the future of accounting will be strategy, communication, analysis, and proactive support.
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the disruptors
with liz farr
rebecca driscoll went out on her own at a young age when a partner at the cpa firm where she was working encouraged her. “you’re not cut out for this path that we have in a traditional accounting firm,” driscoll recalls him telling her. “you’re different, so you should go be different.”
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she already had a book of business as a staff accountant, but on the traditional path at that firm, it would be another decade before she could be considered for partnership.
at the end of 2023, faced with the challenges of parenting two kids under two and recognizing that leading a growing firm wasn’t her passion, she sold 80% of her firm and retained just a few clients. driscoll reports that when she “canceled out the noise and busyness of all these clients and the employees, i would net out at the same take-home that i was already making.” her husband has also joined her firm, taking over the bookkeeping side of the business.
the name of her business, conscious accounting, came from a client who remarked that she was different from “regular accountants” because she was conscious and aware of her clients’ issues and proactive about providing them with what they needed.
driscoll has also created courses for small businesses that can’t afford her services but need help getting on the right track at the beginning. this has “allowed us to serve more people in a way that fits their budget and kind of meets them where they’re at.”
around the same time she shrank her firm, she also began coaching other accountants. as jason staats, founder of the realize community, explained to her, “the cool thing about helping firm owners is if you can help them run their firms better, then they can help more clients. so you’re actually having a bigger footprint and a bigger impact than just helping your own clients.”
besides working inside the realize community as an advisor in residence and running a roundtable group for bookkeeping, she is launching her own coaching business, conscious coaching.
additionally, she and mike sylvester are combining forces to launch a community for accountants, the collaboration room. although they have different backgrounds, ages, and approaches, they are united in their desire to help firms do things differently.
13 more takeaways
- be intentional in your hiring that you find the people who can support you in your journey.
- build your business in the way that makes sense for your lifestyle, not to grow the metrics of the number of clients and the number of employees you have.
- with a remote team, consider working together on zoom or teams, with microphones off, but available to answer questions.
- get out of the work and invest time in training your team. this enables you to be available to help them when they need it.
- the first step to change in a firm is securing owner buy-in.
- to get over the money fear of culling clients, consider the worst case scenario. if you double your fees for a group of clients, and they all left, how much money would you lose? what if 50% leave? figure out how much revenue you need in your firm to keep the lights on, and do the culling in pieces.
- your needs as firm owners and as humans need to come before the needs of your clients. learn to set boundaries.
- you shouldn’t care more about the client’s situation than they do.
- to be a better leader, the first step is to get the client work off your plate so you can collaborate with your team and teach them. if your clients aren’t willing to work directly with anyone but you, maybe you need to make some changes to your book of business.
- embrace technology. if you didn’t grow up with computers all around you as the younger generations did, hire someone to be your technology person and let them run with it.
- before you grow your firm, get a clear understanding of what your goal is and what you’re trying to achieve with your business.
- instead of working really hard for a few months without a rested brain, embrace spreading the work out through the year.
- the future of accounting will be strategy, communication, analysis, and proactive support for clients.
more about rebecca driscoll
rebecca driscoll is a cpa with a master of accountancy from the university of south florida. she lives in charlottesville, va., with her husband and two kids.
in 2016, she founded conscious accounting, a fully virtual bookkeeping and tax services firm. additionally, she offers one-on-one and group coaching for firm owners in the online community realize and on the website conscious coaching.
driscoll and mike sylvester are joining to build a community for accounting, bookkeeping, and tax professionals to learn and grow through mentoring and coaching.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr
can you tell listeners a little bit about your business, where you’re located, what you do, and how long you’ve been in existence, things like that.
rebecca driscoll
yeah. so i am in charlottesville, virginia. i am originally from new hampshire, and then was living in florida for about nine years, and i started my firm in florida, we had a physical location there and a team, i think my at the biggest it was around six employees. and then covid kind of changed things, and having babies change things, and so it’s been kind of an evolution, but, but i started, i started the firm in 2016 on my own. i had been doing a career change from being a middle school math teacher to stumbling upon bookkeeping with some friends who own businesses and buying bookkeeping for dummies and trying to read this book to figure out what bookkeeping was so i could help my friends with their quickbooks to then eventually meeting with cpas who were doing the tax returns, and telling me all the things i was doing wrong in the books, and teaching me and, you know, learned a lot on the job. and then i a lot of cpas kept trying to get me to work for them, but i had maybe, like, 11 bookkeeping clients at the time that i was, you know, learning on the job how to do the bookkeeping for them, and i was very transparent about that, that i don’t know what i’m doing, but, but, but my they were friends, and they trusted me to figure it out along the way. so i worked at a about three or so different firms throughout this time, and was, you know, very open with them about my small book bookkeeping business on the side, and they would do the tax returns for my bookkeeping clients, and they let me keep my little book of business. and during that journey, i decided to go back to school, and because i had no had not taken any business classes as an undergrad, i had quite a bit of undergrad classes to take before i could even start a master’s in accountancy. so it was, i think i did it all in a year and a half, but it was intense, and one of the cpas was like, you’re young, you’re single, you don’t have kids. like, just get this done. so i did, and i sat for the cpa exams at that same time, and got my license and had the i ended up at a large, a pretty large firm, and was in the tax department there, and they liked me because i knew quickbooks and bookkeeping, and a lot of the tax accountants didn’t, so they kind of so it was a good fit there. and yeah, so cpa, master’s degree, and, you know, staff accountant at this big firm, and my my little book of business was starting to become not so little anymore, and one of the partners kind of pushed me to go try things on my own, and told me, i always have a desk there, but, but, you know, you’re it was kind of this thing of like, you know, if you want to become a partner here and be bringing in lots of clients and lots of business, you know, you have at least 10 years before we would even look at that, but you’re the staff accountant bringing in business, and you’re just, you’re not, you’re not cut out for this like path that we have in a traditional accounting firm, you’re different, so you should go be different. so that’s what i did, and i had no idea what i was doing, and i paid other cpas to review my tax returns for me and help me figure out puzzles that i didn’t understand because i still didn’t have as much. uh, experience on the tax side, as i wanted to have before going out on my own, so that made me uncomfortable, but i got a lot of support. and then just over the years, i’ve tried to hire the right people to to be able to support me, and it’s been unique going out on my own at when i was at such a young age, instead of after a couple decades of experience, you know, then going out on my own, i i don’t love in some ways, it was great, because i could make my own rules and not do things the way they’ve always been done, but, but there’s been a lot of learning and mistakes and and stuff because of the kind of non traditional path. but so at the end of this past year, in 2023 i sold 80% of my practice to a colleague of mine, and my employees were part of that sale, and i was left with maybe like 20 or so monthly bookkeeping clients that i also do the tax returns for. and so it really condensed my workload into just like a core group of clients that i can serve year round, and kind of make money in a very efficient way. and the reason i did this was because i had two children under the age of two, and managing employees. and the children was just not it just was too much, and i i never really felt like i was a great boss. anyways, it just wasn’t like what it’s not my passion or skill set and and being the only one at the top. it just i didn’t feel like i could serve them very well. and i felt like i had so many clients, and all these clients were really just going towards paying their salaries. and if i kind of canceled out the noise and busyness of all these clients and the employees, i would net out at the same, you know, take home that i was already making. so it just it i and they deserved a better place to where they could be trained and, you know, learn more and grow more so. so that is what happened. and then at that same time, my husband decided to join me and help me with the business, which was crazy because we moved to virginia for a new job for him, and he’s an engineer, and he he ended up dropping down to part time. there he goes in the office one day a week, and the other four days a week, he works with me, and we, we had been prepping for this, and he had been learning a lot about bookkeeping and thinking of kind of taking over the bookkeeping side of things. so since then, he’s hired a few overseas employees to work under him, to help with the bookkeeping, and we have a contractor in the us as well who is helping him with one of our bigger clients. and then i’m just focused on tax returns and onboarding new clients and that kind of thing, yeah, tax planning, things like that. so, yeah, that’s that’s where we’re at right now in a new kind of thing that we just started doing was white labeling bookkeeping for other accounting firms. an opportunity just kind of stumbled upon us to do that. and bookkeeping being my roots, it just like, you know, we were pretty efficient at it, and know what we’re doing. so we are kind of testing this out with one firm doing the bookkeeping for them, for all their clients, and we’re kind of excited to see where that will take us. so, yeah,
liz farr
well, this is exciting, you know, and in two observations, you know, one is that your youth and your inexperience with traditional firms is not really so much a deficiency, but that is really a huge asset, because you don’t have to shed all the, all the baggage of the traditional model of accounting, to go out and try different things. so that’s that’s really remarkable, yeah, yeah. and so i, you know, i think that you should be an inspiration to some of the younger people who are maybe thinking about getting a degree in accounting, but don’t really know how to do that and what will happen afterwards, but you’re showing that you can figure it out. yeah. and my second observation is that. that because you have your own business, and because you are self employed, you have the freedom to build a business that fits your life, yeah, and it’s not the other way around. you know, there was an article in accounting today about how so many cpas plan their pregnancy yes around busy season,
rebecca driscoll
all of my friends did that. yeah, yeah, it,
liz farr
yeah. and i think that that’s just kind of crazy,
rebecca driscoll
yeah. question, it, it’s just like, it’s just our lives. now,
liz farr
it’s what you do. you know, of course, of course, you would do that. so i think that that you should, should celebrate your accomplishments as being an example of somebody who’s doing things very differently and can demonstrate to other young women how you can create a business that supports your life. so kudos to you for all of that.
rebecca driscoll
thank you. it was definitely when i started my business, the the main two questions that every person, including my family, would ask me is, how many clients do you have and how many employees do you have? those are like the two things that everyone asked, and it was clear that the bigger that those numbers were, the more impressed they were going to be with me. so i felt a lot of pressure to have as many clients as possible and as many employees as possible, and i tried to do that, and then, you know, over the years, realized i needed to reverse and start, go back to the beginning, where i started and rebuild in a way that made sense for my lifestyle, and be proud of how few employees and how few clients i actually have. yeah, exactly.
liz farr
you know, it’s not the number of things you put out there, but it really is the top line revenue. yeah, and if you’re serving just a few clients at a deep level, then you can make just as much with twice the clients, but with less service,
rebecca driscoll
exactly.
liz farr
yeah, yeah. now the name of your firm is conscious accounting, and i’m kind of curious about that. what does that name mean about the way that you operate?
rebecca driscoll
yeah, so i a client came up with the name actually, many years ago, and you know, she was like, you’re not like regular accountants, you’re like, conscious, like you like you’re, you’re aware you’re alive, you’re with us, like you’re, you’re really, you know, kind of getting on our level more and being really present with the issues that we’re having, you know, as taxpayers and as business owners and, you know, you’re different, you know, so, so that’s how the name came up, but, but, yeah, i think for me it’s, it’s about like awareness and being kind of awake and alive and aware of what what our clients need, and being proactive about those things, and not just being this kind of passive, sort of asleep, sort of, you know, once a year, we check in and look at after the facts information. and, you know, think to ourselves, like, oh man, i wish i knew about this earlier. we could have saved them some money, you know, like, so just kind of more hands on, more more proactive, more aware, yeah,
liz farr
yeah. and, and i’m curious how, how is that this? how are you continuing this now that your husband is working with you? yeah, you know, is he also adopting that with the contractors that he’s overseeing? yeah, so doing that,
rebecca driscoll
i’m lucky that he has, his whole career has been in management, so he’s very used to managing teams, and is a very good at managing teams. so his he knows how to really keep, keep his employees. you know, really can’t think of the right word, but so he does like daily check ins with with his team, and they meet, you know, on teams, and they have video chats, and they talk every day. sometimes they even work with their microphones off, and they just do the raise their hand symbol when they want to ask a question, but they just work alongside each other and silence just to kind of you. know that they could chat each other or share screens whenever. so that kind of goes along with that consciousness as well of just being aware and being you know in the moment with your team and really trying to be proactive and be there before things get difficult, and just, you know, be present.
liz farr
that is really a gift that that you have, and that is something that i wish so many more traditional leaders would do. i i’m sure you experienced kind of the the walk by leadership, walk by management. hey, how are you doing today?
rebecca driscoll
not walk by run my partner, my old firm, he wouldn’t walk, he would run past you, and it’s like, i didn’t even, like i was going to ask you a question, like i didn’t even get to, yeah, yeah,
liz farr
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. or, you know, one partner, you try and ask him a question, oh, put on my calendar,
rebecca driscoll
yes, yes, okay,
liz farr
well, your next spot is next week. that’s not going to help me today.
rebecca driscoll
and i think, like, if we look at, like, zoom out to like, what the issue really is there is, like, you know, you have to if you’re going to actually manage people and get to know them and be involved with their journey of learning and growing as a team member, you’re you have to have a open calendar, like, you have to have a lot less work on your plate to be able to allocate time to helping them. so that was, i mean, that’s always been my problem of why i can’t manage people. a, i just like, am such a people pleaser that i just want to be friends with them, and it’s just i don’t have the right personality for it. but b, i’m like, i have way too much work to do. i don’t have time to help you. and of course, if i were to put that time aside and just train them, then they could start, i could start delegating that work. and, you know, everything could get fixed over time, in theory. but yeah, i think, like in larger firms, like the teams that who are managing the staff like they need to be getting out of the work and and just focusing on the training side and so, you know, like calling clients or whatever it takes to have less work so that you can invest your time into your team and their growth. i mean that only will benefit them in the end.
liz farr
yeah, i like your emphasis about helping to grow your team, and i bet that that comes from your background as a teacher, because that’s what teaching is all about. and you were, you were a teacher way before you were a cpa, you know. and funny story, my husband was a teacher for many years also, so i i have very intimate knowledge of what that lifestyle is like, yeah, now, now, but you still teach in in some ways. you’ve got an online course for business owners, you’ve got a couple other spreadsheet tools, yeah. can you, can you talk about these things a little bit? i think this is really cool,
rebecca driscoll
yeah. so i think, like when i started the business, i was working with really tiny clients, and, you know, it got to the point where they couldn’t afford my services. as i grew and as my experience, you know, grew, it just and i just felt so badly that there was this like population of business owners who, you know, weren’t really making any money yet, but if they only knew the right steps to take at the beginning, they could save themselves a lot of trouble later on, if they just, you know, set up their entity properly, or did their bookkeeping properly, or, you know, had a separate bank account, like all these basic things that, or knew what an ein was like, they just like how who’s who’s going to take the time to help these people because, you know, it’s just not economical for us to serve those clients, but they don’t have any they’re not able to invest in our services, but they they absolutely need it. so the course i created was designed to just sort of answer like the overwhelmingly repetitive same questions i just kept getting over and over again with our inquiry form on our website, the same type of questions always. so my thought there was, if you just invest in this, it’ll be cheaper than, you know, getting on a retainer or engaging with a cpa or tax repair. or something, but at least you’ll, you’ll know what you need to do. and it’s kind of diy focused, of like, you know, here’s, here’s what you’ll put into turbotax, and here’s what you know, here’s how you’ll do this. and then the bookkeeping spreadsheet was just, you know, i think that if you even though, like quickbooks and stuff is marketed towards business owners as this user friendly tool. you can get yourself in a lot of trouble in there if you don’t understand accounting, of course. so the spreadsheet was meant to be a safer place to do accounting work when you don’t know how to do accounting work. and so it just has a lot of parameters in place where things can’t get messed up too badly, and they can still kind of see a p&l and track different things that they’ll need to put on their tax return. and then had a lot of realtors interested in working with us, and they kind of fit into this category too, of not needing to be really paying for accounting services, but they needed to know some important things to be able to do their taxes, and so we made a special spreadsheet just for them too. so yeah, it’s just kind of allowed us to serve more people in a way that fits their budget and kind of meets them where they’re at. yeah,
liz farr
those are, those are really great ideas, you know, and i’m kind of thinking in the back of my mind that i should get together with you and put one together for freelancers.
rebecca driscoll
oh yeah, that’s the biggest, that’s like, the biggest population of like, they’ve never made money doing contract work before, and so those are, it’s very confusing, and they don’t know what they’re allowed to deduct, and they don’t understand that taxes aren’t being taken out. and, yeah, it’s a whole thing, yeah, but then, but they’re not, like, ready for, like, a big, you know, cpa firm to, you know, so, but they still need help, you know. so,
liz farr
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. i’ve tried to help out the freelance writing community, and in teaching them, sort of the basics of how to keep your books. you have to keep some kind of records. you have to save for taxes. yeah, it’s, it’s not like a w2 where all the money that goes into your bank account is yours to spend. you have to save some of it for different things. yep,
rebecca driscoll
exactly.
liz farr
yeah. now i love that, that you’re teaching accountants, that you’re teaching small business owners, and it’s sort of like, you know, bridging, you know, starting from where they are, and then helping them get to where they really could grow to need an accountant or bookkeeper. yes, exactly. that’s so essential. and now, now, besides running a firm. the other, one of the other cool things you do is you have a coaching team. you know, you coach people from owners, you’re you’re in jason staats’ realize community, and you also have a business called conscious coaching. now, how did you get started with coaching?
rebecca driscoll
that’s a great question. i’m trying to think how it started. so it’s been a little over a year since i’ve been doing the kind of mentor coaching through jason’s group, realize, i think he, i think i had just had my second child, and i was talking with jason, and he was like, what are you going to do about your firm? like, how, you know, how are you going to run a firm with a newborn and a, you know, one and a half year old, like, you know? and i was exploring when i was pregnant. i was exploring like, how do i get out of maybe i don’t want to run a firm anymore. maybe i need to find a different thing. maybe i should be a professor. maybe i should teach. maybe i should, you know, help firm owners with something like, you know. and i was just exploring like, every avenue of thinking, like there’s no way i’m going to be able to keep the firm alive while raising two kids like that are so young and so close in age, it’s just going to be too hard. so i was talking with him, and i think he started telling me about how helping firm owners is really cool. and, you know, it’s like, well, i want to help. i want to help, you know, businesses and thrive and stuff. and he’s like, well, the cool thing about helping firm owners is if you can help them run their firms better, then they can help more clients. so you’re actually having, like, a bigger footprint and a bigger impact. and. than just helping your own clients. and that was really interesting to me. and he wanted to start offering kind of more resources to members of realize where they could sign up once a quarter to meet with advisors in residence, is what he calls it. and you know, he has a lawyer you can meet with. he has, you know, automation pros like all sorts of different software gurus and things that you can meet with. and so i was, i think, the first person that he had that you could meet with. and so members can sign up once a quarter to meet with me, and we just meet for an hour, and i make them fill out a little form before that just says, kind of like, what’s keeping you up at night as a firm owner, and what are the problems that we need to fix? and then we kind of hop on a call and just fix the problems. and it’s really fun, and i love it. and my calendar was getting so full with these, there’s 500 members, in realize, and i think if i just let my whole calendar be open, i’d probably be doing like three a day at least. so it’s, it was really, you know, received very well. and now i run a group, kind of round table, and realize that we talk specifically to about bookkeeping. so like bookkeeping firm owners, or, you know, tax firms that are wanting to incorporate bookkeeping now and want to add that monthly reoccurring revenue into their, you know, model like, so we talked through, like, all the mechanics of having a bookkeeping business, and i, i met with jason to check in about how it was going. and he was like, are you is has this helped you build, like, a coaching business outside of realize? and i was like, oh, no. like, i just, i just do it in real life. he’s like, no. the whole point of this is for you to, you know, be able to advertise your services and do, you know, take it outside. oh, so that’s when i created a website, and i just went with conscious coaching to kind of just go with conscious accounting and and i still feel like the awareness and the realness of my approach kind of rings true with with the way i coach as well. so the the brand kind of still works for this. so i do have a website now where people can sign up for, even if they’re not, and realize for a coaching session, and that, you know, i think, will evolve over time as as i can dedicate more time to the coaching. i would love to have that be the only thing that i do, because it’s been really cool to see the changes that that firms are making because of us meeting together. it’s been really rewarding.
liz farr
that’s fantastic, and it’s so gratifying to hear about firms making changes because, you know, both the firms that i worked in, well, all three of the firms that i worked in were just kind of stuck, and the owner said, well, those are great ideas you’re bringing up to me. liz, but i’ll have to wait until i have more time to try them out. yeah, so that’s that’s fantastic. now, now, can you share some of the big wins that you’ve seen with some of the firms you’ve worked with?
rebecca driscoll
yeah, so you know the, i mean, the first thing is having the owner buy in, right? like they have to be willing to want to make these changes, and that’s like a big roadblock for a lot of firms out there, but the ones who find me in realize they’ve joined realize because they want to make those changes, they’ve either taken over their dad’s firm, or they just bought a firm, or they have been doing things the same way for a long time, and then they know it’s archaic, and they and they’re really motivated to make a change and take their firm to the next level, or they are still working a full time job, and they’re just ready to start a firm, and they want to do it right. so they just want to know everything they should do from from the beginning to make it to do everything the right way. one of the most popular services i’ve done with, you know, in this coaching space is like a client makeover, i guess i call it where we like the culling of clients. so i have, like a spreadsheet template that will i work through with the firm owner to kind of figure out what i think, you know, the classic thing is kind of rate each client, a, b, c, d, f, and then we, you know, figure out what we’re going to do about them. for me, i think that, like, there’s so much like psychological, emotional stuff that that firm owners have to deal with when making these big, radical changes. a lot of it comes down to. like, money fear and like, so we have to kind of work through that, and then also, like, the people pleasing and not wanting to have to give, like, disappointing news to people and that that’s really hard too. so like, for the money fear thing we’re looking at, like, well, let’s just, like, stare that fear in the face and, like, really look at what the number would be. so it’s a lot of like, worst case scenario analysis, sort of of like, okay, so let’s say you raise you triple the price on these 10 people, and all 10 of them say no and leave. how much money are you losing? and then, okay, well, what if 50% of them leave? well, how much money, or, you know, and kind of understanding, like, what you’re really up against and what really could happen. and once we kind of face that fear and like, look at in the face and see, you know, financially what could happen, it’s like, never as bad as we think, or we realize, okay, well, we can’t go below this number, because this is how much money we need to keep the lights on. so then we’re only going to take this risk, and we’re going to do this in bite sized pieces. and then once we know how that turns out, then we can take another chunk of people and talk to them and you know, so and then how? then also the wording of, how do we tell the clients this news, and how do we remember that, like our needs as firm owners and people human beings like, need to come before our clients. we can’t put people pleasing, and, you know, making the client happy before our own needs. it’s just that’s not healthy, like, so we can’t just keep doing something that’s not healthy for us just because we feel bad. and so there, you know, we have to work through a lot of that confidence and boundary setting and learning to not care about the client more than they care about their situation. and so, so, yeah, so success stories, i’ve had clients who are, you know, firm runners, who have cut, you know, hundreds of clients and then now are making more money than they were before. a lot of scenarios like that, i’ve helped clients with things like creating kpis to help measure how their staff is doing so that they can kind of catch things that need work. you know, with their staffing, as they as their firms have grown, and kind of help them come up with like how to review their employees work, and how to review their employees performance, and how to have those conversations. and we do a lot of talking about pricing and packaging, and a lot of times it becomes a therapy session too. like business therapy, you know, there’s just, we’re human beings, you know, running businesses. so like the human part of us, in our personalities, comes out a lot in the way we run our businesses, and so we talk a lot about that too, yeah, yeah,
liz farr
that’s that’s so healthy, you know, and so many accountants, they just don’t really have anyone to talk to, you know, they, they often can’t really share that with the people in their firm, because they’re afraid that they will look bad, and they and it’s hard to share with their peers in maybe at the state society level, because they might be afraid. oh, well, jim jones accounting, they’re having problems. let me poach some of their clients or some of their
rebecca driscoll
people, yep.
liz farr
so there’s a lot of that fear. so it’s, i think it’s really important to have a community where you can be honest and real and authentic and really share what’s going on. you know, speaking of community, you and mike sylvester are in the process of launching a brand new community for accountants, which i just love. i think this is just going to be such a dynamite group. almost makes me wish i was a firm owner so i could, i could join, but never mind, you
rebecca driscoll
could still help us. yeah.
liz farr
so, can you talk a little bit about how that came about? yeah?
rebecca driscoll
so, so, ever since jason has kind of been pushing me to try to do something outside of realize, you know, in addition to to doing stuff in realize, i’ve been trying to think about what that looks like. and, you know, how do i keep, if i do a small group coaching session, how do i keep. that small and intimate, but also be able to reach a lot of people. and how do i, you know, like, just kind of exploring different models and and just, you know, should it be three sessions and then a check in? or, like, you know, what like? what does this look like? how do we communicate in between sessions? how frequent would a session be like if we were to, if i were to offer this, you know, outside of realize and i so, i’ve been thinking a lot about how, how can i help firm owners? what do they need? how can i help them? and there was a post that came up on twitter of somebody mentioning something like that, and then brenda cannon, who’s a colleague of both mike and i, she said, well, like, i think you guys are trying to do something similar. like, you guys should talk so, so mike and i chatted, and he had helped me with, like, an indiana tax issue, like, a year before, and he’s, like, such a nice guy and always so helpful. so i was excited to chat with him, and we just kind of realized that we both were at a part. we’re totally different ages, totally different backgrounds, totally different, like, styles, but we are both, you know, he’s getting closer to retirement and ready to give back to the community and the industry. and he gets a lot of messages from people wanting advice, and he sits and answers them all, but he’s kind of ready to be able to help more people in a more structured way. and i am kind of, kind of more i am familiar with all the traditional models that firms get stuck in, but i like have more energy around like, being brave and not doing things that way, and more experience not doing those things that way. and i have a lot more understanding of technology and how that it plays into a firm. so the two of us together, we really kind of cover a pretty wide range of knowledge and perspective. so we’ve been having a lot of meetings about figuring out what, what this could look like, like. is it a community? is it just zoom meetings that people can sign up for? is it like, you know, what is this thing? so we decided to just start by creating a survey to, you know, understand the interest, and that’s what you saw on twitter. and we got almost 300 responses from people who either want to help us by, you know, they’re willing to teach on a subject matter, or they just need help with their firm. and i would say the majority of people were the latter, they just need help with their firm. so it’s very it’s just like, crazy. how many people? and in my head, i’m like, well, isn’t everybody in realize? and it’s like, well, no, there’s 500 people in realize and, and mike is always reminding me of that, of like, you know, no, there’s, like, a lot more than 500 accountants out there. and i’m like, okay, my bubble is realize. and i love realize and, and i have a lot of colleagues who are starting other communities too that are specific towards, like, a, you know, a specific journey that a firm might be on or an accountant might be on. so we’re, we’ve collected the data. now we need to analyze the data and determine, you know, what can we do that will help people the most, and what does that look like? so we have, we have ideas, but now we really want to read what what everybody said, and give them what they want. so more to come. it’s exciting. yeah,
liz farr
this is, this is exciting because, you know, on the one hand, might can appeal to the ones who want the voice of wisdom and long standing experience, but at the same time, the way that he’s built his firm, from what i see on twitter, is so different from the way that most firms operate, you know. and then we’ve got you who’s the voice of youth and energy and technology, and you know the young people and new business and all that excitement. so i think this is going to be an amazing community, and i just can’t wait to see and so so listeners, stay tuned and make sure you sign up when this is comes out. yes, so, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. well, the rest of my questions are things that i ask a lot of people, okay, and i’m always curious about the answers. because they’re they’re always different. the first one is about leadership. now, as we mentioned right before we started talk, before we started recording, we’re kind of at a transition point in accounting, yeah, and i think we’re also at a transition point in leadership. we’re moving from the top down model to more of a fulfilling bottom up model. yeah. and what advice do you have for firm leaders who want to become better as leaders?
rebecca driscoll
yeah, that’s that’s a great question. i mean, i like the i think first thing is, like, they have to get the client work off their plate so that they can go be in the trenches with their team and, you know, collaborate with them and teach them things and help them. and if they can’t figure out how to do that, you know, because it’s kind of like a catch 22 of like, but the team’s not ready to take on the work, or the client’s not willing to work with somebody else, you know, then it’s like, you really need to look at your book of business and see if some big, big changes need to be made there. and that that’s kind of like, you know, the first thing, and i would say the other thing is, we, kind of, we’ve touched on technology a few times, but i think, you know, my generation, i’m, i’m 36 my my generation was the first one growing up with internet being i mean, i think for my whole life we’ve had internet. i mean, we definitely was dial up aol, you know. so i, i saw the beginnings, you know, of it. but, but computer education, everything was so, like, drilled into us in school. and we, we, we kind of, it’s we still had to learn how to, like, do things ourselves in a computer. it’s not there was not just an ipad growing up where we didn’t even have to think and we could just click things. so i think, like, my my generation is really pretty tech savvy, and i think the generations coming up as well are maybe a lazier version of tech savvy, because things are just so easy now, but the generations before us really like didn’t get that gift that we did, of like growing up in it. so a lot of the ideas around incorporating more technology into a firm and and running a firm more efficiently with new technology are like so uncomfortable to firm owners, because it’s just not what they grew up with. and, you know, people like my my parents and grandparents will say, oh, you’re so good at technology. you’re the wiz. and it’s like, well, no, it’s just that i grew up with this, like i was, i was in the right place at the right time, you know, but i could totally understand someone who didn’t grow up with these things for to feel completely foreign to them. but i think that understanding how to leverage technology as a firm owner right now is like the like, what is like, such a game changer, and can, you know, really, you know, change things for a firm. so the ones who aren’t ready to do that, or aren’t comfortable to do that, like, you know, as they’re going to sell their firms when they’re retiring, they might have trouble selling. they might have trouble, you know, attracting other people to the firm. it’s just, you know, it’s this. so i really think being a good leader is also being willing to embrace technology and and, and i, i can respect and understand why it’s so hard to embrace technology, if you’re certain from a certain generation, that makes total sense to not be comfortable with it. but the ones that i see who hire somebody on the team who’s going to be the technology person and just delegate that and let someone else run with it, who you trust, i think that can really make the difference. so it’s not to say that every leader needs to learn how to use technology, but you need to, you know, find someone on your team who you put your trust into, and let them run with it and and make the firm more efficient and better. you know, workflow and experience for clients using technology,
liz farr
yeah, and i think that that really is such a a bonus, you know, if you can delegate just figuring out technology to one person who can be the implementer, the one who does the research, and the one who tries things out, and then the one that develops the processes so that everything meshes together that can be such a valuable position to have in a firm. and you know, so many firm owners are reluctant to invest in that because they see that as a cost item and not a revenue generator. but i always think that if you’ve got somebody who’s a tech expert in your firm, then they can also go out to the clients and help them get their technology set
rebecca driscoll
- revenue stream, yeah, yeah. new offer, yep, yeah.
liz farr
so, yeah, i think, i mean, we, we, we
rebecca driscoll
were able to eliminate the admin position in our tiny firm, because all the technology and automations we have set up just replace that, you know, right? it’s definitely cost savings. yeah,
liz farr
yeah. and now to shift gears a little bit, sometimes we learn the most from the mistakes that we’ve made. can you share with us a valuable mistake that you made, one valuable in terms of what you learned? yeah,
rebecca driscoll
i mean, i think that growing my business kind of just for the sake of growing without really understanding what i was, what my goal was, and what i was trying to achieve, was my kind of mistake, because i brought on team members that weren’t a good fit, or i wasn’t able to support those team members in the way that they needed. or i, you know, hired too quickly, without really understanding, you know, what this person was going to do or what their experience was, you know, i think, and then just taking clients on that, you know, i had no business taking on as clients, but just wanting to build and build and build. i think, you know, i, while i learned a lot from that, and i know how to help other firm owners not do these things now, or how to get out of them once they have done them. i think that if i really think having a clear goal and understanding of what you’re trying to achieve with your business, you know, can anchor you in in every business decision you have to make, knowing like is, does this get me closer to the goal i have for this company, or not, and and that, if i had had a clear understanding of what i was trying to do and what where my my end point or goal was, i would have made a lot of different decisions.
liz farr
that is such a wise way to look at things to look at it from with the the end in mind, as stephen covey says, and not just to grow for the sake of growing, yeah, not just to add more dollars to the top line, yeah. if, because not every dollar that you add to the top line is the right dollar. no, all of them are no. they just are not. now, what are some things that you think accountants should stop doing immediately? i hmm,
rebecca driscoll
that’s a good question.
liz farr
we’ve touched on some
rebecca driscoll
yeah, stop doing immediately. i mean, i think that a lot of clients that come through my door that are unhappy and they want to switch accountants are coming because they have been with a firm who’s just taken on way too much tax work, and they’re trying to get it all done in a few months, and there’s just no way that they can give attention to each of these clients. you know, at the same time, it’s just, i know some people really like that, like, i’m just going to work really hard for a few months and then relax the rest of the year. like, some people just like that model, and they don’t want it to change. but i just don’t think that. like, serves anybody. i just don’t think that clients get what they really need when you’re trying to do hundreds of tax returns at once, and you’re doing it late at night without, you know, a rested brain. and so i think the sooner accountants can embrace spreading that work out throughout the whole year and finding a way to, you know, communicate that extensions aren’t bad to their clients, and find a way to spread that work, or just cut their client list so they’re not doing as much tax work. you know, i think that that can be really helpful. i think that model needs to change
liz farr
absolutely, you know, i couldn’t agree more, you know, i remember there was, you know, when, when tax season started, you know, at the beginning you’d get, oh, a tax return. oh, new one. let me get this out today, and then, and then, after a few weeks, it’d be, oh, i let me look at the bottom of the pile. oh, that’s been there a week. i better get that out today. and then another month would go by and oh, my god, this one has been there for two months. yup, yup. i’m just not going to get to this. so it’s really difficult. now, i want you to get out your crystal ball and think about the future. 10 years from now, where do you see accounting in 10 years?
rebecca driscoll
i think that a lot of the bookkeeping and tax prep will be automated in a way that we don’t have to categorize or reconcile or make many journal entries on the bookkeeping side. and you know, the data entry on the tax side will pretty much be done. so i think it will all that will really be left is, you know, strategy and analysis and communication and support, like with with clients. so just, you know, here are these prepared financials that were automatically prepared for me, but i know how to interpret these and help you make business decisions with these financials. and here’s your tax return that was kind of put together automatically, but i know how we can strategize and, you know, save you money in taxes, and i can explain to you what this means and why this happened, and you know, i can be proactive with you and meet with you before tax season to make sure that when those numbers do automatically get put in all the little boxes, they’re the right numbers that you know, have the best you know implications there, don’t have bad tax implications for you, and have the best outcome for you and all that kind of stuff. that’s kind of my thought,
liz farr
that’s that’s in alignment with what i think. i think that in the future, a lot of the debits and credits will just kind of happen. i think of it as an analogy to the first cars, where you really had to know a lot about how a car worked, how the engine worked, to get it to run. yeah. now you just get in, and you have your little key fob, and you press a button on the dashboard and and off you go. and if you have a tesla, then it will kind of drive you there yourself and entertain you, you know, not not completely independently, but close though. yeah, getting close, yeah. so i think that we’re on the brink of of a big transition in accounting, from the way it was that which was what drove me out of public accounting. but the changes are so exciting that this will i i’m hoping that this will bring a whole new generation of talent into accounting, that would
rebecca driscoll
be great. yeah, yeah.
liz farr
well, i want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your your very busy day and in between your kids school and getting work done. so thank you so much. rebecca, thank you. yeah. now, if listeners want to connect with you, where’s the best place to find you?
rebecca driscoll
maybe, i guess twitter. i’m i do hop on there at conscious. cpa is my. uh name on twitter, um, or in realize, if you’re a member of jason stats, realize group, i’ll see you in there. um, or you could always email me, uh, rebecca at conscious dash accounting.com.