Chelsea Viseth

I absolutely attribute my success to never giving up. I personally pursued a career that many people didn't think that I was going to be able to achieve, and I've had a lot of adversity in my life. I have two children, I'm a single mom of two children, and so there were a lot of people that really didn't think that I would make it to the level that I am at now. The biggest piece of advice is absolutely just been, never give up, stay focused on that end goal, and keep going. For me, I think that I personally thrive in an environment of change, and so my favorite quote that I like to say is, that the only thing that stays constant is that everything changes.

For people just getting involved in accounting or just graduated, decide what you want to do as far as public accounting or private. Of course, I say don't give up, that's definitely advice I would continue to give. But I think that for specific to accounting, and I'm gonna go with the private accounting side of it because that's what I'm in currently, I would say that you have to find the right cultural fit. Once you do that, everything else just kind of falls into place. It's really about the team that you have, the company that you're working for, and where your end goal is that you want to be at. I worked in public accounting for a while as well, but I didn't find that that was where I wanted to be personally, and I really enjoy startups. I really enjoy having the ability to learn through the private sector and just being able to utilize my skills in different ways instead of in public accounting where you just have more of one set skill set that you're focused on. On the private side, you get to have more functions that you get to do.

One of the challenges, specifically on the accounting side, is the AR side, getting our customers to pay in their correct net payment terms. That has been one of the issues because we deal with a lot of really big companies, and a lot of them have expanded net terms. We have issued invoices that say net 30, but we're kind of the little guy in the picture, and so we kind of have to go along with what they want to do sometimes. There's a lot of back and forth with that. Also within the role that I have and within the industry that I'm in, it is still pretty male-driven, and so kind of working through that and bringing in the female perspective is a challenge. I'm the only woman in the corporate side of my business and the only person in accounting that's a woman. Sometimes I wear multiple hats. I try to help out as much as I can within marketing or sales, or just helping out with the C-level suite stuff.

Integrity and having trustworthiness are right there at the top for me. There's a lot of things that I have to do, that I have to work with, that are confidential. A lot of people have, in my company specifically, have a lot of trust in me, so having that integrity and having the trustworthiness are my most important values.