work-life balance means integrating work and life so that the work we choose to do expresses who we want to be in the world.
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the disruptors
with liz farr
ingrid edstrom wants accounting to be not just a more sustainable profession but one that’s regenerative. “this idea of sustainability is really operating from the idea that things can continue to perpetuate as they are,” she explains. a firm may be financially sustainable, “but at what cost to our families, to our personal health?”
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the regenerative approach recognizes “that we’ve already passed a threshold of harm that needs to be healed,” edstrom says. “regenerative accounting is starting to reframe those ideas around ‘what does it look like to go about business in a different way that is truly life-supporting for all peoples and our planet, rather than being extractive of our planet and exploitative of our peoples?'”
making this change means that we, as accountants, need to “allow that vision to pull us forward,” she explains. by making different choices, “we don’t have to put up with being in the unhealthy discomfort that leads to harm,” edstrom says. making different choices means stepping out of the “linear thought patterns that keep us doing the same things the same ways because that’s what we’ve trained ourselves to feel safe.” instead of hanging on to the old ways of doing, edstrom says, “we can measure our growth by the people, the habits, the past us, that we’re saying goodbye to.”
to support accountants who want to “turn the accounting profession into a vehicle for positive change in our world,” she and matthew heggem co-founded the accounting alchemy network. this grassroots movement recognizes that we are “the stewards of the narrative of money and finance in our world” and encourages us “to be the change we want to see in the world” by finding ways to work with clients holistically to support them in achieving their life goals in congruence with their values. the accounting alchemy network also encourages accountants to lean into the discomfort of having conversations about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as a way to learn and grow. normalizing healthy conversations about the challenging topics of race, sexual identity, and religion can help us all “feel inclusion and belonging in all worlds.”
edstrom encourages accountants to apply their talents more broadly. “i feel like accountants can account for a lot more than money,” she says. she says money, finance, and economics are not “as real as the relationships that we have with our families and the connections that we have with our teams, our coworkers, and our clients.” instead of just focusing on money, edstrom encourages others to focus more on personal values and to “be accountable for how our daily choices, whether those choices be financial or other choices, are impacting ourselves in the world around us.”
11 key takeaways
- true leadership is not about changing someone else’s behavior. leadership is confronting others with their freedom.
- true power is empowering each other to do amazing things and create the outcomes we want. we are more likely to succeed together than we are alone.
- many cpas allow their credentials to become part of their identity. yet that credential can become an entrenching relationship, but it does not need to define who you are. it is not all of you.
- working as an accountant causes discomfort that can lead to harm: sitting too much, carpal tunnel syndrome, and eye strain. we tend to wear these harms as a badge of honor to demonstrate our resilience, but that’s not effective resilience.
- effective resilience means learning to withstand things that aren’t within our control and not putting ourselves through hard things just to prove that we can. it also means leaning into uncomfortable conversations and growing from the experience.
- as jim rohn said, if we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with, are we investing our time with the people we aspire to emulate?
- maslow’s hierarchy of needs was appropriated from the blackfoot people, who had the hierarchy flipped. instead of self-actualization being the pinnacle of achievement, this was the foundation.
- if we can begin with a foundation of purpose, we can create interdependent, healthy relationships that enable us to meet all our needs.
- we create change by asking ourselves questions: what if we don’t have to do it that way? did someone teach us that because it was in their best interest for us to believe that? what if it doesn’t have to be that way? what would different look like?
- to create a better firm, leaders should ask themselves, “what do i want? do i enjoy the way this is going right now? would i like things to be different? what would different look like?”
- work-life harmony means integrating our work and life so that the work we have chosen to do expresses who we want to be in the world.
more about ingridedstrom
ingrid edstrom is the chief empowerment officer at the award-winning consulting firm, priestess of profits, llc. she is a woodard certified business coach, a certified positive intelligence mental fitness coach, a certified working genius consultant, and a certified offers and needs market facilitator. she has been recognized as one of the accounting profession’s top 40 under 40, most powerful women in accounting, a top 100 proadvisor, and the 2017 top “up-n-comer” proadvisor. edstrom leads the empower your passion mastermind group for accountants through the roundtablelabs community and co-founded the accounting alchemy network. when ingrid is not teaching & consulting, she is usually playing irish music or frolicking with her goats.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr
welcome to accounting disruptor conversations. i’m your host, liz farr from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. in this little series, i’m talking to owners of firms who are doing things a little bit differently than our parents’ and grandparents’ accountants. my guest today is ingrid edstrom, founder and chief empowerment officer of priestess of profits and cofounder of the accounting lchemy network. welcome, ingrid. how are you?
ingrid edstrom
doing? great. thanks so much for having me, liz. it’s great to be here.
liz farr
thank you so much. now, can you tell listeners just a little bit about your firm, where you’re located, what services you offer and what kind of clients things like that? sure,
ingrid edstrom
i am located first off in the unseeded ancestral lands of the shasta and tacoma peoples in southern oregon, just outside of ashland. and my firm priestess of profits is currently a one woman show, i used to have a bookkeeping firm with employees and those sorts of things, but then really kind of changed things up and realized that i wanted to do a lot more of the coaching and advisory services and transition from doing the backend bookkeeping work, to really focusing on first business strategy and financial workflow design. and i still do that a little bit niching primarily in tours and activities, companies. but over the last several years now my main focus has really been on drilling and deep in coaching with accounting professionals. and that looks like private coaching. and also i lead a group within the roundtable labs community called empower your passion, where we delve into some of the, the deeper limiting beliefs and impostor syndrome and recognizing that our, our business problems or our personal problems in disguise, so what does it look like to really unpack those things and recognize that we are humans, and need to be able to recognize that human experiences often discounted in a profession like accounting? and how do we go about creating a more holistic experience for ourselves, for each other for our teams and our clients and start breaking apart some of the tropes and limiting beliefs that are getting in our way and creating unhealthy, unsustainable and even inhumane working environments for ourselves and for others. so that’s where my focus really is now. and that’s one of the reasons why i call it priestess of profits recognizing first prophets, that there’s more than one way to benefit in business, that it’s not just all about the financial bottom line, that there’s a lot of different kinds of capital and things that can be gained through the work that we’re doing, such as social capital, or general fulfillment in our lives, and that some of those things may be even worth more than money to us. and that the work that we do is a spiritual experience, that these choices that we make in our lives have great meaning to us, and impact how we choose to show up in our lives. and i love doing that work with people where we’re encouraging ourselves and each other to show up in our highest selves doing the work that we choose to do to be the change we want to see in the world.
liz farr
oh, and i love that you in that with that quote from gandhi. and, you know, people like you really give me hope for the future of the profession. and when i left public accounting years ago, i was ready to just turn my back completely on the world of accounting because it had treated me so badly. but here i am finding wonderful people like you, who are doing great things and helping accountants become more than just the tabulators of numbers.
ingrid edstrom
yes, we are definitely a lot more than the tabulators of numbers it comes down to. if we think about the language that we use accounting, how do we hold ourselves accountable for the things that really have value to us in our lives? and when we really take a close look at the way that our world is operating, when it comes right down to it, money, finance, economics, those are all stories that someone made up. and we’ve built our society upon those stories. our culture is built upon those stories, but none of that is actually real, real. feel like yes, it’s real isn’t it impacts our lives. but at the same time, it’s not as real as the relationships that we have with our families, and the connections that we have with our teams, our co workers, our clients, how do we really start focusing on our values, and be accountable for how our daily choices whether those choices be financial or other choices are impacting ourselves in the world around us? and i feel like accountants can account for a lot more than money.
liz farr
exactly. now, ingrid, you’re also co founder with matthew heggem, of the accounting alchemy network. can you tell listeners about this organization, which i only recently found out about, which is just astounding, that i didn’t know about it before?
ingrid edstrom
well, we’re so glad that you found us lis and really, really happy that you’re interested in spreading the word on your beautiful podcast, because, yeah, more people need to be learning about this at this point. and we’ve been keeping it a little bit quiet over the last couple of years, mostly because we wanted to really establish the culture and the healthy habits of how we wanted to go about things within that community, before opening it up to a really, really wide audience, to ensure that we didn’t have essentially naysayers coming in and just breaking it down from the get go before it even had a chance to start. but now that we’ve been doing this work for a couple of years, and we have a clear playbook on how to get involved, and what that looks like and communications framework that supports how we want to treat each other, we’re ready to have more people dive in and get involved. and the accounting alchemy network is a grassroots movement, working to turn the accounting profession into a vehicle for positive change in our world, recognizing that accounting professionals are essentially the stewards of the narrative of money and finance in our world. how do we step into that role in a healthier, more holistic way? that leverages our ability to be the change that we want to see in the world? how do we work with our clients in a more holistic capacity to support not just their financial goals, but their overarching life goals and recognizing what their personal values are? and how they’re exercising those values through their business? how do we encourage ourselves and our clients to stop sacrificing our deeply held values and beliefs on the altar of profit? because that is what our dominant paradigm that we’re currently swimming in has taught us we have to do in order to survive. we now have a group of accounting professionals having these conversations asking these questions on a regular basis. and we would love to invite more voices and minds to join these conversations, and really look at what could this look like to turn the accounting profession into a vehicle for positive change in our world?
liz farr
no positive change. and one of the things that you mentioned briefly that has that the accounting alchemy network is produced is the playbook. and the playbook talks a lot about regenerative accounting. what does that mean? you know, is it are we composting the numbers? or what?
ingrid edstrom
that’s a really good question. as much as i do love compost, i live on a farm. composting the numbers, that’s such a creative idea. um, there’s a lot of discussion around sustainability, even our conferences, how to have sustainability in our businesses. and people use sustainability in different ways. not totally defining the term and even when matthew was speaking at quickbooks connect, he led a panel discussion of accounting alchemy members at quickbooks connect in 2022. and in that discussion, it had, i think, sustainable in the session title. and some people were coming to talk about more global sustainability, environmental sustainability, issues and how our business choices impact those things. but then there were also people in the room who thought they were coming to a session to discuss right but how do i make my business sustainable as in and putting all this time, energy and effort in and out not making enough money for the business to be sustained. this idea of sustainability is really operating from this idea that things can continue and perpetuate as they are now. whereas regenerative is recognizing that we’ve already passed a threshold of harm that needs to be healed, and that there’s things that need to be done to regenerate those resources. and we might have a business that is sustainable financially, but at what cost to our families, to our personal health? is that actually sustainable? what does it look like to have a more regenerative business model that is holistic that takes into account all of the different areas of our lives to ensure that we’re not sacrificing one thing, one value, to be able to survive in the way that our current paradigm is telling us that we need to be going about things. regenerative accounting is starting to reframe those ideas around what does it look like to go about business in a different way that is truly life supporting for all peoples and our planet, rather than being extractive of our planet and exploitative of our peoples. we want to create systems narratives and accounting processes that are regenerative. and we believe that we can, by simply having these conversations, asking the right questions, developing the opportunities to have those aha moments, where people can then go on the creative pursuit of creating the systems and processes of what that might look like. and we’re already coming up with some really, really fun things.
liz farr
i love it, you know it. my experience in public accounting certainly demonstrates that we were past the threshold of harm. i remember having a conversation with one of my cpa lawyer friends. and she asked how i was doing and i went through the litany of bodily pains. i had my ulcer in my back and elbow tendinitis and arthritis in my fingers. and she looked at me and said, liz, your job is killing you. you need to quit. yeah. and you know, and that was just what was expected what we had to do to get through those long days. and the repetitive work.
ingrid edstrom
yeah, and what if it’s not what we have to do? what if we learned that somewhere? what if someone taught that to us? because it was in their best interest for us to believe that? and what if what we’ve been selling ourselves isn’t true? what if it doesn’t have to be that way? what would different look like? how do we create that change? we start by asking those questions.
liz farr
yes, and being willing to try doing things differently. now, something that i love about the work that you do is the emphasis on values, purpose and empowerment, in addition to not instead of profits. and as you mentioned, you also lead some groups over on roundtable labs. now, how can accountants lean into values purpose, and empowerment to help themselves and their clients?
ingrid edstrom
you know, i’ve been talking with people a lot just over the last week about maslow’s hierarchy of needs. and this idea that self actualization is this pinnacle at the top of a pyramid, the bottom of which is we have to have our basic needs met that, you know, we need to have food, water, shelter, safety, security, and then up from their community, and that if we can somehow achieve all of those things that at this pinnacle, will reach this state of self actualized almost like enlightenment or something like that, that is this far out their goal. and what many people don’t realize is that back in the 1800s, whenever it was that maslow was coming through the united states, he appropriated the hierarchy from the blackfoot people. and when he did, he flipped the script. self actualization was never intended to be this so out of reach pinnacle self actualization is the foundation. and then if we can begin with a foundation of purpose, empowerment values, knowing who we are. then from there we create the interdependent, healthy relationships that make it so that all of our needs are met. and it’s only in our current dominant paradigm that we’re swimming in these these waters of capitalism, colonialism, institutionalized racism, that we’ve been taught that we don’t have enough, we’re taught this, this idea of scarcity. and that there isn’t enough to go around for anyone who’s led red lynn twists, fantastic book, the soul of money, she talks about the three toxic myths, that there isn’t enough that more is better, and that we have to compete with each other, to have as much as we can get in a zero sum game in order to win everybody else has to lose. and the third toxic myth that that’s just the way it is. so there’s no point in questioning it, don’t bother even putting the time and energy into thinking about how it might be different. that’s just the way that it is, there’s not enough more as better keep fighting for your slice of the pie. and it doesn’t have to be that way. and when we start by working on ourselves, and develop our own health practices, whether that be meditation or yoga, being with our families, doing the things that feel fulfilling and enriching to our lives, that from there, we build the healthier habits and healthier relationships, recognizing that true wealth is not financial. and even security is not financial, wealth and security are relational. that by having the relationships that support us and have our backs in times of hardship, that our needs will be met. and that begins within each of us. so how do we support each other? recognizing that these more dominant thought systems of scarcity and zero sum game have been really kind of infiltrating our mindset and programming us from a very young age? how do we overcome that programming? and the group that i lead in roundtable labs is really about working to overcome that programming together. and we’re a very, very close knit group of people who are doing that work together and supporting each other in that process of breaking down those limiting beliefs that lead to things like imposter syndrome and zero sum game thinking. how do we transition from a power over paradigm to a power with paradigm rather than perpetuating power dynamics, where in order to have power, we have to be in control and trying to dominate a situation? how do we recognize that true power is empowering each other. so that together we have the power to do amazing things and create the outcomes that we want to create, and that we’re more likely to succeed together than we are alone. but individualism is considered one of the symptoms one of the attitudes and behaviors of institutionalized racism for a reason. it is kind of pervasive in our culture, to think that each of us needs to succeed on our own. and humans were not meant to do that humans were meant to thrive in community and interdependent relationships, not codependent relationships, but healthy, effective, interdependent relationships. and that is a big part of what we are working to build and emulate in the roundtable labs. and particularly in my group, empower your passion which is just such a delight to this amazing group of people in my life doing this work together.
liz farr
oh, wonderful. and and i love the idea of self actualization being the foundation for all of us, the birthright of all of us, not just the prize for the few at the very top who achieved that. i love that. it’s really wonderful. now, what are some things that you do in your work that you wish other firm leaders would also do?
ingrid edstrom
whoo, i’m trying to figure out how to frame that up without it being a should conversation because i don’t want to shoot on anyone.
liz farr
no.
ingrid edstrom
i consider shouldn’t dirty four letter word. you know, whenever i hear that word should, whether it’s directed at me or anyone else, i think, what do i want? what do you want? how do i empower you to go have what you want? and i think that maybe that’s a good place to start is just what what i love to encourage other firm leaders to do is really ask themselves, what do i want? what would i really, really like? do i enjoy the way that this is going right now? or would i like it to be different? what would different look like and just start asking the questions that can lead to more questions. and some of my favorite ways of going about that is just taking the time to meditate. i have a really, really pretty solid meditation practice daily, and trying to set aside that that time for myself to cultivate my own mindset to cultivate my own inner state of being recognizing that my outer world follows my inner state of being and asking, am i being the person that i want to be? if i’m doing certain things in my work life or my home life? that makes me feel off? why am i doing those things that way? and just checking in with ourselves around, we talk about work life balance, or work life harmony, and how those things fit together. except that our work and our lives are not these two separate ideas that are in opposition. our work is part of our life. how do we integrate those things so that the work that we have chosen to do in our lives is an expression of who we want to be in the world. and in order to do that, we first need to know who we want to be in the words. i think about we were just in a game changer intensive course for the accounting alchemy network and this beautiful video by south american indigenous leader arkin lish, lucia swallow came up in the conversation, and archon talks about before we can know what it is each of us needs to do, we first need to know what we can be. and if we don’t know ourselves well enough to know what our passion and our purpose is in this world, then we don’t know what to do. we’re just doing what we’ve been programmed or taught to do by other people. and in order to really find out what is our purpose? what is our passion? are we doing the right things. sometimes we need to step back and take a moment in silence to just be with ourselves. and that can be uncomfortable. and recognizing that discomfort and harm are not the same things. engage discomfort is where learning and growth happens outside the comfort zone. so how do we lean in to the discomfort and allow for learning and growth allow for our own personal evolution? and i think that if not just firm leaders, but everyone in our world, if we’re leaning in to our own learning and evolution, that our world would become a very, a much better place, i would venture to say really, really quickly if we could encourage a larger percentage of our population to do that kind of work. i think that that’s, that’s the biggest piece is taking that pause.
liz farr
i agree. and as you were speaking, i was getting flashes of some of my bosses at cpa firms and how really desperately unhappy they seem to be at core because they were not really doing what they love, but they were just felt compelled to do this work, because that was the role that they have chosen, fallen into almost unconsciously and unaware of the implications. and so suddenly, they had to be these really dreadful leaders to try and crack the whip and get us to do the work. because that’s that’s how their business is were structured. but that’s not what they really would have loved most to do.
ingrid edstrom
yeah. well, and recognizing that they learned that somewhere, hurt people hurt people, and maybe they don’t know any other way. but recognizing that true leadership is not about changing someone else’s behavior to leadership is confronting others with their freedom. ed class and i recently, book club peter blocks newest book, confronting our freedom for the accounting alchemy network, and those replays are available on youtube, if anyone’s curious what ed and i thought about that book, but just reading that beautiful book, confronting our freedom, really reframes that idea of the managerial mindset, and what it looks like to actually lead people and be led into lead ourselves. because when it comes down to it, leadership is just another kind of relationship. how do we empower each other to be our most effective, beautiful, thriving selves? creating what we want to create in the worlds and achieving the things that we want to achieve? and how do we set those goals together? how do we make sure that we’re rowing in the same direction? and yeah, it’s a work in progress. and our work goes about it in our world kind of goes about it in a bit of a slavery mentality that we would do well to break out of, and that begins within each of us. and it starts with each of us taking responsibility for our own freedom, our own choices, recognizing that no one can make us do anything.
liz farr
it’s very true. and, and i can’t wait to find the time to dive into those recordings, because i read that book, and i loved it. but i just felt like i have spent so much time in accounting and science and an outside of the idea, the world of ideas, that there was just something i just wasn’t quite able to grasp. so i look forward to challenging my assumptions and challenging my mindset about that. now, sometimes what we stop doing can have the most impact on our lives. do you have some examples of things that you start doing sounds like from your intro, it sounds like you’ve stuck doing a few things along the way. what’s had the most impact for you?
ingrid edstrom
oh, man, there are so many things. um, right now, i’m being reminded of a fantastic quote by a friend of mine, who is or was, at one point, at least an addiction counselor. and he once said to me, that we can measure our growth by the people we say goodbye to. and it’s not just the people, but also, i think that the habits and the routines and even just, you know, talking in empower your passion, my roundtable labs group at one point around the way that many of us identify with our credentials, i’m not personally a cpa, but others who are cpas. and i have, you know, some other credentials and things like that. to say i am a cpa, or i am a certified business coach means that we’re identifying with those things, and we allow those things to be become part of our identity. and it’s it’s not necessarily effective to attach ourselves so firmly to those identifications. i have a business coach certification, that is something that i have, it does not define me. it is not all of who i am. and yet, for many, the cpa credential can become an entrenching relationship. and it was just so fascinating to hear some of the ideas that were coming out in that discussion around the identity of the cpa and how that can catch us up in some toxic habits and relationships. and it reminded me of how long i stuck around in an unhealthy relationship for 21 years, with the wrong guy, and now that that wrapped up a couple of years ago, um, the amount of learning and growth, you know, that has just been exponential, in ways that i would not have been able to step into my own power, while enabling that unhealthy relationship to continue. and sometimes it really just takes getting pushed to that level of discomfort, where we recognize, oh, you know, harm is being done. when i think about that line between discomfort and harm. i learned in a wonderful course, i took fatima mann of the love and healing work organization teaches a wonderful course on leveraging white privilege to deconstruct institutionalized racism. and it was in her course, that she starts with talking about being in consensual relationship first with ourselves, how do we be in consensual relationship with ourselves? and then with the thought constructs that we find ourselves swimming in, you know, these these ideas that our world perpetuates? how do we develop a consensual relationship with those ideas and then working on being in consensual relationship with each other. but starting with being in consensual relationship with ourselves and those ideas of discomfort and harm she she framed up the question of discomfort being? if we’re uncomfortable in our seat, okay, we can shift our position. and what does that look and feel like to oh, hey, i’m uncomfortable, i’m going to move. but when does discomfort become harm? because harm needs to be healed? if someone’s doing harm to themselves or to others? what does that look like? because we can be doing harm to ourselves by you know, actually physically harming ourselves, you know, think thinking about people who self harm, or who harm others, or if you know, we have an accident and fallen, now we need healing. or if we have a traumatic life experience that needs healing, that’s harm that’s been done. however, discomfort, when we’re not in consensual relationship, discomfort, that is our body’s way of talking to us saying, hey, this isn’t working for me, i need you to move. and if we don’t listen. and we ignore those smaller consent conversations time after time, after time, it builds up and turns into harm, repetitive stress injuries, and for accounting professionals, hey, sitting is the new smoking, not getting up and moving our bodies on a regular basis and typing too much leading to carpal tunnel and eye strain. looking at the screen for too long, there’s layers, layers and layers of it. and we all do it. and we’ve been taught by our dominant society, that these little harms that we’re doing ourselves are things that we can wear as like a badge of honor of, oh, look at this, this pain that i inflicted on myself. and you know, on the one hand, oh, woe is me, let’s have a victim one upmanship contest. and on the other hand, look at how much i was able to withstand, as if that was standing of what we don’t have to withstand is building resilience. but it’s not effective resilience. resilience is learning to withstand the things that aren’t within our control and not putting ourselves through hard things, for the sake of proving that we can. so we’re doing harm to ourselves on a regular basis. and there’s so many times so many times, that it’s like i wake up and realize, oh, that thing that i’m doing is harming myself, or maybe even harming others. you know, when we think about it in terms of the diversity, equity and inclusion conversations that each of us really could use to be having more of, what does it look like to normalize and create effective, healthy conversations about race and sexual identity and religion so that each of us can feel inclusion and belonging in all worlds? and those things are uncomfortable. leaning into that discomfort and learning and growing from it. that is what is true resilience. avoiding those conversations isn’t very effective. and that’s where i’m reverend deborah johnson, one of the one her full instructors from the pachamama alliance courses that we take within the accounting alchemy network. she has a wonderful quote, she says, pain pushes until vision pulls. and i like to think about that pain pushes until vision pulls is kind of the inflection point, the tipping point of when we move from the discomfort and actually say, you know what, i’m recognizing that i need to be in better consensual relationship with myself, with others and with our planet, the world as a whole, what does it look like to be in right relationship with all things in all ways, including through our work as accounting professionals, and step into that and allow that vision to pull us forward. so that it’s not just about the pain, because until we make a different choice, nothing’s going to change. and that choice points, that’s where our freedom lies. confronting our freedom, once again, that choice point is where the freedom lies. and learning to bring that choice point earlier and earlier in the conversation with our own being and with each other. so that we don’t have to put up with being in the unhealthy discomfort that leads to harm, that we don’t have to put up with those situations that we can make a different choice earlier. we don’t have to put up with the relationships that aren’t effective for us. we can measure our growth by the people, the habits, the past us, that we’re saying goodbye to, and it’s scary, our egos want to hang on to that past us, the default mode network, that network of neural synaptic connections in our brains, that tries to keep us in linear thought patterns, to keep us doing the same things the same ways, because that’s what we’ve trained ourselves feel safe. except that perpetuating harm in our lives isn’t safe, it’s quite the opposite of safe. and making a different choice could create the change that we want to see, we just have to get out of our own way to do it. and i feel like that personal evolution, those things that we stopped doing that have big impact, i love this question. because that’s everything. and sometimes we need other people to reflect with us on what are the things that i’m doing that maybe i could stop doing that would have a big impact in our lives, sometimes we’re too close to those things to see them. it’s like trying to look at the nose on our own faces. so having interdependent, healthy community that is able to reflect those things for us is also really, really useful.
liz farr
i agree with you on 100%. and, and i so wish that my bosses at accounting firms had had more of a holistic view of the importance of their work, and a bigger view of how we could serve the community and our clients at a much deeper level. you know, about the time i was leaving, i told one of the managers who later became a partner. you know, look, you’ve got to revamp the onboarding process. you know, you’ve got to ask everybody when they come on board, who’s your financial adviser? oh, you don’t have one? here? let me recommend one. who’s your estate attorney? you don’t have one? let me recommend one. what is your end game with this? this business? do you? what are your plans? do you want to pass this on? do you want to sell it? even if it’s something that they just started this week? where do you want to be in five years? but because we were not in the habit of asking those questions, which again, get to maslow’s pyramid of hierarchy, what is it that you were trying to achieve? we were stuck down at the bottom of just providing the accounting services and the tax services and not on helping them use that as a foundation for where they could be calm.
ingrid edstrom
yeah, yeah. and supporting people and building that awareness is key. it’s like they said in gi joe cartoons and i was a kid knowing that knowing is half the battle. now we know and knowing is half the battle. yes.
liz farr
sometimes, it’s not just what we stopped doing, but it’s sometimes mistakes that we make that we learn a lot from. can you tell listeners about a valuable mistake that you made valuable in terms of the learning that came out of it?
ingrid edstrom
yeah, i mean, there’s so many i make mistakes all the time, i’m reminded of sekou andrews at a quickbooks connect that he spoke at years ago, gave a beautiful talk on how failure is pre success. that it doesn’t matter how many times we fall down, so long as we keep getting back up. and if we’re still breathing, we’re still here. we can keep trying, we can we can do whatever we can, with the tools that we have. and i think i feel like i’ve been, you know, really, really focusing on on some of the big lofty ideas. so if i’m going to choose a valuable mistake that i made, somewhat recently, that is simple and somewhat relatable. so i mentioned that a couple of years ago, i got out of a really long term relationship, 21 years, and being a single person, you know, starting to step back into the, what does it look like to date people? what would it look like to meet someone new, and haven’t really been meeting very many people. and i made the mistake of trying a dating app. and i know that that is something that many people have had quite a lot of success with. and i wish all i wish them all the best if that tool is a good fit for you no judgment or anything like that. for me, it was a mistake. and the reason why it was a mistake, you know, i kind of dipped my toe in the water just by turning on the dating function in facebook. and i found as i was paging through these profiles of men, because that’s what i would be looking for. that it was bringing out all the worst parts of me that the habit of paging through and saying yes or no, was building neural synaptic connections that encouraged snap judgment of other human beings, whether it be based on what they chose to put in their profile, or how they looked or anything like that. and after just a few weeks of going through this, i noticed like okay, one, it’s kind of addictive. there’s that false dopamine response that hooks you in the way that social media does. so it’s hard to stop. and at the same time, the way that i felt when i was doing it was gross. it was it was just depressing. like, is this all that’s out there, you know, like, what is going on? like, i’m not finding anyone who’s really sparking my fancy and like going through, it just was building this kind of avalanche of this is not who i want to be. and recognizing that, that that made it not a fit for me and being able to stop. even though it is very addicting that as much as there’s tons of chemicals to get addicted to outside of our bodies, you know, people can get addicted to drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, those sorts of things. that really, the chemicals that our body creates, all on its own, are the most addictive substances we are ever exposed to, that we are addicted to our habits. and stopping doing something is hard. even after just a few weeks of being on this app and paging through people, i got to see firsthand, wow, this could really easily turn me into someone who i don’t want to be. and that stopping was hard. and that was a very, very valuable lesson for me in the empathy that it brought to myself and also to others. recognizing how hard it was to make that choice, and also encourages me to hey, go out and meet people in other ways. what does it look like where where am i meet someone who i actually want to invest time with? well, where do healthy effective people hang out? maybe i need to go to the gym more often. what would that look like? so those are the kinds of questions that i end up asking myself and just trying to perpetuate the healthy habits that support me and being the and who i want to be, and building that awareness around that. and the mistakes are part of that process and owning the mistakes and taking responsibility for the mistakes, recognizing that responsibility is not about blame or shame. responsibility is simply our ability to respond. consciously intentionally respond with a choice.
liz farr
absolutely. and i and i love that you’re so vulnerable and sharing your miserable experience with a dating app. you know, i’ve been blessed that i’ve never been tempted, you know, they haven’t. they didn’t really exist. the last time i was single, so yeah, for me, either. i’ve been spared. and i did dabble a little bit in one of those personal ads they used to have in the papers. i did that once i just said, boo. boo. yeah. but belly, you know, it reminds me of how superficially we often judge the professionals that we choose to work with? and how difficult it must be for somebody seeking an accountant to find one that really resonates with them? or how do you put that on your website, that we ask the difficult questions, and we’re not afraid to make you uncomfortable in the sake of growing? yeah, how? how do we do that, you know, without making people afraid to put up their hands and say, yes, i want to work with them.
ingrid edstrom
you know, that level of transparency and authenticity, to show our full, authentic human selves, in our marketing, recognizing that marketing is really just a communication tool, how we put ourselves out there more authentically, and invite people to know the whole us and demonstrate to them that, hey, if i can show up in my full self in this relationship, i would love to know all of you also. we hide ourselves behind this professional veneer that isn’t healthy or effective. and we tell ourselves, oh, it’s just business. it’s not personal. where did we learn that that is harmful. that is damaging. of course, this is personal, everything is personal. this is our lives and our livelihoods. these are the relationships that we spend time with our co workers, we see more of them than our families a lot of the time. so what does it look like to have real human relationships with our co workers with our clients or teams, all of those layers of humanity, invite ourselves and each other to show up in our full true authentic selves cultivating real belonging, real inclusion for all of us, even and especially when we’re having a hard time. how do we put the humanity first, rather than it being a requirement requirements to follow fmla guidelines, the family leave medical act to, or the family medical leave act to make sure instead of it being you know, okay, you have x number of weeks to go be with your dying family member, or whatever the case may be? how about we show up and our human compassion for how do we make all of this regenerative? not just sustainable?
liz farr
absolutely. now, do you have any final advice for accountants who want to create better firms and a better world? oh, ideal? no talk about this for an hour? oh,
ingrid edstrom
i think i think the number one piece is asking ourselves that question. if there’s someone who wants to create a better firm and a better world, simply holding that question in my mind, how can i be the change i want to see in the world, how could my firm take an active part in creating the change that i want to see in the world? what change do i want to see in the world? what would be important to me, what are my values? what do i want to create just asking those questions, and also recognizing in the same way that we can measure our growth by the people we say goodbye to jim rohn talks about how we’re an average of the five people we spend the most time with. so the question is, are we investing our time with the people that we aspire to emulate? and it really, really helps to be investing time with other people who care enough to ask those questions that we can ask them with each other, and hear each other’s responses, and learn and grow together. and that is what the accounting alchemy network is for. and for anyone who’s interested in checking it out, you can go to accounting alchemy.net, and sign up for our newsletter, join our linkedin group, our facebook group, everything that we do is not monetized. it’s all free or by donation to one of our nonprofit education partners. so yeah, just being with other accounting professionals who are asking those questions, helps a lot. so we can keep asking them and support each other, in creating the world that we want to see the more beautiful world that our hearts know as possible, is what charles eisenstein calls it.
liz farr
that’s perfect. and i think that’s that’s the perfect note to end our conversation with. now, if listeners want to connect with you, ingrid, what’s the best way to find you?
ingrid edstrom
drop me an email at ingrid at priestess of profits.com. you can also wander to my website, if anyone’s interested in working with me, you can fill out the coaching questionnaire on my website. but yeah, i’m happy to receive correspondence from people who have questions. and yeah, let’s create the change we want to see in the world be the rising tide that raises all ships. and that means cultivating these connections. and i would love to hear from you.
liz farr
fantastic! thank you so much for sharing with us and agreeing to spend an hour of your day with me and the future listeners of this podcast. thank you so much, ingrid.