Latest / Transforming: Tales of Business Evolution / TfP 011. The Influence of Coaching on Firm Growth

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TfP 011. The Influence of Coaching on Firm Growth · Transforming: Tales of Business Evolution

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FEMALE_1: [MUSIC]
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Welcome to Transforming:
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Tales of Business Evolution,
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where we delve into the dynamic world
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of business transformation.
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Each episode is designed for firms of any size and scale,
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exploring both innovative
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long-term planning and day-to-day
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operating practices that help
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organizations adapt to a changing landscape.
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Join us each month as we hear from leaders in
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the public accounting profession,
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sharing their experiences
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of reshaping their business models and inspiring
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you to explore new ways to evolve your own organization.
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Let's dive into this month's conversation now.
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Erin Hartman: Hello. I'm Erin Hartman,
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Senior Manager with the Firm Services team
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at AICPA and CIMA.
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PCPS or Private Companies Practice Section,
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is focused on the evolution of
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accounting firms and modernizing accounting operations
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through our "Transforming Your Business Model" project.
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We aim to highlight practitioners
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who are doing things differently to make
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this a sustainable profession
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and one that works for their lifestyles.
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Today we take you on a journey of a CPA who has
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had a non-traditional path from the beginning,
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but it's all led to and
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centered around public accounting,
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either directly or indirectly.
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I'm happy to be here with Rebecca Driscoll,
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who is the co-founder of
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The Collaboration Room, and coach for firm owners.
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Rebecca has worked for several firms,
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owned her own virtual firm,
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and has most recently co-founded The Collaboration Room.
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I can't wait to talk about all
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of this and what led you down your path.
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Thank you so much for joining us, Rebecca.
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Rebecca Driscoll: Thank you for having me.
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Erin Hartman: Do you want to start there and
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talk about that practice?
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Rebecca Driscoll: Yeah, sure. Before COVID,
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we had an in-person office in Florida in
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Tampa Bay area with
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about six employees and running a tax and CAS practice.
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Then when COVID happened,
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we switched all of
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our client interactions to be fully virtual.
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Then slowly over time, employees
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started asking if they could work remote as well,
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and sometimes they even had to depending
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on where we were at with COVID.
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Then when my husband got
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a job in Virginia and I had to move,
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that really made us think about
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"do we even need this office?"
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"Do clients even know where I live anyways?"
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We had clients all over the country at that point.
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We became fully virtual.
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We kept the office for a little while,
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and then eventually we didn't
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even have an office anymore.
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That opened up a lot of
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possibilities of where I could hire employees.
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Yeah, so that's where we landed.
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Erin Hartman: Now, you had employees not only in
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the US but in other countries, correct?
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Rebecca Driscoll: Yes. That was more in the past year.
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Over time, the firm got a little smaller.
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I kept trying to simplify a little bit as
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my lifestyle was changing with having young children.
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About a year ago,
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I sold a big chunk of my practice and
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my employees were part of
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that deal to another firm owner.
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And then I was left with maybe about 35 or so clients,
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and my husband and I tackled those 35 clients together.
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Then quickly we realized we need a little more support,
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and a colleague of mine has had great success with
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hiring in the Philippines and
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helped us find two great candidates,
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and they helped us with
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all the basic bookkeeping needs that we had.
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Erin Hartman: You seem to work very
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smoothly in this remote world.
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I remember just hearing you
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talk about this, and it's something we've talked about,
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especially over the years and during the
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pandemic, about firms having to transition to this.
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I remember saying to you
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that you would be a good teacher, and you said,
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well, I'm a teacher.
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That is your background, correct?
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Rebecca Driscoll: Yeah. I will say before
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we get into my background that
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I can see why it's a huge transition to go virtual for
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a lot of firms who that's not how
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their career started and
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that's not what they're used to.
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But as far as workload goes,
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we have a pretty cut-and-dry workload as accountants.
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You're either working on the project,
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you're either hitting the deadline or you're not.
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It's very black and white.
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I feel like as long as each employee
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has some dashboard that shows their progress, and
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they're updating their progress on assignments,
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and management is able
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to track that progress and communicate it,
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I think the work can still get done.
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Then it just leaves the morale, culture, community side
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of that, and training and all of that,
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which could be a whole podcast of
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how I was able to tackle that.
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But there's so many cool tools nowadays.
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There's something called Loom that a lot of firms
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are using now to just
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record their screen while they're doing something.
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If there's something that you are ready to delegate to
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a staff member, or you're creating
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review notes for them and you want to show them exactly
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what's going on with the errors they made,
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you can record your screen and show
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them exactly what need to learn.
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Then the great thing about that is they can press pause,
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take notes, rewatch it.
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They could rewatch it every month when
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they're doing that same month-end close.
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There's transcripts and summary
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notes that come with those types of softwares now.
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There's a lot of ways that we can all
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work together without being in person. I'll send up.
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But yes, I did start my career as
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a middle school math teacher in New England,
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and I liked it, but I
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couldn't help but feel like it wasn't
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exactly what I wanted to be doing.
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I liked the idea of helping
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people and teaching people things.
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But when I looked at the trajectory of that career path,
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it just something didn't feel
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right, and I was still in my early 20s.
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I ended up moving to
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Florida with a friend just for the summer,
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just to see if I liked that lifestyle, whatever.
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I ended up working at
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this big Gourmet grocery store that was opening,
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and I was in charge of
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creating this database of all of the products that were
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going to be sold in
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the grocery store and making sure we had
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a SKU for each one so that
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they could all be scanned at the cash register.
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It was so much fun to organize all this data,
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and I loved it.
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Then they noticed that not only was
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I good at spreadsheets and data and numbers,
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but I also was very social.
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They put me in charge of managing the relationships of
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all the local vendors that we were going to
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have, that we were
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going to sell their products at the store.
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It was a lot of farmers market-type crafty vendors.
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As I got to know these vendors who sold
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all home goods, crafts, food,
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canned goods, all sorts of things,
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they started asking me if I could help them
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with the accounting for their small businesses.
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I was just an ex-middle school math teacher at the time.
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I did not feel qualified at all to be helping them,
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but they could see what I could do with
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all these spreadsheets and they were like,
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no, you'd be good at this.
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I purchased Bookkeeping for Dummies,
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the yellow book, and read it cover to cover,
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had a highlighter and just tried
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to teach myself double-entry accounting,
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debits and credits.
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I did the QuickBooks
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Online ProAdvisor thing to try
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to learn the software of QuickBooks.
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Then I told these friends,
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if you'll just let me play and figure this out,
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I'll charge you next to nothing to let
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me do this, but I'm probably going to mess up a lot.
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They're like, deal. That sounds great,
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because they were all creatives and had
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no clue how to do all this number stuff.
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Then the CPAs started getting to
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know me because they would be
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grabbing the books at tax time to do
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the tax return for all these
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small businesses, and they're like,
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who is this girl who is in here doing these things?
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They started teaching me a lot of like,
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this is a chart of accounts.
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This is how you reconcile.
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This is what this all means.
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This is a debit, this is a credit.
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Then inevitably, they all tried to poach me
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to work at their firms as a staff accountant.
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I had my choice of a lot of
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different firms that I could work for,
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and I did try out a couple of different ones.
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But because of my generation
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being pretty tech-savvy as a millennial,
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I was able to really quickly see things like, well,
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why are we entering
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every single transaction
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manually into QuickBooks Desktop?
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I know there's a way we could sync this bank feed and
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all these things that just didn't really
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make sense and felt really archaic.
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One of the CPAs that I worked for,
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he said, you're in your 20s.
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You're single, you're not married.
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You don't have kids. Go get your CPA license.
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Just do it. Just go do that right now. So I did.
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It was really hard because I
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didn't have any business classes from undergrad.
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I ended up having to take more undergrad classes than
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grad classes to get
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all the classes that Florida required.
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But I did it, and I got my master's in
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accountancy and sat for the four exams.
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At that point, I was working on
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a big firm, and I really liked it.
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Now, this is where things get interesting
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with the bookkeeping versus tax and
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where firms are now thinking about adding CAS into
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their practice, because when
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I started working at this big firm,
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I had my little side hustle
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of my bookkeeping business always,
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no matter what firm I worked at.
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I would just have the firm do the taxes,
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and I would keep doing the bookkeeping on
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the side for my little clients.
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Every firm was totally fine with that.
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As time went on, I realized, well,
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I want to learn the tax side so I can
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be a little more well-rounded here.
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When I moved to this bigger firm,
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it was a little more hip and modern,
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a lot of young staff and I had been working at
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these old-school, red-pencil-for-write-ups and
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doing everything on paper.
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There'd be CPAs there who would print out
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an email to give to you for you to scan and put in,
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and I'm like, you could have just emailed me.
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We didn't have to print this and scan it,
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and upload it back.
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Like that happened a lot.
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This was really fun to be at this big firm,
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but this firm was separated into three departments,
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tax, audit, and bookkeeping.
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I was in the tax department
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because that's what I really wanted to learn.
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But the partner who was in charge of the tax department
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was thrilled that I had a bookkeeping background,
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which I was getting a little better at this,
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but I was learning a lot and was
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good at bookkeeping at
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this point, because they were like, great.
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Now we can ask you bookkeeping questions
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so we don't have to go talk
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to the bookkeeping department.
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This is amazing.
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We'll just have you even do bookkeeping projects
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on our side so that we
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don't even have to interface with them.
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I was like, okay.
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It did give me a superpower
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and a leg up in my department.
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But it was so interesting to me that these tax people
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knew nothing about QuickBooks or anything,
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and a lot of it is just learning software.
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They knew how to make a journal entry,
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they just didn't take the time to learn
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the software side of it and get comfortable with that.
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That was really interesting, and I
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learned a lot about tax at that job.
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Then I got to the point where I
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was just about to have my CPA license,
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and one of the partners was mentoring me, and he said,
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you need to decide if you're going to keep building
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this bookkeeping business on the side or if
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you're going to just be
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a full-time employee here, because I had
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always been part-time because I was taking
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grad classes and studying for the CPA exam.
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He said, you can work here.
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You have a desk here always,
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but you're already bringing in business,
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and that's not something we'd
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expect for you to do for another 10 years.
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You're not going to be
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a partner here for another decade.
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You have a lot of hoops to jump through before.
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You're a staff accountant.
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As much as I want you to stay,
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I really think you're already behaving like a partner.
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You need to just go be on your own, do that.
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He's like, okay,
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but I don't know what I'm doing and
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I don't know how this all worked.
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I knew that I always had a desk there.
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He threw me a few clients and sent me on my way.
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Yeah, he was like, as a partner I want you to stay,
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as a mentor I want you to go.
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Erin Hartman: Right.
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Rebecca Driscoll: I did hire a friend who worked there as
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a part-time consultant to review my work.
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We had a weekly standing call
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where I could just ask questions
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because I didn't feel fully
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comfortable just taking on anything at the time.
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Erin Hartman: Right.
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Rebecca Driscoll: That was in 2016, I think.
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From there I started
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doing taxes and bookkeeping on my own,
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the same original clients.
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Then I took their tax returns at that point,
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so I was doing both things for them.
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Before I knew it, it was time to hire an employee.
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I needed an office.
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I was doing hundreds and hundreds of tax returns,
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and everything was new that I was learning.
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It was like, I would say yes to anything.
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It was a lot of research and
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learning and a lot of mistakes.
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A lot of CRUDs.
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Erin Hartman: But it was good, and
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you did that for 10 years.
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Rebecca Driscoll: Yeah. It took
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a little while for it to get up and running.
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Maybe it was like my baby.
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I really was so passionate about it.
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I ended up realizing that it was really hard to
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service these super tiny micro businesses,
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like farmers market-type vendors.
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I made an online course that they could buy where they
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could learn everything they
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needed to know about setting up a business,
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and I made a spreadsheet
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that they could purchase that made it really
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easy to track their transactions
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so that they didn't have
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to pay for like a QuickBooks subscription
14:28
if they weren't ready to hire a bookkeeper.
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I really tried to accommodate those small business owners
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all the while and just really focus on that.
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I ended up with a lot of local clients in the Tampa area.
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Then over time, through referrals and things,
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it really started spreading.
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I noticed that people didn't care where I was located.
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They didn't even ask where I was located,
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and I'm learning state laws
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in all these different states now,
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and then people just move,
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but they're loyal to you and they want
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to stay with you and they trust you.
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It quickly became a fully national operation.
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Erin Hartman: When you moved, because you're saying you
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moved from Florida to Virginia.
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Rebecca Driscoll: Before I even did that, we
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had clients all over the country.
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But once I moved too,
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I knew that it wasn't going to be a problem.
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It's really become very fluid,
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where you live and
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where your clients live and all of that.
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Erin Hartman: Fast forward, so you had
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that business for several years,
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and then do you want to talk
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about what happened in your life?
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Decided it was time for you to make a change?
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Rebecca Driscoll: Yeah. I remember in 2021,
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I was due November 29 with my first baby,
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and I had hired
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and enrolled agent who had a lot of years of
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experience that I really felt like
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was going to be able to carry the firm
15:49
while I took a maternity leave and be
15:51
a manager, and I was training him on everything.
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Then November 11th,
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my water broke in the office,
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and we're Googling, "Is my water break?" All this stuff.
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Shortly thereafter, I was at the hospital.
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I kept saying, but it's not
16:08
November 29th, it's November 11th.
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I'm not supposed to have a baby yet.
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I was on the phone while in labor with this employee
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trying to catch him up to speed with
16:20
everything else I could possibly tell him.
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I was on the phone with him until
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minutes before my son was born.
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It was this really big transition of
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my baby is going to be with someone else,
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and I'm going to have a human baby now,
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and that's as a mom and it was
16:36
a really weird feeling because I was able to
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work as many hours as I wanted
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and just be fully immersed in my business before then.
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I think what a lot of firm owners are looking for
16:50
who are solo firm owners is
16:53
some relationship with someone at the top,
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because it's very lonely at the top.
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That doesn't necessarily mean a business partner,
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but just some lead employee or
17:04
something where we can
17:05
feel like we're a lot less lonely up there,
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someone to help make decisions and
17:09
someone to help us just feel less
17:12
alone or that we can have
17:14
a few weeks off after having a baby
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or just someone that can keep
17:18
everything functioning well.
17:21
It's hard when you only have
17:23
a couple employees when you're still pretty small.
17:26
That is an awkward time
17:28
because the firm owners still doing a lot.
17:31
That set me on a journey of trying to figure out,
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should I even be a firm owner?
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Do I just need to make some tweaks to
17:38
my client load or
17:40
our services or our offerings or our pricing?
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Because at this point, since I was willing to
17:46
accept anyone who could fog a mirror as a client,
17:50
we were doing all tax returns
17:53
and all weird agreements with, well,
17:57
this person we pay their invoices for them,
17:59
and this person we do sales tax,
18:01
but we do it for free because they sent
18:04
us this client and all that crazy stuff.
18:06
I did start focusing on how can we streamline?
18:10
How can we standardize?
18:11
What sort of integration,
18:12
automations, things can we set up so
18:15
that maybe we don't even need an admin
18:17
because things just flow?
18:20
What kind of boundaries can we hold with clients
18:22
where we don't have accounts receivable anymore,
18:24
where they're paying upfront for things,
18:26
so it's automatically withdrawn?
18:28
What about our phone system?
18:29
Can we have a message that just plays that explains
18:32
that we don't have unscheduled phone calls,
18:34
but here's how we can schedule
18:36
a call, all those little things to streamline as much as
18:39
possible and curb our clients and direct
18:42
them to places that made it all a lot easier.
18:46
The thing that was still really hard for me was
18:48
training my employees and being
18:51
a good manager and boss to them while also trying
18:56
to be a good manager and boss to
18:58
my child and in my household.
19:01
It felt like I had too many children.
19:04
I just wasn't able to identify someone
19:09
else to take over and be the manager.
19:12
That just wasn't happening.
19:14
I hired a coach to help me decide what to do.
19:17
Ultimately, I decided to sell
19:20
about 80% of the firm, mostly tax work.
19:23
At that point, I had a policy that, you know,
19:26
we will only do your taxes if we also do
19:28
your books to try to help us be more
19:31
efficient with having less client relationships and make
19:35
more money with less clients, was the goal.
19:38
It's everyone's goal.
19:39
My employees were a great fit for this transition,
19:42
and they were really excited to
19:44
work for this new firm owner that
19:46
we all knew from going to
19:48
QuickBooks Connect and all these community things.
19:50
We were all friendly already.
19:52
That was great.
19:54
Then my husband, he
19:56
was getting burned out at his job
19:58
that we moved to Virginia for,
19:59
and when my baby was 10 months old,
20:02
I got pregnant again.
20:04
He had been helping me with
20:05
bookkeeping in the evenings a lot.
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He was slowly getting his feet wet or getting a
20:11
little bit familiar with,
20:13
how do we categorize transactions?
20:15
How do we reconcile a bank account?
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Erin Hartman: Talk about that a little bit more,
20:18
because my husband is not a trained accountant.
20:21
Rebecca Driscoll: He's an engineer, mechanical engineer.
20:24
I think as long as there's some buy-in
20:26
and interest in businesses and you're
20:29
interested in how businesses work and how
20:32
businesses make decisions and
20:35
looking under the hood of a business,
20:37
if that is interesting to someone,
20:39
I think that is enough
20:41
to dive into the world of bookkeeping.
20:43
Erin Hartman: I think that can even be a better fit
20:46
sometimes. We even we talk about two things.
20:48
We talk about using
20:50
non-CPAs in a role that might be a traditional CPA role.
20:55
Then we also talk about how that
20:57
can be a better fit because just
20:59
because you're a CPA and you might
21:02
be the COO of your firm,
21:06
because you've been there a long time,
21:09
that doesn't mean that you
21:11
necessarily know how to run a business.
21:13
Rebecca Driscoll: Yes.
21:14
Erin Hartman: Being interested in running a business,
21:16
knowing how to run a business isn't
21:18
necessarily the same person that took
21:21
a CPA exam and knows how to
21:24
do taxes or knows how to audit a company.
21:27
Very interesting that your husband is
21:30
interested in that as an engineer,
21:33
wanted to learn bookkeeping,
21:35
went into business with you,
21:36
so I love that.
21:38
I think that's an interesting story right there.
21:40
Rebecca Driscoll: As a non-accountant,
21:42
he's out working in industry.
21:44
When he looked at some of
21:46
the sets of books that he was in charge of,
21:48
he's like, oh, yeah,
21:50
their cost of goods sold is like mine, and
21:52
I worked for a place where it was like this,
21:54
and we have this great metric that we use.
21:57
Do they have KPIs?
21:59
Because we have KPIs. And yeah,
22:01
I think we usually use this factor when
22:03
determining if we can afford to hire another employee.
22:06
Maybe they should try that.
22:07
Well, when I manage a budget,
22:09
I like to do this.
22:10
I was like, oh, you know
22:11
a lot about how businesses work.
22:13
He's like, well, yeah, I work for a business.
22:15
It's actually pretty cool to get
22:17
someone that has real-life experience
22:20
working at a business to help you analyze business.
22:25
That worked out really nicely.
22:27
I think the technical knowledge can come,
22:30
but if someone is good at managing people,
22:33
that is something that I am not good at,
22:35
and I'm just too much of a people pleaser.
22:37
I just want to be friends with everybody.
22:39
I just don't know how to manage people,
22:40
and I don't want to know how to manage people.
22:43
That's just not my strength.
22:45
But my husband is used to managing a team of 30 and
22:49
has always been told he's a great boss and loves
22:52
being a boss and is great at that.
22:54
He was able to quickly build
22:57
his own team in our bookkeeping side of things overseas,
23:01
but he knew what meeting cadence they should have
23:04
and tell them to go out to
23:05
dinner and that we'll buy dinner for.
23:06
He knew all the little things to do to keep them feeling
23:10
connected to a community, and even working remotely,
23:13
how to do that because he was a great manager.
23:17
I think that's a really interesting skill
23:20
set to look for as a firm owner.
23:22
Even outside of our industry,
23:24
are there people that are
23:26
really good at managing people?
23:28
Erin Hartman: Right, and using
23:29
people's strengths and what their passions are.
23:32
We talk about that a lot, too.
23:34
People just based on longevity become managers of people,
23:39
and that's not necessarily
23:41
their strength or what they want to be doing.
23:43
Rebecca Driscoll: Right. That could negatively affect
23:45
people's careers paths and possibly make them leave
23:48
the profession because they're
23:50
not being given the support that they
23:52
need, and that can have
23:54
a really powerful impact, negative or positive.
23:57
Erin Hartman: Exactly. No, those are great points.
24:00
I know that you have since
24:02
gotten out of public accounting for the moment.
24:05
Do you want to talk about that,
24:07
what you are doing?
24:09
Rebecca Driscoll: You sold the rest of
24:10
your clients in the brand,
24:12
so the brand will live on under
24:14
a new awesome female CPA,
24:16
now owns the firm and will be taking on the whole brand,
24:21
which I'm happy to see that live on.
24:23
I think that decision partially
24:26
came from me just posting on Tax Twitter,
24:30
"Does anyone want to buy a fully virtual bookkeeping
24:33
and tax firm that's pretty small?"
24:35
I got over 100 letters of intent in a week.
24:39
That was really crazy to me
24:41
that so many people wanted to buy a firm.
24:43
I didn't even say it was my firm,
24:45
but people were really interested in.
24:48
There were bidding wars. It was crazy.
24:49
It was like people really wanted to buy it.
24:52
I think a lot of it was because of
24:54
the monthly reoccurring revenue
24:56
of the CAS work that we had.
24:58
Just we were running really
25:00
efficiently and being fully virtual.
25:03
It's just very funny to me how
25:05
this CAS side has come full circle, that a lot of firms
25:08
are now interested in adding the CAS work in
25:11
when it was looked so down upon at my old firm.
25:15
Erin Hartman: You're right. It is much more elevated.
25:18
Rebecca Driscoll: I think some firm owners,
25:19
they understand the value of bringing that in-house,
25:22
but it's just a whole new thing to
25:25
have to figure out, and they're just trying to
25:27
stay afloat with what they're already doing.
25:29
It's like, while they appreciate that it would be good,
25:32
it's just not in the cards right now
25:34
to bring that work in-house.
25:36
But I will say the monthly reoccurring revenue,
25:39
the ability to see
25:40
your client's income situation at
25:42
any given moment so that you can be proactive
25:45
with tax projections for them and
25:48
just the ability to have basically
25:49
the tax return done on January 1st,
25:52
January 15, whenever you close
25:54
the books, because the books are done.
25:56
Tax season is so much easier when
25:59
you are the one who did the books all year long.
26:01
There's a lot of benefits.
26:03
I do think that if you're not able
26:06
to bring the CAS work in-house,
26:08
then at least finding
26:10
a really strong alliance with a bookkeeping firm or
26:14
even another CPA firm that does bookkeeping that's
26:17
willing to white-label it
26:19
with you or do some partnership,
26:21
I think that can be almost just as good
26:24
because then you're able to align with, "Hey,
26:27
this is how I like to see the adjusting journal entries.
26:30
This is the due date that I want to be
26:31
able to pull a quarterly report.
26:33
Can we make that happen?" And still kind of work as
26:35
a team to get that done for your clients.
26:38
That was really great. I ultimately
26:41
decided to sell the firm,
26:42
A, because there was so much interest, and, B,
26:45
because I was spending so much more time with
26:49
other accounting firm owners than
26:51
I was with my own clients,
26:53
and I was feeling so much more passionate about that.
26:56
I felt badly about that.
26:58
These people deserve someone
27:00
who's really passionate about helping them,
27:03
but I am just having
27:04
so much fun giving back to my own profession.
27:06
I started with doing some coaching
27:09
in Jason Staats' online community called Realize.
27:12
That was doing a lot of one-on-one coaching.
27:15
After doing over 100 of those sessions,
27:18
I started really seeing some patterns and
27:21
understanding the struggles of either new CPAs that
27:24
are just decided to start their own business or
27:27
seasoned ones who know that there's
27:29
something wrong and they just don't know how to fix,
27:32
And just helping different firm owners
27:34
on different parts of their journey.
27:36
Then I've since then started doing
27:38
some round tables in his community for bookkeeping for
27:42
either firms that want to add bookkeeping in
27:44
or for firms that are bookkeeping only,
27:48
and looking at some of those add-on
27:50
services that can be added into bookkeeping,
27:52
like more controller-type things or
27:55
CFO-type things and the pros and
27:56
cons of offering those services.
27:59
Yeah, I'm at the point where I'm just
28:01
trying to use everything I
28:03
learned to help other firm owners on their paths.
28:08
Erin Hartman: You're still in the profession,
28:10
just in a different way.
28:12
Rebecca Driscoll: I think it's just really important
28:14
for accountants to think about
28:17
what lifestyle do they want or
28:20
need to be having, and how much money
28:23
do you need to be making, and then find
28:26
a way to connect those two things that works for you.
28:30
For me, I realized it's not that I don't want to work,
28:34
that I just need to stay home with my kids.
28:36
It's not the hours of work that was the problem for me.
28:40
It was the type of work.
28:41
I realized that high stress,
28:44
high liability, high responsibility type work,
28:48
I'm just not at a point in my life where I want to have
28:52
that much liability and responsibility
28:54
for a taxpayer's life.
28:57
I never know when it's going to be a snow day,
28:59
when a child is going to be sick,
29:01
when we're going to have to go to the pediatrician.
29:04
There's so many unknowns right now of
29:07
potty training and all these things that I
29:09
know that being at the pediatrician's office and
29:12
realizing we didn't tell
29:14
someone to make a certain tax payment,
29:15
and having that all be on me,
29:17
it's just not a good fit for me right now.
29:20
I think that it's really figuring out
29:22
what's your appetite for liability and
29:24
responsibility right now and how
29:26
can you tweak your situation.
29:29
That could have been for me finding a partner.
29:32
It could have been a number of
29:33
different things to help take that pressure off.
29:36
Erin Hartman: Right. I think that's a good point.
29:38
It can be different for different people.
29:40
I think this is just such an important conversation
29:43
to have as we talk about
29:44
the pipeline and the importance
29:46
of attracting people to the profession,
29:49
retaining them, and just
29:51
making sure that it works for their lives.
29:53
It's largely about realizing
29:55
that it's not just a cookie-cutter profession.
29:57
It's not just about crunching numbers.
30:00
It's not just for people.
30:01
You mentioned before that people
30:03
you worked with realized that you're
30:05
a people person and it's not just about working alone,
30:09
not just compliance work from
30:12
February 1st through April 15th.
30:14
It's not just about deadlines.
30:16
There's other things in this profession
30:18
that people need.
30:19
People are definitely happiest in their careers when
30:22
they're using their gifts and
30:24
doing what works best for their lives.
30:26
You truly exemplify that.
30:29
Rebecca Driscoll: Oh, thank you. Sometimes we
30:30
need a break from being client-facing.
30:32
We started to do a lot of white-label bookkeeping for
30:37
other accounting firms that wanted
30:39
to have a bookkeeping arm of their firm,
30:41
but they just didn't know how to do
30:43
that and didn't want the responsibility of doing that.
30:46
We actually would white-label that so
30:48
that the client didn't know that we were doing it,
30:51
but we were taking care of.
30:52
I loved that for this season of life because I
30:56
did not have any direct responsibility to the client.
30:59
My client was the accounting firm,
31:01
and they felt great because they knew they had
31:04
a CPA firm dealing with their clients,
31:07
so they didn't have to review anything because we were
31:09
even taking care of the review piece of it.
31:12
There might just be a tweak to make of,
31:14
I don't want to be client-facing for a little while.
31:16
I want to do the work,
31:17
but I don't want to
31:19
have the client relationship right now.
31:21
I don't want that level of
31:22
responsibility. Or I have a friend who
31:25
dropped down to part-time at
31:26
that big firm that I used to work for.
31:29
When she dropped down to part time,
31:31
maybe a few tax returns came off
31:33
her dashboard, but ultimately,
31:35
the same amount of work pretty
31:36
much still had to get done,
31:38
and it didn't feel like there was
31:39
an easy way to measure, okay,
31:41
if you're working at 60%,
31:43
then this is how many returns you're going to be doing.
31:46
Ultimately, she just got into
31:48
a situation where she felt like
31:49
she was working full-time,
31:50
but for 60% of her pay and very stressed about deadlines
31:55
and all this responsibility and new mom with young kids.
32:00
I ended up hiring her to
32:02
work based on what her terms were.
32:05
She said, I can do two days a week,
32:08
and I can't do emails in between those two days.
32:11
But this is my skill set,
32:13
and these are the things I can do
32:14
during those two days each week.
32:16
It was like, yeah, that works.
32:18
She didn't think she was going to be able to find
32:19
any job doing that, and she was doing contract work.
32:23
I told her, oh, man, there's a lot of people who would
32:25
love to have a part-time CPA on
32:28
staff that just plugs in and does
32:31
some projects and doesn't
32:33
necessarily have to be client-facing.
32:35
There are so many options, so many options.
32:39
Erin Hartman: Listening to you, Rebecca,
32:41
I feel like the coaching that you're
32:43
doing is like the coaching you wish you had.
32:45
Rebecca Driscoll: Yes. Exactly.
32:48
Erin Hartman: I'm sure there are so many people that are
32:51
glad that you're available to help them.
32:54
Like you're saying, it can be a lonely world,
32:56
and sometimes you just need
32:59
to know that you're not alone and that
33:01
people understand what you're going
33:03
through as a firm owner.
33:06
That's one of the things that we talk about in
33:08
the PCPS networking group,
33:10
sometimes even just misery loves company.
33:13
I know that the issues
33:15
that you're dealing with as a firm owner,
33:17
other firm owners deal with them too.
33:19
A lot of times there are solutions.
33:22
Hopefully, there's always a solution
33:23
that somebody can help you with,
33:25
but just knowing that you're not the only
33:26
one dealing with whatever
33:28
the issue is can just be rewarding as well.
33:32
Rebecca Driscoll: We have so many decisions
33:34
to make as firm owners.
33:35
There's so many decisions,
33:37
and it's very exhausting to
33:39
be the one in charge of making all those decisions,
33:42
and there's so much pressure and we overthink things.
33:45
Just to have someone to bounce
33:47
a thought off of and just see, hey,
33:49
how would you make this decision, or how have
33:51
you guys decided to handle this?
33:54
It can be a game changer, for sure.
33:58
Erin Hartman: In a world that is ever-changing,
34:00
I think you're a great example
34:02
of this is a great time to be a CPA.
34:05
Choose your own adventure,
34:07
whether yours is to be in public accounting,
34:11
to indirectly be in public accounting, you can.
34:14
Rebecca Driscoll: Yeah. I am so
34:16
thankful for that CPA who told me to get
34:18
my CPA license because I
34:20
know that I have job security for life.
34:23
I know that if my husband
34:24
loses his job or he's not happy,
34:26
I know I can jump back in.
34:28
God forbid I get divorced,
34:29
I know I can get my own job,
34:31
and be totally independent.
34:33
I think, as a woman, to have
34:34
a certification like this, that I know that I have,
34:37
this is just financial protection
34:41
for me that everyone's always looking for a CPA.
34:45
There's always going to be options,
34:47
public, private, you name it,
34:49
and there's so many ideas of even just little one-off
34:53
consulting-type side hustle projects that you can do too.
34:58
Even the PTO at
35:00
the elementary school here
35:01
was like, can you do the books?
35:02
Everywhere you look, there's an opportunity to help
35:05
someone with a skill set that we have all learned.
35:08
It's great. It gives you a lot of peace of mind
35:11
that you'll always be able to make a living.
35:14
Erin Hartman: Exactly. Well, thank you so much for
35:16
being here today with us, Rebecca.
35:18
I thought I knew a lot about you,
35:19
but I've learned so much more.
35:21
You just have a great story,
35:23
a great personality, and I
35:25
know our audience will love hearing from you, as well.
35:27
Rebecca Driscoll: Well, thank you, Erin.
35:29
Thank you so much for having me.
35:30
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35:33
Erin Hartman: Thank you for tuning in to
35:34
Transforming: Tales of Business Evolution.
35:37
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35:39
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Visit our PCPS Transforming
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36:00
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36:03
and we'll see you next time.
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