Bill Hanna, CPAAccounting Leader Driving Financial Excellence

I am that mouse! Are you??

23 Aug 2026 · 2 min

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1:33

In this short motivational video, Bill Hanna, CPA, opens with a favorite quote from the film Catch Me If You Can about two mice that fall into a bucket of cream. The first mouse gives up, while the second mouse struggles, eventually turning the cream into butter and crawling out. Hanna declares himself the second mouse, using the story as a metaphor for his own immigrant experience. At 19, he left Egypt for the United States, borrowing $2,000 for his flight and initial living expenses. He worked a $5‑an‑hour job for a year to repay the loan, saved for college without any external funding, and eventually built a professional career as a CPA. Hanna distills this journey into three actionable lessons: work hard, learn continuously to work smart, and regularly step back to view the bigger picture. He ends with an encouraging call to the audience to persist, believing in their ability to turn their own “cream” into butter.

Chapters

I want to read you a quote from a movie that I love. The movie is Catch Me If You Can by Leo DiCaprio. And there is a quote in that movie when his dad goes up on the stage and he receives some kind of award. And he says, 2 little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that he eventually turned that cream into butter and he crawled out. Ladies and gentlemen, as of this moment, I am that second mouse. I love that quote very much because it represents part of my life. When I was 19, I came from Egypt to the US, and just to get here, I had to borrow money from a friend of a friend. I borrowed $2,000 for the flight to get here and the first maybe month in terms of apartment and food. And it took me like a whole year to pay back this person working at a job making $5 an hour at the time in the year 2000. So it took me a lot of time to get my life together. I had to save money to go to college. No, no one paid for college for me. So all I'm saying is that all of your hard work, all of your struggle right now, just like in the story, all of the struggle that turned the cream into butter so you can crawl out. Work hard, keep your head down, learn as much as possible so you can work smart while you work hard. And always take a step back while you're working hard and look at the bigger picture to Think how you're gonna get out of that bucket of cream at the end of your hard work. So keep at it. I believe in you.