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Stacy Ennis: And I think a lot of us lose that - men and women, young and old; we lose that hope so early in our lives.
Blake Oliver: Welcome to The Cloud Accounting Podcast. I'm Blake Oliver.
David Leary: I'm David Leary.
Stacy Ennis: I'm Stacy Ennis.
Nancy Buffington: I'm Nancy Buffington. [00:01:00]
Laura Tully: I'm Laura Tully, and we're from Next Level Women Leaders.
David Leary: Next Level Women Leaders ... We are here at QuickBooks Connect in San Jose, 2019. We are recording live. All of you are on the QuickBooks Connect speakers page, and I start poking around because I'm like, what makes a good podcast? What's interesting? Usually it's like, "This one'll be interesting; something I don't know a lot about."
I start drilling down on everybody's profiles, and I noticed all of you were founders of the Next Level Women Leaders. Me [00:01:30] being a father of a powerful 13-year-old girl, who's- she's the president of her school, and she's very career-focused, and very driven, and very strong-minded ... Why is there a need for a communication platform and leadership training for women? Why does that need to exist, or why'd you found that?
Stacy Ennis: Well, we started Next Level Women Leaders because we noticed a gap with women that we were working with. It was really a gap between what they knew [00:02:00] was inside of them - the potential that they knew they could achieve - and what the world believed they could deliver. So, our training is really about helping women align who they are on the inside with how they show up on the outside.
Nancy Buffington: I'm gonna say a little bit more there. More power to you and your daughter for having- for her being a really powerful 13-year-old. I was a really powerful and eccentric girl in the 1960s, surrounded by artists and all kinds of crazy people, and when I turned 12, I got [00:02:30] real quiet real fast, because at 12 years old, you're developing; you suddenly have peer pressure that you're aware of.
I went absolutely silent from sixth grade until the end of graduate school. Never said a word in class. That's kind of what Stacy was just talking about - this huge gap between what you have inside, and the potential you've got, and what you're showing to the rest of the world. So, I had a lot to get over, personally, in order to be able to share that, and that's why I feel like we all wanna give back in that kinda way.
David Leary: Is it just [00:03:00] stifled, actually, by stereotypes and other people's behaviors?
Nancy Buffington: Learned, at 12 years old, that it really was not okay to be a smart girl.
Laura Tully: I think it's a combination of all of it, too. I think we take in the stories of what we're told, where we should be placed. We take in the stories of cultural expectations. But I think we also craft our own stories about where we feel like we- where we fit in, or where we belong.
I think what's cool about Next Level [00:03:30] is that we really allow women to have that space where we could have these really hard conversations about showing up in your own way. That doesn't have to be, "I gotta be like a guy, or I have to be really feminine." It can be on a term where you're actually defining it in your own way. I don't think most women get to have that space for themselves because it's always been carved out for other people. [00:04:00]
Blake Oliver: A lot of the, I guess ... Maybe not so much now, but at least in the past, a lot of the advice to women was, "Act more like men if you wanna get ahead."
Stacy Ennis: Right.
Blake Oliver: And there's still, I think, still some of that messaging that goes on. You're saying it doesn't have to be that way?
Stacy Ennis: Yeah, absolutely.
Laura Tully: Absolutely.
Nancy Buffington: That's right.
Stacy Ennis: We're in a really exciting time to be able to gather women together in a space, and talk about these issues, and to help each other feel emboldened to take that next [00:04:30] step, and maybe take a risk or at least define for ourselves what our lives can be, and then take the steps to get there. I mean, that's really what we're aiming to help women do.
David Leary: So, our last interview we did was- there was a bunch of accountants' coaches. One of the big problems for accountants and bookkeepers is value- charge charging for their value or finding value in themselves. It sounds like that's almost a double-edged challenge for women because you have to get over this women stereotype - am I valuable as a woman? Then, now I gotta figure out if I'm valuable as [00:05:00] an accountant or bookkeeper. That's what you guys do is help people - entrepreneurs - then get over these hurdles.
Laura Tully: Yeah, and I think it's more than just, "Get over it," but I think it's really intentionally carving their own space. Whether you're a man or a woman, I think it's really having that space where you can actively participate in how you are showing up. I think what Next Level does is [00:05:30] give these women the space to really immerse themselves in conversations that are, quite frankly ... Our two-day training is very challenging. The feedback that we get from our attendees are that it pushes them in ways that made them really uncomfortable, but I feel like that is part of the growth. That's part of the process of really getting to where you're gonna thrive.
Blake Oliver: So, gender diversity is a ... Diversity, basically, [00:06:00] in general, is a big problem in the accounting profession, right? I don't know the stats off the top of my head, but it's like less than 20 percent of partners at firms, at least the big firms, are women, right? I'm close to that number.
David Leary: I think it's almost 50 percent, at the beginning, as far as entering the profession. Then, as it goes up - each layer of management to partner - it just gets less. There's just so much attrition.
Nancy Buffington: That's typical.
Blake Oliver: What advice do you have to women who are in those firms [00:06:30] who are not partner, and aspire to be partner, and want to break into those ranks? How do we fix this imbalance? Or do I try to work my way into the system that's already there, or do we just say that's failing, and we can never fix it.
Nancy Buffington: One of the things that I would say, and it goes back, David, to what you were saying about value, is we really start with values. What is my value, and what are my values as an individual? Not those that are given to me, but what am I carving out for myself? That's a real mindset piece, and that gives you this clarity to then realize [00:07:00] that you actually have a fair amount of choice and freedom about do I wanna go do my own thing? Do I wanna do this corporate thing? Do I wanna create something entirely new? It's really based on your values and what you wanna get out of your life and what you have to contribute. Then, everything else builds on that. That's the foundation.
Stacy Ennis: I could build on that, as well. I think one of the things that we hope women take out of this training is to recognize that they actually have more influence than they believed previously and teaching them [00:07:30] ways to influence the people above them, around them, below them, in their lives, in their work, and to begin to feel this, I think, hope for having more influence in their work.
Laura Tully: Yeah. Just to add to that, I think it's also recognizing that momentum can happen wherever you are. Whether you're at an entry level, whether [00:08:00] you're about to put yourself in the position of advancing in your career, or asking for that big raise, or whatever it is, I feel like the point for progress is to plug ourselves into all aspects and all arenas to make our physical selves, and what we think, and how we think visible, because, if I'm not in the room with you guys, you're not gonna know what I'm thinking-
Stacy Ennis: I think this applies to men, too [crosstalk]
Laura Tully: Yeah, vice [00:08:30] versa, totally.
Blake Oliver: Right.
Stacy Ennis: I have a daughter, and she's six; her name's Lilly. I observed, one day, just kind of ... I'd seen her do this a bunch of times, but it just struck me this one day that when she looks at herself in the mirror, she has this huge smile on her face. It's like she can see what's inside of her. She sees all this greatness, and potential, and hope. I think a lot of us lose that - men and women, young and old - we lose that [00:09:00] hope so early in our lives. I think that there's room for us to reclaim that and move forward into a vision- a life that we really, truly want.
Laura Tully: Yeah, and I think it's both arenas, too, of women giving men the space to be vulnerable and men allowing themselves to not act as the- what's the word?
Stacy Ennis: Status quo?
Laura Tully: Status quo.
Blake Oliver: Right.
Laura Tully: Yeah.
David Leary: We had another guest in the past, Jina Etienne- [00:09:30]
Blake Oliver: Jina Etienne.
David Leary: -who was on, and she really opened our eyes. She talked about the whole ... If you have a room of just white men, you have to have diversity in that room because even men will get together and they'll assimilate into the same role and none of them will be themselves. Until they can be themselves, how are they gonna be even open to letting other people be themselves?
Blake Oliver: She connected, for me, this idea that ... Think about it, the reason these firms can't move forward and can't embrace new technology and new ways of working together is because there's not enough diversity of thought [crosstalk] in that room, period. It's [00:10:00] about creating like diversity of experiences in life-
Nancy Buffington: Absolutely.
Blake Oliver: -and you can't have that, if you're all from the same group that has this limited life experience.
Nancy Buffington: Absolutely.
Blake Oliver: So, I think that's something that, I don't know, white guys have trouble understanding; at least, as a white guy ... Hey, this is something I can actually talk about from my own experience! There's this feeling, and especially, I feel like people in accounting have this idea, like everything [00:10:30] should just be merit-based; like we should ... The people who - and this is the way the big firms are set up, right? Like whoever works the hardest and bills the most gets the partner, and that's the way it should be, and it should always be that way, right? But the way the way it's set up, you see the fall off. It's designed to create this narrow group of people that can succeed in that environment, and that's bad for the firm [crosstalk]
Nancy Buffington: It's absolutely bad for the firm. The other piece of that is that, when you ask ... If you start backing up, [00:11:00] and you go, okay, let's even say that it's merit-based and who's doing- who's making the most contributions, and who's bringing in the most work or whatever? The way you define those-
Blake Oliver: How do you define merit?
Nancy Buffington: Right?
Blake Oliver: How do you define achievement?
Nancy Buffington: And who feels like they can actually come out and say, "Here's what I just did. Let me share my story ..." [crosstalk]
Stacy Ennis: Yeah, who's given that space?
Nancy Buffington: -it's gonna be people who feel comfortable already doing it; those who feel more tentative, may be doing incredible work, but no one knows it because they're keeping [00:11:30] it private.
Blake Oliver: Yeah, and I saw that for myself ... It's very easy to take credit for other people's work on a team-based environment like an accounting firm, and people would do it all the time. People would stay late, just to be the last person leaving, even though ... It doesn't mean they did any better work, or they did more work. Then, the mom who leaves to pick up her kids gets penalized in the eyes of the partner for not being as hard-working, even though maybe she is the one who supported [00:12:00] all of this to happen. We value hours put in rather than client relationships-
Stacy Ennis: Yeah, or quality of work.
Blake Oliver: Quality of work ... It's all set up in a way that, you know, if I'm willing to ignore my family, sacrifice my personal relationships, and do nothing but stay in the office all the time, which is traditionally easier for white males to do, then you'll succeed. But, it's just ... I couldn't do it.
David Leary: The value's not there. Two episodes ago, I think, we [00:12:30] had news story about female-led companies/female CEOs ... If you have a female CEO, or a female CFO, they're more profitable. Remember [crosstalk]
Blake Oliver: Yeah, yeah, there's a study. I forget where it showed up, but-
Nancy Buffington: And also, females on the board - more profitable.
David Leary: More profitable. I wanna tie this back to some stats you have on your website, and I'm just gonna read that here. "Even though women make up 57 percent of college graduates, they comprise of only 38 percent of management positions and a meager two percent of CEOs ..."
Blake Oliver: Two percent of CEOs. That is-
Nancy Buffington: It's astounding [crosstalk]
David Leary: What does success look like? Obviously, [00:13:00] you have individual client success, but what do successful women look like? If they're percent of college grads, or 57 percent being CEOS ... What is success? What's the world you imagine for our daughters?
Laura Tully: I think what I want for myself and what I want for my daughter is to be able to choose. I think just having the space for options and not feeling like, "This space [00:13:30] isn't for you. You can't go to that space. You don't belong here because you've never been in this space ..." I feel like just being able to have the option of accessing as many different spaces and arenas would be a huge progress.
Nancy Buffington: I like that a lot because- what I like about that is that it speaks to what you were saying earlier, Laura, about not having your space carved out by other people, but it's this kind of more opened-up space where I can decide that I'm gonna work hard, do [00:14:00] awesome stuff, and be a CEO. I can decide that I'm gonna create my own business. I'm gonna decide that I'm gonna take time and be with my kids. Nobody is telling me I have to do either one of those things. I'm the one in charge, and I have a clear sense of how and why I wanna make those decisions.
Laura Tully: Absolutely. I think, too, just as a woman, and as a black woman, I think that one of the things that has always struck me is that I am now having the ability to [00:14:30] see that I can belong in a lot more places where I've just never seen anyone that looks like me, which was mind-blowing, and I'm a grown-ass woman. Just the fact of seeing women in spaces where you thought like, "Oh, I didn't know I could exist in the space," and that you belong, and you're competent, and capable of being here, I think that's gonna be huge. [00:15:00]
David Leary: The takeaway for me, I think, is this not carving out your own space, and it's the same, if you're using Blake's example of the guys working at the firm. They're not controlling their space. They're not making their value choices. They're just doing whatever they need to do because everybody else told them they have to do that. Everybody keeps compromising their own values-
Stacy Ennis: It's a very American way of working. I've lived in four different countries outside of the U.S.; I'm in Portugal, right now.
Nancy Buffington: Not right [00:15:30] now.
Stacy Ennis: Well ... [crosstalk] calling in. Yes, but I find ... It's interesting because I feel it when I come back for any extended period of time, in the U.S., just the difference in workplace culture. Everything shuts down for two hours in the middle of the day, where I live in Portugal.
Blake Oliver: That sounds nice.
Stacy Ennis: Yeah, including government [crosstalk] It's annoying when you're trying to get something done, but it's nice when [00:16:00] you live in a place where it's accepted that you spend time with your family. People meet together for meals during the day, and it's a really, really nice thing. I wish we had more of that here.
Blake Oliver: Spending time with family.
Stacy Ennis: Isn't that a concept?
Blake Oliver: I love the flexibility that I have. I get to work from home. I get to go pick up my son from school, or I get to see him in the morning. My father lived a life in corporate America where he was gone when I woke up, and he came home when I went to sleep, and if he [00:16:30] was on business trips, I would go weeks without seeing him. That was just normal. I thought that's the way it was when you grew up. So, I'm glad that things are changing in that regard.
David Leary: I think the stronger women get, it's gonna make the world better for us men.
Nancy Buffington: Absolutely.
Blake Oliver: My wife doesn't put up with anything. She's changing our small family by saying, "Hey, this is gonna be 50/50. I'm not gonna be the caretaker, and you're not gonna be the breadwinner. We're not gonna do it that way."
Nancy Buffington: That's great.
Laura Tully: I totally [00:17:00] agree, David; both of you ... I feel like it gives you guys more freedom; so much more freedom to choose in a way that you probably are pretty constrained right now in choosing. So, I feel like it goes both ways.
Blake Oliver: I like it. I actually- I think every dad should have the flexibility that I have. We need to change the way that we work in this country-
Nancy Buffington: Absolutely right.
Blake Oliver: -so that [00:17:30] families can spend time together.
Nancy Buffington: Going back to your question earlier about what does success look like? I think it would be similar for women and men. How about if we just were able to be and to do things, instead of always having to second guess, and work ourselves up for things, and compare, and go, "Oh, I'm not qualified for that." How about if I just go, "Hey, here's a thing. Let me spend all my energy just doing and being that thing instead of all the internal stuff." That goes for men, too, but [00:18:00] it's certainly a challenge for women.
Blake Oliver: So, I know that you do a two-day course, and I'm hoping, maybe in the time we have left on the show, you could give us a preview of some of the-
David Leary: A two-minute course [crosstalk]
Stacy Ennis: Let's speed this up - a minute per day.
Blake Oliver: Well, we've talked about - we need to do this. We need to make this happen. What are the things that you teach in your course - some of those key learnings, if you can share? Anything you'd like to share?
Stacy Ennis: Well, Abbey, our other co-founder, Abbey Louie, is [00:18:30] not here. She starts off our two-day training with a session on vision and values. So, she actually starts with values and then goes to vision. One of the things that's different about what we do is there's a lot of introspection and work. People don't just sit there and listen to us talk. Most people don't enjoy just sitting for two straight days and listening.
There's a lot of Sticky Notes involved, and we have art supplies, and people are moving around; they're interacting. She's [00:19:00] walking the people who are there through this process of defining their values, beginning to define a vision for themselves. Then, I get to take over after her and work through defining your core leadership message. So, how do I define myself? Who am I? How do I show up? Then, it goes over to Nancy.
Nancy Buffington: I take the baton from Stacy and we go, "Okay, here's this cool core message that is unique to you and really reflects [00:19:30] your values and your vision. How do you begin to tell that story, physically, even?" What we're leading up to, again, is that they're going to develop a story and share that live in front of each other; in front of 29 other women.
We start with a piece on physical presence, and that's where we make that ... We begin to make that shift from the internal work to the external work - how do you show up? What does physical presence look like? Then, we spend a fair amount of time helping them develop a story [00:20:00] that really helps people understand who they are and what kind of leader, what kind of professional they are. They share that, and their laughter, and tears, and those kinds of things. Then, Laura-
Laura Tully: The process, as you can see, is we work from the inside out. Where my part is - how do you create this really great package with all the work that you've done from the inside to make sure that it's expressive in the most authentic [00:20:30] way on the outside, through wardrobe styling, and just putting on a damn good outfit that you feel and look good in?
One of the main things that I dive into is letting our attendees recognize that you have the space to really create how you are showing up to the world, and you can choose how you define that in a really powerful way. Whether it's feeling good [00:21:00] in those jeans that you're putting on or rocking that most awesome blazer, or whatever it is, it's just having ownership in that you are being authentically you and not someone in a magazine or something you saw on a mannequin ... It's being reflected from the inside out. At the end of day, it just makes getting dressed a lot easier.
Nancy Buffington: What is interesting about the fact that we all chose to [00:21:30] kind of wrap the whole thing up with this great bow of the wardrobe styling with Laura is that a lot of women's trainings really shy away from that. I understand why - it's a little [inaudible] like, "Oh, really? Are we gonna do clothes?"
Blake Oliver: Well, I read ... Ernst & Young apparently didn't shy away from it. I don't know if you saw that story. We talked about it recently.
Nancy Buffington: No.
Blake Oliver: Some of their internal training materials for women were released; leaked ...
Nancy Buffington: Oh, yes, you're right.
Blake Oliver: It wasn't exactly the most flattering type of training.
Nancy Buffington: Correct. Right. So, instead of creating [00:22:00] more constrictions and saying, "Here's what you must do, and can do," and all that, it's like, "Let's show you how to do it, and then you take it from here. You decide how you wanna do things. You have ownership over this." Trainings that don't give women at least that information leave them kind of- they're very hungry for it, we've realized. They get really, really into it, and they go, "Oh, you mean I could do this? I could do that?" There's a lot of self-doubt and even self-hatred that comes out in these sessions, and it's [00:22:30] a pretty healing experience [crosstalk]
David Leary: I can tell there's a domino effect of this. If you could get somebody to just like ... "You can pick what you wanna wear to a business meeting. You don't have to wear what you're told you have to wear to a business meeting ..." It's a domino, right? That leads to another decision you make. "Oh, I can make the decision, or the choice."
Stacy Ennis: It's intentionality, really, at the end of the day. Part of it, for all of us, is we've all been impacted by each other and our own growth. Part of why we came together is because we believe [00:23:00] in each other and the impact that they've had on us. So, Nancy, Laura, Abbey have all had a really profound impact on me. We were working with all these people and referring them between each other, so we were able to pull it together into this really powerful experience rather than kind of jostling people between us. It's been pretty neat to see the impact.
Nancy Buffington: Yeah.
Blake Oliver: Well, to end on a slightly- a lighter note, holiday season is coming up, and people are gonna be buying [00:23:30] toys for their girls, their daughters. I don't know where I saw this, but I saw Barbie recently - entomologist Barbie. I wanna get your opinion. Knowing that Barbie hasn't always been exactly the best role model, but, is this a good thing?
Laura Tully: You know, I ...
Stacy Ennis: I have so many feelings.
Laura Tully: I wanna see the outfit first [crosstalk]
David Leary: We're gonna lose our Mattel sponsorship ...
Laura Tully: Look, Barbie [00:24:00] is an iconic figure. Mattel is a giant in the toy industry. I think it's important that we, as consumers, hold these giants ... Have our expectations met, as far as what we want for our children and for our family. I think that an anthropologist [crosstalk]
Blake Oliver: I [00:24:30] had to actually ... Yeah, it's somebody who studies insects. It's a very specific Barbie occupation, but I think it's good, because used to be [crosstalk]
Stacy Ennis: It used to be a pink Corvette Barbie ... [crosstalk]
Blake Oliver: She's still wearing pink. Don't get me wrong, but she's also wearing science-y stuff, too [crosstalk]
Laura Tully: I think it's a drop in the bucket that we need to fill. These small micro-movements [00:25:00] matter, and we're not gonna fill the bucket overnight, and that's okay, but I think every step, or every drop [crosstalk]
Stacy Ennis: I feel like, honestly, we've sworn a couple of times ... So, I think it's been a kind of half-assed effort from most of the toy manufacturers. Where are the non-white toys? Why don't we have more colors represented in the outfits? I don't know [crosstalk]
David Leary: -stats about management, right? [00:25:30]
Blake Oliver: My son is obsessed with the game Guess Who? Have any of you played that recently?
Laura Tully: Oh, yeah.
Stacy Ennis: Yeah.
Blake Oliver: I looked at Guess Who? ... We've been playing it for a little while, and I'm like, "God, these are all super-white names." [crosstalk]
Stacy Ennis: Yeah. 100 percent.
Blake Oliver: Even for the people of color [crosstalk] I'm like, "You haven't fixed this yet?" It's like John, Sally, Will ...
Laura Tully: I don't remember the photographer, but there is this image of a little [00:26:00] white girl, and she's standing in a toy store, and it's all black dolls.
Blake Oliver: Oh, that's cool.
Nancy Buffington: Oh, right.
Laura Tully: When I saw it, I got choked up because I think there was a part of me that felt like could this ever ... It just seems like, oh, my gosh, like I can't even imagine that ever happening. I think the fact that that space exists for [00:26:30] a lot of young black girls and boys to be in many spaces where they just never see themselves, it's a big deal.
Nancy Buffington: Two quick things I wanna say about the Barbie. One is it's cool to have them do, like, Entomologist Barbie, and there's a Frida Kahlo Barbie, and a space- astronaut! That's the word! Astronaut Barbie. It'd be really cool if they would take away the tiny little feet that are also jammed into high heels because I [00:27:00] heard about the entomologist Barbie. It was really hard for them to get the boots on her feet.
Blake Oliver: Right.
Nancy Buffington: The other thing is that it's cool to have entomologist Barbie, but wouldn't it also be cool to just like buy your daughter an insect collection kit, or a microscope?
Blake Oliver: We need a PwC partner Barbie, right?
Stacy Ennis: There you go-
Blake Oliver: A Big Four accountant Barbie.
Nancy Buffington: That's right. I will also say that my 25-year-old son, when he was little, had a Barbie, and his father was so embarrassed to have him take it around on plane trips and things, but it was his Barbie. So, [00:27:30] if you're gonna have Barbies, they should be ... Boys should be able to play with them, too.
Blake Oliver: I like it.
Laura Tully: Definitely.
David Leary: So, you guys have a busy schedule. You guys are doing coaching, right?
Nancy Buffington: Coaching, presenting, mentoring.
David Leary: So, what's the best way, if somebody who's listening wants to go to your boot camp in Boise?
Stacy Ennis: We're at NextLevelWomenLeaders.com, and we're also on Instagram at the same handle.
Blake Oliver: How about each of you personally? Our listeners, they can't see us, so would [00:28:00] you mind going down the row again and just saying who you are and how people can get in touch with you?
Stacy Ennis: Yeah. I'm Stacey Ennis. I'm an author and consultant. My website is StacyEnnis.com.
Nancy Buffington: I'm Nancy Buffington. I'm a public speaking coach and trainer, and my website is NancyBuffington.net.
Laura Tully: I'm Laura Tully. I'm a personal wardrobe stylist and influencer, and you can reach me at LauraTully.co.
Blake Oliver: And, as always, I am @BlakeTOliver. And you, David?
David Leary: I'm @DavidLeary.
Blake Oliver: Thanks for joining us.
Stacy Ennis: Thanks for [00:28:30] having us [crosstalk]
