Welcome to the The VICI Code, where we unlock real stories of small business owners who've battled chaos, crushed doubt, and conquered their challenges. Faith, family, and finances. No fluff, just raw, honest conversations that decode the path to victory, one story at a time. What is up? Thank you for joining us today as we explore margin, money, and mission. Today's guest is going to walk us through the financial breakthrough, how strategic clarity creates profit and peace. But before we jump in, I just want to remind our listeners of the new AG1 Ambassador Program I'm excited to be a part of. I've been drinking AG1 for years. Every morning I wake up, I start my day with a scoop of AG1 mixed with a glass of fresh-squeezed lemon and water. Just one scoop is packed with over 75 high-quality ingredients that combines a multivitamin, probiotic, and a blend of superfoods that have been clinically shown to improve gut health and close common nutrient gaps. As a longtime AG1 guy, they have offered me a special deal to share with you. If you're interested in trying AG1 yourself, you can use my ambassador offer found in the show notes. With your first order through my link, you receive a free one-year supply of D3K2 drops. 10 free AG1 NextGen travel packs, and a free 30-day supply of Omega-3 pills. This is $130 value for free just by using my code. But enough of that. I'm super excited to get into this conversation with our next guest. They believe that financial strategy should bring both profit and peace. And I agree. As the founder of Advanced CFO and host of the Built by Margin podcast, Laurie Chen CPA started her accounting, tax, and CFO firm to help business owners and startup founders increase their profitability and think strategically about their financial growth. Like many accounts, Laurie began her career at the Big Four public accounting firm. She's always had a passion for entrepreneurship, which led to her earn her MBA from Duke University in the Global Executive Program with a concentration in entrepreneurship and innovation. She is also a Master of Accounting graduate from University of Texas at Austin and a BBA in Accounting graduate of Texas A&M University. Her purpose-driven shift from the high-stakes corporate world to helping founders achieve sustainable growth is rooted in her mission to help clients make confident decisions with real-time financial visibility, specifically focusing on increasing margins. Laurie and I met in Dan Martell's Elite. I know our listeners have heard me mention about this. It's a dynamic group of people led by a dynamic guy, Dan Martell. But Laurie's journey from big four firm and M&A transactions to focusing on profitability, cash visibility, and scaling with soul perfectly embodies the theme of overcoming traditional business models to find a purpose-driven breakthrough. I always start with the journey, like where do we begin? So we have to start with obviously like your big four experience. You know, you have the ultimate financial pedigree, big four experience, corporate finance, MNA. What was the defining challenge or frustration you witnessed in that high stakes environment, either in large corporation or VC backed growth companies that sparked your personal breakthrough and led you to start Advanced CFO? Yeah, so for me, I've always had an entrepreneurial mind and heart. But I knew going into college that I wanted to go to business school because I always wanted to start my own business. But I chose accounting as a major because I wanted to learn the language of business. A lot of people go to be engineers, doctors, lawyers, That kind of thing. But I wanted to be an accountant because I wanted to learn the language of business. And so, you know, I got graduated, went to the big four, started work at KPMG. And that was a grind because, you know, you're like, you know, 22 years old, and then you just get thrown into this prestigious but low paying job, you know, you work like, you know, 80 hour weeks during busy season, you work year round, you know, it's a it's a tough atmosphere to be in and to be thrown in as a 22 year old. Right. I was expecting like nine to fives, but it was more like nine to nines. So. I had several years of that, but it was a great experience. And they do very important work, have great clients. The experience was great, but I was ready to move on to corporate, have more of a social life. And then, you know, I did corporate for several years, worked for a large corporation. And it was just kind of like, you know, this is not really very exciting at all. I'm just made for so much more than just doing, you know, general ledger accounting or like just being a cog in the wheel of corporate accounting. Right. And so, and also, you know, I was living in Houston at that time. So, you know, I was working for a large oil corporation. I was like, you know, this is really not the industry I want to be in like long-term, you know, it's stable paid, it's good people, you know, good environment, but it's just not challenging for me. And so, you know, I made the decision, you know, I'm going to move First of all, I was going to move to the West Coast, move to Seattle. And I was also going to just do a whole different industry, but still be in accounting and finance. So I was basically just taking my skills and just move somewhere else. And doing that led me to eventually work with a startup. And, you know, the startup that I work with, you know, got acquired by a large Silicon Valley based company, you know, over $80 million deal. So that was my first taste of working with a startup, working with them through the acquisition, getting them acquired, getting that big exit. And that gave me a really good taste of what working with smaller, high-growth startups looks like. And that's what led me to start Advanced CFO. Yeah, I think we all have such a similar, you know, I, I started with, uh, Ernst and young, um, family issues ended up, uh, staying in Syracuse, um, regional, but it was, you know, no different long, crazy hours. And then I, and I tried my hand at, uh, at corporate and you just feel like a number. It just wasn't. what I was getting into, what I wanted to get into. And I got into accounting for the same reason. I wanted to always be a business owner. I always wanted to know what that language is. And that's the art of what we do, right? Like we are able to tell the story. Each financial statement is like a different chapter and it tells different parts about the company. So I love diagnosing companies by reading through the numbers. But I have a similar story where, you know, I just, felt like I could do more and be more flexible and agile by doing my own thing. But I don't have as much of the academic background. Why did you pursue the MBA in entrepreneurship and innovation after having a successful accounting career? What were I really wanted to broaden my horizons. You know, the thing about MBAs is like, yeah, is it really worth the degree? Right. That's an age old question. Now, if you go to a top school like Duke, right, it makes sense because of the network. You know, you're not just learning from the top professors, but you're also learning from the top classmates. And so the network truly is what makes getting the MBA a worthwhile experience. And going to a school like Duke, you know, obviously you get a lot of great experiences. Now, one thing that they really are good at is like global experiences. And so I did the global executive MBA, which means that we basically, you know, travel the world. We went to India, we went to Germany, Chile, China, like every two months, once every two months, we take our classes there with our professors and our classmates and do all these team projects. So the learning experience there in that program is just top notch. And then I always, you know, like I mentioned, I always had that entrepreneurial heart in me. And so the reason why I want to do an MBA was because, you know, like going to a school like Duke, you know, it'll open up a lot of entrepreneurial like connections for me. and I'll also be able to go beyond the financial numbers. Because I mean, yeah, obviously I already had a master's in accounting. So it's like, I already know the business stuff, right? I already know corporate finance, I already got my CPA. I know the theoretical stuff, but it is like strategy and entrepreneurship, innovation, putting together a business plan. being exposed to a completely new network of people, a successful venture capitalist, that's definitely a very intangible benefit Yeah, strategy, strategy, strategy. I love your deliberate approach to, I know what I know, but I see the benefits of rubbing shoulders with other people and just sharpening your tools to become more dangerous. So I do want to talk a little bit about your podcast. It's named Built by Margin, and you speak of wanting both profits and peace, which I agree with. What's the biggest breakthrough lesson you've had to teach founders who are chasing high revenue but ignoring their margin? Can you give an example of a client who had high revenues but was on the edge of a financial crisis, and how did you help Yeah, so I recently this year, I started with a construction manufacturing company. So their high growth, you know, last year, they did about 3 to 5 million. This year, they're on pace to double that. And the biggest problem they had was, we don't have visibility into our cash. cash flow, we have no idea where our cash is going in and out. We have hundreds of thousands of dollars of AP and AR every month, every week, right? With construction and manufacturing companies, yeah. When you're doing it at the million-dollar volume level, there's a lot of ins and outs. And I've seen this with other companies too, not just this one, is that the margins are so tight that they have to manage their cash really well. And they're so busy with operations, with getting new customers in, with actually delivering on their services, they need someone financially savvy to tell them where the cash is going in and out. So the biggest thing that I did for them was come in, understand their business, understand how they operate, and then build them a cash forecast that is basically in real time. And so we just had a meeting last week where I presented them a 30-day cash forecast. And I was like, hey, this is what vendor AP looks like. Here's your fixed fixed expenses, you know, rent, utilities, payroll. Here's all the variable expenses. Here's what it would look like if you hit your sales goal. And this is exactly the number that you need to hit in order to keep your business afloat at the level of cash that you want to have in the bank, right? And so there's no way they would be able to do that like without someone that actually knows how to build a cash forecast. So, To me, cash visibility and forecasting is one of the biggest pieces of any business. Whether you're doing a couple hundred thousand a year, or you're doing millions a year, you have to know the cash because how else are you going to afford your payroll or your AP. You gotta know how much cash can be in the bank. And sometimes there's so many variables that you have to account for. Are you actually gonna be hitting your sales numbers? Because if you're not, then you're gonna be in a huge cash crunch I couldn't agree more. Not knowing your cash and not having a forecast or even a budget. I mean, it's like jumping out of a plane without a parachute, right? Yeah, thanks. But you got, not all clients look at accounting as an investment in their company. And that's something that we push heavily at Veche. It's like, we don't push them into more services, but we just say, hey, listen, You gotta go off your gut, but if you're going off your gut, but you're not making decisions based on the results, based on numbers, based on data, you're really leaving not only a strategic advantage on the table, but you're jumping out of the plane without a parachute. But that's an area that we like to really lean in with our clients too, is putting those financial tools to help them understand their business. Because really, if your accountant is not If you don't love your accountant, you probably don't have the right accountant, first of all. Second of all, if they're not leaning in and giving you more of this information, more tools to help you make your job easier, then I can't imagine what the value is there. So I completely agree. And you do have this one startup, you helped increase their margin by 171% in one year. What's the biggest mindset, block founders have that kills their margin and how do you Well, so with this company, they weren't a startup. So they were a bootstrap company. So they've never taken in capital, but it's purely, purely through profits. Right. But I worked with them for three years. And when I first, got in, in 2021, this is when I did the complete financial transformation. Like there was just some very basic things that they weren't doing. Like they, they had a controller at that time who I replaced, but it was just like, where's the profitability here? Like why, why are you spending like $16,000 on rent? an office space, you know, when most of your guys are like out in the field, you know, is like those kinds of things, you know, payroll, like why, why is the payroll so bloated? You know, like we, we have, like, we really have to just go through the basics of like, let's look at the PNL on a monthly basis. Let's close accounting on a monthly basis. Now that that's another issue, right? If, if you're, if your accounting and financial process is not right, you're not able to close within 10 days even. Like 10 days is a great standard. Some people close in five days, right? That's perfect. 10 days is great too. But some people can't even close in 30 days. And I'm just like, you know, if you're not, if you don't have a time to close, then how can you use that to inform your decisions? So basic things like having a close, basic things like looking at your profit and loss to see like, where are you overspending? Whether it be payroll, rent, OpEx, like subscriptions that you don't need, like all those basic things and just going through that exercise of of looking at the P&L, of doing the analysis, putting those accounting controls in place, that led to 171% increase in margin the next year. So yeah, there's just some basic things. And I think just having a fractional CFO on board to look at those things who's been experienced and Yeah, and it keeps the company lean, right? Fractional is key word. And, you know, we're kind of at a point where it's like, if we take on a new client, you know, if they don't have a sophisticated accounting system, like we can't work with you. Even to the point where like, if we don't do your books is kind of like where we kind of draw the line now because so many people think they know how to do their books and then I just don't like hitting clients with cleanup fees. I hate it. I'd rather just get ahead of it and just take care of it for them. Because then not only are we making sure that they have good in and outs, but also now we're coming alongside them, like you said, monthly. We're closing their books. We're closing their books the first week, we're meeting with them the second week, and they're understanding their business a lot more. It, it's taken a pain on my end of having to, you know, be more lenient with clients, but I've noticed that being a lot more, no nonsense and bold with them and saying, Hey, this is kind of like how we do things. It's only improved the quality of the type of client we have and also improve the culture that we have here. Cause we're not asking for our team to do things and, and be heroes during times where we just don't have the time to do it. So yeah, good point. And it helps when you see the books, you can present more options for them that would help lead to increased margins. So the next section, I want to kind of get into purpose, clarity, and confidence. Your clients often already have a CPA and bookkeeper, yet they still ask you, how long will our cash really last? Or can I afford this hire? What's the crucial difference between the compliance work a CPA does and the strategic purpose-driven advisory work that you, as a fractional CFO, provide? How do you It's all about forecasting and future planning. So the work of a CFO is to look forward at the future and do strategic planning around that, and also to understand the visibility into that, right? So your accountant, your CPA, your bookkeeper is focused on accounting for the past. So it's about transactions, getting it, categorized properly in QuickBooks, getting it closed, you know, so that you're compliant with your taxes, you know, on a quarterly basis. And then at the year end filing, like getting all the transactional history, correct. But like CFO work, Strategic work is so much more than that. It's understanding what drives the business, what drives the revenue, what drives the costs, what drives the gross margin, the net margin, and all that. And so being forward-looking is a very different skill than recording transactions. And I had a prospect, not a client, but a prospect recently reached out to me and say, you know, our fractional CFO, they don't know how to forecast sales, you know, because they've been forecasting sales based on like past transactional history. But this company is growing fast. They're like, yeah, we're 1.5 million revenue right now, and we're growing really fast going into Q4 holiday season. And this fractional CFO that they had was forecasting it based on past data. And I'm just like, that makes no sense at all, that you would do it that way. And so Fractional CFO work, the way it should be done is, let's look at transactional history, let's look at the analysis, but then we've got to extrapolate that out into what does it look like for the future? I'm not going to use the same numbers I use for Q3 into Q4. It just makes no sense at all. Do some kind of methodology, whether it be like increasing your percentage, doing some kind of growth rate, doing some kind of like extrapolation, whatever it is, right? Just something. So I think that's a good example of like what CPA versus like what the real strategic CFO work Yeah, it's being proactive versus reactive. If I had to sum it up, you're actually trying to look forward to the future and predict things. And I love that. That's what I like the most about my job is it's like gamifying it, right? I love getting into the spreadsheets. you know, developing assumptions and, you know, interviewing the, the, the client about their business and understanding it. Yeah. Taking the, the past and, and what that story tells us and tying that into, um, what, what, what their goals are and what they think we can do, establishing what those parameters are for setting, um, some variables going forward and then seeing like, were we right? You know, we should be. If we do A, B, and C, then we should be hitting our goals. And yeah, that is a good advantage. Now, you have this upcoming book coming out, Riskworthy. You talk about the importance of prioritizing qualitative returns over just quantitative ones. What does risk-worthy decision-making look like when you're advising a founder on a major growth Now, that is an interesting question, interesting way to look at it, because yes, one, at the base, you do need to look at the financial impact of your decisions. That is really important when we're talking about a huge deal, right? But that can't be the only reason why a founder or CEO decides to go through with a project or make a major investment. because at the end of the day, it's all about why you're doing what you're doing, the purpose behind it. And so I talk so much in Riskworthy about what qualitative return on investment looks like. Quantitative return on investment Yes, it is important. It is a consideration. You should do your calculations. You should work your fractional CFO, figure out what the strategic returns are. But I don't think that's the only reason that you should take on a risky project or do an M&A deal. At the end of the day, it's about why you're doing it. And of course, make sure you're making ethical decisions. Ethics is so huge in our financial world. There's a lot of people that are obviously not doing the right things. And so when it comes to qualitative return on investment, I ask, first of all, are you doing it out of out of being the best version of yourself? And second of all, are you doing it because you have a strategic vision of your best possible future? And then three, you also have to ask yourself, is this in line with ethics and morality? Like, I'm not just doing this for my own financial gain, I'm doing this for the betterment of my community, my company, and other people. So all those things have to be considered when it comes to qualitative return on investment. And it goes back to what you and I both believe in is, you know, having that passion and having the purpose along And that that's well said. And that kind of goes right into like my follow on, which is, you know, how does a founder's personal mission or purpose directly influence the financial decisions you Personal mission or purpose directly influence the Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean their personal mission and their purpose, like that is huge to everything that they do. Like, you know, like when you actually invest money into something like that's when you're like putting your skin in the game. That's when you're like actually, um, making something serious, right? And so the mission is so, the founder's mission is so tied to like what they're doing because they put their money where their mouth is. So that is like, that's huge in terms of like knowing like what your purpose is, knowing your mission, and then putting your money behind that, like backing it from a financial perspective, like it Absolutely, absolutely. So, The next question's all around what's next for Laurie. As an entrepreneur yourself, what's the biggest challenge you are focused on overcoming right now in scaling advanced CFO while ensuring you maintain a high-touch, purpose-driven Yeah, the biggest thing is, you know, I really take pride in working one on one with my clients and founders. I, you know, even though I have people working for me and with me, like I make sure that I have meetings with my clients that it never gets too busy or crazy enough to where I can't develop that relationship. I think that's really like the sweet spot of like where I work is like, you know, I'm offering a relationship with the founder of basically saying like, hey, I'm here to like be your advisor, you know, be that have that you have me in the corner. to help you guide you and give you the financial perspective, the cashflow forecasting, the strategic insights, whether you need someone to help you talk with investors, I'm there. The CFO, that's something that you can't replace with AI is that relationship with your fractional CFO. And so, My main purpose is how do I continue to build that relationship with the founders? How do I make sure that they're supported? How do I work with them one-on-one? I never wanna get to a point where I'm not able to support them, even though I do have a team working on the ARAP, the accounting and all of that. So that's one thing that I really pride myself in, especially as I'm growing, have experienced growth, continue to experience growth, and just want to make sure that that is a Yeah, that's really similar to our approach on just being tech heavy at Veche. And you've experienced buying back your time, as we've discussed. It allows me to spend more intimate time with the clients. So although going more tech heavy with ours may not be something that some of the clients would have envisioned us going, they're seeing the value of that investment because someone handles my calendar, someone handles my email. Anytime we're communicating, it's through our CRM task manager, project manager tool. And that just allows me to have a lot more flexibility to spend more time with them because that's one thing that hasn't gone away. People still want that personal touch. I think The younger generation are a little bit more transactional. They like to go boom, boom, boom, which is fine, um, whatever they want. But I think there's still a large portion of the population that still want to feel like they have a good relationship with their accountant, probably because we know more than, you know, they know about themselves. You know, we, there's a lot of, you know, intimate stuff going on when you file and know someone's, uh, accounting information. So it's important to be able to give them that. Um, What's one piece of tough, no-nonsense advice you'd give to a purpose-driven founder who's struggling to look at the numbers because I would say the most important piece of advice I'd give them is, you know, going back to the cash flow is like, understand your numbers on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And the reason for that is like, at the end of the day, like, are you actually profitable? A lot of business owners don't know if they actually are. And they don't even know the difference between cash basis and accrual basis, which is a very important concept and a distinguishment to make, right? And so you and I understand what cash basis and accrual basis is, but if the founder doesn't understand or is not like taught what the difference is, that could lead to a lot of problems. And so it all goes back to the cash. Like, you know, there's a saying that cash is king, especially in the startup world, right? Because if you run out of cash, you can't continue on because you have no revenue, maybe you have barely have any revenue, but you have like a ton of expenses. You have all this R and D, but you have no cash. And so whether you are a venture backed startup with, you know, millions of dollars in funding, or you're like a bootstrap profitable business, you at the end of the day have to understand where your cash is at all those regular cadences. Otherwise, you might actually just not really even be profitable at all. You might just be hemorrhaging money. And so working with a CPA or a CFO more so will help you understand like where your cash is actually going and will help you understand like, are you profitable? Can you continue this and can you grow, right? Cause there's a lot of strategic decisions that you have to make. after understanding what your wiggle room is. So having that in place is the key to having a sustainable, profitable, purpose-driven business. Because knowing the numbers is what allows you to create more value Yeah, that's such great advice. And I just want to kind of recap some of these things that we've gone over. There's a difference between compliance and strategy. Your CPA and your bookkeeper, they are in the compliance world. They're making sure things are accurate and complete. They're looking back to make sure everything is tidy, but strategic and tactically, you need to also have your eye on what's ahead. It's important to have clean things because we make decisions based on history, but you got to be forward thinking because some businesses, a lot of businesses actually go out of business because they're doing well and they have cash issues that they could have solved and could have predicted had they had a professional look at their numbers. Also, the power of clear financial margin to fuel peace. A lot of these startups and a lot of these small businesses, the owners are just frantic. They're not happy. And I think that understanding their numbers would definitely fuel their peace. It would definitely bring them a lot more peace because they can believe in a plan. They know that they're good or that they're not, but at least you know, and you can at least plan for it. And then the importance of making risk-worthy decisions, be strategic, have someone on your team that helps you take these risks. Because in accounting, it's all about risk mitigation and being risk averse, but there's a certain level of risk that's worth taking and that can really catapult your business. Laurie, thank you for sharing your experience and your dedication to helping founders achieve scalable success. If listeners want to know more about Laurie, please visit her website at advancedcfo.co. and check out her podcast by visiting her builtbymargin.com website. You can also follow her on social media. Her accounts are at Laurie Chen, CPA, MBA, and at Advanced CFO. Also, don't forget to check out her upcoming book, Riskworthy. Laurie, Yeah, I'm really excited because I actually just got the green light in the last week or so that this book is gonna get published next summer. We're doing a pre-sale campaign starting in December, already starting to put out updates. When you follow me on social, you'll see I'll have clips from my book and just me sharing insights, me going through the book writing journey. And so if you go to www.riskworthy.co, you can sign up there for updates and also the campaign that's launching in December. But yeah, this book is definitely coming out. It's going to get published early next summer as paperback, audio, hardback. all of all those formats. So it's going to be really exciting. So, yeah, sign up and looking forward to sharing more of my journey with So exciting. So exciting. Thank you for everyone listening to the Vici Code. Join us next time as we continue to explore the journey of purpose driven leaders. Thanks for tuning in to the Vici Code, where the underdogs rise and the numbers finally make sense. If today's story hit home, share it. And remember, faith fuels