353 Making The Hard Decision to LEAVE A Firm

Okay, this one's, this one's an oofer. Katie Healy's gone through a, a transition of, of kind of being everything for.

A small firm to making a really hard decision to go out and do her own thing.

I can relate to so many aspects.

Of her story and I was frankly stuck on this for a long time that like the latency between when I decided like this isn't going to be my forever thing, but finally built up the courage to decide like, this is what my next thing will be for me. Man, that was hard. I've had some conversations with, with Katie at conferences and I was like, this is just a story that people need to hear because there's so many people grappling with this exact thing right now.

This was a fun convo.

Super sharp. She's going to have so much success in doing her next thing. I think you like this one. Okay. Katie, thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

For folks who are not familiar with you, what is the, what's the 32nd Katie intro?

Well, I am a CPA. I've been in public accounting for 15 years. I most importantly, am a wife and a mom to a five year old daughter.

Nice. Yeah, we've talked kind of throughout the years, but like got sort of your latest story and I just, I feel like such a kindred spirit. I don't know, I feel like we kind of navigated such similar situations, kind of making a, like finding success in a firm but then just having to get to a really hard decision and all the fears of the people you're letting down along the way and how you balance doing what's right for you versus what everybody else wants you to do. And so to kind of set up that context, maybe tell us like your journey through the firm that you've been with and kind of how you got to where you are in your career today.

Yeah. So I started with the firm that I've been with for 15 years. I started there as, you know, just a entry level position and I've worked my way up by. We've grown exponentially. We started with like a staff of three and now we're at the stop of 11. It's pretty big. We have 1800 clients, like 3 million in revenues.

Did you start there out of school?

So I kind of did life backwards, so to say I went to college right out of high school and decided I did not love where I was going to college left and I actually got into accounting without a degree and working at a private golf club. And I, yeah, I did. And I really loved it. And so I was like, I gotta go back to school, school and get my degree. And I knew I was living in a really small town. I moved back to the town that I grew up in in Arizona. It's very small. And that was not the place that I knew I would have a career in. And so I went back to school. I actually went to online school and got my education through the University of Phoenix. And once I had gotten my degree, I was like, I'm moving. So I moved down to the Phoenix metropolitan area and that's where I've, I didn't actually go right into public accounting. I was in, I worked in the accounting department for property management company. But what was the catapult that got me into public accounting is in order to get my CPA license, I needed to work under a cpa. And so that's what got me into public. I like my friend said, you know, I know someone that's hiring, you should reach out to them. And I did. And here we are.

So is this the only public firm you've worked for?

Only one, yes.

Oh my gosh, the loyalty.

Yeah. And so the, the decision to leave has been very difficult. Right. Being at one place for 15 years and they're like family. So going from. So I've worked my way up over the 15 years and we're such a small, like family oriented firm that we've never really had titles or special roles. And so I'm like very technology savvy. And so I have worn many hats. I mean I manage the it, I train new staff, I hire staff, I deal with clients. I mean I, I wear very, I have a very integrated role. So. And it's a very traditional firm and I work and working was working just a lot. And I, you know, know, knew when I joined realize and saw what more modern firms are doing, I was like, oh my gosh, there's other options out there. And so, you know, that's what kind of got me to the point where I wanted to explore other options.

That being a high performer in a firm that size, like you do everything.

Like, yeah, pretty much. You.

I don't know if your experience was the same as mine. I, because I came up in small firms too, I felt like I was surrounded by a bunch of accountants. But then I got sucked into like almost filling all the gaps, like tech over here and systems over here and.

Oh, look guys, I found this new thing over here. We should try and pull this in.

And they're like doing the work. And I'm like, no, look. But like, before you know it, because in a firm that small, you don't really have redundancies of someone else coming in behind you. Like, you feel like you're kind of doing all that stuff at a certain point.

Oh, no, I don't kind of feel I was doing all those things, you know, like bringing in new technology, new software, new like everything. When I started, they were just barely starting to do like a paperless system. We're still not paperless, but far better than originally. Right. And then we, this year we finally got off of a server and we're 100% cloud based now. And like, those are all like, pushes that I've made. Like, hey, we need to modernize our firm a bit. And so.

Yeah, can I. Okay, sidebar on that? The whole paperful to paperless transition. Because I actually had. Somebody asked me this question just the other day and I didn't have a.

I didn't feel like I had a very good answer. For him, the question was basically, what.

Does my firm need to have lined up in order to make the transition to being paperless? And when I heard that, where my mind first went to was my situation. And I suspect your situation where you're like, okay, I see that this needs to happen. I don't know that anybody else around me quite sees that this needs to happen because they've been doing it this way for a decade plus and they really don't want to change for a person in that situation. And I think like, I'm. If I'm out of touch, I'm out of touch because I'm so far removed from being in firms that I'm a little bit more divorced from the emotions of it all than like, you are, where you're kind of just going out the door.

And so there's part of me from.

The outside that's like, think about if you're willing to put that whole thing on your back yourself for something you're building for somebody else. Like, that's kind of where I'm at now. You're like, you just did it and like, you're in the middle and you kind of have feet in both camps. How would you advise somebody like that who may be about to like, take on this monumental task?

Well, any, any technology change is, is hard in a firm because you're going to have the people that are completely against it. Right. And so luckily for like document management there they were using some form of paperless. But we still Have. And today, to this day, we still have a supply room full of paper files with nice stuff in it. Yeah, I don't know if I'd call it nice, but yes. And so I think, I mean, there's so many benefits, right? You, you can, anyone can look at a file without having to go, pull, pull it. Right. You can look at work papers from a prior year on a fly with a phone call with a client instead of having to go get a file. Right. And so it is, I mean, to get the information into a doc, a document management system is, Is a lot. Someone has to scan all the papers in, you know, or someone is going to be responsible for that duty. And if you have a big client base, it's a lot. Right. I think this was a long time ago, so I don't know exactly how the transition went to go. So 100%. Not 100%, but mostly paperless. So we have, we were originally. Our tech software that we use is Lacert and they had a DMS system that came along with Lacert well years ago. They launched the partnership with Smart Vault. And I knew we needed to be with Smart Vault. We needed to have this client portal for the clients to access.

I remember when Smart Vault was cool. Like, there was a time when, like, that was the thing.

Yeah, yeah. So we, we transitioned to smartphone and it was hard, it was a very hard transition just to get people used to the new system, how to do things, how to organize documents. And I mean, you want everything in a working order, right. You don't want it just thrown in there and try to figure out all the files. So I, I would say like, start little. So start maybe with your entity clients or start with your individuals and test it on a small, small group. Right. So if you're, look, if you're a tax firm, pick your smallest group of people or a handful of them and have them test a document management system, especially if it has a client portal. Right. To get feedback.

Do you think some of those big.

Like, super ambitious projects are kind of what ultimately gave you confidence? Like, like, like I can look back at a few of those big things where I'm. Like, there were situations where I was getting a lot of pushback, but I still knew that I was right and I still had to find a way to navigate all that. And I think those are like, very formative moments for me.

Yeah, I actually, I was prepared to tell you this that truly the, the, the reason I feel the change has been not as hard is because of the, the operation side experience that I have the technology set up. I mean, obviously we transitioned to Smart Vault almost three years ago. We transitioned to Carbon. That was painful. That was very hard going from computer based practice management to cloud based and transitioning everything over. Oh my gosh, it was like. Oh, it was, it was hard on me and it was really hard on the team to roll out and be open to the change. So. So I feel like software changes within a firm, right? So I have a whole, a big operational perspective of things because I've done the document management change, I've done the conversion to Carbon, which was very painful. Painful for me with a setup. I mean, I did everything, I set everything up and then we transitioned everybody over. It's a lot of work and it's very hard and I learned a lot and I think that prepared me to be able to go out on my own, knowing what I learned in these experiences, what I like. I definitely learned what I want and what I don't want. I don't want to have to go through a conversion, a practice management conversion again, because it is really painful and it took way longer than I anticipated. And you know, unfortunately we, we didn't go to Carbon immediately. It was Intuit's version of it. And, and so I'm so thankful that Carbon took it over because it's a hundred times better than it was when it was ran by Intuit. And it's just painful. And so I feel like the thing someone in my shoes could do is get your hands on the operational side, learn software, learn the IT things, take classes on learning, you know, new software, like what's out there. You. I mean, honestly, if I wouldn't have gotten my hands into these things within the firm, I don't know that I would be prepared to go out on my own because I can get the people. But there's also the office side that has to operate in order to effectively manage your business.

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Show notes to learn more.

What was the first thing?

I mean, I'm trying to think of like contextualizing. This is going to be landing for so many people who are in a similar situation to you. And the whole, like, what makes that just so emotionally challenging, I want to get into. But contextualizing that, what, what was the moment for you where like you first kind of got outside of that group think bubble of the firm? Because I think 95% of people never really emerge from that. I'm in this little tiny like ecosystem and I never go out and see things outside of that to get perspective.

Yeah. So I think really what changed for me was the first year I went to QuickBooks Connect, which was, gosh, I don't know, eight maybe years ago, seven years ago, something like that. And just seeing, meeting people, right. It's, it's really all about the community. Right. And putting yourself out there with people who are like minded like you. And you don't know what is out there unless you're asking. And in all honesty, the re. The realize group is truly what opened my eyes to know that I could most definitely do this on my own. I mean most definitely and even know that firms operated differently. I mean I was, I've worked in the small firm my entire public career and I don't, I didn't know what was out there. I mean my, I have friends within, within the firm that work there and they came from big, big firms so they have some experience. I don't. And I didn't know that. Gosh, there's so many options.

Yeah.

And, and better, you know, in my opinion, better ways of running a firm. So, so that there's a better work life balance. It doesn't have to be that traditional way. And I didn't know any different until I put myself out there.

So it's one thing to be, I don't know the person driving this change. And I went through like this, I don't know when I first discovered the world outside of my firm because it was 2018. 0con is what it was for me. Like that was when like my mind opened and then I went through this phase of like being a know it all. Because I could steal all these ideas from other people and I'm like, I'm just gonna take all these to my firm, we're gonna plug them all in. And some would work and some wouldn't, but I didn't like immediately go to, oh well, this means I need to leave or this means something else is a better opportunity for me. What were like the very beginnings of that. I don't know that feeling. And like I have to imagine like in my case there was a lot of resistance to that. Like I, I knew this inside of me, but I was like it. Because the notion of doing something that hard was just so scary.

Yeah. So you're meaning like the realization that I needed to make the change.

Yeah.

Like what, what came to it. Yeah. So I, I love, I like change. Right. I'm, I'm all for making changes within the firm for a better work life balance. Right. Work smarter, not harder has literally been my mentality and I have been the leader of that within the firm. And you know, I would say the, the point that it really, I mean I've been making changes in the 15 years that I'm there, but maybe not to the tune of where I would want the firm to be if I were the owner of it. And so experiencing what other firms can do. And I was like, well, maybe I can just do this on my own and realizing, like, I can just set this up to begin with from zero and do it the way I want to do it without forcing other people to change. And I think it's the change that people have to overcome, and that is very, very hard. And I mean, not to say that there's been no change because that's definitely not the case. There's been a ton of change within the firm, all for good, not to the, at the pace that I would like to see. So to say.

So you eventually came to the point where, like, I've, I've got to either go do something different or go, go do my own thing.

Yeah. What was life balance?

Oh, it was a work life balance. Was that.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Because I, the, the catapult was always like, let's do things differently within the firm to provide a better balance for everybody. Right. Never just for me, for everybody. And this last year has been probably the most challenging, challenging year of my entire career. We had one of the partners, her husband is incredibly sick and he. She stepped away completely from the firm to become 100% caregiver. So we, that happened in March of this year and this was, you know, there, this was going on prior to that, but March is when she stepped away mid tax season. A lot of work got moved onto the rest of the team and I, I think I just hit my. I can't do this anymore. I literally said, this is the last tax season. I'm, I'm working like this. It's. We're over capacity, we don't have the staff and I don't want to work like this anymore. And no matter how much change happens, I just don't think it's going to provide the work life balance I'm trying to achieve in my life.

This is the million dollar question. How do you stack those like, scales of the universe of. On the one hand you're like, I can be the hero here and everybody really needs me. And there may be all sorts of other things happening outside my control that makes them need me even more versus I got a kid at home, I got a husband. Like, how do you, how do you make that calculation? Like, ultimately, what does it come down to for you?

It was very, a very hard decision. It's, it was not taken lightly by any means. I mean, I love my team at work and, but I love my family more. And I, I knew I just could not do this anymore. It wasn't fair to my family that I'm working the kind of work that I'm working. And I, I, I just knew I, I couldn't do this. It wasn't fair to my, I mean, there is nothing worse than your daughter coming telling you as you're tucking her in in bed at night, mommy, please don't tell me you have to work more than night. You just got home from work or on the weekends, mommy, you have to work again. And I just didn't want that anymore. If I, if I had no children, I don't think it would matter as much. But now that I have children, my family is way more important than any job. Quite honestly, even though I love my job, I, I still love my job. My family is number one.

Yeah, that was, I remember talking to you about this and that was a big thing for me too, is like, there's something, there's something like universally grounding about having kids. Like you have this thing that matters more than all the other stuff. And it kind of puts everything else in perspective. How does, how does this play? Like, without getting too detailed, how does this ultimately play out and how do you do. The calculation of this is going to suck no matter what and it's going to hurt no matter what. But how did you come to a decision of how to do that, of.

How to make that, make the change? Yeah, so being it was very hard. I'll tell you. My husband was not on board initially at all.

Oh, wow.

He was not at all. It took some convincing because he one is not a fan of change. And my income is the income that mostly supports our family. And I would be walking away from something very steady to a lot of unknowns. You know, would I get enough money to coming in to support our lifestyle? Would we have to make changes to our lifestyle? Like, at first when I told him, like, I think I just want to go out on my own, he was just, he was not, he was not, he was not very happy. It was not that he wasn't happy, but he was just, it was a very hard sell, for sure. And once we got talking more about it and like I ran, I think the number one thing I did was I ran numbers right? Like real data. Like, here's how much accountant through and through.

Let me, let me show you the financial model.

Yeah, for sure. Let me, let me run the numbers for you. And I could see, like I needed to make X per X coming in per month to like still be where we're at today. And so when I did that, and I've had a side hustle for many years and so I, I already have money coming in from that. So if I have this minus what I need, you know, this is the change. And I said, this really boils down to like seven more monthly recurring revenue clients, right? That's not a lot. Like I can, I can do seven and like breaking it down to smaller amounts. And then that was like, well, this is more achievable. And it was more achievable for me to see it that way too, because it is scary. It is very scary walking away from something guaranteed. And so when I, when we looked at that together, I was like, okay, we can do this, I can do this. This is no big deal. And, and then the other thing set in is like, oh man, I'm really going to put the team in a pickle, right? Because I have such an important role within the firm and I don't want to leave them high and dry. And so I thought long about this, like how I strategically plan, like, how could I set the team up for success with my departure, right? I manage the accounting side of the firm. So I manage our bookkeeper and our, our reviewer. All I manage all that. So I have that to take into account, plus all of the technology stuff that I manage. I mean, so I'm like thinking in my head, okay, gosh, how am I going to do this? So the logical thing to me was to give two months notice because I couldn't give two weeks and be like, let me just train everybody and set everyone up for success in two weeks. It was just not possible. We're already short staffed, it's extension season and there's just no feasible way to get work done and also train, train people on the team. And so I just knew in my head two months was the number I needed to give.

I could tell you for me, like the moment, there was like a moment that I always, in every role that I've left, like, I built up the moment of telling that person that I don't want to disappoint more than anything else. Like there's all these other peripheral things and you're like worried about hosing this person and that person. But for me the like climax is that one person who's my boss or something like that that I'm going to have to tell that's going to be super disappointed. What was that like, building to that moment, like, what, how did that shake out? Like, was that just, I don't know as Challenging as you thought it would be.

Yeah. So it, I was, I, I wasn't nervous, so to say, to have the conversation. I was nervous for the reaction. Right. Because I knew it would come as a shock. I, I, I never talked about leaving, nothing like that. So I knew, I knew it was going to come as a shock and it did. It was very apparent when I, when I delivered the message and I kind of expected that anyways. Right. Like, I knew going in it was going to be a shock. And, you know, do I regret anything? Absolutely not. Like, I, I felt so much relief after telling, making this decision public. Right. You know, I was like, I, I felt, I felt a weight lifted from me because I've been carrying this decision and inside trying to strategically plan, you know, how I can set the team up for success, knowing I was leaving and then making the decision. And it was really hard because, I mean, we're like family. You know, I've been there for 15 years. They've seen me get married, they've seen me have a baby. You know, like, it, it's, they're, they're like family. And so you never, it's always hard delivering hard news to family. Right. And so it'd be one thing if it was someone I didn't care for. You don't really have, you know, the emotions involved with it, but it is someone I, I care about. And so, you know, it was, it was really hard. It was a hard decision and, you know, but I feel like we're in a, in a good space now with my duration here at the, at the firm. I, you know, I'm here to set up the team for success. You know, I've been trying to record loom videos for everybody on the tasks that I do and also train people one on one with the things that I do. So my intention was never to leave on a bad note and never to leave them high and dry.

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The Show Notes Today's episode is sponsored in part by liveflow gang. Liflow launched a new dashboarding platform and I got to have a play with it the other day. It's actually pretty darn cool. They've got loads of templates like they've always had live flow for context. In the past there were utility that connected your qbo, your Xero with your Google sheets, your Excel so that pull any like client data into there. Now they're doing the same thing but for dashboards. Bunch of dashboard templates you can swipe.

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Show notes I think that's anybody that runs a firm like that is their biggest nightmare is like exactly that. That like central super core person surprising you as you transition to doing your own thing and ultimately then have nobody to blame but yourself. Do you think about is there a different sort of environment you could foster that wouldn't lead to surprises like that that would maybe encourage more transparency so that if something like that was going to happen it wasn't a big ta da this is final sort of conversation. And maybe before that it's like a kind of here's what I'm thinking. Maybe like longer term planning sort of thing.

Mm yeah. So I would say the in my firm I would probably have specific roles for people so that you're all your eggs aren't in One basket, so to say. So if someone does step away, you're. You're only managing that one role instead of multiple roles. But I know it's hard in a small firm. Right. You have a small firm with, you know, a budget that you have, you know, for wages, and I get it. And. And in order to stay, I mean, you know, competitive, I feel like there are things that smaller firms have to do in house versus then out versus outside help for it. Right. And so I. I mean, I. To that tune. I do understand that, but I think the key for me would be to have strategic roles with everyone in the firm. So not one person is doing five jobs.

Yeah, very true. You know, somebody's going to listen to this and go out and start their own firm because of this.

I hope. I hope they do. You know, I. It. It is honestly been a hard decision, but the best decision that I could have made. I've been working on this for several months leading up to giving my notice, and literally so much opportunity is coming my way that I was not expected at all. And I'm really excited to see what the next six months brings. Honestly, I have. I've gotten a lot of great feedback and to the point where I'm pretty sure I'm going to start hiring somebody.

Wow. Geez. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

That.

That was going to be. My next question is like, there's a bunch of people listening to this who are, like, on the edge and, like, thinking about doing this thing and. But they can't see what's over that thing. You can just see a peek over it right now. Is. Is it what you thought it would be? Is it different than what you thought it would be? Like, what is that peak over the horizon for you? I know you said some, like, surprise work came out of the woodworks when you just said you were leaving.

Yeah. So it is moving a lot faster than I expected, for sure. I was not expecting. Expecting the. The. The clients that want to come on board. I. I was not expecting this. I was just like, let me get through. Let me, you know, start building. And it just. It's way, way different than I expected. Not in a bad way, just and definitely good. But I would say I have learned a lot from listening to your podcast, honestly, and I am not going to wait until I need somebody to hire them. So, like, I. I anticipate by, like, January I would need someone. Right. I'd rather hire them now, take the hit financially initially, but I know it's not, like, a permanent thing because literally, so Much work is coming in.

Cool. That's awesome. Um, let me. Let me wrap us up with a. With a kick in the shins here, because you've told me that you've always been super career focused. You've always worked a lot. Is there a risk that you go out and you do your own thing and you still work your ass off?

Yes, there is. But, you know, I feel like I have learned the word no really well the last, you know, couple years. And I already know my capacity of what I'm willing to work on. I have the number of, you know, tax clients that I'm wanting to. To deal with, and I'm strategically setting up my firm to work with the kind of clients that I want to work with that fit in the exact model that I want versus, you know, just taking anyone that walks through the door. I don't want that. And I think that's what's kind of different with me with starting up is I'm not hurrying for whomever just comes through. Right. If you fit my model, awesome. And I would love to work with you. If not, I'll refer you to someone else because it's just. It's not what I want. I don't want to be burnt out. I want to enjoy working with my family or being with my family. I want to enjoy my work, but also want to spend time with my family. Like, I want to go on field trips with my daughter. School. I want to. She has spring break. I want to be able to go on a spring break vacation, you know, when she is on spring break in March. And so I definitely know my limits, and I. They're hard limits, so they are non negotiables, and I am going to stick to them.

That's good. It's so easy to. It's so easy to walk out of a situation saying it's going to be about the family. And then you walk into the new situation and you're like, oh, well, now it's about this thing I'm building and my pride and this and, like, how quickly you can just stuff that in the couch. And it's just. You trade one set of problems for another. But I'm in your boat. I would much rather have nobody to blame but myself. Like, even if I didn't, even if I got it wrong on the first try, like, ultimately having that agency, I think is, like, it doesn't get any better than that. And I think a. A often overlooked, like, thing about accountants that is just really badass is we are not intimidated by entrepreneurship, I mean, we are, but like, on an entirely different level than normies. Like, you have a conversation with your spouse, it's like, exc, like doing your own thing. Excuse me? Like, I have no understanding of what.

That even is because I don't know anybody in my life that even does that.

And we're just like, you should see these knuckleheads. I work, I help a whole bunch.

Of them, and they're not as smart.

As you would think. Like, that's such a cool trait that we take for granted.

I know. You know, I have this awesome powerhouse of women in this mastermind group that I'm in. And literally they're all business owners. And they all have said they have not regretted leaving where they were to be where they're at. You know, you might not make as much money. And I'm okay with that. I'm looking literally for a lifestyle change, not a dollar value change. And if it comes at a cost of making less, I'm okay with that. I'm absolutely okay with that.

Out of curiosity, who's that? What type of person is that first hire going to be?

Probably a junior accountant that can help with. I actually have quite a few accounting clients because I have been doing a bookkeeping for quite a long time, long before I even started working at the firm. And so that's growing very quickly when my news got out. And so I will probably hire someone that can help with that kind of stuff. Initially, I actually enjoy the client interaction. I love, I love my clients. I love dealing with them. I love helping them. I love helping their businesses succeed. And I, I'm not in a position where I want to walk away from that yet.

Thank you so much for sharing your story. This is obviously, like, it's fresh enough to, where it's kind of a sensitive thing, but I think that's also what makes it super, like, meaningful for folks. So thank you for doing this.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. I, I'm glad that I can share this with everyone. I mean, I think it's just a matter of ripping that band aid off and doing it. I mean, worst case scenario, Rebecca Driscoll told me, she's like, worst case scenario, it doesn't work out. You can just go back and work at a firm. And I'm like, well, yeah, that's true.

Right?

Like that.

Yes. Like, there is no such thing as a worst case scenario. I, I, the framing I think of that as a lot is like me leaving a firm. What if the firm has to downsize what, do we have to let staff go or something like that? And it's like, it is such a good time to be an accountant. Like nobody is going to be left to high and dry. Like anyone will take you right back.

There's so much work that's, that's needed in the accounting field. And with a shortage of accountants, I know the job would be there if I needed it, but I am not in a position to throw in a towel in six months. Maybe after a year, I'd consider it. But at the trajectory things are going right now, I don't see this being in a problem.

Super cool. If somebody want to get in touch, is that a thing you'd encourage? And if so, where?

Yeah, I would absolutely be happy to chat with anybody. I've actually talked to a couple people that, you know, were interested in learning a little bit more about me and. And I absolutely would be happy to chat with others that are kind of on that fence of deciding, do I stay, do I go? The easiest way would be to connect on LinkedIn Katie Healy. Or you can visit my website, scaledaccounting.com and hit contact and reach out that way.

Very cool. Katie, thank you for doing this.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

All right, take care.

You too.