Welcome to Elevate with Elsner. Join us for inspiring conversations with individuals who have transformed their lives and are making a difference through the work that they do. And now, Welcome back to another episode of Elevate with Elsner the show where we don't just talk business, we talk legacy, leadership, and leveling all the way up. Today's guest is a true financial force, Laurie Chen. She's a CPA, a high-level CFO, and the brains behind two powerhouse brands, Advanced Accountant and Advanced CEOs. both built to help entrepreneurs stop guessing and start growing with financial clarity and confidence. Laurie doesn't just help you clean up your books, she helps you own your future. From early stage founders to high performing CEOs, her strategies turn chaos into control and stress into systems. We're going to dive deep into how to make your business financially unshakable and what separates a hustling business owner from a strategic Absolutely. So let's get right into it. What got Well, I've been, um, in business school. Um, I've been in accounting finance, um, ever since I graduated. So this has been my career. Um, I started out in public accounting at a big four audit firm, uh, working crazy hours, long hours and auditing got my CPA and then went into corporate accounting and industry accounting. Um, and then it wasn't until several years later when I went to get my MBA, that I was exposed more to startups and entrepreneurship. I wanted to kind of have a career shift and industry shift. And so that's what got me into the world of startups. And I've been working with numbers my whole career, was moving more from the accounting side to the finance, FP&A, M&A side. And so my MBA gave me a lot of confidence to go out and try new things, start working with startup. That startup got acquired by a large Silicon Valley-based company. And then after that, I decided to start my own company, which became Advanced Accountant and Advanced CFO. And so now I work with lots of startups that are trying to raise capital, trying to expand their business, plan for that acquisition or exit, or just working with companies that are bootstrapped and just want to be profitable and Oh, that's awesome. So what would you say the mission, obviously you kind of dove into it a little bit, but what's like the mission behind advanced So the mission is to bring clarity to the numbers. One of the biggest things that the companies I work with deal with is financial transparency, tracking systems, and cash flow. So people know what revenue and profit is, but they don't necessarily know how to track it or how to make the numbers make sense from a financial standpoint. They need someone like me, a fractional CFO to tell them what the numbers mean, and to make sure that they keep themselves in business. So having that financial transparency, having clarity is a huge part of being a business owner. And if you're a business owner, your passion is not going to be in the numbers, most likely, right? Your passion is going to be running operations, selling the product, solving people's pain points. My job is to focus on giving the founders, the operating team, the numbers that they need to make strategic decisions. everywhere from KPIs to the cash flow. Cash flow is a huge deal when it comes to running a business because at the end of the day, you need to know what all your liabilities are, when they're due, how much cash you're bringing in. Top-line revenue, that's not necessarily what you're going to bring in in 30 days, right? Your customer might not pay you. And so I can help with running the numbers and the analysis on what collections look like for the next 30 days, make sure that the business stays afloat, and then give you visibility out to a certain time period. Companies I work with, they have 12 month to 28 month forecasts. You know, it's that detailed. So getting, giving people transparency, um, in their numbers Yeah. So coming from like a CEO standpoint to a CFO, obviously if, if you don't agree as a CEO and a CFO, there's going to be some major issues, Yeah, yeah, definitely. And that's really why the CFO always needs to have a good working relationship. Because really the CFO is the right hand, the financial right hand to the CEO. I've not really, I fortunately have been in a position where I had to argue with the CEO too much. I do a lot of due diligence. We make sure that we're a good fit for each other in terms of working styles, goals, vision, making sure that there's alignment. But you're absolutely right. If there's no alignment, if there's personality clashes, then it's going to create a lot of conflict. And you don't want to be in that boat, especially when you're in a startup mode and everything has Yeah, that's true. I just see when you hear about, especially like post COVID and how everything's changed, like you just see a lot of different clashes like that come about and you see things turn over and people drop, you know, step down from CEO, step down from CFO, et cetera. And it seems Yeah. So like I said, there's got to be a mutual understanding and you've got to ask the right questions. It's just like having a business partner. Having a business partner is tough in a lot of ways. It's like a marriage, right? It's a business marriage. And so in a lot of ways, the CEO and CFO relationship is like a marriage. So you have to understand how to work with each other, get alignment. And also communication style is also really important too, And what would you say like how to build, you know, like a proper financial system that scales? I know it's very complex, but what are you So in order to build a strong financial system, you've got to have the accounting foundation correct. Um, and so I can't stress the importance enough of having clean financials, having a clean set of books. Because that's the input to the output, right? The input is having clear financials, having everything reconciled, having all the numbers that you can work with to make strategic decisions off of. So whenever I start working with a company, I make sure that their financials, their monthly close is timely and accurate. A lot of companies, I go in and their books are messed up. It's not reconciled or there's glaring accounting issues. Those need to get fixed in order to have even a good forecasting system for FP&A work and cashflow work. So I always make sure that the company has a strong accounting foundation And then we can move into building the FPNA system, the dashboards for KPI tracking and reporting, and then the cash flow system. Everything goes back to the cash, right? As I mentioned before, it's about knowing how much cash is coming in the door every week versus how much is going out, and being able to project that with a fair amount of accuracy. So it's all interlinked, having that accounting, FP&A and the cashflow forecasting, it all needs to be in line. And that's why I always give it 30 to 60 days to get a company up and fully running and have that financial visibility. It's not overnight. transformation, it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and then it takes skill and knowledge in order to fix the problems that the companies are facing and get them to a point where they can actually be confident in what their numbers are So would you say the truth about like cashflow? One of the big things that you hop into these businesses is they think like, you know, or you have to tell them like, hey, profit does not equal cash, right? Is that kind of an issue sometimes? Honestly, a lot of the founders I work with don't have that issue, but I have seen others that I've talked to have that knowledge gap, especially profit We have this concept called Profit First. It's actually a book, but it's really a good concept to implement and actually execute at the business foundational level is understanding like, what's my actual profit? and being able to reinvest in the business based on what that profit is, being able to allocate your money to taxes, the operating expenses, the payroll, all those things. But then you also have to pay yourself, owner compensation, pay the founder, pay the executive team. with owners or whoever there are. So that's important. But then yeah, there's cash too, because then it's like, how much cash is coming in the door? And so people do need to understand that cash does not equal profit. Just because you have $100,000 in the bank today, doesn't mean you're going to have it in the bank tomorrow. So yeah, understanding profit first versus what your cash levels look like is critical to keeping the business afloat and not having That makes complete sense. And now Yeah, I just announced it recently on my podcast. I am working on a book that's going to be published in 2026. The title of the book is called Risk Worthy. And the concept behind it is, basically, how do we make decisions in life and business that actually gives us a good framework for making those tough decisions? And so the conventional wisdom is that what makes something risk worthy, especially in entrepreneurship, is that the potential upside justifies the uncertainty. And we focus only on quantitative factors and tracking, right? But based on my research, interviews that I've done, I believe what makes something risk worthy is its ability to create the best version of yourself and your best possible future. So basically all the qualitative factors that we don't necessarily consider in our decisions. So I've done a lot of research and I've already been in the writing process and super excited to share this and to share my journey along the way to becoming an author. But I think this will be a really good book for people to read about having that new framework for making decisions, both from a financial perspective and a life risk perspective, Yeah, I can tell. Obviously you're, I know you talk about one of your strengths is obviously having emotional intelligence. So inside that book, I'm guessing you share some tidbits of, Yeah, absolutely. So I'm, I've done a lot of research. Um, and even on, uh, the, the guests that I've interviewed for my podcast, you know, I asked them about risk and how risk has affected how they started their business. You know, what decisions did they make that, you know, they shouldn't really have have made, um, based on quantitative factors, but they went with their emotional intelligence, their emotional, their gut. and follow their heart, you know, in making the decisions. And also, I go through examples of, you know, very well known entrepreneurs and business owners, you know, Elon Musk, Sarah Blakely, you know, what, what were the things that caused them to rely on their emotion their emotional intelligence, their gut to make a decision in spite of the financial risks and all the downsides that they were facing. You know, they shouldn't have made those decisions, but why did they do it? You know, they relied Yeah. So, you know, I guess that's kind of like the difference of being busy and being in control, right? Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think. Being busy versus being in control. Yeah. Um, I think a lot of people, um, don't have that. And so we really have to focus on, you know, what are the quantitative factors that. Help Yeah. So what are, what are some, uh, you know, when you, when you jump into a business, are there just some like immediate red Yeah, so when I look into the financials, if I don't see that the bank accounts are reconciled, that would be a huge red flag. And something that I've talked about recently with a client of mine is internal controls. So internal controls is the idea that in a business that you should have safeguards to prevent fraud, to prevent any type of malpractice, right? And a lot of businesses, especially at the startup level, don't have that in place. And so I'm glad you mentioned looking for red flags in that regard, because if you don't have those internal controls in place, then you're in an environment that's ripe for some kind of malpractice happening, legal risks, liabilities, and that kind of thing. And so that's one thing I look for, making sure that there's internal controls or some type of internal controls in place, looking at the bank statements, the reconciliations. There's a lot of companies that don't necessarily have that in place. And that's just a standard, like a very standard accounting practice to have in a company. And then, yeah, I would say the other thing I look at is, you know, if I'm looking at the dashboards and I see that, you know, there's certain metrics not being met, then that will always raise a red flag and say, hey, operations team, look at this particular performance tracker and why are we here? The data is showing us one thing, you're saying another, so we kind of dive deeper into what's And most of the time when you dive into that, like you say, it takes, it's not going to happen overnight. Like you say, it takes 30, 60, 90, maybe even Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It, it takes a long time because you know, the issues that we're solving, there's a lot of problems. Um, and everything, you know, goes back, ties back to the financials, like the financials, um, the money, the profit, you know, it all. it all informs how well the business is doing. And so in order to get to a place where you're actually measuring your performance, you've got to have good financial systems. And as I mentioned before, it starts with the accounting, getting that right at least. But in a lot of businesses, that can actually be very complex concerning whatever industry that they're in. And then tracking it and making sure that it closes on a timely basis. So a good close for the month is between 10 and 15 days after the previous month. If you're not closing your books within that time, you're actually not getting timely and accurate data. Now, some companies actually close around day five. So five days after the month end, they're able to close their books, which is, that is ideal. But I think most companies fall between day 10 and day 15. And if you're not getting the information any earlier or any later than that, then you probably have a problem on the reporting I guess that's probably when people are using Venmo and Yeah. I have seen that too. I've seen salary payments being made through Venmo and PayPal, which I don't I don't necessarily recommend, but yeah, people do get to that point where they're making payments out of those systems. And yeah, we would like to avoid that and have established processes in place, especially when it comes to something like payroll, which Yeah. So switching over to the mindset, the mental CEO side instead of the CFO side, what is the biggest mental shift a business owner needs to go from self-employed operator The biggest thing is hiring and hiring the right people. So I've definitely seen that in order to scale, you know, I work with a lot of startups and so when they get the money, they hire a bunch of people, skilled people, right? I wouldn't overhire because I've definitely seen that too, where you're kind of putting the cart before the horse. and you're hiring too many people. But I would say being strategic about your hires, understanding that both from a financial affordability standpoint, as well as from an operational needs standpoint, having that balance is key to making the strategic hires at the right time. That makes complete sense. I guess when you're getting all focused and getting all dialed in with founders and these startup businesses, what lights a fire in you to just see it succeed? Is that what just keeps So I mean, I'm passionate about the numbers. Like I said, I've been working with numbers for many, many years. And so that's always been a passion of mine. But then another passion of mine is just why I enjoy working with startups is I like to be a part of the building process. You know, I've worked in corporate, I've worked for large companies, you know, that have thousands of employees. And so what I appreciate about working with startups and small businesses, you know, companies between 10 and 30 employees is that you really get to build process from the ground up. And there's that creative aspect of that, that I really enjoy. And being able to be more than a cog in a wheel is something that I'm very passionate about and what drives me towards entrepreneurship and Well, that's neat because obviously you found your niche and it seems to be working from all your following and your brand and what you've created. Is there one thing you would tell somebody starting a business? Just do this before you I would say just contact me right away because honestly, I work with people that are zero revenue, but have gotten some seed money or have invested some of their own money. And so I've worked with entrepreneurs that just had an idea and needed someone to build their financial model for them and bounce ideas off of. So from zero revenue all the way up to multi-million dollar companies. And I enjoy working with all of them. So I would say there's not really a gateway. It's really just if you have the passion, and if you need help with numbers, then I would love to talk with you. and maybe just put together a business plan. That definitely helps. We can build a financial model if you have a business plan, you have done the market research, have some ideas in hand about where you want to go, where you want to be. I'm there to help put those ideas down into numbers and into some kind of model or a system that is Yeah, it's incredible. It's really incredible. I think what your your talents have kind of show themselves, you don't even have to really learn about you. You can just see all online and then you get to talk and hear this. And it really shows your knowledge, like in the number industry and the CEO side and mixing it with the CFO side. So it's been it's been interesting and really fulfilling to hear all this stuff. And on your side, I know you have multiple outlets to get a hold of you or find you. Where are the best spots Yeah. So I'm on Instagram, uh, Laurie Chen, CPA, MBA, um, posting weekly content there. Um, also on LinkedIn, um, a lot of the clients that I work with, um, are, are from LinkedIn. And so I also have a very active following there. I'm also posting weekly there. Um, and so come find me. And then on my website, it's, uh, www.advancecfo.co. And then if you're interested in signing up for book updates for Wow, you got it all going on right now. Busy, busy future Yeah, no, I'm super excited. It's a really exciting time right now. Yeah, I have my own podcast where we have weekly episodes and then working on a book and then I have client work. So yeah, Yeah, it sounds like it. Well, I'll have to, for sure, put all those links in the show notes and everyone can learn from this episode for sure. And then from that book too. Perfect. I'll have to stick to that. If you want to graduate from business operator to true CEO, this is your blueprint. Laurie Chen just laid it out from understanding your cash flow to building systems that set you free. Her brand's advanced accountant and advanced CEOs are proof that you don't need to work harder, you need to lead smarter. So follow Laurie on her Instagram, at Laurie Chen, CPA, MBA. Hit her up on LinkedIn, or if you're ready to elevate your business finances, you know who to call. This is Elevate with Elsner where we don't settle, we scale. Until next time, keep building, keep believing, and let's keep elevating. Thanks