Link To Guest Website: https://www.citrincooperman.com/

Title: “Leading Citrin Cooperman’s Outsourced CFO Services Line”
Guest: Connie Wright – Citrin Cooperman
Interviewers: Nathan Gobes – Radio Entrepreneurs & Evan Macedo – Sapers & Wallack / FEI Boston

Click here to read the transcript

Nathan (0s):
Welcome back to Radio Entrepreneurs. I’m a producer, Nathan Gobes filling in for Jeffrey Davis this morning. I want to thank all our listeners and viewers for joining us. We’ve had a over 8,000 guests on the show and counting, and this is the segment in a partnership with FEI Boston, financial executives international, which means my co-host is the one and only Evan Macedo of Sapers & Wallack. Welcome Evan.

Evan (24s):
Thank you, Nathan. It is always a pleasure to be here. I love all of the entrepreneurs stories we do, and we have another guest here.

Nathan (34s):
Not just any other guest though. We have a Connie Wright, partner at Citrin Cooperman. Welcome Connie.

Connie (41s):
Hi, glad to be here.

Evan (44s):
It’s a pleasure. They have you here and Nathan, she is just not a partner at Citrin Cooperman. Citrin Cooperman is also a partner of FEI. So I just want to hear from you Connie, how FEI is going and how the partnership has been?

Connie (1m 1s):
So I have known FEI in one shape or the other from his 20 years. And I love the partnership. It’s been able to allow me to interact with FEI members and do some networking, both to their benefit and to my benefit. And they have great programs. If you haven’t participated or gone to any of the speaker programs, a highly recommended, there is some, some great topic that space and discuss. I am a raving fandom. FEI is you can’t tell

Evan (1m 35s):
Me if you can’t tell him by my logo up here, I’m also a fan. And we also get a lot out of it at Sapers & Wallack as well. Now Connie for our listeners out there that maybe are not familiar with Citrin Cooperman, can you kind of give a quick, a brief overview of what you guys do?

Connie (1m 54s):
So the firm is a full service public accounting firms, so audits tax, and a variety of consulting. And we are a national firm and have a international partnership that we have offices throughout the country. So it’s set up and coming from about five years ago was not a national affirm. So it’s been growing a, but both organically and by acquisitions. So it’s been a lot of fun to be a part of them. And then I had a service group to them.

Nathan (2m 28s):
Yeah. I heard that you started your role last December or December of last year. Excuse me. I’m wondering how that’s going and what your focuses are for 2021.

Connie (2m 37s):
Sure. So not a stranger to a providing the service, outsource accounting, finance to companies, but I joined such a cute in, in December. And I have to say it’s been a blast. It’s a great collegial collaborative group of people. And while I’m responsible for the new England practice, we’re doing my work and I have clients all over the country. A lot of them are startups and emerging, and some of them were the entire back office. Others. We are a fractional doing a special projects and other work.

Connie (3m 18s):
And I like to say, I’m a recovering CPA. I’ve spent most of my life, either in public accounting or consulting. I’m doing the sort of work.

Evan (3m 30s):
And I a S I hear you, you know, you have clients all over the country, a, which is great to hear that your business is growing. I wanna hear it a little bit more detail on what actually makes an ideal client for you. Like where do you find the client? And you’re like, wow, I really, I really can help them out.

Connie (3m 49s):
Yeah. So our clients, a lot of ’em are startups in a merging. And so in a startup, in an emerging environment, a they don’t need a back office 24 seven, but they need the talent of a CFO. It could be a capital raise or just the strategy of, of, of a cashflow and burn to a larger companies that have a back office, but there’s a skillset missing. We do a special accounting and finance project. So I get a chance to do a lot of my curious living with my clients. And a lot of them are, I have a problem. They want solved in, of course, it’s fine to get in their, but others are simply saying, I know something’s missing and we can go in and give them a quick, a assessment and determine that maybe they’re not using technology to its fullest, that could be more streamlined.

Connie (4m 47s):
They might have vulnerabilities, or they just aren’t getting the kind of a management information to run the, from that they need ’em they might not know a, what is the product’s, you know, what are the margins on their products? And, and, and what’s, what’s selling and what is it? So it it’s so multifaceted. I have a couple of fun clients, cryptocurrency, if you want to go dumpster diving with me and learn all about that. And then I have a plain vanilla manufacturing, a solid been around for 20, 30 years. If they know they want to be strategic

Evan (5m 28s):
In, in Connie a I realized that the dumpster diving comment, that’s, that’s pretty funny. So this is, what would you say are some of the, the, the, the top you, no one to three, a day challenges that you keep finding your clients are running into again and again.

Connie (5m 48s):
So they’re not getting their financials in a timely fashion. And that usually means they’re either not using technology or they haven’t streamline how they are processing information. And so therefore, you know, it’s 15 working days after the month end close and, and they still will have the information. They aren’t getting the strategic information they need. So they really don’t. They, they have my gut and understanding of their business. They haven’t validated their gut. And sometimes when we present the number’s to them, we are showing them information that they didn’t know.

Connie (6m 33s):
Other times were validated. Some of our clients were doing M and a prep for them. So we’re getting them ready for acquisition. And it’s a really good to do the exercise well in advance of when you want to get acquired, as opposed to at that moment, but we can help them understand what are the key levers in their business and, and what they wanna focus on, and that how to effectively describe the things that might not be going so great, but aren’t necessarily a bad components of their business. But I like to say the answer more questions, and you ask when you present information. So that helps me.

Nathan (7m 13s):
Yeah. So you’re, you’re going into some of the aspects of our next question for you, which is, you know, what are you of any advice for listeners that are considering bringing in a outsource CFO? You know, some things that you wish a, that the businesses might know before going into this, a common misconceptions, anything like that?

Connie (7m 35s):
Well, I’ll start with a common misconceptions, and it’s actually cheaper to have somebody on a fractional basis than a full-time basis. And particularly when you are at a certain size, you may think you don’t need that talent, but I have failed that CFOs. And, and this is a plug for FEI, which has a lot of CFOs and its organization are worth her weight and gold. A, a CFO can improve your back office, provide you with strategic management information.

Connie (8m 20s):
And they also are individual that can evaluate risk companies, have risks by the nature of their business they’re in and how they built the business. So I would say it’s by definition and by design. And if you haven’t taken a look at what that risk is, you can be caught really flat-footed a lately. We’ve seen the huge increase in cyberspace, a security risk, and hackers. And there’s some really easy things you can do. And the CFO can help you identify that gets you to the experts and prevent that they’re going to help you manage your cash. So they are going to help you make, I always say every decision you make has an equal and opposite a impact.

Connie (9m 8s):
So if you make an accurate decision or you may have inadvertently made a passive decision, you were unaware of the CFL can help you understand. They can sit down and work with you on a budget and to talk about what your goals are, and then help you keep that and targeted or have of the adult conversation, time to pivot. We need to move away from there. So I just, there’s so much value in having that skillset and talent available to

Evan (9m 35s):
You. Hmm. Well, that is a, that was fantastic. I know we’re getting to the end of our time for our show over here, Connie, you have been a phenomenal guests. Thank you so much for joining us, offer anybody out there. Who’s listening. If they want to get in touch with you, they want to ask you questions to see if you are, you are right fit for them. How did they contact you? Well,

Connie (9m 56s):
My name is honor our website. So Citrin cooperman.com, but it’s really easy nomenclature email C as in my first letter, Connie and Wright, w R I G H T, that Citrin cooperman.com. And I’m on LinkedIn. I am on the FEI membership. So if you’re an FBI member and I think that that should cover it.

Nathan (10m 26s):
Okay, great. And a, of course, Evan, if people want to get in touch with you, you find, find out more about the safest and Wallach or FEI Boston, one of the best ways to reach you

Evan (10m 37s):
A while. That’s really easy. So if you want to get in touch with me at say prison wallet, a you can just go to Sapers hyphen wallet.com and just go right through our contact page. You will find myself and all of that. All of our other advisors, we are a boutique financial advisory and employee benefits firm in the heart of Newton mass. And I know that we’d love to help you guys out, and they had anybody else that, that needs some of our services. A additionally, since this is an FYI segment, FEI is the premier a financial, a senior financial executive M organization, and Boston, as Connie was mentioning earlier, there’s fantastic networking events in a really good chance to kind of increase your knowledge in your field as well as me, some fantastic people.

Evan (11m 25s):
So you can check us out at the FBI, boston.org, a you can see the list of events and how to contact us and how to become a member.

Nathan (11m 35s):
Thank you. Thank you, Evan. And thank you, Connie, for, for joining us on the show. We hope you’ll come back in the future to give us updates.

Connie (11m 43s):
A lot of fun things you so much.

Nathan (11m 45s):
Thanks. Want to remind everyone, this is Radio Entrepreneurs.

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