Episode Summary
Daniel Fritz, SmartVault’s Director of Products, chats it up with Dawn Brolin, CPA CFE, about the importance of setting personal and professional goals, plus provides insights on how to help your team work like a well-oiled machine. He also shares how SmartVault’s passion for creating happier and more productive accounting professionals is at the core of their commitment to creating the ultimate document management solution for your tech stack.
Daniel’s Story and Motivation
Daniel begins the conversion by sharing his experiences as a new graduate, and how his first boss, Nancy Ward, was the catalyst to help him actively pursue his personal and professional goals. He talks about his current professional goals being improving his team and scalability. He also shares that he finds joy when those around him also achieve success, and love what they do.
SmartVault and Going Paperless
Dawn discusses her admiration for SmartsVault’s ability to secure and hold important tax documents, and how many accountants operate completely paperless now.
Daniel also talks about how SmartVault’s goal is to go completely paperless, and how they are on the cusp of doing so. Daniel shares that over 1.5 million CPAs use SmartVault’s services, and how they had over 13,000,000 documents that were uploaded and processed through their service.
Dawn also expresses her appreciation for SmartVault, as they are alway striving to integrate with new programs and software, and their growth as a company has never been static.
SmartVault’s Integration, Current Changes, and Company Growth
Daniel begins by talking about how SmartVault has completely redesigned their entire billing system to allow them to bill in local currency. He also talks about DocuSign’s new subscription based model that is more affordable than their DocuSign counterparts. And lastly, he discusses revamping their UI in their web portal and other programs.
Dawn also shares how SmartVault makes communication between her and client easy, and makes sure she can do her job efficiently and efficiently as a practitioner.
Daniel adds how SmartVault becomes your central document depository; practitioners and clients are able to access all of their documents quickly and securely.
Importance of Outsourcing and SmartVault’s Flexibility
Dawn also talks about how important it is to outsource tasks to companies who specialize in them; you can’t do everything in accounting, so stick to the things you like doing, and outsource the ones you don’t.
Daniel talks about the flexibility of SmartVault, and how they take into account what their clients want and need. They also keep in mind that accountants aren’t the only clients they serve, and are always striving to make their program more accessible to businesses of all types and sizes.
Today Not Tomorrow
Daniel talks about his experience as a salesman, and how many relationships he established back then, he still has today. He also shared another former boss’s valuable advice of TNT, today not tomorrow, and shares that SmartVault strives to maintain that value as well.
Dawn agrees with Daniel, and expresses how important it is to implement knowledge you learn in your firm today! Not only will this allow you to help your clients gain success, it will also help you achieve your personal goals.
SmartVault and Their New Developments
Daniel talks about SmartVault’s past operations, and how they needed someone on the inside to directly oversee new product development. They onboarded Daniel to try and implement these changes, and he shares how they have scaled their team from just 2 developers, to now 7 developers, and a team of 15 people. He talks about how they made small changes at the beginning of 2020 to cut ambiguity and increase efficiency.
He talks about how they are so close to developing a well-oiled machine, and now they are focused on slowing down, taking their time, and implementing more automation to make their workflow more streamlined.
Daniel’s Personal Motivation
Daniel credits his wife for his personal motivation, and shares how her intellectual guidance has been crucial for his success. He also talks about being inspired by his Dad’s work ethic, but also the devotion to his family.
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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.
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All right, well, hey, everybody, welcome back. My name is Dawn Brolin, the host of DM Disruption. Also the author of the Designated Motivator and the Designated Motivator for accounting professionals. I’m also a Certified Fraud Examiner. I’m also a mom. I’m also a volunteer assistant coach, I could go on for days, but it’s gonna be more fun to talk with our today’s guest, who’s going to be Daniel Fritz from smart ball. Now if you know me, you know I love smart ball period. Okay, it does the job it needs to do for me and my clients and I love it. So Daniel Fritz, I could tell you what I would have to intro you. This is the Wizard of the Wizard of Oz. And smart ball. This is the guy and you want to talk to if you ever see this guy at a conference, grab him, nail him down and talk to him. Because he’s brilliant. And he wants to hear what you want to know what’s coming down the line for smartphone, all that stuff. Daniel knows it all. So Daniel, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you doing? And I’d also like to say Shazam, Team rolling. There we go SmartVault theories. Let’s take this thing.
Daniel Fritz 1:51
Thanks a lot, Dawnn. Yeah, super glad to be here. It’s really, really kind of you not only to have you on the show, but also those kind words. Yeah, absolutely. We’d love everything smart vault, everything you have you see me at a conference, let’s talk like we can talk for days. You know, security and smart vault is completely built into my DNA. I joke with my my team members all the time that, you know, I one time yelled at my product manager. Why didn’t you do that? Well, you never told me this I know I told you to do they found out that I totally told him to do that in a dream. So I live eat sleep and dream smart ball every single day of the week. So here’s somebody that says I absolutely love smart ball. Nothing on this planet makes me happier. So thank you,
Dawn Brolin 2:29
I’m your girl, Dan, I love SmarVault, it what it does for me and my productivity level is through the roof. My profitability is even further and adjust, you know, I’m able to do my job for my clients, which is all I just want to do is get it done for them. So it’s great. But you know, we had a great conversation last week on a totally separate call. And we talked a lot about where, where your motivation comes from. And you had some awesome stories of, you know, a former company that you worked for, and how you had some management or some so other people in that company that really just fired you up and motivated you and I want to hear all about that.
Daniel Fritz 3:04
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I have to give a shout out to my very, very first boss, Nancy Ward. She truly took me out of my shell, I was this, this kid, honestly, right out of school. And she brought me the first time we ever sat down, I worked completely remote. This is back, I worked for an EHR company called Sage. And people today will know that is Greenway, one of the biggest EHRs out there. And anyway, Nancy sat me down. And she said, look, the most important thing to have is to keep you motivated as a salesperson is to always have a personal and a professional goal. And, you know, just kind of trick for anybody ever interviewing with me? That’s a question I’m going to ask you. Because I think it’s really important that you stay motivated, both personally and professionally. And, you know, the very, it’s funny how things change over time, because whenever I first heard that, I thought, Oh, well, I want to get engaged to my wife now of nine years, Sam, and then my professional just like, Look, I just want to be as good as the person that I was replacing, because she was on that sales trajectory path before me. And you know, it’s funny how it evolves. Because now here at Smart ball, my personal goal is, you know, I want to pay off a little bit more debt because I want to get a boat, but it’s gonna take some time. Yeah, no, we talked a little bit about your, your awesome Grady White over there. But uh, on the professional side, for me, it’s all about my team and their scalability. Because I, they, my team hears me talk about all the time that we want to become a well oiled machine. And there’s an old video out there of either Secretariat or one of the other famous things in the guy back in like the 50s or 60s just saying, like, look at this incredible machine that’s going down. And that’s, that’s what motivates me, is it seeing we’ve got some new devs that have joined on our team and just to see those guys contributing? see them having impact on what we’re doing. That’s just so exciting to me. Because when I joined, we were such a small team, under invested and no one really knew what they wanted to do and how they wanted this to be a vision. And it’s it’s been great to see that growth because one of our more experienced developers told me a couple, like, about a month or two ago, he just said, we’re working on hard problems early in the morning 745 before most people are in the office, and we’re sitting there going back and forth. And he just at the very end, I was like me, I really appreciate you, Jacqueline, this thing, thank you so much for the extra effort here. He’s like, man, I just love my job. And that there’s nothing that beats that as far as like satisfaction, because you can work anywhere. But you know, getting to work on the cool stuff that we’re doing innovative stuff that we’re doing the SmartVault is is awesome.
Dawn Brolin 5:52
That is awesome. I was just talking to a room Mather with ultimate ultimate quest. And they do a lot of education for CPAs. And he told me a story about how so if you’ve listened to this episode already, it’s okay. If you haven’t, you want to listen to it. But anyway, he was wonderful. And he talked about how he went into this customer. He’s his former CPA, and he does practice now. But he saw the sign on the wall. We walked into this executives offices at TGI M. And it goes right along with what you’re saying. And usually we say well, tgi fridays, Friday Hello, yeah, maybe they said, right. Like, that doesn’t make any sense. Like who knows that. And he said, That’s exactly the point. What the guy wanted to do was create a culture that the people that worked for him and worked at that facility would want to come in on a Monday morning, and they were excited to come back to work because it was a place that they love to be. And that’s exactly what you’re saying with your guys. And just being able to, you know, create that culture. And like you said, it’s a, it’s a well oiled machine. If you think about a CPA firm, if there’s any other place, and he’s a well oiled machine, it’s at a CPA firm, because we have compliance deadlines, we have security, you know, things are requirements we’ve got to pay attention to so we have to be as much of a well oiled machine as anybody else. Right. And so that’s, again, one of the things about smart vault, allowing that and having that secure portal for your clients to be able to jump in and grab what they need whenever they need it. You know, we started charging people for paper copies of their return. We said, you know, we send them their quote, and we have little checkboxes optional. paper copy, 20 bucks, that’s 200 bucks, right?
Daniel Fritz 7:29
That’s right, there you go.
Dawn Brolin 7:30
I might have had one person check that box this year. And that’s it.
Daniel Fritz 7:36
That’s the goal that we’re completely going for honestly, the paperless revolution that’s been trying to happen across multiple industry, I’ve worked in the healthcare industry, I’ve worked in the tax industry, I’ve actually, there was a small stint where I worked in the entertainment industry.
Dawn Brolin 7:53
Oh, we don’t get to hear about that!
Daniel Fritz 7:58
But uh, but you know, everyone wants to go there, everybody wants to be paperless. And here at SmartVault, that’s, I really feel like we are right on the cusp of truly getting there and just like you don, you’re able to go completely paperless. But you know, as we as we release some of these features, yeah, it’s just hey, person, we need these documents. And then you guys take those documents, put them through your well oiled machine, Don, and then provide them right back out to the portal. I mean, that’s, that is completely paperless, the idea that the only piece of paper is just getting sent down from the employers from the banks and all those things that you have to just take a picture of, you know, and that’s where we’re adding a lot of efficiency and usability when it comes to smart ball because we want your clients which we have about 1.5 million clients of our CPAs it’s Marvel 1.5 million that are using this I think some of the crazy stats, I should have grabbed some of those stats before I jumped on but we had over 13 million documents uploaded I mean, I mean it’s it’s crazy that the amount of documents we play with and just making that so much easier for the for the team members for you guys to deal with makes it to where to truly is paperless. And that just there’s there’s no like, yeah, you’re at your office, you don’t have the just file cabinets of old documents. You guys are like “No, it all on SmartVault, we don’t have to worry about it.”
Dawn Brolin 9:26
Exactly, you know, and I think that one of the things i i made beat a dead horse and it’s just too bad because my podcasts and I can’t if I want to write like cry if I want to. It’s my birthday. Who cares? So one of the things that I just want to hammer down into people’s brains two things. Number one, having applications are awesome, but they’re even awesomer which is a word. They’re awesome. Okay, if they integrate with each other, they can talk to each other. The second thing that I say about applications are are they growing? Are they forward thinking? Are they always looking for the next better way to do something or better technology? To solve a problem, and that’s why I choose Smart ball, they’re always on the path of improvement. And they’re always, they’re always thinking of open API. I think, for example, liscio is a great example, the way we’re integrating with carbon assert, and other software’s. And I think that that’s so important. So you obviously, a lot of things coming down the pike, some new release is here in the last couple of months you guys have put out there. Tell us about that stuff.
Daniel Fritz 10:25
Yeah, so some of the most recent things that we’ve done is that we are completely redesigned our entire billing system, we don’t want to be experts in billing, we want to be able to bill in local currency we want to do like ACH payments, and all of these things. And so we had to completely just break part of our software that’s been there for 14 years and plug in something new, we have a new way of using DocuSign, you can now just use it as a subscription model, use as much as you as you need. And it’s just a per user per month cost. That’s, by the way, what’s more affordable than our DocuSign counterparts. And the biggest thing that we’ve done in the last about three or four months is changing up the UI. So the UI was very dated, especially in the web portal. And what we’ve done, we’ve actually added something called Request docks. So you as a CPA can just type in Hey, Fritz, I need some documents from you, it takes if you know what document you’re looking for, I can create a template of 1520 documents that are recorded in about a minute, if I’m just typing down, I need this because they’re free text fields, you put in whatever you want in there, and they’re like, Hey, Don, I need your W two, I need your 1099, I need your IMTS, I need all of your DIVs. And I need a picture of your dog, I need a picture of that great wine, because I love boats. And you can say that the required ones that are in there. And so you get to that point. And you say like, Alright, I’m going to name this just, you know, prints this template real quick, because it took me a minute to make. And I just pull over and I say alright, Fritz, and I can add a little message in there. So usually I need these things. And then when you’re done, the little submit button in the top corner will light up. Because that was really important, because you talked about, you know, being innovative and things sometimes the smallest pieces, I have to quote my she’ll be embarrassed if I give her her name, but my lead QA person, she really talks about the last 5% all the time, she’ll kick something back in the tabs. You know, we have her her name proof code is what what the developers strive for at this point, and we want to make sure that she doesn’t kick it back. But she talks about the last 5%. And that that submit button is it’s just one of those things that just makes us just that, you know, just ticks it because you can have it to where your clients could upload documents, and they could just hit it. Well, what if they didn’t miss? They didn’t upload a couple of them? Mm hmm. Well, then you have to go through the whole wringer again, where is it? The button is not even clickable. It’s it’s it’s just a blue button that has the dark black letters of submit in it. And once you have uploaded or said, Hey, this, this question doesn’t apply to me that for the last required question, that thing lights up. And that’s the that’s the difference of having a team that really thinks about how that inner interaction should occur. So we don’t even allow people to make the mistake of like, Oh, crap, I didn’t answer that. Last question is, Hey, I can’t Why is this not working? Oh, I didn’t. And I got a scroll down. There’s more questions down here. And that saves time on your your end? It’s key.
Dawn Brolin 13:29
Oh, it’s key. Right. I mean, revisit. I mean, I don’t know how many times Tracy historically, just be like, she’s like, I think everything’s there. And then I go in, I’m like, nope, they don’t even they give me zero information on their for rental properties, I have nothing like what. So having this ability to ask and request that information and have that go right into their smart vault folder without us having to deal with it. And knowing once they submit, it’s that we do have everything that we asked for. Right. And that’s, that’s a time saver, and it’s for the client. Here’s the thing, people, this is important to know, how you’re reacting or how you’re how you’re communicating with your client, the way you communicate with the client, the easier you make it, the more they’re going to love you. They don’t want to be bogged down. Nobody wants to deal with this crap or deal with it. They don’t want to do it. They don’t want to have to deal with taxes. Like, oh, God, here we go. Another year goes by which it seems like it goes like that. And it’s back again, tax season returns. And so for the practitioners who are listening to this, just think about your workflow and how you’re communicating with your clients. We just implemented liscio a great tool to use with clients, right? I mean, if you if I’m if I’m doing that, if powerful accounting Inc, is sending requests and having communications through liscio and working with smart ball and they’re everything that they need is at their fingertips in a lot of ways, right? Especially on their phones, they want to have things on their phones. If you’re not doing it, they’re going to find somebody who is absolute right and I don’t want to take your clients I have enough of them. I love I love Almost all of them and many of my clients are listening, not sure which way you go, hopefully, you’re going to in the happy development section of our client list, right. But that’s the key is the is the interactions that you’re going to have with your clients has to be has to be workable. I know that clients say to me, they thanked me for smartphone, you know, they thanked me because they don’t have to ask me for a copy of their return. It’s right where they’ve always live, which is in SmartVault from day one. Right?
Daniel Fritz 15:28
Yeah. And that’s in that right, there is one of the really big benefits that you know, you you sometimes run into a lot of people, it’s like, oh, well, I, I have that. And I printed it out, it’s here and I haven’t physically in like my safe at home. Whereas the SmartVault, digital copy, fullback, you know, fully protected every single alphabet soup of acronym from sec to FINRA, to GDPR. All of those acronyms, you’re covered. Because we we have that in there, we have a complete audit log that you can see everything that has happened that document from the beginning of time. And and that is so key, because when we talk to some of these accountants like look, no smart vault truly becomes your central document repository. This is the brain center. Yes, you have those tools, which awesome. I was just on a phone earlier today with Chris from Liscio. Love Chris girl, well, yeah, me and him are doing a Happy Hour, in a week or so. But like, that’s the thing is like, you know, to the point of the whole, like billing thing we talked about a minute ago, we don’t want to be experts, smart nuts. You don’t have to be good at everything, to make money in this world. And then that’s something that I learned whenever I was working in the entertainment industry, the software I sold was, was very niche. And there was like this very specific kind of person that would pay a lot of money for it. And so that’s how I feel about smartphones is like, look, we are the document storage location, we don’t need to be this beautiful app that liscio is the communicator they are 1000 times better than we are at client communication. And we own that, that’s why we decided to integrate with them and said, like, Chris, you don’t want to be I sat on the phone with his CTO, when we were first talking about the integration. And he just said, I, I don’t want to build a document storage solution on this, right? He’s like, we want to stay in the UI on the front end where it’s beautiful. And and we said like, look, we could never compete with you in that world. But we’ve got a document storage system that is, you know, the equivalent of Fort Knox over here. Why don’t we just connect those and then we’ll just kind of like, hey, you need a document storage system. Oh, you need some communities, go to Liscio is very similar to the like you said, with Karbon, the conversations that we’re having with carbon are going to be the very same thing that practice management with Licio. With us that starts that best of breed. In that way. You’re not in this like locked ecosystem, because when you try to be good at everything, you’re good at nothing, you’re mediocre at best. So yeah, that’s definitely where we want to go.
Dawn Brolin 18:06
Well, that’s one of the messages I’ve been trying that part of this the purpose of the podcast, right is to take motivation, put it into action. And one of the things that I look at is when you like we have a reassess your firm mentality. And so taking, and we’ll have this up on our website, at some point is to take an assessment of your of your firm, because at the end of the day, exactly what you’re saying, Dan is, really, what are you good at? What do you love to provide for services? What are the things what are you doing right now that you don’t like to do? You know, I know for a long time you know, when you first start your firm’s we’ve talked about this many times, you’re like, you’re kind of like an accounting whore. I know, that’s not really the right term to say in business, but you are, you will do anything to make money, you’re gonna you’re gonna take on payroll, you’re gonna take on sales tax, you’re gonna take on, right up work, you’re gonna take on tax returns, whatever it is that you’re just going to take on all these things. And then he makes eventually, after you’ve fallen on your face enough times to say I suck at this. It’s okay to say that, by the way. And I did that I was like, I don’t want to do payroll, I don’t want to be a payroll person. ADP, you’re my full payroll HR solution. I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to worry about it. You’re doing it. You’ve got a great partner program this great line myself up with that smart ball. Okay, smart ball. I want to duck storage. I want the best doc storage, I can find smartphone. I think I’ve out of all the apps I use besides into it because I started with QuickBooks back in 1999. But I think smart ball is the application, the solution that I’ve had the longest, you know, because you you go through your firm’s growth pattern, and you’re like, Okay, I’m gonna try, you know, this app, or I’m gonna try Google Docs or on the truck. And then you come to this one, you’re just like, Oh, my God, this is my lifelong app forever. Yeah. And that’s what you do you go through over time, but then you get this well oiled machine. And you’ve got things integrating, and everybody in the firm knows, we do the same things, every single client, we onboard, every single one of them matter what we’re doing the same way. And guess where they always start. So number one thing, SmartVault, because what we do is we create this potential clients folder, right? Because not everybody’s a client automatically. It’s kind of like what we do with keep, we put that you know, person into keep. And then once they upload their, their prior year return, we use quotient, we send them a quote, they accept it great. But they have to upload their prior return, the number one thing they have to do is upload their prior returned a SmartVault. So guess the first app they deal with with us, the very first app is SmartVault. That’s how it’s done.
Daniel Fritz 20:46
That’s the way to do it that. And you know, as those as those things go through, you know, you mentioned all those different things that we can do. That’s because we have that flexibility, when it comes to the folder structure, because you’re just in your case, Don, you’re using that as a potential client, and then you probably apply some more templates to it. But as you think about those things, it’s the flexibility of smart bolt is really where a lot of that value comes into play. Because, and honestly, that kind of makes it harder on our side, you know, not harder, just a little bit more fun, if you will, because you whenever we make a change to the software, we have to consider not just what it’s done once, even though she has like 90% of the roadmap locked up, like she knows what she wants. But for those other 10%. You know, we have to think about it. And that’s really prevalent in the way that we did some of the new files and folders, you know, when we released this new look and feel to it, there’s now a breadcrumb instead of this, you know, 1995 windows tree on the left. I you know, it’s funny Don is to laughing about that we literally had a design that was skinned and beautiful. And it took me and me and Danya to say like, Guys, no, there’s some times when you just have to let something die. And we just and the funny thing is, is that one of my CSM people they came over, and they just said they were just concerned. Like, they trust us. We know what we’re doing. We’re talking to enough customers. But she was very much like, are you guys not sure about this one? Because you just get so used to it. But that’s, you know, we really thought about it and said like, look, yes, accountants work that way. But a plumber, a potential pool company that could definitely benefit from smart vault, they can, you know, get those quotes from quotients. And kind of run it the same way, hey, we’ve got these bids for some pools. We need XYZ documents from you because and we’re going to provide you some documents cuz you got to give that to your HOA to make sure that they’re not going to tell you to rip up the hole in your ground. And, and it’s a those are some of those just that flexibility. But when you’re talking about like, hey, yeah, we use this this way. It’s just it’s so unique to hear. But that’s what we that’s the innovation. That’s what makes our life fun. Is saying like, how are we going to make this work? Yeah, we’ve got, you know, of our 7000 customers and our 1.5 million guest users. We, yeah, how we’re gonna make this because the big Yeah, the big majority of about 5000 of them are accountants and say, like, we’ve got to break that mentality. And that’s one of the things that whenever I came in, I really instilled on the team like look, kind of like you said, you reassess your practice, like we kind of had to reassess how we did development here. And I had had a couple great mentors through the years that taught me valuable lessons in that realm. But what we ended up on is just like, hey, no, we’ve got to consider that and we have to stop pump the brakes. And hopefully, you can’t see too much more back here. It’s a little insight into my mind a little bit, but we we will whiteboard everything. I’m, I have two whiteboards here, I have an entire wall that’s on the other side of this. That’s just it’s a whiteboard wall. And awesome. We’re always thinking about how’s this gonna work, we got to make sure it works for Dawn, but we also have to make sure that it could work for the potential landscapers. Bang, right that wants it to do, because if we just narrowed our focus, and we only did tax, you know, there’s a lot of great tax programs out there that are just that. But if you think about it’s like, they’re really rigid, it’s like, well, what if I’m a CPA, but I also kind of do this other thing, right, it would really be really hard to enforce one of those to do something.
Dawn Brolin 24:29
Right. Yeah. And that’s, you know, one of the so, you know, we talked in the beginning and you mentioned briefly that it was Nancy Ward was the name of the of the lady right. So I remember you telling me about some other like tidbits of that of that company that you worked for and and some really great stories there. Like, what other kinds of people were around you that you just loved and…
Daniel Fritz 24:49
Oh, just you know, when you’re a young sales guy, you you really get to kind of like meet a lot of people and just all my different teams. They had profound effects on me. And I still keep those relationships going today, some of the other big throughout the years of me being out and about. One of the best quotes that I learned early on was no matter who’s copied on the email, the truth doesn’t change. That was one of one of the best. And then bajas Dan was my boss. When I was at Azalea, I was the VP of product, and he really, he really instilled on me and I absolutely love Baja. He instilled upon me, TNT–today, not tomorrow.
Dawn Brolin 25:36
I told that story, Dan! you told me that one last week. I told the coach, I told the coach on Friday, I said I learned a new one today. Go ahead, keep going with that, I love that.
Daniel Fritz 25:47
And that was the thing is like I was the VP of product in you know, we were in a rural health care, really underserved areas. So you have all the big monolith hospitals in downtown’s and the medical centers and everything like oh, this massive Hospital, a lot of people forget about the random little hospital that’s three hours away from anything, right. And, and that’s what Azalea provided and you know, they’ve gone on since since I got wooed away to come over here to smart vault. They’ve gone on they’ve they’ve acquired a couple companies. But the thing is that always was instilled in me why bajas like let’s do make the change that they need today, not just wait on it. So we had several instances where, you know, healthcare is always changing, but it’s like, oh, this new customer, we only had about 40 or 50 of these smaller hospitals. But we were constantly changing that. And just having that as a as a motivation behind me is, you know, he’s like, Look, man, like your wishes what it is, but we can take an action, let’s take that action today, not tomorrow. Because we’re just kicking the can down the road, we’re never going to get anything done. And so we we use that mentality here at Smart vault as well. We try to be as efficient as possible and like, hey, if we find something like QA, find something, we’ve got to take that action today, and not just kick it down the road, because someone’s going to find that bug, someone’s going to find where that doesn’t, that that error message doesn’t describe what you have had, you know, what mistake has been made.
Dawn Brolin 27:16
That’s, you know, so T N T. Today, not tomorrow, if you want if you’re listening, if you’re listening to this podcast, I’m telling you right now, if you take nothing away from this conversation with Dan, today, is today, not tomorrow. And that means in your firm, we go to conferences, we watch webinars, we listen to podcasts, we read books, we do all of these education, and then you know what we do with it? Nothing thing. And you just have to say, What am I going to implement today, I’m not going to wait until tomorrow, I’m going to implement this one solution for my firm, because it’s going to help my firm, it’s going to help my clients, it’s going to make me happier, it’s going to make them happier. And with all of those little things, you will be more profitable. You can go buy yourself a great 22 foot Grady White like hey, go that’s or whatever it is that you want to do you want to spend more time with your kids at games or whatever, you know, and that’s something dandy or the culture at Smart ball people. It’s smart ball that work with you. You were talking to me last week a little bit about, you know, you grew from a very small number of developers. And now you’ve got quite a few more which one body is a big number, by the way? You get one more developer that’s like, Oh, my goodness, two more hands. And one more brain. I’m in! So tell me about that.
So yeah, when I joined the team, we were we were being overseen by the smart vault is owned by a company that’s actually traded on the London Stock Exchange called Get Busy. And so we were we were being they was kind of being run by those guys. But they weren’t here in the business. That’s why they decided to bring me in this looked like they wanted somebody who has, you know, kind of done that before, has a decent track record, and whatnot. And so that’s, that’s what I came in, and it was me and another product guy. We have one QA person. And actually we only had two developers when I first started because one of them was on paternity leave it so there’s about five of us. And now we have we are about 15 people strong. We have scaled the team. The QA team is now three different people. We have a content writer on staff, I have two product people that help just build this engine. And then not to mention the seven developers and we have a couple more openings that we are we are actively hiring. We have two people that run our development operations area. So we’ve we scaled from this tiny little group. And all of that was we kind of had to sit down and I sat down with my team. I said, Look, guys, we have to do development differently. And I was telling you no dumb we talked last week I kind of mentioned is like look at what you remember changing. It was these little changes for the last couple of years in smartphones, like they move to AWS and then they just kind of just worth, you know, just plugging in just time and just saying like, hey, let’s just get these couple of things. And they made an investment the the board made an investment and let’s let’s have this smart ball could actually grow gangbusters over here. And that’s honestly what we’ve done. So we had four really small releases in 2020. During the pandemic and everything I instilled my processes we have a way that we like tickets to be written for our development teams so that we cut ambiguity and increase efficiency because even us, one of the six pillars of Smart Vault is BSU, it’s about blow shit up and that’s on. And, and the thing is, is that that’s I kind of just reiterated that, you know, some of these guys have been doing this my right hand guy, Himashu has been a smart vault since the beginning doneness.
Daniel Fritz 28:58
I love that guy. He’s just like, teddy bear, you just want to hug him.
Yes, absolutely he is he’s absolutely been instrumental in my success. And I, I owe a lot of that to him. But I also feel like we’ve kind of taught him because it’s really fun. The first year we hear you’re the new guy in town, you’re like, Oh, we’re gonna do it this way. He’s like, No. And now the funny thing is, is here we are about two years later, and he’s just like, we can’t do that. Because we haven’t followed the process. We’re not doing these things. And this is gonna turn into a mess. Yeah. And that’s what the evolution is now seeing. We have structured feedback sessions, we have customer validation, we have this massive multi page document that we put in this work. So that structure to say like, okay, we’re thinking about doing something, let’s write an executive summary about it. What are the market requirements? What is the cost? Like, what would this if we decided to do this thing? So I’ll give a little bit of a insight here. One of them is a document approval workflow, like, what if I wanted to say, in your case, Don, you want to Tracy to approve something, or trace or vice versa? Tracy is like, I want to send this out, but I need Don’s approval. Hey, assign it to don don. And you get a little notification. Hey, Tracey assigns you this thing do you approve or deny? That’s one of those things that we’re considering right now. So we have to go through what competitors. And the best part about it was like I brought that up, I hamachi. Just said there’s no way we have enough time to do that. Now, now that we have gotten into that we have scaled from those two developers, we now have seven developers. And it is very much a it’s still just me and him honestly, for the most part writing those. My next guy, my new guy starting next week. Oh, great. But that’s, yeah, give us a little give us our little bit of our lives back. But that’s the thing is when you’re writing those and you just create like I said that well oiled machine, we’re not quite there. I always tell my seems like we’re almost there. We’re on the path. And I think everybody can see that. And we were having conversations around like pace right now. It’s like, let’s, okay, guys, let’s tap the brake. We’ve been like pedal to the metal, we need to calm it down a little bit. Make sure that we follow these processes and what is realistic, sure, we can sprint and like really get a thing, but we should calm down. And and just take our time, let’s make sure that we get these efficient, efficiently out, let’s make sure that QA does the right thing. We’ve kicked off automation. It’s all these really cool side initiatives that we’ve been wanting to do for so many years before I even got here. But now like we got there, we have the process. We have the personnel like we’re scaling to that. And so we’re really close to that like Okay, now we can calm down, get our pace, add a couple more people to where we’re not ever in crazy. 12 hour day mode. Like a CPA is during tax season, right? It’s just like, hey, no, like, this is now life. This is my, this is my job. And we’re doing some really cool stuff. And that’s what’s so exciting.
Dawn Brolin 33:54
Yeah, that’s awesome. And, and so, you know, I want to bring it in a little bit personal for you right now. Right? So we love smart ball smart ball. It’s my favorite. I can’t I love them enough. But I want to I want to hear from Dan the man Where’s gonna be Dan, man. And through your just Was there somebody in your life? Like for me? It was my dad. I mean, that’s a lot of a lot of girls will say that. Right? So was there somebody in your life outside of your professional world that that really helped you help? You know, guide you?
Daniel Fritz 34:24
Oh, absolutely. It’s my wife. 100%
Dawn Brolin 34:26
I knew you’re gonna say that. I knew it. Oh, yeah. To meet this woman. She sounds like an angel.
Daniel Fritz 34:32
She is She is brilliant. She is hard working. And she has it the priorities. Right? And I’ll take her word from whenever like we got married almost 10 years ago. My brother was the best man. He gave a speech and he kind of mentioned like the positive things that happen to my wife and just in his species like oh, yeah, no, like this has just been a godsend. She’s here and in honestly like she’s the biggest cheerleader but she’s also just so many intellectually smart that she’ll listen to me and like, what do you think about this? And should I should respond and just kind of give that guidance? Like, no, you can truly do that. No, you’re being a little crazy. Yeah, sometimes it works. So, um, but yeah, like with her, it’s, it’s she’s always the one that is just right there to give you the right a bit of motivation. You know, I’ve made a couple switches. And she’s just like, No, let’s just go for it. Like, this is an opportunity. Like, let’s let’s do it. Especially when I jumped to smart ball. I was like, I don’t know, like, do you think guys like I’ve I had left health care before. And she says, Look, every single time you’ve done something different, you’ve learned it, and you’re, you’re more excited about this than you have been on any of the other changes. And so she was very much a cheerleader through that entire process. So she’s her and then, you know, my dad is I have to say, my dad as well. He goes my pops in there. Yeah, so So pops. You know, he, he was an engineer, so he always, and he’s as Black Belt Six Sigma kind of guy. And he really showed that, you know, work is for work and life is for life. I mean, he coached my basketball team, which I’m terrible sports, by the way.
Dawn Brolin 36:19
That’s okay. He needs to be typing. We don’t need to be out there hittin’ things.
Daniel Fritz 36:22
That’s right. And so but but he really just kind of, there’s something that I like to mimic myself is, you know, he was always there. He’s like, look, he never missed a band concert. He never missed a competition or something that we were doing. And my parents had, like, kind of two families is kind of how I look at it sometimes because I had me and my older brother. But we were in college. My brother was in college, when my youngest sister was in first grade. Wow. And they and they were two years apart. So like, my parents kind of had two families about 12 years apart. That went through that. And it’s just he was always there. Every single thing his priority was always family. He was, you know, he also he’s the kind of guy I could just call him. What do you think about this? You know, what should we do here? And he’s just, he’s just a brilliant guy. But yeah, it’s just like the family that people that are around you. He was a grown up. He was he had four kids on a single income. And it’s just, it’s just awesome. Pops. Pops is in general, awesome. So definitely a motivator for me.
Dawn Brolin 37:31
I love that. That is that’s yeah, I mean, in those for us, for those of us who have lost their father, since which I’m one of them. You know what my whole mission is? Listen, I’m gonna work as hard as my dad taught me to work was a guy who was he worked for Pratt Whitney was a tool and die guy. I still have his tools and probably the problem. At this point, I’d love to give them to a kid to start out with in that world. But you know, he just he had guys behind the lions when they had Strikes Back in the day. You don’t see a lot of that these days, but Strikes Back then he was like, I’m not crossing the picket line. I’m not crossing against my guys. I’m not going to have them see me go home to my family while they’re here here picketing for their jobs or whatever, whatever the case was. Yeah. So he taught me Listen, you do whatever you know, is right. That’s right. If you if you it’s funny, you said that about the truth in an email, right? But it’s just yeah. Right. So if you’re, if you put out an email to your guys and say, hey, you know, whatever, whatever. And then they see you driving across the picket lines. They’re like, well, that email couldn’t be true, because look at your drive across, but whatever I mean, I’m using as an example, but that is, you know, your word is the best thing that you could possibly have. You say you’re gonna do something, you do it and and I’m not saying I always hit the mark on that, because I don’t I do the best I can. You know, life is an etch a sketch. I definitely believe in that, that every day you get up in the morning and you start drawing all day. And you’re like, oh, that didn’t come out. Very good. Well shake the thing. Go to bed and get up in the morning you starting over again, anything giant and I think that’s the purpose of sleep, to be honest, it’s kind of like a reset button, a reset button, wash your brain out, get rid of the crap that happened. And you know, we can all only do the best we can do. And that’s why the motivation part of life is so important to me because you know, yeah, I have crap days I have days where I’m just like, Oh, God, I can’t do this again, or whatever the case may be, which also is a really good indicator that probably shouldn’t be choosing to do it. That’s a whole nother conversation. There you go. Right so yes, I agree. Yeah, I reassess it’s like almost every morning like i Yesterday was terrible because of this or yesterday was great because of this. Then I can say okay, well I know what I need where how I need to shift today. I spent all day on emails yesterday I felt so unproductive where now today I come in I do four or five tax returns. I feel great. Because I feel like I’m doing my real job right. So right I definitely find that to be the case but but it’s been awesome having you on Daniel we try to keep these within 30 minutes and otherwise Okay, great. Yeah, ah, people check out they don’t care anymore. And we want them to hear our message because really, at the end of the day, you know, smart ball happens to be a visionary as well. Okay. And like I said, The the, my whole selection of the apps that I support, and that I use every single day, have to be visionaries. They have to be trying to do better every day just like we are. And really, you know, approachable is another kind of a key thing where it’s like, if you can’t get a hold of somebody in support at some kind of an app for an app, we got a problem. You know, I’ve got a couple that I had worked with. And I’m like, I can’t I’m not getting the support I need. What I love about smart ball is they’re on it. They’ll send you out, Hey, listen, we know this isn’t working right now. We’re working to fix it. Like you guys are proactive rather than reactive. True. Yeah. And I found that you know, because you can go to your website, and it’ll even just say, hey, SmartVault’s down, which has I mean, that might have happened twice in the last–
Daniel Fritz 40:45
Eight years.
Dawn Brolin 40:46
Eight years. I don’t think it’s gone down. But it’s it’s just that ability to find out what’s up and be able to approach them and work with people on their team. So responsive and awesome. So you know, that’s why smartphones definitely in my starting lineup will always be part of my starting lineup, because I just don’t see anybody else outpacing these guys when it comes to document storage solution. So, but I want to thank you so much for taking your time. Daniel, you’re fantastic to talk to!
Thank you, Dawn, and thank you for being such a champion of SmartVault. Yeah, you know, we’re all of us here we live and breathe it. Really excited to see what the next couple years are gonna bring. We’re gonna make it innovative and be that visionary.
It’s gonna be awesome. So and then we have another release coming up here in the next couple to three months. Daniel, we’re gonna have you back. We’re gonna talk all about it. We’re gonna you know, get people to understand even better, and just love smart vault. Smart vault smart people. Daniel, you’re my people. Danya shout out to you girl. I love you man. Daniel, you’re my girl. Danny Buchanan fan was smartphone I think since the beginning if not close to it. Yes. phenomenal person. Rachel Montana. Rachel pay, all those guys. Yeah, all everybody. It’s smartphones. Just love you guys. And again, thanks so much for being here today, Daniel and talking to you soon. All right, take care. You better take care.
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, sits down with Erron Stark, Division Vice President of Channel Strategy for ADP, to discuss the current challenges many businesses are facing, specifically with hiring staff and employee retention. They speak about how ADP can provide data and solutions for businesses in these challenging times, and allow accounting professionals to provide their clients with a wide pool of information they can use to solve their current business pain points.
Erron’s Introduction
Erron Stark, Division Vice President of Channel Strategy for ADP, is in charge of putting together the program, products, and processes, and does so in a way that can provide value to the accounting community. He acknowledges his passion for helping the accounting community, and knows how valuable that relationship with them can be.
How ADP’s Access to Data Can Help Solve Pain Points
Erron speaks about his experience at Engage, and shares how different the conversations were this year following the pandemic. He talks about how people were hesitant to seek help from ADP, and didn’t want to experience change due to the overwhelming changes they had to overcome following COVID-19.
Dawn agrees, and briefly discusses how ADP can help with benchmarking, and uses restaurant owners as an example of this. She explains that many restaurant owners are having trouble staffing their business, and she explains that ADP can provide the necessary tools and information for business to see what the current hourly wage trends are; ADP has data from everywhere.
Erron adds he’s seen the same trends, and that hiring employees is one of the biggest struggles that many businesses are facing. He says that ADP’s benchmarking data goes off of real time data, and can give businesses accurate information in terms of how to retain employees and also see what local businesses around them are doing.
Dawn also adds that partnering with ADP allows accounting professionals to give value to all of their clients, rather than just providing payroll. Only looking at payroll data is not enough to keep a business thriving in current times, and it’s up to the accounting professionals to make sure their clients have access to enough information to properly execute plans and procedures to keep their business afloat.
ADP’s Vision for the Future
Nate discusses how ADP strives to always improve the way they present data to their firms. He talks about how it will be a continuous evolution of development, and makes sure they are receiving feedback from the accounting community for how they can best improve. He also talks about how ADP is also striving to help clients with proper regulatory compliance, as this can be difficult for many clients to implement properly.
Dawn also adds that she appreciates how ADP has her back, and can notify her of issues that may arise within her client’s business, such as not properly providing worker compensation and liability insurance.
Erron’s Motivation
Erron shares how he finds his motivation in his family, and also strives to put them in a better position. He also talks about his competitive nature, and credits his experience in sales during college for providing him with his consistent drive. He also shares his passion for always striving to always improve his work, and gets a lot of motivation when he sees success in ADP and in his clients.
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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.
Alright, so everyone, thank you so much. And welcome to the DM disruption. Super excited today to have Erron Stark from ADP on the show today. He’s just a great guy. We had a really good time at one dinner one time isn’t our best friends. And that’s just how it works, right. But, Erron, welcome to the podcast today. Introduce yourself. Tell us what you do and what you love. Go for it.
Erron Stark 1:12
Yeah. So first of all, thank you for having me Dawn. It’s it’s a pleasure. By the way last week is been a year and a half of being not in person with you is like the culmination of some good things to come. Right. So great seeing you last week. As you mentioned, my name is Erron Stark, division vice president of channel strategy for ADP is a lot of words. And ultimately, what that means is myself, my team, we are responsible for putting together the programs, the products, different processes, and how we can provide value to specifically the accounting community. There are other channels, we’re responsible for some of our executive bank relationships, we work with brokers alike, but over 60% of our business comes in through the accountant, community like people like yourself on so I think my number one responsibility is that came into this role about four years ago was Do not Mess That Up. This is such an important community to ADP, you know the value that we provide the service that we provide the products that we you know, offer to you and your clients, you know, our team’s responsibility is to keep that at a very high level, if not always exceeding expectations. So happy to be here to talk about what we’re hearing and seeing and feeling, you know, within this profession today. Um, and from there, you never know, with our conversations which direction I’m looking forward to.
Dawn Brolin 2:32
I know you know, we’ll we’re always entertaining Aaron, I haven’t have a blast all the time. That’s how we roll. And so ADP is part of Team Roland team role and having our full All Star tech stack of, you know, these are all the positions we have in our firm to run our firm. These are all the applications that we recommend to our clients. And of course, so ADP is number one. I’m disappointed a little bit the fact that when I asked ADP what they want, I’m not surprised by any stretch of the imagination, but which is your favorite baseball team. And of course, Erron and Amy, they’re all I don’t I don’t know what kind of drugs they take on a regular basis. But they’re all about the Yankees, right? Yankee Spanky. So we’ll just get that out of them.
Erron Stark 3:13
You can just grab yourselves and team Brolin, I think that, you know, it gives us a good start. So let’s not get into that, because you…
Dawn Brolin 3:23
It’s so fun. No, you know, and that’s one of the things like we just are trying to make this whole program, the podcast, all of the all star lineup. And that because we will we want to do is help my fellow accounting colleagues, my professionals realize that we have the ability to teach our clients how to run their businesses in a way that we run our businesses. And with that, we want to make sure that we’re implementing best practices, the most value add that we can provide to the client. And that’s one of the reasons why ADP is just a homerun, they’re, you know, they’re the homerun team, a homerun player on my team. I mean, they give me the ability to service my clients, monitor activity within my clients to analyze and things like that. And so I just for me, it’s not, there’s just no comparison to what ADP provides my firm and my clients for service. But, Erron, okay, we were at Engage, right? And we were, it was wonderful to see people that was like, so important to get around each other, to learn from each other to be a look in each other’s eyes again, you know, and so tell me a little bit about your experience at Engage and what did you see from the practitioners and what’s the what’s the hype?
Erron Stark 4:33
Yeah, so finally getting to interat in person, which was amazing. I think it’s, it’s interesting to see since the last thing that we’re in person, and obviously many, many conversations, virtual conversations over the last, you know, 16-18 months, however long its been, losing track, but the reality is everybody’s been talking about and like two different paths, right, you have this thing on top of it. legislative changes path, which you just have to as the frontline, the frontline for every SMB client that’s out there, and where they’re looking for advice and guidance on how to navigate through that. So you have that piece which you don’t necessarily control, which is very taxing and time consuming. And all the regulations regulatory compliance on this report, and then you have, you know, this continuous evolution of advisory services. And I put air quotes in here, because I feel like everybody’s got it like a different definition of it. But no matter how you define it, right, it’s a combination of leveraging technology, leveraging data, being able to present it in an articulate form to your clients that will help and enable them to grow. And hopefully, this is a, you know, a cocktail of all the different definitions that exist out there. But I think one of the things that I learned, and I’ve heard this in a couple of different conversations, not just an engagement leading up to engages, yes, I understand it’s right. And yes, I’ve started to see and learn more about what’s available to me. But I still don’t know how to actually capitalize on it, like, there still seems to be a certain level of hesitation on because people are in the sensitive state, like, how do I profit from the cutaway product? Guys? How do I monetize it. Um, and I think that’s something that, you know, the firm’s that we’re working with, some have figured it out that, you know, definitely on the more progressive side, because they understand the value to it, and how it differentiates them from, you know, the accountant, the advisor, the practitioner down the block, and then there are a lot that just don’t understand how their clients are going to react to it. And it’s giving them a little bit of pause. So, you know, from an ADP standpoint, I think that, you know, we help definitely with some of the technology elements and the tech stack that we can provide to give that data that intelligence, but we’re we’re looking to continuously evolve based on the feedback that we’re hearing is, how can we either develop or partner with, you know, those entities, and that can actually help a firm understand how I can monetize this, how I can introduce it to my clients, where they don’t feel threatened by it, where I’m trying to gouge them during a very sensitive time, versus this is a valued service that is going to enhance your business. And as you are trying to grow your practice. So am I and we’re in this together. Right? Like, I think that that’s something that we’re still trying to figure out. I don’t know if I have it fully laid out just yet. But hopefully, that’s a good summary of what we’re seeing what we’re hearing.
Dawn Brolin 7:28
And you know, Heather and I talk a lot when I spoke with her the other day, we were talking about, you know, the whole concept of the benchmarks of what are other and we use restaurants as an example. We know right now that employers are really struggling finding employees, finding people who want to work, we won’t get political about it, but it just is what it is. Right? So with saying that, what the solution or a resource that ADP is able to provide you as a practitioner through the accountant Connect portal, is that benchmarking? What are people getting paid in Boston, Massachusetts as a server? What are they getting paid? And, you know, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, wherever, wherever your clients are with loves, ADP has data from everywhere. And I think that that’s one of the things right now, when you listen to your clients say, Hey, listen, I’m struggling with hiring employees, I can’t get people. What do I do? Well, one of the first things you can do is go into your account, connect resource and go check and see what the comparatives across the country or wherever your clients located for the similar for a similar type of business, and figure out maybe your way underpaying people, it’s totally possible, but you don’t know if you don’t have the resources. And that’s, I think the most important thing to me are the resources that I can tap into the PPP loan, you guys crushed, that, you know, the reporting and the things that we needed to report in for forgiveness, and things like that. And guess what people that’s still going on today’s PPP loan close with it was end of May the second round, there’s still reporting requirements that you’re going to be required to provide. And if you’re just not able to pop those reports out, you know, I’m sorry, but you got to you’ve got to look at something to do something different. And so, you know, talk about if you can era just talk a little bit about what you’re seeing from a hiring perspective, because you guys obviously see all of the industry statistics and the reporting that comes out about that. What are what are you seeing out there with regards to employee retention or even hiring.
Erron Stark 9:27
I want to be really, cause I feel like media, medium without hearing and seeing some of the statistics and the sensitivity around you know, having to retain employees and the taxing exercise that that that includes and listen to the bits that are most important asset are people but people are calling this current time the Great Resignation, 40% of employees are considering leaving their current employer because there’s a there’s a premium out there. cause the amount of jobs that continue to stay open 9 million jobs, right that they’re open right now in the economy. And as good as the jobs reports have been as far as filling them, like there’s an attrition that’s taking place, it’s opening up more, and then there’s just been this big void. And they can see that has built over the past year and a half, that is going to take some time for us to get back to. So employers are taking extreme measures to offer hiring bonuses, premium benefits, different experiences, whether that’s, you know, hiring bonuses or equity within their firms like there is a variety of different tactics that they need to differentiate themselves from the competition or attract them away from their current employer. So everybody’s playing this offense defense game. And to your point that comp benchmarking is what really does differentiated versus some of the other datasets that are out there is that it’s it’s built off of real time intelligence, where you can go look at some of the job boards, and you can go and look at some of the other datasets, but they are an aggregation of information that took place last month, last quarter or last year, based on those different jobs, or potentially what people are being offered in a job board. Right, like what’s on the actual adopters. But that doesn’t necessarily correlate to what people are getting paid and offered at the end state. So what our information does is we’re aggregating and anonymizing 30 million plus employees across the domestic US. And then we’re pulling that in by industry, by geography by job tied by tenure. And that’s what people are getting paid right now. Right? The second and if you take that, and you start to expand it with this, you know, another piece of attracting and hiring talent right now, is the flexibility optionality, when it comes to where you’re going to work, and how often you’re going to work, right? Like you’ve seen many companies instituting four day workweeks, or your instance being you only have to come to the office three days a week, or not ever come to the office at all. So people have relocated from New York, Florida, from Florida to California, from Texas to wherever. And just heard about somebody moving to Montana sounds glorious, like the reality is, what what you’re paying for talent that used to live in New York City, the cost of living is not the same in Montana, right, and being able to have the tools to pivot quickly are, I mean, you could say that that’s important, right? And a differentiator for not just us for the firm, but the firm to that client, right to be able to, you know, identify that. And then all these pieces to get off this model up here, I guess, is also taking a look at the clients that are reaching out to you or one cohort, right? Like that’s one group of people that are proactively reaching out to their advisors, and asking them for a level of consultation and how to navigate this. Is it every client? I promise you, it’s probably not right. It’s not like you have 100 clients, maybe 50 are doing that. Me too, right. But the other 50, the other 98, you have to assume that some of this is taking place within their organizations as well. And if they’re not reaching out to you, it’s either a, they don’t know the questions to ask, ie, they don’t know that you have services or solutions to help me or see the worst answer. They’re going somewhere else for, right. And it’s that some or else that should be just something top of mind for the accounting profession, because everybody’s trying to create these robust suites, where I offer this, and this This, in essence, right. And some of those other this is, we hope and fingers crossed that they’re not going to be accounting services. So Right. So and what we’ve done to take offense to that with our accounting partners in accounting Connect is the new insights application, which actually shows you which clients are adding employees, which clients might have attrition, which clients are opening up or have multiple jurisdictions that they’re adding to their payroll, who should be leading indicators that you could take a proactive measure with your clients pick up the phone and say, I just saw that you added 35 employees over the last 90 days, that’s awesome. But are you putting in the infrastructure to help support them to help retain them, right? So you can stabilize this growth if not accelerated, moving forward? Or the adverse which is, hey, I’ve seen that you lost him people over the last month or two, what’s causing that? Maybe it’s the compensation piece to your point where I’m overpaying, which, you know, maybe that’s not the worst thing, but what if you’re underpaid? And now they’re talking them off the right because you were going off of a different model that 18 months ago made sense, but today is not the same.
Dawn Brolin 14:50
Yeah, and I think that that again, we always talk about adding value, which everybody always talks about adding value and I think, in our accounting profession now, we’ve got to do that more than we ever need. And did before more of thinking outside of the box, not doing the same thing where, like you said, somebody is adding employees? Are they, you know, should they be adding different benefits? Are they let’s say the add employees they have 401k? is did you offer the 401k? To your new people? Did they sign up? Do you have the, you know, they don’t want to sign up? So did you have that letter that says no, I’m opting out? Those kind of like labor force issues that the client may not be thinking of as they’re growing? That Okay, listen, we got to take a look at this, or we got to take a look at that. We got to say, Hey, listen, wait a minute, what if we have employee retention, tax credit, things that we need to address, things that they’re not necessarily thinking of? And, you know, maybe sometimes we’re not thinking of them. But when you relieve yourself from performing services, that are not a value add, and you stop doing those things, and you start moving over to, hey, we got to take a look at this, you know, maybe they’re a new client, maybe they’re, you know, we I got a lot of new clients last year, did I sit down with every single one of them and go, Okay, do you? Do you qualify for the employee retention credit? Do you have tip credits, you have this, like, those have to be in the forefront of our minds. But if I’m focused so much on the performance of payroll, or the integration, or the journal entries on making, which that’s a whole nother ballgame, I lose sight of the value added things I could be doing for that. And I think that that’s my point about about partnering with a solution provider that gives more than just that payroll, blah, blah, blah, it gives you that bigger picture to have conversations with your client that they need to hear. They don’t even know they need to hear them, but they do. And so I think that that’s, you know, been a really great thing. So Aaron, so tell me, for the next, let’s say a year, what is the plan to help to help put these other types of tools in place? And what’s the vision of ADP from a solution providing perspective or support perspective for accounting professionals? That you can tell us about?
Erron Stark 17:01
Yeah, yeah, year, for sure. We keep a couple in the vault. I think it will just continue to be released. We serve up our information to our firms, right. And the feedback that we go we that we’ve already heard. And by the way, it goes without saying, but all of the tools and resources that we develop that we partner with us is is all from solicitation and feedback we get from the kind of community like so our Advisory Board, which you are obviously in the member of, but just the general accounting profession, you know, we continuously reach out to ask, what are the things we can continue to do in order for not just the graded need to be to be the preferred provider, but also to add value, right like to help us professionally and you saw that in what was done during the height of the pandemic and the PPP that you mentioned before. So, you know, we have those tools and resources, feedback through accountant connected, if you see something, say something, right, like we’re always keeping our eyes and ears open. But I think where we’re focused on right now is, again, making sure that we have some of those tools and resources readily available to help navigate the regulatory compliance, because we don’t see that going down. Unfortunately, or fortunately, anytime soon, like some people do benefit from this ever changing landscape, right? You know, it sometimes leads to profitability. But then on the flip side is what am what we really excited about? How do we take this data? How do we take this intelligence and make it actionable, right, where we can actually take that information as opposed to looking at it and looking for it, which is step number one, and we’re there, which is super exciting. But imagine a world where we can take that and proactively provided to you to then proactively provide it to your client. And I’ll use just a quick example. employer hires an employee in a state that has a required mandate for a retirement vehicle. And they do not have one in place today, imagine that a notification goes off, which again, you can look and find this data today, but you’re gonna have to search a little bit. But imagine if just with a snap of a finger ADP is notifying you to say you have a client out of compliance up the hero. And by the way, here’s a solution set that you can easily tap into whether or not you want to use it or not, doesn’t matter. Like, here’s what’s happening, what they should be doing, and solutions if you’re not looking to scour the internet.
Dawn Brolin 19:34
Yeah, and you know, honestly, that’s, that’s the type of thing that, you know, I complained one time I had a client who didn’t have workers comp, they were in New York City, and if you are from New York, and you don’t have workers comp, you know, I got a bill comes through the New York State kind of like goes right at you right for your jugular. But it was like she added one employee and I wasn’t really thinking like, I’m not their insurance agent, right? And so later down line, they get the notice they’re like, you know, you set up payroll, why didn’t you set up workers comp? And I’m like, oh, like it was like a light bulb came on in my head that Oh, I do have to be the insurance agent. Not really. But I have to be the one who says, hey, you know, do you have workers comp in New York City for New York for this employee? Because New York’s pretty, pretty rough about workers comp. And so really, it was at the end of the day, it was my failure in a way that I wasn’t paying enough attention. But, but having ADP say to me, Oh, hey, so and so just add an employee in New York? And hey, do they have workers comp? Do they have you know, do they have a withholding number set up? Are they registered in New York to be able to pay in New York employee? Things like that, that we need to be that person who is thinking forward for the client? And not just be the person? Oh, yeah, they’re on, okay, they got somebody on payroll looks like their payroll went up. And oh, that, you know, it’s in the accounting, who cares? Because really, the clients need us for more than that. And so the more that we can, again, not set them up on insurance, necessarily, unless you’re doing a worker’s comp pay as you go. But even just liability insurance or things like that, that the client has no clue they need this stuff. They don’t have any idea. They go to an attorney, typically, the attorney sets up the entity. And then that attorney is all done. Well, the attorney didn’t think about that they have liability insurance, do they have this all their job was to register their you know, entity, and get them an EIN, they think that’s where it ends? Well, that’s where it begins. And so the more tools and things like that when it comes to the payroll regulations that ADP can provide to the practitioner, and that’s what ADP has been doing. And I think, from a motivation perspective to take action, which is really what this whole podcast is about motivation, turning into action. And that’s what we want, I don’t want to motivate you, and then I’ll be your goal. And you’re like, Oh, that was great. No, it’s like, okay, what am I going to do with the information I learned? I’m going to go do something about it. And so I think that you know, what ADP has in the pipeline is exactly what we need. But I want to I want to go a little bit to your personal side, Aaron, a little bit over here, which will be unexpected, that’s fair. But I want to hear about what motivates Aaron Stark, what, what motivates you to get up every day and do what you do? And I know, you’re gonna tell me, it’s because of people like me, and you love us. And I get all that what I’ve thought about Erron Stark, like, tell me a little bit about that.
Erron Stark 22:17
Yeah. So there’s, there’s two sides of me, the get me up every day and push me probably more than anything. So it’s, what is obvious is my family, right? So father of three, my wife of going out almost 12 years come September, you know, there’s really nothing that I wouldn’t do to put them in a better positioned than I ever had growing up. Um, and, you know, so that’s, that’s first and foremost. But I’m also a very competitive individual, like growing up in a sales organization, put myself through college doing sales. Like, I am always looking at ways in which, you know, myself, my team is exceeding expectations, like when I put on my GPS in the morning, and it says, I’m gonna get to the office at 7:30, I kind of look at it and I drop an expletive. And I say, I’m going to be there at 7:15 right? Like that. That’s either my competitive nature or my psychosis, I’ll let you choose. But you know, it’s just that drive of, you know, never been content with, you know, what it is that we’re doing. And part of what attracted me to ADP is that I think it’s built into our DNA and the fabric of organization, but it’s only five years in the business of, you know, always looking to exceed our expectations and outperform, you know, what our partners, our clients, you know, are looking for an ADP, are we always perfect? No, right? Not, nor am I as a as a human being. But I think when you balance those two sides of the equation, right, having something that grounds you in my family, but then this this, this desire to always be getting better, right? Like, no matter what that is, those are my motivational factors.
Dawn Brolin 23:58
And I love that that’s, you know, that’s, for me, it’s my big motivation right now, at least in my in my professional world is to help other practitioners, but also my clients, I got an error. And this is actually kind of like a timing thing. But I had a client email me this morning, and I finished their tax return and they’re like, can you please split the cost of the taxpayer and two payments, and I’m like, not a problem they’ve been a client for many, many years. I know, you know, I know, they’re good for it type of thing. And I, you know, I make very, very few exceptions to that to the rule of getting paid. But she emailed me and she said, I’ve not told anybody this, but I can’t tell you how much I’m struggling with my family doesn’t know. Nobody knows. My family has been depending on me for 20 years to provide for the family. And I’m just burnt out. I don’t even I can’t sleep at night. And so from a motivation perspective, immediately going into the DM mode, mindset mode. That’s where I go immediately when I hear something like that. It’s like whoa, stop everything. Right, we’re here for a bigger purpose than to process payroll. What we are here to do is to serve clients and give them value, but also understand their where they are as a human. And the work. I mean, I can’t say enough, it’s the worst time from a mental perspective for people. And so the more that I can streamline production in my company, whether it’s through tax returns, things like that, but having the streamlined technologies that I utilize, allow me to stop and say, hey, when can I call you like, this is too important. I don’t care about your money. None of that matters, but the people do. And that’s, at the end of the day, what we’re really about. And so yeah, your family is your motivator, were you and I, Aaron, we are both competitive, we will, we will fight til death bleed to death. We don’t neither of us care, we’re competitive. But at the end of the day, it’s that human that I’m sure you’ve had so many interactions with practitioners who are in a position that they’re just struggling mentally, or from whatever perspective and I think, you know, hopefully, this DM mindset will help people step back a little bit and treat each other more like humans and not robots, and, you know, the efficiency and the resources. And all those things are great, we need them in our practice, so that we can address the more important things which are each other. And so, you know, that’s kind of, you know, I’ll give you I want you to give me last thoughts on that, just kind of on that concept.
Erron Stark 26:27
So, I, I love your, your mission right now kind of find the right word to encapsulate what it is that you’re doing. But it’s a mission, right like this, you know, this motivational elements of what you’re trying to bring is probably a little bit different than what you’ve heard or seen within your profession, right here for many years. Tom, from a historical lens, you naturally get into this proactive lens, but you’re adding in this different dynamic of that motivational factor, which brings in that human component to it. Because I do think that everybody needs a reminder of like, when you ask him this question, what does motivate you had? Because there are some challenging times right now, like we’re still working from home in certain instances. And, you know, not every conversation has this positive outlook on it, there’s probably more of those than we care to admit in certain instances. But like, honing in on what does motivate us, right? And what got us to that point where we were happy and potentially not, you know, reminding ourselves every day, I think is a testament to you know, what you’re bringing to market right now. And you know, the conversations that you’re having, I’m happy, I’m privileged to be a part of it. So thank you for letting me here today. Looking forward to the next one. I remember the first time we did this was in that dingy conference room with a microphone in front of your face, and I wasn’t sure what was happening. But here we are a couple years later, and the conversation just keep getting better and better. Dawn, so goes out with Thank you, and, go Yankees. And just kidding. I look forward to speaking to you soon. This is awesome.
Dawn Brolin 28:01
Absolutely Erron, thank you again, so much. And thank you everybody for listening to VM disruption. We’ll be back again next week for another episode. We’re here to just try to support all of you in whatever way we can. And ADP is definitely a partner that I call my family as part of my team. And critical toast to the growth of powerful accounting. So thank you again, Aaron, and we’ll be talking to you soon so stay out of trouble. Go Red Sox.
I hope you enjoy 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
Best-selling business author and advocate for entrepreneurs, Mike Michalowicz, joins Dawn Brolin, CPA, CFE, to talk about finding the motivation to come back from setbacks. He details his own struggles and why his mission is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. He also gives Dawn tips on how to run a successful podcast…Michalowicz style!
How Mike Found His Motivation and His Come Back Story
Mike shares the story about how he had to lose almost everything in his life to gain back control. He talks about how making the active choice to try and solve the issues around him is what put him back on the path to success.
He also shares a quote that he keeps on his wall that reads, “Eradicate entrepreneurial poverty,” and uses that as his motivation to solve issues not only for himself, but to fellow entrepreneurs around him.
Mike’s Impact and “Profit First”
Dawn discusses how Mike’s book, “Profit First,” comes up in certain conversations with clients and colleagues, and how people always have wonderful things to say about him and his book.
Dawn and Mike also discuss how since the success of “Profit First,” other entrepreneurs have used his concepts and ideas to write their own version of “Profit First,” and tailor it to their specific industry and needs.
The Designated Motivator Concept and it’s Success
Mike discusses his admiration for Dawn’s new “Designated Motivator” concept, and says he really understood it when she presented it at an art conference he attended. He speaks fondly about her phenomenal presentation, and says “It really can be one person,” when discussing how the right individual can make all the difference in a team or company.
“One person with the right attitude and the belief in others can turn a company into anything,” he also adds.
How to Be the Designated Motivator
Mike asks Dawn how she is able to genuinely believe that a team or company is going to achieve success, despite their losses in the past.
Dawn responds by saying, “I’ve got to find out what makes this person…what makes them tick. What do they love, what do they not love…you got to get in their heart, and you have to show interest.” She talks about how if you truly take time to know someone, and genuinely want them to succeed, progress will be inevitable.
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Transcript
Dawn Brolin 0:01
Hello everyone and welcome to the DM disruption. I’m the host Dawnn 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.
Mike Michalowicz 0:48
This is your first podcast ever and that’s why I’m going to teach you how to do a podcast.
Dawn Brolin 0:52
That’s what we’re here on the designated with the DM disruption. It’s all about disrupting yourself while on camera.
Mike Michalowicz 0:59
Exactly in front of them. So here’s tip one. Tip One is you start in a facilitated conversation that sounds like it’s kind of off the cuff like, hey! I haven’t seen you in so long!
Dawn Brolin 1:10
Oh my Lord, Michael.
Mike Michalowicz 1:12
You look amazing.
Dawn Brolin 1:13
Oh, stop it.
Mike Michalowicz 1:14
And always sound like you’re in the same room. That’s the other thing.
Dawn Brolin 1:17
Oh, we definitely are.
Mike Michalowicz 1:18
I know we are and it looks like it. Are you broadcasting the video? Are you just showing just audio?
Dawn Brolin 1:24
Oh no, we’re doing both.
Mike Michalowicz 1:25
Okay, so do listen to recording. We’re in the same room. People are video. We’re not in the same room.
Dawn Brolin 1:31
But don’t tell those people. They’ll never know.
Mike Michalowicz 1:34
That’s tip one. Tip Two is have little icons of yourself that you can throw up on the screen.
Dawn Brolin 1:39
Oh, I like that. That’s awesome. I um, well, I guess this is probably a good interpretation. Here’s mine. Because if you know me, you need is looking for my face. You need a you this is a user manual. And we got a user manual. For what how do we use her? How do we use Dawn Brolin?
Mike Michalowicz 2:01
How often have you heard that like when when you were dating? Yeah. How many times you here? How are we going to use? How am I going to use her?
Dawn Brolin 2:09
I think it was the other way around. How many?
Mike Michalowicz 2:11
Did you ever say that? Like someday like I’m gonna use that person?
Dawn Brolin 2:14
Oh right to their face, though. I would not like look over the room. I’d be like bright up in their grill. Like, how old were you?
Mike Michalowicz 2:20
When you did your first date? How old were you?
Dawn Brolin 2:22
Seventh grade. I held hands. Man. It was intense.
Mike Michalowicz 2:26
Oh my god. That’s amazing. And I’m like, serious boyfriend girlfriend.
Dawn Brolin 2:30
Actually, he was my first real boyfriend. And I say, I still love him.
Mike Michalowicz 2:37
Oh, yeah! It’s your first love is always your permanent love. Totally. So how long did you date?
Dawn Brolin 2:45
Well, for about two and a half years, of course, you know, from junior high school into high school. And then he found this blonde and left me. I mean, let me give you the instance when I knew we were done. It was snowing. And I called him we’re supposed to talk on the phone, you know, talk on the phone. I called him and he’s like, I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you. I’m making a snowman.
Mike Michalowicz 3:06
Right now ninth grade.
Dawn Brolin 3:07
This is ninth, Like almost 10th grade.
Mike Michalowicz 3:09
That’s a dagger to the heart.
Dawn Brolin 3:11
And I think part of it was that every time we would get together I still thought it was like it’s a competition. So let’s play like, let’s play horse. Let’s like compete, and I would win and I think that kind of went against me. Yeah, the man. Want a competitive woman.
Mike Michalowicz 3:27
Yeah, so some people do some guys do some guys don’t. You know, he’s like, I’m making a snowman and you’re like, with who are by yourself? Or how did
Dawn Brolin 3:38
Yeah, he was he’s just like I’m making I’m making a snowman. I gotta go.
Mike Michalowicz 3:42
So what came of his life?
Dawn Brolin 3:44
Do you know? Wonderful guy is a chef.
Mike Michalowicz 3:46
Oh, nice.
Dawn Brolin 3:47
Nice guy. Yep. Marry to actually girl that I played basketball against named Pam. Great person. Love her. So it was all good. It wasn’t really good in the beginning. Oh, because I you know, we play basketball against each other. So I just want to pound her every time we were on the court. Oh, she stole him from me. And you know, after that phone call went upstairs. Of course, it was dinner time, which is always convenient. While I sit at the table sobbing. My tears go falling into mashed potatoes. My mom’s crying, I’m crying.
Mike Michalowicz 4:18
And let me ask this question. Obviously, that didn’t continue that relationship didn’t continue. But when it comes to family members, your spouse and people in your family, what are the professions you need for a well rounded family? Chef is one you definitely have chef in a family.
Dawn Brolin 4:36
A nurse or a doctor doctor? Yep. For the chef.
Mike Michalowicz 4:40
I’m asking I know that list. By the way. I’m asking to see if you can get the top five.
Dawn Brolin 4:43
Okay, so I’ve got chef I’ve got nurse,
Mike Michalowicz 4:46
I count six, nurse or doctor number one,
Dawn Brolin 4:50
Accountant.
Mike Michalowicz 4:52
Three.
Dawn Brolin 4:54
I mean, let’s be real, therapist.
Mike Michalowicz 4:57
Seven
Dawn Brolin 5:00
I would ah, a contractor.
Mike Michalowicz 5:05
Number two, well, we’ll take woodworker, cabinetry maker or contractor number two.
Dawn Brolin 5:10
So does plumber doesn’t get involved…?
Mike Michalowicz 5:13
Four! Number five?
Dawn Brolin 5:18
Teacher!
Mike Michalowicz 5:19
No.
Dawn Brolin 5:20
Electrician!
Mike Michalowicz 5:21
Oh, you that should be, it’s not even listed, that should be on there. Number five is auto mechanic.
Dawn Brolin 5:27
I could I could have gotten there. I could have totally gotten there.
Mike Michalowicz 5:30
The thing is I was looking at this bill I got from TIA, I made the whole thing. Every time I looked down. I was like this bill, my insurance bill. I don’t know what the ranking is.
Dawn Brolin 5:40
Of course you don’t
Mike Michalowicz 5:41
Yeah, I have no idea. But I’ll tell you all those were good guesses. I don’t know you. Who don’t who don’t you want the family. A mortician?
Dawn Brolin 5:49
A therapist.
Mike Michalowicz 5:51
Ha ha! A therapist.
Dawn Brolin 5:52
I’m diagnosing you with you know, double personality disorder.
Unknown Speaker 5:56
Yeah. A home, a bum. A vagabond? You don’t want that one.
Dawn Brolin 6:03
An attorney would be a good one though.
Mike Michalowicz 6:06
Yeah, attorneys like you want them and you don’t want them.
Dawn Brolin 6:08
Right. Especially like if they’re a divorce attorney. Maybe not
Mike Michalowicz 6:12
When you’re in trouble. You want an attorney, but otherwise, you don’t want to acknowledge an attorney in the family. Oh, somebody was a chef. There’s a therapist.
Dawn Brolin 6:22
You know what you don’t want? An IRS agent?
Mike Michalowicz 6:25
Oh, well, they don’t have family.
Dawn Brolin 6:31
unless you don’t want to go to parties. If you don’t want to be around people. You don’t want people to talk to you have an IRS agent in your family,
Mike Michalowicz 6:39
I wonder if anyone’s ever said that like, oh, what does your wife do? Oh, she’s a Russ. She’s an IRS agent. An Earus agent? …IRS.
Dawn Brolin 6:55
I have a true story about that. I did a IRS case 2011. With with down here in New Haven. And we had a great successful case. I was on the side of the IRS, which is now you know, get close to your enemies. loved them. They were great. So the Assistant United States Attorney her she had a birthday party. So she invited a bunch of people and she invited little Don Brawl into the party. And you could see the tables of people that were like, not anything to do with that IRS group. And those that were the ones that came like actual friends that came over the ire IRS criminal investigation, IRS agents, nobody was sitting at that table. But me. Yeah. It was great.
Mike Michalowicz 7:38
Why would you work with the IRS? Typically, they’re the private entities do the defense side or the other side? I should say,
Dawn Brolin 7:45
Right. Well, that was in your–thank you for just interviewing me during the podcast.
Mike Michalowicz 7:50
That’s how the first podcast always goes!
Dawn Brolin 7:54
No, it’s good. So what happened was actually I was an accountant who was not doing his job and said that his his own tank defrauded his own tax return essentially, and said QuickBooks was broken and made the wrong accounts and the reports were wrong. And so they called the IRS called into it, and they said, Hey, your software is broken. According to this defendant. We need you to send somebody out to verify and testify and they said, Oh, we don’t do that. But we know someone in Connecticut that will. So they sent me over and I went in as a QuickBooks expert. We convicted him of of IRS fraud, went to jail for eight years.
Mike Michalowicz 8:28
That could be jail time.
Dawn Brolin 8:29
He was eight years. Stavros S T A V R O S, Gainias G A N I A S, you can look it up, Google it. You’ll see the case right in there. I should get a copy of the transcript because there was one line that I said towards the end of my testimony. The opposing counsel said to me, Ms. Brolin is anyone–
Mike Michalowicz 8:51
Can I use that term loosely. And I think color–
Dawn Brolin 8:55
He should have just said Brolin, Brolin.
Mike Michalowicz 8:57
He’s like do you go by groin or crotch?
Dawn Brolin 9:01
I go by duh best. So he asked me Is anyone in this is anyone perfect Ms. Brolin. And I said, Sir, and I looked him right in the eyes as loud as I could, sir. Only Jesus. And that is in the court transcript.
Mike Michalowicz 9:18
“Only Jesus.”.
Dawn Brolin 9:20
And let’s just say that was pretty much the end of my questioning.
Mike Michalowicz 9:23
Oh my God, you did the biblical. Really? Yeah.
Dawn Brolin 9:26
It was so good though! The whole testament like they told me I testified for probably a total of six hours. I created a whole PowerPoint spreadsheet, a PowerPoint presentation for the jury to understand what was going on. And they told me that for the first like, hour, if you need to stand up you can really, because now I can use my hands. I said, I can. I’m pointing at the jury. Do you see what I’m saying? I’m looking at see that?
Mike Michalowicz 9:54
Oh were you you talking like that?
Dawn Brolin 9:56
100%!
Mike Michalowicz 9:58
It became your own show.
Dawn Brolin 9:59
It was sha–, they had the IR– I’m not bragging, maybe I am. I’m not. But the the CI, the head of CI in Boston. After my first day of testimony on a Friday, they recalled me to Monday, they called them and they came down from the Boston field office to watch the rest of my testimony.
Wow. They’re…
The bet the bails guys, the ones that come in, they supervise the courtroom. Yeah, they were like, We’re, it’s my turn, we want to go to the show.
Mike Michalowicz 10:30
So let me, this is my best interview ever. I want to say this, when it comes to that personnel you have you are a rarity. And you gotta admit this, like most people are not like, you know, therefore, most people don’t have the courage to be designated motivator. You know, how can how can I be a Don Brolin? Or do I need to be made better question?
Dawn Brolin 10:51
You just need to make sure you have one in your life?
Mike Michalowicz 10:54
Oh, you can find one? You can find one.
Dawn Brolin 10:57
Yeah, you can find one. But you know, for those people who you don’t have to be screw, yeah, I’m a little over the top. A little. But really the end of the day. And this is one of the questions I want to ask you, Mike was, at some point you’ve been through, you’ve bought and sold businesses, you’ve been a part of you, you have your amazing story of a major struggle that you had towards the end of one of your opportunities, one of your entrepreneurial outings, if you will. And you had to pull yourself together. At the end of that you’ve told the story many times and if you want to preface with a little bit of that, what got you motivated enough to pick yourself up? And I know the answer this but people, people out there listening or watching do not know it that pulled you out of that pit that you were in and motivated you to say I’m not giving up? I’ve got to do this. Oh, yeah.
Mike Michalowicz 11:49
So sorry, the end now tell the story. Good. I found I know this is true in your life, too, is that we all experienced trauma. And there’s different flavors of it. My experience was around financial collapse I brought upon myself and it was in retrospect, I now realize I was trauma had all the symptoms, shock, disassociation, anger, depression. But I’ll tell you it compared to other traumas that people experienced that is nothing. There’s physical abuse, sexual abuse, I mean, there’s stuff that’s horrible. And we found those in those moments, we can make a declaration to say I will never allow this to happen to myself or anyone else again. And that became a declaration which I didn’t even really know I was making conscious. I was making subconsciously it wasn’t conscious. Ultimately, you’re unconscious. The mom was I built and sold to companies. I’m 30 years old. You You and I met on a TV set right after this traumas about two years later, but I made money and I thought I was hot. Shit. I thought I was the tamale. I walk around like, oh my god, if I saw you on the street, I’d say nice word. But like, I am so smart. I’m so much better than you. So Right. And I believe that’s really interesting. When I was interviewing you for my podcast about being a DM, you said you got to believe in other people more than they even believe in themselves. I believed in me more, I believe in others. And that’s the reverse of DMing. That’s what I’m doing. That’s where you’re a mad dummy. And what I thought was greater. And so I think God universe, something had to fix this for me. And what I did was I started a third business as an angel investor. I didn’t know what I was doing. I lost all my money, I lost well over a million dollars and wiped myself out. I lost everything, including my home. And I had to face my family to say we’re losing our house. We lost it 30 days later. And when I lost the house, we actually weren’t we were renting a house with the intention of buying in this neighborhood. We’re scouting it out. We couldn’t afford the rent. So landlord said, You got to you got split. And we saved our ass. That’s another story. But I went to my family say we’re losing our house. We’re losing everything. My daughter was nine years old at the time. And she said to me, she was I tell her I said, I can’t afford your horseback riding lessons was $20 a session. And she looks at me and she just starts welling up crying. And she ran away. I thought she was running away from me. And I think when we experience trauma, that sensation of running away is very overwhelming. She actually was running to her bedroom to grab her piggy bank. And she ran back to me and she was Daddy. I know you can’t provide for us anymore. I’ll provide for the family. And it’s such a gut punch. It’s that I brought that much devastation that a nine year old girl feels that she has to give her life savings which she was saving quarter by quarter penny by penny to buy a horse one day to give up her dream to support the idiot. And so that became my wake up call. And just to be clear about this dog because I think many people confuse this in other people’s stories like oh, so the next day you start kicking ass as An author or doing your thing. Now, next day I start hitting the bottle I was Busan, I spent over a year in depression, never went to a therapist. So it’s self diagnosed. But clinically, I meet all the parameters of depression. And but what came out of it slowly, was this growing awareness that I had problems in. First out, except I didn’t really understand how entrepreneurship worked. I didn’t understand how money works, at first admit that maybe I have a problem. And then I set out to fix it. And honestly, every piece of work I’ve done up to this point has been trying to fix my own problems, things don’t stand by entrepreneurship. The final thing I want to add to this is it has become a mission. I was on my wall right here says eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. This experience I have of all these challenges, entrepreneurship in entrepreneurship is not limited to me. So many entrepreneurs have it. So I’m trying to fix for me I’m trying to fix for millions of other people my book, that’s how it came about. And so he said, designated motivator, the first person for me in my life that motivated was me around a calling a purpose. I wake up every morning, I look I have my house too. I look at those words. I think those words, I’m like, I gotta fix this today. I got bring the best of me today, every single day.
Dawn Brolin 16:18
And you do and you you have changed many people’s lives. I run into weird places or client phone calls. And I’ll just say, Hey, have you heard of profit first? And they’re like, Oh, my God, last month? And of course I do and blah, blah, blah. And of course here my next line is? He’s a friend of mine. bodies. We did. We did some shows together. Have you seen? What’s your business? Your business? Episode 77 with? I mean, it was tucked away in the back, but it was there.
Mike Michalowicz 16:50
Yeah, I dare say we were too good for that show. Because first episode, it was just me. Yeah.
Dawn Brolin 16:57
Right. We crushed it.
Mike Michalowicz 16:58
We crushed it. And then subsequent episodes. They’re like, really? I don’t know if you should be the exclusive host. We want JJ. And JJ is probably the nicest person I know is she’s on her. Oh, yes. I could spin out show but never.
Dawn Brolin 17:11
You never know. Maybe in the future. Yeah, we could make our own movie.
Mike Michalowicz 17:16
Dude, that woman was awesome that the series of shows she made, I wish to continue on forever. And I don’t know, if they didn’t get renewed or JJ is like I’m just dying after doing like 500 episodes or something crazy.
Dawn Brolin 17:26
Probably no, it was it was a phenomenal opportunity. I just like no everything happens for a reason, the way you look back at it really does. So So I want to hear so it looks like so Profit First is like taking off. And I think that, you know, I’ve always been somebody since I met you to follow what you’re doing. So the first question I have is, What do you have in front of your camera? So you’re looking at the camera as opposed to the person?
Mike Michalowicz 17:49
How do you how do you do this right?
Dawn Brolin 17:51
Yeah I need that.
Mike Michalowicz 17:52
Yeah, you look at the camera.
Dawn Brolin 17:55
So I just go like this instead of looking at you.
Mike Michalowicz 17:57
I’m not looking at you, so I can’t even tell. So I see you out of the corner of my eye. So I can see like an outline of you by can’t see your eyes or anything.
Dawn Brolin 18:04
Okay, so it’s a strategy.
Mike Michalowicz 18:06
Oh yeah, and it’s one of the top things that people doing video don’t do. They look at now I’m looking at you. They do this the whole time. Yeah. And I wonder I understand for conversation, but this is presentation. This is different. So look at the camera like it’s your own. I guess someone’s eyeball and just never never break from it ever.
Dawn Brolin 18:25
Oh, so this is kind of like Monsters Inc. Where you have what’s his face with the one eye?
Mike Michalowicz 18:29
Yeah. Like, you know, I’ve never seen that movie. Mike was always that Mike McCalla watts, Mike was asked
Dawn Brolin 18:37
the same thing. You have one head one thing in your head. That makes sense. But off the part of that. So I’ve been following you. So I’m going to try it. I’m going to practice the rest of this. Okay, stay locked in on the camera, they lock down the camera. So yeah, actually, you know, it’s not like I’m like attracted to look at you. So that’s a whole nother thing but um, so because your wife is terrifying. So um, one other thing is that I want to let you know I’ve been trying to follow you follow in your footsteps on your success when it comes to being an author. But not only that, but being that inspiration motivator to all of your followers and all of your audience. And so I’m my whole goal is to follow your concept of Profit First, and now you have people writing their own versions of profit first for the doctor. I think it was a doc, I can’t remember I see a bunch of people popping up saying just came out what happened motivated with that what happened there?
Mike Michalowicz 19:26
So this is interesting is people that do these, these books are looking to gain further exposure for themselves just like I’m looking to for the work I do in you. And there’s really two paths. If you want to pursue a book, you can write your own book, but your thing garner the exposure you got to get the word out. So you really released DM and you’ve great, extraordinary idea. Now you got to do podcasts or podcasts and in hope it catches on, right. The other path is you take an established brand and you do a derivative. So he’s either said well Profit First so popular that when an entrepreneur hears about it now, they already know it, I just want to, I want to be part of that brand momentum. So that’s what these authors are doing. They’re doing Profit First for a vertical. What’s interesting is I think we have seven in circulation. And I think there’s one more coming out this year, every single author has really soared started, they own their category. The first book that came out was called Profit First for ecommerce providers. Well, if you’re not an E commerce provider means nothing but if you are if you sell on Amazon, that’s a big deal. And Cindy Thomas and the author is the authority now in that space, right?
Dawn Brolin 20:36
Yeah, so So my whole follow Mike Michalowicz, mission, right? Is and I don’t know if it’ll be people that are writing offsets of the designated motivator in the future. But I see what we’re working on right now is a designated motivator for the accounting professional, you know,
Mike Michalowicz 20:52
Where you write it yourself.
Dawn Brolin 20:54
That’s, that’s what we’re going for. So so even if maybe other people don’t want to write their designated motivator book, with their, like you said, with their industry specific or their passion, they could write. So I following that, and so did they approach you how did it work? Did you like put that out there? Or did they come to you what what happened?
Mike Michalowicz 21:13
They a few people approached me say, Hey, I would love to be a co author. So once, once I start getting all these, hey, I’d love to co author a book with you. Which I don’t do, I would suggest you never do. And probably I’m contracted not to do like penguin penguin would shoot me down in seconds. I don’t know, right? You are the brand. The thing is, it’s like any other business partnership to people author a book, if you’re going to and I know you buy you know, I know you over the years, you’re going to dry that so hard to be successful. If the other person doesn’t, they’re riding your coattails. So you really want to get in that and that your bed not for just a business, you’re in bed for eternity that book will always have your two names on it. Or the beginning it’s like I don’t know if I really want to do that. Now penguins lock me out. Real always not always but sorry regularly coming to me saying I want to co author a book with you. I’m like, can’t do it won’t do it. And then they start saying well, is there any way I can do a book with you? Because I want to leverage your brand and that’s like, oh, that’s what you want
Dawn Brolin 22:10
Well, at least they’re being honest,
Mike Michalowicz 22:11
Yeah, totally totally. They just want to get a quick like and are willing to pay for it’s not like it’s free. They pay 10s of 1000s of dollars just for the rights and then they earn a lot more just to do the process get printed. But this model isn’t new to me. You myth in the business space. Michael Gerber did this now this goes back 1520 years ago, it with E Myth for you know XYZ and you’ll see these themed books with these derivatives out there pretty regularly. Once a book gets traction..
Dawn Brolin 22:38
Chicken Soup for the Soul was like probably one of the ratios was a great example.
Mike Michalowicz 22:39
Chicken Soup for the Soul was a great example.
Dawn Brolin 22:43
A great example. So that was the concept.
Mike Michalowicz 22:45
Soup’s for your Mama’s soul.
Dawn Brolin 22:48
Exact always for mama always from Mama. Oh mama still around. She’s great.
Mike Michalowicz 22:52
Is she still working with you?
Dawn Brolin 22:53
Mama is still working with me. Shout out to Mama Mama. She’s great. She’s still still amazing. Still adorable. You can’t I mean, she never won’t be. Although she had to go to jury duty on Friday. And I told her I told her put some like fake piercings on your face. Maybe they won’t pick you.
Mike Michalowicz 23:09
Yeah. Does she care about the business? Or she care about being a noble citizen?
Dawn Brolin 23:12
I mean, right? Hello, it’s taxes. Let’s go. But um, yeah, so So I’m finding so what do you know? What are you thinking as far as like the designated motivator? Concept? Like, what do you think? What kind of impact do you think that that’s gonna have? And like, just be you know, you’re always honest with me. Like, what are you thinking? I mean, you wanna you wrote the foreword, buddy.
Mike Michalowicz 23:32
Yeah, I freaking love it. And the first time I heard it, and really understood it was when you presented it at our conference. Right was now that’s it two years ago, because it was pre COVID. I think it was..
Dawn Brolin 23:45
It was 19. I think it was 19. Because it was right after our season. It was the the fall of our contract season…
Mike Michalowicz 23:51
Yeah, you know, just to give you some context, when you come on stage, I have no idea we’re going to talk about I have no idea why. Yeah. Now anything you have a presentation, you just kind of go walking out there, like a little bit like Chris Farley, from when he doesn’t, he’s a motivational speaker, Matt Foley, kind of pull your pants up a little bit, and then just start rolling. And like, what are we gonna see this time? It’s always phenomenal. It’s always phenomenal. This one has something special about it. In that the story, there was a story arc with you turning that team around that softball team. Yeah. And what goes in my mind is nothing changed. The players didn’t change. The teams they are playing didn’t change, like the schedule, everything’s pretty much the same. There’s minor. Yeah, only thing of substance was one person you came in and started to treat them differently, have different expectations. The way you communicate is different. One person changed it. I started looking at other sports teams and sports is a great analogy for business. And you see a coach come in. And the same team that struggled for years all of a sudden turns around. It really can be one person And you see with companies, like you see, I remember looking at Apple computers, right grows with Steve Jobs, they get rid of Steve Jobs or he leaves wherever and apples are going, this starts tanking, they, they bring him back in one person, it was last season one person, and it goes right back up. I think people underestimate the impact they can have individually. And when you have it’s the strongest emotion, the strongest vision that wins. If you ever come home and you’re in a dispute with your spouse, what one’s really angry, one’s really happy, whoever, whoever brings that more and use the angry person, both sides are gonna go angry, or both sides are happy. And with his Desi motivator concept, I believe in so much, because if you bring it, you can change a team around and the performance can be extraordinary.
Dawn Brolin 25:48
Absolutely. And you know, that’s why the whole concept is if you’re not that person, that’s okay. You know, and that’s where I think people disconnect. Well, well, it doesn’t anymore. Yeah.
Mike Michalowicz 25:59
And I’m not Dawn Brolin, like, like, you know, this is like a tame you doing a podcast like you got to see you on stage. The, the antics is that you’ll do the stuff you’ll say. It’s unbelievable. And people love it and the same time say but I could never be that. We are here at our own. It’s not me. My name is Kelsey Eris. She’s actually down the hallway from me. Love her. Yeah. You know, Kelsey,
Dawn Brolin 26:23
I know Kelsey.
Mike Michalowicz 26:23
Kelsey is not Dawn Brolin, she doesn’t bring an energy this she doesn’t have craziness. She would not dress in a banana suit. Today she but she lavishes our team with love. She loves our people. And I saw our team who I was leading. Before Kelsey came on board. We were doing an amazing job. I so proud of us. When cows came on board it up. We went from amazing team members to team members who will take a bullet for the company now. And I’m like what’s changed? Kelsey, it’s just Kelsey, one person with the right attitude in the belief in others can turn a company into anything.
Dawn Brolin 27:04
Absolutely. It’s a genuine belief in somebody else. That’s part of it too. We you know, like everybody doesn’t have to, you know, order a body bag for instance, and put that in a dugout and then put the other teams scorecards up after we victoriously win 17 to one you know what everybody has said?
Mike Michalowicz 27:21
Would you do you bought a body bag? You’re so effing crazy.
Dawn Brolin 27:24
I bought a body bag. I thought it’d be fun. And I and we put the season we put the teams that lost against us on the body back body back in the body. Yeah. And then when when actually when I first brought it to the field because they never know what I’m showing up with they don’t know or so. How do you even buy a body bag you can buy a body bag I Amazon stores.
Mike Michalowicz 27:44
i wonder what the sales are!? Who buys that?! The guy the funeral home like Oh, my guy pick up somebody? Hey, hop on Amazon give me two bags. I need one for a chubby guy.
Dawn Brolin 27:56
Give me a orime order.
Mike Michalowicz 27:59
Give me a prime plus and a prime.
Dawn Brolin 28:02
Of course I didn’t just go cheap. I got the one with the handles. You know? So? Well, I got to the field. The kids who cannot believe it. They’re all crying laughing
Mike Michalowicz 28:11
And what did, did you have something in it? Or is it just an empty bag?
Dawn Brolin 28:13
Well, so I got in it, and you know it’s all zipped up, let me get in it! So I got in it. A couple of the kids carried me across the field. I mean, just you want to lighten the mood a little bit by a body bag and put one of your staff in it is here in the office
Mike Michalowicz 28:28
Was this if you want to lighten the mood, but somebody in a body bag, but it was this this game day?
Dawn Brolin 28:34
It was a practice actually was a good practice before a tournament and I’m like we got body bags now we got to start putting people in body bags only zip close early. They barely could couldn’t really breathe that seaway good thing only dead people.
Mike Michalowicz 28:48
So they carry you out in a body bag and what they unzip it and you’re like, Okay, here’s who we’re killing next. Or would you sell..?
Dawn Brolin 28:54
Yeah, they dragged me over to the duck out of the bullpen and the kids, you know, the girls are all warming up pitching, say bring me over there, put me on the ground, unzip it, and I just kind of pick my head up and the pitchers are just lose it. They just lose it. You know, and you don’t have to do that. But it’s pretty fun to do something out of the ordinary like, for next season. I heard about little violins to leave in a dugout for every dugout that we when we leave a little mini violin.
Mike Michalowicz 29:17
Oh my god, you’re on the opposing teams.
Dawn Brolin 29:20
Yeah, in their dugout, I mean, yeah,
Mike Michalowicz 29:23
It’s kind of like what you’re what, what’s really interesting about your designated motivator, technique, and people don’t realize this. It’s a technique used by serial killers. So you leave your calling card, some people chisel they take an eyeball with them, or they remove a tooth, or they leave a violin or something behind that’s your calling card.
Dawn Brolin 29:43
Your you got to know I was there. It’s awesome. So we’re, we’re you know, I’m always strategizing on how to here’s the thing people get so wrapped up in the seriousness of life like, unless we got to be serious believe me when you see me going against the IRS or I’m in here trying to battle for a client I’m assuming As they get, and I take all names, okay? And, and so there’s times when you obviously have to reel it back in and I have to work on that a little bit, sometimes sometimes a little word up. But at the end of the day, people will gravitate to abnormal, when it’s fun, and it’s creative, and they’re involved in it. And it’s like, you know, we had this one girl on team this past season, barely talked, and she really had a tough time kind of buying into what I was selling. And then one game, we started rallying, and one of the girls and everyone is sitting the same stay in the same spot. You know, we’re very super, what do you call it superstitious? And this girl that was seeing this one spot that we believe was the reason we were rallying? She had a go, she was she was going to pinch it. So I looked at this girl who has no emotion, I said, I looked around, oh, Taylor, she looked at me and I go, and she’s like, she went right over stood in the spot. And she was like, I can’t leave here. And, you know, so, again, it’s about like, I just want them to experience how great they really are. Yeah. And people in your office. They need to experience how great they are. Yeah, and that’s why, like you said, Kelsey, doesn’t have to be you know, buying body bags and stuff. But she she pours out love in the way that she pours it out and people know it’s genuine. Yeah, you know, and I think that that’s, that’s in the we need this in this in this country in this world, more than we do at any other time. Which I never thought I’d say that cuz I say that every year, I feel like, right, but we really do we need it. We need it now.
Mike Michalowicz 31:31
Yeah, no, I love that. And I love what I’m hearing is believing people so much. But let me ask you this. How do you believe in people when you don’t necessarily believe in, you arrive to a team? That’s not winning? So hard to say? Well, I believe in you and really believe that you arrive to a business that’s not selling and go to sales teams. I know you’ve got this. You can say those encouraging words. But how do you get the emotion there? So it’s an alignment?
Dawn Brolin 32:00
Yeah, you gotta like, the way I look at it is I look into like, your one eyeball in front of me here. I’m looking as much as I can into your soul. Yeah, maybe weird. But I’m trying to learn about you in as an individual. Because yes, a team is there’s no I in team, I get that. But unfortunately, there are eyes that comprise a team. Yeah. It’s that you can’t get the eye in the way of the team. Right? So the way I look at it is I’ve got to find out what makes this person as a person, not a player, not a student, not a what this person what makes them tick, what do they love? What do they not love? I can kind of feel their confidence level pretty easily. And you can do that if you really start to try to learn people and like, kind of get their vibe. That’s where you can start. You got to get in their heart. I believe you got to get in their heart and you get in their heart and you show interest. And it’s got to be genuine. You don’t ever talk fake to people. You don’t. How was your weekend?
Mike Michalowicz 32:59
Right? Yeah. Work? Yeah, it’s got by the way, thanks for not being interested for
Dawn Brolin 33:05
Oh, go ahead over Mike. Yeah, you just you have to have a genuine interest. And so once you start to your heart starts to connect to them. Yeah. You actually can’t stop it.
Mike Michalowicz 33:17
Have you read the book, Extreme Ownership.
Dawn Brolin 33:19
I don’t think I have.
Mike Michalowicz 33:21
Okay, so it’s a pretty popular book is by two Navy SEALs. I think the Navy SEALs, I know Jocko Williams or something. And there’s that guy. Here’s what’s interesting. They talk it was definitely Navy SEALs. They talk about the training they do out in San Diego Coronado. And what they did is they have these rubber boats, these riverboat races where the Navy SEALs at the rundown the beach kind of rubber boats, they go on the boat and they go out to a buoy and back and whoever wins the race doesn’t have to do next race and teams are racing us all day. It’s exhausting. And what the leaders saw was that one boat was consistently winning. And the captain who doesn’t paddle was the most encouraging we got this kind of thing. And the other one there was like almost mutiny they were fighting come on your your effing up. Right did was a they had a team that was unified and a team that was disjointed. They swapped out the the captain from the boat that was crushing it, put them on the crappy boat and took the leader of the crappy boat, put them on the excellent boat. And so they assumed that it’s the team members. Well, the first race it kind of same on the same way that the fast bow that was fast before when again, even the crappy captain, they already saw this dissension. And by the third or fourth race, the boats were about the same. And then by the fifth and sixth race, it flipped. What they saw was the captain was really determining the unity. And when when there was a problem, the captain would actually amplify and say You screwed it up. And then it was fingerpointing. The other one when there’s a problem saying, Hey guys, now we know something that we shouldn’t do again. Let’s do this. Let’s go at it in just that encouragement, flip the boat, same people just to words of encouragement and they flipped so it just points to what you’re saying. And we really hold on to do commercial you know anything about podcasts commercial break time. If you’re a book this guy Mike Michalowicz wits has a book for you. Yucca. Yucca. Yucca. Yeah. Okay. That was a commercial.
Dawn Brolin 35:15
That was stinking perfect. I was that’s what I was hoping for was a little like ad lib advertisement.
Mike Michalowicz 35:20
Yeah, you don’t want to be structure, because people will drop off your podcast if you like, Hey, let me pitch something right now. So the podcast, the speaker, people just kind of continue through the podcast host continues through. But you got to really quippy. It’s got to be engaging. Otherwise, they’re going to do the 15 seconds forward each time. So
Dawn Brolin 35:37
Yeah, we can’t we can’t blame a thank you. Nice job. See learning. We’re all learning the same time. I love that. So the last thing I want to chat with you real quick about is the fact that I know you know, it was a really difficult story where you lost everything. And then you were boozin’, you were homeless, all this other stuff.
Mike Michalowicz 35:53
Well, homeless is all extreme. But yeah, so without a home, it’s true.
Dawn Brolin 35:57
Okay, you didn’t have a home. But taking it that step you had you were struggling with finding a place to live. So now you have a place to live. You even have an office that you work in? What’s with the beard, like, you not afford a shaver? Like, what’s your story there?
Mike Michalowicz 36:10
So I’ll give you the honest truth. The primary reasons I started growing this just because laziness i It wasn’t this length, there’s just kind of like a shorter bear this. And my wife is like, oh, that kind of looks good. It’s like leave it. Like, I’m gonna ditch Cygnar not leave it. So my wife has encouraged it. Here’s what’s interesting. When I speak to speaking, sometimes people ask me about my beards. So I’ll say, hey, audience, let’s do a quick survey. And I did find this one group. It was like all women, and I said how many against the beard and I heard like Mongo. I said, How many for the beard, the place almost fell down. And like the beard stays. The guys are like, 50 guys really don’t seem to care. 5050 women, it seems like 95% I keep the beard. Now, here’s the other thing. So that’s one thing. So it seems like actually more people like it. Okay, I’m either way on so here’s the other funny thing about a beard. The pre how prejudiced people are so it just went in your favor. So I wherever I go people Oh, you look awfully handy. Eric question for I there’s not a a weekend goes by without someone asking me if I if I’m an electrician, plumber carpentry skills. If I can fix something. I was picking up some furniture for my son for college. Someone house was give me it’s almost like she sees me goes Oh, hey, my husband was trying to fix our door. She’s, you might just take a quick peek at it. And like of course I will. I was at Home Depot yesterday. I’m walking down the electrical aisle. Electric aisle and this guy comes up to us like, Hey, you’re an electrician. I gotta ask you a question. I’m like, electrician. The beat is unbelievable. It’s unbelievable. What a beard does in people’s perception. So it stays.
Dawn Brolin 38:00
I love that. I love that. Oh my goodness. Well,
Mike Michalowicz 38:02
I could store things in here. I could just I’m..
Dawn Brolin 38:05
I’m sure you have last night supper tucked in there so dinner lunch.
Mike Michalowicz 38:09
Yeah, there’s weird things. There’s a bird’s nest going somewhere on this side. Yeah.
Dawn Brolin 38:15
Oh my goodness. I love it. Well, Mike McCalla wits, the man of the hour. Just love you so much. Thank you so much for coming on. And I know we’re going to do some more things together as we move forward so we can make people profit, make profit first write Profit First, and be motivated to do it
Mike Michalowicz 38:29
Dawn Brolin, I love you!
Dawn Brolin 38:33
Thanks, everybody for listening and watching. We look forward to the next episode. Thanks so much. I hope you enjoy this podcast. Feel free to visit John Rowland calm in order to motivate you to improve your practice. Wishing you all the best. Have a great day.
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.
Hello everybody! This is the DM Disruption Podcast! My goal during this podcast is to give out great content from a variety of avenues such as fellow practitioners, as application providers, vendors, who you know, have the secret sauce that comes to helping you run your practice. My goal and my passion is to help every single accounting professional that’s out there, help every single one of you in some capacity. I may not be able to solve all your problems, but over 23 years of experience that I’ve had, in setting up a cloud based anywhere access firm, that can generate a half a million dollars in eight months with three billable people. Imagine what you can do, by changing your mindset, and getting some motivation to make some changes in your practice.
That’s the whole purpose of the DM Disruption! It’s the whole purpose of the book that’s coming out this fall, called The Designated Motivator For Accounting Professionals. I’m going to take my 23 years of experience and jam it into a book that’s less than 100 pages. And I’m going to build a community of people who will come and ask questions, I’m going to be there for you, answer your questions, help you out with some templates, some best practices when it comes to either client interfacing or running your firm with technology, or how to advance in the world of tax resolution or fraud case work, or whatever it is you want to do. My goal is to just take everything outside of this coconut, and suck it out of my brain and shove it into yours. That’s my goal. It’s a whole new level of experience. And that’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking to help those of you who either been in business for a long time, or those of you that are just getting started.
So stay tuned, we’ll drip this out every week, we’re going to have a new guest, or I’m just going to talk to you. I mean, my whole goal is just to be out here having conversations with you, answering questions that I find out on social media or in my own community, and to help you improve your practice to get the best, most efficient, well oiled machine, so that someday when you retire, you can sell that thing for a lot more money than if you don’t have great processes. I’m telling you, the value of your practice is going to be determined by your acceptance of technology and implementing it in a way that will be succession proof. And that’s my goal.
So join me every week as we talk to various guests and again, have conversations with you and I just the two of us if you will, in the DM Disruption Podcast. Thank you so much, I hope you really enjoy this! Feel free to visit my website www.DawnBrolin.com if you want to be a guest, come on, let’s go. Let’s talk about whatever it is you want to talk about pains, great successes, doesn’t matter. Let’s get this community together, and start supporting each other and motivating each other to have the best firms possible!
Okay, so I hope to see you every week, I hope to see you around, I hope to hear from you on the DM Disruption Podcast. Thanks again! I hope you enjoy this podcast. Feel free to visit www.DawnBrolin.com in order to motivate you to improve your practice. Wishing you all the best!
Have a great day!
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Heather Sperduto, VP, Accounting Channel, ADP , Talks About the Power of Partnership on The DM Disruption
Heather Sperduto, VP, Channel Sales, ADP, joins Dawn Brolin, CPA, CFE, to talk about motivation, her family’s deep roots in the accounting profession, and how ADP, Team Brolin Starting Line Up Member #5, continues to strive to be the profession’s premiere payroll provider as the landscape for client services evolves.
Heather and Dawn begin their conversation by discussing the importance of finding a partner to assist in payroll, and bring up key pain points that can be solved with proper allocation of payroll.
“We need a partner in payroll, doing your own payroll is almost virtually impossible,” says Dawn. Heather agrees and acknowledges how the landscape of accounting has changed. She also discusses pain points that both clients and tax professionals have been trying to work through, and how ADP can assist in easing stress.
Making Data Meaningful to the Client and Guidance
“The data is out there, but for the accounting professionals, it’s how they make sense of the data, and how they make it meaningful to the client,” says Heather. She specifies that ADP’s goal is to serve their clients data in a way that is actionable.
She then begins to talk about how not only can ADP assist their clients with payroll, but in other areas such as compensation; because they have access to a wide network of data, they are able to provide their clients with a variety of answers to issues many businesses are facing.
How ADP Benefits Accounting Professionals
“One of the really great tools that just came on board was the ability for us to go ahead and get our clients started with payroll” says Dawn. “I love that tool because we as the practitioners want to be able to be proactive.”
Heather agrees and talks about how ADP allows you to mold the way in which your representative assists you. “[You can design] the way you want to interact with a partner, and have the flexibility that suits your needs in the moment…you [also] have the flexibility to really design your interaction that’s in your best interest, and the client’s best interest.
What Motivates Heather
Heather talks about her father’s career as a CPA, and speaks fondly about her experience watching him win the “Educator of the Year award” at the New Jersey CPA Society.
“I’ve always admired his passion to make people better, and it’s just ironic that I happen to do the same thing,” says Heather.
She also says she finds her motivation in all of her family members, including her siblings.
How ADP Benefits Dawn
“I need their support. I need to know that when something comes up [they are right there,]…it’s like I have a teammate, it’s more than just a referral relationship, it’s really something where without ADP support, I don’t think I could do things that I’m doing now,” says Dawn. She credits ADP for allowing her to gain back valuable time to work on her passions and to achieve important goals for her business.
How Peer to Peer Recommendations and Partnerships Are Changing the Game
“We are seeing more peer to peer recommendations…[and] we are seeing more and more accountants join forces,” says Heather. She says this allows all accounting professionals to gain a wider scope of knowledge from each other, which in turn allows them all to better assist their clients.
Heather also says, “We are seeing firms that are moving massive amounts of clients over to an ADP.” She discusses how moving payroll over to ADP allows accounting professionals to service their clients faster and be more productive.
Only Providing Payroll is Not Giving Value
“You as a practitioner need to take control over your practice; what you offer and how you guide your clients…[just] providing payroll is not giving value,” says Dawn. She specifies how adding value to your clients is in your ability to analyze them and their situations, and to provide them with the best resources and solutions, even for problems they may not have been aware of.
Don’t Underestimate Your Value as an Accountant
“Don’t underestimate your value,” says Heather. “You all have truly earned that title of the most trusted advisor, now so more than ever before.” Heather finishes her thoughts by discussing how it’s important to always be thinking ahead, and to always strive to help businesses reimagine, and take their goals to the next level.
Dawn recently celebrated the success she’s had with ADP as a result of her participation in the ADP Accountant Revenue Share Incentive Program with her local representatives, too.
As Dawn says, “This personal relationship means so much to me as an accounting practitioner because ADP is more than just my payroll provider—I decided years ago that doing in-house payroll was not the best way to serve my clients—but outsourcing it to a trusted company is. The people I work with at ADP are invested in the success of my practice. They bring me new ideas and solutions to help my business keep growing and to ensure the success of my payroll clients. It truly is a win-win relationship.”
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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.
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome again to the DM disruption. I’m super excited to have a great friend of mine, who works with ADP, but really more than anything, just a great person, and somebody who I think is a motivator in our industry, when it comes to working with professionals like myself, and she’s done so much for us. So Heather, introduce yourself, let’s let’s talk about, you know, what’s your role at ADP and what you’re kind of seeing out there in the industry. And, you know, we’re gonna rock some worlds here today.
Heather Sperduto 1:19
All right, here we go. So I run point on the design and execution from a sales operation perspective, and I have the fun job of all of the energy that I use up is spent towards the accountant community. So how it is that we help accountants better serve their clients. And it’s been a cool ride for me because I’ve been here since literally even before I graduated college, I was an intern at ADP. And I spend more than two decades really trying to go after this market, and just give like the best support we can to the accountant community.
Dawn Brolin 1:54
Well, it sounds like you started when you were 10? Yes, you’ve been working for two decades with in this area in the space, but so you know, payroll is payrolls payroll, people think but I think it’s just so much more than that. I think that we as the trusted advisor, making sure that we’re recommending the right Payroll solution for our clients is critical. And with the landscape of accounting, and payroll, and labor, and, you know, the last year and a half of the pandemic, the landscape has totally changed. And I think that, you know, I don’t find, at least for myself, in my industry, as far as you know, how payroll works, is that we need a partner in payroll, doing yourself doing your own payroll these days is almost virtually impossible, because of the filing requirements and the different credits that you can have. And so what are you seeing, as far as pain points in the industry, with practitioners like myself, or like trying to maneuver things? And there’s just so much and so overwhelming? What are you seeing?
Heather Sperduto 2:51
I think it starts with just the overall complexity, like you mentioned, the landscape from a compliance perspective, has skyrocketed, and of course, there’s no good time to make changes. But unfortunately, when the world started to unfold at a feverish pace, was a heart attack season, right? So the accountants, and they pivoted on a dime, and they went from cranking out tax returns to how do I help? Right? Like, how can I be that calming effect that works with my clients? To let them know that it’s going to be okay, right? And how could How could I sift through some of that complexity and make it simple, so that their clients truly understood? Am I a physician that I need to close my doors? Am I going to reimagine how it is that I work with my customer, my clients today, and even for the firm’s themselves. So you know that complexity was probably something that accountants haven’t seen throughout their entire career. And hopefully, you know, we don’t see anything like that going forward. But just the pace. And the area of expertise that was sought out from the accountants was, has been in my horrible it’s been truly truly admirable.
Dawn Brolin 4:07
Yeah, and I see certainly, you know, what ADP has done, because of the landscape and the way things have changed, to allow us to obtain information that maybe historically we weren’t really looking for, or weren’t really relying upon. And having that ability to, I mean, the resources with accounting connect, we were even just to start there. And again, this is what we what I want to deliver in this pot in this episode of this podcast is how can we help my fellow practitioners and people to make the right decision when it comes to payroll because payroll was payrolls payroll, like I said before, but with the landscape now in the in the reporting requirements and the compliance requirements are so overwhelming, that like for myself, I can add value by a by providing a great service through ATP, but also the resources of You know, I always say there’s a notice as the old notices are coming no matter who’s preparing payroll, it’s irrelevant. The IRS states, the states are so far behind right now we’re seeing notices coming in. But being able to, let’s just take, for instance, the pain point of notices being able to upload those as service requests through accountant connect and follow the the results of that notice by the staff at ADP by the by the representatives who are solving those problems. So if we think about it, yes, that the accounting industry, Heather, like you were saying, it’s just been like, whoa, what has happened? And so many practitioners are like, do I want to keep doing this? And so one of my biggest recommendations is, hey, take a look at what you are providing for services today that maybe you don’t want to be providing tomorrow. And so are you being tied down by that compliance work through payroll? And if so, account Connect is a great is an absolutely phenomenal solution for professionals. So those types of pain points are what you guys are looking to solve for, you know, the running of payroll is what it is, but it’s the other resources, like managing notices, or having the access to business valuation tools, which you guys have just launched here recently. Right? So that’s what you guys are looking to do at the end of the day?
Heather Sperduto 6:17
You know, don’t it starts with the data, right? Like, the data is out there. But for the accounting professionals, it’s how they make sense of the data and how they make it meaningful to the client. So yeah, like Dave is our middle name at ADP. But I think what we have been trying to do is serve up that data in a fashion that’s actionable. You know, so we were talking a little earlier about one of the, the issues out there with business owners today is how do I get really great people? Like, how do I get them in the door? And when I get them, how do I keep them? Right? So what we’re trying to do is say, okay, like, like, let’s start with the clients, the mutual clients that we share. And when they hire people, or when they terminate people, like, let’s put that data front and center, so that as an accountant, you can see that and have conversations with your clients, that if they’re struggling to get talent, what are some of the tools and resources that could be tapped into, like, as an example, analyzing compensation, you know, like we provide and look at 30 million records, spending 90,000 organizations, and if I’m an account, and I can look at a map of the country and say, okay, you know, I have this restaurant, you know, I’m here in Cape May, New Jersey, on vacation with my family right now. And the restaurants are struggling and I walk in, and there’s tables open, but they won’t see this, and it’s a half hour away, because they don’t have the staff. Right. So I could go in to that map of the country, I could pick New Jersey, I could I could pick down to a certain county level, and say, Okay, what does good compensation look like in the restaurant industry, for cook for a manager for server and give that guidance? I mean, compensation is not the end all be all. And that’s a whole nother conversation when you look at why employees are attracted to the organizations that they work for. But it’s a given, right? Gotta pay your people? Well, if you want to be competitive in the market, and you want to keep them talent. So I think it’s about how do you make the data meaningful? And then what are those tools or resources that will allow you to expedite the conversations and help dream build and forward thing with clients?
Dawn Brolin 8:29
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, again, when we’re talking kind of about pain points that are both from an accounting professionals perspective, but the clients of course, most importantly, that’s who we’re all serving ADP, you know, and all the accounting practitioners. But you’re right, and I think I just actually was on a call for a couple hours this morning with with a great client from Pittsburgh and, and we’re sitting there trying to figure out, she can’t get staff, she can’t get people, she’s got an 8000 square foot restaurant, she’s probably utilizing 2000 square feet, because she doesn’t have the people, enough people to do the serving and the cooking and all the rest of it. And that’s a really big problem across the country. Right now is everyone very well knows this is not a secret. You know, there are various opinions on you know, how, how can we make this change when we don’t pay more? Okay, well, that’s great, you’re gonna pay more for your meal. Like, you know, at the end of the day, the restaurants have already suffered enough. You wanted to suffer more by paying more I get that. We do see how they’re which I think is great. We do see the people going out to these restaurants tipping more than they’ve ever tipped before, which I think is, you know, if you want to look at the citizens of the United States, I can say for myself for somebody as a client in a restaurant. Thank you. Right. Thank you for understanding that these servers. We’ve got to supplement the servers pay because the restaurants just aren’t just can’t afford to pay 14 $15 An hour plus tips. And so we’re definitely seeing that. So ADP what what are the things as far as ADP is motivation to the accounting professionals. Listen, we’re here, we provide a great payroll service cool, right? payroll service, payroll service. But what you guys are doing for the pain points in the accounting industry is, as you’re handling the design and the delivery of, of how we interact with ADP is that you’re providing us with that benchmarking, right. So that’s, you know, making sure that we have real a real realistic salaries and things like that reasonable salary calculations that S corporations have to perform, you got to make sure you’re paying yourself a decent amount, an amount that the IRS would accept to allow you to continue being an S corp. And I think one of the really great tools that just came on board was the ability for us to go ahead and get our get our client started with payroll, without needing to use our direct rep who believe me, I got the best in the country, I’ve got page, so sorry to everybody else, but I do have the best rep. And so I love that tool. Because we as the practice, you want to be able to be proactive. And I think that that’s another piece that I’m sure that you found that we were all asking for, hey, let us get this started. Yet, you’re still going to kind of monitor at the end, you know, the end game, right.
Heather Sperduto 11:08
But I think it’s about designing the way that you want to interact with a partner, right? And having that flexibility that suits your needs in the moment, right, like you mentioned, Paige, dedicated associate, like, she’s amazing. And very often, you probably want to interact with Paige. But there are other times when you’re like, hey, you know what, this is probably easy enough that I could figure it out on my own. And I could get the proper authorization and get the client up and running. So you have that, that flexibility to really design your interaction that’s in your best interest. And the clients best interest. And I think innovation and technology has allowed us to accelerate the pace in which we offer that flexibility, right? Like that wasn’t always the case. I mean, when I was running around, selling payroll, and working with accountants, if you open my trunk, like, massive amount of files, and getting everything ready and organized, and you know, now just the way of the world and just technology, it allows us to work differently.
Dawn Brolin 12:11
Yeah, definitely, I think, you know, as, as I go through as a practitioner, and I want to say we’re gonna take a sideways move here in a second, because I want to hear a couple things about Heather’s produto, personally, and how Heather, what is Heather’s big motivation to do you know, everybody wants to service their clients, we’re all people pleaser, we’re gonna get to that in a second. But I definitely find that one of the most important things is integration, okay, and having a Payroll solution that can integrate with other applications. And so if you, if you go to dawn brolin.com, you’ll see our starting lineup, and you’ll see, there’s a map of exactly how our technologies all integrate with each other. And I think that that’s something that we again, in the accounting profession need to really analyze, because having that integration removes the manual and journal entry. So if you’re listening to this, and you’re still manually entering journal entries for payroll, stop, go to ADP get get, start moving your clients over there for the automatic sync and integration between not just cubio or zero, or the online solutions, which are great, but it still has also as if transactions for those that are in QuickBooks Enterprise, or QuickBooks Pro Premier or a desktop solution. So that integration is so important. And so you know, I think I just want to make that point. Because I think sometimes we miss the end game, the end game is to have good payroll, compliance, everything under compliance, but then having that ability to get the reporting out of ADP and into the accounting software seamlessly, without manual entry, and my restaurants a great example, we have it all mapped where the back of the house versus front of the house versus managers versus officers. And we have the all of that payroll mapping in so we do weekly budgets with them. And so we are able to say, Okay, what happened with labor. And of course, it’s typically the front of the house back of the house that ends up being either up or down, depending on what happened. And so we can analyze it so much better. So I just want to make sure that people are listening, if you are doing anything with payroll manually, shame on you stop it, stop it right now, and do something different. And get that going now, so that next tax season things are running seamlessly and smoothly, you’ve got to make the transition, it’s going to take some time, you’ll have a dedicated rep, it’ll be awesome. But I want to shift over to the Heather’s Sperduto of the world. And I want to know a little I want to get under your hood of your car which is the Heather’s Sperduto kick butt mobile vehicle. And I want you to tell me a little bit about like what is motivated you to you know to be me are amazing at paid well, you have a reach you I don’t know if you sleep ever, but what is your motivation? There’s in your life in general, tell me about you.
Heather Sperduto 14:52
Listen, I don’t think you could stay with the same company as long as I have if you weren’t motivated on a regular basis. And for me, I always say if hey, if I wasn’t inspired, and continuing to learn every day, like I would have jumped ship a long time ago, right? But if so I have that professionally within the culture and embracing like our newest associates. So that would be like on the professional side, but on the personal side, my dad is a CPA, right? Like he’s an accountant. And one of my proudest moments of my life was, we went to the New Jersey CPA society, and he was given an award as the Educator of the Year. And he’s a chairman in the accounting department for years at a college here in New Jersey, he teaches review class for the CPA exam, I swear all the tax returns he does are complimentary to friends and family, right. Um, but he gets this award and he says, imagine giant stadium and every single seat filled. That’s how many students I’ve taught in my career. And for me, I’ve always like, just admired his passion to make people better. And it’s just ironic that I happen to do the same thing. I might not necessarily be the CPA, but I’ve embraced the CPA, Accountant channel, bookkeeper lane, at ADP, so there’s some synergy and consistency there. So that’s really been a motivating factor. And then just like family in general, like my two brothers, they were collegiate athletes. My older brother took that passion. And he was a big track runner, and now he owns running stores. But his passion is coaching. So he coaches high school and every year his his kids go to the state finals and championships and he sends a few of them to Ivy League. But then on my younger brother side, he and his wife are professional triathletes. And that is their passion, and they travel and they compete in the Ironman, and my sister in law is so good. She’s ranked one of the top 10 in the world right now at 40 years old. So when I see them on a Saturday morning, I’m getting ready to watch TV and put my feet up. And they’re going for a run for like three hours. So that dedication and motivation, hey, just surrounds my world, I happen to apply that energy to what I do in the corporate world. But I see how my family has done it in their respective outlets that complements their style and where their passions are.
Dawn Brolin 17:23
Well, that’s just amazing. And I feel like I should go running right now I’m not going to but I feel like I should. Right? And I guess and you can see, you know, I do relate a lot of things. And not everybody’s an athlete. And you know, some don’t even realize that they are athletes in whatever way they are. But definitely in athletics that that team philosophy, having the ability to like for you selling your family is a really great big, wonderful team where you’re all obviously supporting each other, and things like that. I think, you know, right now in the accounting profession, as we’re working on the book, right now, the the designated motivator for accounting professionals, looking at that ability for us to reach out and pick each other up is more critical now than ever. And I think that’s part of why my relationship with ADP is so important to me, because I need their support, I need to know that when something comes up, I can reach out and go, Hey, Paige, something’s happening with this, and I don’t know what to do about it. And what do you think and it’s like, I have a teammate. And it’s not, you know, it’s more than just a referral relationship. It’s, it’s really something where, without ATP support, I don’t think I could do the things that I’m doing now. Right. So I’m, whether I’m writing a book, or I’m doing tax returns, or I’m doing whatever I’ve taken that. I mean, it was, I would call it painful payroll, it just, you know, four months of the year, I’m tied down, I’ve got to deal with all this regulation changes in the reporting and with the PPP loan, the PPP loans in and of themselves. And what ADP was able to do to support the practitioner was critical for me. So I want to make sure when I choose my solutions, and the people on my team, the players on my team, you know, everybody has a positions ever, you know, you got to have a workflow management, you’ve got to have this and that you’ve got to have a Payroll solution that you can rely upon. That takes that four months of compliance work out of your factor, you know, I don’t value add for me is not payroll is not a value add for me to get paid. But but with the accountant with accountant connect, and with the ability to have the accountant referral program where there are Commission’s being paid out, that supplements the pain that I have to when if I get a notice from a client, I’m like, oh, I want to deal with this. And I’m like, Oh, that’s right. ADP pays me a portion of their fee to take that to take that form, scan it, uploaded it to the service center and do a service request. Now it makes sense to me. And there’s not a lot of other solutions that are providing that type of support. And I think that that’s, you know, to me, one of most important things but I do love that story about your family and how they’re, you know, cheesy motivate, that motivates me just hearing that…
Heather Sperduto 19:56
You know Dawn, I would give you an observation too because so much of what I do is I’m and out of accounting firms, right on a regular basis throughout the course of the day, I could meet with a firm in Chicago, California, Florida, you know that. I mean, I used to be on the road every single week, right? We’d be at the shows and whatnot. But an observation is we are seeing more peer to peer recommendation. So like you talk about the team, right? Yeah, yeah, we have our sales and marketing efforts. But we are entering into relationships, because Dawn is sharing her story with Jill somebody in her network or down the road there locally in the community. And we’re seeing more accountants like really joining forces to just have dialogue and understand what is best in class, what is everybody doing, whether it’s through their state society or local organizations that they work with, and we’re seeing people go all in. So you know, as an example, like, oftentimes, not so much on the accounting software side, like a firm, if they’re all in in Xero, or QuickBooks or whatever that looks like when they gain a new client, you know, they say, Okay, this is the accounting package that we use at our firm. And here’s what you’re going to do. Traditionally, we hadn’t really seen that on the payroll side, it was almost as if firms would leave it up to the client, if they were using a software package, and it was working, okay, if it’s not broke, we’re not going to fix it, right. But in recent, you know, years, that next gen firm, they are going all in on their tech stack recommendations. And we’re seeing firms that are moving, like massive amounts of clients, right now over to an ADP for all the reasons that you said, right? They they’re embracing the award winning accountant connect the access to the report, but it’s making them more productive. So when they master their accounting software, and they master whatever’s going to be their engine for payroll, right. Mm hmm. It allows them to service the the clients faster. And when we look in the dashboard, we keep doing this analysis that says, Okay, let’s talk about your book of business. We know that we share 23 mutual clients, what’s going on in your world with the rest of them? And we’re uncovering like, Okay, well, I still have a handful of them that I do in house, is that really the best answer? Or I’m using a couple local companies and other national provider, but we’re seeing more and more firms that are really taking the time to analyze their entire book of business, and make decisions that are putting them in lanes with the best technology and service, right? Because you need both. You have a technology, but you need the people on occasion, you got to ask a question. So you need the people that are going to have the answers for you, to put you in that position to win.
Dawn Brolin 22:46
Yeah, and that’s definitely just again, for food for thought for those that are listening is is to those decisions have to be made. And we and we were historically like that, Oh, okay. You’re on gusto, okay, oh, you’re on this, you’re on Intuit. Okay? You’re on this, okay? And now it’s just like you said, if you’re going to be in QuickBooks, number one, if you’re at let’s say, a desktop, you’re going to be on a hosting solution, you’re not going to have the QuickBooks file, local. That’s how we operate. That’s how we work. There’s no sense in sending data files back and forth. And so I think it’s, this is probably the biggest point of this whole episode, right? You as the practitioner should need to take control over your practice, what you offer, and how you guide your clients. And I liked what you said, as far as you know, I can go in to my client base and see who has 401k People have workers comp pay as you go, or do I have a contractor on ADP payroll? Who’s paying that $10,000, worker’s comp payment up front? You know, what are the things that I’m able to advise better. So when you have that, I will call it consolidation into one platform where you can see everything in one place, the analytics that you can come up with, and the way that you can have different conversations with your clients that give that value that we’re all talking about. Everyone’s talking about giving value. Well, providing payroll is not giving value people, okay, actually punching the numbers and issuing checks and doing all that stuff. That’s not a value add. What’s a value add is when you can analyze your clients and say, Hey, I noticed you’re on workers comp pay as you go. What I you know, because I don’t necessarily know what my clients do for workers comp, that’s not necessarily something I asked them all the time. But now I do know, right? Are you one of those guys who pay up front, and then you have your audit, and then maybe you get some money back? And maybe you don’t like, now I’m giving value to that client to manage their cash flow in a way that they weren’t doing before? And I think that that’s the whole point of what this conversation has been on the motivation side of Listen, gain control of your clients, and you’re not going to lose people that you know, you’re the trusted advisor, they’re going to believe in what you’re saying. And I think that that’s what the message that Heather and I are trying to give you is find a solution that’s going to give you more than just payroll prep, and tax filings because that’s just Anybody can do that. But when you can bring in a whole new conversation of 401k and workers comp, and, you know, hey, listen, you’re like you said a restaurant Pittsburgh, you know, let’s see what the average pay is we’re having we’re struggling hiring people. Okay, well, then maybe we want to pay people more than all the other restaurants, maybe we’ll gain some, some people from that whatever, whatever your analysis and your consultation with your client is, I think that’s what we have. So Heather, why don’t you wrap it up? And give me your final thoughts on where, you know, as far as your recommendations to the accounting industry in the in the thought process of a really managing those clients well.
Heather Sperduto 25:33
I would say to accounts, probably already know this, but don’t underestimate your value, you know, you tell your clients to jump in, they say how high and you know, you have all truly earned that title of the most trusted advisor now, so than ever before. So, you know, I think everyone is truly looking to the CPAs, the accountants and bookkeepers, and I mentioned it earlier, which is a level of admiration and respect. But I think it’s that forward thinking lens, that has to be apparent, right, it’s one thing, it’s one thing that, you know, everybody gets situated here, but it’s another thing to help businesses reimagine and take their business to the next level, right, because there have businesses that have struggled, and there have businesses that have thrived. And there’s, there’s a market for those thriving businesses. And I think we all just need to think differently, right about the services, we offer the product line. And that holds true not just for our clients, but for ourselves as well. Because if we’re not thinking differently, then the firm down the road is probably going to think differently and offer something that maybe hadn’t been brought to the table. And businesses are all in and trying to self reflect and figure out where they go next. And the accountants are really the ones that should help them dry that scenario of where they take their business and the not so distant future.
Dawn Brolin 27:05
Yeah, and that’s a great, that’s a great final thought, because that’s true, like the clients are going to shift. If you’re not shifting, they’re going to shift this way. And you’re gonna be shifting that way. And you’re gonna be going in total opposite directions. And so we’ve got to be those forward thinkers, we’ve got to be in front and ahead of the curve, and not just trying to catch up. And so now’s the time to do that, because you never know what tomorrow is gonna bring. So it’s just time right now. And you know, that’s what we’re here to encourage you to do. Make some changes in your firm, make your work life balance a lot better, and now’s the time to do it. So, Heather, thank you so much. Heather’s produto with ADP, an amazing woman. If you ever see her at a conference, you got to get around her discuss so much knowledge is so great. And now we’re going back in person a little bit more. That’s wonderful too. But again, thank you, Heather, for joining me here on the DM disruption. And thank everybody for listening. And we’ll talk to all of you soon enough. I hope you enjoy 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
It’s Dawn here to share with you my new podcast, The DM Disruption!
The podcast features practical advice and insights from yours truly and a wide range of guests from across the accounting profession who are focused on sharing motivation and strategies to help us practitioners achieve greater levels of professional and personal fulfillment and reward.
I decided to create The DM Disruption podcast to offer my fellow accounting professionals and colleagues from different areas of our profession with a forum for sharing our successes and challenges as well as the motivation to fuel greater a better way of doing things in your firm.
On The DM Disruption podcast I’m interviewing you, my peers as well as changemakers and thought leaders in the accounting profession. If you have an interest in making our community as a whole stronger and more successful, let’s talk!
Listeners can listen to The DM Disruption podcast here and watch it on The DM Disruption YouTube Channel.
New episodes of The DM Disruption podcast will be published weekly. To date, I have recorded podcast episodes with:
· Best-selling entrepreneurial author Mike Michalowicz
· CPA, James Upton of Upton Accounting in North Carolina
· Jody Padar, The Radical CPA
· Robin Hall, President & Principal Consultant, VARC Solutions
· Heather Satterley, CPA and Owner of Satterley Training & Consulting
· Dan Hood, Editor of Accounting Today
· Seth Fineberg, Editorial Manager/US Team Lead, AccountingWEB.com
· Chris Farrell, CPA, Founder of Liscio
· Ariel Sandell, CISRCP, Cybersecurity Compliance Consultant
· Erron Stark, DVP, Channel Sales ADP
· Heather Sperduto, VP, Channel Sales, ADP
· Kathy Grosskurth, Owner, Bookkeeping Clean and Simple
· Melinda Emerson, Founder, Quintessence Group
· Nate Flake – VP of Operations, Fishbowl
If you have a need for motivation or are involved in supporting the future success of the accounting profession, I’d love to have you as a guest on the show! Let me know by using this online form.
Looking forward to talking with YOU and helping everyone shake things up and achieve their goals!
Let’s GOOOOOO!
