Revisiting: Chris Ortega on What Makes a Great CFO (Hint: They're Not Just a 'Human Calculator')

Hey, Lauren Pearl here. Today on the Growth Minded cfo, we're bringing you another one of our favorite rerun episodes from season one. We were joined by the freshest CFO out there, Chris Ortega. Chris is the CEO of fractional CFO firm Fresh FP&A. I've known Chris for a few years now and what he brought to this episode is exactly what makes him so delightful to be around. Chris is a wise and energizing storyteller, full of aha moment takeaways that leave you feeling smarter and more prepared to take on anything. In this episode, he dropped gems on how to be a better business partner and leader, how to break out of a siloed finance department, and how to be a more effective CFO in the position we talked about being a true business leader. Not just the person who runs the model, but the person who understands the customer, reads the room, builds trust across the company, and helps the business make better decisions. If you are a finance leader who is working on better stakeholder partnerships and building firm trust, this is a great episode for you. We hope you enjoyed this rerun episode with Chris. Buckle up, you're in for a treat. I never had a CEO, business owner or founder ever look across back from me and say, hey Chris, you did a great job on that forecast. Like that forecast was really good. Or hey Chris, that budget package that you put together, Absolutely amazing, right? Welcome back to another episode of the Growth Minded cfo. This is Lauren and I'm Alex and we're very happy to have you on the show today. And today we have a wonderful guest, Chris Ortega. Chris, why don't you introduce yourself? Yeah, first and foremost, thank you for having me here. Super excited for our conversation. Nice to see, nice to hear, wherever you're at right now. My name is Chris Ortega. I'm the CEO of Fresh FP&A, which is my own global fractional CFO and advisor service company. Prior to starting Fresh FP&A, I've spent over 20 years in accounting, finance, FP&A. Financial leadership primarily in high growth businesses. I'm based in McCorsville, Indiana, which for those that don't know, we're like three hours south of Chicago. And one interesting fact about myself that I think is pretty cool is I have the best initials in the world. I think my initials have aligned to where I'm at in my life. My initials are CEO and I'll tell a funny story about that. When I was 8 years old, my mother set me on her lap at my grandma's house. On a Saturday afternoon, she sat me on her lap and she says, bunny. That's her nickname for me. She calls me Bunny. And she says, bunny, do you know you have the best initials? And your initials represent the highest level that you can reach in business? And I'll never forget looking at my mom and saying, wow, like, that means I could be a fireman. Like, the CEO's the fireman in business. And she's like, exactly, Bunny, you are the fireman in business. So, yeah, that's a little bit about me and a funny story about, you know, where I'm at now. I'm off to be the CEO now, so it all comes full circle. That's awesome. You're now officially a fireman. I really like the fact that, like, the most important thing is just being the fireman. Of course that is. That's what it is. I mean, finance, we put out fires. Right? Like, that's exactly the case. I mean, that's another connection. That's completely true. We are kind of a fireman of business and finance as well. Yeah. That's awesome. I really like it because we were talking about this right before the show and we're talking about, like, how you need to kind of like, sometimes be like, the fireman and sometimes, like, being the one that wakes up everyone in the room as well. And so, you know, I think that's a great segue to the conversation we're going to have today about the role of the CFO and the CEO of those organizations. Totally. Chris. To kind of get us started just on some context, more about you. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your journey to becoming a fractional CFO and a CEO and some of the experiences that kind of prepared you for that eventual fireman role. Yeah. So I think for me, like, it'll start and I'll talk about it in different stages. I think for me, I first loved, like, finance early on in life. And when I say early on in life, this is like middle school and high school. I'll never forget, like, the first finance accounting class I took at Pike High School here in Indianapolis, Indiana. And I'm going to age myself, but this is when accounting was done on, like, T paper, like, accounting paper. That's how old I am. Right. And I remember taking this accounting class my sophomore year of high school. And. And I've always loved math. Like, for me, algebra, geometry, calculus. I've always been, like a math orientated person. And one of the most important dots that I connected earlier in my career early in my finance journey was my sophomore year. I realized that accounting was basically business algebra, right? Like if, let's take it. Like, if you really look at accounting, right, assets equals liabilities plus stockholders equity. That's the same thing as X equals Y plus Z. That's geometry, that's algebra. So connecting that dot early on, I was really able to understand, like, and I love just numbers. I love telling a story. And like finance and accounting, it was telling me the story of the business. So that's what I really, like, I would say fell in love with my finance and accounting journey. Then I did my undergraduate work at Indiana University. This was right back when Enron was going under and the whole Sarbanes Oxley was taking off. And this is a interesting thing about me. I originally started off in college as a marketing major. Like, I came in my freshman year. I was like, the four P's, product price promotion and placement. And I was like, I'm doing marketing. And then Sarbanes Oxley happened, the fall of Enron, Arthur Anderson went away and it became like the Oprah Winfrey of getting jobs in college. And it's like if you were doing accounting and finance, it was like, you get a job and you a job and you get a job. And I was like, you know what? I kind of love accounting and finance. So I switched my major. I ended up doing an honors degree in accounting and finance. And then I started my career in public accounting. Really great experience. I started off at Ernst and Young as an auditor. I had a really great experience of building and working with a lot of different Fortune 5000 companies here in Indianapolis. Then after that, did the whole CPA thing and realized that, man, busy season is not where I'm going to be. Then I jumped into the next chapter of my career, which was my first entrepreneurial organization, which was called Cha Cha Search, which was like a mobile kind of software company. I came in as a senior accountant and that was like the first chapter of, I would say first six years of my career was heavy accounting. And then I realized, like, hey, accounting was so much looking back, it was not really looking forward. And I wanted to go back to school and get my MBA. So that's where I jumped into FP&A. And I got my MBA full time while working as a financial planning and analysis and Senior Financial FP&A Analyst at a publicly traded pharma drug development company. Really great experience there. And then I was like, got into leadership in software. I got to work at a couple different software companies. Most recently, I was VP of Finance at amarsys, which was a software company that we helped build our Americas operations up, built that up to scale and. And sold that off to SAP, which was like the largest acquisition I was a part of. So most of my career, accounting, fpa, right into leadership. And then three years ago, I found myself at this fork in the road in my career. There's two things that I realized. The first thing that I realized is I know what it takes to transform and scale finance teams. I've been doing that most of my career. I know the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. And most importantly, the second thing is I felt like there needed to be a fresh perspective brought to finance. So that's why I took the leap of faith. Most of my career was working with great entrepreneurs. I lived out that dream that my mom told me when I was 8 years old and I started fresh FP and A. That's super cool. I had one question kind of ringing in my head because we've had all this talk so far about your journey in finance, and then also that you were destined to be a CEO. So one thing that I'd be very curious about is as you've now transitioned to CEO, obviously you're still also a cfo, and you've been in finance leadership for a long time. What about being a CEO? What has that taught you? Or has that changed at all the way that you approach being a cfo? Because I know that transition for me happened the other direction where I was first a cfo, eo and I went to cfo. So I'm really curious, what's it like the other way around? What did you see so many times, like, jumping into that CEO suite? Like, I had to intimately know our clients. I had to intimately know their pains, I had to know their frustrations. I had to know our market. For me to be a great CEO, I had to shed some of that perfection that most CFOs have that attention to, you know, only looking at the numbers and not getting outside the business. That always just like finance, we're over in the corners. We don't collaborate inside the business. So a lot of those things, for me to be successful in that CEO suite, I had to shed those things, right? Because here's the reality, right? I look back through my career and I never had a CEO, business owner, or founder ever look across back from me and say, hey, Chris, you did a great job on that forecast. Like, that forecast was really good. Or, hey, Chris, that budget package that you put together. Absolutely amazing. Right? They don't. You have to think like a business person. And what better role in the CEO suite to think about the business first, Right? And that's one of the things that we had to figure out at Fresh FP&A is like, do we. One thing that we want to be is finance valued partners. Like, we want to be able to look at. The CEO looks at us and says, hey, Fresh FP and A. Chris and his team are not just financial partners. They help us solve business problems, but from the financial lens of solving that business problem. So that's one of the key things of making that leap, is like, you have to shed some of those practices, some of those processes, some of the mindset things that you have. That's amazing. You know, Chris, one thing that I love about the energy and everything you say here is that with a lot of other guests that we have on the podcast is the fact that, like, these are people that are actually challenging the static quo. Right. They're not doing things the same way as like, others. And that's something that I feel is very much needed in this finance world. And that's something that we kind of like pushing as well. And I think it would be super interesting, like, you know the name of your firm, right? Fresh fpna. Right. Yeah. It says something around the fact that, like, you're challenging something. Right. It's Fresh. And can you just walk us through, like, you know, what led to this name and beyond just the name, like, what is the philosophy you have behind the way you approach, approach your work and your positioning as a company? Yeah. So I'll take Everybody back to January 1st of 2022. Right. And this was where this is the catalyst. I. I just, I just went through an opportunity where I found myself at the first time in my career I was laid off. I went to a series B level company after the exit of the previous company that I had, looking for another opportunity to build, shape, scale, exit a company. And in less than, you know, I found myself in laid off. And I was at this point and I said, you know what, man, I never forget that first of January. Everybody has those New year, like New Year's resolutions. And for me, I was like, I want to build something around this. And I'll never forget logging on and a great tool that I recommend a lot of people to use. Not a finance tool, more of a business tool. I logged into Canva, which is a tool, and I walked in there and I was brainstorming this idea and I'll never forget the inception of Fresh. I was thinking about ideas. I was like, man, I want to bring something new. I feel like there needs to be like a new perspective broad. I want to brought something different. And I was like, what is. My nephew sent me a text and he was like, Chris, man, you're like one of the freshest CFOs that I know. And I was like fresh is like. And I was like fresh. And I like googled it and it was like, yeah, fresh is something new. It's like I was like great. But the play on FP and A, this is where it really brought a different perspective. And when I looked at what we were going to do, what's the main value I want to provide? What is the value I want to give SMBs? What are all my team focused on? And I chose FP&A because that's our version of FP&A is not financial planning and analysis. When I look back over my 20 year experience in growing and building and scaling and exit finance teams, I didn't look at myself as a great financial planning and analysis person. I looked at my team. I wanted to position us as great financial partners and advisors. So when I was thinking of the FP&A, I said, man, the fresh perspective on FP&A is not financial planning analysis. Technology can do that. What I want us to be and I want our value proposition and the impact that we want to have to the clients that we serve, I want them to look at us as financial partners and advisors in the business. So that's how I came up with Fresh Chef P and A. That's awesome. It's such a like interesting moment to kind of have that transition. What it sounds like that, you know, I work a lot with founders of, you know, companies that are just starting these kind of like VC backed SERPs. And when you speak with these founders, they have this kind of moment, these like eureka moments where you're kind of everything is coming together, you have this great idea, you describe it. And it's funny because so often when you speak with CFOs, you're the voice of reason, you're the straightforward not okay, you pop the bubble of the dreams and tell the financial reality. But it's also kind of speaking to having this cross functional experience, having some marketing, having an opportunity to be a CEO. It's such a sort of launchpad to be able to be a more growth minded cfo because you have that empathy for the perspective of that leader on the other side of that financial model who doesn't care how cool your Excel formulas are. They just want it to tell them the likely future budget so that they know what vendor they could choose or what revenue stream is going to produce roi. So it's just, it's very cool to kind of hear that moment of that all kind of coming together of your marketing background, your finance background, your budding CEO kind of coming out of the woodwork. It's just like super cool. And it's so cool to hear the energy as well. Chris. I think that's something that I really like. You know, like, you're talking about like, kind of like killing the dream or like catching the bubble and stuff. And, and too often that's the case, right? CFO is like, that's when they come in, you know, they need to set the budget and put constraints and stuff. And I really like, like some of the people that I met was just like, this is not my job as a cfo, right. My job is actually to drive like the profit optimization or drive more growth or. And. And my job is to help you do this, right? Not to. Not to just explore you and stuff. Not at all. Right? Yeah, yeah. And you need. And that's what I like about this. And that's when the founder type of mental as well, that everyone should be having in the business, like this energy that you have, right? And you can see it here. And that's whenever you can have like a finance function that works with the same energy and everyone is aligned around that. I feel that's just when magic happens, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. One thing I just want to add to that is like looking back over the teams, right. I think I've always looked at my finance teams and I've always been the cfo where it's like, not cfo. No, Right, Yeah. Cfo go like, how. How can I help enable the business? Right? Because here's the thing we got to realize. Let's take a step back, right? If you look at fight, let's just take very. Let's go 10,000ft of finance inside of teams, right? Yeah. Finance by its nature is a supportive function of the business. Some. Some CFOs are like, we're so used to commanding the business. Hey, business, go do this for us. Go update this. Go do this. We're so used to commanding that we miss, hey, we're supposed to serve and support the business. And that's always been like, my mentality is like, I never wanted a business partner to look at me and say, man, Chris knows ASC 606 and he can calculate CAC in his man. And he looks at customer lifetime value all the time. Like, I never wanted them to look at me as like a great calculator that can go calculate in the business, right? I wanted our business partners, I wanted our value. I wanted my team. I wanted the impact that we had was inside the business. And when you come from that, move away from that commanding mindset of the business, that no, no, the buck stops with me and you're over budget. I can't do it. And you shift to be like, how can I serve you? How can I support you? How can we partner together? That's one of the greatest things I love about the clients that we serve at Fresh FP&A. I get CEOs, owners and founders all the time that tell me and my team. Kris, I've never worked with a finance team or a CFO like you and your team. I never. I didn't even know finance could operate, could partner, could impact. And they look at us as not just. I get CEOs that message me like, hey, Kris, I'm thinking about making this change in the operations sides of the business. Want to get your thoughts around. It has nothing to do with finance, right? And they just want to talk and say, I look at Chris and his team, I look at the CFO suite as not just the people that when I want to get budgets or they tell me no, are they. You know, how we're tracking to our forecast. I want. When there's a business problem, when there's a business opportunity, when there's a business challenge, I want to go consult and partner with my cfo, with my finance team. That is the holy grail that you want to get to. We want to be CFO goals inside the business, right? And here's the other thing I just want to add to that. Those are opportunities that get you outside the comfort zone, right? Let me give a practical takeaway for everybody going back through and looking at this. If you want to be that CFO that's collaborating in the business, go ask your business partner. Sales, marketing, operations, hr. Go ask them this very easy question. What problems, opportunities and frustrations do you see in your functional area? Here's the most important part to say, how can I help you solve those problems, look at those opportunities or get through those frustrations. That is a game changer. You'd be surprised how many business partners, they never had finance action in that question. They never had finance. Be proactive in helping them solve frustrations. That is a goldmine of building that collaborative relationship that CFOs need to have in the business. Yeah, I think that's so clear, it's so true. And I think it also speaks to kind of breaking out of that role as it's sort of prescribed in, like, if you grow up, you know, you're X big accounting, I'm X big consulting. Like, we have these kind of prescribed ways that the different functions fall into the process throughout the year. This is when we do budgeting. This is how these parameters are set. This is when we decide what we're investing in. This is when we do our taxes. And finance can kind of fall into this rut of performing those duties at the time they're expected to do them. But you're talking about a very consultative approach, which is so, so much more impactful because. And I think I often see this when I work with, like, more junior finance folks or folks who are really focused on FP&A and haven't had as much operator experience to say something like, what is this financial model, this thing you're working? What is it trying to solve? What is the question that you're answering with it? What is the business problem that this is solving? And oftentimes they don't know they were given a certain set of requirements. Right. This is what it has to do. But they don't have the context of why. And when you have that why, when you understand the situation that that operator's in, why they need the data, it's so impactful. I'm remembering actually, in my own background, when I was an operator, before I was a finance person, I came from a family business where no one really had much of a finance background. And I went to business school and I sat down with the books of my company with a finance person who was also at school. Right. They were in FP and A or financial advising beforehand. And I figured we'd go and look at the books of my family's company as like, a fun exercise for me to learn how to do finance. Wow. And they turned to me and said, lauren, this business needs to shut down. And it was actually, it was a year before the business would go under. My family's business went bankrupt while I was in business school. But it was this aha moment of like, oh, this is what finance is for. This is why it's so powerful. Like, I had worked in the company my whole life and had no idea what was going on. And in a quick conversation, this finance person could understand what was happening in the business, because finance is the language of business and how it tells you what's going on. And it's like that connection of having that empathy for the operator, but having the skills of the finance piece that really allows you to have this huge impact. Absolutely. So aligned. So aligned. When I listen to both of you, I think the one thing that rings to my mind at this point in time is actually the concept of first team. Right. You're not a CFO for doing your own model and doing your job as, as a finance person when the VP of Sale is doing something different, right? We are all part of a team, a management team that needs to work together so that we get that business in the right direction. Right. I think that's what you just said, like when the CFO is coming to you and telling you, like, how can I help you? Right? How can we collectively get better? I mean, unfortunately, like this never happens, right? I think this is the first time that I hear that, right? Yes. More people would think like this, but that's the essence. It's not that it never happens, but it's very rare, right. And I think that's usually the sign of high performing team, right? It's not about like, did I completed my own goal with my team and just sometimes not really caring about what's happening on the other side. It's just understanding that we all together to just make this organization a better organization and we need to understand each other. And I think that comes back to this idea of trust that is widely discussed in this book around the five dysfunctions of a team, when they introduced this concept of first team. But do we trust each other? And I think you're a very good example of that. Yeah, absolutely, man. Absolutely. Yeah. And just to add to that, I think like one of the most important balances, and this goes for all professionals, whether you're an accountant, whether you're an fpa, whether you're, you know, senior financial analyst or whatever, right? I. One thing that I've realized is that I was never the smartest person in the room. So my IQ is like, I'm not like one of those, I don't know, those fancy, fancy IQ people, right? One thing, one thing I've really learned early in my career, right, Is like I grasped and looked at opportunities to increase my emotional intelligence, right? Like sometimes as a cfo, right? This is the hat you have to put on. You have to put on that chief feelings officer had. You got to go get in tune. Like you gotta, sometimes you Gotta take off the, the pragmatic, the quantitative, the very linear financial. And one of the things I would do even with my team is like I would walk around and just say, I will pop in sales meetings and pop in operations. Just say, hey guys, finance isn't here to do anything. I just want to learn. I want to know what you guys are going through. I want to see how I can help. And you'd be surprised as how those people looked at me was like, oh my God, like Chris is in the room. Like I gotta. And I'm like, guys, I just want to know the pulse of the organization. Like I want to know how I can help. I remember leading software teams and we have sales development reps, right? We have like 10 sales development reps which are the hardest jobs in the world to do in software. I remember late after one night I just was working calls with them and I'm like, hey guys, like I'm gonna jump on some calls, give me a script. It was mind blowing. They're like this, this is our finance leader and he's with us at 5:30 going through calls with the script and he's in it with us. And I bought him lunch and I got to understand how hard their job was. Like it was important for me not to just dive in there, but I was like, I want to go. No, I want to feel what it's like to be in this position, getting in that moment. Take those opportunities as CFOs. Irregardless of where you're at in leadership or entry level. Find those opportunities to build that connection in the business, build that pose, build that pace, build that emotion. I think, and remember I said it first here, what separates a good leader from a great leader is not the intellectual, not the iq, right? It's going to be high levels of eq. You give me a person that has a high level of emotional intelligence and a nice level of iq, I can turn them into a great leader. That to me is a differentiator between a good and great leader and a good and great cfo. Yeah, I love that idea of almost as an exercise because we're focused on what does it take to become a growth minded CFO? Get out of the CFO's office, go to the office, go to tech, go to these other functions. I love that because it's also so practical. Like you go in the room, you speak with those folks, you try, you have a hand at maybe trying to do a piece of the job. You're going to get a lot of that cross functional context that really helps you be better and be more growth minded. And welcome back. We're here with Chris Ortega having a great conversation about being a growth minded cfo. And Chris, I've heard you speaking in the past about also embracing failure, which I think to some CFOs and finance folks sounds terrifying because a failure is avoided at all costs. So Chris, can you tell us a little more about kind of your theory around embracing failure and why CFOs should be doing that? Yeah, this is a great question and I get asked this a lot and I think getting over failure is a superpower and I'll take the time. So for those that don't know, I used to be an amateur boxer a long time ago. And when I got into boxing, I lost my first two fights that I had. And I'll never forget, I went out there, I lost the two fights. I'm questioning my skills, I'm questioning if I'm training hard enough. All the questions come in with losing and failure. And I'll never forget my coach, Susanna Rodriguez Griffins, who's the CEO of lifea Promotions, her own boxing company that we helped get her up and running. She told me something that I'm going to share with everybody that changed my life. When it came to failure, I was sitting down with her. I came in for my training. I was kind of disgruntled because I'm like, man, I lost my first two fights. I don't know if I'm in for this. I don't know if I'm cut out for this. I don't know if I can keep doing this. She sat me down and she says, chris, when you look back over those two fights, what did you learn? And I went through, I was like, man, I need to calm down. I need more warmup time. I, I need to work my jab more. I need to listen to you. I need to tune out stuff a lot more. I know I'm a late starter, so I need to get that first round to warm up. I came with like 30 different things that I can get better at. And she says, chris, okay, so you knew all those things that you learned from it. So did you actually lose? Is that actually failure if you learn from it? I just had that feeling going back to that moment where that light, it just clicked again. I was like, she says, chris, never forget in boxing or in life, there's only really two options you have. You either win or you learn. You only lose, you only fail. If you don't learn that was like I said, man, if I can go into every situation and I learn from it, it's never a failure. I love that. It's funny, you talking about kind of embracing failure as a CEO makes me think of my own experience failing as a cfo. Rolling out like I was. It was early in my CFO days working with a startup and I was rolling out a certain targets type reporting for the first time. And I had like all of my, I was a CFO finance team of like one. I think I had like a bookkeeper, but it was under resourced, put the whole thing together, did all of the back end to get it all going, got my reports all beautiful and ready and kind of showed it to the team. And no one gave a crap, right? No one paid attention to it, no one followed it. They all were just kind of annoyed by it. I presented the next month, thought it was a waste of time, it just didn't connect at all. But from that I ended up speaking with a buddy who was sort of running product at the company and we talked about relating kind of the reporting to the way that startups approach product market fit. And it's this very interesting idea. And a startup, as founders we're told fail fast. And the idea behind fail fast is about just put something out there, have it not get traction and just go and try things and change and tweak and tweak and tweak until you start to get this reaction of positivity and then you can build out more. And the advice was sort of do the same in the reporting function, do the minimum viable report you can do to figure out what channels people listen to, what kind of targets people are responding to, what numbers they understand, what meeting actually will get folks talking. And so it was this process instead that I then pursued of tweaking a little bit. Next I took out all of the backend, all of the fancy stuff. I only used numbers that I could get readily available because it wasn't about the numbers, it was about presenting in a way that worked and innovating as a CFO, which as CFOs, it just has to work right. But the world is changing and sometimes you have to innovate and that means risking failure. And so you gotta kind of embrace that startup methodology in order to continue to delight your customer, which is the rest of the company. Maybe more CFOs should be going to Y combinator, there should be a Y combinator to see if or being boxers, they should be one way or another. Tris Maybe just as a closing, like, you know, last question, because I know we're coming up on time and we could talk for hours, but you're really an inspiring leader. I can tell it from, like, the way you talk, the way you, you know, you get us into the story, and we want to learn from you. Right? And that's why this could go on for hours. But just on a closing note, like, how does that influence your relationship with people around you in the company? Right? What is the kind of mission you see yourself having when you do this? Right? Beyond. We haven't really talked about finance today, right? We've talked a lot about, like, what is going around finance and how you inspire people. So how do you see this as a mission for you to just kind of, like, go beyond this for your team? Man, I think the number one mission, not only do I have internally with my team, but I see, like, one of the greatest things I have, and I've seen this in finance teams that I have the ability now, one of the greatest things that you can have as a leader is that because of who you are, because of the way you show up, because of how you invest into people, how authentic you are and committed and intentional you are about that. When you see people reach levels that they. They do work, they do projects, they reach levels that they never thought they could achieve, right? And I see that with my team. I see that with my. My pod. I see that with my other fractional team. And you see them in that light bulb moment, and they say, man, I never thought this was possible, but I have a great safety net. I have someone that's constantly pushing. I have someone that's very intentional, the way that we can inspire people to make a positive impact. I've had people on LinkedIn that says, Chris, man, I've had leaders, they've way more experienced than me. They reach out to me and say, chris, man, I would love to learn more about how I could be part of Fresh Chef P and A. Because the mission that you're focused on. And listen, as a CEO of my business, it's hard, it's lonely. And I'll just highlight this, like, being a minority in finance, that's a whole nother obstacle and adversity that I had to overcome, right? Me being the way that I am. I don't look like a traditional cfo. I don't show up as a traditional cfo. I have a mohawk. I wear Jordan shoes. I don't fit that motor type. But the biggest advice and the biggest motivation I can tell everybody, your voice matters, your experience matters, show up every day your most authentic self. And you never know how much you being you and you walking in your truth can inspire someone else and change their life. And at the end of the day, right when I look back over everything, if I can inspire and motivate someone to use their skills, passions, talents, and experience to help them realize and achieve greatness in themselves and they can carry that over to somebody else, that's the biggest ROI in life. As a CFO that I want to have, I don't want people to say, oh, Chris was a great cfo. Chris brought ROI to the people around him, to the environment that he supported in the world. That's the kind of ROI I want to bring. And it's also, you know, an opportunity to do that. So to me, that's what motivates me. That's what inspires me. And I'm humble and thankful and appreciative to have the opportunity to inspire and motivate others. I think we couldn't get a better conclusion. Recording. Yeah, it's amazing. And I think, like, you know, just being super grateful that, like, you could share this today on the. On this episode. And, you know, I wish, like, we have many, many more of those conversations with, like, a lot of finance professionals. Yeah, let's do this every day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Next expo, you're gonna be like, all right, talk me through a rolling forecast. And it's like, okay, now we gotta get super technical. Yeah, yeah, yeah, next time. Which I can get to, like, I am dangerous when it comes to that stuff. That's the best. I think we spent our time very well. It was our time very, very well spent. Thank you so much, Chris. I think that a lot of people listening to this episode will want to reach out to you and learn more about you, listen to more advice, or learn about Fresh V and A. Is there anywhere we can find you easily? Yeah, so I'm all over LinkedIn. Just type in Chris Ortega. Or if you want to type in fresh CFO, it'll go to my LinkedIn. We're on all the socials. FPA on all socials. If you want to learn more about how Fresh FP and A can help, or if you're SMB business CEO, owner or founder, and you're looking for that strategic partner to help you bring financial clarity and confidence to your organization, check us out at www.freshfreshfpa.com. you can schedule a free consultation and we can connect. And yeah, I have a YouTube follow us on Avon on the website. It has links to all of our socials. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Chris. That was an amazing episode. I think we enjoy that very much with Lauren and I think that's why we started that podcast. To be honest, you have people like you that can share the stories. I think we learned as much as the listeners today and I hope this was really helpful for them and just, you don't even need to just give us like a positive rating or anything. My piece of advice today, if you listen to that podcast today and episode, please just share it with one or two of CFOs or finance people around you. Because more people need to hear this, right? And act like this. I think that's what we need. We need people like CFOs are more human and people are more like gross minded. And that's actually why we're here with this podcast. So thank you so much, Chris for being on the show today. I'm super grateful and I look forward to many more episodes like this. See you later in the next episode. Bye bye.