Lawrence Chester has served as a CFO for 25 years for companies such as Colovos Company, Republic Windows and Doors, United Service Companies, and High Sierra Sport Company, helping them eliminate losses and improving financial operations and reporting. He is an intuitive businessman, able to grasp complex situations, driving to the heart of the matter while developing creative solutions to problems.
Realizing that he enjoyed the challenges of helping companies that were working their way through a crisis, Lawrence joined a bankruptcy trustee for several years, analyzing the financial condition of client companies and managing them through those difficult times. Soon after that, he struck out on his own, forming CFO Simplified’s team of CFOs.
CFO Simplified helps their clients get clarity on their business’ performance, and the core of CFO Simplified’s focus is working with small to mid-sized businesses in cash flow improvement, strengthening internal controls, improving profitability, and clarifying financial reporting. Since starting CFO Simplified, Lawrence has been involved in Business Turnaround, and Mergers and Acquisitions, in addition to Financial and Operations Management for his clients.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- What CFO Simplified means to Lawrence Chester
- The pain points businesses are facing and what CFO Simplified does for its clients
- How to balance the company’s financials and their need to hire and scale
- Why companies need to be proactive about your financial planning and reporting
- How the financials of the company can help determine the future of the business
- The most common financial mistakes that companies make
In this episode…
When you look at your financial statements, do you see the information you need to help you make changes today that will affect your business profitability tomorrow? If your financial statement isn’t telling you what’s happening in your business, then there’s a problem.
According to Lawrence Chester, the President of CFO Simplified, there are two basic ways of looking at your financials: one is on a cash basis, and the other is on an accrual basis. But what do these two options mean and which one should you use to pay for recurrent expenditure like taxes?
Learn more about smart financials for business growth on this episode of the Inspired Insider podcast. Tune in as Dr. Jeremy Weisz and his Rise25 co-founder, John Corcoran talk with Lawrence Chester, President of CFO Simplified, about the pain points businesses face with their financials, the common mistakes they make, and how to rejig your financials for business growth.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Special Mentions
Sponsor for this episode
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Rise25 was cofounded by Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran. Here I am the host of the Smart Business Revolution podcast and this is a live episode with my co host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz,
Jeremy Weisz
Dr. Jeremy Weisz, this is also going to be on InspiredInsider.com so you could check it out after this live on Smart Business Revolution or inspired Insider.
John Corcoran
And this episode, before we get to our great guests, we’ve got Larry Chester, I’m going to introduce in a second of CFO Simplified. This episode is brought to you by Rise25, our company where we help b2b businesses to get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with done for you podcasts and content marketing, you are listening to a podcast right now or maybe you’re watching it live. And if you ever thought, Gosh, I started a podcast Well, I’ve been saying yes for 10 years, because it’s such a privilege to get the smart talk to smart people like Larry, who we have here today and expert in numbers, which is something that we could all use help if you want to learn more, go to Rise25media.com or email us at [email protected] and before I get to today’s guests, I want to give a big shout out to ProVisors which Jeremy is very active in and Larry’s very active in and they connected through that Lisa Meredith in particular, who runs ProVisors, Adam Grace phenomenal tax attorney and pbb expert want to give him a shout out as well for all the great work that he does. But I’m excited because our guest is Larry Chester. And Larry has served as CFO for 25 years for companies including Cole own a butcher, Colovos Company, Republic Windows and Doors there, I can handle that one United Service Companies, I can handle that one too. And High Sierra sport company, helping them eliminate losses and improve financial operations and reporting in times of COVID. This is more important than ever. And he realized that he enjoys the challenges helping companies that are working their way through a crisis like COVID. And so he joined us bankruptcy trustee for several years, which I did when I was practicing law not being a bankruptcy trustee but worked with trustees. So I know that’s not an easy job for sure. Analyzing financial conditions of client companies through that role in managing them through these difficult times. So that’s tremendous background. And we are really privileged to have you here today, Larry with us. But let me start with just asking you about the name CFO Simplified. How did you decide to name your company CFO Simplified? And what does it mean to you? Why choose that name?
Lawrence Chester
Well, I think the interesting thing is that a lot of business owners become entrepreneurs, because they are interested in either a passion for a product that they have, or a customer base that they want to serve. Nobody ever starts a company because they got an MBA and they say, Hey, I can read a financial statement. Let’s start a company. So my comment is that what we want to do is help businesses really understand their financials. And so as a CFO, we make their financials simple, make it easier for them to understand so that they can make decisions today that affect profitability tomorrow,
Jeremy Weisz
Larry, when clients come to you, what are they saying their biggest pain points are
Lawrence Chester
really, it’s two things primarily, one is they don’t have enough cash to operate their business. So they’re cash constrained. And that’s one of the things that a lot of companies are facing right now. And the second thing is that they’re not getting the information, they need to be able to make the hard decisions to understand what their full costs are to understand what their overhead costs are, to understand how much money they’re wasting or spending on things that they shouldn’t spend money on. And so it’s a matter of getting prompt financial reporting, and understanding what those financial reports are telling them. And that’s one of those things that we do for our clients.
