This episode is sponsored by Liscio. Learn more at www.liscio.me
Summary
Katie Thomas, CPA and Founder of Leaders Online, joins Dawn to talk about her motivations, how to find work life balance, why your firm needs to have an online presence, and more! Listen now to learn how your accounting skills can benefit you in other aspects of your career, and how you can achieve both personal and professional success!
Show Notes
Katie’s Beginnings
Katie begins her conversation with Dawn by sharing her background in accounting, and shares her experience as a CPA and a public accountant. She shares that although she doesn’t practice accounting now, the skills she gained as an accountant have been invaluable to her.
“I didn’t realize that, with an accounting degree, you could really do a lot…those skills are really transferable and they also give you a lot of credibility.”
Katie started her career in accounting at Ernst & Young, but quickly learned she wasn’t finding the fulfillment she was looking for. She knew she had a love for marketing, and was hoping she could pursue that at EY, but unfortunately was not offered the position.
It wasn’t until she experienced a health scare where she really began to reevaluate what she wanted her career path to look like.
Katie also encourages listeners to take that leap of faith if they want to make that career adjustment or change, adding that there is no “right time” to make one.
“And then I realized that there’s no, really, ‘signal’. It’s like, it’s got to be up to you.”
Katie’s Motivation and Developing Leaders Online
Katie eventually left EY, and pursued a career in marketing—specifically in the accounting/business industry. She also shared that shortly after she quit EY, her husband ended up needing a major surgery, and that served as a huge motivation to get her business off the ground.
Katie also shares that she’s always had a passion for marketing. She even helped market her father’s business when she was just 16 years old, and talks about how that experience helped bolster the trajectory of her business.
While she loves the accounting industry, she did not find joy in tax returns and bookkeeping, but knew there was a market for the services she could provide to practitioners, which ultimately led to the creation of Leaders Online.
Why Your Firm Need to Get Online
Katie’s business, Leaders Online, is a marketing and consulting service that can help businesses increase their online presence. She can help with developmenting a social media presence, creating a new website, branding, and much more.
Katie says she often finds that accounting firms are hesitant to share their achievements online, and prefer to rely on references to gain new clients. The problem with only relying on references is that your pool of clients can remain quite small. By putting yourself and your firm online, you are able to reach a wide range of clients, and you are able to choose exactly who you want to work with. Even if your firm is not looking for new clients, putting your firm online can even attract new staff who may want to work for your business.
Importance of Work Life Balance
While it is important to find joy in the work you do, Dawn and Katie both agree that it’s important to have goals outside of your work life.
Dawn shares that even though softball season is during tax season, she always makes time for it because it gives her something to look forward to, and ensures that her work hours are productive.
Katie agrees, and shares that she started scheduling horseback riding lessons, and that it’s important to find other activities that you can define yourself by, rather than just your career.
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Transcript
Dawn Brolin – Liscio Ad
Hi everyone, my name is Dawn Brolin, I’m a Certified Public Accountant, Certified Fraud Examiner, a president of Powerful Accounting, Inc, and the author of the Designated Motivator for Accounting Professionals.
I’m here today to talk to you about one of my favorite new application implementations. And that’s with Liscio. We were finding that we were chasing clients and wasting a lot of administrative time chasing them for documents, for information for answers to questions as we’re going through tax season. And we found that we really could be working a lot less hours if we could solve for that pain point. So we found Liscio. And because of implementing Liscio, we were able to save hours of time every single week chasing clients. Not only was it the time that we were spending, but it was the frustration of trying to get in touch with them. And for them to securely send us documents and information so we could prepare their tax return in a timely fashion.
No more picking up and putting down tax returns, because we don’t have everything we need. What I love is that it’s one central place for us that all of us in our firm can see all of the communications, whether it’s via text, or email, or a document that we’re looking for anyone in the firm can go grab that document or that communication, and know exactly what’s going on with that client at all times. What’s even better about it is that it does integrate with our project management and workflow solution, as well as our accounting software. So we’re entering contact information for our clients in one place and pushing it out to other solutions that we use. And I find that application integration is critical. But being able to save us that time, so that I can be on the ball field coaching in the spring, or whatever else it may be being with my kids, whatever it may be. But we found that we were being so unproductive, doing that administrative chasing that we were just like it’s not the clients fault, it’s our fault, we have to offer them a solution that’s going to work for them. And what we found was as we were implementing Liscio, with our clients, the best feedback we would get in this was almost every single client was wow, that was easy. And that’s what we need it to be in order for our clients really get us what we need. And it’s got to be secure. We need cloud to cloud secure document exchange and secure communications. We no longer give out our personal cell phones, which is awesome. I don’t want to hear from a client midnight. If I happen to hear from them through my Liscio app, then that’s cool. Maybe I respond, maybe I don’t, but it gives me that flexibility and that time of peace and quiet when I’m not in the office. So I’m telling you go out, get yourself a demo of Liscio, implement it for your business you have a successful upcoming 2021, 2022, 2023 and beyond tax season. Thank you so much for listening. And I wish you the best as you move forward.
Dawn Brolin
Alright, everybody, hello, and welcome back to the DM Disruption. My name is Dawn Brolin, and of course your host and I’m here with somebody that I just met really like a handful of months ago through you know, the electronic world, we’ll call it. But I was Katie Thomas here now it is…lifetime online co– help me,
Katie Thomas
Leaders Online.
Dawn Brolin
Leaders Online! I’m such an idiot. But really Katie has one of the sweetest souls of people you know, you know, you come across people in your life and you’re like, is she really there’s no way she’s this sweet and nice, but yet she is! And she’s intelligent. She’s got motivation. She’s got drive, her story is so awesome. I’m excited to share that with you. So, Katie, thank you so much for coming today. I mean, you’re out there changing the lives of accounting professionals, and we want to hear all about it. So tell us who you are, what you’re doing, why you started what– your story is so great! And tell us just about yourself.
Katie Thomas
Well, thanks so much for having me on done. I’m super excited to be here. And I’m a CPA, an accountant like a lot of people who tune in, so I can relate to a lot of what you guys are going through, have gone through with school, and if you are a CPA and took the exam, I feel you but I took a little bit of a different path, once I had worked in public accounting for a little bit. So this is an interesting part of my story because I didn’t realize that with an accounting degree that you could really do a lot and that just the foundation of those skills are really transferable and they also give you a lot of credibility. So that’s something I want, like all accountants to know is like, there’s so many options for me. I do marketing and public relations. But you can go into technology, you can go into consulting, you can go literally into anything. And if you have a background in this industry, people automatically–they want to hear from you because you understand businesses.
Dawn Brolin
Right? Absolutely. And so being a CPA yourself, I’ve always said, I try to tell this to like the application providers and the different companies of vendors that we work with that listen, honestly, I’m going to listen to Katie, before, I’m going to listen to maybe one of your salespeople, or one of the people that are in your marketing department. Because I trust Katie knows where I stand. She understands she’s been through the CPA exam, which is one in and of itself. I was watching on social media this weekend. And a young man had you know, passed the CPA and I was just…it brings you right back to when, if you remember, Katie, I don’t know about you, but I don’t even know how I passed this thing. Right? And so the last exam comes through and you’re like, Oh, my goodness, if I pass this I’m in. I’ve done it, right? And you’re, you don’t want to push that button. Right? It’s terrifying.
Katie Thomas
Oh, it is. Every time you feel like you failed, at least I did. And then you’re like, okay, yes, I passed.
Dawn Brolin
I will tell you okay, this so funny, because you’re just a little itty bitty baby. I mean, in very respectfully, by the way, your experience and what you do, but compared to this old lady, you’re just just, you’re just, you’re just a beautiful young lady. Anyway, I don’t know about you. But when I got my first result, my first exam, I got a 75. And I was like, 75 is passing, I swear, I printed 100 copies of it. I’m like, they can’t take it away from me print print print, like I was freaking out! Like, there’s no way they could take this away from me. And, you know, being able to encourage other accounting professionals as they’re going through that journey, because that journey, and I don’t know about you, when I when I took the exam, which wasn’t really that long ago, honestly, I think I think it was 2012 when I finished up. And so it was later for me, right? So I didn’t do it when I was young. And I just remember that process, it was a two year process, and every weekend, my husband would take the kids somewhere and either take him to his brothers, or they would go hiking, or they go to the playground, so Mommy could study. Right? And that was my big thing. So but to the encouragement now, there’s the social media areas with either whether it’s Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Twitter or whatever it may be where there’s these groups that encourage each other, right?
Katie Thomas
Yep. Yep. Lots of encouragement and collaboration and just basically a community.
Dawn Brolin
Yeah, it really is. And we need each other support. And so I remember I read through your story, which I think is fascinating, by the way. And I love the fact that you felt like you were kind of in a corner on your, I want you to tell us the story because it just shows the the true result of being motivated. And whether it’s a negative motivation, or positive motivation, or whatever it may be, or just this, I love that you have a dad like I have, I had a dad that passed away. But his inspiration, his work ethic that laid the path for where I knew I needed to go professionally. So I want you to tell that story, because it really is inspirational, and it’s motivational, and so tell us about that story, because I really enjoyed reading it.
Katie Thomas
So I was–I had just gotten married at this time, and I was working at one of the big four firms. And for me, I always knew I wanted to go out and do something in like, the more creative space. So I did marketing for–it actually my father’s small business growing up–from time I was 16–I was working with them, and really helped them all up until I started at EY. And so I was super familiar with that space, and I loved it. But then I got into accounting because people said that’s the Language of Business, and long story short, I was at EY, I had just gotten married, and I came down with this weird sickness that I was in the hospital for nine days, the doctors were telling me that my heart could stop at any minute. I mean, I was perfectly healthy. And then all of a sudden I wasn’t and people are, you know, doctors are like, we don’t know, really what’s wrong with you. And when I got out of that, I really realize that, whatever you want to do, there’s never going to be a time. So I remember I would sit at EY, and I was like, I know, I’m being called for something else, like I feel it in me. But you know, am I too young? Am I smart enough? Is anyone going to take me seriously, I have a good job. And so I was just kind of like waiting for a signal. And then I realized that there’s no really signal. It’s like it’s got to be up to you. And so I was like, Okay, I went back to EY and I went to one of the partners and I was like, you know, I love doing business, business development. I love doing marketing like, is there a role in this company for me? And they basically said, “Hey, no, like you’ve got to be you know, a lot further up in the company.” And I totally respect that, so I said, okay. I see this with accountants, like, I know accounting, I know like what we do, maybe there’s a spot for me in the accounting industry doing this. And so I left. And I thought, okay, we’ve overcome one challenge. Well, just a few short weeks later, not even a month, my husband found out he was going to have to get a 13 disk spinal fusion, going to be off work for many months, the foreseeable future, and we’d have to go to New York for this. And so it was a crazy time, but it was, so it was exactly, I sometimes I feel like things just happen for a reason. And this one, it was like, Okay, you made this decision to go out on your own. Now you have an even bigger motivating factor, because your husband’s not going to have that second job of income, you’ve got to produce and provide for yourself and your husband, and we’re gonna find a way to make this work. And sometimes when your back’s up against the wall, that’s when you’re like, it’s go time, I’ve got this, I’m going to find a way. And so that was like, for me, that was like my motivation success story, and here we are today.
Dawn Brolin
I love that. And so I and I truly believe that. And so, I think I totally believe things happen for a reason 100%, you close one window, and another one opens, a door doesn’t matter, right? And that’s kind of how we’re, I think a lot of it too. Like, I love the fact that your your dad has his own business. And, you know, you were in the weeds of that when you were 16, which I feel like, you know, I’ve been in business when my kids have seen you know that what that work ethic takes, because it’s one thing, I just I do this as my total opinion. And you could tell me, people could tell me, I’m nuts, which I kind of am. But to say that, you know, when you work for yourself, and you’ve done accomplish something like passing the CPA exam, I believe the CPA exam is part of what prepares you for the future for success in a profession, even if you don’t follow through and do traditional CPA work, right technical work. But that does the discipline, and the commitment, and you know, just that 18 months, or however long it takes people, some people takes less, it took me the exact I mean to the day 18 months, which because I’m a risk taker, apparently. And so but you know, you’ve learned that discipline, through that process, it gives you that ability, like you said, you had no choice girl, you were gonna bust out, and it was there was your backs against the wall. And guess what, you either have two choices, you can give up, cry about it and stay miserable at EY. Or you could bust out and say, you know what? I’m going to fall down, I already know it get a bunch of band aids and a bunch of bags of ice, because you’re gonna fall in your face, you’re gonna get beat up, you’re going to doubt yourself. And that’s what the CPA exam to me, that’s what it did. It prepared me to understand I failed one part right? Out of the four I failed when I had to take it again.
Katie Thomas
That’s good!
Dawn Brolin
Right? It’s not, there’s nothing wrong with that. And so where you are right now, you’re advising and consulting and working with accounting professionals, you have a book club, as a matter of fact, and other things. So tell me like, what’s, what are your clients telling you? What are you seeing in the profession? Like what is our biggest need? What are people screaming for?
Katie Thomas
So it’s interesting, because as accountants, we’re really competent, and what we do, and how we help businesses, and our our set of skill set. But whenever you’re, you take the a lot of these accountants and I’m speaking generally not for everyone, not like you, Dawn, if you ask them to start sharing about that online and putting yourself out there and talking about some of their accomplishments, how great and awesome they are taking some of those skills and just putting them out to the public, they clam up. They’re not confident in it. And the thing with this is, they’re really, one, they’re not attracting as many like clients for their firm or some a lot of firms actually, you know, they’re like, “We don’t need any more clients right now, after COVID, we’re busy”, but they want new staff, well, they’re not putting their self out there and their brand out there, so then they’re not attracting that talent that they really could be. And it’s, it’s so cool to witness someone that is so awesome, and they’re lacking this confidence to really put themselves out there and help them do that, and then what comes from it, like more clients, more staff, maybe it’s they get an award like Top 100 Accountant or 40 under 40. It’s it’s really cool what comes from that and it’s not, they’re not conceited, they’re not bragging, it’s just creating a brand and a voice which they have. They just need to expand that and make it louder, put it on the microphone.
Dawn Brolin
Yeah, and that’s such a good point too, because people will say to me, “Well, how do I get this type of work?” I want it you know, in in the in the new book, that Designated Motivator for Accounting Professionals, we do this reassess your success conversation to say, listen, are you even servicing the right clients? Are you actually performing services that you love? Or are you just doing it because it feels, you know, fills the payroll bucket when you need to pay payroll. And I found and I try to tell people listen, you’ve got to find something you love, because you’re going to work for a long time. And you you at least, and you may not, you know, I started out doing bookkeeping, you know, I didn’t go to EY or to a bigger firm, that just wasn’t the route, I stayed fairly in the smaller firm size. And then I love you know, kind of love them, like, Oh, I’m really good at this. I feel like I’m really good at it. And then I was like, I feel like there’s so much more I can be doing. And then I kind of shifted to tax and now tax resolution, a lot of that’s because of Eric Green. I hope you’ve heard there.
Katie Thomas
Yeah, of course!
Dawn Brolin
Eric is…Eric has steered me in a direction that I can’t be more thankful for. I kind of feel like if I had him, when I just graduated college, my life would have been very different. Not that I would change anything, because I wouldn’t, but he really helped me steer in this direction of passion of motivation, what I want to do to help people. And so I think that you’re right, like, be loud and proud. And you know, you don’t have to be like, it’s not even about being cocky. It’s about being knowledgeable and sharing that knowledge with other people who need to hear that knowledge. And when you do that, you make that loud voice, people are gonna go, oh, I need somebody for a QuickBooks data cleanup. Oh, I know who that is. Because I see them on social all the time, or somebody to do you know, employee retention, credit calculation, right, or r&d, or whatever. When you make yourself known that that’s what you do, you will get you will get referrals, and you will get clients that you’re looking for, right? And I’m sure you’ve seen that with people, right? They’re there. Are they servicing clients? They maybe maybe shouldn’t? And are you having those conversations with? With your people?
Katie Thomas
Yeah, it comes up a lot, because a lot of times they are not currently serving exactly who they want. Or maybe they’ve made that transition, but they still have, you know, a handful of clients over here that they’re like, I need to replace that revenue. And it’s like, okay, but if no one knows you, then you are just relying on your existing clients to pass along the referral. Whereas if you have an online perception and brand and people know you maybe those people seeing you all the time, those aren’t your clients, but it’s like, “Hey, my friend over here, who has a similar business is looking for this. Have you seen Dawn online, she clearly knows what she’s talking about. Like you should check her out.”
Dawn Brolin
Right? Yeah. And I think as you would probably can testify to this, too, there’s, there’s enough work for everybody. I kind of every once in a while I giggle I’m like, trying to remember the last time I went into my office, and I sat down in my chair, and I said, Boy, I just don’t really have anything to do today. Like, I kind of, I kind of have that as a goal personally, is to be able to like work myself out of work, which is what I try to tell my clients, listen, I don’t want to be on your dime, 24/7 I want to get in, I want to do really good work for you, give you great advice, and help you move your business forward. But at the same time, you know what? I someday would love to catch up. I would like every November and December, that’s my goal, right is to catch up on my work. So I can maybe take a couple weeks off, imagine. And so so with that shifting a little bit to helping people that you’re working with these these CPA firms, CPA owners, a firm owners and things like that, that’s your primary people in the firm owners that you’re talking to?
Katie Thomas
Yeah.
Dawn Brolin
And so to help them understand that, you know, there can be work life balance, and people throw “work life balance” around. Now, there’s never, I mean, I just don’t see us on a teeter totter words ever even. I think that we have tax season. And we’re doing a lot of that. But I also find like for myself, and you read the first book the Designated Motivator, taking the step, a leap of faith to say, “You know what? Yeah, I know softball is during tax season.” And so what is that? Is that the end of the line for me, because I’m a tax preparer, and I can ever be involved in something like that, right? So for me, it’s it’s not equal. I don’t not at softball the equal amount of time I’m working, but it gives me that ability to have a clear mind. And I think it’s really helped me focus better. And so are you finding your practitioners, the firm owners that you’re working with that they really struggle with that with being able to do something they love to do outside of the office?
Katie Thomas
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that for a lot of us, too, just the personality of our profession. Again, I’m generalizing here, but we’re very motivated, very dedicated to what we do, and to our clients and our, our team members, that it’s a challenge for us. Um, and I think though, for a lot of people, it’s like, it takes something significant to pull them out. For example, I know one firm owner I work with, she realized that her son was graduating this year and she was like, “Oh, my gosh, like, I’ve been working his whole, you know, high school” and so she way pulled back I was just like, I don’t know why this just hit me. So I think it’s really cool like you telling that story that you know, you took on coaching the softball team and stuff. And it wasn’t like that was something you know you had to do, but it kind of it was a moment to like, pull you back and make you realize, like, okay, I can do this. And I can rearrange my schedule, or sometimes I think, too, when you put something like that on your schedule, at least I’ve just found personally, it’s like you, you make it work like time just expands how it needs to expand. And that’s not to say you can only work one hour a day versus like, you can kind of give yourself deadlines and speed things up or move things around to just make it all work.
Dawn Brolin
Yeah. And I think too like, for me that it’s one of my examples is okay, I know I have practice at 3, and I don’t want to miss practice. So I know I have to shut my email off and shut my phone off, and I need to focus on these five tax returns, however many it is, in order for my reward to go to practice. Now, if I don’t hit the goal that I know after practice, I’m coming back to the office because my my goal for the day was these five tax returns. And so when you set in, you’re right, that it’s that that sense of urgency, where if you have listen, I can fill a 14 hour day with work, no problem. But how productive am I really being?
Katie Thomas
Yes!
Dawn Brolin
Because I have this big expansion of time, right?
Katie Thomas
Exactly. And I know I do the same thing, even though I’m not doing tax returns now. I, I’ve always been into horseback riding and I kind of especially when I started my business, like, let that not be as much of a priority. And so like as soon as I put it back on my schedule and scheduled lessons again and like really devoted myself to being committed to doing it. It was like, you have that reward and you’re going to work towards it and take the time away.
Dawn Brolin
Absolutely. I feel like you know, I just what I have another thing that I can go and it’s like clearing your mind really the other day and I love that you horseback ride a very dear friend of mine. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Heather Satterly, she’s out of Rhode Island. Heather is she and Liz Scott run the Appy Hour?
Katie Thomas
Oh, yeah. Okay, of course, Heather!
Dawn Brolin
Yeah, you Heather. She’s, she loves horseback riding. And so she started to, yeah, she you got it, you guys would say oh my goodness, you guys would love each other. She started horseback riding, you know, maybe six months ago, maybe I don’t know if it was longer than that. She was renting a horse. She now has bought a horse. And she goes horseback riding. She’s got this group of friends and everything. And it just you can see a person’s world change when they are embracing something that they’re passionate about outside of work. I mean, we all love to where people pleasers accounting. Sorry, you are. We do have this stigmatism. And I think you alluded a little bit to it, where people are like, “Oh, well, I’m in the accounting profession, and so I’m supposed to be professional and I’m supposed to be in my suit all the time. And I’m supposed to be doing tax returns. And don’t talk to me during tax season.” And even at Scaling New Heights, I have to say, I think it was Veem had the best t shirt award at Scaling New Heights and it said “I’m sorry for what I said during tax season.” And that just like, righ?, I thought was that was creative. Um, but to think about that is the attitude. It’s like, well, we just don’t, you know, like, my friends will be like, “Oh, we don’t bother you during taxes.” I was like, Dude, I’m still a person. Yeah. And you know, I can still go out to dinner. I can still eat.
Katie Thomas
Right!
Dawn Brolin
So you can’t let–people go ahead…
Katie Thomas
Oh, I was gonna say you can’t lose your identity to a job or profession. And it’s hard to not lose it sometimes, which is sad. You have to be intentional about it.
Dawn Brolin
Absolutely. And I love what you said about your client who realized, oh, my goodness, my kid’s going to graduate. And I feel like the like was in softball. I always try to teach the kids and I try to drill into their heads, listen, do not have regrets. Life is shorter than you think it is. And it’s busier than it’s ever been before. But if we don’t stop for a hot second and say, Listen, the work will be there, you’ll get the work done. But to understand that you don’t want to look back and go, Oh my goodness, I wish I’d done this or my kids now off to college. Now they’re gone by, you know, they’re out of here. And it’s like, I missed that whole opportunity to be a part a big bigger part of my, my kids life. Now listen, I understand. There’s some people that listen, this is what you do. I’m not this is not a judgment. So let’s, right Katie?
Katie Thomas
Right!
Dawn Brolin
So let’s, let’s you know, preface the fact that we’re just trying to give you some motivation and some encouragement to stop for a minute. I mean, either just sit for five minutes and be like, what do I really want out of this life? I mean, I’m 51, okay, I’m not on the upslope I’m not on the upslope, okay, I’ve hit the peak, coming back down. But what do I want that ride to be like? What do I want that exit strategy of life, which nobody wants to talk about? Because it’s, you know, gloomy, but really, at the end of the day, there’s only two things you have to do you have to die, you have to pay taxes, right? Those are the only two things you have to do. So if those are the two things that are not really that pleasant, right, let’s see how we can fill our lives, even if it’s just an hour a day, an hour a week, two hours a week, that you can really feel good about something for yourself. And guess what? Here’s the thing, Katie, I’m sorry, I’m talking probably more than I should know. But I just I just connect, I really connect with you. Like, it all makes sense to me. And I look back and I say, what if? What if I had done these things? And what if I took some time to myself? Because I know it re-energizes me. And I know that listen, I’m going to have regrets. There’s no doubt everybody’s going to have them that’s inevitable. But can we minimize the regrets? And what does that mean for you, there’s a commitment thing, or there’s a, you know, continuing education, whatever that may be, but to look outside of all of this professional work, and I’m a CPA and all this stuff, and say, “You know what, I’m also a person,” and you’re going to lose, I lost staff for when I made that decision. People quit people, they were like, you’re not in the office enough. I mean, I don’t know if this is the truth, because I never really told me, but it’s like, why, what was the problem? I wasn’t in the office 16 hours a day, which is the you know, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. Or, you know, you didn’t feel like I was I was working as hard as you were, it’s like, okay, and you’re gonna have that negativity, you just have to be willing to accept it. Right? At the end of the day.
Katie Thomas
Yeah. Yeah. And I think something that about that is like, so powerful to do, and then have grace, if that changes, because like what you think brings you joy, like maybe right now, you are really focused on your career, and like, the thought of doing some sort of project or taking on extra work is like, that really does give you a lot of joy. That’s great. But then you, you know, a year changes, and now you’re having a family or something like that. And it’s like, Okay, I’ve got to take a step back. And maybe your life looks different, or your view of joy looks different now. Like, that’s okay, too. I know, that’s been something I’ve experienced is like, accepting that your wants needs, desires are going to change. And that doesn’t mean that you as a person aren’t as committed, or anything like that. It’s just like, no, like, you’re in a different stage in your life now, and priorities do change. And that’s okay. You’re still a committed person to your job and your profession.
Dawn Brolin
I love that. It’s like I say reassess your success, but reassess your joy. Like it sounds corny, but it’s true. Like, you don’t want to be that person who’s on this shirt that said, “I’m sorry about what I said, during tax season,” you don’t want that to be your message.
Katie Thomas
No, you don’t.
Dawn Brolin
It’s funny, but that is not what I want to be perceived as is like a tax season we’ll ever we will see Brolin for three months. And yet I’m like, so you know, and this is super funny, too. And then maybe you go out, you know, to watch a game in a bar with your buddies, like on a Friday night or something and you go, you show up and they’re like, What are you doing here? It’s tax season. It’s like, what?
Katie Thomas
I’m a human!
Dawn Brolin
I’m still person. What do you mean? And it really is powerful when you can, you can determine and in like, set the stage for your success in whatever that some people are like, Listen, I’m going to work. I want to work 60-70 hours a week, 80 hours a week, and I’m just this is my time to shine. And I’m going to pump through it because then I take the other seven months off eight months off. That’s okay, too. Right? And and like you said to you, mate, I grinded man, I was the breadwinner. I had just like you were when you had your husband, right? And laid up, which by the way, when you wrote that up, it said, so my new husband, and I gambled about that. I was like, Oh, she got rid of one!
Katie Thomas
(Katie Laughs) Nope! Still same one!
Dawn Brolin
One and done. I always say I don’t want to retrain man, I have my one guy. I’m gonna keep him. I don’t have to retrain. But but it just, it just is. And it’s something that you just have to reflect back on and say, I think this is what’s best for Dawn Brolin. And that’s where I think it’s hard for us because we do want to please everyone else before ourselves, but over time, that can beat you down. So tell me about what are your what are the things that you can offer to the to the people that are listening now, what you you are doing coaching with these firms, you’re helping with marketing, you’re helping with branding, tell us about what you’re doing. So we can you know, people have a need for what you’re doing. So tell us a little bit more about that.
Katie Thomas
Yeah, so if you’re a firm owner, and you feel like right now, you aren’t being seen online as the expert you are, then that’s where you’re the perfect candidate to get some help. So maybe you don’t like your current website. Or maybe you feel like your social media presence is lacking. Or maybe you see people getting featured in articles and you, you want to be featured to you want to share your knowledge and your expertise, then that’s exactly where we can help you and we can come in and work together to create a plan on how to take you from where you’re at now to where you want to be. And we’ll work together and do it. It’s we need a little help from you as the practitioner because you’re the only one that knows your story, your voice your brand, but we try to do all the heavy lifting like all the content, writing, creation, all that’s done for you.
Dawn Brolin
And I love that and we need that. And I love the fact that you’ve been a CPA and you are a CPA and that you’ve been in our industry and worked for the bigger firms, you’ve, you’ve worked with accountants, just in general and clients, you understand what the client needs to hear as well. So, so what what let’s just because we’re gonna wrap it up, but what’s the website that people can come find you?
Katie Thomas
You can go to Leaders dash, so little hyphen online.com. And you can learn more about what we do there schedule a time to talk. And then I’m on social media, Katie Thomas, CPA pretty much everywhere. So you can I send me a DM.
Dawn Brolin
Definitely. So well, it will post the link, the link will be right there on the on the homepage of the podcast, you’ll be able to click links and go listen to Katie, I just have to say that I I’ve met you for a very short period of time. And it was almost like an instant connection that I felt like you like got me like you figured you understood me and I and you could hear me and that kind of thing. And I think we as practitioners need to get that voice out there. And if you do want to be someone who wants to get on the stage, and you want to, you know, teach and speak and write and be part of the community educational program, which is really what we’re all there to do, especially the online presence, let people find you people need to find you. You want them to hear your voice. And so Katie is a phenomenal human being number one, and number two, just she’s got it figured out. And I think you know, definitely take a look. Get on a call with Katie and see how she can help you improve that online presence in your voice. So Katie, I just want to thank you so much. Like I said, I really enjoy just interacting with you at any time. And if there’s anything we could do, we’ll probably have you back cause I want to hear more about how are your obviously your clients, we don’t know who they are, but what are they doing over the next six months or so and so we’ll we’ll definitely have you back on the show. So any last words you want to leave with people?
Katie Thomas
Well, I just wanted to say thanks for listening to this episode and you could have been doing anything with your time and you chose to spend 25 minutes hanging out with us so I really appreciate you.
Dawn Brolin
Awesome, Katie, thank you so much. And we’ll be seeing everybody again on the DM Disruption next time from Dawn Brolin from Windham, Connecticut, everyone have a great rest of your day. Thanks so much!
This episode is sponsored by Canopy
Learn more here!
Episode Summary
Alicia Katz Pollock, CEO of RoyalWise and QBO Rockstar, joins Dawn for this week’s episode of the DM Disruption! Listen now to learn how Alicia went from a 7th grade substitute teacher, to being a successful business owner, and one of the top QBO teachers in the country!
Show Notes
Alicia’s Beginnings
Business owner, QBO Rockstar, and bass player extraordinar, Alicia Pollock begins her conversation with Dawn by talking about her experience as a 7th grade substitute teacher. Alicia says she’s always had a love for teaching, but quickly learned that teaching middle was not for her. She then moved over to teaching GED classes at her local community college, and took pride in knowing that she was helping people reach their goals.
Alicia also talks about how she’s always had a love for technology and was always keen on learning what new gadgets had to offer. She recounts a story where, at the age of 13, she learned how to use AppleWorks and created a patient database for her father’s Dentistry business.
Alicia’s Introduction to QuickBooks
Alicia owned her own jewelry company early on in her career and started to learn QuickBooks as a way to help manage her business. She found she had quite the knack for it, and became the go-to person in her area to help other business owners understand QuickBooks. This small interest in QuickBooks eventually led her to creating her own software teaching business, RoyalWise, and runs the business with her husband Jaime. She became so successful that she ended up selling her jewelry business in 2015.
Alicia’s Accomplishments
Alicia is also a member of the Intuit trainer-writer network, and is even on the national training team. If you take any QB Training Events or Intuit’s training sessions, there’s a good chance that Alicia will be one of your teachers!
In addition to training, Alicia is also an accomplished writer and has several QBO training books available to purchase on Amazon.
Alicia also talks about the success of her business, RoyalWise—a company devoted to teaching QuickBooks, Microsoft, and more to a variety of individuals.
How Alicia Finds Motivation
Dawn asks Alicia where she finds her motivation, and Alicia shares that she was very inspired by the book “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz.
“It’s kind of both our family Bible, and we give a copy to all of our employees,” says Alicia.
Alicia also shares that she finds motivation through her work, and knowing she is helping people achieve their business and personal goals makes her very happy.
Alicia also shares that she initially found much of her motivation from Dawn, as Dawn was the first speaker she saw when she first attended QuickBooks Connect.
Connect with Alicia
Visit RoyalWise
Check out Alicia’s books on Amazon!
Want to listen to this episode? Click here!
Want to hear more episodes? Listen here!
Find Dawn Brolin’s Latest Book, The Designated Motivator for Accounting Professionals, on Amazon!
Follow Dawn Brolin!
Transcript
Dawn Brolin 0:05
Canopy is an awesome tool if you’re doing tax returns or tax representation either way. What it allows you to do is pull transcripts from the IRS, they have an integration certified by the IRS to pull transcripts. What I love about it is I log in one time, I connect my E services account. And I can go into Canopy and pull transcripts, I don’t have to continue to log into the E services, put in my password, get my code and get in and finally just get through E services, it’s so cumbersome. So I use Canopy as one time connection, let me give you a couple tips. Number one, I like to pull transcripts for some of my clients who make estimated tax payments, maybe they don’t provide me a copy of the estimated tax payment, I want to make sure I know the correct date of those estimated payments, okay. So I will go into Canopy pull an account transcript for my client, and be able to see what dates they made their estimated payments just solves for a lot of problems, there’s no notices maybe I thought they did four or $5,000 estimated payments, when really, they only did three, they told me that it board they only did three, a notice comes in because they didn’t pay enough in tax. And now they’re saying you do the tax return wrong. That happens all the time. So to eliminate that pain of that process, and that, you know, customer integration or customer experience, right? We want to eliminate notices and all costs. So that’s one really key thing. The second one is when you’re not sure, if the clients giving you all of their documents, maybe there’s a 1099R that they had from the year before. And for whatever reason, they don’t think they can find it, I can pull a trans- a wage and income transcript, pull down all that information. So at least I had the federal information on that 1099 If it’s applicable if they received one for that year. And it eliminates again, the whole concept of notices. So I find it really important as I’m preparing tax returns to have this tool in place. And so I love using it. So as a tax preparer, those are a couple of tips, how you can use Canopy in your practice. Thanks for listening.
Okay, well hey, everybody, welcome back to the DM Disruption. So excited to have Alicia Pollock on with me today. We have known each other for a wicked long time. So from New England, I can say wicked, wicked long time, but we’ve never really and we agree we’ve really not had a lot of time to spend together. Just us as you know, we go to conferences and like nobody…. You’re like, what is the crossing of the night or something like that, or whatever it is. But, but I’m excited to have have you on today, Alicia. So tell us a little bit about yourself. And you know, you’re out there educating and training and teaching and you have just a passion for it. So tell everybody what you’re up to.
Alicia Katz Pollock 2:53
Yeah, well, so my name is Alicia Katz Pollock. And my actual official job title is QBO rock star. And it’s not just because I’m really good at QuickBooks, which I am. But I also play music as well. So…
Dawn Brolin 3:06
Oh cool! I didn’t know that. What’s your favorite instruments? Your instrument?
Alicia Katz Pollock 3:09
I play bass. I play bass.
Dawn Brolin 3:12
Yeah. Without the bass. We got nothing. By the way.
Alicia Katz Pollock 3:16
It’s all about the bass, no drummer.
Dawn Brolin 3:19
Yeah, exactly.
Alicia Katz Pollock 3:21
Yeah. And, um, I actually have a master’s in teaching. And I started my career as a seventh grade English teacher. And that lasted like literally about six months as a substitute teacher. And I realized that the kids were there because they had to be there. And you know, and when you’re in seventh grade, you know, it’s all hormones and social and like, teaching, you know, how to, you know, Charles Dickens was the last thing that they cared about. And so I moved over to the, the GED program at a community college. And so I started teaching adults because adults are there because they want to be there. They have a goal. They want to meet it. They might not know how, but they’re motivated. And so I started teaching adults, and I’ve been a computer geek, like my whole life. When I was a kid, the very first like, when the first home computers came out my apple two? My dad was a dentist and his base-, his office was in our basement. And so I went down to the computer and Appleworks was like the first database program, so I figured out how to use Appleworks and I created a database, and it took all of his paper records, and they put them in the computer so that we could write so that we could send postcards for their dental cleanings every six months. And so that was my first job at the age of 13 was programming the database.
Dawn Brolin 4:42
That’s so cool!
Alicia Katz Pollock 4:44
I’ve been a computer geek absolutely forever. And so Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, I was teaching in business schools, how to use comp apps, and I had a jewelry company and I learned how to use QuickBooks for my jewelry company. And it just started dovetailing with all the computer stuff that I would sit down and do a computer consult and people would say, well, you know, what about the, you know, can you help me with QuickBooks and so I kind of got up to speed on it, and I started doing it. But I would run everything I did through a bookkeeper to make sure that I wasn’t mucking them up. And she told me that actually, not only was I doing a good job, but like, my books were kind of bomb proof. And so the QuickBooks part of my business just start growing and growing and growing to the point that I started handing off all of my Apple clients, to my husband, who became my business partner. And that’s when we formed RoyalWise, so now he does all the Apple consulting, we still do a little bit of Microsoft Office, but not so much. And now I’m QuickBooks 24–almost literally 24/7.
Dawn Brolin 5:57
My goodness, you obviously what a great experience. I think a lot of people who started to learn QuickBooks and became you know, amazing people like you who are out there teaching people had their own business, and they were just like, oh, I figure this out. And then they fell in love with that, as opposed to your jewelry business right? You still have that?
Alicia Katz Pollock 6:15
I sold it in 2015 because I couldn’t do both of them.
Dawn Brolin 6:19
Yeah, it’s kind of like, okay, which direction am I gonna go. And so now you have a passion, of course, for teaching. You had a passion, right for a long time ago. But now you have a passion for teaching people QuickBooks and tell them like you’re doing that at like an exponential level. Tell us about that.
Alicia Katz Pollock 6:34
Yeah, so I’m a member of the Intuit trainer, writer network, and I’m actually one national training team. So if you go to QBTrainingEvents.com, and you take any of Intuit’s trainings, and I might be one of the presenters, I also might be one of the little elves behind the scenes typing madly to answer all of your questions. I’m a speaker at QuickBooks connect even coming up in November. So I’ve been a regular with them since 2015. And Scaling New Heights as well, although I’m not going this year. But what I bring to the table that is unique in the industry is that I’m a writer and a trainer. And so I have a book on Amazon that that is actually my notes from my QBO bootcamp that I teach at RoyalWise.com. And so I built this entire training portal, not just like a webinar with some recordings, but I have like a whole organized QBO training system at RoyalWise.com. So it’s got, you know, learning paths, and there’s over 40 videos, there’s probably close to 100 hours of content, I’ve got memberships, I’m doing a boot camp right now. And then all of the books I’m also writing books for Questa Consulting for Doug’s Leaders textbook, like the famous one that so many people learned how to do QuickBooks on it felt to me to rewrite it and modernize it. So in 2021, no 20 in 2020. I rewrote the desktop books, and I’m right now working on converting it to QBO. And this is like, like a 600 page textbook, step by step instructions and quizzes and like the whole the whole nine yards.
Dawn Brolin 8:24
So that’s awesome. So tell me tell me, of course, I’m all about motivation. What motivated you to do to like take that on kind of set it? You said it fell in your lap. But what a monstrous project, okay, I’ve real I wrote a little book this little really tiny. Felt like it took forever. You’re writing me like a manuscript of how to use QuickBooks. That’s a big job. That’s a big job.
Alicia Katz Pollock 8:48
It’s like literally my magnum opus. It’s like big book. It’s like, yes. Because I had this. The book that I wrote, grab a copy of the book that I wrote, that’s on Amazon, I did it in 2015. And, you know, it’s about a 200 pages. And it basically says, here’s the feature, here’s what it does. And this was actually, originally my notes for teaching the class. So when I would teach the class, I had this PDF. And I was spending so many times–so much time like printing it out of my laser writer and hole, punching it and putting in binders and handing them to students. I was like, I think I could publish on Amazon for cheaper than a binder. So made a mass market and it’s actually, like, I’m waiting for the latest version to clear it should be up by the time anybody watches this, the 2020 version should be up. And so but like, I would sit there with this, and it’s like, well, I’m talking like it says create a sales receipt. But it’s not saying click this type this. Here’s what you need to think about this field. And so like I had this dream of writing the big book, instructions, and then Questa approached me and I’m like, “here’s my chance!”
Dawn Brolin 10:01
That’s– you know, and I’ll tell you in the trainer-writer network, which I’m one of the new member committee, people, we really struggle finding people who want to write. And so I find it amazing. So you love to teach and write, which is a kind of rare combination. You know, it really is.
Alicia Katz Pollock 10:19
I mean, there’s a lot of people out there making videos. I like to think that my presentation style is, you know, sets me apart from that, but I’m one of the few people putting pen to paper or keys, keyboard, and think, “Well, books are dead, you know, why would you want something printed out?” But the truth is, is if you’re actually trying to look up something and learning how to do it, there’s something to be said, for having that paper in there.
Dawn Brolin 10:45
Agreed. 100%. Yeah. And so you’re teaching this is are you primarily teaching like new QuickBooks users, bookkeepers that work for companies? Like what do you find to be… or is it a mix?
Alicia Katz Pollock 10:56
It’s totally a mix. I mean, I started with the business owners, because I was doing the business consulting. And so the way I started teaching was the fact that I was like, teaching the same thing to client after client after client. And I don’t do bookkeeping. I’m not a bookkeeper. I’m doing the setups and the training and the troubleshooting and looking at a messy file and explaining to the business owner what they need to do differently. Like, that’s my favorite thing to do. And so my classes started as the business owners, not the bookkeepers. But of course, like QuickBooks is QuickBooks, there’s certain things that bookkeepers need to know, different right? From business owners. But for the most part, it dovetails and for while I had actually separated it out on my website, like I have a membership program, so that you can subscribe and get access to all of my content, instead of buying it piecemeal. And up until for like, the last few years, I’ve had a business owner track and a bookkeeper track, and I just decided we’re doing a revamp, I’m like, you know, let’s just bring it together. Other than keeping away it’s the same.
Dawn Brolin 12:01
Right? It’s just you’re doing the same thing. You’re teaching a business owner or you’re teaching a bookkeeper, they’re both doing the same thing. So So now how and so how long have you been? Have you had your site up? And how long have you been doing that? Kind of that part of training?
Alicia Katz Pollock 12:15
Yeah, we started the learning management system, what’s called an LMS, back in 2017. So that’s when I started building it. And then after at that point, it was just like, Okay, so I’ve got the core class, what don’t I have? Okay, I need more about reports. I need more about payroll, I need more about all the new features coming out. So I have this thing I do is like “look what I found” wherever it’s just it’s a free course where it’s just like, here’s receipt capture when it came out and tagging when it came out and mileage when it came out. And so I love like finding all the little nitty gritty things like that’s my motivation is I’m using it all sudden, bam, something new pops up, like cool! Let me go play with that now. So that’s what I like.
Dawn Brolin 12:58
And I bet you love the aha moment. I had one this morning. So like, I’m, you know, I’ve got probably 50 clients on QBO you know, at this point, so you know, obviously been working in QBO for a while, and it’s that one thing that you find, so I’m just going to put myself out there I’m going be vulnerable, here goes. This morning, I had a client asking me about an invoice. And I’m like, subtotal. How do I create subtotal item? It because… my brain is just always goes back to that desktop functionality, right? And I’m like, you idiot. It’s right there. In the lower left corner says add a subtotal. But you know, like those of us who are who have been the desktop loving humans that we’ve been for so long. You’re just like, it’s an item? Of course. It’s an item. No, it’s not an item, but it’s right there on the face of that sucker right there staring you in the face.
Alicia Katz Pollock 13:48
Yes, sales taxes aren’t items, assemblies aren’t items…really different.
Dawn Brolin 13:53
It’s so different. And so I love when you like you’re saying, like, when you teach someone, they’re like, “Oh, now I get it!” That’s the stuff you love. And that’s what you were looking for. And those seventh graders who refuse to give that back to you, right?
Alicia Katz Pollock 14:07
Those aha moments where like the light bulb goes off like, “Oh, my God, that just changed everything for me!” That’s what I love.
Dawn Brolin 14:15
And you’re getting that reward. And it’s so like, I do love working with the business owners. And you’re just like, you know, hey, what about this? What about that we tend I tend to bring my clients in, and I’m like, and like you said, you’re not doing bookkeeping, but essentially you are. And I want to say that I really love the fact that you said, “You know what, I work on these books. I’m going to train it but then I’m going to run it by a bookkeeper, somebody who, you know, kind of can see that full picture of things.” And you know, I always talk about it. I had this one staff member who still absolutely the best bookkeeper, in my opinion in the country. Never went to high school didn’t go to college. But you know what, it didn’t matter. She had a passion for wanting to make sure that business owners could read their reports and that they were accurate all the time. And so you know, you say you’re not a bookkeeper. But at the end of the day, you know, you’re giving that same result, you’re actually giving that result as opposed to the process, which I find, like really awesome. And those aha moments where, where you’re solving something that they just never even realized there was a solution for, you know, and so I love that. So, so tell me at some point in your life, right, and I, I’ve read your notes, right? But, you know, somebody motivated you or something that motivates you. And of course, I agree with you, when you get somebody who is like, Oh, that’s awesome, bro. I’m like, I get that now. Makes sense. That fills up your bucket. Right, that fills your glass. Yeah. And says, Okay, I’m doing this right. I’m helping this person. So you say I believe it was your family? You said what you said, oh, when everyone probably says that what people? Not everybody does say that. So tell me about that. Tell me about your family. What What how do they motivate you?
Alicia Katz Pollock 15:56
Well, I have…my family is that we call it “the house of love”, that my husband’s and my commitment to each other was that we would have a house of love that no matter what happens, that would be the founding principle. And I don’t know if you’ve ever read The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz…
Dawn Brolin 16:13
I have not!
Alicia Katz Pollock 16:14
It talks about motivators, that book is absolutely amazing. It’s like this thing, I think it’s actually right on right up on this bookshelf. And it’s kind of our both our family Bible, and we give a copy of all of our employees. And the idea with the Four Agreements is that you’re impeccable with your word, you don’t make assumptions. You don’t take things personally, and you always do your best. And so with those four guidelines, we can work anything out. And like, my kids are amazing people, you know, that was our goal was we wanted to raise good people. And so you know, we look at all the you know, some 70 of my kids friends are like, “Oh, my God”, and like, are just awesome. I mean, they all have their moments, obviously. Oh, yeah. But they know that, where’s mom, she’s upstairs writing, or she’s upstairs recording something, you know, they, they know that I’m driven and motivated. And hopefully, I motivating them to take that approach in their lives, as well.
Dawn Brolin 17:13
I love that. I love that. And you know, I was talking to Scott a little bit earlier. And in this guy, Scott, he’s on an earlier podcast. And we talked about how, like, I’m just surprised, my kids are still alive, right? It’s like, they give them to you, they put them in this thing, and they put it in your car and you bring it home with you. And I’m like, you haven’t even done a background check on me. Like, are you sure you want to let these humans come home with me?
Alicia Katz Pollock 17:41
Because this drive cars that they should have apparently.
Dawn Brolin 17:45
Right? And, and I think that that’s fantastic how you approach your relationship with your husband, and how you approach your kids. And I guarantee you and there’s nothing more fulfilling than when a kid says to you, mom, because my kids have said this to me, Mom, you know, I just want you to know that I so respect your worth work ethic. You know, the fact that you’re out there you work till you know that historically I don’t do it so much anymore. But you know, just work work work. Because I’m we’re people pleasers, we want to do the things we want to do, right, which I love that about, about what you said, right? And so how old are your kids? 13 and 1515. And they’re at that age, we’re gonna call it that. And when you can say, you know, people people said this to me a lot. I’m sure people are saying this to you. Oh, the teenage years. Oh, man, how brutal was that? And I say, You know what, I enjoyed their teenage years, we had an open conversation open relationship of, you know, let’s just always be honest with each other, always tell the truth. And you can live by that and be successful in anything you do. If you can keep together those, you know, characteristics.
Alicia Katz Pollock 18:56
It’s really true. It’s it all comes down to that foundation of trust.
Dawn Brolin 19:00
Mm hmm. And so and so what does your husband do in the partnership besides what he’s told? That’s what I tell people. What does your husband do what he’s told, not really, but what is his role?
Alicia Katz Pollock 19:10
Jamie does the same thing that I do with Intuit, but he does it with Apple products, although he’s not doing as much writing but we our whole website has a whole Apple section as well. So we have like another 50 videos on Macs, iPhones, iPads. And so he largely works with seniors just because you know, the people who grew up with it grew up with it, but he helps your parents getting their technology because you know, it makes you crazy like “Mom I told you that six times already!” Jamie’s the person who can tell it the next six times. And and then when Jamie’s not doing all of the Apple stuff, he’s actually the he’s kind of like the mom in the family. He’s the one who’s helping the kids keep their heads on straight and he’s a gourmet cook and so you know…
Dawn Brolin 19:57
All right, you got that nailed down!
Alicia Katz Pollock 19:59
Yeah. Exactly. So he does he does all the cooking and I’m eternally grateful. I think it’s more important than what I do.
Dawn Brolin 20:06
Oh, absolutely. Filling the belly is extremely important. And, um, so So if you were to look to two to three to five years down the road for Alicia, what is that going to look like for you? Now you obviously you love doing the training and the recording and the writing and things like that. But is there something like coming down that you’re like, you know what, this is one thing, let’s just not even talk about like work. But if there was something that you said, you know, what, five years from now I’m going to make sure I’m doing X or I’m doing z like, what would that be? What would that look like for you?
Alicia Katz Pollock 20:37
Well, I mean, on the on the the work front, my goal is to take these textbooks that I’m writing and get take them out of just the academic world and make them available to the mass market. So that’s kind of my roadmap for like the Nexus, it’s going to take us two years to transform it, but you can buy the book on Amazon, and then you can go to my website and watch all the videos that go with the step by step instructions in the book. So like, that’s my immediate plan. And so you know, finding away from going like, just me behind the desk, to making this a whole training program and getting it out there. So that, you know, making the this kind of mildly entertaining bookkeeping approach. And getting that out there. So like, the professionally, that’s what I want to be doing is like, you know, going as taking it as far as I can, on the personal side, continuing to play music, and actually, not just taking my lesson every week, but you know, maybe other people hear me sometimes would be nice. And, and then of course, I you know, want to travel I want to my, once my kids are out of the house, I want to buy an RV and drive around. And because you know, if I’m gonna be driving for eight hours, I could be in the back doing some more writing well, my husband’s drive, and travel as much as possible.
Dawn Brolin 22:01
I love that. So, so as you’re looking, and that’s one of the greatest things about you know, I mean, you and I, like we’re about, you know, say we’re about the same age, you’re probably younger than me. But back when it wasn’t so popular to be mobile. And now with the full ability and permission to be mobile, that’s a perfect plan. Because now you can work because you love what you do. Right? Some people I love what I do, I can give you an example. So I’ve been working on a civil audit and and this individual, let’s just say it wasn’t really transparent on his tax return as he should have been, right, it wasn’t as honest as he should have been. And so when you get that you get through something like that, and you can minimize their exposure by, you know, getting the auditor what they need, get, you know, doing the things you need to do. And then you get the letter that we finalized it, everything’s good, we accept it, we move on. And they don’t open up other years. That to me is like, that’s what drives me to want to continue, right? It’s that success that win, right? And so for you, your wins, are getting these things published, getting out in front of people, and certainly people subscribing to your website to be able to that you you see them progressing, you see them succeeding. And that’s what you love to do. So I love that goal of mobility. Because you already are mobile, we are all mobile already. But be able to take it and then you know, pull in something that’s more personal, like traveling. Right and be able to do both. Best of both worlds. That’s what I would call it right. Yeah,
Alicia Katz Pollock 23:34
It really is. I mean, I started using zoom with my clients and stopping going on site back in 2017, when there was a snowstorm in Portland, we couldn’t go anywhere and so much technology is out there. And so I did my first screenshare you know, back then. So then when COVID hit and everything got locked down in the beginning of 2020, actually one of the very, very first things that we did is my husband ran and Jamie whose name is Jamie. Jamie ran these Zoom trainings for all of our entire RoyalWise base. So like seniors, my business owners, everybody, and we had like we literally had 80 People over 70 in one in two Zooms. So it was adorable. So you have that whole grid of all these people going like this, like can they hear me? Okay, the mute button is in their lower left, everybody look for a little microphone and click the mute, okay, turn it off, turn it on and it was just an so it was absolutely tremendous. And so because we were already doing training, this has actually been a boom for us because now people are comfortable with going online and virtual training and I’ve been doing in person classes for years you know, right classroom, bring everybody in, set up the projector, I had the screen so that I could record it. And, and all of that, and our production values have been able to go up hugely, because now I have like, I’m in a sound studio, like there’s like foam on my walls.
Dawn Brolin 25:12
I mean, it’s just, it’s a whole different world than it was just, you know, and I see, the biggest challenge I see are those that just don’t they want to stop it, they don’t want to do it, they don’t want to part of it. And then there’s those people where like, I do a lot of training with firms to teach them how to get in the cloud and, you know, do things electronically. And a lot of times that, you know, one of their first things as well, my older clients, they’re not going to want to do that electronic thing. And I’m like, You know what, I get that, I totally get that out. And I always tell people, I say listen, I meet my clients where they are, if they’re just not ready, then they’re not ready. But I’m always still putting in their ear, hey, listen, you know, you can really, let me just send this electronically while you’re sitting in front of me on your phone, because they all have phones, and let’s let’s see how that works. And that’s what you’re doing your your take your meeting them where they are, you’re helping them take those baby steps. And you know, Alicia, honestly, teaching those older people because of COVID, last Christmas, you probably have positively affected how many people you think between those students, these elderly students who learn how to go on Zoom, were able to zoom with their family during Christmas that they would have never been able to do before.
Alicia Katz Pollock 26:24
Absolutely. You know, and and you know, the numbers, literally hundreds that we’ve been helping seniors, like, know how to use their phones, or buy iPads or buy computers, and we need t shirts that say green share, blue share, you click, you click the blue share button, I say that more than, than anything! But it’s been we’ve been really grateful that we’ve been in this position where we can provide this support to people because a lot of people would have been more lost if they couldn’t meet with their loved ones, or, you know, we have a lot of clients and senior centers and that Jamie has to like go meet outside. And they had no contact with their families. And so we know that we’ve been instrumental on keeping these people, you know, mentally mentally challenged, yeah. Like in a way that they’re being able to stay connected with the world. So that’s amazing. We’ve been in this position where we could have maximum assistance to people.
Dawn Brolin 27:30
So if you thought of it in that context, really before that, hey, listen, we’re actually keeping people more connected than they would have ever been. Imagine the pandemic five years ago, people weren’t learning how to use Zoom, the loneliness we have now, imagine the exponential and would have been if we weren’t able to do things like that, where you are able to affect those people in such a deep way. Like, I didn’t even really think of it when you first said that you guys are doing that. I didn’t really think of it that way. But wow, what an impact. What an impact.
Alicia Katz Pollock 28:02
It’s been huge. We’ve been really grateful for the position that we’ve been in through this big mess that the world is in because my husband and I are already technological. My kids are already tech geeks. So like homeschooling for them was no big deal. We didn’t have any, any tech challenges, just other challenges that came along with it. But like, I’m just grateful that I’ve been in this position to meet have the maximum impact on people as we transition. And you know, I think there’s some definite benefits to the fact that we are now able to work remotely. You know, the amount of time that I spent driving from client to client to client, that’s another two hours of productive time in my day.
Dawn Brolin 28:48
That’s so true. It’s so true. And it was interesting, because historically, Alicia, as you have been and I have been trying to drag people, right, come on, get into the 21st century, join us as we move into a new way of work, a new way of living. And we were doing it before pandemic happened. We were ready. You know. So for those who weren’t ready, I hope that they’re getting it like figuring it out. Like we’re not just saying it for nothing. We’re saying it because it really matters, right?
Alicia Katz Pollock 29:17
Well, one of the things that’s been really funny that’s happened just in the last month or so is that my husband’s getting getting called calls from some of his clients where their technology is getting too old. You know, I joke that computers, age in double dog years that one year and a computer is 14 human years. So from your computer is five years old. It’s 70. Right? It’s like getting ready to retire. And by the time it’s seven years old, it’s 96. And like it can barely do anything. It’s very slow now, and now we’ve got people calling us because now they can’t Zoom. Their operating systems are too old. And the computers that Jamie’s replacing right now are actually the ones that I set up with when I first started in the industry as because I started actually as an Apple consultant, before I was doing QuickBooks, and so he’s now replacing the computers that I set up for people, like 10 years ago!
Dawn Brolin 30:12
That’s wild!
Alicia Katz Pollock 30:13
Isn’t that wild? Amazing. We have this program called the Robin Hoot program, we do everything with with owls, so you can see my owls. And so Robinhood program is that when Jamie helps somebody get a new computer, he does the data transfer. And then we take the computer off of their hands and wipe it back to factory. And if it’s still usable, we take it we send it out to Freecylce.com and we have we just get the computers out into the community to people.
Dawn Brolin 30:40
That’s awesome. I do the same thing. As I also not only do I do that is when we go to conferences, and we get backpacks, you know, sometimes you can leave with three or four backpacks from a conference. And and I’ll repurpose those and when they have the back to school stuff. You know, I have a friend of mine that locally organizes a backpack drive. So we’re able to repurpose them and give them back and you’re right. I had a couple of computers last fall. I was like here, find a couple kids who can use them. Right, right.
Alicia Katz Pollock 31:06
Yeah, we pass out old iPhones, we pass out old Macs, you know, anything that we can get back out into the community.
Dawn Brolin 31:12
I love that. I love that. Well, Alicia, this has been a great conversation, we will try to keep it within 20-25 minutes, so people will keep listening.
Alicia Katz Pollock 31:22
I have one more thing that I need to add–as far as designated motivator goes, I was thinking back when I my first QuickBooks Connect, which must have been like 2015, the very first presentation I went to, yeah, was you. Oh, really? My very first accounting conference, my very first workshop was you, you’re up on the stage, you had little squishies that you were chucking out into the audience and candy or hooking up people. And I love it. And, you know, it was incredibly entertaining, as well as informative. But it was like stand up comedy. And then I went Redmon, who’s it? And hers was like, as throwing as much information at me as possible. And so like, those were my first two workshops, and I came out of those first two going, I can do this. I want to be on this stage. And so that’s like, Okay, I got this, I can do this. And so I started like hunting down Alison Ball and finding out how I can get involved.
Dawn Brolin 32:24
I, Alicia I love that. That’s very humbling, um, you know, certainly to come into your first conference, and then you got this psycho up there. You know, that’s, I’m glad to hear well, I went well, you know, but but that’s, you know, and that’s one of the things like Leslie Kabat, Chetty was my person. I went to an advanced QuickBooks, the first advanced QuickBooks training they had, it was local. I went saw Lesley Kappachetty, and I said, I want to do what you do. She gave me the call this person do this, do that. And that’s how I started and I love that myself and Laura Redmond could be that for you. And what the greatest part is, Alicia, you’re being that for other people now. And that’s there’s nothing more rewarding than having people have success. And that you could be even just if I could be an ounce of a part of that, then that’s very humbling for me. So thank you for, for saying that. And I’m sure that you will have someone come up to you, or chat through to you at QB connect this year, right? That will say, Alicia, you are the first person I saw and you are the reason why I want to do this. And you inspired me so and that’s all we can do as as colleagues as peers, we’re here to help each other. And certainly, I really do appreciate your time. I also love owls. I think owls are amazing. And but we will definitely will have links in the podcast to your website. So if you make sure you send that stuff over to Gaynor because we want to promote what you’re doing and support you in any way we can. And I’m sure I’ll see you soon be in the next year at some kind of conference. And hopefully we can have a coffee and sit down face to face and catch up.
Alicia Katz Pollock 34:00
I will totally look forward to that.
Dawn Brolin 34:02
I would love it. I love it. Alicia again. Thank you so much, everybody for listening to DM Disruption. We’ll see you back here next time. We’re always looking for great people. So feel free to reach out you want to come on the show. Great people like Alicia was helping other people. Thanks again, everybody. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you. You’re awesome
Alicia Katz Pollock 34:18
See you in class!
Dawn Brolin 34:19
You’ve got it, see in class, bye bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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Episode Summary
Scott Cytron of Cytron and Company sits down with Dawn Brolin to chat about how he went from struggling to find work as a writer shortly after college, to now owning a successful PR company that’s been in business for over 26 years. Listen now to find out how Scott finds motivation, how important networking is for your business, and how doing what you love can bring you more joy in both your professional and personal life.
Show Notes
Scott’s Introduction
Scott Cytron discusses his early beginnings as a Journalism major at the University of Missouri, and how he struggled to find work shortly after graduating. Scott talks about how difficult the job market was at the time, and how even after countless interviews, he was not finding any work. He then started working as a volunteer writer for United Way, and how even though he was not making any money, this allowed him to gain the networking skills that he would use in the future. Because of his work with United Way, he eventually landed a job with the American Red Cross.
“And yeah, I mean, it was like, joke pay, but it was a job and I was glad to have it.” Scott says in reference to how much he made at his first job.
Scott also shares how he found his way into the accounting industry; he was recruited for a position at the Texas Society of CPAs, a position he held for 9 years.
Being Laid off and Starting His Own Company
Scott shares that he was laid off from his position, and talks about the grief he struggled with following the lay off.
Shortly thereafter, he was contacted by a few vendors he worked with while he was at the CPA society. He was asked to teach the sales people how non-profits thought and operated so they could sell more affinity cards. With Scott’s experience working with nonprofits, this ended up being a great gig for him, and with more vendors starting to contact him, this eventually led him to start his own business.
Importance of Networking
Scott then shares how important networking was when he started his business.
“And one thing led to another and I networked. I really, I let absolutely everybody I know, I told everybody, I know what I wanted to do, and what I was doing.” Scott shares.
Dawn agrees and says networking is key when trying to gain clients and being “loud and proud” about what you do will help you reach more people who are in need of your services.
Scott also shares how as a business owner or accounting professional, you can always be doing something to increase your reach with new clients. He encourages people to take their clients out to lunch, schedule “coffee talks,” and how developing these relationships can lead to not only more work in general, but meaningful work as well.
Keeping The Client and Yourself Happy
Scott and Dawn also share how important it is to maintain a good relationship with your clients, and while it’s important to make them happy, it’s also important that they make you happy.
“And I at this point, if I’m not having fun, or Brian isn’t having fun working…I’d rather go do something else. Yeah, because life is too short,” shares Scott.
Scott then shares about how important it is to maintain integrity and honesty with your clients, and says,
“My best day is when a client will call me up… and say, ‘I’ve got a problem. Can you help me fix it?’ Because to me that says you totally believe in my integrity.”
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Transcript:
Dawn Brolin 0:05
Hi, I’m Dawn Brolin. I’m a certified public accountant, Certified Fraud Examiner, and the author of the designated motivator for accounting professionals.
Today, I want to introduce you to Truly Financial. They’re a digital bank and you can visit them at Truly Financial.com They are part of the team rolling starting lineup, which is the best of breed roster for technology solutions and partners that I use in my own accounting practice. Powerful accounting, Inc. In fact, my entire ecosystem or playing field, if you will, is called truly financial fields. Here’s why. Banking the right kind of banking is essential to everything you or your clients need to do when it comes to money. Truly Financial is changing the banking game. For starters, they’re a digital bank, no more going to the bank for me, those days are over. I can do everything online, and so can your clients. Partnering with truly financial helps you offer clients and their customers frictionless collaborative banking solutions anywhere in the world. Truly Financial provides accessible all in one banking that gives small businesses superpowers that were previously only available to larger businesses. When you or your clients open a Truly Financial account, you get multi country corporate Visa cards, local and international bank accounts, and the ability to send or receive payments seamlessly. I use truly financial to help the business owners I work with grow without getting slowed down by high fees, or big bank bureaucracy. Learn more about how truly financial is changing the game for accounting professionals and their clients. Be sure to check out their partner program for accounting professionals to at truly financial.com Thanks so much for listening.
If you know anything about writing articles or information about accounting Scott’s your guy, he just that’s what you do. Scott, you write and you do amazing things. So hey, everybody, welcome to the DM Disruption. I’m here today, really excited about our guest today, Scott Cytron. He is an amazing writer, he puts the junky words that I throw to him. And he makes me sound like I know what I’m talking about. And so I love working with Scott and work with him for a long time if you know, he writes, you know, all of the Intuit articles, but he does so much more than that. And we’re going to get into that today. So Scott, thank you so much for coming on today.
Scott Cytron 2:28
Well, thanks for having me.
Dawn Brolin 2:30
You know, I thought about this when I saw you on the schedule, and I said, we don’t know anything about Scott. He’s like in the background all the time doing writing and stuff like that. It’s just your articles, and your information is so phenomenal. But we don’t know about Scott himself. And so I was like, we’re gonna get to know Scott on this episode of the podcast today because I think that, like it’s so much more cool to read an article when you learn a little bit about the guy who’s right now. Right So, Scott, we’re gonna talk about your history in the marketing world, where you came from, where you were motivated in a certain way to get yourself to go out and start your own prep your own business and for writing so tell us who you are. What do you do what’s going on? You got a fractured foot what else is happening? Yeah, I
Scott Cytron 3:19
Yeah I have a fractured foot, yeah, that’s been a lot of fun or not. Yeah, and I’m usually used to you know, being really active like exercising and and you know, not not running but like doing your swimming and walking and all that and it’s been it’s been a journey but I got out of the booth this morning. So life is good. Finally out of the blue so now…
Dawn Brolin 3:43
You can itch, well the boot you could take off to itch, but…
Scott Cytron 3:47
Yeah, yeah, at least I didn’t have a cast that’s for sure. No, I It’s interesting career if he would said to me years and years ago when I started my career that I was going to be doing this I would have absolutely laughed in your face because I was like what is that I don’t even know what the heck that is. You know I I went to journalism school actually have a journalism degree from University of Missouri which is still the number one top school in the nation for journalism and ere we go numbers and football sucks though the basketball student okay but football is not great. Yeah, but I you know, I knew I always wanted to write I was a very good writer in high school. I loved writing you know, the remember the old blue books I don’t know if the students still right in blue books or not. They probably type it online now like for…
Dawn Brolin 4:37
Well, are they blue? Are they the black with the white? They look like cows.
Scott Cytron 4:40
I could if if right took a class and the professor said, I need you to write a, fill up your blue book about this topic. I can actually sit down there and write extemporaneously for hours about that topic, which was, I thought a real gift that I had, I didn’t know anything about anything else. I knew how to write. So I pursued journalism and graduated with a degree and a Bachelor of journalism with a specialty in magazine. And I was going to be a magazine editor when I graduated, okay. And I decided I want to eat. So, because eating is a good thing. So, I went to where I actually went into PR and kind of stumbled into it. I mean, they had one PR class at Missouri. And it was like this joke class, like you took it, if you couldn’t make it at anything else, this was way back. And now, you know, of course, it’s a very respected thing. But back then, you know, I, I had this, my mother refer refer to that as my interview suit, I had this blue pinstripe suit, that it was on and off my body three times a day. And of course, I could never gang the interviews. They were like back to back. They were always like, early morning, get home, take the suit off, put it back on, go back out. I was getting lots of interviews, but no bites. Because the job market this was, I’m telling you, it was the early 80s. The job market was pretty tight. All over was tied, and couldn’t find a job. And so I was active in a communicators organization at the time, which is still around. It’s an international group. And I went to a couple meetings and met this man he was with he worked for the United Way. And he said to me, why don’t you come see me United Way their office was downtown. He said, Are you interested in doing some volunteer work? I was like, Well, yeah, I got nothing else going on. He said, This could lead to something if you came and like showed your face got to know some people. In other words, network when I didn’t, you know, you’re not taugh in College how to network. I mean, nobody says, you know, this is what you need to do to find a job. And sure enough, I went down and volunteered my time writing articles for some of the agencies that belong to United Way and my mother and father, thought I was absolutely nuts. I mean, they were like, Why are you spending your time volunteering, when you should be out interviewing. It’s like, well, this is what I’m doing. So shut up. This is what I’ve got going on. Sure enough, it led to my first job, which was with the American Red Cross, they, the fellow I worked with the United Way knew there was an opening. And he said, go interview. Here’s the name of the number of the person need to call, got the job. And I was there about a year and thought, Well, okay, this is interesting. I was making $12,000 a year. Oh, wow. Wait a minute. Now, it turned out after taxes to be $765 a month. That was 300. And whatever it was $332 a check. And I would sit there all the time going. Okay, this is how much I have coming in. These are my bills. Do I really have enough to pay my bills? And yeah, I mean, it was like, joke pay, but job and I was glad to have it. And that led to some other things. So basically, basically, I I stayed in PR, I studied nonprofit PR and went from there. Actually, I went from there to an agency that recruited me fly knew we had a PR agency. He said, Why don’t you come work with us. I was there about a year and a half decided, okay, the PR world is I guess it’s for me, I’m going to stick with this. But I really wanted to do content. I really wanted to do more content. I was doing a lot of press releases, I was doing a lot of media contact. But I really enjoyed writing. So I was kind of the writer in the agency was a small agency at the time. Now it’s still around much larger. But I actually went back in a nonprofit, which was kind of unheard of I went back and worked for big brothers and sisters, and learned about it because I was in charge of fundraising. And really wanted to learn how to raise money in a nonprofit, and eventually led actually to a position a United Way. And from there I was recruited with from a woman who used to work there to the Texas Society of CPAs. So that’s how, when people say, “What’s your accounting background?” Well, I worked there for nine years. And I was head of all the internal communications the member communications, membership programs and learned just a heck of a lot about a lot of stuff and met some really great people. I liaised like I was head of the volunteer groups for the map, which was you know, management and accounting practice. Yeah. So they were all the public practitioner, and I still actually keep in touch with a few of those people.
Dawn Brolin 9:42
Oh, that’s cool.
Scott Cytron 9:43
Yeah. So I was. I was there for about nine years and then I was the one that thought I’d never be laid off. I was like, my job is solid. Hey, look at me. I’m tougher than this. I got laid off. laid off because that was one of the higher salaries and they said, you know, we love you, but we don’t want you anymore. And I, I cried.
Dawn Brolin 10:08
Yeah.
Scott Cytron 10:09
I cried for a couple weeks. It was right when Rosie O’Donnell Show was on the afternoon, like when she was starting her show, so I can see all the Rosie O’Donnell Show.
Dawn Brolin 10:17
Yeah! (laughs)
Scott Cytron 10:19
My son was five at the time. And I, you know, like I had to do something to earn money. And they gave me a little bit of severance they gave me they like they placed me with one of those agencies, which where they teach you how to find a job, rewrite your resume. I did all that. But what happened to me was, you talk about inspiration about being motivated.
Dawn Brolin 10:42
Yeah.
Scott Cytron 10:42
What happened was, I was contacted by a couple of vendors that I worked with while I was at the CPA society, because I headed up the member affinity program, which was the program like the credit card program for the members, the banking, the mortgage brokers, all the member benefits. I was contacted by this company, that was the financial arm of MBNA, America, which is now Bank of America more Bank of America years ago. They were interested in getting into the AICPA to switch them from first USA to MBNA. America, okay, they knew that I people involved, but trying to make this long story shorter, they brought me up to Boston once a week for six months. And they want me to teach the salespeople how nonprofits thought and operated. So they can sell more affinity car. So it was kind of the sweet little gig that I started out with, I was like, Well, if I can do this, maybe I can continue to do my own thing. And I got a call from another vendor I used to work with, I’m the one that set up the original website for the CPA society. So I got called by that company which was out of Seattle. And then one thing led to another. And I ended up really trying to make a go of it. I thought, well, that was in like November. And I thought if I could just be busy through the spring and just pay bills. Yeah, I’ll give the no and I always wanted to start my own thing I really did. I actually had a dream because I worked so much a nonprofit to actually do an agency a PR agency, that was only nonprofit clients, and I got some real pop back. But I said, you know, you’re going to have to have a certain number of clients to make that work because nonprofits couldn’t pay as much as for profit clients. And that’s true. That’s very, very true. So I ended up going out on my own. And one thing led to another and I networked I really, I led absolutely everybody I know, I told everybody, I know what I wanted to do what I was doing. That was during the age of dial up, I know I’m dating myself, but dial up computers, I typed out my, my letters on a typewriter, I mailed them every day to people. This is what I’m doing this what I want to do, and one thing led to another and you know, now 20, almost 26 years later, I’ve still got my own business.
Dawn Brolin 13:11
You know, and I love that because I think a lot of times people will ask and you see it over on social media all the time in a lot of the various groups, and I’m gonna log the accounting groups, and you watch them, they’re like, how do I get clients? How do I, you know, grow my practice? How do I do? And it’s not any different than what you did? Really, it’s like, be loud and proud about what you do get a little more specific, right? You don’t want to be just, oh, I’m an accountant. Well, you know, what? Accounts are a lot like attorneys. There’s very different types of accounting services that are provided. Attorneys, you know, their bankruptcy attorneys or their family attorneys. Usually family attorneys aren’t doing bankruptcy at the same time. Usually, there’s different partners that are doing really focus things. That’s how you become the best. Like when you think about somebody who writes somebody that is out there in publications that is doing amazing writing, Scott Cytron’s at the top of listening accounting field period. Right. And so, and you did that, and you did that work, Scott, all yourself, man. Right. And your motivation, I think a lot of our motivation, I mean, you know, you got laid off, right at the end of the day. I’m not saying it’s bad to be an employee. That’s not what I’m saying. But you don’t hold your own fate in your own hands when you work for someone else. And if you have the drive, and the commitment, the passion, the focus, to go out there and do it. What you’re doing is exactly right. You’re out there you’re networking, you’re letting people know loud and proud this is what I’m doing. And one thing leads to another Oh yeah, you know what, oh, you need an article written call Scott mean he’s your guy that’s so and that’s how people will start to grow their practice and that’s what you’ve done for your business, is grow up.
Scott Cytron 14:51
That’s absolutely the case. And you know, I get kind of perturbed, well, I don’t get perturbed I get pissed off. Yeah. When I hear good I hear from an accountant or bookkeeper or anybody in the profession. Oh, I just don’t have enough work. I don’t have enough business like, well, you’re not trying hard enough. My God, look at the number of companies and businesses out there. When was the last time you’d network with somebody? Oh, right now Well, COVID is going on? I can’t possibly do that. Yeah, you can. I met a pro advisor, or I guess last year who, this was brilliant, she scheduled coffee talks. And it was a 15 minute thing. Yeah, schedule a coffee talk with me. And yeah, okay. We can’t, you know, there was a long time where we couldn’t see each other in person. But you could still waste a network and waste to get the word out about what you’re doing. But I completely agree when a when a person in PR and marketing communications calls me or sends me a note and says, I need, I need some referrals I need to network with you. I understand, you know, some people, can you help me out? Like, what do you what area do you want to work in? Oh, I do everything? Well, no, that doesn’t help me because I need to know what you either niche in. I people know, for me, I niche accounting and finance. Now we have other clients outside of that. And I tried really hard over the years to diversify. I did a lot of healthcare. Like when I started, I did accounting and finance and I actually did morphed into healthcare, and did a lot of that. And then did some B2C work. I did some work for Blockbuster in Pizza Hut and some really great fun projects. But I always said like, it was like the God Father, I got pulled back in. And around the seventh or eighth year, I thought, well, okay, I just, I’m gonna stick with this, but was with accounting and finance. But I still want to try to find gigs outside of that. And we do we have some, but you know, there’s a group of interesting, there’s a, there’s like a handful of us across the nation. That niche in this area, and we all know each other, and we actually exchange work.
Dawn Brolin 16:55
Yes, absolutely.
Scott Cytron 16:56
Which is great. You know, if you know, Betty can’t do something, she’ll say, Scott, can you pick this up, or, you know, whatever it is, or they’ll refer what we’ve heard each other. And that’s what makes it really fun. You know, so no, we trust each other enough to get the job done. But we’re also great to work with, you know, we love we love what we do.
Dawn Brolin 17:15
Yeah, and that’s important. I mean you could to do for the rest of your life, basically, You should probably find, I was telling kids you’re like I work with, you know, I teach at the local university, I’m not right now because of the book. And I’ve got too much going on. So I’m not doing it this semester. But it’s like, I try to tell the kids like, listen, you’re going to work for forever, okay? So I encourage you, number one, find something that you’re good at, but you’ve got to enjoy it, because it’s a long road, there’s gonna be ups and downs, and sideways and backwards and all this stuff. And you’ve got to be able to get up every single morning and know why you’re doing it. And remembering that you do love it. And, you know, I want to switch a little bit of gears in that conversation about the industry right now. Now, you obviously you see it from a 30,000 foot view, and sometimes a 10,000 foot view, you know, you’re you can sometimes just have a broad conversation or write an article that’s a little bit more general in nature, or you may jump into some more deeper scenarios. So are you You know, as far as the practitioners out there, are you seeing what I’m seeing in this really tough 18 months, almost coming on two years now of, of really, in the accounting industry, specifically, where people are just struggling. I you know, and I don’t know about you, but I think sometimes it’s the people who don’t have systems and processes in place, that are able to handle either volume, or like we were talking about just being able to do that coffee time, coffee talk and just being able to, like, you’re gonna have to bring yourself into this into this timeframe of technology, I think is maybe one day is right.
Scott Cytron 18:45
I think that’s absolutely right. And yeah, yeah, you know, when you own your own business, you’re your own helpdesk. Yes. Your own IT , support your own helpdesk. Yeah, I think what’s interesting about about that kind of conversation about accountants and bookkeepers, networking is, most of the ones I know, you definitely excluded. You’re not in this camp at all. They’re afraid to ask for referral. They’re afraid to ask their clients for referral. I had this one client who was a Sage provider, they did manage services through Sage, and they had a very successful business. And they were like, well, we don’t seem to be getting any new business. I said, well, I said to the owner because I work directly with the owner. But when was the last time, this is why before COVID, I said, When was the last time you took a client to lunch? Oh, I don’t know. I don’t you know, I don’t really do that. Or do you go to lunch every day, knowing that he did? Well, yes. I said, so why don’t why don’t you take your best clients to lunch, make a rule that you don’t talk about busniess, and but you talk about not, not your business, but just business in general? How you can help each other out? Oh, I don’t have time for that. Right? But you go to lunch every day. He goes I get your point. But he said I’m not going to go do that. I’m like Why are you so afraid to ask a client for referral? What are you afraid they’ll say to you? You’re being too forward? I said they need referrals from you just like you need referrals from them exact. So why don’t you you’ve got a chemical company you’re representing, you’re doing the books for chances are they know other people, maybe in similar industries that are competitive, or whatever the case is, you know, ask, ask for help and helped them.
Dawn Brolin 20:29
Exactly. And, you know, I also some of the other things I think of is, you know, if I get a particular client that I’m like, Yeah, you know what, I’m not really your fit, but I know somebody who is, right, or if someone that comes to me that is predominantly Spanish speaking, I know exactly who I’m referring them to. And that’s because Mariette and Hector Garcia, you know, those guys are all out there, loud and proud about what they’re doing from a bilingual perspective. You know what, that helps me? Because, you know, I just had a client this morning even emailed me, she’s like, I’m in New Jersey, we have called, she actually a new client. She called me last week, we had a nice phone call. And this morning, she email she said, Listen, I’m from New Jersey, I had an accountant from New York, and I felt like I never could get in touch with him, or I couldn’t go to his office, blah, blah, blah. And I said to her, I said, Well, Jackie, here’s the deal, kid. Listen, if you want somebody local, just say the word. I’m sure I can find you somebody in New Jersey, that would love to be working with you, whatever. I said, but listen, at the end of the day, I’ve got Tracy in my office, who you if you call our office, if she is working with she, you know, sometimes she goes on vacation whenever she’s really kind of part time. If If she calls you she doesn’t answer that phone call, I promise you within 24 hours, you will get a call back, because that’s just the way she rolls, right? And so what I said to her, I said, Hey, if you want some from New Jersey, I’m happy to refer you like, I want what’s best for the client. Because it’s like happy wife happy life. It’s happy client happy business. Like, you know, I don’t want upset clients. I don’t want those people. So if I feel like, you know, this isn’t a fit for me, you know.
Scott Cytron 22:05
But you know, at the same time, like I’ve had cases, like locally, I’ll give you an example. I worked with a financial management company here. For we worked together 12 years. And the owner was a heck of a nice guy, the nicest guy you would ever want to meet. If you said, Bill, give me the shirt off your back, he would take it off and give it to you. I was at his wedding. I mean, that’s how that’s what a great relationship. Yeah, I know. That’s what a great relationship, we had. This PR I did his newsletter articles, whatever. And, but he could not make a decision to save his life, he could not make a decision. He managed, he wouldn’t work with anybody unless they had more than $2 million in assets. I mean, that was his sea level practice. So when he was very good at it, but he couldn’t make a decision. And I finally, you know, like, probably the fifth or sixth year like this is all like this is not working? Well, I really tried to resign twice. He kept throwing more money at me. And I was like, okay, well, I guess I’ll continue. And finally, the third time I just said, Bill, you’ve got to go find this somewhere else. I said, I’m sorry. But why would you pay me? You know, like, he was a happy client. But sure, I wasn’t happy working with him, because I didn’t feel like I was helping him. You know, and I feel like in the, in the accounting profession is kind of the same thing. Why would you continue working with a client, you don’t think you’re helping just to make the money? You know, and, and to me, it’s the whole story. It’s the whole advisory services conversation that some accountants still cannot wrap their arms around, they cannot figure out like, oh, you know, they can look at the tax return and figure out that they have stocks, they have other assets they have. I don’t, you could look the return. I don’t know, you know, I’m not a tax guy. But I know how to do that. And to have that conversation with your client, I don’t know if they’re afraid that the client will leave them because it’s going to cost them more money. But you know, if I had a client that I knew, had this issue, I would certainly bring it up. And that’s where you make your clients happy. Like you want to, but we do in PR we say we anticipate what you’re going to need before you need it. That’s that’s the whole crux in a nutshell is we want to make we want we want to know what you need before you realize you need it. And that’s that’s where we have happy clients and communications with clients is key like they you know, the worst thing I would want to happen at the end of the month is for them to get my invoice and say what did he do for that? Well, no, that never happened. Because we’re constantly in touch. We’re constantly you know, doing stuff back and forth. They know exactly what’s going on. So…
Dawn Brolin 24:56
I love that conversation about like you’re saying like keeping a client, like you were saying that just because you’re you’re making money from them. And that’s great. Sometimes it isn’t the best fit I, we had a client just here in the last few months he had whatever issues he had, and we just it was the last straw, we were making a lot of money. It was a great project, it was a fun project. But we were just, we just got to the point where we’re gonna keep this guy, we’re gonna actually be able to intercept this audit was a criminal audit, we had all the i’s dotted T’s crossed, he had his record keeping was terrible, his prior account just really did a major disservice. So we were going to go after the, ENO, for that, like, we had this whole plan, but he just became like, he was mean. And a girl on my staff was kind of mostly dealing with them. And, you know, she called me at one point, she’s pretty tough. And she was like, I just don’t know if I can handle this anymore. I said, then that’s the end of it, we’re done. And so I fired the client, I was like, I don’t need to, I don’t want to make money off those people. And then on the other flip side, I have one of my best friend’s real really great, another couple that my husband I’ve been friends with were that the God daughters, one of his godparents, and one of his daughters. Just we love Him. And so what we he owns his own security system business. And we would chase him and chase and chase him for information. And it was like, just became painful. So finally, his kid, actually my goddaughter graduated from college with an accounting degree. And I said, Kyle, your daughter is doing your accounting she’s doing all your sales tax returns, go figure out your tax return, because we’re done. Like, it wasn’t even it was about just, this isn’t worth it. And you know, we’re friends, and I would love to help my friends, but not at my, you know, at my cost, if you will, of having to chase them constantly. And you know, at that point, where’s the value anyway? There isn’t any.
Scott Cytron 26:42
The one thing, the one thing I dread is firing clients, and I’ve had to do it. Luckily, I’ve never been fired by a client. But I’ve had a power plant. And I mean, the financial planners, one example. But you know, there have been other examples. And I at this point, if I’m not having fun, or Brian isn’t having fun working, you know, working on this, my son works with me, as you know, if we’re not having fun. I’d rather go flip burgers at the Burger King. Well, hopefully not there. But you know what I mean? I do, I’d rather go do something else. Yeah, because life is too short. And, you know, when a client gets ornery with me, or starts questioning my integrity, we can have a conversation about absolutely, I’ve got a very thick skin. But you know, at the end of the day, is this really worth it? And it’s it’s a tough thing, because, you know, I mean, when I first started my business, it was absolutely all about the money. I had to make money. I mean, let’s just face it, I had to do it. And then on the seventh, eighth, ninth year, I was like, okay, it’s less about the money and more about the quality of the work. Unfortunately, I’m not…
Dawn Brolin 27:53
100%
Scott Cytron 27:53
Yeah, it’s now all about the work. And I, you know, I feel like the the pay is going to be there, the money is going to be there, hopefully. And will last I’ve been very fortunate people have been incredibly kind to me, over the years and generous. And, you know, I know we work hard for what we do. But at the same time, I never, never think that something’s an absolute, I absolutely am grateful for everything we get. But sometimes you have to fire a client and that’s not easy. I always feel like, Oh, my God, this whole door is going to shut and not open. And the moment you do it, you know, as a business owner, like this weight comes off of you. And a window opens and something else happens. It always works like that. I don’t know why, I don’t know if that’s fate, I don’t know what it is. But it’s just weird.
Dawn Brolin 28:41
Well, and I think one of the things that I want to Well, this is going to be the kind of the last week well, we usually go 25 minutes or so. So we’ll but I want to finish with this part. Because you know, you submitted we always have people submit to us some information so that I don’t, you know, ask you questions that make no sense to you. But the I think the most impressive thing that I read about kind of your art are written conversation about what you do, why you do it, what you’re motivated for, and what makes you happy. And the number one word that I that just pulls right out is honesty. And I think at the end of the day, if you can be honest with yourself, and be able to say, and there are situations where I’ve seen practitioners work, and it’s garbage. I’ve seen it. I’m like, How is this client paying $65,000 in self employment tax? Why are they not an S-Corp? Like, I look at this stuff, and I’m like, I wonder because I don’t know, how do you look in the mirror or send an invoice to a client and take their money when you did such bad work? Now I will say for myself even if I make mistakes or I you know I dropped the ball on something. It will not cost the client anything because that’s my integrity, my ethics and my honesty that I know I jacked it up. It’s my fault. And so I don’t feel comfortable and I can’t sleep at night, if I know that I’ve done dishonest, right. And so I know honesty for you is one of your biggest things. And I agree with you and you can’t look yourself in the mirror. Or you know, what’s worse is if you can, and you’re being dishonest, that’s even worse. But tell tell me about that honesty thing, because I really, that really spoke to me.
Scott Cytron 30:21
Well, I just feel like you have to be genuine. I mean, you can’t, people are gonna play games are going to play games until the world is over, which hopefully, isn’t anytime soon. But you have to have integrity and honesty. And I think along with incomes trust. And I will tell you, you know, I always ask I ask a client two things. I asked them if they’d rather be rich or famous. Because I don’t whenever I have a new client, I say what would you rather be rich or famous? Or what do you mean? What do you mean by that? I said, Okay, if you want to be rich, it’s all about PR is all about getting your company’s name in the paper. If you want to be famous, it’s about getting your name in the paper, or the media, whatever it is, but that’s always a good question. The second is, you know, just you want to at the end of the day, you want to absolutely be honest with what you’re doing. I have done crisis communications in my time, and which, which is basically if a client was imperil, for some reason, let’s say they had somebody on their staff that embezzled money or somebody went to jail, or there was really a big problem like that, I’ve done that kind of work. I now outsource that, like if I have a client that has that, because there are people to do a way better than me. But I always say what, at the end of the day, my best day, I always say what is your best day? Like? What makes you the happiest? What is your best day? My best day is when a client will call me up. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a client will call me up and say, I’ve got a problem. Can you help me fix it? Because to me that says you totally believe in my integrity. Now, you may not always take my advice, which is your deal, you know, and I’ll never tell somebody their baby’s ugly outright, probably sandwich that in something. But I always tell by clinets by saying, you know, and if you don’t feel like you’re going down a rabbit hole with something? I’ll let you know. Because why would you want to hear me say, oh, everything’s great. I want to be a yes, man. You know, what good does that do? Anybody? You know, we’ve had several recently, you know, like, with COVID, going on, we’ve had a couple of instances. And I’ll give them my opinion about what I feel like they should be doing and whether they again, whether they choose to follow it or not as their deal. I can’t control that narrative. But I know for my off, yeah, I can look in the mirror every day and say I really did the best I could.
Dawn Brolin 32:47
Yeah, and I think that that’s, you know, it’s that’s an amazing message. And I guess that would for me, that is what when I read the the information that you had sent over, and I’m just like, every bit of what it sounded like in what you wrote, and what you sent over was definitely coming from your heart. And you can, you can read the honesty, you know what I’m saying? And I think this episode is about honesty and integrity. And if you can be honest with yourself, and you have an integrity, things will always work out for you. Because you are being asked, like you said, is it fate? What is it when you close that door? And then another one, probably for open? In some cases? Right? And I think that comes down to at the end of the day that that ability to have that honesty, integrity, you’re trustworthy. People are comfortable around you because you, you know, you’re not sugarcoating things you’re telling them. And like you said, Let him take the information in and do what they wish with it. But you always know you’re giving the people I mean, you know, as an accountant, people always say, Well, what do you think? Can’t I you know, what if I did this, and can I do that? And I’m like, Okay, listen, I’m going to tell you what you should be doing. And then you’re going to go ahead and do it or you won’t do it. You know, Oh, should I go and buy this truck at year end, because I just want to reduce my expenses? I think that’s stupid. I think that that would do really need that. Like you need it. Like I’m always very open with them. Not gonna, I’m not gonna Yes, sir. them and be like, oh, yeah, that’d be awesome. We’ll get yourself a truck like, and you know, you’re on the phone. And you’re like, I just got to tell you, I just don’t think that’s the right answer. It could have been, it would be very easy to go. Oh, yeah, go and get it. No problem. We’ll just make sure you send me the paperwork, so I can get it into your books. Like, that’s too easy.
Scott Cytron 34:29
I love that.
Dawn Brolin 34:29
Right? And it’s like, I got to have that conversation with them.
Scott Cytron 34:34
Don’t you wish that they would teach this at school? Don’t you wish they would teach you something like, like, from an early age? Even like preschool. And I don’t know that they do. It’s been years since my son was in school, but I you know, I just don’t know. If it’s if that’s something that’s being taught. I you know, I’m afraid that’s probably not. I
Dawn Brolin 34:54
I mean, to think about, like a course on decision making. Yeah, right. Right. Like okay, you, we’re giving you information and you read the and then you interpret the information, and then you use it or lose it. And teaching them how to work through that would be really awesome. Maybe we can get, you know, they’re doing education reform, if we can slip that in somehow..
Scott Cytron 35:13
I’ll get it on the agenda, how’s that?
Dawn Brolin 35:17
On the agenda! Well, Scott Cytron. I really, I’m and I’m being as genuine as I am always very honest and open. And I wouldn’t say these boastful things about people if I didn’t believe them, but I’ve really appreciated you. You’ve helped me in my career tremendously. Just through the work we’ve done with Intuit, of course, with writing and different things that we’ve been doing. And I just want to thank you, from my side of the industry from from being the accounting side, you know, you’re you’re out there giving us the information that we need to make those good decisions. And I don’t know if anyone thanks you for that, you know, a check isn’t thanks enough for you. But I just personally have appreciation for what you’ve done for me. So I want to thank you for that.
Scott Cytron 35:55
That’s really, really good night. Like, that means more to me than I can tell you. Thank you.
Dawn Brolin 36:00
Oh, Scott. I mean, we really go way back, man, we really do. And, and I wouldn’t, you know, I want to have you on again, I’d love to talk more. You know, this, the DM Disruptions about just where I’m trying to disrupt the industry in a positive way. Right? So helping people to take like you’re saying, take the information on what you shouldn’t shouldn’t be doing as a practitioner, and interpreting it, but not just sitting there and thinking about it, but doing something about it. We want people to do things, right, we got Scaling New Heights coming up, don’t just go to a conference or watch a webinar to just be present. You know, just be there as a human. Be there with purpose. And then take whatever you learn, even if it’s just one thing, and make a change in your day in your life, and I promise you, your practice will change. And that’s what we’re trying to do. So, Scott, you’ve been awesome, and I appreciate you. And I’ll be looking for you if you’re if I see you as Scaling and be out the ball. I know you’ll be the slowest guy walking, but I’ll be able to find you I’m sure!
Scott Cytron 36:58
Thank you, I will.
Dawn Brolin 37:01
You take care and say hi to your son for me because I do remember meeting him I think it was at QuickBooks Connect event we sat together towards the front I think but I do remember him and I wish you the best and I know, I know We’ll be talking again soon.
Scott Cytron 37:14
Sounds good. Thank you!
Dawn Brolin 37:16
All right. Thanks everybody for listening to DM Disruption Dawn Brolin here with my man Scott Cytron love him. This episode is sponsored by ADP my favorite payroll processing company you know why cuz I don’t like process payroll. So Amen. For ADP. I just have to say that. Scott again. Thank you so much. You’re wonderful, and we’ll talk again soon. Sounds good. Thank you. Alright, take care. Bye. Bye, everybody.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Episode Summary
Liscio’s Alison Ball joins Dawn Brolin to discuss how Liscio is your all in one solution for better communication with your clients, a hub to receive important tax documents, and a place to track all your messages and files in one place, all with top-notch cyber security! With more and more practitioners moving their firm to Liscio, listen now to see how they can help you and your clients work better together, and help achieve both of your goals easily and efficiently!
Get to know Alison:
Alison Ball is the Director of Marketing and Influencer Strategy for Liscio, Inc. She is passionate about helping firms to differentiate themselves by providing Client Experience 2.0TM to their clients. Before joining Liscio in August 2020, Alison spent 15 years leading accountant influencer programs at Intuit, and prior to that she was an accountant herself. In her spare time, she grows amazing backyard vegetables and loves hiking in the San Francisco Bay Area. She believes that life is too short to spend it with mean people, and any day she can help someone else be successful is a good day indeed.
What is Liscio?
Alison describes Liscio as “a collaborative environment for you and your team to work together along with your clients.”
Liscio is an all in one communication platform for tax practitioners that makes communication between them and their clients incredibly easy. With both an app and browser based software, Liscio provides you with a messaging platform to communicate with your clients, and helps keep all the information they share with you in one place. They also make it easy for clients to share their tax documents with you, and even send reminders to your clients when they are behind on sending you important tax information.
Why Email Communication is Not Serving You
Alison and Dawn share their frustration when having to use email to communicate with their clients, and share how they have both been stuck digging through their inboxes to find the one piece of important information.
When Liscio is implemented, you can completely avoid this, shares Alison. Liscio keeps all your messages and client documents in one portal, so you can access them from any place at any time! No more lost messages, and no more digging or sorting your inbox!
Liscio also offers integrations with your favorite apps such as QuickBooks Online, SmartVault, Adobe Sign, and more!
A Better Work Life Balance
Dawn and Alison share how many clients prefer to text their practitioners for information, rather than through email. Alison talks about how this can be a problem, and how texting can feel very invasive on the practitioner’s end, and make them feel rushed to answer their clients’ questions.
With Liscio, clients can still have the convenience of contacting their practitioner directly through their phone, and practitioners can know that all of their client’s messages are already sorted, and will be easily accessible during working hours, rather than having to track the messages they receive while at the dinner table.
Learn more at www.liscio.me
Want to listen to this episode? Click here!
Want to hear more episodes? Listen here!
Find Dawn Brolin’s Latest Book, The Designated Motivator for Accounting Professionals, on Amazon!
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Transcript:
Dawn Brolin 0:05
This episode of the DM Disruption is sponsored by Veem. Veem provides a convenient way to manage AR and AP was superior reporting, a mass pay option, payment tracker, invoice capture and more. Veeam also provides a start to finish approval process to minimize the risk of fraud, a common occurrence in business today. At the end of the day, Veem is an all in one business global payment solutions for clients of all sizes, visit them today at www.Veem.com.
Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Designated Motivator, DM Disruption today and our podcast, we’re really excited today to have one of the greatest people I’ve known in the accounting industry for so so long is Alison ball. And many of you know, Alison, Alison is with Liscio, which is an application that is solving for pain points with your clients. And I think the message that Alison I want to bring to you all today is that we as the firm owners, and in the practitioners, and the technicians sometimes need to step back and think about what the client is experiencing. And we love to solve for ourselves because that’s natural, but we really want to make sure we’re keeping the client in the forefront of our mind. And in order to do that, and in order to be successful in that experience, we’ve got to have tools in place to keep that experience positive. So Alison, welcome back. We’ve had you on before, and you’re always a blessing.
Alison Ball 1:28
Thank you, Dawn, it’s just amazing to spend a few minutes here here with you and your audience. I loved how you introduced this this chat that we’re gonna have today, because I think accountants and bookkeepers are so heart led, that you know, because you can’t you join the profession, because you want to help your clients be more successful, right. But somewhere along the line, you know, somewhere along the line and get bogged down in this friction with you and your clients. And I hear people say, you know, well, I, I’d like to fire all my clients, or I, you know, this is the year I’m gonna make, make my clients, you know, get their documents on time. Or, you know, you know, this is the year that I get to do things differently somehow, and then get we never do. And we endure these busy seasons, right? These busier seasons, and the stress mounts and things. And I think the reason I found Licio so incredibly fascinating is that Chris has uncovered a, a solution to a problem that many people just don’t even know exists. And that’s how they’re how they are allowing their clients or how they’re asking their clients to work with their firm in a digital fashion. So that’s what I’m really fascinated about. And that’s what I want to talk about today is how if you nail that, if you remove that friction, how all boats can rise?
Dawn Brolin 2:53
Absolutely. And, and I know obviously, as a practitioner, I hear from let’s say, even new clients that are referred over to us. We’re listening to them as they, you know, well, why did you and I asked the question, I think it’s a great question to ask a new client. Why did you switch to me? Like, why were you looking for another accountant? And I would, I would probably, I could say 85 to 90% is communication. Yeah, there’s a lack of communication. And I just got a new client from New Jersey who was like, you know, you’re in Connecticut, I’m in New Jersey, how are we going to communicate? And that was my biggest problem with my prior account, and I couldn’t get a hold of them. And, and certainly, we can go down the email road, Allison. We can talk about emails, because emails are the death of everybody. Right? And it’s, it’s really wasted time, no value there. And there. They are a standalone type of communication, we need a one face one stop one way to communicate with the clients. And that’s why we chose Liscio, we needed to communicate with the clients. And I and that said this before, they love it. It’s so easy for them to use. They’re all on cell phones. I think I have two clients with Star Trek phones, I call it their the flip, they still may text by hitting, you know, to get to see, to get three times. That’s that’s not the norm. And so I think a lot of times and I know people, oh, well, people aren’t going to want to add another app to their phone. People have a bazillion apps on their phone, they can’t even find half of them. They don’t know to put them in folders and things like that. Right. So that assumption, I think is a challenge for practitioners. Yeah,
Alison Ball 4:31
I think like Well, let’s start with the email thing because I think most people think of email as the best way to communicate. And it certainly is easy in the moment. You can type an email and kind of forget about it. But what you have to understand is what is the downstream effect of that email. So if I send an email, let’s pretend you’re my client. If I send an email to you with a long list of documents and a link to my portal because I want you to send them securely and you get this on you’re probably going to get it on your phone. You are probably nowhere near a scanner. And you’re in, you’re busy, you’re in the middle of your busy day. So what happens to that email, you open it, you go, Oh, Alison wants something, okay. And you immediately close it, you probably mark it unread. And then your day takes over and it goes down, down, down, down, down into the inbox, right? Now, eventually now, okay, then Dawn saying, hey, Alison didn’t send her stuff. Send me another email. Same thing happens. Oh my gosh, don’t you know now Tracy’s asking you “Hey, hey, Dawn, Alison didn’t send her stuff.” So, okay, now you got Tracy on you. So then Tracy starts emailing me. Okay, now Don and Tracy can’t see inside each other’s inboxes. Right? And so then okay, then I answer one of them. One of those emails that got sent, right. And so then I’m, and maybe I’ve got some questions in my email. And so everything is all like, and then there’s no way for your team to see in each other’s inboxes the client gets lost, they lose the string, they can understand what they’re doing. So what Chris created with Liscio, Chris and Sekhar the two co founders is a system of it’s it’s a collaborative environment for you and your team to work together along with your clients. And so what happens is that the client is, you know, at the closest analogy I have done is the way that you work with your online bank. Right? When you go to send a document to your bank, what do you do you just snap the picture, but you send it like your deposit a check, right? Liscio is that easy. So you just so you said maybe clients don’t want to put an app on their phone. Cool thing is they don’t have to just like a bank, they can log into their browser, right? But the magic happens when you bring everybody into that same quiet space. There’s no email, strings, there’s nothing, there’s no waiting through anything, the staff can see everything for that one client. So you and Tracy can see everything that you need from me. And it’s and it’s all like there. And then the system auto reminds if I owe you something, the system auto reminds so magic happens, and I think what’s really interesting is is that people need to walk in their clients shoes to understand what the experience is. And I just don’t think that email and the link to a portal is making anybody’s firm, more efficient, move faster or look good. And so I’m on a mission to change that.
Dawn Brolin 7:33
Absolutely. I wouldn’t even take it a step further. So we’re emails Absolutely, they those numbers, you know, on the daily they start dropping down no matter how much you make it be, you know, tag this to junk email, you don’t want to look at it. I find not only emails which I can’t stand emails more, which even becomes more of a problem. Texting. Oh, now we’ve talked about texting. Oh, yeah. The texting. The texting has turned into email, honestly. Yeah. And people are goosebumps talking about it, but it’s demanding.
Alison Ball 8:07
But it’s demanding, it’s it’s like it’s like it’s like email in your face. It’s like, Oh, my God, I’m gonna get, where’s my camera? I’m gonna get you right here in the face, like poke in the eyes email.
Dawn Brolin 8:17
And you know what? It’s like, okay, you text me. If I’ve read it, you don’t want to read it, the text. And now that text from somebody ends up over the weekend in 20th position. And I’ve replied to them, because I know that like you said, it’s in my face. And they want an instant reply. I go, but what…
Alison Ball 8:36
Which we love being interrupted and family dinners, and yeah, we’d love that. Right.
Dawn Brolin 8:41
Love that. And so, you know, clients expect to be able to text you. And they in so I actually this phone right here, this is my personal cell phone. Now only the special get this phone number, because this is my this is my personal phone, I have a phone in that office over there. That’s the business phone. And that does not come out of the office. That’s for authorization codes, that’s protected from clients. Because and I don’t give this to out to my clients. I have some friends, obviously, our clients by telling them if you text the personal phone number, you have been voted off the island. Oh, can note you’re gone, you’re out of here. So what Liscio will do for you and like like Alison was saying, it only has the important information in there. So you’re not having to, you know, sort through emails or go back to your text and go scrolling and looking for all the work you just promised you would do over the weekend. And you’re you know, now it’s Monday and you’re like, oh, did I text somebody over the weekend it was you know, football, whatever. So when having things in one place, you’re going to minimize that I just call it wasted time.
Alison Ball 9:53
A tremendous amount of wasted time to look for things and to search for things and to look across platforms. And the other thing Don is I don’t know about your clients, but I hear frequently from practitioners that their clients will text them documents, pictures of documents. Now, yes. Now, if you have a client who is texting you, and especially those that are taking photos of documents and attaching them to a text, they’re giving you a really clear message that they want to work with you using their phone. It is the clearest message you could have. So those clients that are texting you, if you move them off text, and you move them on to Liscio, they will be delighted. And your communications with them. And the way that you work together with that client will be elevated 100x And B, it’s so much better, because the client will be like, Okay, I have one place, oh, if I need done, I go here, right here, right here on my phone. And and again, people don’t have to use the phone app, they that’s that’s it’s just like dealing with your bank, you can use the browser or, or your phone. But we’ve found that that is a really big, a really big thing. And then what happens is when you’re getting those documents quickly, and your team is on the same page, and everybody can see what’s happening with that client, all those communications, the documents, the signatures, what else we talked about the tasks, the all the things that have to do with the with the tooing and froing, between your firm and your client. Everyone can can move faster. And your work gets more accurate. And and all these missteps that sometimes happen. Like you never have to worry about a foot refer as a firm owner about being blindsided by something. Because maybe you were out of the loop out of the communication loop because a staff member was dealing with them, and maybe they didn’t deal with them in the right way or, or they said something that wasn’t communicated back to you. And then you had a misstep, you never get those blind sides never happens. Because anybody can go in and review the history of it. Right, of that client?
Dawn Brolin 11:59
Definitely. And I think another kind of component that we don’t I don’t think we really think about all the time is that everything being in that one place, having all the firm have that access, eliminating emails, because people this is one thing that people don’t think about either. And that’s what this whole conversation is about is the client side of it. And on the client side, so many clients, especially if you’re dealing with individual tax clients, they don’t live on their email.
Alison Ball 12:26
No, they’re they’re doing their businesses, right. They’re running their businesses.
Dawn Brolin 12:30
And so you know, we happen to sit at a computer all day. So we have I’ll call it just carte blanche access to emails. But our clients don’t my contractors aren’t going home at night sitting down and reading my email with my questions. But if I text them throughout the day, previously texting them that I get an answer from them right away, I can keep moving in my work with you’re doing that with Liscio and tell them either notifications on by the way, because that those notifications aren’t going to pile up like an email notification.
Alison Ball 13:02
No, they just they just get it they just get a little ping with “Hey, Dawn has a question.” “Oh, Dawn has a question.” *ping ping ping*, and they answer back.
Dawn Brolin 13:09
And that’s, that they so here’s an I think that this is even more powerful than anything else. Right? They know if there is something that comes through, they know that that is their accountant, their tax accountant on a text, they don’t post you on an email, ding, they don’t know it’s you. And they and they get so many of those dings that they don’t care anymore. Where when you when you have one specific application that is specific to your taxes to your business, and direct access to your CPA, they are going to tell everybody about that. Because no one else has you know who else is doing it? Well, hopefully everyone is because everyone gets on Liscio.
Alison Ball 13:51
And we have had so many new firms come to us because clients use Liscio with a different practitioner. So we’ve had bookeepers, we’ve had them use, like for example, let’s say I’m let’s say I’m the client and I’m using Liscio with my bookkeeper. And then I go to my CPA firm and I say “Wait, you don’t use Liscio.” And then the CPA firm says, “Well, what do you mean?” And so and then they show it and then they’re like, oh, so we get so many referrals from the client actually driven from the client, because the clients really love it.
Dawn Brolin 14:21
Absolutely. And that that mindset of, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, I was wanting an app like this, I wanted to develop a powerful accounting app that do this communication with for years, I’ve wanted to do it. And now I’m like, well, guess what, I didn’t have to do it because someone else did. And now I like it.
Alison Ball 14:45
It’s very reasonably priced. And it’s very reasonably priced. So you don’t have to go through all the app development. Yeah. And I think the other thing done just you know, I’m mindful we’re going to be up at time pretty quick, but I I think the other thing is just the security and you touched on it. But the but email is such a scary place. And texting is scary. And you know people have to if you have a PTIN, you’ve you’ve had to fill in your Wisp and say that you have that written information security. Is it plan or protocol plan? I don’t want the P stands for. But you’ve actually verified that you’ve got that in place. And so if you’re using email, then you don’t have it in place.
Dawn Brolin 15:25
Yeah, the PTIN. is actually the preparer tax identification numbers what the PTIN is.
Alison Ball 15:30
With the, with the risk.
Dawn Brolin 15:33
And you’re checking a box, man, when you say, Yeah, I’m secure. I’m good. You know, people say, Well, you know, the IRS is never going to come ask for a copy of your plan. Well, you know what, never say never. Because you know, what they want the IRS right now they need money. And you know, how they’re going to get money by finding people, period. So, you know, be be aware, and and think a little bit more about it. I think that’s what we’ve got to do. We just got to step back for a hot second and say, what are the most important components of my firm? Number one are my clients because without them, I don’t have a firm. And so if they really are in the forefront of your mind, if your clients really are that important to you, then you’re going to want to take the steps that you need to implement in an application, Liscio to communicate with them securely. That because here’s it at the end of the day, they’re not thinking about security, they’re not they don’t think about it at all. They’re like, you know, I have somebody, oh, let me just shoot you an email with my W2. And I’m like, No, it’s like, you’re not thinking how you just want to get it to me. So we have to be at the forefront thinking of the security 100%.
Alison Ball 16:40
Yeah, and well you know, it’s just Liscio just makes it very easy for people to do that. And I think if I wanted to leave one thing with you is it’s just really walk in your clients shoes, when you think about the technology you ask them to use an email is probably causing a lot of hurt and harm in your firm. So rethinking mail for sure.
Dawn Brolin 17:00
Yeah, absolutely. And just think about what you hate it because I totally do. I totally do. Um, you know, everybody wants a clean inbox. Yeah, and including your clients, right, including your clients. So, but yes, Liscio telling you to collect communications, make it seamless, make it easy for people to communicate with you. Because if you don’t, someone else will. And that’s the that’s really the takeaway, just get it together. It’s not hard to implement. This is not like trying to implement some kind of new technology that we don’t even understand. It’s something you’re doing already. Do it in one place and do it with Liscio, period. So Alison, thank you so much. It’s always a pleasure to have you on.
Alison Ball 17:40
Thank you, Dawn!
Dawn Brolin 17:40
Everyone, we will see you on the next DM disruption, we’re going to continue to bring you insights, knowledge, practitioner tips and tricks and all the things that we can help you grow your practice to be more efficient, more effective, and most importantly profitable. Okay, so thanks again. We’ll see you guys all next time
This episode is sponsored by Bookkeep
Episode Summary
Truly Financial’s Mike Milan joins Dawn Brolin to discuss the benefits of digital banking through Truly Financial, and highlights how banking, wire transfers, and implementing company spending cards can be made easy for everyone, including small businesses! Listen now to find out how Truly Financial can benefit your business, as well as how accounting professional can help save their clients money!
Episode Notes
What is Truly Financial?
Mike Milan of Truly Financial joins Dawn Brolin to discuss how digital banking can be beneficial for small businesses, and how Truly Financial helps save their clients hundreds of dollars in wire transfer fees and account minimum fees.
Truly Financial is a digital banking service that allows companies to have international purchasing power, even if they can’t compete with larger businesses around them. Truly Financial solves the currency exchange problem, and keeps the transaction local, rather than across borders.
Mike even compares the ease of their wire transfers to using Venmo—transactions are made quick and easy.
Implemented Truly Financial in Your Business
Opening up an accountant with Truly Financial is easy, and can be done online! You provide them with basic identifying documents of you and your business, and they do the rest.
Truly Financial Spend Management Cards
Truly Financial also provides you with spend management cards that you can distribute amongst your employees, rather than having to reimburse them. You are able to set the spending limits, see all the transitions that are taking place, and these cards can even be used for employees who work overseas.
Mike highlights how you as the business owner are given up to 2.5% cash back on most purchases, even on the purchases made by your employees; they also have no minimum account fees!
“We’re trying to bring the perks of the big bank down to everyone.” says Mike.
Learn more at https://trulyfinancial.com/
Want to listen to this episode? Click here!
Want to hear more episodes? Listen here!
Find Dawn Brolin’s Latest Book, The Designated Motivator for Accounting Professionals, on Amazon!
Follow Dawn Brolin!
Transcript
Dawn Brolin 0:06
This episode of the DM Disruption is sponsored by Bookkeep. Bookkeep provides automated bookkeeping by posting sales and reconciling payment deposits from Square, Spotify, Amazon seller, and more to QuickBooks Online or Xero, automatically. What is great is that the Setup is easy and nothing needs to be done. Once it’s set up. After that it’s set it and forget it. Bookkeep will do your job from that moment forward. You can even have historical transactions posted, all you have to do is ask, stop stressing about posting these simple but voluminous transactions and start letting Bookkeep do the work for you. Check them out at www.bookkeep.com today!
Hey everybody and welcome back to the DM Disruption, myself Dawn Brolin your designated motivator is here to help you come up with solutions for your firm, but most importantly for your clients because they’re here for you to be the trusted adviser to guide them in the right direction, and we have one of my very favorite people I’ve known for a long time. Mike Milan, is here today from Truly Financial, an interestingly awesome product, that we’re going to kind of give you a little bit more detail about what Truly Financial can do for you and your firm, but also for your clients. So, Mike, thanks so much for coming. I love you, you’re like one of my favorite people, we it’s like you’re like a brother from another mother. Right?
Mike Milan 1:28
I will tell you, I’m motivated right now, I’m already motivated, right? So if you’re if your job is to motivate me, you did it even before we got on the call,
Dawn Brolin 1:36
Bang! That’s what we’re here to do. Because really the end of the day, we just want to solve the problems of the world. And one of them is, with regards to banking, and being able to make payments and to be able to collect money and to have, you know, your employees being able to have cards and you know, doing all these things so that we can run loose, you want to make business work better, faster and smoother. So Mike, tell us all about Truly Financial, let’s get this going.
Mike Milan 2:02
And I gotta tell you what I mean, when you look at it, and I’ve got 15 years of now banking experience, you know, talking with banks, teaching bankers, talking with small business owners, and it kept coming back to the same thing of, it’s getting more and more difficult to do business globally. And it and I don’t know about you, but when I went through the MBA program, I read a book called The World is Flat, and it predicted the globalization of the economy, which is saying, you know, even the smallest business and Galesburg, Illinois, you know, could do business in India, or Pakistan, or China or any of these other places. But it’s so difficult to do that, right? It’s so difficult to do that. And not only that, when we started talking about, especially after COVID remote teams and working with other people and getting the best talent. Well, the best talent is no longer just contained in a geography, you know, inside a border. Right? It could be anywhere your best player could be in Toronto, well, how do I work with that person, when they’re the best, you know, key player. So what we’ve done is, is build products that help you not only be a hyper local, small business, but have an international beef or, international flair if you’d like that, and expand your business globally.
Dawn Brolin 3:17
Yeah, an international presence that somebody that is a smaller, smaller company, like you said, can’t kind of compete with the cost to do business globally. And I think that that’s one of the key pieces is that well, how do I even open that door? How do I even in most people would be like, well, now I got currency translation issues. I’ve got this. I’ve got banking fees, I’ve got that. So Truly Financial is opening up that door to allow people to be able to maneuver in that space. Right?
Mike Milan 3:46
Yea, you know, what’s funny about that is I mean, it said at you lose up to 5% of an invoice just by doing business internationally, maybe because you you do have that you do have maybe a currency exchange problem where you’re forced to convert at the time of the transaction? Well, you know, we’ve done away with that by being able to hold multiple currencies in one account, so I can exchange money when it’s good for me, I don’t have to do it exactly when the transaction takes place. The other thing is, is that a lot of like international wire, sometimes go through multiple steps where you know, you can’t go from, you know, some of the African currencies like SETI into the Japanese Yen. I know that’s kind of a big problem here in Texas, we’d have a lot of that. But as an example, you have to convert it to US dollars first, and then back into Yen. Some of there’s some of them that just don’t have a direct exchange, you have to use an intermediary. And that costs money, right? Sometimes $40 to $60 per transaction. So we want to help you save money by making it just instant.
Dawn Brolin 4:48
Okay, and so, so tell us something like that. So, if you’re a if you’re a practitioner, and you have clients that are you know, maybe even already in that global world or they’re already you know, doing A lot of transactions of business in Canada, let’s just say right, because I would think, you know, a lot of us have have businesses that have, you know, activity in Canada. So, walk through a simple scenario and how what, what is the Truly product actually do to improve that process for the client? If you come up with an example for me?
Mike Milan 5:19
Yeah, so I mean, I mean, normally, there would be a cross border transaction, right, which which you know, where the people in Canada, even though you want to send money in US dollars, they have to either receive it in US dollars, and then make a conversion to Canadian dollars, which is, again, another pain in the butt for them. That’s kind of a typical thing, right? Where you’re paying them or you’re receiving money from them the same way there’s this conversion charge. What we’ve done is we’ve created a way to conduct that transaction locally. And it’s more like a Venmo transaction, and it happens instantly. So let’s just say that I’m in Toronto, you’re there. And it was a Connecticut?
Dawn Brolin 5:55
Yeah!
Mike Milan 5:56
Okay. Yeah. It’s at one side of the world that I don’t know very much about.
Dawn Brolin 6:02
It is mysterious out here!
Mike Milan 6:03
That’s right. So, but think about it, like a Venmo transaction, where you can just say, I want to pay @ Mike, and I send it into Toronto, the same way that you would, you know, me with a Venmo transaction now. So what we’re doing is on the back end is, is creating a transaction that happens locally, rather than across the border.
Dawn Brolin 6:22
Got it. Right. And that’s perfect. Because that’s really, at the end of the day, what we want to do is we just want to either get paid or pay, we don’t want to have to go through, like you said, dealing with exchange rates and how to make sure that that’s all done correctly. And you know, any accounting software tries to do that. It’s not always successful, but, but just that facilitation is what you’re solving for.
Mike Milan 6:45
Right? We’re like a Sherpa, right? And then international funds, Sherpa, right, we’re gonna guide that transaction all the way through. And it’s basically, because I tell you, anybody that tries to do an international wire right now, there’s no visibility, you don’t know what happens, you don’t know when it even changes hands to another person. Sometimes it takes up to two weeks, and that could delay your goods. You know, just because no one’s gonna send it until they receive the money. So what we’re doing is we’re walking that transaction all the way through for you at the speed of banking.
Dawn Brolin 7:15
Right? So yeah, within a 24 hour period, or whatever that may be, right? Because you got that
Mike Milan 7:20
Sometimes instantaneous, sometimes it takes a day or two.
Dawn Brolin 7:23
Yeah. So now, so a client comes to you, or, you know, business owner comes to Mike and says, “Hey, I want in.” What do I have to do? How do I get how does this all get set up? Because that’s what a lot of times people will say, Well, how hard is it to get this implemented? Right? That’s typically a normal question. So tell that process,
Mike Milan 7:43
if you’ve ever opened a bank account is the same. But what we’ve tried to do is take away the, you know, the requirement to walk into a bank, sit down with a bank loan officer and go through every single process, and I forgot this paper, and then I gotta go ping pong back and forth, we email or private things. We’ve built in automation on most all of the verification of a business, right, because there’s a couple of regulations, we have to go go, you know, go by, as one is know your customer, the others know your business. And that way, we know kind of what’s happening in the business. So we have to verify who you are. And we have to verify who your business is. And that’s really done with, you know, your EIN will say, for US business, we can verify that your real business, we look at the website to make sure that, you know, if you have a website tried to determine what business you’re in. There’s certain businesses we can’t do business with, right? So and then then of course, your as a person, it’s a copy of your ID and then just gain your thing like I did with Alexa yesterday. So now like Alexa even recognizes me. So it’s really that easy. It does take a few minutes, it might take, you know, five or 10 minutes to go through the process, but it’s really point click, type in your EIN and we we go gather all the data for you.
Dawn Brolin 8:52
Which is awesome. Because I had an experience, just I would say, I think it was like last maybe May, April or May. And I was going to set up a new bank account, right? And with Bank of America, you can you can set up a new account online, you know what? The process is awful. The process is brutal. Any of your banks, your, what we’ll call your “historical native banks” that we’ve had, you know, at the corner of, you know, Main Street for years, even they haven’t solved for exactly what you’ve already solved for. You know, you go you set up the account and you give them some stuff, but then you got to wait for the signature paperwork to come. So you can they they’re not even using E signature of Bank of America for this process. But you’re just like what, so the big count takes like three to four weeks to just set up because they’re gonna mail you the papers to sign and then you mail them back. And I mean, it’s just insanity. Like it just doesn’t make sense. So that is a huge solution that truly financial is solving when people want to set up a bank account. Bang, just go on there, get it set up, and then go Talk about the card. So we got businesses who have employees who, you know, need to get paid and need to pay for things or whatever. Tell us about the cards and the card process.
Mike Milan 10:08
Yeah, I tell you, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s one of those things, it’s, it’s the new way of doing business, right, it’s a way for you to not only give your team some authority, some responsibility, but also help them be accountable with Spend Management cards, right. So it’s, it’s, it’s as easy as just typing in your name, and sending you out a card, then I set the transaction limits that you can spend per month, per category, per transaction, I can set all those limits for you. But I can also, you know, have visibility, and I can see what you’re doing instantly. So as you make a transaction, I see it happening as it as it works. So you can do that across your team. And what’s interesting is that we can also issue cards across the border. So if you find that perfect employee in Canada, or, you know, Warsaw, Poland or Singapore, you can actually bring them on your team and and pay them much like you would in their local currency or in your own. Right. So it’s one of those things that we’ve really solved for that way. What I do like about it, is that our corporate cards, right that these these SmartLink, we call them smart link, which is linking my employees to my account, right? So SmartLink is our spend management system. But our corporate cards are unlike any debit card. So think about the debit card, where you just go use it for your everyday purchases. And that’s kind of our tagline is, you know, your everyday domestic and international purchases, right? That’s kind of what we’re, we’re working with. You actually were given cashback up to 2.5 % on everything. You can’t get that with a debit card, right? That’s one of the reasons why we give you a corporate card. And believe it or not, if you go try to apply for a corporate card, most banks have minimum requirements, they got minimum, so much on daily deposit or so much on your annual revenue. None of that, right. We’re trying to bring the perks of the big bank down to everyone. We’re really what we’re trying to do. It’s like getting a discount on every single thing you buy. Right? So..
Dawn Brolin 12:01
I’ll fight you for the quarter in the parking lot like you and I will be fist fighting for that quarter.
Mike Milan 12:10
Yeah, here’s, here’s the cool thing. Remember, the SmartLink accounts? Yep, everything your employees are purchasing rolls up to the main account. So they’re not getting the reward, you are right, even when they’re out, they’re spending on your behalf.
Dawn Brolin 12:22
And that is really powerful. Because if you think about it, umm, having employees, like, you know, say, Okay, we’ll just reimburse you. So a lot of companies do that. So if you have clients out there, people were listening, you have clients out there that are that have employees using a personal credit card, and a lot of like you said, a lot of the smaller businesses, and I’m saying smaller, a million and under people who are a million and under who have employees, and they use their own credit card, you reimburse them. They’re getting that either cashback depending on what kind of card they have credit card, on a credit card, they’re getting cashback and they’re getting or and or points or something. Right. So and I think that that’s a really big deal, the business owner, should be the one enjoying those perks, and those that cashback and how that all works. Because really, at the end of the day, that’s their money. Right? And so and they’re paying for them, and make the purchase. So they’re, they’re getting paid to go make the purchase, and now they’re getting cashback on their cars or points. Now we say no, I’m paying you to go do this thing. But I’m going to enjoy the reward, which is that the cashback?
Mike Milan 13:30
You know, it was fun is that a company I’d worked for prior, they took all of the money and then put it towards the party at the end of the year. Right. I mean, the the employees ended up getting it back in one way or the other. But I thought it was a great way to finance a, you know, company perks with those types of purchases.
Dawn Brolin 13:49
Absolutely. And I do I love also the fact that you don’t have fees, because that is what I mean statement fees. And just if you don’t have your you know, maintain your minimum balance, you’re going to get a fee for that. And then then the payments. Okay, let’s talk about the fees for when you pay somebody, right? You don’t have fees when you pay somebody.
Mike Milan 14:09
No.
Dawn Brolin 14:10
And that’s it globally, your the wire transfer fees, if you’re doing wire transfers, or doing any of those kinds of things, you’re paying 50 bucks, 75 bucks sometimes for those transfers. So if you have clients that are doing that, what’s beautiful about it, not only are we are we opening up the ability to do that global economy and global global payments, but being able to take clients that now already do that I thinking of one of my clients, he’s uh, he does a lot of work in Canada. And so he’s selling like these huge structures and things like that. For him to be able to pay for the goods and things that he’s doing, he’s going to be the next phone call that I make because he’s he could really benefit from this product for sure. So I want people as they’re listening, think about the clients that are working globally. And that are you you’re going to be doing tax returns soon. Then those of you who are listening, that are bookkeepers that are watching these fees come through, pay attention to the fees, because they are they can get big me. Some people will say to me, I don’t want to accept credit cards because I gotta pay fees. Well, you know, here’s your solution. We got it, we got solved already done.
Mike Milan 15:18
There you go, there you go. But, you know, it’s when all of our prices are listed right on the website, you know, I TrulyFinancial.com And mostly, everything’s free. Now, we got some value limitations, right. I mean, there’s only so many, you know, international wires that you can do in a month. But our limits, I think, are probably more than I would do anyway, you know, you know, between then I can look it up to be exact, but we’ll say you get 10 free, right? Who’s doing 10 of those a month? I mean, yeah, so, but we have to two programs. One is the free program where the limits are a little bit smaller, right, you may be three transactions here are 10 transactions there. And then we have a $25 month per actual fee and a bank account, we charge you $25 a month, but you get a lot more of those free transactions, you know, like 25 or so a month. So I mean, more than most people do anyway. But $25 a month, one time is a lot better than what you just said, $50. Every time.
Dawn Brolin 16:15
Exactly. Exactly. And you know, you know, Truly Financials and business make money to people, it’s, you know, we all are, that’s what business is about. But it but the cost that cost that reduction in fees, is going to can be substantial for some of your clients. And so you’ve got to, you know, and I was on another podcast with Allison Ball with Liscio. It’s client experience that we need to be more aware of. And I mean client experience in that, what can we bring to the table to them to say, Hey, listen, we’re going through your taxes, or I’m doing your books, and I’m seeing all the wire transfer fees that you’re paying, we got to do something different here. And so, you know, that is where we become the hero to our clients. And here’s a great example of where you can bring this product to your client say, Hey, listen, we watched all your fees, we gotta, we gotta do something different here for 2020. Great place to start with Truly Financial for sure.
Mike Milan 17:11
Well and I’ll tell you, I mean, I know I should be transparent. We’re saying, Okay, well, we’re giving you all these fees, right? We’re just we get a lot of different free transactions. And you say, Well, how do we make money? Well, if you look at our card, we’re a visa partner. So every time you use it, you know, we’re getting a piece of that transaction, which doesn’t come out of your pocket, it comes out of your vendors pocket, right. If you go to Walmart, if you go to Exxon Mobil, I mean, we’re getting a piece of that transaction, you know, through Visa.
Dawn Brolin 17:37
Yep. And you know, it’s interesting, too, because people don’t think of that, like the merchant fees. They think, Oh, I’m just Visa just gets my 3.2% or whatever, whatever the fee may be. There’s so much there’s a lot of components built into that 3.2%, and Truly Financial happens to be one of them for the Visa. But again, you’re not It’s not like your rates are going up. It’s not that’s not the situation. So it’s just the Visa is got this partnership. So it’s I think it’s an awesome solution. I think it’s something that we should be, we should have this in the forefront of our mind as we go through tax season. And as we go throughout the year, I mean, you can save your client two grand, that’s a lot of money, you save your clients, in some cases, probably five $6,000 in fees that they’re paying now. And so keep that in the forefront of your mind as you move forward through taxes and move forward through 2022 to keep it in the forefront. Like any last thoughts?
Mike Milan 18:29
Hey, we want to be your bank. That’s where it is.
Dawn Brolin 18:34
We want to be your bank. Truly Financial Mike Milan, we can sing my land is your land. That’s how I know. In my mind, every time I land is your land. Will you ever said that to me, I was like I’ll never pronounce your last name wrong again. Mulan, which I think is a Disney movie or something. But it’s Milan. So like, so much for spending some time with us today. Again, the DM Disruption is all about shaking your coconut and getting you to think about doing things differently. And yes, period. The world is changing. You can either fight against it and get left behind or you can join the fight and make changes in your business and with your clients. And Truly Financial is one of those components that you go we gotta shake it, put it in your head, so you’re thinking about it. And thank you again so much for listening. Mike, thanks so much for coming here today. And we will see you on the next DM Disruption. Thanks again, everybody. Thanks
Episode Summary
Fishbowl’s Senior Director of Integrated Services, Bev Lang, shares her journey within the accounting industry, her experiences “coming up to bat with Brolin,” and why Fishbowl feels like family, and is a key member in Team Brolin’s Starting Lineup!
This episode is sponsored by Fishbowl.
Beverly’s Introduction and Why We’re #BetterTogether
Beverly shares how difficult it can be to collaborate effectively, especially in the QSP industry, and talks about her passion for teaching others how to do so. She references QSP’s moto is “#BetterTogether”, and acknowledges how important it is to seek help when you need it, and be willing to help others when they are struggling
Beverly’s Journey and Experience with Fishbowl
Beverly started at a QSP, and after attending her first Scaling New Heights in 2009, she decided to take a chance starting her own QSP. She chose to go all in a few years later, and ended up having huge success!
Beverly talks about meeting Fishbowl at Scaling New Heights a few years later, and fell in love with the software that they provided. Beverly became their top seller, and Fishbowl eventually offered to buy her company. Now, Beverly and all of her employees have a Quickbooks channel at Fishbowl.
Beverly also talks about how Fishbowl has consistently outperformed similar programs and software, and shares her appreciation for the company as a whole.
Importance of Partnering in Payroll
Beverly talks about how she built her own empire, and how she has always been one of the top providers of payroll. She also talks about how important it is to become certified in payroll to show your knowledge to your clients.
Dawn agrees, and talks about how important it is to be in compliance with payroll, and how important it is to find a good partner to assist you.
Clients Success Stories with Fishbowl
Beverly talks about a medical equipment company she recently worked with, and how Fishbowl was able to not only provide excellent inventory management to their company, but also help in other aspects of their business, including all the medical requirements implemented by the FDA.
Beverly also talks about how many clients come to Fishbowl in desperate search of a system that provides them with what they need, but does so in an affordable way.
Impact of Covid on Manufacturing and Importance of Inventory Management
Dawn also talks about the importance of having a virtual or cloud based system that allows companies to implement new inventory programs without having to have a representative come in person.
Beverly agrees, and talks about how quickly Fishbowl pivoted their program to provide virtual solutions, and how Fishbowl has developed integrations with online businesses programs like Shopify, Amazon, and Etsy.
Dawn also discusses how important it is for businesses to partner with inventory management programs because it can be very difficult to project future inventory costs without proper assistance.
Beverly agrees, and shares her passion for educating customers on how to correctly understand their reports, and how an accurate understanding of inventory can lead to future savings and business success.
Beverly’s Current Work Life and Inspiration
Beverly talks about the difference between going from a business to an employee, and talks about the feeling of needing to prove herself. She also talks about trying to improve her work-life balance, and her desire to be able to have a team of people that work efficiently, without having to work 80 hour weeks.
Beverly also talks about how she found her initial motivation from her beginnings in the QSP community, and now finds inspiration from her former English college professor and best friend, Holly.
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Transcript
Dawn Brolin 0:01
Hello everyone and welcome to the DM Disruption. I’m the host Dawn Brolin. I’m a certified public accountant, Certified Fraud Examiner, and the author of the designated motivator. We’re here to help motivate you to take your practice to the next level. Have you considered outsourcing your clients payroll? Well, I did and I went with ADP. The resources they provide, along with their partner program become the premier outsourcing Payroll solution. We as practitioners already deal with a ton of compliance. Keeping Up With payroll isn’t a value added solution that I should be focused on. If you’ve considered outsourcing before, reconsider it today. Choose ADP to be part of your starting lineup.
Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the designated motivator. We’re here to not just motivate but put stuff into action and I’m so excited. There’s somebody else I’ve ever learned from in my career. It is from Beverly Lang, who is a doer she is not a talker. She is a doer, and she is at the forefront of this industry making things happen. Today’s sponsor of this episode, as you can just imagine, fishbowl fishbowl the absolute best Inventory Management System period that you will find and the person that I go to and I refer to as Beverly Lange because she knows all those things. And you know, I want to be an expert at the things I’m good at and that’s just not my area. So I hand it over to somebody who is an expert and that’s Beverly, so Beverly Lang, thank you so much for coming today.
Bev Lang 1:34
I’m so excited to be here. Love my son Brolin love rolling with Brolin. So anytime we can jump on that the train there or what is it? Come up to bat, so to speak with Brolin?
Dawn Brolin 1:47
Let’s go, let’s go. Run’s with Beverly Lang today. And I’m excited because Beverly, you have done amazing things in your career. You’ve gone from here to there to there, and now you’re at the top of the world. And most importantly, Happy belated birthday from the Dawn Brolin. I was so excited for you. You ended up going somewhere. What was your little plan? What did you do?
Bev Lang 2:09
We actually went yesterday with my son and his little friend, we went and played Top Golf and I have laughed so hard. It was the best day ever. It was overcast, it was cool. There was a breeze blowing and I had two quirky teenagers and we just had a ball.
Dawn Brolin 2:26
I love that. That’s awesome. And you have historically done a lot of fun things with your son like getting in your in your RV and traveling all over the place and drive wherever the heck you want. Right. So that’s an awesome.
Bev Lang 2:39
Have a laptop, will travel. So I can work from anywhere with technology even before COVID I was completely mobile, and wasn’t going to leet, let work keep me from being able to do the fun thing. So yes. Well, you know, we just sold our RV though. So we got new adventures coming, just bought to 15 acres of land. Have our own little domicile there and see what comes with that.
Dawn Brolin 3:04
And I love that. So you’ve been so people always ask about the life work balance thing, right? And it’s kind of like, you know, my whole thing was, well, I’m going to go coach a softball team during tax season, because that makes sense. And you’re hoping you’re part of what you’re all about is again, this that mobility perspective that people like we knew this before. COVID. Right. And so now it’s like, people talk about work life balance, and how do you do it? And it’s like, you know what, you have to make a decision, and you just got to go do it.
Bev Lang 3:33
That’s it, you know that’s it.
Dawn Brolin 3:34
You can’t talk about it. And so you have you have done some amazing things for many people in the industry. And I will say definitely, for us a powerful accounting. Amanda was your biggest fan. Although I say I’m your biggest fan. But red, red was all about Beverly, I mean, but you were instrumental in helping us understand we were in the Q SP program. Previously, we’re not any longer but when we were we just we really struggled to figure things out. And I felt like you were able to give us Mote the motivation to do better. And you were there to support us and that’s tell me about how you feel about that. Because that’s really important for all of us in this industry to realize that we are all here for each other and we can do great things for each other.
Bev Lang 4:18
We, we have to be. So I mean there’s let’s be honest, in the QSP environment, there is that clique-ish high school mentality. There’s some people that don’t play well with others. But the way I see it, there’s enough work out there for all of us. And so when read come to me and said I don’t know how you do it. Well here let me help you that that’s what I like to do is teach people how to do what I do. It’s very easy to be able to go out and talk to a customer about a product you love a product that you feel confident in and sell the customer and support the customer using said products. So I feel like we should be able to call each other and there’s been many times late late at night you and I’ve been texting or Facebook message Okay, what do I do about this Dawn, and you’re telling me how to handle something and vice versa? We got to be there for each other. Otherwise, you know, as cliche as it is our motto in the KSP industry is hashtag better together. And we are absolutely, we can’t always be rockstars at everything. That’s why we got to find your niche and find those people. That compliment us like you and I.
Dawn Brolin 5:21
Absolutely. And that’s, like, I mean, you think about the people who have like you, I’ll say you’ve grown up with we’ve all kind of grown up with each other in a little bit of a way, right? I mean, you know, thinking about the days of the Q SP, we’d like Rebecca Brandenburg, of course, she’s with Avalara. Now, and you know, what she was able to do for that program. And so many other people that came before her Simon and all kinds of different people who add into it, I find that it’s so easy to build those relationships, because they, I feel like Intuit doesn’t hire jerks, if that makes sense. Right? For the most part, I would say…
Bev Lang 5:56
For the most part, there’s been a few, but for the most part, they really, truly want to see us succeed. And they really want to work with us. And so yeah, I mean, I started with Simon pass, back in 2009. He signed me up, he, you know, he left the channel and went, went on his merry little way. And now he’s come full circle back to being part of the channel. So you know, and I never lost that relationship with him,so…
Dawn Brolin 6:23
And really you know, and so, of course, we’re going to definitely shift into the conversation of Fishbowl, because, you know, I went up there to do the filming for the Summit. And I’ve an even since I met the fishbowl called the Fishbowl guys, for the most part there guys, except for Kim. Now we see Kim a little bit more, which is great. But it’s like, I feel like I Intuit was my first real introduction to applications, accounting software, whatever. But I’ll say vendors for lack of a better description, where I like was like, these guys are like a family like these people. I feel like I can really count on these people when it gets down to it. And I need something. And I had the same feeling about the fishbowl guys, I say the visual fishbowl environment. Very, very welcoming, very, very intense when it comes to serving their clients and their customers. And I think that that if you’re in so for people who do listen to the show, a lot of people are looking for what are those apps we should be looking for? What are the good, the bad, the ugly of what we should be considering? And for me, one of the biggest things is can I work with them? Are they accessible? Are they willing to have a conversation if we’ve got an issue, or if we’re just, you know, looking for some help on how to maybe close a sale or whatever. And they’re always so open to have that conversation that’s so important to me. Now you have an amazing relationship with fishbowl. And I do want to hear like the history of Beverly Lange, from when Beverly started back when she was a baby baby because she’s only like 32 as of yesterday. So I mean ish. Like, forget it, right? 24 I know, I was really, I mean, I felt like I needed to be, oh, you’re still a baby. When you hit once you hit the top of the hill, man, that’s where I’m at.
Bev Lang 8:09
I’m still climbing the hill!
Dawn Brolin 8:10
Climb it, climb it, climb it! But I want to hear about Beverly Lange’s journey. And a lot of people like to hear the journeys because it’s relatable. And tell us some of the good, the bad and the ugly that you’ve gone through since your inception of, you know, being in business for yourself, and in this space of accounting.
Bev Lang 8:27
Well, I started with another key USP and at the time, I didn’t know what a key USP was. I was working under him selling, selling a lot and didn’t have a clue that he was getting paid for every sale that I made. Okay. And when I found that out, it kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I was like, wait a minute, like you could have at least told me what we’re doing. And we could set the structure. And so he took me to my first scaling new heights back in 2009. Okay, wow, I met Simon pass and found out about the reseller program. Okay. And I said, You know what, at that time you had to pay to play it was a grant to sign up. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna take a gamble on me. Yeah, and the other chsp who shall not be named just like you can’t do that. There can’t be two of us in high school. I was like, watch me. He says you’ll never make it. Here I am today, selling a million dollars plus, and he still sell on the 100 150. So who made who do Am I work with? I worked with Simon and I just dug in. I worked a full time job for the first two or three years and started making a little bit of money. I was like, You know what, you can really do this. You could really make money just selling QuickBooks. So I quit my full time job and went all in and got a new cam, which was staff and we grew 578% The next year. I agree. 332%. And so over the course of three years, I’ve built my book of business to where I am. I met fishbowl at scale. New Heights Bahamas which was what, five, six years ago? Yes. Took them kind of it with a grain of salt. It’s like a It’s another software I’ll check it out. I really like the guys. They seem very personable. Okay, close was a great guy Kendrick, and so got to learn a little bit more started making a couple sales. I was like, You know what, this is really good software and I don’t have a whole lot in my partner stack. It was QuickBooks, Fishbowl, Avolera. That was it. And, you know, I wanted to be really good at all of those became their reseller for the last three or four years. And they finally came to me in May. They’re like, You know what? We’re like ice cream, and whipped topping, like, you’re the cherry, we got to put it all together, how do we make this one company? And I jokingly said, You know what, you can’t afford me, you know, this ain’t never gonna work. He’s like, throw me some numbers out two months later, I’m a full time employee that required my company, all of my employees, and we now have a QuickBooks channel at Fishbowl.
Dawn Brolin 11:00
That is so awesome! And because QuickBooks and fishbowl are buddies like, right? It’s a natural, it’s a natural conversion from thinking that QuickBooks is going to manage all of those inventory leads correct. And I’ve always said, listen, QuickBooks Enterprise is phenomenal. It is awesome. It’s, it can do so much for you, it gets to a point where it can’t. And so and maybe that is just not the right fit. So I find that like, and I’m sure you do, too. When you’re working with clients, you’re trying to help them with the solutions that you know are the best for them. I always tell people, I try to meet them where they are, and then bring them into, “Hey, listen, are you ready to be a legitimate company?” Yeah, right. “Are you? Are you ready to run this right?” And I think that that’s where we, as the consultants run into sometimes challenges because we have this conflict conflict of, oh, I don’t want to spend all this money. Well, number one, Fishbowl is extremely affordable. Let’s be real. I mean, honestly. But not only that, it’s not just affordable. It’s what the client needs at the end of the day. And it’s not an expense, it’s an investment. And I have this conversation, right? With the clients, you’re not spending money on fishbowl, you’re investing money in your inventory, which by the way, it makes you that is your product, man. Without it, you’ve got nothing you’re out of business.
Bev Lang 12:20
Well, just like they say you have to spend a little money to make money. And that’s true, if you really want to take it to the next level. We as consultants have to look at the customer and where they’re at today, and where they want to be in six months, 12 months, 18 months. And if it means okay, we need to push them in fishbowl because that’s where they want to be in 18 months, that’s better than putting them on QuickBooks now, then having to cater to what it can and can’t do, and then turn around and having to push them too quick to fishbowl again in a year. So that’s not the best for the customer. Now I love into it, I am number one into it fan into it. and QuickBooks is capable of meeting the needs of the drivers. That’s where I’m going to stop. But nine times out of 10. If they’re heavy manufacturing, or they’re into the three PL or they’re into distribution, QuickBooks just doesn’t offer all the bells and whistles that are needed. And so the best solution out there that I have found, and I have tried them all is visual, whether they’re quick, yes, desktop or cubio. And so then we can even reduce them, maybe they don’t need enterprise anymore. Maybe they just need QuickBooks Online. So because all the heavy lifting is going to come out of fishbowl, right. And so we really want to look at the customer and right fit the customer, whatever that means.
Dawn Brolin 13:34
Right? So now if we think back, we pull back a little bit, and we think of the 2009. And the experience you had with the Q SP being a partner and things like that, it was easy for you to be motivated to kick ass. Let’s just be honest about that. Right. So So with that, as your journey went on, I’m imagining that your MO, a lot of your motivation came from being able to fulfill the needs of your clients, right?
Bev Lang 13:58
Absolutely, absolutely.
Dawn Brolin 14:00
I mean, without clients, we have nothing, we’re consulting with no one, if that even makes sense. But but at the end of the day, you built yourself an empire and you were the lead in that. And how many employees did you get up to at one point?
Bev Lang 14:14
Umm, six.
Dawn Brolin 14:16
Six employees, and they were implementing…
Bev Lang 14:19
QuickBooks, Fishbowl, filled service management, payroll, because I’ve always been one of the top providers of payroll. I think Cary Kahn and I go back and forth quite a bit. But yeah, for the for a long time. It was always me in the payroll industry, right. I work hand in hand with Intuit on product development for both enterprise cubio payroll. We just had a Payroll Certification release. I don’t know if everybody knows that. But there’s a new certification, a new badge. It’s bright pink. Everybody’s gonna love it. But it’s payroll. And it I wrote I helped write that. So everyone needs to go learn that because it talks to the product and it talks about being a payroll specialist. So if you want to provide payroll, go get certified so that you can show your knowledge and your wealth to your customer.
Dawn Brolin 15:07
You know, and I love that you talked about that, because I did see an email that had come out that that was coming down the pike and knowing that that’s out there. If there’s anything that it’s that is important, when it comes to us as consultants or bookkeepers, or CPAs, it doesn’t really matter what it is, the biggest things are compliance, right? So having that, that being in compliance at all times payroll is a stinking nightmare. If you want to provide payroll services, you got to obtain every ounce of knowledge that you possibly can certainly with Intuit having that relationship with Intuit, whoever your your contact is there with regards to payroll, and making sure that you have that conversation. Because payroll, guess what, here’s one thing that I’ve realized about payroll, no matter how well you do it, how often you do it, how good you are at it, you’re going to get notices.
Bev Lang 15:56
Yes. Different, right, wrong, or indifferent. That’s it.
Dawn Brolin 16:00
Yep. And the client is going to look to you as the payroll provider, whether you outsource full service, whatever that may look like for you. Or if you’re actually literally doing payroll, handling quarterly things like that, which the cost of the technology these days, and the ability to have that full service is a no brainer. But still knowing how to set them up knowing where they need withholding registrations, because no payroll service that I’ve seen, are actually providing the service to those withholding registrations and Department of Labor and they hire a new employee in another state, you don’t know about it, and there’s no withholding and no unemployment, or if there’s no holding, if it’s applicable. But that’s just such a big thing. And with Fishbowl, the compliance area that we’re concerned about a sales tax, right, we’ve got distribution, we’ve got all of this crossover…
Bev Lang 16:49
Postal, drop ship, you need to know where there’s tax, and that’s where Avalara, as you mentioned before, comes in, we have a great integration tool. And Avalara is the leader, by far in the industry of maintaining compliance with both sales tax use tax, and keeping your sales tax exempt certificates in compliance so that you know which ones are dated and which ones are out of date. So yes, compliance is a big issue in the manufacturing in the wholesale industry. And we have solved by that by using Avalara.
Dawn Brolin 17:23
Absolutely. And I find that, you know, certainly for me, my compliance area that I deal with is tax returns and tax representation. I don’t want it to go any further. So that’s why I partner I personally partner with ADP, and I partner with Avalara. But Intuit just the same, it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re partnering with somebody who again, I think the most important thing about the vendors and I mentioned this before about fishbowl is the relationship you have with that vendor. Right? Right. Because if you can’t get problem solved timely, there’s penalties and interest involved here, and we’re talking significant. So having that ability. So tell walk me a little bit through what is your who is your ideal fishbowl client, like if you were to say, okay, here, these are the ideal people, they’re out there, obviously, anybody that’s like you said in distribution or manufacturing and things like that. But you know, give, I would love to hear a case where you’ve got this client, and they were just a train wreck, because that’s usually how we get them. We don’t get them because they’re doing great!
Bev Lang 18:23
If they’re doing right, no. We get ’em because it’s a mess.
Dawn Brolin 18:28
It’s about… so talk me through one.
Bev Lang 18:30
I had a customer in Seattle, Washington medical manufacturing, didn’t have a system in place, decided to go with QuickBooks, we looked at QuickBooks and decided that it wasn’t robust enough. So we implemented Fishbowl. Customer has been up and running for a year, and they they absolutely love it, they have grown, it has grown with them, it has allowed them to create specific processes for each division within within the receiving within the inventory control within, you know, quality, outsourcing it to other third party vendors for value add. And so it’s allowed them to keep track and because they’re in the medical industry, they are so heavily regulated by the FDA, that it keeps all of that reporting that’s required allows them to track by lot number, serial number, whatever they need to, so that they can do a recall if necessary, which knock on wood, there hasn’t been one. But it gives them that capability. And so it has really helped this company come full circle with their inventory management, and making sure that they’re ready to grow as quickly and growing, so a great solution for this company.
Dawn Brolin 19:43
Yeah, and so interesting, too, because you’ll find that clients come to you and there do you find that they’re more price conscious or they feel like you know what, we’re ready to get a system that we know is going to work because they’ve been stumbling with workarounds which by the way, we are kings and queens have workarounds, right? But when you can get a real true system like Fishbowl, it’s always the better solution. Always.
Bev Lang 20:08
I would say they’re about 50/50. Most of them come, they’re mad because they’ve been stumbling. And they can’t find that one system that works. But they’re still price conscious. So fishbowl has done a really great job at increasing the features, making sure that everything is as robust as it can be, but still a price point that is palatable, something that I can afford to do something that the mom and pop onesie twosies can afford, as well as things. We try to offer bundled pricing with implementation QuickBooks support, because they need to integrate the two systems, we want to teach them upfront before it becomes an issue. And so we do some bundle packaging. And then we usually have some great financing offers, you know, 0% down for 12 months or whatever to hell, right, that small business or that price conscious customer or cashflow with cash flow issues, to still be to afford the software that they need. And then right like you said, you’re you’re only as good as your support, we can sell the greatest product in the world. Let’s sell a Lamborghini. But if you don’t put that key in, in the engine crank, it don’t matter how pretty it looks it run. So we have to be able to support and we do we have multiple support divisions and teams. We want to make sure the customer is taken care of we’re working hand in hand with the Fishbowl rep on the QB side to make sure that everything is talking the way it’s supposed to.
Dawn Brolin 21:32
Yeah. And so that’s a good question too. I want to ask you, as far as, like implementation, when somebody comes to fishbowl like, obviously I said everything to Beverly, because why would I go work around anywhere else, right. So you can also anybody that’s listening, if you want to hook up with fishbowl and get some more insight into that just reach out to Beverly, she’s all over the place, social media, you name it, she’s there, she drives around an RV that she just sold, which is going to build on a property, we should probably have some kind of a retreat for all of us to come to. But in the meantime..
Bev Lang 22:03
Yeah we could do that! Once the house is built. we can we could have a, what would everybody do? We can just all are out on the property?
Dawn Brolin 22:11
Well I think that’s what we’re also excited about Scaling New Heights is actually be able to get to be face to face with people.
Bev Lang 22:15
What seeing somebody? Yes, because it’s been what two years now?
Dawn Brolin 22:18
Tt has been two years! I went to engage. And it was great. I got to see Deb Defer, I got to see, I’m just Todd was there and just a bunch of people, Amy Selleck, from ADP, just a bunch of people, it was kind of like, oh my gosh, like Todd Robinson, who I love very much. Just being able to get to be in front of people, again, was just like, we’re real people. Again, I kind of forgot right now. And now I think if you think about COVID, and the impact of COVID on those manufacturers, wholesalers, all those kind of people who it’s 100% touchless. And it’s in a little bit of a way, and it has been for a year and a half, almost two years now. That’s something that people need to take into consideration when they’re considering what am I going to do about my inventory supply chain, or being able to distribute and get things out and not have to have that human human touch, unfortunately, right. So so tell me a little bit more about how that kind of plays in and what you’ve seen over the last year and a half with regards to, you know, the COVID response from for those that industry.
Bev Lang 23:24
Well, fishbowl pivoted very quickly after COVID hit and designed some really great virtual implementations. For those that couldn’t go on site. We also have developed quite a few more integrations, we’ve seen a lot of spike in people having websites or online presence, so that they could sell their product. And so for that fact, we have integrations with Shopify, you know, webgility, we have other shopping carts that we can work with so that we can bring that information down into fishbowl verify that the inventories there, process the order and then push that over to QuickBooks. With the training and support, we’ve really gotten some fine tuned processes in place, so that we can make sure the customer is still taking care of even though it’s virtually through a computer. And we’ve been very successful at implementing Fishbowl virtually. And so that makes the customer happy. It’s cheaper on the customer, the quality is still just as good. And getting up and running. We’ve seen us I would say we’ve seen a spike in the number of people that are moving to fishbowl because during this COVID time, people actually have time to stop and look at their accounting and what’s not working and actually fix some of those issues so that when we come out of this tailspin, they’re already set for success. And that’s what we’re hoping to see is our customers just sail through with great sales moving forward.
Dawn Brolin 24:49
And you know, I think certainly with because of the COVID pandemic having that it’s got to be good information, more than it ever has had been before. Although we’ve always we’ve been talking about this Ever as in the accounting industry of, you know, I was saying yesterday to Gaynor, I’m like, Listen, if you’re not recording, you are not properly reporting. And it’s just like anything else with inventory. You know, from a tax perspective, there’s tax implications when it comes to your inventory. You know, I had this one client, they happen to be a liquor store, and he would at year end, buy a ton of inventory. He’s like, I’m getting it on sale, it’s gonna be great. And I also can reduce my costs, I can reduce my bottom line. That’s not how inventory works, buddy!
Bev Lang 25:32
No that’s not how it work! That’s perpetual.
Dawn Brolin 25:35
Inventory is perpetual, it’s gonna sit on that balance sheet, and it’s not going to affect your cost of goods sold. He didn’t understand it. And so I feel like people are now starting to give inventory the right attention.
Bev Lang 25:51
Right. There’s a lot of customers that don’t really understand why buy and sell it. But there’s so much more that goes into that. There’s so they like, what are all these journal entries? Well, it doesn’t just go straight from I bought it, I sold it, like there’s a lot between, you know, so you know, educating people, which is what I enjoy doing is teaching them how the system works, and how the two work together so that they can understand the reports they get.
Dawn Brolin 26:18
Yeah, and they’ve just got to realize that that value of inventory is from a succession planning perspective, which a lot of people I just find that people don’t think about. What are you gonna do with the future that inventory on your balance sheet is going to help you sell you’re, hopefully, hopefully we see inventory turnover ratios turning and turning and churning, right? Because without that we’re sitting on dead inventories. Also No, good, right. That’s no good. So I think that again, like you said, I think people are starting to say, hey, I really do need a good inventory system, I need to make sure that I’m understanding what my numbers are, that they are accurate…
Bev Lang 26:55
Absolutely, trends. What did I do this time last year? What do I need to you know, budget for in the next six months. So you can look at cash flows you can look at during the analysis, and you can see exactly what you’re return is.
Dawn Brolin 27:08
Absolutely. And being prepared for this coming holiday season, which I think I’m hoping that those who are selling products online, because like you said, people are moving more online, because it’s not so brick and mortar anymore. People need to be able to get to your store. But they also don’t want to get to your store online, and buy something that isn’t in stock. And if you don’t have your inventory system up to date, so that you know, you have 10 in stock, and you actually do have 10 in stock, because you can go to a bin and check it that people are in line are being discouraged because you never have stuff in inventory. And that’s not because of anything other than I would say, lack of investment in the business that you’re trying to be successful in. You know..
Bev Lang 27:52
That’s correct. Especially with all these that I’ve picked up Amazon and eBay, and Etsy as resellers, we have plans for those so that we can help manage that Amazon. While it’s probably one of the the most common selling platforms, it’s very intimidating for someone who doesn’t understand how to reconcile because there’s a fee for this a fee for that, you know, so having the knowledge to understand and have that talk to to Fishbowl so that your inventory value stay correct imparitive to keeping your financials accurate on the QuickBooks side.
Dawn Brolin 28:28
So now, Beverly, now…
Bev Lang 28:31
Now Dawn!
Dawn Brolin 28:32
Now honey..
Bev Lang 28:32
Now honey…
Dawn Brolin 28:34
God I love you, Beverly!
Bev Lang 28:35
I love you, too.
Dawn Brolin 28:36
So now that you’ve made this amazing transition from owning your own company, having it been acquired, and that whole process, how do you like how is your life today as opposed to what it was say five years ago? Even? Like, just in general like your, your Do you? I mean, I can I know you I know how excited you are about being at Fishbowl. And I know that you have, obviously they know you have what it takes to take their company to a whole nother level which you already have done in a very short period of time. And I think a lot of that is because of your experience, and your compassion and your passion to solve these problems for people because I think I forget who I was talking to the other day, we really are people pleasers, right. And so here’s what do you what do you find has kind of changed for you as, as anything changed.
Bev Lang 29:28
A lot has changed. I mean, it’s a complete different mentality going from business owner to employee. So I feel like now I have to kind of prove myself even though I’m putting that on myself, because I’ve already proven myself. But I still have a stress level. I still work but now I have like six or seven under me that I need to make sure you’re taking care of our team is phenomenal. We’re like family and we are growing by leaps and bounds. We’re adding another employee next next week. Okay. And so I’m hoping I’m giving myself six months, another couple of weeks, a couple of months. And I’m hoping that the the work life balance shifts. And then I’m back. Sure even more even playing field because I’ve got all these great people around me like my great Tina and Maracore. Tiffany and Casey, all these great employees that, you know, I’m teaching, not that they don’t know how to do it, but just teaching them what I’ve learned in my years within teacher, my best practices, and then we’re finding our best practices. And I think we can grow this team without us all having to work 80 hour weeks.
Dawn Brolin 30:36
Sure, sure. Which is obvious. I mean, you have a young one, you just have a son, right?
Bev Lang 30:42
Well, does my ex husband count? So then I have like, two?
Dawn Brolin 30:48
You can never you can never change that. And so being able to spend more time, oh, he’s 14, right. I knew he was a teenager. So because you’ve made the reference to the golf outing. But are you finding like, alright, I like for myself, even having that ability to spend that quality time with him is like priceless. And, you know, your motivation, I’m sure is to continue to provide for him in ways that, you know, he needs right as a teenage boy, I’m sure there’s plenty of I had girls, so I can’t imagine I mean, the boy thing.
Bev Lang 31:21
My situation is probably a little bit different. Noah doesn’t want to spend any time with me. He’s at that age where moms are not cool unless he needs money. Okay. But Noah was also diagnosed with narcolepsy at 12. Okay, okay. We have we’re really not sure what the future holds. We’re still trying to figure that out as we don’t right. But we actually went looking for him his first car yesterday. And yes, I know. He’s only 14. He’s fixed to turn 15. But I drive an Audi that he drives an Audi. He ain’t driving our cars. So we gotta go. We gotta go get him a car. So you need a leader. That’s what we were looking for something that he can learn to drive in? Because he’s not getting in mine.
Dawn Brolin 32:04
He’s not touching Mama’s car!
Bev Lang 32:07
I don’t think the Gator counts, because I don’t think you can drive that on the road, the little aka utility vehicle. So but yes, my whole thing was I wanted to set myself up for retirement. I have said for the past few years, I wanted to retire at 50. I’m now set to retire at 52.
Dawn Brolin 32:25
That I love that. That’s yeah, my goal is 55. So my goal is to retire 55 Because my dad retired at 55. It’s it’s more of a personal goal, because I want to be like my dad, right? We all have that. So for you, Beverly, if you think back in the history of your career, or your life or whatever, who was somebody who inspired you motivated, you picked you up when you were down? Whatever that case, may be you have a person that that fills that role for you.
Bev Lang 32:58
I do I have a couple of people actually. So motivation comes from two different places. I have the one the key USP that I work for at first that told me I couldn’t and I don’t like to be told I can’t do anything. That’s all you know, that lit a fire because I’m like, I’m going to show you and I think yeah, but then I have a probably my best friend Holly who was my English professor in college. Oh, we connected because I got my first essay back and I only got a 90. And I wanted to so I asked for a meeting. And I wanted to know what I had to do to get those other 10 points that I wanted to a plus not a minus. And she’s like, Are you kidding me? You’re the only student asking me how to get a better a. So she worked with me so that I got an A plus in that class. And we just hit it off. And we’ve been friends for years. So but she’s, she’s like my voice of reason. Whenever I’m starting to go off the deep end or I’m spinning out of control. I call her it’s like okay, I need you to talk me off the ledge like, help me here. What do I do? And she’s always got my back and she’s always got the right words of wisdom just when I need them.
Dawn Brolin 34:11
I love that, and just so you know you are that person for other people. I know for sure for me, you have always inspired me to like be better do better. I almost kind of think of it like what don’t I know more than anything? It’s because you know, obviously we know what we what we know. You are a very big inspiration to Amanda. She really looks up to you still does we I text her every once in a while and she’s always asking me if you see Beverly and I can’t wait to send her a picture. We’ll have to do that. Yes. We’re gonna text her a picture for sure.
Bev Lang 34:43
You know, I could say the same about you Dawn though. I have a ton us Rebecca Branberg. I still call her, Jamie Dimon and Avalara. Like, there’s so many of us in our community that we’re so tight knit, Gina from Intuit. Oh, like we’re just family and like if nothing happens Like I could pick up the phone and call you in the middle of the night, you didn’t answer the heartbeat, I do the same thing for you. And so there’s, you know, there’s so there’s those few that we have connected with. yet. I think we, we build on each other, you know, and we have other and that’s the way it should be. There shouldn’t be this whole USP, I can’t talk to you, because you might steal my client. Look, if I can take your client, they weren’t your client to begin with. Bang, done that. I’m not looking for you to steal your client like right, you know, but if I can, they weren’t yours to begin with, so…
Dawn Brolin 35:34
It’s it’s funny you say that too. Because Mama said to me, mama, mama still miss mama, that Mama, she’s never going I told her you have to be dead before you leave me honey, because she keeps this whole company moving forward. And I said to her the other day I said, Oh, my I It’s so strange. We haven’t been getting any leads this week. Because we’ve been getting since COVID. started, we’d get in one to two to five a week, we have new either people with issues with tax returns or need to get tax prep, or whatever the case may be. She’s like, Oh, I’m a little worried. I said, Mama. I don’t remember the last day I came into the office and called you and said, Hey, I don’t have anything to do. Like that just goes to the whole, like, there’s so much work out there that we can all help each other. Right?
Bev Lang 36:18
That’s right. That’s right, there’s enough work for us all. And is enough, I believe if QSP’s would lean on each other a little bit more, we can all have a better work life balance. Because there’s things that I don’t like to do that I would gladly pass off to someone else. Absolutely. My customer was safe, and that they’re just going to do this work. And they’re going to come to me for whatever, because that’s how I would treat other people in their customers. Like if you ask me a customer for Fishbowl, I’m only going to talk to them about Fishbowl. If they need QuickBooks, I’m going to come back to you and say, Hey, this is what your customer needs. Can you go sell this customer that? Like I’m not gonna steal–
Dawn Brolin 36:55
Beverly, could you just handle it?
Bev Lang 37:00
I’m not gonna like a sale, sale. There’s too much out there for me to build a retai– or reputation like that I wanted your own for being honest, loyal and helpful. Nothing other than that.
Dawn Brolin 37:10
Absolutely. Absolutely. So listen, it’s always a pleasure to spend time with you. Is there are there any last words you want to want the listeners to hear from my dear friend Beverly Lang.
Bev Lang 37:22
Just if you have inventory needs and QuickBooks is not cutting it, rr you think maybe QuickBooks is not the best solution. Reach out to me at Fishbowl. I’ll be happy to try to answer any of your questions. And then make sure you go pick up a book for Dawn, pick that book up and show him one more time, Dawn, and I’m waiting on my autographed copy. I’m sure I’m right.
Dawn Brolin 37:44
Okay, I’m bringing it to you. But the new book is going to be out by scaling. Yes, designate motivator for accounting professionals. And really, it’s all about helping pick the industry up helping people see that there are other things you can be doing if you don’t love what you’re doing. Beverly loved what she was doing, but found she could do bigger and better have she joined forces with fishbowl and sometimes that’s a great move as well. Right? Right. Right. So Well, thank you so much for coming on. Beverly, I love you dearly. What would Beverly do? Reach out to Beverly if you need anything for fishbowl or call me and I’ll send you to Beverly, whatever, whatever you may need. But that’s what we’re here for. So thanks again for everybody for listening to the VM disruption and we’ll talk to you next time and go out there. Figure out that work life balance and enjoy yourself. That’s what we’re all what life’s all about. Thanks again. Everybody was ready, honey. Let me fly back.
I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Feel free to visit DawnBrolin.com in order to motivate you to improve your practice. Wishing you all the best. Have a great day.
Episode Summary
Nate Flake, VP of Operations at Fishbowl, joins Dawn Brown, CPA, CFE, to talk about his upcoming summit, and to discuss the inventory management services that Fish Bowl provides. Listen now and learn why investing in the right software, connecting with industry professionals, and having a strong team working behind the scenes of your business can lead to its success!
This episode is sponsored by Fishbowl.
Fishbowl Summit and Nate’s Motivation
Nate talks about the upcoming virtual summit that Fishbowl is hosting and shares his excitement to have a dedicated conference to discuss inventory management. He talks about how the conference will cover everything in an SMB toolkit to give business owners the knowledge and resources to help achieve their company goals.
Importance of Proper Inventory Management
Dawn and Nate discuss how important it is to have correct inventory management to have a successful business, and cutting corners will cause more problems in the long run.
Nate discusses how Fishbowl, his Inventory management company, can help businesses save time, money, and can be installed locally on your desktop.
Benefits of New Hosting Service “Quarium”
Nate also discusses another branch of his company called Quarium, which provides businesses with a hosting service to run Quickbooks and other professional accounting software.
The service also includes a “partner portal” which allows accounting professionals to easily access information from their clients without headache or hassle.
Dawn adds how she appreciates the security that Fishbowl and Quarium can provide to businesses.
Nate also talks about how investing in the right technology in your business early on can benefit your company in the long run.
“There’s hundreds of companies that are making the right steps and investing in the right technology, and they’re blowing up. It’s crazy.
Importance of Building a Foundation for Your Business-:19:42
Dawn talks about the importance of having a solid foundation in your business, and falling short on areas like inventory, can greatly hurt the growth of your business. Investing in the correct software can greatly improve the structure and flow of a business.
Nate agrees and shares how he appreciates Dawn’s integrity when it comes to working and fighting for her clients.
Partner Program at Fishbowl-26:34
Nate also discusses how Fishbowl has implemented a Partner Program that connects accounting professionals to other industry professionals that can help streamline productivity and increase the success of a business.
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Episode Summary
Robin Hall, Owner & Principal of VARC Solutions talks with Dawn Brolin, CPA, CFE, about proving the naysayers wrong, and the importance of developing a proper work-life balance, and how to set expectations and boundaries with your clients.
Robin’s Introduction and Motivation
Robin Hall is the Owner & Principal of VARC Solutions, an Intuit centric firm that handles all aspects of the software, including training and purchasing software. Robin talks about how the motto of her company is “helping companies get back to their business.”
Robin shares that her designated motivator is everyone who said she couldn’t do something. Robin also shares that Dawn is also one of her designated motivors, and shares her admiration for Dawn’s enthusiasm about accounting. But most of all, Robin credits a lot of her motivation from seeing her clients succeed, and knowing she had a hand is making that happen.
How Does Robin Support Her Team?
Robin not only tries to implement team building events, but makes sure she’s taking action everyday in the office to make sure all of her team members feel heard and appreciated. Robin also remembers having negative experience at previous work environments, and actively tools steps to push against those office practices, even if they were considered the norm.
Robin also talks about one of the initiatives she implemented is “Summer Hours,” where employees work 9 hours Monday-Thursday, and then only work a half day on Friday. Another thing she did was take her team on a sailboating retreat, in order to further develop their relationship with their team members.
“The more that they have fun together, the more interpersonal communication becomes stronger,” says Robin.
Accountants Aren’t Doormats
Dawn shares an unfortunate experience she had with a client, and talks about her decision to fire the client in the end. “We need to realize as practitioners, we are not doormats,” says Dawn.
Robin and Dawn share their current frustrations with the IRS, and how this is causing strained relationships with current clients.
Robin also adds on to Dawn’s previous comment, and shares that clients need to realize that their practitioners are doing so much behind the scenes, and that they are often solving problems the client was never aware of. She shares that it is unfair for the client to unload their frustrations onto them, and that respect should always be upheld.
Robin also shares that many times, accountants bend over backwards for clients and overextend themselves, which then in turn lead to the client taking advantage of their time.
Maintaining a Work Life Balance
Robin talks about how COVID-19 actually helped her manage her work-life balance better by forcing her to delegate tasks. She shares that she was able to scale down the amount of hours she was working, and shares how our biggest resource is having access to our own time.
Dawn agrees and shares similar sentiments about taking time to reevaluate what’s important in her life, and where she wants to spend her time.
“I’ve stopped being busy…and I’ve started being productive,” shares Dawn.
Robin adds how she stopped just tracking her billable hours, and now tracks all aspects of her work. This allows her to see areas where she may not have been as productive as she could’ve been. She shares that even if you are on salary, you need to be tracking where you are spending your time to show the areas of the day you could be more productive.
Dawn adds how important it is to set your boundaries with clients so they know what to expect and how to treat you. She adds that when you as a practitioner always make yourself available, it sends the message to the client that they have full access to you.
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Transcript
Dawn Brolin 0:02
Okay, well, Robin Hall is here to help us learn about motivation. Robin has been actually a designated motivator for me for many years. Robin is the owner of VARC solutions. And she’s gonna tell us, actually Rob, you just tell about yourself, you know more about yourself than I do.
Robin Hall 0:25
You tell it pretty good, Don. But I’m Robin Hall, the owner, Principal Consultant of VARC solutions, we are coming up on our 22nd year in business are completing that 22nd year. So I’m very proud that we are Intuit centric, firm. And so anything that touches QuickBooks, then we handle for our clients anywhere from purchasing software, training on the software, outsourced CFO, anything that they need to do that, really let them get back to their business. So from day one, we’ve had kind of a motto, that’s really fit and taken us over the last 22 years of letting you get back to your business. So anything that the client needs to make them get back to their business, that’s what we’re here to do.
Dawn Brolin 1:12
And I love that. So you have been in the industry for a long time. And with that you’ve met many other accounting professionals, right? You have, you have made it in a lot of ways, your mission as part of your mission of your company, at least there’s just as Robin Hall’s mission in life, is you’ve helped so many other practitioners, other accounting professionals to you know, improve their business, grow their business, and it felt like it doesn’t want to be like Robin, right? That’s the way I see it. And you’ve helped me tremendously over the years for sure. So, you know, motivated, motivated me in a way that, you know, I’ve wanted to be as good as you are, as a consultant, I’m probably 1/10 of the way there. Because you have been doing this for so long, and you’re providing your clients with the right solutions that that, you know, work for them. And so, you know, tell me, Robin, I want to know who your designated motivator is, like, who through your life, it can be a couple people, whatever, that has motivated you to be as successful as you are, was it that somebody believed in you? What, like, what was it?
Robin Hall 2:22
So a couple of things. So one is, actually my designated mode. motivator is actually everybody that said, you couldn’t do it. And my goal in life is really to prove them wrong. And so for every No, I got that just drove me a little harder. And so, you know, in the accounting world, most accountants like to sit behind their desk and do their numbers and not talk to anybody. And, and, you know, you’re a little bit of my designated motivator, because I go to these conferences, and I’ve been going to him for a long time. And, and you see, and we’re all there and learning loads, but then you see this spark running down the aisle or running up on the stage, and just being loud and proud about accounting. And it’s like, well, I can do that, too. And so you’ve kind of motivated me to take that passion, and really just move it forward. And so I think that’s one of the things that’s motivated me is the passion for helping people and the passion. And so I don’t know that I have one designated motivator it when I see that the look on my clients face from just distraught despair, and I can’t do this, and I don’t know how to do it, and my spouse started a business and he making me or she’s making me do this, and they’re just tormented by this. And then we break it down to simple terms, and then they come out. And, you know, back when we used to go see clients, and you’d get a hug at the end of the appointment. That’s what made me motivated to do more. And to to, that’s what gives me my shining star. And so that motivates me. And then the people that said, you know, when I first started out, it was like, Well, maybe you need to go and do a little bit more education on this and maybe you need this and so I had worked in all aspects of accounting and I’m like, you know, I can do this I can I can do this and so all again, all those naysayers just made me want to do it more and I think with everything I’ve done in my life, if somebody tells me No, I’m just gonna go and do it anyway. So you know that that’s one of my you know, my awesomeness is probably got me a little farther. But, and then again, Dawn, people like you that I see out there, going and doing it and it’s great to be up. I love to stand up in front of a class, and just be crazy, because it’s okay to be crazy. and talk about accounting, it gets dull and boring. And it’s, it’s those things that just make you perk up. And it’s more than just knowledge. And I think, way we do our business and the way that we take care of people, it’s, that’s what drives me to do more. It’s the passion for what we’re doing.
Dawn Brolin 5:23
Well, and that’s one of the things like from a, as a practical, logical accounting mindset that I’ve always thought of, like, I’ve watched you do classes at scaling, new heights, or QB Connect are on webinars, or wherever the heck you happen to be. And I think for me like to watch you is your knowledge. Right? So obviously, you’re super funny. We’ve always had a great time together. And that’s definitely a thing. I didn’t you motivate a lot of people because in certainly for many reasons, but you know, you have success, and you’ve committed to your team, and you can see that in the longevity, with your, with your, with your players. That, who are looking for we’re all looking for that perfect balance of I run a company, and I’ve got to be educated because I got to know my shit. Like, that’s always good. We got to know our shit. Right? You can’t fake your way through that stuff. It just doesn’t work that way. But I just find like, what, give me a couple of things that you do with your team, because you do a lot of things with your team, your team var, see, you’ve got shirts to prove it. Your your people are proud to wear them. And you know, what, what are some of the things that you’re doing with your team that that seemed to be working for you.
Robin Hall 6:44
So we try and do different things, we have a lot of team building events and stuff that I try and do things, little things in the office as well. But one of the things that I’ve learned, you know, I read a lot of books, and I don’t follow any one person’s philosophy. I say, I kind of I’m in the buffet. So I take a little bit from everybody’s and I take the pieces that talk to me. And, you know, I make sure and I kind of build my own little culture with that. And the other thing that I’ve done is I worked for, you know, some not so healthy places, they weren’t the best work environment. And so I took all those rules that were rules for the sake of being rules and threw them out and said, I take care of my staff, my staff will take care of the clients. And that’s the ultimate goal. So with every decision that I make about my staff, then we try and make sure of is the client getting taken care of? Can I be flexible in this? If so then yeah, go ahead and do it. So you know, when that’s served us well. And so, like right now, we’ve small thing, but we’ve instituted summer hours. And so what is that Monday through first Thursday, we work nine hours, and then on Friday, we are working a half a day. But the caveat is if a client has to have something Friday afternoon, then and they do it in advance, not last minute, Susie, but we take care of them, but we’re giving them in the summertime when their kids are out of school and all that, you know, a half a day extra on their weekend. They’re not having to burn vacation. They’re not having to rearrange things. Everybody knows, we’re kind of training our clients for that. But we they know if we’re if we need if they need something we’re here. So a couple other things, you know, you know, the we just did a team building where it was I took them out on sailboats. And so for we were in two different teams. And so for the first two hours, they taught us how to sail, some of us didn’t learn quite as well as the others. And then the last two hours, we had a race. And so you know, and leading up to that they all know we’re doing an event, but I like to not tell them what we’re doing. And then the week before, I’ll just kind of drop hints. Well, you might get wet. Yeah, might need some sunscreen, you know, so I’ve dropped hints and somebody asked, we were swimming with sharks. And so the next step was there, there shouldn’t be any sharks, but I’m not making any promises. So you know, I just try and make it you know, a little bit fun and games. One of the things that we did for to build our teams, because I like to do the teams different every time and I don’t let people if they’re office mates, I don’t let them be on the same team because I want people to mix it up. And I had them draw and I gave them two different games. And, and one of the games was like lists all the 50 states and the other one was it was like 24 Ah, in a in a D, and you had to say what it was. And there were 50 of those. So it’s 24 hours in the day. So that little riddles and so they got to look at those. And then I said, if you don’t like your option, then there’s option C, but it’s a one time trade, you can’t can’t give it back. Right? So I had a couple people go for option C. And option C was like these horrible history questions and these horrible math questions and all of this stuff. The first line of the thing said, make sure to read this completely. Before answering any questions. So Dawnn, I’m sure you know what’s coming next. The last was write your name on your paper and turn it back in, like, donate there any questions. So you know, I got some, you know, you’re a mean, on the bottom of a couple of those. And one of my top guys just started going to town on the math questions. But part of that was the high staff redirection, the people giving you directions, they’re there for a purpose. It’s not just hot air, read the directions. And then they, I gave them time to work together and stuff like that. So, but I brought lunch in, and we all did that as a team. So the more that they have fun together, the more that those interpersonal communications get stronger. So if somebody says something, and they’re like, they’re being mean, or if you know that that’s not their personality, and you have a personal relationship, and not just a working relationship, yet, you don’t take that as personal. And so we’ve I’ve found, since we’ve been doing a lot of team building, and I do one, about once a quarter. But they’re not scheduled. And it’s just wherever Robin feels like it, but it’s about once a quarter. Because I don’t want people to have the oh, well, we’re doing this this weekend or something like that. So, but they always have fun. We never, we’ve never repeated in any of our team building stuff. And so but they’re learning how to work together. So that’s the important part to me is one, I expect them to work hard, but I want them to play hard. And I want to give them the environment to do it and do it together.
Dawn Brolin 12:23
Right. And that’s, you know, as we’re, at least I know, I’ve talked to a handful of people and been watching social media on the struggles that a lot of practitioners are having right now. And it’s, it’s kind of sad, you know, a lot of them are like, I don’t know, if I want to do this anymore. I don’t, you know, why did I choose this route for my career. One of the things that we’re the perspective that we’re trying to give them is or that I’m trying to message to them is, we got to try to not focus on the client side, drag us down, because what’ll happen is you’ll get an email or get a phone call from a client, it’s just not a pleasant experience, and it ruins the rest of the day. Right? And, you know, I have an example a couple of weeks ago, or maybe it’s been a month now, I don’t know, I think it’s about a month. And we acquired that we we did a huge project where we are kicking butt taking names, basically running for companies for him for locations of his of his business, where which wasn’t necessarily part of the the agreement, but we you know, scope creep, but we’ve charged him for every moment. And it was, you know, a couple 100 grand over the last year and he popped off on us so hard, like just went sideways for absolutely no reason. And we fired him. And I think that sometimes we have to realize as practitioners, we are not doormats, right. Right. You know, I mean, are you seeing because that’s, that’s, I think what we’re seeing is, obviously, with the IRS and all their ridiculousness right now, and not being able to keep up with things,
Robin Hall 13:51
What They’re being ridiculous? I did not notice that Dawn!?
Dawn Brolin 13:57
You know, that’s why prior to having this being on the podcast would be I didn’t want to disclose that because I thought you would be you’d be so shocked and maybe wouldn’t want to come on because you disagreed with me. They are out of control and the clients are going bananas. And that’s not just the IRS but the law you deal with a lot of sales tax. Right and trying to get through to those people and those people are brutal in the first place.
Robin Hall 14:26
Yeah, yeah, we’re we’re finding that that states are going a little crazy to we just had in Texas, they finally just released the unemployment rates for starting January 1 of 2021. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So we get to go backwards. So it’s a fun time over here. And so, but here, here’s the thing. I want to go back to your doormat comments. You know how like our kids. They’re more they’re well behaved when they’re with others. but not so much when they’re with us. So I think clients get comfortable. And they figure we’re part of their minions, staff of minions, and so they can just pop off at us. And it’s okay. And, you know, they forget that that we are an extension, but we are separate. And so we do deserve the respect. And they don’t get to, because there’s something else going on in their world pop off of that, because we are out there fighting those battles to them, and sometimes doing things that they don’t necessarily understand the depth of what we’re doing. So when we have to call the IRS or call something on behalf of payroll, they don’t realize the hoops that we’re jumping through, they just know that, you know, it got fixed, and they don’t understand what it takes to do that. And so I think with them popping off, sometimes it’s just like our kids, they’re more comfortable. And so they feel like it’s a safe environment to do that. And they forget that we’re do that respect as well. So you can be a little bit of a sounding board. And you can you can grumble with me, but not at me. Right. So and when you take it, you know, it’s a fine line, when they cross over it. It’s, it’s almost an uncrossable that they can’t get back.
Dawn Brolin 16:26
Right? Right. And you know, when I think more than anything, and I totally, I can totally sympathize and empathize with people because all we all get that from the client. At the end of the day, the way I kind of look at it is, you know, we have this one that a bad apple here and there, and we’re all gonna have them, that’s nothing you can change. But what you can do is change your focus and like focus on those clients that you’re like, Oh, my goodness, whenever to call I love them. I didn’t example when I had you was going through this firing process with this large client. I have this this client that came in, they had to sign a power of attorney 2848 because the IRS can’t decide what they actually will accept a signatures or not, because we know they said they will. But then like half the agents won’t. It’s just you just want to go to the phone and grab them by phone,
Robin Hall 17:13
And if it’s a Tuesday or Thursday as well.
Dawn Brolin 17:18
Yes, definitely not a Friday.
Robin Hall 17:21
Yeah, no, definitely not a Monday either.
Dawn Brolin 17:23
No, no Monday and Fridays, you’re not gonna get that cooperation. So, so this wonderful couple came in there. And you know, they’re not a large line by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re probably two of the nicest, kindest people you’ll ever meet, right? We all have a ton of clients like that the bulk of our clients are good people, they care about you, as much as you care about them. There’s a reciprocation in the relationship. That is, you know, that makes sense. And then you just have those plants that are not like that. So I have this, this couple come in, and, and they were they you know, oh, you know, I know, we just here sign this, but we have some questions. Should we make another appointment? And I’ll go, heck, no, let’s talk now. And they were just so I mean, after every sentence, I thought, I swear they said, Thank you.
Robin Hall 18:07
So yeah, like, those that you just want to just can can I have 100 of you? Can I you know, is do you have friends that are just like you, I want those clients. Here’s another lesson that I’ve learned with that Dawn, is, you know, those clients that are really in desperate need and really need a little bit more by our nature, and I know you do this as well, you and I’ve had conversations over the years, we try and bend over backwards. Yes, I can work like, Oh, I’ll come in on Saturday. Yes, don’t worry, it’s a five o’clock appointment is I’m not going to charge you any extra for it being after hours. All of those things that you bend over backwards for. Those are the ones that seem to take advantage down the road, whereas the ones that you’re like, No, our hours are 830 to five, and it’s by appointment, we booked up about a week in advance. They make sure they have their shit together. And and so sometimes we’re our own worst enemy by trying to be that bend over backwards hopeful, because it comes back later and bites us.
Dawn Brolin 19:14
Yes, I totally agree with that. And as a matter of fact, I had a conversation with Chris Farrell, about similar to this conversation. But I said to him, I said, you know, sending those emails out at 11 o’clock at night, like I mean, I used to I used to work at 14-15 hour days, and I was hardcore for it. I was all about it. You were bad. You think you’re cool. When really in the end of the day, you just don’t have your shit together. Right? So. So here we’re talking about that 11 o’clock 11pm email that you send out. That email just told whoever you sent it to that it was okay to talk to you 11 o’clock at night? Absolutely. And that is setting yourself up for failure.
Robin Hall 19:55
So, so I’m going to I’m going to before we got on the podcast, you and I were talking A little bit about COVID. And I’m going to tell you, if there’s one thing that came good out of COVID is before one of my goals. So, pre COVID, one of my goals was to get to a 50 hour work down to a 50 hour workweek, not to but down to a 50 hour workweek and to be home by six o’clock, two or three nights a week. For years, I had that goal for years, and I couldn’t hit it. I couldn’t make it. It was there was always something I was here till seven or eight o’clock, almost every night. And so, you know, those 12 1314 hour days were very common. And so, one when COVID had one, I went down hard. And so I went down for three weeks. And so even though I have a very, very, very competent staff, there was things that I was holding, and then I wouldn’t delegate. So I had to learn to delegate because I was on my couch for three weeks, and I wasn’t moving. But then also, I learned, like, since we’ve come back, and my staff has all been back in the office for about a year now. But it I’m going home about six o’clock every night. And so I’ve learned how to separate that something happened in there where it was either that delegation I did, he has either stuck, or I’ve learned to say no, in my day is done at six o’clock. Now there’s a rarity that I’ll stay later and do something but I’m not working on weekends. And I’m really not saying past six o’clock on a regular basis anymore. So there was some shifts in where we had that work disruption. That actually was good for me because I had to reassess and, and we allocate my resources. And our biggest resource is our own time.
Dawn Brolin 21:55
Yeah, that’s definitely I mean, as far as COVID I mean, obviously, such a terrible situation and terrible thing that’s happened. It’s like, I mean, for me, I guess, I just realized what was most important, I think a lot of us had like a little bit of a reflection time, I would hope that you can’t take things for granted. You don’t have any idea. You know, what is tomorrow gonna bring? We don’t know, it was like, almost like a moment to moment, are we gonna ever be able to leave our houses again, like, this whole reflection of truth of you know, what it was mostly Robin, I think it was out of our control. And we can operate, that’s a big deal is a big deal. And we had to shift and we had to adjust and we had to realize that listen, you know, I don’t have control. So what I did this one of the things we teach the girls softballs kids call them what in this in the book, what’s important now when philosophy it’s not about winning, quote, unquote, white for now. And that’s something that we all I think struggle with in one capacity, like, What’s tomorrow gonna bring? You know, who cares? What’s gonna happen tomorrow? Let’s, let’s focus on where we are today. We’re, where are you be in your shoes, we say, be in your shoes, wherever your shoes are, that’s where you are. You’re not 10 steps ahead or sense. 10 steps behind, you are where you are. And I think that that reflection for a lot of us, you know, I realized I don’t need to be in here. You know, people say, Oh, you’re busy. You know what, I’ve stopped being busy. You know, what I started to do? This is a big deal. I started being productive. Right? Right. If this if this big ass is in the seat, she better be making some money, solving problems doing something, right?
Robin Hall 23:37
So a long time ago, I used to just track my time for what I was billable. And then now, I mean, I am absolutely real. Like, I get paid a salary. I don’t I don’t get paid by the hours that I work. But I am religious about tracking my time. You know, we’ve dealt with with T sheets. And so it’s very easy clock in clock out. But I track all of my non billable time. And so I can go back and go, Why did I have 20 hours of VARC time? What was I doing? And Was I being productive? So everybody in my company for me down? We track everything that we do. And it’s it’s for that very reason. It’s like what were you doing? Were you just there filling a seat? Or were you working on something trying to make things better? So it’s, it’s, it’s amazing how much that can open. And so I’ve talked to a lot of solo practitioners that it’s like, well, I’m all on fixed fee and just me and I’m not paying anybody by the hour so there’s no need to track my time. I’m like that is the most important time to track your time because you don’t know what those timestamps are. You know, the one of the things that I pulled from somebody else’s you We instituted, and I can waive it if I so choose, but the, the you’ve had these two dogs. So I just have a quick question, you can get quick question to death. And, you know, we’ve instituted that we have a minimum charge, and for my clients that I know, we’re gonna have that quick question, then we’ll do it for the month, and then we just build them at the end of the month for, oh, you had an hour’s worth of quick workings for the month, we’ll just bill you for an hour. Right. But they understand that that I bill, they understand that my time and my education is worth something. And so a lot of times, we give that away, as consultants, we give that our education away. So when we go, and we spend that valuable time at scaling new heights are the QB connect, and all those webinars and learning all about the PPP, and all of those things that we had to just instantly learn and know about and become experts on that actually took a whole lot of work in the background. And so when I can give you an answer on PPP, or the ffcra, often, that’s because I had 20 hours worth of figuring it out and learn and, and talking to other people and educating myself so that I can give you that two second answer. And you’re not having to do 20 hours worth of research.
Dawn Brolin 26:23
Exactly. Exactly. And I think what is one of the most important things that you said, I think the people who are listening should definitely take this one away, is setting the expectation with the clients they know expect. So saying, Okay, you got a quick question. That’s fine. Or like I love times, people, obviously, they want to know some tax information, or they have questions around tax. And Tracy knows, first of all, one of the things and I love the delegation conversation, Robin, because it’s like, I would Yeah, no problem. Give me a call, you know, I’m just sitting here, blah, blah, blah, whatever it was like then, then then because the way I presented Oh, you have full access, and you don’t worry about it became a problem, right? To get work done, because all I did was answer those quick questions or give that advice over the phone on the phone all frickin day or answering 7000 emails about it. It’s like Tracy, so if you want to talk to me about this, you want this kind of help or whatever, you got to set up an appointment, because number one, I suck at my own calendar. You’ve got to mama, right yeah.
Robin Hall 27:20
Because you and I are our own worst enemy.
Dawn Brolin 27:23
Oh, we are!
Robin Hall 27:25
So stop that people! I actually make it a joke with my clients so that they’re they don’t…1.) I don’t like it, and I know a lot of people do this use like Calendly. And it’s like, go to my signature and make your appointment on my calendar. I have somebody in my office is like, no, let me find a good time. Nope, that doesn’t work, what what fits on you, and then doing overtime zones and all of that. I like that personal touch. We don’t have anybody, we don’t have voicemail here. So, you know, somebody always answers the phone. You know, that’s another thing. But I joke with my clients, and I go, let me get you Denise, if she’s going to set an appointment, she doesn’t let me touch my calendar, because I’ll just overbooked myself, or I’ll, you know, do it wrong. So I want to make sure you get taken care of so let me have her make sure. And then we I train them to go to her instead of coming directly to me. And so now even if they email me, they copy her because they know or if they if they don’t, then I say yes, I can help you with that. I’m going to copy Nancy needs to call you and or I’ve copied Nancy, she’s gonna call you and get a time setup, we’ll get you all taken care of. And so I don’t answer that question right then and there. Because again, it’s setting a precedent to I give them the behavior that I want, go over here to Nancy so she can set it up. And to I’ve defined that as an appointment, so that they know that it’s billable, and they have respect of that time.
Dawn Brolin 28:58
Exactly. And that you’re that setting experts and that may help people who are listening, like realize it’s okay for you to determine how you want to operate. That’s like one of the hardest things like you want to make everybody happy you’re doing all those people pleasing, but the same time you’re making yourself miserable. So set some set some boundaries for yourself and for your, for your firm and for your staff and, and just you know, you can make the experience a much better experience for everybody all around once you start realize you got to do that. And so, Robin, I can’t thank you enough for coming on, because I just knew you have to come back. Sure.
Robin Hall 29:35
Absolutely. Dawn, I will see you at any point you whether you knew it or not. It’s funny that you said I was one of your motivators. You’re one of my motivators. So maybe that’s why sometimes we just look like we’re going in circles. No, I’m kidding. It really okay. I learned a lot from you. And if you pick up things from me then not just that just builds me up and just like my clients gives me power and passion that that made my day you telling me that so I would love to come back and visit you at any point.
Dawn Brolin 30:07
I love it. It’s and it’s the truth I don’t lie I’m not a liar just just is not in my, in my blood. And, you know, I just I do appreciate you and I know there’s a lot of other people out there who appreciate you Robin because like I said, You’re you’re a, you’re a such a thoughtful presenter, a thoughtful person, you’re always willing to give your time and then we talked a couple weeks ago about sales tax together and, you know, I was like, I need your help. And you were on, you know, ready to jump right in and, and you know, that’s, I think that’s just one last message for people who are listening if you’re out there and you’re struggling, grab on to somebody who’s doing it who’s getting it done. And we all want to help each other so never be too shy or or whatever to reach out to somebody we’re here for everybody. So Robin Hall VARC solutions can find you you’re you know you’re out there doing all kinds of amazing things you can still quit things consultants are doing all kinds of crazy stuff but what VARCSolution.com, Robin, is that right?
Robin Hall 31:03
That’s correct.
Dawn Brolin 31:05
I love it, VARC solutions, obviously Rob is all over LinkedIn, all over Twitter all over Facebook. She’s just everywhere, and crazy. So I appreciate you, Robin. I love you so much, buddy. And I look forward to talking to you soon.
Robin Hall 31:16
Absolutely. And I’ll see you at Scaling I’m sure in a couple months.
Dawn Brolin 31:19
You know you will I wouldn’t miss it.
Robin Hall 31:21
Alright girl, thanks.
Dawn Brolin 31:23
Okay, talk to you soon. Bye bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Episode Summary
Learn how to streamline and transform your transactional practice to create a proactive practice with these PowerSHIFT strategies from The Designated Motivator for Accounting Professionals, Dawn Brolin, CPA, CFE, and Sean Duncan, CPA, Founder of SMD Consulting & Accounting, LLC.
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Transcript
Dawn Brolin 0:01
Hello everyone and welcome to the DM Disruption. I’m the host Dawn Brolin. I’m a certified public accountant, Certified Fraud Examiner, and the author of The Designated Motivator. We’re here to help motivate you to take your practice to the next level.
Have you considered outsourcing your clients payroll? Well, I did and I went with ADP. The resources they provide, along with their partner program become the premier outsourcing Payroll solution. We as practitioners already deal with a ton of compliance. Keeping up with payroll isn’t a value added solution that I should be focused on. If you’ve considered outsourcing before, reconsider it today. Choose ADP to be part of your starting lineup.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the DEM disruption. We’re here at Scaling New Heights live very exciting times this week, and I’m here with Sean Duncan, the owner, CEO, President, you name it. He’s it at SMD Consulting and Accounting, and one of my very best friends who’s my conference boyfriend, which I think is totally fine to say!
Sean Duncan 1:07
Hey, my wife said it’s okay.
Dawn Brolin 1:09
We got permission, I mean, it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. It’s all good. So we’re excited here to today we’re gonna talk to you a little bit about how you can go from somebody that’s like a tax practitioner, and move yourself into advisory. And so Sean is is leading the way. When it comes to advisory work with clients. I’m still dying over this lady over my shoulder right here. Because I can see it’s almost like we’re connected. We’re like, twins that are connected. But that’s something different. Anyway, so excited to talk to you, Sean. So Sean, your story is amazing, because you didn’t start out wanting to be an accountant. Nope. What happened to you?
Sean Duncan 1:44
Oh, my God. Talk about shock when I was a child, no. So I originally went into accounting because I was going to go into the FBI. Now, that really wasn’t the original journey. I was lost, not sure what I was gonna do for a career. But the FBI struck me as a calling. And that’s an important thing, because it wasn’t just I want to go do a job it was calling. And law, language and accounting are the easiest three ways to get the bureau. So I happen to be sitting in an accounting class, congratulations. I’m an accountant. I’m the first kid my family to get a college degree. And so I’m certainly the first to get a master’s degree. And so fast forward 2003, I’ve got my final interview scheduled with the Bureau, I’m going to fly up to Kansas City, Missouri for those interviews. I’m gonna head down to Austin, do my physical fitness test, Dallas coordinator says Shawn, you’re my best candidate. Just go through the motions in the next three to four months, you’ll be in the bureau, you’ve made it. And then the second epiphany, the first epiphany was I was going to go into the bureau, second epiphany, unfortunately, 10 years after college and all the stuff like I’m, I’ve done it, I realized how badly I wanted to be a husband and data. And so this is the weird moment is like if I go into the bureau and I go pursue hostage rescue team, which is their SWAT cuz I’m kind of a dumb meat head. I wasn’t gonna be around. Your investigations, you’re traveling. And it just my my value proposition for that declined immediately when it really struck me how much I wanted to be a father and a husband. So I turned them down. And so here I am, 30 years old. And I have a master’s degree in accounting that I don’t want.
Dawn Brolin 3:17
I don’t want it!
Sean Duncan 3:19
I mean, come on, who chooses accounting. No, seriously, guys, I didn’t intend to be a CPA in the traditional sense. I wanted to pursue this dream, the CPA, the accounting that was all part of the path. And then no joke for two years completely lost. I was in lost soul. I was depressed. I had no clue what I was going to do. Do I go back to school? What do you do? My wife is amazing and supportive. In that journey of the two years, it occurred to me why the beer was so compelling. When I was looking at the career, it was about how the job matters. When I’m doing what I’m doing the job actually has to mean something when I’m laying on my deathbed 400 years from now because I I will be part robot. I want to make sure that when my old Tron self looks back and says, Did it count, right? All the hours we spent I mean, we all spend a lot of time at work. Are you doing something that fulfills you and adds value? And that was it. That was the moment and I realized I had all these skills that help business owners that help individuals and helping others achieve success? Well, that’s it, it doesn’t have to be the bureau, it just has to be something that has meaning. And that actually was where SMD consulting and accounting started. I wanted to lead with SMD Consulting and Accounting. It’s named in order on purpose because we wanted to be that CPA advisor that actually gave advice to small business owners because there’s brilliant practitioners out there. But it’s hard to do advice if you don’t know where to start. And that was where my skill sets were and all the career that I built. So started the firm and I wanted to go do that. So that’s the FBI piece of it is focusing on how we add as much value as possible to people and their families.
Dawn Brolin 4:57
And so, in addition to that, Your whole thing was like you said, like, I want to, I want to be a dad. I want to be a family, man. And you knew that that path wasn’t going to be there for you. Now, fast forward after that. You became a tax man.
Sean Duncan 5:14
Yeah, I did. I did.
Dawn Brolin 5:15
And you did tax work. And you did tax work, tax work, tax work. And what were you able to do? Like you were just tied down? It was almost like you were in the FBI, but in the tax world…
Sean Duncan 5:25
Okay, so there’s these epiphany moments that keep having these moments, right. I’m sitting there on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in my office, and I got the window seat, and it’s like, two in the afternoon, and I’m working on a return. It’s 75 outside. And I get a text from my wife again. Sunday afternoon. Yes, it’s tax season, of course. Her and my wife is texting me pictures of her and the kids at Six Flags. Wait a second?
Dawn Brolin 5:50
Oh, I want to go on that roller coaster!
Sean Duncan 5:52
Yeah. And so I turned down the FBI, before I had kids. Now I have them and I’m not with them. And it was, it was absurd. I was just one of those. Okay, this is clearly not working. And oddly enough, we’re sitting at scaling new heights, in scaling new heights. 2017 is when the final kind of bridge got into place. The camel’s back. That was it. I’m sitting at the conference. And it dawned on me, I don’t have to do taxes, my skill, our team skill, the value proposition is advice. Let’s just do the thing we’re amazing at because unfortunately, the dang tax returns are taking us away from the families not not just me. It was taking us away from our club, my employees, families, it was taking us away from the advice on the client. I mean, if you’re a client, and it’s April 14, and you go, Sean, I’m going to sell my business for 10 million bucks. Oh my God, I need help. My answer was awesome. Can we talk in May? Exactly. That’s not and we can. We were staffing up like crazy. I’m my office is in Frisco, Texas, one of the fastest growing cities in the US a phenomenal city. We were the largest firm in town. So we were successful. Unfortunately, our success was keeping me from my success. My success was to be the best husband and dad, my employees, I wanted them to spend time with their family. I wanted us to give value to clients. Because again, that’s why we started the firm. And we were disappearing from our clients taxes were getting in the way of achieving achieving our definition of success. And so I said enough’s enough. And I literally fired all the textbooks. off he went. And now we all we do is advise we do bookkeeping work, because the bookkeeping gives us the data that we need to do the analysis. But we focused on advice and then had to completely create a whole brand new model. And it was it was a journey.
Dawn Brolin 7:37
It’s a journey, and I want to talk about that journey. Because with every with change comes pain, just know that’s gonna happen. But you know what? That success is that you have after the fact that you have today in here and now, way outweigh those pains. But absolutely. There were pains and I want to hear, give me if you want 123 however many you want to give me pain points that you had when you were transitioning from tax to advisory.
Sean Duncan 8:04
Well, Dr. Dawn…
Dawn Brolin 8:07
Lay down on the couch! It was one day! I was crying!
Sean Duncan 8:16
I screwed up so many times. I screwed up because I was creating something completely. Again if y’all are accountants, you know what it’s like, you know, our industry have a pattern. This is the way it’s always been done. And here I am saying no, we don’t do tax prep, we just do advice. First pain is I underpriced now that’s a common theme here. We don’t charge enough. Well, you don’t, I was creating something new. So I kind of looked like I was beta testing on everybody. Right? And you can’t leap into the feet I could have. But and I should have I foot I went into low. And then scope creep happens in things that that hurt revenue dramatically because I had taken a big giant meaty seif to two thirds of my revenue. Yes, again, I was killing it.
Dawn Brolin 8:57
No guts, no glory, buddy.
Sean Duncan 8:59
And so when in of course, there’s the financial pressure, you’re trying to juggle and make ends meet. And so I had to be very clear and confident. And I will say that cutting all those clients, I never had doubt that that was the weirdest moment is I mean, if you can imagine you’re going to go to your firm and say, we’re getting rid of two thirds of the revenue. Let’s do this. It’s a terrifying Oh, absolutely. And I I never had doubt. And we’ll talk maybe if we had time about what vision plan and goal and and how I worked backwards in my strategy, but it was never a question that I was making the right choice. I was now seeing my family more and I was doing the things we need to do. We were helping people with more meeting but mistakes, absolutely underpriced and that that really created a whole new pressure.
Dawn Brolin 9:40
So underpricing of advisory work?
Sean Duncan 9:42
All of it.
Dawn Brolin 9:43
Okay…
Sean Duncan 9:44
Everything, especially the advisory because it was really trying to feel out where the market was, who was on I was going to serve and how that works. Second, we we tried to be customized like, John, what do you need because what you need is different than what Nick needs but Nick needs something different. So we created this own ellaborate checkbox system of all this terrible, terrible, no one knew what we did because we did try to do everything. We then brought that down to the good old Mark wicker Sham, you know three choices of versions right I got the bronze silver platinum, because I skipped gold, who needs gold?
Dawn Brolin 10:16
Who needs goals? So overrated?
Sean Duncan 10:20
Well, we, that was too much, right? Because then clients were looking at well, I thought I signed up for this here, and you can show them the contract. So then we had to boil it down again. I mean, no joke for two plus years, we were trying to invent the methodology and just kept screwing up. But there’s an old Chinese proverb that says, You’re going to fall down seven times get up eight. And that was it. It was the resilience just kept getting up. So I kept screwing that up. And there were lots of other different things like the the challenges that we have with communication, making sure the client really gets it. But there were, there were a lot of hurdles, a lot of hurdles the market is still isn’t ready for you. I mean, imagine all the people that come in and say I need a tax return. Okay. I don’t do that. But I can save you $100,000. Yeah, but I need a tax return.
Dawn Brolin 11:06
I need that done. Well, in order for me to refinance my mortgage, or whatever it may be.
Sean Duncan 11:10
I’ve had somebody that we’ve modeled out and said, if we do these three things, we will save you $100,000 This year, yeah. But if you’re not gonna do my return, well, we can find you somebody that’s amazing at preparing, we’ll build the strategy. And they’ll prepare. Yeah, I need it all in one roof. And they go to the other person who doesn’t give advice. And so they’re the smartest thing, they’re happy to pay the 100,000 in taxes for that convenience. So we have to solve for that and make it as frictionless as we can. So it’s, it’s a journey in the key to this really, for me is, this is what I wanted to create for my clients, for my employees, and honestly, selfishly for myself. Sure. And so we were creating what we believe to be right listening to the marketplace as much as we could, but it was, it was rough. Some moments, you’re sitting there going, am I just the dumbest person in the world. But then you knew we knew we were adding value, we knew we were helping, we knew we were lifting up. And I knew that this is where the industry is going. I mean, we’ve talked about this off here a lot, oh, my gosh, where our industry is going, you must be advising. Now. That’s how I chose to advise. But a lot of people will do advisory live and stuff like that. So I can tell you all kinds of terrible stories..
Dawn Brolin 12:12
Well, I’m sure but but really, at the end of the day, okay. So the successes don’t necessarily happen through the journey. And the because the journey always has the bumps and bumps and bruises. And you know, you get your butt kicked and stuff like that. So because a lot of listeners, we talk about advisory all the time, right? So it’s advisory advisory, you’re like, well, what the heck is that? Really? So So can you out for me? Can you dumb it down for me to say, these are the types of things, pick a client and say, This is what we do from an advisory perspective for this client. So any client, you think you’re not to mention their names and like that? Or if they have a family? We don’t care about that. But just what do you what is your process? So I come to you? And I’m like, Shawn, I’ve got this business, and I need help. What do you what do you say? What do you do?
Sean Duncan 12:57
We start with a lot of fact finding, we got to find out who you are, because what your pain is different than somebody else’s pain. So we’re still listening and customizing. We have a standard pricing model and methodology because the more the more you standardize it, the simpler it is, I understand. But I gotta know what you need. Because I actually may walk out of that meeting and say, You don’t need me, you’re good. You know, we’re giving you two pieces of advice that go with the challenge. And this is really the hurdle we run across a lot advisors and and I’ve had, I’ve actually had people stop me at scaling and engage in other conferences, and say, How do you know what to tell somebody? I will say this to the audience. Y’all are really smart people. You know what you’re doing, you know how the entities your work, you know how the books work, you know how to do tax savings, you know, that mileage is a tax deduction. I know that sounds rudimentary. But clients don’t know that true. And so it could be just as simple as scanning the tax return and going to did you know, you can write off your cell phone, boom, there’s $1,000 tax deduction. It’s the simple stuff that we take for granted, the client in the public doesn’t know. So actually honestly start there. We look at what’s going on and going, Okay, let me hit the low hanging fruit that creates an immediate value. And then if I’ve got to look at something more complex, I go into kind of the arsenal of whatever I’ve got in my head and I start analyzing entity formation, or do you have a will we do full estate planning? So it gets into even more elaborate if we need to? What does Dawn need what is Don’s pain? And this really comes back to the heart of it is what is success for you will almost always ask, What do you define success to be is what your success is, is what we should be working toward? Not some contraption that I come up with. I’ve had plenty of clients that like they just want scoreboard, I want to make as much money as possible. Sure, cool. Nothing wrong with that. I want to take as many vacations as possible. It’s a different model. And so we’re listening to how we can create the solutions and honestly, you just help. If you go in and help. Yeah, you’re making them better. You’re adding value. Congratulations, you’re an advisor and you’d be shocked. The things that a client will value would be the stuff you’re like, well, that one was obvious, right? Wait, wait, so I can I can write off that conferences. business expense. Yeah. That’s why you went right. But if so, so is all the alcohol the conference, okay, that might be maybe sorta oh, what kind of conference was it?
Dawn Brolin 15:18
It depends on how much you…no…we will get into those things but, another thing too that I find interesting. And a great maybe a good example is 2021 and 2022 meals and entertainment well, meals no more meals are 100% deduction. How many of you that are listening right now have told your clients? Hey, guess what, go spend money at the local restaurant because it’s 100% deduction? Yep. Like that’s, that is advisor. That’s advisory services right there. If I’ve ever heard of it!
Sean Duncan 15:45
Or just telling what the new tax laws are. We don’t know what the new tax laws are. But you have an inkling? Sure. That’s proactive. Okay, by the way, you guys are I have lots of real estate clients. I have a lot of position clients. Hey, real estate client? Did you know the 1031 exchange is possibly at risk? Yeah, maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But if you’re giving them the heads up, they can start thinking it and they’re telling their friend Oh my gosh, my CPA or EA told me this. And if it doesn’t pass, you celebrate the victory and say, Hooray, we don’t have to worry about it. But if it does happen, they knew it. And they’re not feeling like they’re blindsided. So sometimes you’re you’re telling them information you don’t even know. You’re there to share and help. And that’s what and honestly, that’s where I get a little selfish is I love helping. I love that fulfillment. I know you guys do to everybody. The accounting profession is full of people that are people pleasers, and they want to help and you said this in your session. We want to help people be better. Yeah. And if you just have this information in your head, and you’re not sharing it, it doesn’t do anyone any good.
Dawn Brolin 16:40
Well, I think part of it too, is that what we’re doing is we’re getting, we’re getting them what they need a tax return, we’re getting them what they need their books reconcile, we’re getting them what they need. But with those things are not giving them that vision that they need to plan ahead and be ready for what’s happening in the future, not behind you. And so I want to transition a little bit to of course, we’re sitting in the ADP booth, because we love ADP. And so you know, one of the great parts about ADP is their accountant Connect portal, because your talent your set, we’re gonna we’re talking about how can you advise your clients? What tools can we use simple tools to advise our clients, reasonable compensation, you know, go Google that there’s a billion different ways you could go, there’s no definition. It’s just like, what? And so, you know, ADP gives us that information through accountant connect. And I mean, personally, accountant Connect is turning into an advisory hub, it really is. It’s amazing. I mean, between between what they already have in benchmarking industries, you know, in various industry reports, and now the strategic partnerships that they’re doing with Gerard and, and biz equity and things like that, where they’re, hey, listen, guys, we’re opening our API to give the information to these third party vendors, if you will, because we’re all playing in the same sandbox. So if you’re sitting here, you’re listening, you’re like, Well, you know, everybody talks about advisory advisory advisor, I don’t know how I can start with advisory, how do I do that? You know, what you could take step one, take one client that you currently service, and start to do more than reconciling, do more than on, you know, a tax return, or whatever, and say, You know what, I’m going to take this client to the full end of the earth. And I’m going to actually start advising, it doesn’t have to be, we don’t have to go so extreme, as Sean did immediately, and I’m selling tax, and I’m going over here, and but you know, what you can start with the clients you already have. But you’ve got to have access, the key is you have to have access to the tools that give you that information to be able to advise. So if you’re out there, and you’re like, oh, yeah, I’m logging into five different payroll services. And so I’d have to gather that information to be able to give insights, well, you know, you might want to think twice, right? And that’s a one example. But, you know, I think for people to get started, is that a good start? Is that a good suggestion?
Sean Duncan 18:58
And actually was really funny, I didn’t tell you this earlier. I just realized that here at Scaling, I’ve had no less than three different CPAs come up to me from prior conferences and thanked me about the advice and tips I gave them on the change how it changed their business in their lives. And I’m like, I this was the stand aside of the booth. And we’re chit chatting, right? Love that. It doesn’t have to be big. And this is really, really, really important. Okay, so let me roll back to advisory. What is advisory and you can be this intimidating umbrella of the universe of I got to get their entities, right. And I’ve got to tell them the right technology, and I got to tell them apps stop. When you do a tax return. Do you stop for five minutes and go? Is there anything else I see they can do here? That’s advisory. Now some of you do that. Some of you don’t. We all know plenty of practitioners that just go and throw it out. And they say, Well, if there’s a did you miss something? It was like they didn’t give me the form. So I don’t know. Well, that’s not who we want to be. Pause, look and go. Do you want to do a retirement account? Hey, did you have mileage just Take a moment. That’s the incubator for an advisory. Then when you go, you know what, guys, it’s been two and a half years now and you still have never done a retirement account or you’ve never written off a vehicle or you’ve never done the Augusta rule or whatever you want to say whatever you think. Tell them how they can do that this year, you switched it to Proactiv. You know, great software, you hate that software, you love this software, and you tell them why you’ve advised them on software, you have all this wonderful insight, just start telling them, just start finding a way to help them now if you bill by the hour, it’s really easy. You set a meeting, you discuss it, you build, we do a fixed fee service, we do a subscription service, and we do project stuff. So we have a different pricing model, but it’s whatever fits what you’re trying to accomplish. And I would then say before you go completely nuts and try to give all the advice and Accountant Connect is amazing. The tools that are out there, you don’t have to even use a tool. Now we do we love going into accountant connect and noodling up a number and saying, Hey, all this metric. But it’s, it’s just using knowledge and sharing it with your client to start with. And then as you get going, and this is extremely important. You talked about this in your session is who’s a good client? What’s Who are you trying to help? And Who you trying to serve? If you want to help everyone, you’re really helping No one. Who are you best suited for? Do you happen to have accidentally have a ton of knowledge in trucking? Go help truckers, it’s Who do you want to help? You know, I really like beer. So I think I want to help some breweries. Breweries man, great. I love helping physicians. I love I know what the impact they make in other people’s lives, how many lives they literally save how hard they work, they make good earnings. So don’t get me wrong, it’s still there’s a business model. But it’s if I help a physician be more successful, they can be in practice longer, which then can help other people. And it has this extrapolation effect. So we’re working on building a model where we can coach and teach CPAs this business advisory, not there yet, hold tight. But we’re trying to we’re trying to build our procedure manual in a way that we can give it to a CPA and help them and my theory is and this is my big angle version. If I help one CPA in my career, started advising all of their clients. How many clients that guy have look at that report? 300? Yeah, I helped 300 families by helping one CPA. Absolutely. That comes back to my mission. My mission is, if and you we’ve talked about this before, if I’m at work, it has to matter. What’s my barometer of matter? If I’m not with my wife, and kids, it pet her freaking count. Yes. And so if I can go in and help, that’s why I speak that’s why I go on stage, I can help 500 people, it’s not because look at me, it’s right. I’m in a room and I can help 500 people in one shot. That’s impactful in my work matters.
Dawn Brolin 22:50
That’s world changing. You know, at the end of the day, that ripple effect goes hard.
Sean Duncan 22:53
Oh, yeah. And you could be you stood up in front of the room ago, did you know short term rentals are actually considered active income? Wait, what I thought rentals were passive, not subject to the passive loss rules. Did you know that? Did you not know that? Guess what, you know what? Now, you can use that to tell someone. And it’s this constant little cycle of learning. And it’s again, I get excited about it. Because every time I learn a little gem of something, I’m thinking about who needs to know that it’s advisory. That’s all it is. It’s not it’s not this massive project. Just start helping people. And you were an advisor. Congratulations, you’ve graduated to advisory because he gave somebody suggestions.
Dawn Brolin 23:31
Advice.
Sean Duncan 23:32
Yeah!
Dawn Brolin 23:33
Advisory, I think came from the word advice.
Sean Duncan 23:36
I believe it’s from its Latin roots of ad-vice…
Dawn Brolin 23:38
Advice. That’s the that’s the acronym for the whatever. So anyway, yeah. So So with that, too, I would imagine what’s really nice being able to do the adviser people, putting clients in the best position you can help them be in. And for us, we were at people, it’s all good. Doesn’t matter. But for us, I mean, I don’t know about you, we’ll just talk for a hot second about rev share. But I don’t know about you, Shawn. But listen, number one, I don’t want to deal with payroll. Some of you that are listening, love to do your own payroll, you’ve got your own payroll service going and you love it. And, and I love that you love it. And that’s fine. But for people who are more driven on that advisory work, or, you know, just want to ship their business, and I’ve talked to some people here who are I don’t want apparel anymore. Great. I look at it that listen. I’ll refer clients to them. I would still want my hands on it. I want my eyes on it still, but I don’t want to do the actual technical work of the payroll. Not only that, but ADP will pay me to bring them clients and customers. Now for me. I love that because when a client calls me and says or sends me Hey, Brolin, I got a notice from the Connecticut Department of Labor which by the way is so freakin far behind in the filing I chugged my choke them out. And so I get the notices from Canada. I get it from my own payroll, but I go in and I go and enter that service requests. But when I do it for a client, I don’t charge them for that. Right? It’s not it’s not that’s not a value added service to deal with that. So ADP pays me referral fee for for bringing them business and that covers any of that extra work I may need to do. And it also can help you buy a boat! I don’t know if you knew that.
Sean Duncan 25:19
Apparently it is!
Dawn Brolin 25:20
It’s an alleged thing!
Sean Duncan 25:21
A little extra money seems to be available to use for whatever you choose to do.
Dawn Brolin 25:25
Whatever you’re just it’s so weird, like, I don’t know.
I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Feel free to visit DawnBrolin.com in order to motivate you to improve your practice. Wishing you all the best. Have a great day.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Episode Summary
Dawn Brolin, CPA, CFE, The Designated Motivator for Accounting Professionals live from Scaling New Heights 2021 discovers the Ultimate Bookkeeping Solution with bookkeep™, CEO, Jason Richelson.
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Transcript
Dawn Brolin 0:04
Well, hello, everybody. And welcome back to the DM Disruption. We’re here to talk about action where you take action with your business. And I found a new app! I found a new app at Scaling New Heights, bookkeep! Jason Richelson, with me today to talk about where did this come from? And where have you been my whole life and that kind of stuff. So introduce yourself. Tell us what bookkeep.com is doing on the accounting.
Jason Richelson 0:29
Yeah, okay. My name is Jason Richeson. And I started with bookkeep. We started actually as a bookkeeping firm. We still have bookkeeping customers we basically started to try and automate the entire bookkeeping process. And the one thing that we figured out that wasn’t being done is all these losses that are hitting your bank account. So restaurant, we serve a bunch of restaurants. So you’ve got GrubHub DoorDash. And basically, we’re like, we got to put these properly, we got to log into the system, we got to get the logins and we realized that this is becoming a bigger, bigger problem with restaurants, every single app that you see every single tablet, or deposit in your bank account. When you’re doing Shopify, there’s up to 10 famous types of Shopify stores. And as a bookkeeper, you will have to properly book sales. So that’s essentially our software does, it’s really to help CPAs small bookkeepers, big bookkeepers, automate that process so they don’t have to do it. Wait a second, what is this Door Dash cost, what are the fees, are there sales tax in there? Wait, I lost my login and I need you to get it back to me. When you connected with us and stays connected, we capture the data, we post it properly, we make sure to always reconcile to the deposits. So we essentially automate all that for you on a daily basis.
Dawn Brolin 1:48
So that’s awesome. But I do, obviously, people know I do a lot of IRS representation work. And one of the key areas that they focus on in their audits are really driven from revenue. Right? They don’t necessarily want of course, if you’re throwing expenses into the tax year, and they’re all even numbers, that’s kind of a red flag, right. But when it comes to gross revenue, and making sure we’re not posting, we’re not taking sales tax into account as income, right? You’re mapping all of that.
Jason Richelson 2:12
Yeah, yeah. And actually, what I’ve learned from this conference is one of our biggest competitors is that a lot of accountants are just booking it as revenue, because it’s too hard to figure out what it is. And either they can’t get the owner to give them a login or the client for its, I don’t want to login and figure this out. So so we automate that. So really getting the word out that we do this is really kind of what we’re doing is like, Oh, I didn’t know I could do that.
Dawn Brolin 2:36
Well, it looks awesome! I have a client on Fisher’s Island, New York, and she’s a small boutique, and she has QuickBooks point of sale. But she also has online sales, and she uses Shopify for online sales. And what we find is to get that information directly out of Shopify and then into QuickBooks has been really a pain for her. So this is like a big deal for those retailers who are trying to and especially the, we don’t want to do the stuff that you’re doing. Because there’s no value add on transaction management, right? Your transaction management is a thing of the past. You know, prior to all these great applications and solutions. We had to hand key we were hand keyers. That was it. It’s not like that anymore. So why did you stop, you so you started bookkeep? And you just saw this need? Oh, my goodness, the volume!
Jason Richelson 3:21
I, and I should say this before I start, I was at Shopkeep.
Dawn Brolin 3:24
Oh Shopkeep! Everyone knows shop!
Jason Richelson 3:28
Yeah, so shopkeep was, so I have a huge amount of experience building the front end system. And actually, one of the last things I did at Shopkeep before I moved was to build the accounting integration. So I always, even on my stores, I built that integration into Quick Books two year agos. So I’ve always known. I just realized, oh, where we want accountants is to really think about us as their outsourced data entry automation department, right. So we actually have a new program just for this show. It’s $99. Unlimited, if you have to be a pro advisor, really certified, it’s your business…
Dawn Brolin 4:10
You want to work with people who know what they’re doing. Pro advisors know what they’re doing.
Jason Richelson 4:14
Exactly, well we want to build a business, if they have their own business. Not be afraid of E commerce not be afraid oh they’re using Stripe, they’re using PayPal, I don’t want to touch it. Just make the connections, make it flow properly. And if you have problems or things and we know your CPAs literally CPAs on customer care, I also see those chats. I mean, as we get bigger, but we’re hiring people who know what bookkeepers do and they’re smart, but really our focus is that. Whereas integration to QuickBooks, it doesn’t work if….so we know both sides of it, we understand what’s weird with QuickBooks, what are you doing with the account that we were trying to post to? Why is square, what Square data count? Well, Square’s API is down….
Dawn Brolin 5:11
That is a big deal. That’s a big deal. That’s what I was I was talking fishbowl a little bit earlier that when you have a software solution that knows both sides of the transaction, they know, we know the bookkeeper side, we also know the QuickBooks side, that relationship is a better relationship than there are other applications where they know their side is what we integrate, we do this but but then when you have a problem with the way it comes into QuickBooks, and you’re looking in the QuickBooks, if you don’t have the expertise, and you have a vendor that doesn’t have that expertise, you might want to think twice, because you’re able to support us in that way.
Jason Richelson 5:46
And support you the proper way I gave I gave a talk yesterday about accounting integration, that I use so many apps, myself and my own business and with our clients, you know, things like the sync button, you click the sync button, the payroll system, and then it posts another journal entry. Like it says sync, it should be syncing, matching with my audit trail should go to the same entry and I have a trail that they post, because they just don’t even get it what do you have to do every day? Right? And then cleaning that up? And then you can’t find the link to that journal entry that they posted? Where is it now I got to search for it. Ours, our system, it’s back and forth, we can send you back into QuickBooks in the right place. Does that mean our QuickBooks back to Shopify or square to the right place? Before a wrong the journal entry? Eventually, yep, data in our journal entries and all sorts of sales receipts in your future that tell you this is a sales summary from this exact time period if your timezone is off? Why is this not matching? Your timezone? Your sales summary is this, and you have your batch setup wrong, which is why those aren’t matching. So you’ll be able to figure that out without having to go back to Square or Shopify.
Dawn Brolin 6:51
And that’s a huge deal. Because when it comes to those same, the same, and how it comes in is so important. You’re crazy. So Michelle, so far, you know, and how this all works. I know for me, so many times the data is coming in and it’s not necessarily coming in right in the vendor doesn’t know how to help us solve for that. And you guys have that figured out. And I see that happens all the time. When it comes to retrieving information, shove it into QuickBooks. So we’re really excited to work with you guys and get the word out. Listen, people, if you have not figured out yet, the transactions are going to come into QuickBooks, not by your fingers, it’s going to come in through a solution like bookkeep, that’s going to give you the data that you need to drive and drill down if that’s what you need. So it’s been awesome, Jason, you’re talking to you. And there’s an emergency, which is totally fine. And so what I want to thank everyone for listening and we’ll talk to you guys soon. Here we are with bookkeep.com We’ll talk to y’all soon. Bye bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
