We were lucky to catch up with Charese Chambers recently and have shared our conversation below.
Charese, appreciate you joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?
My entrepreneur origin story doesn’t start like most, because I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. Financial Fancy was truly birth from a place of care for small business owners and their understanding of their numbers. So when I did finally get bit by the self-employment bug my first thought was how do I turn my hobby of doing taxes to a full season operation. Education was the NorthStar. Give information and knowledge to small business owners so that they could take advantage of the tax code year around – that looked like bookkeeping. I started offering simple bookkeeping services and transiting from being the receipt box tax preparer to my small business clients, to the lady you need to hire so you can make more sound business decisions in real time. This new business model scaled so quickly to afford me the opportunity to leave my full time employment. But that didn’t come without some growing pains, like pricing my services and quantifying my capacity. Reverse engineering cost of running the business and what I need to pay my personal expenses. Price increases impact was more mental than strategy, knowing my worth and value to a small business. 18 years later, Financial Fancy is a multiple 6 figure business and aims amongst the stars.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Financial Fancy is a fractional CFO firm that offers day to day(bookkeeping) combined with projections(strategy) to help small business owners reach their goals in a sustainable way. It’s one thing to know what you need to do, it is different when you need to make operations around the implementations. So working with me is truly a bookkeeping capacity with business coaching. Execution is the only measure that makes scaling a possibility for small business owners.
Have you ever had to pivot?
So many lesson in entrepreneurship but the biggest one for me and changed the game was having to file bankruptcy. Seriously, the shame of being a financial person and having to take a hard look at a reset. Clients were paying slow or not at all and that truly put the business at a halt. We don’t talk enough about the risk, when you aren’t getting a paycheck every 2 weeks. Nothing about entrepreneurship is easy, and considering all the risk is a must. After filing and getting my backend in order, I start require deposits for service, and that pivot alone create a new cash flow in my business and I quick was able to turn things around.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
When I finally made entreprenuer life the main thing. I never could have enough clients to make the revenue I needed to be fulltime, so I cashed out my 401K and betted on me. I had enough to last me a year. After the year cashflow was inconsistent and I was still figuring out what I was offering outside of taxes. Everyone wants you to give your time free, it was a lot to mentally wrap your head around. After the year was up I had to go back to a 9-5, and to say I was defeated is an understatement and of course I would see people who knew I had a business come in and ask, “You not doing your little business anymore.” I took as motivation to figure it out and a year to the date that I took that job I left and Financial Fancy reemerge bigger and better. In the next 2 year after that I was able to put myself on payroll, hire staff and scale. So years after that I relocated from Lynchburg to the big city of Richmond. A blessing.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://financialfancycfo.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/financialfancycfo/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charesechambers/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@financialfancy6877