Small Business Owners.

Pam had spent years in the accounting industry working for large, regional companies whose industries included pharmaceutical, chemicals, baking and transportation and logistics, and as such gained a good view of different types of operations. The knowledge enabled her to relate with companies which were smaller compared to the companies she used to work in but which were large enough to start needing a Chief Finance Officer (CFO) to help them out. Pam points out that business owners and entrepreneurs are smart people who can’t make heads or tails of the kind of “generic template” report that their bookkeeper or accountant gives them periodically, which means that such reports get unread, which is a shame, as the report could give the business owner some insight into how to manage his business. Pam thus saw the need for a way for business owners to understand what their company’s numbers mean, in a way that they could understand, and this was the reason she wrote Your First CFO.

Jenn brought up that there is a difference between “numbers people” and “words people,” to which Pam agreed that she was a numbers person. Pam remarked that the process used in the Author Incubator program met her where she was in her life, in the same way she, herself, met her clients wherever they were in their own lives. The program also catered to her, as a numbers person, but that writing the book turned out to be a challenge, as she soon wrote it out like a textbook. She was then told to go back and get reconnected with her ideal reader, and after taking the time to do so she was finally able to write out the book the way she intended it to be written, which was as more of a story. Pam also remarked that her knowing so much about the topic made it somewhat difficult for her to write the book, as witnessed by her initial attempts to do so, but that this also made it easier for her to do so, as she had a vivid picture of her ideal reader.

Pam remarked that she knows when a client finally gets what their numbers mean when she sees the relief that comes over them, and remarks that CEOs and business owners only need to know what she calls the “ten percent of the visible iceberg,” which is connected to the entire accounting iceberg, figuratively speaking, in order to make the decisions they need to make for their businesses to maximize their effectiveness. Pam also notes that the numbers should be on the business owner’s desk by the second working day of the month, remarking that she had worked with a company that had dealt with several different currencies and was able to do so.

Pam is presently excited with her latest venture, where she delivers short videos on various topics related to finance, which also includes how to handle accountants and the like, at the Priorities Consulting LLC group there.

 

Listen to the Pam Prior Interview on Book Journeys Radio

(Transcript) Pam Prior – Book Journeys Author Interview – March 16, 2017

DOWNLOAD the PDF: Book Journeys Author Interview – Pam Prior – Mar. 16, 2017

Watch out for Book Journeys interview with another exciting author.