In this episode of Against the Sales Odds, Lance Tyson sits down with Audrey Faust, MBA, Financial Coach, and author of She Grows Rich. Audrey shares her inspiring journey from corporate life to entrepreneurship, revealing how she mastered the interplay between mindset, money, and business growth. Learn how her experiences, neuro coaching techniques, and financial expertise have empowered women leaders to overcome limiting beliefs, build wealth, and thrive in business. Audrey also discusses the personal stories behind her book and offers actionable advice for achieving financial and personal success. Don’t miss this enlightening conversation packed with wisdom and practical insights!
Link to Audrey’s book – https://a.co/d/97DeKt6
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Mindset, Money, And Mastery: Audrey Faust’s Journey To Empowering Women In Business And Finance
I’m really excited about this episode of the show. This is the first for me, I’m interviewing somebody that I went to high school with. I wouldn’t say Audrey, we’re great friends, we definitely knew each other. Audrey Faust, who is putting out a book, She Grows Rich, I’ve been following her career a little bit with what she’s been doing in finance and now getting into the coaching side, especially focused around women in business. On their business and some on their personal side also. Audrey, welcome to the show. We went to high school together.
I know. Lance, it’s so great to be here. We have a best friend in common.
We definitely have a best friend in common. We share Sue Gaddy in common, who is Audrey’s best friend and probably one of my best friends from high school, or at least I was her backup plan to get married to and she was mine in case by the time that that wasn’t going to happen. At least we have backup plans. Ironically enough, like a small world, I was talking to Sue right before this, and I was telling Audrey. Welcome to the show. I’m excited.
Thanks, Lance. I’m so excited to be here. It’s so exciting to be with a fellow author who came from Pottstown, a small little town in Pennsylvania, who knew?
That’s right. For, if you don’t know this, I went to two different high schools. I went to one outside of Philly, and then I moved to Pottstown my junior year, and Audrey and I both went to Pottstown High School, the Falcons, outside of Pottstown, Pennsylvania. I cannot even say what Pottstown’s really famous for other than, I don’t know, the Hill Schools there.
Cruising? Cruising down the high street.
Audrey’s Finance Background And Career Journey
One of the best places to cruise. I think Mrs. Smith Bakeries, and that’s about what we got. I do though, ironically enough, not to get political, there was a Kmart there and Donald Trump sent one of his sons to the Hill School. I got a picture of the parking lot when him and his wife, Ivanka, were buying stuff at Kmart. Imagine that. That weird taste there. Audrey, tell us a little bit about your background. You have a finance background, you have an MBA and you’ve been in the VP Finance CFO for the better part of your career. Tell us about that journey.
Believe it or not, I actually didn’t go to college out of high school when we graduated high school. I talk about this story in my book. I went back to get my accounting degree as an adult.
How old were you at that point in your journey? Was it like several years out of high school?
That was in my mid-20s. I actually had two children at the time. I had taken a tax course and learned how to do taxes because I was doing administrative work and it was too difficult to afford daycare to put my kids in daycare. It just didn’t make sense. I took a tax course is where I got started and did taxes on the side. The first year I did my tax return, Lance. It was a shock because I ended up getting an earned income credit which meant I was on the poverty line. I’ve come a long way since then, but that was the kick in the ass that I needed to change my life. It empowered me to go back to school, not only that but to build from nothing, from the poverty line to now my net worth is $2.7 million.
I love it. Now, real quick question, and I’m trying to think back. I don’t know the high school we went to had an academic track, there was like a business track, and there was like a track. When I say track, it’s been like a choice.
I was in the business track. Funny enough, the only class I got an A in was accounting. I couldn’t understand why most of the people in the class were failing that course because I thought it was the easiest thing ever.
You decided to do the hard thing. Like you have kids, you’re starting a family. You have an eye-opener financial experience when you’re doing your taxes. Are you saying that was the precipice that made you like say, “I’m going to start investing in myself more?”
Yeah. My mom was in a marriage and it wasn’t very happy one when my dad actually had mental health issues and she was financially stuck in that marriage. The one thing that she programmed in me, which I evidently didn’t listen to until I got older, was to make sure you can always financially support yourself. You didn’t end up in the place that she was in. She couldn’t financially support herself, so she felt like she was stuck in this marriage.
That moment when I realized that I was like, “I was exactly where she told me not to be.” I knew I had to make a change. The only thing I knew back then to do was to, “Maybe I better go to college and figure this out and make a better life for myself and my children because I didn’t want them to grow up and live where we were always worrying about money and not being able to pay the bills and all of that.”
Somebody told me one time that there’s all kinds of school thought, you hear money’s the root of all evil. I heard somebody say to me one time that sometimes the lack of money is the root of all evil. When you have to work just like that and unless you know, you know. Like mid-20s, and then how long did that journey take you? I can imagine that must’ve been some time put in. Was it night school or a day? What were you doing?
I was going mostly at night. I was trying to work part-time as well to try to add money to the family. Once I took a couple of accounting courses, I actually started my own bookkeeping business. I needed a job or something I could do that could make enough money. Also, have flexible hours that back then most jobs didn’t offer.
It didn’t look like it does today.
You couldn’t work from home.
How were you when in the bookkeeping business? Where were you getting your clients from? Was it a referral? What did that look like? That had to take some guts. I mean, when you think back, you probably didn’t think about it much then because you’re trying to make a living and trying to get it done. What did that look like?
I joined the Tri-County Chamber of Commerce is what I did. Good old Tri-County Chamber. Back then, they used to have a mailing list that you could buy. I purchased the mailing list, I literally sent out 300 pamphlets that I created myself to talk about bootstrapping at all. I printed about creating it all myself.
The entrepreneurial mindset. That’s an entrepreneur. Get it done. Most founders just get it done. 300 pamphlets, people respond to it?
Yes. The universe spoke, I guess, too. I have one client. Out of those 300, I got like 3 or 4 calls. It spiraled because people realized I was smart, I knew what I was doing, and then I was just getting referral after referral. I actually had to put on the brakes because I couldn’t take any more on within just a few months, which was absolutely crazy.
I know it was onto something, but I also had three little ones at that time, as well as going back to school, because I was still committed to finishing my accounting degree because I saw the big bucks the CPAs were making. I was like, “You wait a minute, I want some of that.” That was good motivation to continue to go to school. It offered me great flexibility. I would just go from business to business in the area and do the bookkeeping and it was perfect.
The Purpose In Bookkeeping
Curious, it made me tied a little bit because as we go through your past, we’re going to talk about what you’re doing. What was the main business issue that you were solving when you were doing the bookkeeping? Did they not have staff? Did they not have time? What did that look like? I’m sure that threads into today at some level.
I’ll answer that in two parts because there’s another that really threads into today. The first part was they just needed somebody that could come in a couple hours a week, and pay the bills. Most of them were like multi-six-figure businesses, they weren’t huge, but they were large enough that the owner either didn’t know what he was doing or didn’t want to do it.
They just needed somebody to come in a couple hours a week and get all the bills paid, get the payroll done, get all that stuff done. It was a great little business that I created overnight. In the other part of this, there were two kinds of businesses. This is where I first started seeing it, is there was the six-figure business, a multi-six-figure that just wanted to stay that. They didn’t want to grow. They were like happy with this little like four-person staff making a few hundred thousand a year.
They didn’t look at their financial numbers. As long as they could pay the bills, they were good. They didn’t want to grow. There were other businesses. These are the ones that I really fell in love with. These are the ones that, “We’re at multi six figures. We want to go, we want to keep growing to multi 7, to 8.” That’s what I saw the difference. The ones that wanted to grow, were looking at the financials every month. They were making decisions based on the financials every month. The other ones could care less. All they cared about was whether or not they were going to have to pay taxes that year.
The businesses that grow are the ones looking at their financials every month and make the best decisions based on them.
All of a sudden, those two different kinds of businesses, they’re asking your opinion about the numbers.
The ones that wanted to grow-er.
You became engaged in the business.
Yes. That’s what I felt a lot like I like being engaged in the business and knowing that all the work I was doing meant something to somebody.
Your opinion really counts. I look at the poorest decisions I’ve ever made as a business owner and entrepreneur is when I didn’t ask for clarification or I didn’t verify on the number side, because I’m one of those number person, one of those numbers, people, you’d probably appreciate that. I’ve seen it. I can look at a balance sheet, and I can look at a P&L. I look at the gross profit. I couldn’t tell you what was off and why it was off but I have enough radar for that. When I make the assumption, I didn’t verify that’s why I always got myself into trouble. I think it’s such a critical piece and you’re going to sit at the table at that point with some of these companies. No doubt.
I guess a little further on my journey then, I did that bookkeeping business for about ten years. One of my clients was growing and growing, after I finished my degree, he asked me to come on and be his controller and continue to grow with him. I started with him and he was not even at a million. Between working with him as a bookkeeper and then actually went on his staff full time. My kids were now older and didn’t need as much attention, and I really enjoyed working with him. I got to see that company go from mult- six-figures. When I finally left, it was over five million. That was really cool to be part of that, to be part of the decisions and part of the executive team watching that company grow like that.
It is, people ask me all the time, and they go, “Do you want to retire?” I just like, “Yeah.” I mean, I guess at some level, but I do enjoy the game. I enjoy the engagement. I think there’s a purpose there, whether it’s teaching people, making decisions, there’s some game there that’s fun. You have a passion for it too. I love it.
I do.
You’re there for would you say about five years?
I was there for four years as a bookkeeper and then another five years as their controller. We grew an accounting team, which is awesome. They moved an hour away. At the time I was in Pottstown, they moved from Pottstown to Lititz out by Lancaster.
It’s a country drive.
It’s not a lot of traffic, but it was an hour’s drive each way. That’s two hours in your car. I felt like it was getting a lot of executive positions. It wasn’t as much fun as it was in the beginning either. I was more involved and now there was a whole hire team, a lot of voices. Two hours in my car. I decided I was going to go back out, do my own business again, and just do it in a different way. I didn’t want to go back to the bookkeeping. I wanted to create a business where I was a CFO and controller for small businesses. I also have a bookkeeper that works under me and she does the bookkeeping. I still get to do the fun part where I advise them and help them grow and look at the financials, help them understand, make decisions with them, and all of that.
How did you go about growing that business then? Before you were marketing it one way and you got a bunch of business, then you took yourself out of the game. How’d you jump back?
I did. That was a little scary because I wasn’t leaving a full-time job the first time. I just grew out of nothing. I’m stepping away from a nice little comfortable salary back out. I had a lot of contacts because I was good at what I did. I had the accounting background to do what I did like all the CPAs in the area knew and loved me. They were a great referral source before. I called them on like, “Guess what? I’m coming back out.”
However, I’m going to tell you a big mistake I made. I came back out wanting to create the business that I just told you but I ended up creating a bookkeeping business again and I hated it. Lance, I hated it because I had gotten out of that. I was determined to have a six-figure business within a year and I did it but I blew it up. I was like, “I hate the work I’m doing. This is not working for me.” I kept the one business that was what I wanted. That I was helping involved in the decisions and the management and all of that.
Is that when you became the fractional CFO business?
Yeah. It didn’t take me long to build that and then bring on a team member to do the bookkeeping.
It’s interesting. They at first blush, they look the same, but the work’s different. You almost have to go through that trajectory to pull it apart a little bit. It’s a discovery. The other thing is, because I think it’s interesting, people listen to this podcast, like our business is about growing revenue and sales productivity, but everybody has to sell it. Like sometimes it’s in how you position the business in yourself as an expert to sell your wares. It’s specific, like you said, one’s very specific. The advice piece is the overarching macro decision-making and the financial, the bookkeeping’s the nuts and bolts.
The data entry part.
Writing The Book And Getting Into Coaching
How long then into the CFO fractional piece? What do you learn or pick up there? How do you start getting into the coaching and then the book?
I’m going to tell you a story about the book because I forgot to mention this to you.
No, that’s great. By the way, the book is She Grows Rich. It’s on Amazon, right?
She Grows Rich
Yes. She Grows Rich by Audrey Faust.
There you go.
Guess who inspired my book?
Who?
Sue.
What did she say or do?
She Grows Rich
In the Dominican Republic, together on a vacation together. Obviously, she’s known me since high school. I was just talking about how I grow my wealth and I was like, “Yeah, do this, do that. Rental properties, this, that.” She looks at me and she goes, “Why aren’t you sharing this with the world?” It was like a perfect suit bomb drop. I was just like, “I don’t know.” I was like, “Anybody could do this. This is special.”
I thought about it for a while and then I had somebody else almost like say the same thing to me who I was like in a coaching group myself and I really respected her and she was a coach. She goes like, “You really know a lot about this financial stuff I just cannot believe how much you know.” I was like, “Maybe I should do something about that.” In 2020, I see 24, 23. When Sue said it was like October of 22. January of 23, I put it on my list, “This year I’m going to write a book and I’m going to write it about that.” That’s how it was born.
You’re drawing on the fact like inspiration from the book. Like you’re going, “I got some subject matter expert. I am an expert on this.” You have this macro-financial knowledge. You definitely understand people’s businesses. You’re helping them make decisions. You did it internally with a company that grew. At some level, are a growth expert too because maintaining a business, like you said early on, with some of those companies that enjoy as much, that they might have lifestyle businesses, you’ve actually just paid.
Actually, you’re an operator too, because you’ve grown your own practice twice. Two times over. You say, “I’m going to get this expertise down.” What part do you start putting the bed or sunsetting the fractional piece and start getting into the coaching? It sounds like you’ve invested in yourself a lot too, with other coaches. What’s the inspiration there?
I think it was probably a few years back when I first hired a mindset coach. What I didn’t realize before that was probably about 6, or 7 years ago. It wasn’t that long ago in my life. I didn’t realize those thoughts in your head that you can change them. I never realized it before then until I worked with my first coach. Even Sue, our mutual friend, she’s like, “You’re different. What did you do?” She went and worked with that same coach as well. It’s like that was my first experience as a coach.
I became a certified neuro coach, which is all around the mindset and all the beliefs that you have in your subconscious, and your subconscious runs like 95% of your thoughts in a day. I tied the money piece to it, the money mindset and the neuro coaching, and the financial background that I have and started working with. I first started working in personal finance, which is where the book came from.
Mindset: Your subconscious runs around 95% of your thoughts in a day.
I was helping women understand the mindset, all the behavior around money, creating a relationship with money, and how to invest on your own is pretty simple. That’s all that’s in the book. All about personal finance. My next book is going to be on business finance. As I was coaching on personal finance, I had a lot of people come to me and say, “Do you coach on business finance?” I was like, “I can. That’s my background too.” That’s how that all evolved.
How To Cultivate Your Money Mindset
For the readers, especially you have a specialty in women leaders, and it’s a passion for you. Somebody like you, if you’re anything like Coaches I know or even our own business, we look for common themes that come up. Everybody believes they suffer from the disease of uniqueness. Ironically, you kind of find a baseline. What are the baseline core obstacles when it comes to personal finance or even cascading over to their own business from women leaders? Like what are the three things that they have to overcome that you have to deal with first even with your neuro coaching background? What would you say?
I use the neuro coaching background to work around the money mindset. When you’re growing up before the age of seven, that’s when your subconscious is primarily formed. Whatever you’re hearing at a young age from your parents and people around you, you’re taking it as truth, as 100% truth. For example, my mom used to always say, “We work hard for our money.”
My subconscious interpreted that until I was able to flip it, that I have to work hard for my money. There’s another common theme and you can even see it in the media where rich people. A lot of people have a negative reflection of rich people. Rich people are mean, rich people are greedy, rich people are whatever, fill in the blank. If you have that in the back of your mind, you’re never going to be rich because you are going to do whatever it takes not to be rich. That’s why a lot of people that win the lottery, blow it all because they have this mindset that like, “I’m rich now. That means I’m mean, I’m greedy, I’m selfish.”
If you think that all rich people are greedy and mean, you will always do whatever it takes not to be rich.
That is the primary thing you need to first reprogram. I use my neurocoaching tools to do that first. We identify if there’s any of that going on and then reprogram that. We go into the strategy and getting with a blueprint, whether it’s your personal finances or your business finances, rather than a budget, because I hate the word budget, I call it a blueprint. You can have one in both. It’s really just a blueprint. It’s a map of where your money’s going so you know where it’s going, and make sure it’s going to where you want it to go.
You’re dead on, and I hope everybody’s reading because what I’m about to say concurs. I agree with the mindset piece. One of the things that we do at Tyson Group, and I’ve always done any company. I always have people read The Richest Man of Babylon or The Wealthiest Barber. The reason why is because it’s about paying yourself first. Tell people all the time, that you’ll never go to debtors’ prison. They closed debtors’ prisons back in the 1790s. I get people are knocking at your door, but you should pay you first. I just said this to Sue, but I say it to my people all the time.
Money follows doesn’t lead. Think about everything that Audrey has said here if you’re reading. Yeah, there was a necessity she had to make money, but she wasn’t sitting there going like this is my leader. I’m going to do what I’m passionate about and it will follow me. I think the other thing people don’t program in their head very well, one of my mentors said to me, “Lance, here’s what you need to know about finances. Revenue is the showerhead. Expenses of the drain. One thing you need to remember is the drain can never be bigger than the showerhead.”
I love that.
That’s what I do. The mindset thing, you and I couldn’t be more lockstep. I do think we are a program, especially with your mom. Like going back to your mom said, and there’s probably no doubt that you can tell by the way you’re talking about her worked her ass off. I get it. My mom worked at Schaeffer’s Family Restaurant for years and Red Lobster in Pottstown. Like I watched a woman work her ass off. That was that mindset. Like, “I figure out how do I get money to work for me? Not me always working for my money. How do I get paid when I sleep a little bit too?”
Like you said, the book, She Grows Rich is about personal finance, but I think you and I agreed in the pregame that especially if you’re coaching business owners, and I even told you this even in my own world, my personal finances cross, I am the business at some level, so they collide with each other. My personal balance sheet collides with the business balance sheet.
Everybody’s striving to create a company that it consists on its own, but most entrepreneurs have created a business that’s tied to them until they have that growth plan, like you said. As you get into like who you’re coaching right now, do you see that as getting into the more macro side of coaching them on business? Is that like some of the folks you’re coaching now? Do you see that as an outlet or your next marketplace there?
Your net profit, in most cases, is your income. If you’re an S corp, then you have a salary too but both of that is your income.
Unless you’re just taking a distribution with a lot of people taking a lot.
We won’t get into that.
It’s always a good thing. Anyway, go ahead. I didn’t mean to interrupt.
Anyway, that flows into your personal. If you’re not making a profit, or you’re not paying yourself, you’re not going to sustain your business for very long. Many times it’s about, especially with women, it’s in a service-based business where they’re selling their own expertise, it’s about the confidence and the value that they bring to the table. Sometimes they don’t often realize that it’s not just them. It’s their marketing. All the other things that go with a business that they have to pay for on their own. It’s the whole picture. Sometimes I think, “I’m not worth that much.” A, that’s a mindset thing we’ve got to work on but B, it’s not just you. It’s all the other things in your business that support your business. You get to take home what you deserve.
If you are not making a profit or you are unable to pay yourself, you will not sustain your business for long.
It’s really interesting. I believe in sequence. I think most entrepreneurs and businesses get out of sequence with things. That’s why I was asking you first how you approach your own business. Most entrepreneurs put the product or service together. I got this great product or service that they make the cupcakes but then they go, “S***, I actually get people to come to my store or I find clients.” They go, “I got to be able to speak a financial language. I don’t know how to do that. I just know how to make the cupcake.”
They don’t realize they have these hats, but like when I was asking you about your business each time, there was no hesitation with you. You had an idea, and you go, “I got to figure out how I’m going to sell the idea.” Your financial background tells me that you understand the sequence. The next big thing is not producing revenue. You said it’s how you make money. That’s a big difference. It’s what you keep. I think it’s genius. No, and it is. You gave me some stats in pregame. As we were talking before we hopped on here, you said in the ‘70s that only women entrepreneurs are like 8% of the entire business. Now what are they?
In the ‘70s women only owned 8% of businesses, 8% of businesses were women owned. Now we’re at 42%. Women are coming into the business. They’re outpacing men coming in. Hopefully, we’ll get to at least 50-50 at some point.
Which would be a good thing. You know how I feel, I told you, that most of my leadership team is female. I think being a woman entrepreneur, it brings a set of challenges a lot of times. There are different expectations for a woman and that they put on themselves. I’m not even saying society, nor do I want to get them conversation. I think like even take your own story. You’re like, “You’re coming up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and you’re sitting there going.
I got to make money and I’m going to decide to educate myself. I got one full-time job raising children. I got another full-time job and I’m going to put myself through school.” You decide to actually start your business. You have the credibility because you’ve done it. Listen, there’s not much difference between a six-figure business and a seven-figure business. We all have the same problems. We’re trying to make a payroll.
I worked for eight figures. Wait a minute, they’re not any different than the seven figures. They have the same balance sheet, the same financials, and the same problems.
Answering Rapid-Fire Questions
No doubt, just a couple of zeros. I always tell my wife like, I would love my job if I wasn’t dealing with so many people. We’d all get our people issues. No, I love this. I think we could talk about it all day. I’m really excited about your book. I’m ordering, a couple of copies for my team, and excited that a fellow Falcon, Pottstown people are together. I love that piece. Definitely next reunion, you and I are having a drink. If we go, I’m probably going to drink another time. Before I do that, I have three questions. I had every one of my audience kill me. The first question, every podcast asks this. Before you go up on stage, before you make a big deal, or going to give advice, a big presentation, what song you’re playing that go?
Hey look ma, I made it.
Who is it again?
It’s Hey look ma, I made it. I’m drawing a blank on who sings it.
We’ll find it. Think about that. Second question. You have to gift a book to somebody. What book are you gifting?
One of my favorite books is by Jen Sincero, You Are a Badass. It’s actually the reason or it was the book that helped me leave my corporate job and start a business again. I still listen to it. She also has another book that’s You Are a Badass at Making Money. I still prefer her original one. It’s definitely a book that has been transformational for me. Just really, it just helps you believe in yourself. Nobody else is going to believe, other people will believe in you, but you have to believe in yourself first.
You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life
Last question before I bring this bird down for landing. We’ll talk about where everybody can go get your book’s release date before that. If you were sitting on the edge of a dock and you had a six-year-old or seven-year-old on either side of you say boy and a girl and say their niece or nephew and say, “Audrey, what’s success mean?” What would you tell? How would you say?
You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life
What does success mean?
Remember, 6 or 7 years old?
I’m going to say happiness is the first word that comes to mind. Success is happiness because you need to be happy and having fun with what you’re doing and enjoying what you’re doing. To me, that’s a success. Living the life that you want to live. As we spoke, I get to live in two different places now in Florida in the winter and up north in the summer months. To me that’s success. Like I put in a plan to create this lifestyle and I did. It’s exciting.
Closing Words And Episode Wrap-up
You are truly the author of your life. I love that. Now tell everybody when the book comes out, where they can get it, etc.
She Grows Rich, How to Become a Financial Powerhouse. It comes out on January 21st, 2025 on Amazon. You can find it. Just search She Grows Rich by Audrey Faust. I hope you really enjoy it. I’d love to hear from you. There’s also a book portal that comes with it. It’s free. That’s got some amazing calculators in it. It’s got a whole money mindset training in it. Lots of free gifts in the book portal that come with the book. There’s a QR code in the book.
Can they pre-order it now or on the 21st?
They might be able to pre-order it, but it’s it’ll definitely be out there.
Check it out. Search it if you can pre-order it, if not on the 21st. Audrey, we are hoping and cheering you on and for your success and please order that book. Thank you so much for being on.
Thanks for having me, Lance. This was just a lot of fun being with another Potts Peruvian. That’s where we are in.
Potts Peruvian, there you go.
Important Links
Audrey Faust’s LinkedIn Profile
She Grows Rich
The Richest Man of Babylon
The Wealthiest Barber
You Are a Badass
You Are a Badass at Making Money
