don’t be afraid to fire poor performers to appreciate great performers.
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the disruptors 
with liz farr for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
marie greene founded connected accounting in 2019 out of a desire to create a new kind of accounting firm where firm culture and “reliable, reliable, reliable” customer service were the highest priorities.
“what is your culture? who do you want to have on your team?” are questions leaders need to consider when seeking out new team members or deciding who to fire, says greene. she advises firm owners to remember the message it sends when poor performers are retained because “the good people also leave because you keep the bad apples.”
more: megan genest tarnow: hire for curiosity rather than compliance | clayton oates: one way to keep clients for life | randy crabtree: follow these three rules to keep employees happy | erik solbakken: yes, you can work less and make more | donny shimamoto: future firm growth requires a mindshift | jennifer wilson: empower young workers to build the firm everyone loves | mike whitmire: re-think your hiring and training practices | hector garcia: success strategies of a quickbooks youtube superstar | blake oliver: why tax work yearns to be free| private equity explodes in u.k. | brannon poe: the status quo must go | accounting nerds, unlock your super powers | disruptor: jason statts shakes up the status quo | think small to think big with matt wilkinson | when financial statements go extinct with corey schmidt | can geraldine carter save accountants from themselves? | re-inventing accounting with tyler anderson
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greene recognized that not everyone in a firm wants to be a partner, especially today when “we see partners work crazy hours” and rarely enjoy the benefit of a lighter workload that used to come with becoming a partner.
instead of offering a partner track, everyone’s compensation includes a percentage of the profit, and multiple pathways for career growth are available. instead of running a book of business – which not everyone wants to do – team members can specialize in sales tax, technology, bookkeeping cleanup or even in training and onboarding new hires…whatever it is they want to do.
offering flexibility in work hours is a must for attracting talent these days, so she lets team members set their own schedules as long as commitments to clients are honored. her team includes mothers who are off between 4 pm and 8 pm to be with their children and a farmer who takes three weeks off at harvest time.
eight more takeaways from marie greene
- identify what makes the superstars on your team superstars, and seek out people with those skills and characteristics. think of two or three questions to ask during an interview that will help identify them.
- another way to find great people is to hire for attitude, not skills. if the person is supermotivated and has good people skills, even right out of college, you can teach them enough to become an important part of your firm.
- doing the hard things is helpful for the culture. if you don’t fire someone who’s a bad fit, you’re sending a message to your team that you don’t care much about culture. rather than letting someone just quit, it’s better to fire them and explain to the team your reasoning.
- don’t wait until your firm is 50-60 people to hire a cfo or coo. hiring for those roles earlier helps you attract and retain talent and creates more innovative ways of doing business.
- think outside of the box for profiles of people you want to hire. greene hired a coo who used to manage emergency rooms at hospitals. another person in her operations team was a former teacher who switched careers during covid.
- one reason why firms are not open to investments in technology, professional development or restructuring is that the partners are too close to retirement.
- think about what your goal with your business is, then figure out what that looks like in a firm. marie wants a lifestyle firm so she can work remotely and visit family in france for a month at a time. other people want to quickly build a $20 million firm that they can sell in a few years. others are best as solo entrepreneurs who might have one client or 50 clients.
- keep existing clients and get great referrals by providing excellent, reliable client service. she set up a ticketing system to manage email, similar to a tech company, to ensure that every email is responded to within 24-48 hours.
- communicate clearly with bullet points, not paragraphs, and keep it free of jargon your clients don’t understand.
- a key skill for the future will be the ability to troubleshoot and work with accounting tech. you have to know enough about accounting to make sure the system is working correctly. universities are largely still teaching accounting using paper, so new graduates have little understanding of how to translate that knowledge into working with the appropriate software.
more about marie greene
marie phillips greene is a cpa, entrepreneur, and founder of connected accounting. with three master’s degrees in addition to her accounting credentials, greene is never one to shy away from a learning curve—on the contrary, she is defined by her enthusiastic curiosity. her passion for problem-solving, love for efficient processes, and sincere support for clients are built into the dna of her business. above all, she wants to liberate business owners from the everyday stresses that too often lead to burnout and frustration. a known perfectionist—she organizes her friends’ closets for fun—greene’s skills shine when it comes to finding linear and logical solutions to business challenges. it will always be her top priority to create a nurturing, flexible space for both her team and clients.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr 00:03
welcome to accounting disrupter conversations. i’m your host liz farr from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. my guest today is marie greene, founder and ceo of connected accounting. how are you today, marie?
marie greene 00:19
i’m good, liz, how are you?
liz farr 00:21
i’m great. well, i’m so glad to have you on here. and we have a lot to cover. so let’s jump in. let’s do it. yes. now accounting talent in the us has been scarce for years, and covid made it worse. what are your ideas on how to make it better?
marie greene 00:45
i mean, a lot. and some of them, we’ve tested the ideas and some i’ve worked, some have not definitely, i think the number one thing is, and that’s the reason why i left my old firm is culture is really important. so making sure that you can offer nowadays flexibility, we’re, you know, still we’re coming out of covid. but a lot of people will still want to work from home full time. we’re also like, the only way to attract talent nowadays, is to fit to their needs. it’s no longer a i’m a partner, i had it rough and you’re gonna have to follow my tracks. it’s like, no, no, no, no, we need to adapt to others. and it can be we have moms on the team that want to be off between, you know, four and 8pm, come back for an hour or two, we have farmers on the team that take three weeks off for harvest time, we have people on east coast, west coast with different time zones. and everybody works, the schedule that works best for them, as long as we overlap three to four hours a day. and that we can make client calls and client meetings. i think another another thing that was helpful for me at first when i was hiring and recruiting like it started the firm in august of 2019. and it was just me. and now i have 15 employees in three years. so and you know, we’ve also lost people, and we had to let go of people’s have learned a lot of like, what doesn’t work. and one of the books that was recommended to me early on, called hiring for attitude was so helpful. so we defined our mission, we define our values, once we had the values down, we wrote down four superstars on the team and what makes them a superstar. they’re communicative. they always come to work with a happy, go get lucky like attitude. they’re proactive. and so we kind of made a list. and based on that, we said, okay, well, if one of the core qualities is problem solving, what are the two or three questions we shouldn’t be asking during our interview process, to identify is this candidate or problem solver. and the book really goes further into details. and there’s more. more tips and tools ryan was on is actually is the one who told me about this book, and very grateful to him for that, because that saved us multiple times. and we also we love patrick lencioni. so he wrote the five dysfunctions of a team. and then he got further and further into the people side and the management side. and we adopted his it’s not a personality test. it’s a skill set test that we started providing to people. and that made such a big difference. identifying not, oh, you’re an extrovert or an introvert, but you’re galvanized or you’re going to bring people behind you, or your discerner you’re really really good at like, if we give you a problem, discerning what the solution should be. and we don’t have all of the the trades on the team yet we’re still looking for a galvanize, or, and we have one wonder who’s somebody who really likes to ask the big questions. why are we doing it this way? where are we going that high level? so it’s fascinating now that we count, i shifted our mindset to this. we have a better organization or the team we have we understand our culture better people come in the door or a culture fit. they also fit the values and style that we like to work with. so i think refocusing on what is your culture? who do you want to have on your team and being more flexible with the profiles the hours people can work in and even not necessarily hiring prior accountants but training them if they have the right attitude? teaching tech or teaching bookkeeping to someone that’s too we are motivated, is also a great way to fix the problem. it’s still tough, but we try.
liz farr 05:08
i like the emphasis on culture fit, because that’s so often something that firms just overlook. they just ignore, you know, they want instead, we want somebody with five years of experience with these kinds of clients. and it just overlooks what the big picture because you have to form a cohesive team. if you skip them, then nothing else will work.
marie greene 05:43
yeah, nothing. and i think one of the struggle that i even have as a leader is also letting go of people, and they always say, you know, hire fast fire faster. but my amplatz side has a hard time with the latter. but it is true that you can i read somewhere, i can’t remember who said this. but the idea was, it may have been gary vee, actually, that if you don’t fire someone, you’re also setting the message to your team that you’re not caring so much about the culture. and this adult let someone quit. because if they quit, you’re not sending a message to your team. but if you terminate them and explain why, you know, this person showed up an hour a day, they didn’t do the work. they weren’t proactive. they weren’t communicative. like we, here’s everything we tried with them. here’s the pip, here’s what we did. and it still didn’t work by turning them first. you do tell the team, you guys are amazing. and we keep you because you’re part of our circle our value set our culture. and that also sets the tone. so i think sometimes doing the hard things is also really helpful for the culture.
liz farr 06:57
absolutely. you know, there were a number of times when the firm owners were i was kept on somebody just because they needed a warm body in that seat. but often, that person just created extra work for everybody else. yeah.
marie greene 07:21
i mean, if you over listening does not i’m sure everyone has a name in their head. because i also had that day, right? like i’m sure everybody else under the sun. and it’s tough. and i think people quit the good people leave also because you keep the bad apples. yes, that was my experience as well, like i was on the verge of quitting interviewing everywhere. because my direct supervisor was somewhat of a bully. and it was really difficult. but she actually provided so much financial value to the firm because she worked really late. she was a workaholic. she was a good worker, and good at her job, but not at the people side.
liz farr 08:04
yeah, yeah. yeah, the people side is what you really need to focus on one firm where i was had regularly has complete turnover in the tax department. over an 18 to 24-month period, everybody will leave.
marie greene 08:25
god. that’s crazy. i wonder how you can even keep your clients when that’s the case. because if the point of contact is always going, i mean, i guess it’s easy to find clients nowadays, it’s hard to find people. so you just get another client, if the people there’s turn on people actually turn that the client level, but they can replace both.
liz farr 08:46
quickly. but
marie greene 08:47
yeah, constant it’s takes for us, it takes almost seven to nine months to even start to be profitable on a client. because it takes so much time to like, onboard train the team. it does like three months, make sure everybody like knows in and out everything has the rapport with the client, that’s like another three months. and then finally, we’re kind of like in a groove. the client, you know, is comfortable with us. knows technology understands how we work has there. but if that person leaves a urine, you’re back to zero. so it’s
liz farr 09:20
right. that’s really tough. yeah, yeah, that is so hard. now until recently, the business model for accounting firms have really not changed for decades, you know, billing by the hour, and this strict pyramid radical org chart, you know, where you rise up through all these titles, but we’re beginning to see firms like yours that are taking a different route. what are some of the things that you’re seeing and doing that are working? yeah. i think
marie greene 09:59
the the way i built the firm is, here’s everything i don’t want to do that i had seen them prior. and here’s kind of like where i want to go. and to something that you and i were discussing recently, it’s not everybody wants to be a partner. and think the partners still think everybody wants to be a partner, because that’s how they felt going up the ranks. in the past, partners that admit or even large cpa firm didn’t work that much. they had for sure, like a golden parachute once they left. and they like knew, once you get to partner, you finally made it and it’s more comfortable, and you make more money. nowadays, we see partners work crazy hours, they don’t necessarily have all the luxuries that we thought used to be, you know, and you don’t even know if like, it’s like a pyramid scheme, right? if we think about it, if we think about it, like you can only make money if the person below you works on your book of business, and continues to do so after you’ve retired. so it’s, you really have to make sure the pyramid is full, the problem is the top of the pyramid is no longer enticing. so what we build connected accounting is, no one is going to make partner we’re more fitted into. from day one, when you walk in the door, you make a percentage of profit. and that either because at the end of the day, that’s what we want, you know, the reason why you right partner is to make a percentage of the profit, right? not everybody wants to sell, run a book of business. not everybody has that skill set. and a book i love is the peters syndrome, when you keep promoting somebody all the way to the toll of like, where it’s not the fit, not everybody can or wants to manage. so what we do is we say, okay, once you get to becoming a manager, we tell you, what do you want to do? do you want to be a specialist? and be amazing at sales tax? or at this tool? do you want to go on the tech side of the business? do you want to manage clients and a book of business? and others? do you want to specialize in training and onboarding new hires? do you want to specialize in projects and cleanup, and still have a team below you. so we can like, try to help people realize that it’s not always going up this way. and even if you do a lateral like move to a specialty or to a different skill set, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to continue a career path and a career growth and make more money and all that kind of stuff. so i think it’s being more open minded to business models, we work closer to what a corporate company looks like than actually a firm. i’m also fascinated by the new trend where a lot of firms, even the large ones are splitting the consulting portion of their business, and audit. because when you’re an auditor, for those who don’t follow all the aicpa and all the rules like when you’re an auditor, you have to follow so many roles. and the way your practice is set up can only be a certain way, all the partners have to be a cpa. at connected accounting, i’m the only cpa and we have a couple of people and route to becoming cpas. but it’s not mandatory, not anymore. so in a lot of firms are realizing that that you can have a more flexible business model if you are a consulting firm not. so with that we’re seeing equity investments in large firms, which is still so new, like the accounting firms are starting to be treated like tech startups where hey, we’re going to invest money for a high return on investment. i don’t know how that’s going to work. i don’t know what the long term repercussions of that is going to be on our industry. but i think it’s interesting to just keep an eye on. and that’s the way partners are going to be able to like retire to the on the road. yeah, you get the equity of the business, right. i mean, i imagine where you worked. it must have been the old format, right?
liz farr 14:12
absolutely. yeah. yeah. and because i wasn’t interested in the partner track, they didn’t really know what to do with me. so they just kind of parked me as supervisor for way too many years without saying, well, you know, you can, we can create a new role for you. you can do marketing, and you can do this or you can do that they didn’t really understand how they could use me beyond just churning out tax returns.
marie greene 14:50
yeah, and that’s because then you have amazing people in seats and you’re not leveraging them. right. that’s really like people aren’t really missing the mark and two things i’ve noticed. one is my old firm that did it well, where like one woman, for example, she was like, i don’t want to kill myself at work every day. so they said, okay, you can take every monday morning off. and you can leave early on fridays with the rest of your life if you want. and you’re like, okay, great. i tested it for a little bit. and then she’s like, okay, i’m ready to be back. but i don’t want to be doing what i was doing. so now she’s like, the director of operations, which didn’t have and it’s such an important role. oh, yeah, workload, team, like setup. i thought that was really cool that they were open to that. and we have like, one of my, my first like, hire that i’ve still had, like, my first two hires were like bookkeepers, like my first high level hire, she’s going to be our cfo this fall. and then i have a ceo as well. so it’s kind of like, i can’t live without those two people. and the problem is, people don’t hire those roles until they’re 50 to 60 viewpoint, a firm and i think, in my experience, that’s too late. i think having that earlier on you, you attract and retain talent better, and it creates that more innovative way of doing business. i also think that the reason why a lot of firms are not always opened to investing, thinking about, okay, how do we make liz, a director of marketing or if people are something else, it’s because they’re close to retirement, they don’t want to shake the tree, they don’t want to invest huge dollars and amounts of money in consulting, to do organizational development. they don’t want to invest in tech. why would that they’re four years, five years from retirement. it’s not in their benefit to lower their profit at this moment. which is that because i think that’s going to be hard to change.
liz farr 16:54
yeah, yeah, it’s gonna be really, really tough to change. but it is changing. yeah, the new generation is not doing that they are not. they are not sitting at firms that are in the old way.
marie greene 17:14
yeah. and from the tech standpoint, to one of my battles at my old firm was constantly, you have to move fast. and testing, adopting, implementing tech, you have to constantly be thinking about that, when you are a part of a structure that’s, i can’t even imagine if you’re part of like a national structure, let’s say you’re part of a national structure. and all the sudden you want to implement a new app, the amount of red tape, i’m sure you have to go through to get to the it department, get it approved that and by then it’s almost obsolete already. like you can’t implement a tool like a year later. because by then there’s another one. so it’s kind of the idea of, yeah, being able to be flexible and move fast and be adaptable, smallest structures or thing are going to be leaders in that but we are seeing like bdo and the big guys to also starting to implement some of it.
liz farr 18:16
yeah, yeah. i think the tech revolution is what is really going to liberate people from doing the rote ticking and tying data and trade the stuff, they really don’t need an accounting degree to do that.
marie green 18:35
now, and actually going back to your first question, like one of the amazing rco came in. she used to manage emergency rooms at hospitals. so she managed three of them in texas, so she was like, okay, i was like if you can manage three ers from a process standpoint of people standpoint, a logistical center, you can manage an accounting firm, you know, less than 20 people. but it was also awesome is in her background. she had been a bookkeeper for five or six years way back. and we didn’t hire her to be a bookkeeper or an accountant. we hired her to do operations, but her double knowledge has made it amazing. and thinking out of the box for the profiles of your people is key and we hired so she had a healthcare background. another person who is also an operations has, she used to be a teacher, and during covid switch careers, so now she’s with us. we hired ryan out of college people like it’s just like you can there’s always a way if the person is super motivated, they’re smart. and i said people smart nic skills smart. they’re apt at learning something quickly. their brain is oregon. unlike problem solution, let’s do it. you know, they have tenacity to wrap up tests. we really believe that you can teach them, and they can become part of our company, even though they don’t have, like you said, the exact oh, you need five years of experience, and you need this. so yeah, people need to be a little bit more open minded because the talent is too short.
liz farr 20:26
yeah, yeah. what i’ve heard from other people is to hire for attitude, because the skills can be trained. yeah, 100. yeah. now, what about growth, to firms even really need to grow?
marie greene 20:48
not necessarily. ithink the one thing is we all lose clients every year. so you have an attrition of clients. so you kind of still have to, like, grow enough to stay stable. otherwise, you’re after your us clients, and then your business just goes away? i think the first question that an owner should answer is, why why are you doing what you’re doing? what’s your goal, like, my goal is lifestyle. i want to be able to live off of having a business, i want to be able to work remotely, my family lives in france, i want to be able to go back and visit them a month at a time and work remote. i want to grow people and their careers and partner with them. i don’t want to build a 200 people firm. so now that i know that, what does that look like? and for me, it looks like a firm that’s probably going to be around like 4050 employees down the road. and i said that now my life might change my goals might change that as of today. and i and some and i’ve heard of other people saying, no, we want to build this to be huge, like a $20 million business that we want to flip and sell in five years. so based on like, and do you even like training other people? and you know, dealing with that? that’s a big no. so entrepreneurship is also wonderful. so i think it’s really figuring out, even if you’re a solo entrepreneur, do you want one client? or do you want 50 clients? do you want like, what kind of clients do you like? do you want the ones that you’re super hands on and you talk to you all the time, and you want the ones that don’t ask you anything, they just want to pay $300 a month for bookkeeping. so understanding your personality, understanding your goals, then it doesn’t matter, like you will find and you will have the firm that you want. and that doesn’t necessarily need to be a lot of growth.
liz farr 22:45
right? now, now, what strategies have you found successful in finding new clients to replace the ones that you lose?
marie greene 22:56
do a good job we get so far we get all of our clientele through our network or existing clients. and the reason why we have not had to mark it is our core value, our number one value above everything else is reliable, reliable, reliable. that is our number one, it said three times ebit. but not that many people like it’s it’s unbelievable how often we sign on a new client simply because their former accountant or bookkeeper doesn’t respond to email reports all the data extremely late, sometimes month behind. it’s hard to get a hold of for important questions. and just once no interaction with you. and so this, we have a ticketing system, every email that comes in is managed through a ticketing system similar to assess or like a tech company, or customer service department. it’s we tagged the people on the team, we have 24 hours or 48 hours to respond depending on the client. and we make sure every email is answered timely. it’s simple. it’s such a simple solution, but it helps us maintain a great relationship with our clients. i’m also very type a so i’m want to give our clients the experience i would want to receive i hate chasing nonviable so i think it’s also my personality, that that i think is key and in being communicative. communicate clearly. don’t send giant paragraphs, use bullet points. don’t use jargon. you know, a lot of clients don’t know what ar or ap is. so we don’t use that during our sales process even so it’s really like make it digestible quickly in the format of the client like is the best? and yeah, i mean, i think that, in and of itself is, and you know, be somewhat good at a couple of tech skills like even if you’re not great just learn quickbooks online? or if all you do is quickbooks desktop, be great at quickbooks desktop and just notify other people. that’s where you do because we have clients. because we don’t have that.
liz farr 25:24
that’s correct. that’s right. yeah. and i’m intrigued that you’re influenced by fast systems in you’re using, you’re using what works for them, and applying it to accounting, i think that is really fascinating.
marie greene 25:42
i really think that what makes an accounting firm valuable, even if whether you want to sell it or not, though, like we, we have in our mind that it is about standardizing your processes, and leveraging technology up to a point. and i say that because if all we do is be a tech company that does everything on auto, that’s what bench or pilot can offer you for cheaper, right? again, we’re still really in the people business. but a lot of the mistakes can be avoided, if you have the right thing. a lot of emails can be avoided, if you track them. it’s like all those little things. yeah, we do use like, a lot of so we use the desk ticketing system, we use, every single task is tracked into a tracking system. it has a budget attached to it, it’s recurring, it has the manager for the right step. so everything is laid out. and for each step, we then have tutorials or training documentation that if any, or anyone were to pick up this step tomorrow, they would know how to do it. and it’s really important. and we had this happen with our employee who is a farmer, because on her first year i connected accounting. the, the far the harvesting time was i think, earlier than expected. and she had to step away. and it was very difficult, she still had to be involved a lot in the evening, because we didn’t always have the step by step how to take over the test she managed. so since then, you know, a lot of videos and, and screenshots and everything were added to our practice management tool. but and that allows people to step away to take vacations to harvest grains, and nebraska if you need to. so it is it is like important to still leverage automation and tools that tech companies use. and for them, it’s more like project development. but it’s the same idea. like who is in charge? what’s the task? how do you deliverable due date?
liz farr 28:00
that’s, that is fascinating. i love your approach. yeah, that’s, that’s wonderful. now, what skills do accountants need to be successful today? and in the future? you know, it used to be you need to keep the irs code in your head. yeah. or you had to be really good with the 10 key. yeah. what is it now?
marie greene 28:24
i think your question are in minds news story, or, in 2013, i went into a client’s office for the first time and ended up helping them convert to the not even the cloud desktop. they used to do the books on carbon paper. really, carbon paper books, the bookkeeper was e6. and he would take her three days to run the payroll for 15 employees because she would calculate every single tax every single withholding manually, rihanna write it and wear it next to the checks tab. and it was it was archeological findings. i was like thankies modern. yeah, it was it was actually an experience. i’m kind of glad i got to see this. you know, i think the next generation of kids will be like, what’s a disk, you know, paper binder. so i think tomorrow, it’s going to be i think it’s back to attitude. i think it’s going to be two things. it’s going to be communication, and that’s mandatory, because that’s the only thing we can sell. nowadays, we’re consultants, we’re no longer doers. like you said, technology and tools can help you no pension like the expense in quickbooks. but it’s for us to understand it’s tough because the new generation coming out of universities and schools is trained how to do accounting on paper. but they’re not trained to translate that language and that knowledge into wait a second, if in bill.com, there’s a sinker, what does that mean that the bill come from quickbooks and then get pushed was it pushed this way? they understand debits and credits, but they have no idea how to do accounting, right? and right, or at least troubleshoot. and that’s where we need now, we need people who can troubleshoot tech, because the tech works. but what’s harder to understand is when it doesn’t, why is it not working? and can you even identify, it’s not working. so you can’t have just tech people because they don’t understand the accounting, the new accountants don’t have experience and knowledge to understand they can understand the tech but it can’t translate. so it’s been interesting to have to sit down with younger staff and be like, this is how, like, i have had, like, people not understand what the bank feed is in quickbooks. and i was like, think about it as like, your, this is like your t account, cash. and even that them is still an emic. think about that everything on the cash t account is already coded, you just have to figure out what’s the other side of your entry is a debit to an expense or a credit to liability. but that is even hard for them to conceptualize. so there is a huge need. and it’s something once i have a little bit more time that i want to do. and i have you know, dan luthy, and stephen and like other people like are now teaching. i mean, the two of them teach at brown. josh lands teaches at northwestern like people are starting to go into universities and take the universities from the 19th century to the 21st. and so because we never, we didn’t even went through the 20th. like when i was in school, we didn’t learn quickbooks desktop. and we still learn paper. so it is like a huge leap and a huge jump. i really want to do that i want to go into universities and be like, here’s what it takes to be an accountant to things. are you an introvert or an extrovert? do you like talking to people? or do you not already knowing that? should you go out in public or should go to private accounting? what is the difference between the two? so there’s so much knowledge to be shared with? young’s, you know, adults, that’s one like of the of the things you are going to need in the future. and then the other part is completely like, you can’t be stuck in the past or your are going to like constantly be in fear of what the future is. so right now, people are still refusing to go on quickbooks online. okay? it’s gonna be a rough one, when quickbooks online is obsolete, and then you have to take such a giant job to get to the next thing, like maybe in the future, all banks will have accounting, ledger’s. and transactions going to be coded and we don’t need quickbooks anymore. right? i don’t think we’re anywhere near that. but because then quickbooks is acquiring so many external tools that you still need that. but there yeah, there’s like a big like, open mindedness that some founders don’t yet have. and i think that’s important. and for the new generation, it’s be willing to intern be willing to like, try to get certified on quickbooks online by yourself, take any kind of like business and try running it through quickbooks as a trial, talk to your parents, what do they do ask them for? fake transactions? so it’s all of those things where in the future, you’re going to have to be a problem solver. a people person if you stay in public accounting? a like i think everything we’re saying is like, if you’re in the firm, or like, if you’re in house, very different, right? you’re on sap and oracle, and you don’t have to deal with all
liz farr 33:54
very, yeah, it’s a different world. yeah. very different world. yeah.
marie greene 33:59
but yeah, i love this topic. i can talk about this for hours.
liz farr 34:03
yeah, you know, i, i got my accounting degree in the early 2000s. and it was all just paper. so it was kind of mind blowing to me when i did an internship at a firm and oh, you enter the trial balance, and then you group it, and then you import it into the tax return. i was like, wow, this is really cool. but still back then we were typing the trial balance in. and then by a fluke, i ended up at that firm again, 10 years later. and they had forgotten all of the automations the few automation that i knew. wow, so crazy. yeah, so they were typing in the trial balance and then grouping it and then by retyping the numbers into the tax return. oh my god. yeah.
marie greene 35:06
wow, that’s so they went backwards.
liz farr 35:09
they went backwards because they had such turnover that nobody really knew how to use the technology anymore.
marie greene 35:18
that’s huge. and i think with that, like, the need for tutorials, and don’t type them in a google sheet, nobody’s ever going to read that. nobody’s ever going to read the word doc that somebody six years ago, and it’s not going to get updated. but there are tools out there to make the way we share knowledge so much easier nowadays, like we have a new journal wiki pedia. and every single like card expires every three months, six months or a year, you have to make sure they’re up to date. like there’s just so much. yeah, tools out there. it’s yeah, love this. actually, you know, chad from last year, it was an inspiration. and he was one of the one who when i, it took me a long time to say i’m starting my own firm. a lot of people were like, merge, merge, do it, do it. but i remember going to chat and being like, okay, um, what do i need to do, and his biggest tip was, yes, hire fast fire faster. and then he has like so many videos online. so i started watching everybody else’s videos, like some of his videos were about, here are all the really cool like tools that even sas company use for hiring and onboarding employees. just having a system down, that it’s pretty imperative. otherwise, during tax season, no one is going to interview the people because they’re swamped, and they’re busy. and you can offer like, if the first interview is week one, and you give the offer week three, because it took forever, that person’s gone. they’ve already had accepted a job somewhere else. so yeah, i do like think that those firms that can’t keep up with the tech don’t have tutorials don’t have ways to share knowledge from one generation to the next one of employees. they can’t survive. it’s they’re going to expensive too, because it’s always someone new with a new way to do it.
liz farr 37:19
yeah, yeah. they’re forever reinventing the wheel.
marie greene 37:23
yeah. and the wheel was invented millions of years ago. so guys, it’s already the wheel is there. just use it?
liz farr 37:29
yeah. yeah. just just teach somebody. yeah. yeah.
marie greene 37:33
and most of the software’s, they have content nowadays, they can teach you. you don’t necessarily need to build your own, like, ask the app just be like, hey, i know. most companies are like, on engagement, or like a few, especially on the tech side, like, they have tutorials. yeah, just finding them and just being making a checklist of them. but hey, we’re not gonna feel bad. they’re not doing it’s gonna make us do great. because
liz farr 38:04
that’s right. that’s right. you know, do you do a great job and let the other people do that? they can do a terrible job.
marie greene 38:14
we harvest those clients.
liz farr 38:17
oh, perfect. now, what do you think accountants should stop doing immediately?
marie greene 38:31
i think two things. i think don’t fight so much. the change. it’s so easy to be negative or if your role. just be open minded. don’t shut it down right away. even if you don’t end up adopting it. start to get familiar with the words and with the tech language, and stop doing hourly billing?
liz farr 38:57
oh, yes. oh, yes.
marie greene 38:59
because they will inflate their hours. clients don’t like it. it’s always a surprise in the mail how much it’s gonna cost. it’s, it requires so much admin work on the back end, like inputting your email or is doing timesheets. don’t get me wrong, like we still track hours internally, just to know, hey, we kind of estimated this kind to take 10 hours. and it turned out it was 26. why? you know, but we’re not going to the digit and trying to figure out the issues. and so i think it’s, is let go of that and start doing value billing and understand better what your clients need, and then sell that to say, hey, you have three states, it’s 200 hours per state. so it’s gonna be 600. like, figure out what works for you even if you need to keep it in smaller chunks. but hourly billing is just leads to unhappiness at the staff level, the client level, only the partner is happy. either time, it’s really that for mental health problems, then distress so about being in budget and then the either time.
liz farr 40:02
yeah, yeah. or even if they are honest with their time, then the partner will write it up. i write it down, depending on what they feel the value right to the client. really is.
marie greene 40:19
that is such a good point. that is true. and that affects your end bonuses, because then you’re not profitable. and that your realization rate is not as good. yeah, that’s toxic. i find it toxic.
liz farr 40:32
oh, i do too. i do too. i, i hated tracking my time.
marie greene 40:38
we’re still, we’re still make our team do it. like, yeah, but not for the same reason is to it’s for us the end when we explained that to them. i think it was easier to digest. but it’s, we need to know what we need to train you on. and if a client’s your time, i need to call them. and i need to step into not working. hold on, like something’s off. like, you can’t send us 75 emails a week. i won’t know that until i know how much time. i mean, actually, the number emails and you know, we do track that. but i want to know, you know, the the issues that the team is having if i can’t measure it. so, yeah, that’s a big one. yeah, yeah. all right.
liz farr 41:19
i agree. yeah.
marie greene 41:21
and talk about changing open-mindedness, i’m totally open to not doing it anymore. like, we actually stopped doing it for a little while. and then we brought it back, because it helps the staff level employees better. so it is about like, that’s what we do for now. and i totally hear other people’s like, point of views, we’re completely anti timesheet, every firm is going to have to find their own balance in the midst of all of this, but we, you know, we’re, we’re open to doing it differently.
liz farr 41:53
yeah. well, i’ve talked to a number of people who use timesheets just for internal productivity and for measuring efficiency and making sure that they’re staying within the scope of the engagement. and for that, i think it’s, it’s perfectly valid.
marie greene 42:17
yeah, that’s what we do. yeah, no,
liz farr 42:19
i think that’s, that’s not a bad way to do it.
marie greene 42:23
yeah, it’s a good middle ground. i mean, it’s annoying for employees to still do it. but now that we can automate it with our system, where when you check the task off, it asks you how much time it didn’t take, and then you’re done. like you’re not separately creating your data entry of your time.
liz farr 42:38
okay. it’s good that it’s integrated.
marie greene 42:41
yeah. and we don’t try to track things in point 15 minute increments or whatever. like, if it’s, if it’s two minutes and 30 seconds. good. i don’t care. like we just want the overall, i don’t know the detail like that was.
liz farr 43:00
you know, a lot of accountants know that they have to change, but they don’t. what do you think is keeping accountants from changing?
marie greene 43:12
i think it goes back to attitude and mindset. but i also because, you know, we have choices on how we spend time, i went through a phase in q1 of this year where i was working like, 14 hour days, really, i was exhausted. it was really bad. we were onboarding giant clients, i misjudged the scope, i took it on me to do it because my team was overloaded. so i know, i know how those times feel. but then we start taking on clients for three months, it’s a hard decision to make, because that means less profit, less money. but it means better, it means like, we have time to do a better job on our existing clients, we have to and so sometimes, you have to be willing to let go of the money for a stronger foundation for better systems in place to learn and take the time to delegate and train your team. so that was, i think, one of the reasons. and the second one, or the thing that can really help. accountants start to implement change or be willing or open is, yeah, be aware that we choose how we spend our time. we’re not victim of like our clients, like no choice. less money, but more time can be extremely valuable in the long run. and find your people, like have a group of peers in the industry, other founders. it’s lonely to run a business and having your peeps and ibc that like different like events, you see them at conferences, maybe you have a recurring hour, two hour call every month where you can bring up your issues and learn from one another and share aaron, again, there’s so much business out there. i share everything i do with people. i’m like, oh, hey, like, one of my friends call me the other day. he’s like, can i just go with you into your practice management system and see how you set it up? and we’re thinking about, i’m like, yes, do it. 30 minute call, zoom, boom, this is everything we do secret sauce. and because there’s so much business out there, we’re not worried about competition, we see it more as collaboration, and we learned so much from one another, and we are better. and i think that the tricky part, being friends and, and having all my peers be cloud accountants, you know, like chad, jason, everybody else, i start to think, oh, my god, i’m so far behind. and don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle. because i remember being like, how do i become like chad? like, you know, they want and he’s done that for 10 years. and he has 100 employees, right? very different level. so i think like, when somebody told me that i was like, oh, that i can’t remember who said this, but it was great. and then the other one is, we are the 3%. you know, we’re the 5%. i don’t know the number is a random number i throw out there. but because i’m surrounded by people who have cloud firms and know all the apps and no code and all that kind of i always think like, oh my god, like there’s so much more to do and build and grow. but when you look around, firstly, the us is still on paper. and i thought and we use scribe, like reinventing the wheel every two years. so already just implementing one tool, thinking about one process to improve that already makes you part of the 25% top, you know, or whatever the numbers are. and that was like, i think a moment where i like, okay, my perfection itself and my like, i need to keep going. and i was like, no, we’re good, like, keep one step at a time. but we’re already like in the top firms that run our firms on the cloud. so yeah.
liz farr 47:08
yeah, well, congratulations to you for for being innovative. now, client accounting services is a big thing right now. what do you think will be the next big thing and accounting? or will this be an enduring big thing?
marie green 47:29
i think it’s going to evolve. i don’t think it’s gonna go away. i think when pilot and benji and quickbooks bookkeeping came on, we all thought we’re going away. and you know what, we’re not come back to us after trying violet winter for about a few now. so it’s, there’s going to be new tools, new apps, new whatever, that’s going to help us streamline a process. at the end of the day, though, businesses are run by people and people need people to for advice for emotional support for brainstorming, all those kinds of things. being from france, i actually get to see also a lot of like, what european firms are doing. and i was back in rent a month ago, talking to my dad who actually knows other founders of cloud accounting firms. and he was saying that, in europe, there’s a new regulation that mandates all businesses to calculate their exact carbon footprint of the product, wow. and of their firm. it’s mandatory. and if you get above a certain threshold, you have to pay or you get credits, right. and the idea is that, like, my dad is a manufacturer and so he manufactures products in korea. and all of a sudden, they learn that like the aluminum they use from china has a really high carbon footprint. but if you use the same aluminum from canada, it’s very different. so switching vendor, etc, you just have to figure out the cost. well, local accounting firms acquired carbon audit companies, because now they know every client needs it. so they’re able to like, hey, we’re acquiring you, so we can serve our clients better with this new skill set. and i think that as regulations change in our world, as the tax i mean, we don’t do any tax work. we only do accounting, bookkeeping, etc. cfo level, as things change, being mindset, attitude, being open thinking out of the box, acquiring from that as a service super valuable to your clients, etc, is part of what cass is going to be i think it’s going to be we no longer have a lot of like doers, but we have a lot of different services we can offer. without going too wide. i think we made the mistake early on to offer sales tax and like trying to use the tools to do nexus well, you know what, we’re too small the moment like our person, we had one employee who left because he got his dream job at a brewery. and when he left, we lost that champion, who knew all the tech and the systems and his huge learning curve when we’re done or outsourcing sales tax to experts who only do that. so i think figuring out like, what are the pieces of your puzzle? we did not acquire that firm, we just sent it out to two different firms, the business, but it is like being willing to evolve from a shore cast standpoint, i think the tech, the deck is going to continue to be yeah, i just if we think about this, the fact that like, i can run an entire business on my phone is unbelievable. like when i wasn’t cool. cloud accounting didn’t exist. i can’t imagine where we’re going to be in 10 years. like, i don’t know. it’s just we just have to be willing to continue to learn. and it was cast will be a different name.
liz farr 51:11
that’s, that’s right. that’s right. i think it’s, it’s really fascinating that you have a european connection, because we americans tend to think that we’re the center of the universe, and we are everything. but early on, when i started writing, i wrote a lot of web copy for firms in canada and australia, new zealand. and i learned about all these cool things that they were doing, they’re using all these interconnected apps and doing these all this great stuff for their clients to make their clients more profitable. and to make the bookkeeping more real time so that their clients could really see what was going on in their businesses. and they were using automation. and they were using the extra time that they had to use ins share insights and ideas. so i think that’s phenomenal. and i hope that you continue to share what you learn from overseas, people in the in the us because we were so insular here.
marie greene 52:23
100%. and everything we do, australia did it first 10 years ago. so i did keep my eyes. i mean, actually, i’m not going to forget zero for kiwis in new zealand, is now the most used software in australia. and they were they’re like so far ahead of the curve. i do think that keeping an eye on what others do is so important. and yes, you have to go out of your bubble. if you go to the us like, i can’t wait, when did you meet someone from japan and be like, how do you guys do this? i mean, like, there’s just so much so many ideas. so yeah, i, i am grateful that i get to hear a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit about what others do. and you know what you’re reminding me, i should find a newsletter from one of those french companies and see what they do. and read about it.
liz farr 53:12
yeah, i’m gonna write yeah. yeah, that would be fascinating. you know, i think i know enough german that i could maybe do that germany. my french is you know about how much i can handle for you and me? okay, perfect, perfect. now, this is this has been such a wonderful conversation. do you have any other insights that you want to share with the listeners of this podcast?
marie greene 53:51
i think one insight or lesson i learned is, don’t try to figure out the tools. ask around. somebody else has tested them first. so listen to podcasts, listen to like, ask, don’t hesitate to ask, you’re on like, send three emails, you’d be surprised who responds, go to zero con, go to quickbooks connect, go to the conferences and meet others and just say, hey, what do you guys do about like this issue, and people have tried it before you and they’ll tell you which ones work and which ones don’t? and why. so there’s also a huge resource for us. and this is why i love conferences.
liz farr 54:27
i do too. yeah. i’m so glad that i got to meet you at zero con. yeah.
marie green 54:34
and yeah, and that was all yes.
liz farr 54:36
yeah. now i’m gonna thank you, marie for taking the time to talk to me. now if listeners want to connect with you, what’s the best place to find you?
marie green 54:49
yeah, well, first, thank you for having me on your podcast. it was a pleasure. and they can email me directly murray at connected accounting.co that’s yo there’s no m at the end, they can go on linkedin at marie greene, or on twitter connected accounting if you research it on like so many different platforms, so yeah, don’t hesitate. my team always sends me the different messages if i miss one. but yeah, it’s i love talking about what we do our business, our enterprise, like our industry, our world. so i’m always here if you have a question.
liz farr 55:25
thank you so much. and it has been just super talking to you marie.