MCP113: Avoiding Chaos When Scaling Beyond the Three Million Dollar Wall w/ Lee Stringham

How One Entrepreneur Turned Failed Ventures Into a 7-Figure Advisory Firm

You've got a lawyer, an accountant, and a CFO. But they're all speaking different languages, and you're stuck playing translator while trying to run your business.

Most founders between $3 million and $10 million hit this wall. Your advisors multiply, but nobody's connecting the dots. Your attorney says one thing, your CFO says another, your tax advisor says a third. Deals fall through because your legal team didn't loop in finance. Tax strategies get botched because your CPA never talked to your lawyer.

Lee Stringham built FinLaw Orchestration to solve this exact problem. After running out of cash in his first business at 25, then spending years as both a commercial banker and practicing attorney, he saw the same pattern repeat across hundreds of deals. Smart founders getting stuck because their financial and legal advisors operated in silos.

In this conversation, Lee breaks down how he went from failed carpenter to building a firm that orchestrates financial and legal strategy for companies scaling from $3 million to $25 million and beyond.

Episode Overview

This episode is for founders tired of paying six figures for advisors who don't talk to each other.

Lee walks through his journey from blowing up his first construction company to becoming a commercial lender, then an attorney, and eventually realizing the biggest gap in professional services wasn't expertise. It was coordination. He shares the frameworks and mindset shifts that led him to build a business specifically designed to solve the orchestration problem that costs founders time, money, and deals.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• Why running out of cash in three months taught Lee more about business than his degrees ever did
• The exact moment Lee realized smart advisors giving conflicting advice was costing founders millions
• The framework Lee uses to orchestrate multiple advisors without becoming the middleman
• Why most attorneys and accountants will never coordinate on their own (and what to do about it)
• The real reason businesses stall between $3 million and $10 million (hint: it's not strategy)
• How Lee transitioned from practicing law to building an advisory firm that coordinates legal and financial execution

Key Insights & Takeaways

You can have the best lawyer and accountant in the world, but if they're not coordinated, you're leaving money on the table and creating risk you don't even see.

Lee's background as both a banker and attorney gave him a unique view of how deals actually work. Legal structures that made sense in isolation created tax nightmares. Financial strategies that looked brilliant on paper violated legal frameworks. Founders spent their time managing their advisors instead of growing their business.

The solution isn't firing your team. It's adding orchestration. Someone who speaks both languages, understands both sides, and can translate strategy into coordinated execution.

Take the Next Step

Connect with Lee Stringham: Learn more about FinLaw Orchestration and how coordinated financial and legal strategy can help you scale without the chaos at FinLawOrchestration.com

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About the Podcast

Meet Cool People is where founders, creators, and entrepreneurs share the real stories behind building businesses that matter. Hosted by Ely Delaney, each episode goes beyond surface-level advice to uncover the mindset shifts, failures, and frameworks that separate people who talk about success from people who build it. If you're tired of theory and want practical insights from people doing the work, this is your show.