The Freedom & Profitability You Desire Are Achievable w/Dawn Brolin, CPA, CFE

Speaker A: Everybody, it's Dawn Brolin here, your designated motivator. And am I not fired up for workflow con? Come on, are you kidding me? What a time of year to get our stuff together. I say that very graciously because this is an awesome workflow con. We're going to keep it pg, if you know what I mean. Those things that you want for your firm are achievable. And today and tomorrow, you're going to experience some conversations from some of our most amazing leaders in the world of workflow. And I know for you, as you're sitting here today getting ready for another educational series, what I want to stick in your brain is listen. Not only should you come to this workflow con ready to go and ready to experience what you need to push you and your firm forward as we move towards the end of 2024 and into 2025, that those things that were painful, those things that you were like, oh, if I have to go through this again or this process broke or, uh, this part of this thing broke and you need to change those things, that's what we're here to do here in the next couple of days. Now, one of the things that makes me the most crazy is when people come to a workflow con, or they go to a conference or they watch a webinar, they enjoy the information, they enjoy the materials and they enjoy the presenters. And that's great, we want you to enjoy those things. But what I want to see you do is take it to the next level. It's time for you to take control of your business and move it to the next level. Not just for you, right, not just for your team, but also for your clients. And you mostly owe it to yourself. Okay? If you are a firm owner, that means you have, ah, put in blood, sweat and tears into what you have done. And I know this firsthand because myself as a firm owner, I've been through the blood, sweat and tears. So hopefully over the next couple of days, you're going to get some nuggets of information that resonate with you, that get you motivated to do something different. Because at the end of the day, it's all a mindset. We know this, I speak about mindset all the time. And what happens and goes on between these two things here, these, uh, these idea escapers, I call them, what happens in here is where you are successful or where you are failing. And that means to give yourself some positive talk, give yourself some motivation, but most importantly, give yourself a, uh. Why, why is this important to You. Why is your firm important to you if you haven't defined that yet? You're way too far. You're way too far back. Let's get that defined here in the next couple of days for you, right? Because at the end of the day, this is about you. This is about what you can do to improve your processes. And one process I'm going to do right now is shut off the email, because the ding ding is going to make all of us crazy over the next few hours that we have a conversation. Right, Shahram? Um, just saying. We're going to talk about over the next couple of days, using frameworks to grow your firm. Now, why are frameworks so important? Because, uh, when we don't have good frameworks, we don't have good boundaries, we get ourselves in trouble. Okay, so thinking about through those workflows, what makes sense for you? I always think about a couple of little tips when it comes to framework. And boundaries is one of my big ones. We've got to set boundaries in order for us to be successful. What does that mean? A, uh, simple. Here's a simple example. This is one thing that I used to wear all the time. You see this thing? Anybody have one on right now? This is called an Apple Watch. Some of you may have a different version of it, but it's an Apple Watch. What does this thing do for you? What it does is it alerts you every time you need to know something. I found that this was a bad idea for me because when the phone would go off or there was a phone call or there was a text that was coming through, or there was whatever. Whatever apps I have notifying me of things, this was a big distractor. I had to take that off. I had to take that thing off when I'm, um. When it's not a time to be distracted. I'm somebody who believes in boundaries when it comes to your calendar and blocking time. Blocking. You know, I do a lot of webinars. I do a lot of client calls. I do a lot of all kinds of stuff. If I don't give myself the hour block in the middle of the day to take a break, whatever that looks like for me. It could be take a walk, take the dog for a walk. Could mean grab some lunch. Could mean, you know what, I want to catch up with my mom, whatever, check in with Emily, doesn't matter. But I knew that I needed to set some boundaries to allow my mind to be clear in order for me to perform at my best when I need to be on and so sometimes we need to think about that. So when you are planning your workflow and the way you operate, setting some boundaries within that workflow can be important. Again, it's all about having a mindset. And you're going to talk about people who are solo success, optimizing your schedule for a 15 hour workweek. I'm all for that folks. You better pay attention on that one. I'm not going to mention every single presentation today, but that one is an eye catcher. I know Dawn Brolin likes to work four hours a day. I'll go crazy and do five once in a while. But I really don't like to work a, uh, seven, six, seven, eight hour day. I like to be fresh and on from four to five hours a day where I can be productive. Do you know what workflow does for you? It creates productivity. People will say, oh, uh, you know, tax season so busy, that's your choice if you want to make tax season busy or not, which is great. Again, it's your mindset. This is for you. These two days are for you. What do you want your next tax season to work to look like? Now, it doesn't matter if you're a bookkeeper, doesn't matter if you're a tax preparer, doesn't matter if you're both, doesn't matter if you're an elephant, doesn't matter if you're an ant, it doesn't matter. Whatever you want that tax season to look like for you and, and, and the rest of your year is going to depend on how you establish and decide on what your workflow is going to look like. I'll give you a great example of a poor workflow. Dawn Brolin taking control over a new client onboarding. So we have a really well designed client onboarding process and the bulk of our clients are going to be onboarded for tax and other things will flow from there. Maybe there's bookkeeping, things like that. But when I take my workflow clearly defined and outlined, who's in charge of what? The minute that I break that workflow is the minute the powerful accounting becomes non productive, which means we become non profitable. Okay, this girl doesn't want to be busy. This girl wants to be productive. Because without that, we're not going to be profitable. The minute that I step in the middle of a, uh, workflow where I don't belong is where I come into some troubles. Now for those of you who are solos, you're going to be your own worst enemy because you're in Charge of everything. But are you still following the workflow that you established for client onboarding, for tax preparation, for month end closes, whatever the case may be, with structures going to give you that standardized process, all those procedures are going to give you a total boundary as to how your workflow is going to happen. Now understand that sometimes we set a certain workflow and we realize, ah, uh, we need to do this step before we do that step. No problem. The key is at the moment that that happens where you notice there's a workflow, I tell Nicole, back off, we got a workflow problem here, we back off, hands off the keyboard, we gotta talk about it. Because unless we invest the time in the workflow ensuring that we are all on the same page, and again we're just three people here. But when one person goes off the rails of the workflow is when all confusion begins. And that can be whether you're a, uh, solo with three people, 10 people, 20, 30, 50, it doesn't really matter how many people are involved, it's when you're setting and establishing those boundaries. So I think through tearing down the wall workflows for bookkeeper and tax preparer collaboration. Thank you for that. Because the synergy of the workflow between the bookkeeper and the tax preparer is going to cause either a very positive relationship or it's going to create a very negative relationship. And I can only imagine as the tax preparer, I want that relationship to be seamless. Why? The better the bookkeeper does at their job and their workflows and the ways they manage their financials for the clients and they get the documentation, they've got I's dotted and T's crossed, the easier it is for me, number one, to advise the client. Maybe we're doing tax estimates, maybe we're working through pass through entity tax, whatever it may be, with the books being up to date on a regular basis and that workflow of the bookkeeper that happens to be tied directly to my work as the tax preparer and maybe the advisor, without the bookkeeper and their good workflow, we have a train wreck happening right in front of you. And I will say the same for tax preparers. Tax preparers, if you don't have a good workflow on how you're going to finish up and follow up on books. For example, if you're doing a tax return for a client and you've got your bookkeeper who's done their job and you're the one handling the whole depreciation, or maybe there's Adjusting entries to maybe moving distributions to loan to shareholders, or maybe there's capital gains on shareholder distributions. I don't know. All kinds of crazy stuff that can happen when the tax return is actually being prepared. It's our responsibility, tax preparers, to make sure we do one of two things. We provide those adjusting entries to the bookkeeper for them to make, or secondly, we make them ourselves in the books. Everybody has their own opinion. I'm not giving opinions here. I'm just telling you how it's got to work. Something there has to happen. Why? Because at the next year, you go to pick up that S Corp tax return, and that balance sheet doesn't match the prior year, and you're the preparer. You're going bananas. You're going bananas. We know this bookkeepers. When the tax preparer doesn't provide you the journal entries, and so you're trying to match up the 10, maybe you're somebody who's looking at the tax return and matching it up and maybe having some conversations with the client. We have to be in synergy, and that means both sides of the workflow have to be working. How are you going to communicate? What does that workflow look like? How is the bookkeeper going to communicate with you that the books are ready and good to go? Is that going to be done in your financial sense, in your workflow to say, hey, shooting off an email or a client task or whatever it may be to say, hey, these books are ready to go. Tax prepare. Go get them now. You're a hero bookkeeper. When those books are ready early in the year, when they're. When they're done. So there's no extensions being filed. That's a hero to a tax preparer. Right? And. And for the bookkeepers, the tax preparer who prepares the turn timely, and the. The clients are all happy. We're all winning in those situations, right? So thinking about that freedom and that profitability, how much do you want to work? Clearly define, by the way, how much do you want to work? Well, uh, Brolin, there's no way. There's no way. I'm, um. I'm working 40 hours a week. I'm busting my tail. I've got so much work, and your hair is on fire. Why? There's a reason why your hair is on fire. You either have. It's been set in great boundaries. Setting great boundaries to make sure you have time to get your work done. Are you in the office for 10 or 12 hours a day? Why are you doing that? Do you Know that, uh, if you look at a 10 to 12 hour work day, you're probably productive five of those 10 to 12 hours. Those are facts, folks. Anyone can sit in a chair in an office for a very lengthy amount of time. We're all, I've done it. I've done the 80 hour badge of honor. Yeah, there's a badge of a zero person right there. But I thought it was like, oh, look at me, I worked 80 hours. Yeah, I was in the office for 80 hours. I probably was productive 25 to 30 of those hours. But look at me, I'm so busy. And I'm a, uh, cpa and I'm a business owner, so I'm, um, busy. That's not the way it has to work, folks. And you shouldn't be ashamed of wanting to only work 25 hours a week or 30 hours a week. Whatever your goal is, yours may be different than mine. So set your goal at what you want. What kind of profitability do you want? How profitable do you want to be? Do you like paying everyone else and not having money in your bucket? I can tell you right now, I've had that experience. I had that experience for 23 years out of my 25 year career. You are looking at a standing miracle here. Number one, because I passed the CPA exam. Number two, that I actually did not quit, and I never gave up and I always paid other people and I always worked harder than anybody else, but I was not working smarter. And that's where I failed for 23 years. And, um, see, sometimes those people you think have it all together, didn't really have it all together. Was just hoping and, you know, my, uh, college softball coach said to me, look the part, act the part, and someday you will be the part. If you don't take anything away, take that away. You may not. You may not feel like you are the part yet, but you can be. So you want to look the part and act the part until you can be the part. And I feel like finally, after 23 years, I'm being the part for the first time. The person who says, you know what? It's okay that I get paid now. It's okay that I'm making money. It's okay that I have time to go on my boat. It's okay that I have time to go golfing. Those are my goals. Those are the things I want to do. It's okay that if I want to fly to spend two and a half weeks with my daughter out in California, I get to do that. See, I get a little emotional over that because I didn't get to do that for the first 23 years. I didn't, and it was awful. So for those of you who have been in business for maybe a shorter period of time for me than I have, that you listen over these next two days to the people who have done it, the people who are doing it, because they're here to help you. They want you to succeed. They want you to have freedom. They want you to be profitable. And that is what I'm here to do here this morning to kick this off, to say, I want you to have that freedom and I want you to have the possibilities that you never thought you could have, because I never thought I'd get there. But I always remembered, look the part, Brolin, act the part. Someday you'll be the part. And so for some of you, that's all you needed to hear. But there's more to listen to. Don't get me wrong. You can't jump off now. What I'm encouraging to do, we're encouraging you to do, is to figure out what, what those workflows look like. And guess what, folks? It's an investment. It's an investment in your time to figure this out. This. No one's going to hand it to you on a silver platter. You know, we're all going to share templates, we're all going to share, you know, what our workflows look like. And that's collaboration. And that's why Sharam in Financial Sense have it going on. Because they care about the community. They care about every single one of you who are either here presenting in this workflow con or attending it, because they have every single day I'm in Slack with Sharam and asking him for this and asking Abdullah for changes in Financial Sense because I feel like it would make it more successful for my team. And they're listening. Not only are they listening, they're doing. And there's not a lot of applications out there that do this. And I'm going to tell you that right now. I've been around the block and I've made suggestions to applications and that's fallen on deaf ears. Feedback button, my whatever. Doesn't matter. That's a bunch of baloney. But when it comes to Financial Sense, they actually listen. And that's the freedom and the possibility they're trying to give you as a firm owner to get this workflow figured out. It's not complicated. It's just something you have to invest in. You have to take the time. And sometimes you sit down with a notepad and you're scribbling out, you know, I've been doing it this way. Maybe that doesn't work. Listen to your peers. Kelly Parks will share her world with you. That woman will share everything and anything and help you to help you be successful. And I think that sometimes we get so overwhelmed with what we're doing that we don't take that step back. We've got to take a step back. And here's two days of opportunity for you to take a step back and say, whoa, all right, I need to figure this out because I need it to be the best it can be for me and for my team. So for those of you who are not solopreneurs, you're not the only person in the office. You got a team. And you know what your team could be? An outsourced bookkeeper. That's part of your team. If you're a tax preparer or if you're a bookkeeper, you got CPAs that you're working with that's still part of your team, working together and collaborating and establishing that workflow so that things are painless. Why does everything have to be painful, folks, right? My whole thing this year is I didn't want extensions. I wanted to eliminate extensions. I wanted to have the ability to take the rest of the year to focus on my subscription pricing clients. And we did pretty good. This year I'm going to give us, uh, I'm going to give us a B. Last year we were a C. Every other year we were an F. We were Fs everywhere, right? This year we were a B. You know, that gives me hope that next year we could be A's. We could be A's next, next year. And we've collaborated with a lot of really great bookkeepers in our community to handle the bookkeeping overload that we can't handle. And so that collaboration and that transparency around the workflow is really important to me. And I put on here in a note, strengthen team collaboration and communication. That's what we're trying to do. Can we be making notes within our practice management tool, Financial Sense? Making notes between projects so that we don't have to jump on calls? Utilizing the tags within Financial Sense is my biggest thing, because when I get in the office, the tag that says tax return ready to start. That's what I care about. When I get here in the morning, you want to talk about boundaries. Utilizing a tool like Financial Sense, that's going to allow you to be the productive person so that you can be profitable and not busy. I don't want anyone in here being busy. There's no reason to be busy. We should be in there. We should be profitable and productive. But until we have good workflow and a system for collaboration between the teams and what, again, whatever that team looks like, that's different for everybody, right? So we've got to take a look at that. The other thing, too, that I find, and I wrote this other note down. I've been trying to take some notes on what I wanted to make sure I said to you, invest in continuous training and development. Because guess what, folks, these two days are going to come and these two days are going to go. When they go, what's your next plan? What's your next step for success in ensuring that you have that freedom and profitability and that potential that you want upcoming for 2025? Are you thinking about what that needs to look like for you? Because again, it's going to look different for everybody. And that's okay. We're not worried about that part. Right. But if you think about the investment in that continuous training and development, what does that mean, investing in. If you're not really proficient at financial sense, maybe you don't really know some of the. Maybe the features that it has that you haven't even started to use yet. Take the time and investment. They have great tutorials, great videos. Shiram's educating constantly. Kelly Parks has it nailed down. Utilize the opportunities moving forward. Have a plan for future training, for future productivity where you can meet with your team. That's probably step one. And if you haven't done this yet, I encourage you to do this during a break or at the end of today, before tomorrow is to sit down with your team again, it might just be you. So you're just sitting down by yourself, and that's okay. Sit down and write. The things, the processes that you know are lacking within your firm, if you have staff, listen to them. They are part of the reason why you're profitable, part of the reason why you'll have that freedom you're looking for. And freedom that you'll pass on to them as well, by the way. Because in my firm, I want everyone to win. I have a good friend of mine, we, uh, we bought a couple boats together, him and his wife and me and my husband bought a couple boats together, and we found this one boat for investment. And I said. And he called me up and he said, hey, we got to go take a look at this. Boat. We have an opportunity to buy another boat. We'll probably buy it for investment. We don't need more than two boats at this point. Okay, well, I'm like, well, why can't we have a whole bunch, a fleet, if you will? And I said to him, we, you know, so we're taking a ride down to, uh, to where we go to Westerly, Rhode island, and we're driving down, and I'm like, dude, why did you. Why are you including me in on this? Because you don't need me. You have plenty of money. You can go down there, buy this boat, you know, park it, sell it, and make yourself a nice profit. I don't understand why you need to include me. And he looked at me dead in the eyes and he said, you know why? Because it's so much more fun when everyone's making money. And that's the attitude I have for my staff. I don't want to be the, uh. No, I've. I've had a mindset historically that I didn't. It wasn't about me. I was never going to make the money I needed. I wanted my team to make money. I excluded myself from that. From that sentence or from that statement. That has changed for me, and it took a long time for me to change that, and I don't know why. It's a mindset, folks. I said that in the beginning. It's a mindset. So when I made that change and, uh, made the decision to do something differently, I said, okay, folks, what do you guys want to make? What does freedom look like for you? And that's a question you also should be asking your staff, what do you want out of this? Because you know what? If you don't give them a why you think they're going to be all fired up about meeting with you constantly and trying to figure out all these workflows and doing all this stuff outside of their regular work. I don't know what incentivizes them. I don't know. You know, we have freedom of vacations around here. You go on vacation. I don't even. You don't even need to tell me. I don't care. Because as long as we're all working together, we already know where the project stand because we have financial sense. If I'm like, nicole's off on vacation for a week, I don't need to contact Nicole to find out what's going on with X, Y, and Z client. I go right into financial sense. Uh, sense. I see all her notes. I see what step she's at. So if I need to call the client, hey, listen, I know Nicole's working on your workers comp audit. I see. She's got it. You know, she's working on it. So I just want to let you know we're good there. What was your other question? Now I'm going into a conversation in form because I've got a great workflow tool. But you've got to sit down and you've got to establish what are those troubled spots? How are we going to proceed moving forward with training? How are we going to continue to improve the processes so that everybody has a great work environment? Yeah, work is work. They don't call it fun for a reason. Right. It's still work. But I really do enjoy doing accounting. I enjoy doing tax returns. Who said that? Just me. I really do. I love doing IRS representation, saving people from the feds. It's just one thing that I love to do. And so in order to do those types of things, we've got to have good workflow so that I'm not in this office for more than 25 hours a week. And sometimes I only like to be in here for maybe 10 hours. I don't need to worry about when I'm taking vacations. I just do what I want when I want. That's Ask Emily the next conference you see. Emily Brolin, what does your mom do? What she wants. That's what she always says to me. Right. Which isn't totally true. I mean, it's partially true, but not 100%. So just thinking through those. Strengthening the team, invest in. In that continuous training and development. This isn't just a two days that ends and everybody goes off. That's what I hope doesn't happen. That's what I said to you in the beginning. That's what I don't want to see. I don't want to see you invest your time here and then all of a sudden you tear off and we don't see you again. And we don't see that you're improving your processes and that things are getting better for you, because that's important. The other piece that I want to stress as well is thinking about the client. Think about the enhancing the client onboarding and relationship management, the experience that they're having with you. If you have a really good tool, I. E. Financial sense, to exchange it or request, you know, you need documents or you need certain things and you're able to work with within financial sense, or you maybe you're using another Tool, but you're updating everything within Financial Sense. Crystal clear. Communication with clients and having them with a great experience is important. And that doesn't mean like I use Smart. Everyone knows I use Smart Vault for my permanent document storage. I love it. It's a tool I've been using for what I feel like forever. I utilize that for all of my documents. That's where all of my documents land. But I also want to say that, you know, if you don't have a permanent document storage, you can use Financial Sense for that. But those are the things you have to define. You have to figure out for your firm how you want to operate, what tools you're going to utilize within your firm that integrate. There's a lot to unpack here, a lot to unpack. And thankfully we've got some amazing presenters here in these couple of days that are going to walk you through what their success stories look like, what things are working for them. And so I encourage you just to do the best you can to not m first of all, miss a minute, but understand that as you're going through this, utilize the technology. Let the technology help you be efficient. And sometimes we get kind of, uh, mixed up in the way we look at things when it comes to technology. And people always ask me, well, how much is your tech stack, Brolin? And I just, I, I, my answer has to be, I mean, I know how much my tech stack is, but I don't think that's the right question. I think that the question is, do you invest enough in your technology to help your firm be successful? Price is important. I get that. Don't think that I disregard price entirely, but I need tools within my practice that allow me to work as productive as possible within my boundaries of the way I want to work and when I want to work. But I also need to know that the tools I'm utilizing are top, top of class, top of class. And you know what? They may cost a little bit more. And to me, the investment is worth it. So the technology you're choosing, I just want you to keep top of mind that it's not always the price point that drives the decision. It needs to be the efficiency. It needs to be. What it's doing for you is, uh, it giving the client a great experience. If the client doesn't have a great experience, they're not going to utilize it no matter how much you beg them. If it's not workable, if it's not something that they understand or at least can get used to, they're not going to utilize it. And guess what that'll mean you're going to have to switch to something else. And now you're going to a whole new system, try to onboard people and do something totally new. So do your best to solidify those processes and do what you need to do in that area. Now, I only have a couple more minutes left, but I want to just say this. I want to, I want to wrap this all up to say to you that, uh, in order for you to have freedom and profitability in your firm, you've got to set clear boundaries, you've got to set clear workflows. And you need to invest in the time and the money into the technology to allow you to get there. And I promise you, if you invest that and you take that time within yourself and with your team, whatever that looks like, you will have the success that you're looking for. And I mean that to say that because I didn't do that well for a long time. And I don't know why. I wish if I could start over again. Isn't that what they always say? If I could be. If I was my 20, what was I? 29. If I was my 29 year old self again? I don't want to go back there. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go back to 29. No thank you. Two kids under two. No thank you. But if I was to go back and I was to tell myself and give myself really good advice, I would stick by, look the part, act the part, be the part. I would also stick by the what's important now philosophy, understanding what's important now, what needs to be done so that you can have future success. You're going to invest today for something that you can have later. And some of you are just right around the corner. Some of you, some of you are almost there and you're just not taking it across the finish line. Eric Green and I talk about that all the time. He's always like, brolin, we got to get these people across the finish line like I know we do. Eric, we got to get him across the finish line. I'm hoping in the next two days that you make a decision, change your mindset or continue the mindset of change. Continue the mindset of solidifying your workflow. Make your dreams come true. You deserve every single thing that you work for, for every single penny. And I want you to go out there, spend the next couple of days working on your firm because you deserve it. You deserve the best and from your designated motivator, I wish you all the most success through the rest of this year and in 2025 and beyond. Because you got this. Now go get your day.