Mastering Your Niche in the Accounting World

The Young CPA Success Show: Episode 34

John Scott, Virtual CFO and Partner at Anders CPAs + Advisors, joins Hannah and Joey to discuss strategies for young accounting professionals to establish themselves as subject matter experts within their firms. They emphasize the importance of demonstrating interest in a niche, seeking mentorship, and mastering effective communication. Key takeaways include building strong client relationships, asking questions, and learning from mistakes.

Intro 00:00:00 Welcome to the Young CPA Success Show. If you're a young accounting professional, this podcast is your ultimate guide to navigating your early career. Join us as we share valuable insights, expert advice, and practical tips to help you kickstart your path to success and excel in the accounting industry. Let's embark on this exciting accounting journey together.

Joey 00:00:23 Well, I wanted to. I'm glad we were able to make this work, and I want to touch before, like kind of at the end to make sure we give a little plug for your podcast and talk about all the stuff you're doing with your niche, but where we thought this would be really interesting to get your perspective on is thinking a little bit about younger CPAs and those types of things, and how you can go about being a subject matter expert, or kind of finding your lane in a CPA firm to where you can eventually either run your own vertical, run your own practice, do those types of things, you know, kind of have some of that. If there's something that's very interesting to you as a practitioner, I think there's some very simple steps that.

Joey 00:01:08 I mean, obviously there's no substitute for like putting in the effort and putting in the work. But I also think I wasn't thinking about it in my early 20s about, you know, what are some things that maybe interest me? Do you know those types of things? That's where I thought we could spend our time today. Unless there's something else you wanted to chat about. No.

John 00:01:28 That's fine. I mean, I'm going to talk about what youngsters should do. I don't even know if we can say that early in their career to demonstrate their interest in a career.

Joey 00:01:40 That that's exactly where we wanted to go, because those were some of the questions I was going to ask is like, you know, how do you demonstrate an interest? How do you find a mentor, how do you do all those things? And also Bill Snyder said, youngsters, and that's canon now. So, I think that's okay to say on the podcast we can call them youngsters.

John 00:01:58 The HR folks less experienced.

Joey 00:02:01 That's right.

Hannah 00:02:03 I mean, they're synonymous. Sure.

Joey 00:02:06 So, why don't why don't we start there, like, let's go. Let's go in the Wayback machine. You know, when you started getting, you know, getting started in your career. what were some of the, some of the things that either a you did that you think other people should emulate in terms of demonstrating an interest in a niche or a vertical or something like that? are there things that you did or are there things that you wish you had done now that you've got, let's say, some more experience in the field, shall we? Yeah.

Hannah 00:02:37 So, if he can say youngsters, can we call him old? Is that how that works?

John 00:02:41 No, it's less experience. More experience.

Hannah 00:02:44 00000 okay, okay.

Joey 00:02:46 Oh, you can call him old. I'm not calling him old. You can though. I'm. I'm not seasoned.

Hannah 00:02:51 I can take John. Don't worry. I'll take it.

John 00:02:55 Old talk for somebody who needs a nap anyway.

John 00:02:58 To answer your question. I think early in my career, obviously things could have gone differently. And there are things in hindsight that I would have done differently. And I preach this to the younger staff all the time and to my own children, that you have to demonstrate that you care not only to those that you're working for at whatever career you've chosen, but also to the clients and customers that you work for. Every customer. Every client has to think that you are their priority. And we all know. They even know that you have many different clients, but they have to feel like when you're working with them that you are, they are your priority. And that starts with showing up. When you go into a supervisor to get the next task, showing up with a pad of paper and taking notes. And I can't tell you how many less experienced professionals will come in and just listen to what you say, or you'll be in a meeting like this and you don't ever see him taking notes.

John 00:04:00 And I will say, hey, the next time we meet, I expect you to have a writing utensil and a pad of paper and take notes, because I know that you have great retention. I know you're super smart, but you have to take notes so that you have something to refer back to. You're going to make mistakes. It's not the end of the world. That's how we learn. And I got admonished early in my career for using a pen for work papers. And the partner I was working for called me. And you can say I noticed you using a pen on these work papers. He goes, I make 50 mistakes a day. How many do you think you make? Use a pencil. Like, okay, I get it. He's right. Pencils have erasers so that you can correct those mistakes. And the most important thing about mistakes is it's okay to make mistakes. It's learning from those mistakes and not repeating them.

Hannah 00:04:55 Yeah. Well I think back I think about to, I think we've all probably experienced sitting in a doctor's office and having a doctor make us feel like we are their only patient in that moment versus just like rushing through, like trying to get through it, to move on to the next thing.

Hannah 00:05:10 And I guess I've never truly thought about how that truly does apply to how we look at our clients as well as like we are in that type of service industry as well. So finding those and sometimes that takes that that tough love of somebody telling you like, hey, show up with a pen and paper and like, let me know that you are paying attention in this moment and, and having that hard conversation, how people responded whenever you've said that to them, like, our most people like open like, okay, like I'll do it. Or have you ever gotten any pushback in that moment?

John 00:05:42 I never get any direct pushback. I'm sure that they go out of my office or off the meeting and they might mumble and groan about it, but they do start showing up with a pad of paper. And I think what you talked about, Hannah. About the doctor making you feel like you're valued. It's being in the moment and. Being just solely divided to. Who you're currently working with, whether it's a staff member, a supervisor or a client, you have to be there.

John 00:06:10 And I like to tell. Well, I try and train my children that on time is pine time. So, if you show up on time to practice or a game you're not playing or you're going to sit out for a while, so you have to show up for life ahead of schedule. But the important thing is when you're late, you're not late until you get there. Okay, so if you're running over with a client meeting, you still want to be in, you want to be present in that meeting. And then when you get to the meeting, the next meeting in your late, that's when you apologize. That's when you fall on your sword and say, I'm really sorry. I was in a meeting with a client and it took longer than I expected. You're not going to be in the habit of being late for every meeting. We've all been in that doctor's office. The doctor that overscheduled because people don't make things, and you show up 15 minutes ahead of your appointment, but then you wait a half hour after your appointment to go in.

John 00:07:05 That that could be one of two things. They either overscheduled because they know people don't show up, or maybe it's because they were spending time with their patients and they just have too many patients.

Hannah 00:07:18 Yeah that's definitely food for thought. So, you talked about your being gently corrected about using the pencil. What were some other gentle corrections that you feel like made a huge impact early in your career.

John 00:07:32 Well there were some not so gentle corrections. I mean, I went I once did a return for the managing partner of. We had a father and son set of clients. Both were bankers. Both were married to a woman with the first initial J. So, Jill and Jane and both lived in a on a similar street. So, I had the son's information from the year before with the dad's current information, and I came up with a bunch of questions. Did he change jobs? Did he get divorced and remarried? And my friend, who was a little bit ahead of me at the firm, was supposed to review that return.

John 00:08:15 Well, it ended up going to the managing partner because my friend was out of time. And I heard this happen because his office was too down for me. How much time did he spend on this? So, the point was, when I had those questions, I should have gone to my friend and said, hey, I don't get what's going on here because it looks like he's got a new wife, a new job in the banking industry, and he's moved. And my friend would have said, you idiot, come on. So that was on me for not asking questions and and nobody's. You should ask questions until people tell you that it's too much. Because the more questions you ask, the more information you're going to have, the better job you're going to do in your progression is going to be so much faster.

Joey 00:09:00 You know what? It reminds me of John. And this is we'll talk about our mutual love of the Chiefs and make sure that makes it onto the podcast so that we can talk about it.

Joey 00:09:08 But do you remember that old Snickers commercial from like 20 years ago, where guys spending all that time is getting the in the end zone just looking pristine, and his supervisor comes up and he's like, hey, it looks great. But who are the chefs?

John 00:09:21 Great googly moley. Yep. Yeah.

Joey 00:09:23 That's what that feels like to me. Where it's like, okay, I'm so into this. I'm so into it. And I just misspelled the thing because I wasn't taking that step back. And it's something that I felt earlier in your career. And I don't know when this started happening, but I think it's been around forever. Right. Your desire to prove yourself at the beginning, you come out and you're coming and you're like, I just want to show everybody that, like, I am this super proficient, super talented person. And so, you over do some things like that because you don't want to look like an idiot. You're right.

John 00:09:59 And when you're focused on that, you're basically on the forest floor looking at just those facts, right? Right.

John 00:10:06 When in reality you need to get to the point where you focus on those facts and then you step back. It's like, there's a there's an analogy out there of the kiwi and the eagles. So, the Kiwis, this little bird in the grasslands, doesn't know that the grasslands are on fire because it only can see a few feet around it. But the eagle is soaring high above the grasslands and can tell that there's a problem. So, when you're preparing a project and you're in the details of that specific project, you get to the point where you're good enough to step back and say, okay, does this make sense from a higher level when someone else or the client looks at this. Is this going to make sense to them and is it the right answer? And I think when we're in those details, we have to get to the point where we can step back and say, okay, does this, does this puzzle look right?

Joey 00:10:59 That's one of the things we're trying to solve here in our vertical is, you know, we're working on some work papers for tying out financial statements.

Joey 00:11:06  And one of the questions that we're trying to solve is, how do we get our staff and team members to feel more comfortable saying, you know, a lot of times it's, oh, I'll look at the work paper and I'll look at QuickBooks and I'll say, oh, they match. And then you're like, well, I'm done. But they're not asking the secondary question of yeah, they match but is it even. Right, right. You know, do we even know that like yeah. Does it make sense. And that is to your point about having a staff member demonstrate an interest in being maybe, perhaps more than a staff member, that person who comes up and says, hey, John, I'm working on the details here. And I see this, and I see this, but I don't really understand how they're working together. I feel like there's a connection, but I don't get it. Can you explain it to me? Like, when that happens to me, I'm like, yes, thank you.

Joey 00:11:55 Right.

John 00:11:56 They get it. They're asking those questions. They want to advance. And one of the things on financial statements, I think the work papers are great. You can tick and tie back to the number. Okay. We prove that out. But every time I get a set of financial statements that are the single year, it drives me bananas. And I say, look, I need this imperative because that for me, that's a way to scan down and say, okay, last year this time cash was about the same or it's a little higher. Our accounts receivable is growing. Maybe I need to look into that. What's the reason for that? While our payables don't look right at all compared to last year, and that two-year comparison can give you those trends and point you to where the problem areas might be. Yeah, of course, when you go through those statements with the client, you're going to highlight those areas and say, look, this looks out of whack. But we looked into it and it's exactly right.

John 00:12:48 And that's something we need to address internally.

Joey 00:12:51 Yeah, I can't say how many times I've been on a client call and said, hey, the big story here is income statement looks good, but we've had a lot of changing things on your balance sheet, right? We're looking at the relationship between AR and Whip and deferred revenue and cash and all these different things. And to your point, I had a guy tell me one time, if you can't figure out because your financial statements aren't organized properly, if you can't tell the story in the first couple of minutes of looking at the financials, you haven't organized them, right? Maybe there's too much detail that you can't see a trend. Or to your point, maybe there's one year of financials and not two, and it doesn't give you that place. Or if you have a forecast, maybe there's not a forecast to budget on there.

John 00:13:33 I'm glad you used the word story, because Hannah does a great job of telling the story of the financial statements. Clients are not typically accountants, or they don't have a finance background.

John 00:13:46 So, what comes out of QuickBooks is laser printed. It looks right to them, but in reality it's not right. So, it's incumbent upon us. And Hannah does a great job of this to tell that story so they understand it. Some of the best accountants I've ever seen will do it not only with the financial statements, but then they'll prepare graphs or KPIs that you can measure against the industry to show that, hey, here's in picture form how you're performing.

Joey 00:14:15 Well, and sometimes some of the best accountants can't do that. And that's the area where they're the ones who are struggling in the new world. As we move into accounting being less technical and more advisory, being able to make that, you could have the best accountant technically, but if that person isn't effective in communicating the story, they're not going to be effective in the new world of advisory.

Hannah 00:14:40 And that's something that takes reps, that takes practice, that takes doing it to your coworkers, that takes asking the right questions. And sometimes you just have to continue asking questions before you start to learn the right ones to ask.

Hannah 00:14:52 Sometimes it's just trial and error. Sometimes it just takes some time. I don't think any I don't I don't know that I've ever met somebody who initially in their first in their early in their career, who were asking immediately, just like knew, to ask the right questions. Like sometimes it just takes getting in there and getting your hands dirty and doing the work and making mistakes and learning from those mistakes. I feel like I've learned exponentially more from the mistakes that I've made than from the things that I've done abundantly well in my career. Ultimately. Like, I'm glad that that I've had both to be able to kind of guide my career along the way. And, John, for our listeners who don't know, John is the vertical leader for our local industry here, within the virtual CFO services at the firm. I also want to hear, like your path like from did you have an interest in in this vertical like early in your career? Like what was the path that got you here? And what could somebody early in their career do to express interest in that if they end up finding one that they really love and, and want to become an expert in something?

John 00:16:00 Well, I think your expertise should follow your interest.

John 00:16:05 And though it has to align with firm opportunities, right. So, in my case, it wasn't that I set out to be an advisor to lawyers, but because we were a mid-size firm in the Midwest, almost all of our referrals came from attorneys. So, we were used to working with attorneys and their clients. And we loved those referrals because typically our fees were below the level of the attorney fees, so they were not fee sensitive when we got there because our fees were going to be okay compared to the lawyer fees. And I met a very entrepreneurial attorney early on who had read the E-myth books, and he decided he wanted to work on his business rather than in it. And I worked with him for 17 years. I watched him grow from one metropolitan area to the entire United States and he did it not practicing law, but figuring out the secret sauce of opening up an area and making it profitable within six months by paying attention to data and metrics and advertising. And if something wasn't working because he was paying attention to the data, he would course correct right away and not spend 18 months doing the wrong thing to say, oh, I guess that was wrong.

John 00:17:24  It was an invaluable lesson in running a profitable law firm that I use with my other clients to help make suggestions for them to operate better. I also work with consultants that I don't have this expertise, so I work alongside consultants that can speak to the operational part of law firms. They're usually former attorneys who have done this in their own firm, and then at the end of their career, decided to go out on their own and consult with lawyers. So I never set out to be an advisor to law firms. It just aligned with what I was doing. And I did really enjoy working, especially with this entrepreneurial attorney. But with all attorneys, they're trained in the Socratic method so they can slay you with words. And once you figure out the cadence, and I'm not an expert in the Socratic method, but it does teach you to think differently. In fact, I'll tell a quick story about my daughter. we used to have some knock down, drag out debates about one day she came home and said, we can't wear Nike products because they Enslave Indonesian women to, sewing machines to make their products.

John 00:18:36 And I was kind of goading her a little bit. And I said, well, Kate, that's that's just good business practice. She got incensed, and I did it on purpose just to get a debate going. Once she went to law school and got the training that she got from being a lawyer. Our debates are civil, they're constructive. They're just so much more enjoyable now. I enjoyed getting her riled up and thrown over the edge. We just had a lot of fun with that. But now, I mean, she has swayed me on certain things. I think I've swayed her on certain things. And so, I enjoy that, that ability to debate in a non-aggressive manner. So, you're really helping each other learn the perspective of the other side.

Joey 00:19:26 John. There's a there's a nugget in there that I want to make sure it gets pointed out to the audience. And I think you do a great job of this as a consultant. The number one thing I think you can do to establish yourself as an expert in the room is understanding your client base and how they think and how they talk.

Joey 00:19:45 That's probably the number one thing, and piece of feedback we get with our new clients is we want somebody who knows our industry. We want somebody who speaks the way we do, who talks the way we do, who understands our culture. And to your point, what you did very well at the very beginning was you understood, okay, lawyers are trained in the Socratic method, or they're trained in a certain way of thinking. So, if I'm going to be an effective communicator and an effective coach to these people, I also have to be trained in this sort of way to be able to have those effective communications. And what I admire about that approach is that you're putting the impetus on yourself, saying in order to be effective. This is what I need to do to meet my clients here, not try to fit them into my way of thinking. I have to fit myself into their way of thinking, and I think that's a really important message for really anybody starting their career is like, if you've got a group of people that you want to work with, the number one thing you can do to get started is learn everything you can about them and learn how they communicate, how they talk, how they think are their buzzwords that that they use.

Joey 00:20:57 You know, calling taxes and stuff burden will make you sound really good to a construction person, because that's the industry term that they use.

John 00:21:08 Oh, great.

Joey 00:21:09 Yeah.

John 00:21:11 You know, the other thing I think young folks can do less experience. I gotta I gotta stop with that young and old thing. Less experienced folks can do is show up and be available because, yep, when we hire people in the accounting profession, they're smart. Okay. They're on their way or have passed the CPA exam. These are not. There are a few C students out there, but they are not people who don't work hard and are not smart, but they don't have a full plate. And being available and showing an interest will get you opportunities to work on new projects. And then as you succeed in those projects, the people you're working for will have more confidence. You'll become their go to person for a certain type of project. And then you want to continue to say, I'd like to seek more opportunities.

John 00:22:03 I don't just want to be a pension benefit plan expert. I did that for a while, didn't really like it, but the firm had a need and it gave me some relevance in the firm. I did pass it on. And that's the other thing. As you become an expert, you become very comfortable with that, right? But you need to continue to improve and push yourself out of your comfort zone to do higher value type things for the firm and your clients. That's how you progress by pushing work down that you're comfortable doing, and you're really good at and moving yourself up that value food chain within your organization.

Hannah 00:22:43 And you mentioned your client who read the book E-myth. And I think that's one thing that has been incredibly valuable from for me in my career is reading books, reading books that my clients are reading, not just that, like make me a better like in in my accounting or even personal development books, sure, but ones that I know that my clients are looking to, that they're reading, that they're trying to trying to to structure their businesses off of.

Hannah 00:23:08  I think that also helps to whenever I'm going now, whenever I'm going into conversations with them to be able to understand, like how they're thinking of something and how they're looking at something, and you know, what their plan might be based on, the guidance that they're looking to in books and whatever that might be. And I think that can be applicable to any industry that you want to focus on, is learn how your how whatever the business is that you're working with, how they think, how they're looking at their business, the lens through which they look at it, I think will be incredibly helpful. Whether you're doing a tax return, whether you're doing, CFO type services. for that person, I, I found that to be incredibly valuable.

John 00:23:50 It demonstrates your expertise in their industry and it demonstrates the fact that you care about them. Everybody wants to feel cared about. And as I said earlier, each client wants your soul undivided attention. You have many different clients, but it's incumbent upon us to give them that attention when we're working with them so that they feel like we care.

Joey 00:24:17 Well, I think too, there's, you know, speaking of not just stuff with clients, but also amongst internal team members. Right? A lot of times, you know, especially early in my career, one of the things and Hannah, you do a great job of this. it's good. The number one thing I think you can do is say yes to things, right? Especially if a, you know, a superior or a partner or somebody who's above you in the organization says, hey, Hannah, do you want to. Do you want to come take a look at this? Like, thanks for preparing this spreadsheet. Would you like to sit in on the meeting where we go over it? Oh, yeah. Saying yes to that opportunity is the number one thing you can do. And, you know, I've done this with certain staff members and some say no. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. That's great. But the ones who say yes, I'm immediately more invested in them.

John 00:25:09  And if the reason for saying no, if the first thing that comes to their mind is my plate is full, if someone's asking you to step up and do something else, then you need to look at your plate and say, okay, what can I push down? What am I what? What task am I doing that I'm already beyond that could help someone else develop. And that's how organizations grow and thrive, because they're constantly pushing down responsibility and then seeking additional responsibility so that you can keep growing in your career. And that's a healthy organization that is utilizing leverage and allowing people at the lower, less experienced level to make mistakes. And we train them so that they can move up as well in their career. Yeah.

Joey 00:25:54 And it you know, I've had people ask me too, you know, what was the number one thing you did to start your consulting career. And it's really simple. I got to sit in on a, on a very successful business owner, talk to other successful business owners.

Joey 00:26:08 And I did that for two years. I sat in 200 meetings that were eight hours long. maybe not that many, but it's like 150. But it was a substantial number of meetings over a two year period and being in the room if you're actively listening and actively participating and trying to connect. Oh well, I created this workbook. Let me see how this this guy's going to use it to drive this engagement forward. If you're actively investing that in making those connections, it won't take long until you're starting to tweak the way you're doing the workbook because it's like, hey, I noticed you did something a little bit different here. I changed the way we did this. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't. Let's talk about it. But you'll be surprised at how quickly you start to pick that up and then how quickly that, you know, partner or superior review is going to start letting you run with it. Yeah.

John 00:26:57 Once they trust you, they're going to start letting you do more and more and more.

John 00:27:00 And you're going to continue to make mistakes. You're going to make a mistake with the client. You're going to learn more from that. Then, making a mistake internally internal is a safe space, right? You can make that mistake. The world doesn't know when you make a mistake with a client. that's impactful. That's when you're going to say, that's never going to happen to me again.

Hannah 00:27:22 Well, listen, there's a curse and a blessing to be in a yes girl over here. Like, I've learned a lot by being a yes girl and able to sit in rooms and listen and to learn. But now, like late, I guess I would say I probably started to wrap my arms around this, probably in my late 20s, is that I there are times that it is physically painful for me to say no to something because I want to help. I want to listen and learn. Like you have to be able to recognize those boundaries. And I really like John that you said, you know, recognize whenever you know it, why you're why you feel like you might need to say no.

Hannah 00:27:57 And if that is because you're too busy, delegate. Look at your processes, see where there can be improvements in those processes. Because I don't think I did that enough early in my career. So, it was a struggle to get out of the cycle of just like I would say yes to so many things that I would just like to work until midnight to get it all done. Like I would figure out a way to do it because I didn't want to let somebody down. So there there's got to be a balance in that. Two is yes. You want to grow and yes, you want to learn, but you need to do that in a very healthy way too, in recognizing where you where you can improve, to be able to say yes to the things that really will help you learn and grow, versus just saying yes to all the things because you know, you don't know what might, you know, end up being what sticks out to you. So, I think that's an important takeaway for I wish somebody said that to me earlier in my career.

Hannah 00:28:50 Certainly for sure.

John 00:28:52 Sometimes the world just has to teach you that. That's right. Get back to work life balance. I mean, the profession and all careers have changed in that the folks that are coming in to professions today do not want to work 80 hours a week. And I think some of that is very healthy because you have to be able to be where you are at work but then go home and be where you are there. The pendulum is constantly moving back and forth. I just think it's important that you, you can still say yes, as long as you negotiate with your supervisors to say, I'll say yes. I would love this opportunity. There are some things on my plate that I think we need to push down, and I guarantee you they're going to embrace that conversation and say, that's great, because I really want you to do this. Let's figure out a way for you to do it and not have you work 80 hours a week.

Joey 00:29:53 I think that's the number one thing that less experienced people need to hear from their more experienced people is, you know, I and I had someone say this to me and this was like the mind.

Joey 00:30:05 There's a there's a word for it that I can't use on the podcast, but everyone knows what it is that I had to get over was there certain things where I was like, is this the best use of my skill set? And the response was, Joey, quit being lazy, am I response? You know, I think had I had a little bit more experience, we could have had a better conversation saying, I'm not being lazy. I'm saying I'm the controller of an organization. You don't need me doing bank reconciliations. That's not the best use of my time. That's not the best use of my skill set. And that's not the best use of your investment, right? We can figure out a way to have some other things happen here. But because of that, I was so hesitant to go out there and, you know, explore some of those opportunities of what would it look like and, and what value could I provide to this organization if some of this time was freed up and we could do some other things? And that's where I really do think that's the hardest thing.

Joey 00:31:01 I think young, you know, less experienced people need to get over is like delegation is not a bad word. That's a great word. You can't abdicate. But delegation is fantastic, right?

John 00:31:13 And I'm glad you do. The distinction between abdication and delegation. Delegation is something you collaborate with your supervisors on and pushing work down. And when we delegate and train the younger staff, the less experienced staff, I'm going to beat that out of me. Then we are training our replacements, which allows us to do higher level things and advance in our own career, and it's helping them advance too. So, you know, when you first give somebody something, you show them how to do it, and then you do it together, and then you watch them do it and you review it. So, it takes about three times, if you know, for them to get it. But then over time you begin to trust and you're still responsible for what they're doing. You're still reviewing it. But you know what their strengths and weaknesses are.

John 00:32:00 And you take a risk assessment, and you spend the time on their weaknesses because you trust in the other areas. And so over time, those weaknesses become strengths of theirs, and then they can become more independent of your direct oversight. But people don't leverage because they don't want to spend the time to train, or they don't trust that anyone can do it the way they do it. Well, they're never going to grow because they're limited by their own capacity to do, whether it's a product or service to do that. If you think about it, if you let's say you bought a sandwich shop franchise and you had one, we really bought yourself a job and you're in there managing employees, making sandwiches. But if you had ten of those because you had trained some managers to go run those stores, now you've got an investment. And that's the distinction between a job and a career. If you have a job, you go to it and you're not all invested in it, but you go to it and you do the bare minimum.

John 00:33:07 You get a paycheck. If you have a career, you want to become a higher up, a responsible person in that organization or even an owner of that organization, and you want to help grow it. You're not just feeding yourself anymore, you're feeding the folks that work for you as well. So, the owner feeds himself second after he feeds the employee group. And so, if that's what you want, then having a career is more important than having a job. And I don't care what the profession is, it's a it's a mindset that you take to that job to turn it into a profession.

Joey 00:33:48 So, I have I have it's kind of I guess it's like a quite a strategy question, but more just kind of a navigational type question. There are naturally going to be some members of our audience who have a desire to eventually make that leap to potentially owning or partially owning a part of their practice? What's a respectful way for somebody who's earlier in their career to broach having that conversation with someone like you, who is a partner of the firm? Well, that's the best way to go about having that conversation.

John 00:34:26 What I always enjoyed was when someone came in and said, how do I get to the next level? I would point them back to the manual that said, okay, go look at the duties for the next level. And then I want you to write down where you are now compared to those duties. And then six months from now, I want you to write a case for how you progressed to doing those duties. In many times, you have to do the job before you're awarded the title. And so, people that want to move up and seek my counsel, I say, okay, let's go get the manual. What does it take to be a manager? Where are your abilities now compared to what we expect, and what do you need to work on in the next six months? And the next time we go to a review, I want you to build a case as to why you should be manager and you're going to tick off, hey, here are what you expect from a manager. Here's what I've been doing the last couple of months, and we'll continue to do.

John 00:35:21 I want to continue to grow. I'm showing an interest in my career, and I'm taking away any argument that you could have for not promoting me, because I'm doing everything that you're expecting at that next level.

Hannah 00:35:35 Yeah. It's literally a blueprint for what you need to do in order to get to the next level. And those are the things that you can control. I've always been this way, whether it's reading books or delegation or whatever it is. Like if there's something that I can control, I want to be able to control it. And that is one of those things that in your career, you can, you can, you can control yourself in terms of looking at that, at that list of duties, seeing what you're doing, making sure that you are following the plan because I love a good plan. Like give me a good plan. Give me a good goal, give me something that I can work towards. Because sometimes it's just hard. Especially whenever you're just in the weeds and you're just going through the motions and you're just churning things out to lose sight of the things that you can, can control.

Hannah 00:36:21  So, I love that you pointed that out, and I love that approach of looking at it from that perspective to see like, hey, like, then they have no reason that they're not communicating with you, that it's a performance thing or, you know, whatever that is, there's literally no reason that that you wouldn't be able to get to where you want to go. So I like breaking it down that way.

Joey 00:36:43  Well, I think there's also a natural fear too, of, you know, again, our old our old friend Mr. and Mrs. Impostor syndrome comes into play where I think the number one thing I've always been concerned about is like, hey, I see myself taking this path, but what if they don't see me taking this path? That's a really good way to kind of level set those things. And it gives you a data point. Right? I'm always looking for data points like give me a data point to reference where I am on this map that, you know, we like to think is linear but is not linear.

Joey 00:37:15 It zigzags and goes all over the place and then maybe takes a big circle around where you end up being. At the end of the day, it's not. Nothing in this career is ever linear that way. but it gives you a data point and gives you a place to say, okay, here's where I fit in based on the metrics that you've given me. And that's a place to start the conversation. So, I really like that approach.

John 00:37:36 Too, right. If you seek that feedback, you can see if your expectations and what you think aligns with what your supervisors think. And if they don't, you've got some areas to work on.

Joey 00:37:49 Yeah. Well, it also too, I think there's something to know too. I think a lot of times we naturally in the beginning of our career think, oh, well, that job is just the same job but just a little bit different, right? When in reality, you know, being a director level or higher in an organization is a very different job than what it is earlier.

Joey 00:38:10 You may not even want that. You may think you want it, but you're like, I don't, you know, I'll use me. For example, I just got done talking with one of our directors about, you know, kind of what my role entails from like a travel perspective. And I was like, I'm not the best traveler.

John 00:38:27 because you drive.

Joey 00:38:27 Hard to work really hard to drive places on a, on a moment's notice. So, you know, that's something that we've kind of had to navigate. But, you know, if there's a role in the organization that I'm looking at and one of the job responsibilities is you're going to have to travel, you know, one out of every five weeks to go to a thing that's probably not the best role for me. And having that understanding at the beginning is, is much more beneficial than waiting until the end.

John 00:38:55 In my opinion, communication is key because if your organization knows that and they're sitting around saying, okay, we need somebody that can travel every five weeks, well, that's not Joey.

John 00:39:06 We're going to find something else for him to do because he's valuable. But I'm not going to approach you and say, hey, we need you to do this. And then you're going to say no because it doesn't align with my situation. Then there'd be some hard feelings there. But since you've communicated that, then we're not even going to approach you about that.

Hannah 00:39:27 Well, speaking of travel, we are not just accountants, and we like to talk about this towards the end of our shows because we we're more than that outside of our careers. And, and I know, John, that you are a traveler. You do like to travel. I love following your travels. So, I want to hear about what has been your, your favorite vacation travel experience, that you've had to date?

John 00:39:55 Well, I would say my favorite was the most recent. I loved Ireland a few years ago, then I went to Scotland, I love that. This past May we went to Italy, and I was prepared not to like it.

John 00:40:08 Okay. My youngest had spent a semester in Florence, Italy in college. The day he wrapped up we met him in Rome for 11 days. Italy is fantastically beautiful now. My favorite parts were the more rural areas where you had family restaurants and less touristy restaurants. The scenery is fantastic. I don't even like red wine, but the red wine was good. Oh wow. The food was great. So that was probably my most favorite, but it's also the most recent now. There was a little hiccup in that. When we came back, our flight out of Rome was delayed five hours, which meant we missed our connecting flight in Dallas, and I was scheduled to go the next day for work to Denver for a conference. In fact, you flew into Denver that next day. Yeah. for a different conference. And because we missed our flight on Saturday, we had to get up early and get a flight on Sunday. I had four hours between flights, so I went home and took a nap.

John 00:41:11 My wife did some laundry. I woke up repacked, went back to the airport and went to Denver. And it was a, you know, so from Denver, from Saint Louis to Italy is a seven hour difference. You add another two to go to Denver. It was a nine hour difference. My sleep was off. I was waking up at three in the morning. I was tired in the afternoon. I'm like, okay, the next time this happens, there has to be a couple of days in between.

Hannah 00:41:36 Yeah. That's brutal. That's like, I feel like that's probably has to just be a blur in terms of that travel time span, because like, you had to have been just running on fumes.

John 00:41:46  Well, and I was scheduled to speak at this event. Now I didn't get the best time slot. I got the Wednesday concurrent lunch session and Wednesday being the last day of the conference. So, I knew it wasn't a great time slot. But when I got there, they had printed out a printed brochure in June, and I looked at it and it said I was speaking Monday at 1145.

John 00:42:11 But wait a minute, I thought I was speaking Wednesday. I could have done it, but it was kind of an oh boy moment because I thought, oh, I'm still in this wacky sleep schedule. I thought I had till Wednesday. Now it turns out the printed materials were printed in June of the year before, and so they hadn't set the schedule. The actual schedule was correct and what I thought. So, I did have till Wednesday when I got, you know, half the people had left the conference already. And I got, you know, ten people in the room. But it was fine. It was a good talk and the ten people were engaged. So, there was I will have a buffer next time.

Joey 00:42:52 Less than the one time I Flew out of Rome, which is a story for another podcast. But there was we had a similar incident where the French air traffic controller group. Yeah, they went on strike because their football team got bounced out of the 2010 World Cup a little earlier than they wanted.

Joey 00:43:09 So, to get out of Rome, we had to fly all the way around France.

John 00:43:14 Oh boy.

Joey 00:43:14  And that was one of the last times I got on an airplane, because flying over the Alps was not awesome for someone who is a little nervous to fly, but that always cracked me up because I was like, I feel like everyone's delayed getting out of Rome because the French are mad about something. In this case, they were mad their football team got beat. I think they got beaten like the round of 16 or something. It was way too early. So, they're like, we're not going to work tomorrow so no one can fly over France. Oh boy.

Hannah 00:43:38 Dramatic French.

Joey 00:43:40 I know great croissants though. That's right. I have to give it to them.

Hannah 00:43:45 Awesome. Well, John, thank you so much for coming on our podcast chatting through this. This is so incredibly valuable. If our listeners want to connect with you outside of this podcast and just want to pick your brain, ask you some questions, maybe they want you to expand more on something that you talked about.

Hannah 00:44:00 What is the best way for them to connect with you?

John 00:44:03 reach me on LinkedIn. John C Scott, CPA or on the websites, summit virtual CFOs by Anders or Andrew, cpa.com. Happy to talk to anybody less experienced in their career to talk about, you know is public accounting right for them. Do they want to progress. You know it's okay if they don't. And some people change their mind. I mean one of my better partners, is she's younger than me, less experienced than me, but she's very experienced. She kind of took a time out and said she had three children, and she said, I want to work part time and she did that until the kids were more independent and in high school. And then she re-engaged, and she's got great practice and she's on her way to retiring as a equity partner of the firm.

Hannah 00:44:55 That's awesome. That's incredible.

Joey 00:44:57 Well, I also want to plug your book, too. You've got a book coming out soon. If anybody is interested in doing the legal side of things.

Joey 00:45:03 How's that progressing?

John 00:45:05 The book is now published by Kindle and you can find it on Kindle Amazon. It's called Judicial Dollars and Cents by John Scott, and it also has reference to Jody Grandin, who wrote the original book for digital ad agencies.

Joey 00:45:21 Cool. Well, John, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure. can't wait to refresh on this in a little bit. And hopefully we got some folks who asked some great questions of you and of us as well, that maybe we can chat about in the future. Great.

John 00:45:32 Thanks for having me.

Outro 00:45:34 If you're a young CPA looking to develop in their careers, we're always looking for great people. Visit our website for remote work opportunities with Summit Virtual CFO or find all our open positions at Anders CPAs and advisors.