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Entrepreneur Spotlight
Lauren Colson – Founder & CEO of Colson Strategies
- Favorite Tools & Services: QuickBooks, Asana, Keeper, PandaDoc (why?)
- Where She Finds Talent: MicalaQuinn.com and LinkedIn
- You May Not Know: Lauren is ambidextrous and has a killer surprise backhand in tennis.
“…we provide everything for bookkeeping all the way up to CFO services.”
Lauren Colson is the founder and CEO of Colson Strategies, a full-service financial planning and accounting resource.
“We provide finance and accounting solutions to small to medium-sized businesses and we provide everything for bookkeeping all the way up to CFO services.”
Colson Strategies forms close relationships with its clients, crafting specialized plans that suit each of their widely varying needs and industries.
“We love to give that full service to our clients and love working with varying size companies all in different industries.”
Background
“We think of bookkeeping as what has happened in the past, paired with CFO, which is what is going to happen in the future.”
The team at Colson Strategies offers their clients every resource they could possibly need to ensure a strong, well-thought-out strategy that ensures financial success for their businesses.
“We think of bookkeeping as what has happened in the past paired with CFO, which is what is going to happen in the future.”
Bookkeeping tasks include recording all transactions, reconciling to the bank, paying bills, sending invoices, processing payroll, and certain reporting and dashboards that clients need to make the best decisions for their business.
As for future planning, Colson Strategies offers CFO services, including financial strategy, building out financial models and projections, cash flow analysis, pricing analysis, help with investing, help with creating pitch decks, and debt and equity raise strategy.
Your Right (and Left) Hand Woman
“I'm ambidextrous, so I write left-handed, but I pretty much do everything else right-handed, which is kind of interesting.”
This not only means that she can theoretically write with her left hand and perform advanced accounting equations with her right. It also gives her a competitive edge on the tennis court.
“I play tennis and I have a killer surprise backhand because it's got both of my hands on my left, no one's expecting it.”
Finding Talent
Favorite Place to Find Talent: MicalaQuinn.com and LinkedIn
“I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so I've built up a network…it's always good to have those relationships.”
“The type of talent we hire for the business is on the operational front. I most recently hired a virtual assistant who's amazing and I found her on the Michaela Quinn site.”
“On the internal side, we hire bookkeepers, controllers, and CFOs, and I have loved LinkedIn hiring tools.”
“I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so I've built up a network and I'm building relationships with people that we're not ready to hire or aren't ready to leave because it's always good to have those relationships.”
“Once I am posting for a role, I use the LinkedIn job boards that I've had great success with for almost everyone on our team.”
Lauren's Toolkit
Favorite Accounting Software
“I use it in my company for my books and we use it for the majority of our clients.”
“It's easy to use. It integrates so well with other technology, it has great reporting and is really a great accounting tool.”
Favorite Project Management Tool
“We live in Asana. It makes it easy if we're working collaboratively on our team, we can see what other people are working on on a client.”
“I use it personally for all of my items, so if Asana ever goes down, I wouldn't even know what to do with my day.”
Favorite Password Management Tool
“Every single password that we get goes in Keeper. We can use the Chrome extension so we're not copying and pasting or sending passwords which helps on the data privacy front.”
Favorite Document-Creating Software
“We put all of our contracts, proposals, and engagement letters in PandaDoc. We've got templates, it's easy to send out via email and get an email signature. You can see analytics on if they've looked at it or what kind of engagement there is.”
Where to Find Her
You can reach Lauren Colson through her company site.
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