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Join Stuart McLeod as he interviews the world's top accounting leaders to understand their story, how they operate, their goals, mission, and top advice to help you run your accounting firm.
Stuart: 00:00:06.303 [music] Hi, I'm Stuart McLeod, CEO and cofounder of Karbon. Welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast, the show where I go behind the scenes with the world's top accounting leaders. [music] Today, I'm joined by Leah Roe, founder of The Perk, a premier leadership and team coaching, training and development studio on a mission to build the world's best leaders and teams. Leah is a CPA by training, but a leadership coach and organizational trust expert by choice. She took the leap from accounting to people and culture after serving as the VP of people ops and culture at a health IT company. It's my pleasure to welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast, Leah Roe. Leah, welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast.
Leah: 00:00:52.323 Yay. I'm excited to be here. [laughter]
Stuart: 00:00:55.056 I love what you're doing with trust and the work that you do with CPAs. But let's go way back. So let's not get into the boring bits too early. Let's talk about your journey and how you-- because you're a CPA to begin with, aren't you?
Leah: 00:01:09.510 I am, yeah.
Stuart: 00:01:10.752 So how did that come about? Did you have CPAs in your family? Were you influenced by family members in your vocational selections? [laughter]
Leah: 00:01:21.447 Yes. I was born with a ten key in my hand. No. [laughter] But when I was in college, I started out as a biology major and realized halfway through, I was like, "You know what? I don't want to be [crosstalk]--"
Stuart: 00:01:34.079 Osmosis is not for me. [laughter]
Leah: 00:01:36.744 Yeah, exactly. I was like, "I don't want to be a doctor. I don't [inaudible] in a lab. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with this degree." And my dad, who's a CPA, and he was the CFO of a construction company, and we got together and he said, "You should try some business classes, see if you like business." And so I started some business classes and I came to him and I said, "You know what? This accounting, this is fun. The debits equal the credits. It's a game. You just have to figure it out. It always [inaudible]." And he was like, "Leah, if accounting comes easily to you, or if it feels easy, maybe you should get a degree in that." Because I was graduating in 2010 when in the US, everything was kind of [inaudible], the banking crisis, everything. And so he's looking at a 22 year old kid who hopefully can graduate with a job, and so accounting seemed like a safe bet from his perspective. But he also told me, he goes, "One of the great things about accounting is if you end up wanting to do something else, you have this great background, you understand how a business operates, you know how it makes money, you know all of these things, so you can go into any other area having this really good foundational knowledge. So I got my accounting degree, started out in public accounting. So I was auditing financial institutions, so banks, mortgage companies, credit unions, all of that really fun stuff. And so I did that for about three, four years. On my first day, I alphabetically got put next to Dan Roe at training who then became my husband. So it was [laughter] all [crosstalk]--
Stuart: 00:03:09.899 [crosstalk].
Leah: 00:03:11.244 Yeah. I loved working with clients. I loved my team. But I didn't love public accounting. And so then I started working with a company called Fine Point Consulting, and so I did outsource accounting. So outsourced controllership, CFO work for small businesses, startups. Got really into working with entrepreneurs and startup scene and just loved that. Loved working alongside people that were so passionate and solving big problems and I was also really interested in how they were building their teams and their culture. So did that. Helped one of my clients raise a series B round and joined them as their full-time VP of finance and operations. And so now is when we kind of shift out of CPA world where on my first day at this company, my CEO came into my office and said, "Hey, Leah, nobody here is doing people ops. Do you think that you could do people ops?" [laughter] And I said, "For sure, Jonathan. I can definitely do people ops." I mean, we're a startup, right? You roll up your sleeves or you--
Stuart: 00:04:11.711 Yeah, you just do whatever it takes. Yep.
Leah: 00:04:13.924 You do whatever it takes. And so I told him, "Yes, absolutely, I can do people ops." And I went over to my computer and I Googled, "What is people ops?" And that was how I found out [laughter] what I was supposed to be doing. So that's where I learned that people ops, it's HR, but it's also employee experience and culture development and leadership development and trust building and scaling trust and all of this stuff, and I just became totally obsessed with it and realized that while I am a great accountant, a great CPA, people like me as their VP of finance, because I can talk about numbers in a way that makes you not want to claw your eyes out, while I'm good at that, my calling was really in the people development space, the culture development, and leadership development. So that's kind of my story of how I got here with you today.
Stuart: 00:05:01.845 Yeah, today, all the way up to our podcast. [laughter] So how did that startup go? You did the series B, you became more entrenched in the people ops side of things, the finances obviously went fine, was it an evolution for you in terms of how you developed your theories around people ops and trust and team building and leadership and all those kinds of things?
Leah: 00:05:24.655 Yeah. One of the most fantastic things about that company was that it was like a sandbox. It was a playground. I was given ownership over the area of people ops and really just given kind of freedom to create. And I am a visionary, I am an entrepreneur at heart, and so I kind of got to be an entrepreneur within the company and test out a lot of different things and try different things. And so it was really fun and it was exciting, and as we grew, I-- so I was VP of finance, operations, people ops, and culture, and as we grew, I shed the finance and operations titles and focused solely on people and culture. And then in 2018, I went on maternity leave to have my first daughter, Betty, and we decided as a leadership team, what was best for me personally and for the company was that I was going to take my three month maternity leave and I was not going to work. I wasn't going to check in because we really wanted to be an example that you could be a woman executive at this company, you could take time off and it won't negatively affect you.
Stuart: 00:06:31.968 Not doing email in the maternity ward. [laughter]
Leah: 00:06:34.780 Exactly. So long story short, we did hit a little bit of a hiccup over my maternity leave, and so we had a 40% reduction in force. I was actually laid off while I was on maternity leave. And so it was at that moment, that I had a choice. We went from being totally fine to having no income, no insurance, a newborn, no idea what to do. My husband at that time-- well, my only husband, my current husband, [laughter] husband at that time, so. [laughter]
Stuart: 00:07:07.092 First one, anyway. [laughter]
Leah: 00:07:08.883 Dan had quit his job recently to start his own outsourced accounting practice, but we hadn't really gotten it off the ground yet. So neither one of us had any revenue coming in. And so we had a choice in that moment. We said, "Okay, I can wallow in my own self-pity and everyone will feel bad because this is a real sad story, right, to get laid off on maternity leave, or I can start this business that I've been dreaming of starting for years in the realm of people ops and culture and leadership development." And the thing is, I never would have left. I don't think I would have ever left that job because I loved it so much. I loved the company. I loved the team. So this was almost like a sign from the universe that I was like, "Hey, it's time to go. It's time to go do the thing that you've been dreaming of." And so that was how I started The Perk now four and a half years ago because I can measure my business baby and my actual baby. They are--
Stuart: 00:07:57.593 Yes. [laughter] More or less day for day. Not quite. It must be a thing. We started both our companies when either just while Amanda was pregnant or shortly thereafter. I think it must be a suicidal gene. It's like, how can I make this harder? [laughter] And nowhere near as bad for me than it is for you. You're typically in an in-and-out situation as well. It's like Amanda was doing most of the hard work, but it's not easy, right? None of it is easy. [laughter]
Leah: 00:08:29.837 None of it is easy, but I almost feel like after you have a baby, it's almost like nothing else seems that hard. I felt like on top of the world. I was like, "I can do anything. My body just pushed out a baby. I could do anything. [laughter] You want to lay me off, that's fine. I'm going to start a business." Also--
Stuart: 00:08:46.776 I'm cool. [laughter]
Leah: 00:08:48.652 --your priorities shift a little bit and you're like, "Life--" yeah. So I feel like it was the perfect time, at least for me, to be like, "All right, let's do this." [inaudible] very little sleep. [laughter] [crosstalk]--
Stuart: 00:08:59.361 Yeah, yeah. I think that's part of it too, right?
Leah: 00:09:02.199 Decision making is a lot [inaudible].
Stuart: 00:09:03.779 It's sort of like, "All right, okay, well, we're all in now. We're fucked so we might as well just keep going." [laughter]
Leah: 00:09:11.488 Or we might as well go out with a bang. I'd rather [crosstalk]--
Stuart: 00:09:13.895 Yes. Yes. That's right. What's the worst that can happen? Dan will just have to make more money and we'll pay the mortgage.
Leah: 00:09:19.596 That was the thing. We were like, "We could always go back to corporate America." One of the nice things about being a CPA, which both of us are CPAs, is that you always need CPAs. So we knew we could always find a good job, so we might as well try.
Stuart: 00:09:32.616 Yeah. And being good CPAs, you would have had your budget down to the dollar and away you go and make sure all the bills are paid, and eating noodles on Thursdays and Friday nights. [laughter]
Leah: 00:09:45.698 What's good about having both of us being CPAs, is Dan's very concerned on the expenses, he's good at watching that, and I really love revenue. So I'm really [crosstalk]--
Stuart: 00:09:53.696 Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Well, you and I are-- you and I are aligned there, but I lack the-- [laughter] my wife, well, she was a lawyer, but was pretty good at the-- I want to say it properly. We're both good at spending money, not that great at not spending it. [inaudible] I'm not going to dump her in here because I'm just as bad, but that's okay. And so you kicked off The Perk with what in mind? What was the genesis of the hypothesis that you began with?
Leah: 00:10:23.304 Well, we started off with the hypothesis of, let's start a business and let's try and stay alive as a business. And so we were like, "We'll do everything, finance, operations, accounting, people, culture, leadership. We'll do it all." Because a limiting belief I had was that I wanted to do leadership development, I wanted to do culture development, work in this area of-- especially with trust, and I just had this limiting belief that because that's what I want to do, there's no way that's what people need. People probably want us to just do finance operations, things like that. But again, I was the main sales person. So I'm out and I'm talking about the things that are really interesting to me and exciting to me, and that's culture and leadership and trust. And so we ended up filling our entire portfolio with all of that work, the things that I actually wanted to be doing. So we started off being like, "We want a business. We want to stay alive. We'll do whatever we can, whatever we're skilled at."
Stuart: 00:11:20.195 Whatever somebody's going to pay us to do apart from go down The Castro in San Francisco. We draw the line there, right? [laughter]
Leah: 00:11:26.308 Right. Right. We'll just wash your car. We'll wash your car. We were just like, "We will do whatever." But then we were able to really narrow in and niche on leadership development and leadership coaching. And so that's where we're at. But no, it did not start off just like, "This is exactly what we're going to do." It's been an evolution for sure.
Stuart: 00:11:46.302 Yeah. And how has Dan's firm sort of played into this as well? You're sort of sitting off on similar paths, right, at similar times, but divergent-- perhaps parallel would be the best analogy. But you're sort of sharing war stories along the way, you're sharing the ups and downs together and growing together. What was that like?
Leah: 00:12:14.191 Yeah. It's a great question. So we started the business in August of 2018 and we were doing pretty well, but we were a very young business when the pandemic hit. And so when the pandemic hit, things got really shifted, and for a while there, it was like-- the first things that were cut were things like leadership coaching, leadership development, teamwork [crosstalk]--
Stuart: 00:12:37.897 Yes, yeah, yeah. [laughter] We don't know if we're going to have a business, let alone be the leaders in it, right?
Leah: 00:12:46.687 Yep. So for a minute there, our revenue went to completely zero, and luckily-- so my background when I was VP of people and culture, it was at a remote first company. So my background is in building, developing and scaling remote teams and culture. So that came in really handy then when the pandemic happened and everyone had to go remote. We were able to pivot and really help companies and leaders, one, get remote, but then how do you engage a remote workforce? How do you meet? So that was helpful.
Stuart: 00:13:12.653 As the pandemic was sort of evening out, if you like, settling down, everybody was sort of looking for that kind of expertise.
Leah: 00:13:19.916 Exactly. But at that time too, we went to $0 of revenue and we had a child who we had to feed. So Dan left the company and went and got a full-time job. And so he was working at another startup as basically a COO for a year and a half, and then he came back Perk full-time a year ago this month, because with demand and the way we were growing and scaling and everything, we really needed his area of expertise, which is very much in the finance and operations and accounting. So now he's full-time doing all of that for the company. I always say he takes care of everything, so I get to show up and show off. And he makes everything else [laughter] run and grow and scale.
Stuart: 00:13:58.728 Everything works. Yep. [laughter] And is it still the two of you? What's the idea for growth and expansion? And what does the ideal company look like for you?
Leah: 00:14:10.465 So we do have two full-time employees and I think that that's what's really interesting about being an entrepreneur, is your vision of success changes. When we first started the company, I was like, "I want a massive company. I want 500 employees." I come from the VC [inaudible], so I'm like, "I want to get VC money. I want to do all these things." And that's just not what success looks like for us right now. We have two employees. We're finding amazing experts in terms of sales and marketing and all these things to really outsource a lot of that stuff too. And we're really enjoying having this small but mighty team working with awesome clients, doing work that we love. We're profitable, all that good stuff, and we're also able to spend a lot of time with our young kids right now. So our idea of success might change in a year or two when the kids are in school and then we'll pivot and evolve and change the company to meet that idea of success. But I'm interested, for you too, when you started the company, have you kept that same vision of success and what you wanted, or has it evolved?
Stuart: 00:15:13.489 Oh, well, no. I think you're spot on. Vision of success always evolves. I mean, I was a moron. I should have known way better and realized that everything takes three times as long and cost three times as much to get going. I thought I kind of knew everything, and it turns out I knew [inaudible]. [laughter] But that's okay. It's all right. I came to terms with it, some days easier than others.
Leah: 00:15:40.066 I feel like if you knew everything, you wouldn't start a business. There is some of that but then [crosstalk]--
Stuart: 00:15:45.731 Oh, no. God, no. [laughter]
Leah: 00:15:47.689 --[inaudible].
Stuart: 00:15:48.985 Of course not. There's no way you would, right? I don't want to make the-- we talked about pregnancy and young children. I don't want to make the analogy, but it's sort of like once you're in, you sort of got to keep going. And if you had kind of known, would you have made the same decision? That's the analogy. I don't want to draw the comparison between the pain of business and job, but that would be very wise and ignorant of me [inaudible], and so I won't. [laughter] But there is a thing at the moment, I reckon, where the amount of information available to particularly SaaS companies, right, but a lot of software companies, but also companies in general, right, if the volume of information does not match how easy it is to execute or the capacity to execute, and if you could absorb all that information, would you go out and be successful? Somebody actually said-- I want to say it was on Twitter, but it's relatively intelligent, so it probably wasn't.
Stuart: 00:16:50.420 So what they said was, "You can read everything in the world about shooting a three-point shot, right, on the basketball court, you can read all the biomechanics, you can read [laughter] everything about perhaps a mental state, but if you've never picked up a basketball before--" we probably haven't lived in America. But if you've never picked up a basketball before, you know everything about shooting a three-point shot, but you [inaudible] your 10,000 hours, right? So I think, yes, we thought we'd be further ahead. We're very successful now on most people's definitions. We as hopefully, are making an impact in the accounting industry, and hopefully that improves people's lives. That's what we want to do and to me, that that is a definition of success that I'm reasonably happy with today. And did we want to be bigger? Probably. Well, definitely. Did we want to be earlier? Definitely. Are we happy with it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it just depends on the industry that you're selling into and the pace at which that group of people can absorb what your offering and how close it is to the needs of that group of people, right? So you can have the best product in the world and it might be a tent on Mars, right, if nobody's there to buy it, it's really hard to make money out of it. [laughter]
Leah: 00:18:16.840 I'm curious, are you having fun?
Stuart: 00:18:18.929 Most days. Most days. Yeah. We talked about trust. You talked about a reduction in force before. We did something similar in September, because the macroeconomic environment changed dramatically, our revenue was not growing at the pace in which we had anticipated, and we'd hired for a greater level of revenue. And fuck, that's not fun. I mean, there is just no way to have fun during a period like that. So we're not going through that anymore, but we're coming out the other side of it and some days are a grind. I think the way that we assess or the way that I look at the levels of SaaS businesses, ones and threes, which I copy-- [laughter] we call it R&D, research and duplicate. I copied that off [inaudible], who founded Zora, pretty phenomenal founder. And so you just look at the zero to one, the one to three, the three to ten, the 10 million to 30 million, the 30 million to a 100 million, and we're in the 10 to 30. I'm enjoying it. I've committed to at least get to the 30. I think that'll be sort of probably not next year, but up in and around probably soon, hopefully early the year after, and see how I feel. If I'm not the best person for that job to go 30 to 100, that's fine. That's absolutely fine by me. I'm sure there'll be plenty of people queuing up to tell me about it.
Leah: 00:19:49.642 I'm curious, you said you had a reduction in force earlier or a couple of months ago, what do you feel like-- in terms of trust, how do you feel like that affected the trust at your company?
Stuart: 00:20:00.394 Yeah, it's a great question. How did this podcast go [inaudible]-- this is not the way it's supposed to work. [laughter]
Leah: 00:20:07.845 [inaudible] so much comfortable asking the questions. [laughter]
Stuart: 00:20:13.444 I'll send you the-- well, you'll probably send me the bill now. In preparation for today, I'd thought about trust in our own organization. I've also thought about it in very direct relation to that reduction in force, because we do have a great culture and we did and we do, and talking about it with Jordan, our head of people and places-- VP of people and places, I should say, we backed off measuring our employees'-- well, no, I hate employee satisfaction survey, so that's not what I'm referring to. But people's desire to continue to work for Karbon. Are they getting purpose and enjoyment and satisfaction out of their work? I don't know exactly the best way to-- you're probably better at it than me. Well, not probably, definitely. Sort of measuring that without actually sending them a 300 question survey every month. That's not what you want to do. But we've been talking about that actual process of saying, "Okay, well--" Assume that we eroded trust during that process, right? That is a reasonable assumption to make because one day things are going fine and despite the leadership group having to plan out the reduction in force for six to eight weeks, to some people, it looks like it just turned up that day, right? And that erodes trust. So we are now in the process of looking at ways to sort of rebuild that trust, rebuild that enjoyment and passion and purpose in people's work. You tell me, how should we be going about thinking about those kinds of things?
Leah: 00:21:55.286 Well, there's definitely not one right answer. [laughter] Yeah. I mean, let's dive into trust a little bit, so why I love trust. So when I started doing work in the space of culture, what I really learned and experienced was that all strong organizational cultures are built on a foundation of trust, communication, and alignment. It's those three elements, but. And over the years, as I was doing more work, it really came up that everything, like, say, 99% of your issues are trust issues. Even when it comes down to communication, a lot of times it's the trustworthiness of the person who's communicating the message that causes whether or not people are going to understand it, have their behavior change because of it. And same with alignment. A lot of times we're misaligned on teams because we don't trust the person's vision, or we don't trust the team that's doing this. So that's why I really focused on trust because I realized mostly everything was coming down to a trust issue.
Stuart: 00:22:51.976 As an accountant, how do you reconcile those three things with revenue and profit? [laughter]
Leah: 00:22:56.915 So that's a great question, and that's where I'm going to bring in David, I believe, how he says-- his last name is David Horsager, and he did a research study, and this is why when I read his book, I was like, "Oh my gosh, all of my worlds are colliding and my heart is on fire right now." Because what his research showed was that the lack of trust in an organization has a larger effect on a company's bottom line than anything else. So he really tied together trust and financials. So in his study, a lack of trust affects the company's bottom line more than anything else. I mean, it makes sense, right? How hard are you working on a team if you're surrounded by people who you do not trust? How much are you truly giving on a daily basis if you don't trust leadership or the direction that we're going? Do you buy products and services from companies or brands or people that you do not trust? It's like trust is the underlining element in all of what we're doing in business. That's how I reconcile it. [laughter]
Stuart: 00:23:55.955 And that all makes sense. The things that come to mind is there's some outliers, right, where people like Elon perhaps, nobody can get away with the things that he can because of his level of intelligence. There's an X Factor that has some organizations stand out. But if you go and try-- if mere mortals sort of go and try and do things like he does, you'll end up at the bottom of the pile. The one that comes to mind was the mortgage company, I think it was called Better, which just sort of blew up [laughter] all at once, because they got way ahead of themselves, so. Because particular in the Valley, right, revenue fixes all issues, or valuation does. But I guess what you're saying is like, yeah, but over the long term, trust is a fundamental that you can rely on, genius and intelligence, [laughter] maybe not so much.
Leah: 00:24:54.852 Totally. And I would encourage you, any issue that you have at your company, whether it's with an individual, whether it's a team, if you're not hitting the results that you want to be hitting, I guarantee you it's a trust issue. There's somewhere on that team or within that relationship-- trust has broken down, or customers don't trust your product.
Stuart: 00:25:13.512 What are all the things that you do, Leah, to bring to organizations to sort of start uncovering those trust issues?
Leah: 00:25:21.548 Yeah. So one of the first things we do with clients is we talk about the behaviors that build trust. So ultimately, trust, it's not something that just magically happens and it's also not something that just magically vanishes. It's the things that we do. It's our behaviors that build trust. And it's our behaviors that break trust. And so that can be really helpful for people to understand, because trust is this big complex topic, but really if you break it down, it's like a framework. So these are the five behaviors that build trust. And so we teach that to clients, "This is how you build trust," so that they can ultimately scale trust throughout their organization. And you scale trust throughout your organization by doing these five behaviors. But you need everyone at your organization to be doing these five behaviors. Because ultimately, all of you build the culture together, right? So the five behaviors that build trust, number one, is connection. Ultimately, we trust people that we feel connected to, and at the root of trust, it's all about relationships. And so you trust people who you feel genuinely connected to. So let me ask you, I want you to think about somebody in your life who you completely trust, okay? And tell me, what are the things that this person does that creates trust for you? What's their behaviors?
Stuart: 00:26:37.921 I would say that they're genuine, that they demonstrate integrity. They do the things that they say that they're going to do. To me, that that is a characteristic that above many others probably builds more trust than not. How's that? How's that for a start? [laughter]
Leah: 00:26:58.148 Totally. So genuine and integrity. They do the things that they say they're going to do. So that genuineness, that comes in the connection piece. So first thing that you need to do to build trust in your organization is connection. You need to have ways that you're genuinely connecting with the other people at your company. Another one is commit, and so that's exactly what you're saying. Do the things you say you're going to do. We trust people who do the things they say they're going to do. One of my clients, GE Health, they call this your say-do ratio. What's your say-do ratio? [laughter]
Stuart: 00:27:30.919 Yeah. That's a corporate ratio. But I get it. I understand. [laughter]
Leah: 00:27:35.547 Right? 90%, do you do the things you say you're going to do? One of the things I love about that behavior to commit, is that I work with so many companies on trust and I never find anyone who is maliciously breaking this behavior, who's saying, "You know what? I'm going to go around and I'm going to make so many promises, and I'm not going to do any of them." But it's like, this is a huge trust building and trust breaking behavior, so we have to be really aware of what we're committing to as a company, because we want to commit to all these things. We're so passionate. We want to do all this stuff, but we're human. Life happens, we get sick, we realize we're not the decision maker, we don't have the right resources. So this is one that you have to be really careful with because it comes up every single time. People say, "I lose trust on my team when somebody commits to doing something and they don't follow through with it." And so that's where communication really comes in. Communicating when you can't follow through on something.
Stuart: 00:28:32.071 Alignment comes into that for me, right? We're an organization with fucking no shortage of ideas, right? Some organizations struggle for what to do next or something. We've got enough ideas for the next 30 years, right, with no worries. But what not to do, right? So as you say, people don't go into a conversation thinking, "Oh, I'll agree to do something," and then just have absolutely no-- well, most of the time, have no intention of not doing it. But what happens is we agree to do too much and we don't agree not to do anything. We try and we try and we try. We mostly fail, but I think we're getting better, is to agree what not to do. [laughter] Seems to help with our trust process, but also our alignment and our capacity to do the things that we say we are going to do, we do a better job of them. What's your experience with that? Does that make sense? Or am I talking crap?
Leah: 00:29:27.467 No, it makes total sense, and I think that that's something that's really important. I love that you all are doing that because doing the things you say you're going to do is such a big trust builder, that especially as leaders, if you can commit to less and do those things and do them well, that is a much better way to build trust with your employees and with your company and with your clients, than if you over commit, because you want to do all these things, but you don't follow through on them. You're going to break trust in the process. So I absolutely love that you are [inaudible]. And I like too that it sounds like you're having a list of like, "This is what we're not doing," and maybe it's just a parking lot. We're not doing this right now. This might be done in the future. But these are the things we're committing to right now. We're going to follow through on them, one, because it's going to help us achieve our vision, and two, it's going to build trust with everyone in the process.
Stuart: 00:30:13.779 And it helps you stay focused, right? A lack of focus is-- one of the most frustrating things as a leader, I reckon, is-- because we can say we're going to do everything, but at the end of the day, it's very difficult to get an organization to be able to do everything well, right? That's probably the hardest thing.
Leah: 00:30:34.588 Yeah. And staying focused, that goes into another trust behavior, which is, be clear. Ambiguity and confusion in all forms decreases trust. So you have to be super clear on, what are our priorities? What is our vision? What is our direction? What are our roles and responsibilities? Who owns what? When anything is unclear, your trust is breaking down.
Stuart: 00:30:55.865 This is something I've noticed as we increase in size, right? And you'll see this in all organizations, and it's pretty fucking obvious. However, it sort of presents itself in different ways, right? You can deliver the vision or anything, right? You can say the message to a certain number of employees-- you deliver the vision when you're 20 employees, right? Now, when you're 200-- and those 20 employees will get a slightly different version of what you just said. If you ask them to play that back to you, they're going to tell you something in the various forms of what you said. If you go and ask 200 people the same thing, the scope by which they're repeating what you just said expands, right? The scale increases and it's like, okay, well, now I have to spend more time being "Clear," in air quotes. That doesn't work well in a podcast, right? So I think that as you-- and this is [inaudible] rounding back out to where we started before, it's like-- well, it's a different skillset required to take an organization from 30 million to a 100 million in revenue than it is that 10 to 30, and there's a different skill set below that as well, by the way. But to me, that's some of the areas that you have to really improve at, just being consistent, being clear, demonstrating clarity. [laughter] I mean, you work with all kinds of different size organizations, does that resonate with you? Or am I talking crap? [laughter]
Leah: 00:32:23.025 No, it definitely resonates with me, and I think it also-- as you grow, that's where leadership development and leadership training becomes so important too, because you can't be only clarity person. You can't be the only one who can really explain the vision and make sure everyone clearly understands it. That's where you need your leadership to step up too. So you need to make sure that they're all clear. Yes, you're [inaudible] the vision to everyone at the company, but you need to make sure that your leaders are all clear and checking with them, and then they're the ones that are making sure that it's clear with their direct reports. And if they lead leaders-- just kind of goes down. But as the CEO, as the head person, you can't be the only one who has clarity on everything. You can't scale that way.
Stuart: 00:33:06.608 Yeah. I think it helps-- well, in our organization, a lot of the leadership group have been sort of six, seven, eight years with us, right, so most of the lifetime in the organization. Talking about biology, we tend to have a lot of osmosis, right? We do understand each other, we do understand the direction, and we differ sometimes on the journey, the how we're going to get there, but I think generally speaking, the why and the where is pretty consistent. You'd have to ask them. [laughter]
Leah: 00:33:36.414 And see, that's what happens sometimes too, is lot of teams are like, "Oh, no, we're really clear with each other. We're all on the same page." And then you ask all of them, and they're all not on the same page. [laughter]
Stuart: 00:33:45.353 No, that's happened to us before. I remember in-- was it 2018, 2019? It's like, I thought, "We're going into a leadership offsite, fucking, this should take about 25 minutes. We're sweet. We're all going the same place." I realized 15 minutes in, fuck me, [laughter] we better extend this out by days, because we are miles off. We are nowhere near on the same page and for all kinds of reasons. But we got there. We got there. We had a pretty good session. How have you found-- sort of all of your work, how has it changed post pandemic? Are people sort of coming back together and getting the benefit of that, or is it still predominantly remote?
Leah: 00:34:30.983 So what the pandemic did really well for our business was it helped other companies see that you could do leadership training and coaching-- that you could do this work remotely. Again, my background was in remote-first organizations. So it opened up a lot of companies' eyes. So we were able to grow really quickly. We were able to get new clients. Now we do a lot more in person, which is great. I love being with clients in person. But it's kind of just-- the pandemic, I know that it was hard for a lot of businesses, and again, it was really hard for us [inaudible] $0 revenue for a while. But it did end up helping us. It ended up being a really good thing for our business and for the growth and trajectory of what we're doing. So that was good.
Stuart: 00:35:11.977 And I've taken us off on a tangent here. Okay. So the first behavior is connection.
Leah: 00:35:15.885 Yep. Second one? Yep, second one, commit.
Stuart: 00:35:19.688 Commit. So that's agree to disagree, and there's an evolved saying now, it's sort of like-- it's just arrive at a point and go. Disagree and commit, there you go.
Leah: 00:35:31.106 And then the third one we talked about was be clear. And then the fourth behavior that builds trust is creating safety. So we trust those who we feel emotionally and psychologically safe with. So this is all about building psychological safety with the people on your team. One of the best ways that you can do this as a leader is to demonstrate vulnerability, is to say things like, "I don't have the answer. I made a mistake. I don't know. Let's collaborate on this together. I'm not sure of the right answer." You've done an incredible job today. You create a very safe space. You've been very open and honest and vulnerable like, "I don't know what I'm doing. I've made a lot of mistakes." You create a very [laughter] safe space.
Stuart: 00:36:15.288 I will pass that on to Johnny, my therapist, he'll be very happy to hear that. [laughter]
Leah: 00:36:22.989 That's awesome. What do you all do well at Karbon to create safety with each other?
Stuart: 00:36:29.205 I joke, but we do quite a few things along those lines. I use the words deliberately sometimes, "Okay, this is a safe space for you to--" and I won't say it if it's not, by the way. [laughter] Because that's quite the opposite, isn't it? That'd be a priggish thing to do. That sounds like a very political thing to do. I've used those words. I do not that often, because, again, it sort of takes away the seriousness of it. But we use the Enneagram amongst our leadership group to learn more about each other and to understand perhaps the reactions that we have to certain conditions. And the way that those of us study that a little bit more-- and I'm not great at it, but I'm getting better, is you can help people understand clarity, [laughter] provide clarity by describing things in different ways for different people, right? And that's not adjusting your message to the audience, like some Republicans do. It is simply to engage in conversation that perhaps brings about more meaning or brings about a connection [laughter] that would otherwise not exist because you are describing things in their words, or describing things in ways in which have a better connection. The ones that come up often, strategy, right? There's the difference between a strategy and a plan, or being able to articulate a strategy in ways that carry meaning for those across the Enneagram.
Stuart: 00:38:06.010 And so, for instance, Leah, what we would do is say, "Okay--" well, one of the parts of our strategy is to create beautiful connections between firms and their clients and be a very frictionless part, but a central part of that communication. Now, to some people, to the ones in the threes in particular, they might say, "Well, that's complete bullshit. How the hell? What are you talking about? What does that even mean?" Right? And that's a very legitimate question to a broad statement. But if I say it in a different way, if I say it in a way that says, "Okay--" well, one of the things that Karbon is really good at is being that centerpiece of communication between the firm and their client, and if we could expand that, if we could make that more central-- we're very good at email, but if we can be at all the different transport mediums that firms and clients communicate, then we're going to help create those connections better. And so there are different ways in which we communicate by understanding the ways in which people respond to strategy and plan. That's a very fucking long way of saying that. [laughter]
Leah: 00:39:19.566 But I think what you said is so important, basically what you all are doing. Karbon is helping to build trust between firms and clients. You are a part of building that trust. It's almost like supercharging it.
Stuart: 00:39:33.972 And enabling that journey, right? What we discovered was that-- and if you don't resonate with this, fucking tell me. But what we discovered was that people become accountants because they love seeing others being successful. They love helping people on that journey, right? And it's not really about the endgame for accountants, right? Some people, particularly, entrepreneurs to some degree, can be about the endgame, the big check at the end. Accountants aren't built that way. They love seeing their clients become more successful as they progress through their lives, through their businesses, through their families. And if we can help that, if we can enable that, if we can build that trust along the way, then we're doing our job, and that was part of the strategy that we have. But articulating that in different ways is important so that internally, we can help build a product that enables that, right? You see, making the abstract tangible is a very difficult part of leadership, and it's an aspect that I've been working on that's not that easy. [laughter]
Leah: 00:40:43.320 Well, I think that that-- and that's a good way to describe trust too. It's like trust is so abstract, so how do you make it tangible? Five behaviors.
Stuart: 00:40:51.137 Yeah. So we got to four. Four was creating safety.
Leah: 00:40:54.047 But one thing I do want to say about, yeah, what you're doing with the Enneagram with your leadership team, you hit on it. That is such a good activity because it hits on so many trust building behaviors where you're connecting, where you're being clear on who each other are and how you like to communicate. You're creating safety where it's like you're learning about each other, you're understanding, you're kind of shifting maybe your communication side a little bit to how they most like to receive information. So it's an amazing trust builder that you all are doing. The last behavior that builds trust is celebrate. So recognizing people. Seeing what people are doing and calling it out. That is a powerful builder of trust.
Stuart: 00:41:32.937 Yeah. This is one I rely on my team more, that I'm not very good at this. So as an Enneagram 8, I've got this shocking habit of the never ending horizon, [laughter] and it's like by the time we get there, I've already been there, done that in my head. I've seen how the results play out. I've seen what's supposed to happen, and I've moved on. It's a terrible habit. I do it in my marriage as well. It's fucking not very healthy sometimes. But I try and be more conscious of it. And I rely on the other members of the leadership team to be more promoter celebration or be more regular, be more committed to our celebration and our celebratory moments than I do. [laughter]
Leah: 00:42:16.912 You need those people around you to be like, "Let's stop. We need to celebrate this. This is a big deal. This was a goal. Everyone's been working for it. I know that you're past it, but we need to take the time to celebrate."
Stuart: 00:42:26.142 Yes. I'm learning on there. I reckon we don't do it too bad a job, but again, you'd have to ask my team.
Leah: 00:42:31.362 I am interested with these five behaviors of connect, commit, create safety, be clear, celebrate. Using this as a framework when you think about-- you had these layoffs a couple months ago. If trust has been broken, for example, what I would recommend you do is look at this, okay, where might we have broken trust? Was it with clarity? Do people feel disconnected? Do people feel like it's nuts? Use that because then that can help you prioritize your efforts to rebuild.
Stuart: 00:42:59.505 What I've experienced over the years is different people in the organization and to some degree, different personality types, they will be at different places on that journey of trust and on that journey of recovery. A rift causes anger and frustration and breaks trust, and some will move through their stages of anger better or faster, or just be at different places on that journey as-- on the journey to recovery, I guess. And I think different parts of our organization will be demonstrating different areas of difficulty, say, perhaps the clarity in our engineering might be different to-- they might be struggling most there, perhaps the sales organization might be struggling with a commitment or a connection, now that perhaps they're feeling more vulnerable or something, different types of dynamics, right? So I think the way I would try and address it is sort of ask each of the leadership team to consider those areas and say, "Okay, well, which ones are we feeling like perhaps we're furthest behind on?"
Leah: 00:44:14.537 I would have them consider that four, possibly how we broke trust or whatever, but also then it's like, this is how you rebuild it. So your trust has to be completely broken for you to rebuild it or for you to continue building it. So it's like you focus on these things, okay, we need to connect our team. We need to be clear. We need to make sure that what we say we're going to do, we're going to follow through with it. We need to create safety for everyone. We need to recognize people. So it's like that's how you can start putting it into action immediately.
Stuart: 00:44:40.844 What's changed over the years, right, it's sort of like, you used to go out into the woods and do trust falls, right? And like, "There you go, fucking move on. Everybody trusts each other. Done." [laughter] A, we're not as together anymore, but B, it's sort of like the human evolution, I think, or corporate evolution has improved, and there are many different ways in which you can help build trust in organization. What's some of your favorites, Leah?
Leah: 00:45:08.117 So honestly, these five behaviors, I call it the trust operating system. It really is. So I love just going into organizations and-- it's a trust operating system. So teaching these behaviors and helping organizations to operationalize it, because ultimately, it's when you're doing these five behaviors consistently, that's how you scale trust. So [inaudible] we did the Enneagram one time three years ago and we all connected. So clearly, we all trust each other. It's like, these are the things you have to keep doing.
Stuart: 00:45:35.696 What number? Are you [inaudible] a 2?
Leah: 00:45:38.704 I actually haven't taken the Enneagram. I've taken every other--
Stuart: 00:45:41.920 Oh, really?
Leah: 00:45:43.867 --personality test [crosstalk]--
Stuart: 00:45:43.874 Okay. Well, we have to do another podcast, because I've never had a podcast where I feel like you've switched it on me. So I'm happy. By the way, when we do the next one, I want you to have done the Enneagram for me, okay? You trust me? [laughter]
Leah: 00:46:00.236 Have you done The Predictive Index? I just did that one for the first time.
Stuart: 00:46:03.210 No, not that one. So I'll do that one for you, if you like.
Leah: 00:46:06.683 That was a cool one. I was into that. [laughter]
Stuart: 00:46:10.104 Doing some of these sort of trust exercise, so doing Enneagram, doing The Predictive Index, what kind of in person activities do you like to explore?
Leah: 00:46:19.926 So many good ones, so. And I mean, this is another reason why even when you have a remote company, it's so great to get together once a year for a retreat. Again, my background is in remote-first organizations, so I am all about remote work. But I've been attending a lot of my clients in person QBRs and retreats recently, and it is just such a good time for you to do all of these five trust building behaviors for you to connect in person. You are able to understand-- you get more clarity on who people are, what their intentions are, just what their motivations are when you get to spend a little bit of extra time with them. So I do think having that in person time can really be a big trust builder. I recommend that too.
Stuart: 00:46:57.291 What are your goals for the business in 2023? Are you going to go from two full-timers to 200, or your definition of success while your kids or your girls in particular are young, we're going to keep it lean and mean and make sure that we're a well balanced family and business unit? How's that?
Leah: 00:47:15.578 2023 is all about world domination. [laughter] I'm just kidding. So my workshop that I give, my favorite workshop, it's so fun, it's so impactful. It's called Throw a Trust Party. And so I have a goal to throw 50 paid trust parties. I also like revenue. I told you that. So I want to throw 50 paid trust parties.
Stuart: 00:47:32.963 Trust party. I like that.
Leah: 00:47:34.556 Yeah, Throw a Trust Party, how to scale trust to maximize belonging and results. It's the best. We also love to travel. So 2023 is also a year where I want to travel more and give this workshop around the US or the world. So that's part of the plan. But we don't have a ton of plans for growing the team right now. We're trying to look for more ways to make scalable passive revenue, because we have really good products, we have really good services, but now we want to try and scale it in a different way without having to add to the team.
Stuart: 00:48:03.572 Productize it a little bit.
Leah: 00:48:04.859 And then, again, maybe in a couple of years, we'll want to grow the team, but that's not part of the vision for 2023.
Stuart: 00:48:11.901 You're a big Disney fan, I see.
Leah: 00:48:14.418 Huge. Huge Disney fan. [laughter]
Stuart: 00:48:18.130 What's your favorite Disney ride or experience?
Leah: 00:48:21.373 Oh my gosh, we've been to Disney World so many times. My daughter's four, she's been to Disney World four times. Honestly, I feel like I'm an Epcot person right now. I feel like I go through phases of which park is my favorite? Epcot. I'm an Epcot person right now. I just love the different countries. [laughter] I love experiencing the world. I just think it's so fun. It's so fun.
Stuart: 00:48:44.149 We were at Disneyland a couple of weeks ago, that was all good. No major meltdowns and the kids were fine as well. [laughter] But in a drunken moment, my wife convinced us-- we're going to try our first Disney Cruise next year. So we'll see how that goes.
Leah: 00:49:02.308 Yeah, I've never done one but [inaudible] amazing.
Stuart: 00:49:04.942 Shoot me basically to ever go on a cruise. I'm so anti-cruise. I really don't want to be locked up with anybody apart from those that I don't have a choice to be with, let alone 3000 others. But here I am already regretting perhaps [laughter] my choice for October next year. But as you said, even people who hate cruises rate the Disney experience very, very highly. So let's say I'm a reluctant participant at this moment. I'm very hesitant, but anyway, it's the things we do. [laughter]
Leah: 00:49:42.394 Well, I'm excited to hear how that goes for you. Let me know. I'm also not a cruise person, so I probably will not partake on even a Disney Cruise.
Stuart: 00:49:49.726 Well, yeah. All right. So if I come back from the-- even me, if I come back and say, "Leah, as a cruise hater and as a Disney moderate, [laughter], even I'm a fan," you'll go.
Leah: 00:50:04.268 I will trust you if I feel [laughter] connected to you, if I feel safe. [laughter]
Stuart: 00:50:09.876 Very good.
Leah: 00:50:10.820 If you're very clear on what was good about the cruise. [laughter]
Stuart: 00:50:14.100 Yes. Yes. And I'll build a safe space in Mickey's den or something. [laughter] That could get fucking weird, couldn't it? Okay, all right. Hey, Leah, we're massively out of time here. I've had so much fun. We have to do this again.
Leah: 00:50:29.162 I would love to. Yeah.
Stuart: 00:50:30.612 Congratulations on all your success so far and building the business and all the impact that you're having with organizations and CPAs. And let's do this podcast again, and we'll dig further into trust. How's that?
Leah: 00:50:43.555 Love it. Love it. Thank you so much. This was so fun.
Stuart: 00:50:46.908 Thanks, Leah.
Leah: 00:50:47.716 All right, see you. [music]
Stuart: 00:50:54.614 Thanks for listening to this episode. If you found this discussion interesting, fun, you'll find lots more to help you run a successful accounting firm at Karbon Magazine. There are more than 1000 free resources there including guides, articles, templates, webinars, and more. Just head to karbonhq.com/resources. [music] I'd also love it if you could leave us a 5 star review, wherever you listen to this podcast. Let us know you like this session, we'll be able to keep bringing you more guests for you to learn from and get inspired by. Thanks for joining and see you on the next episode of the Accounting Leaders Podcast.