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Twyla Verhelst is the Head of FreshBooks Accountant Channel, leading the Accounting Partner Program, and has been recognized as one of Ignition’s Top 50 Women in Accounting. In this episode, Twyla and Stuart discuss the state of the accounting profession, how COVID forced the industry to evolve and why there is a shortage of young professionals in the industry. They also talk about the importance of diversity, the accounting community, and what running a marathon and running a business have in common.
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 McLeod 00:00:06.014 [music] Hi. I'm Stuart McLeod, CEO and co-founder 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 Twyla Verhelst, the head of FreshBooks Accountant Channel. Twyla leads the Accounting Partner Program at FreshBooks. And she's recognized as one of the top 50 women in accounting. Twyla is committed to leading the pack on advocacy, change, and community in the accounting industry. As the head of the FreshBooks Accounting Professionals Program, she supports and empowers other accounting professionals as they help businesses flourish. Being an experienced CPA and tech entrepreneur herself, Twyla elevates her accounting peers with the tools they need to thrive and helps them discover their most valuable asset, being their authentic selves. It is my pleasure to welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast, Twyla Verhelst.
Stuart McLeod 00:01:06.724 Why don't we start? How'd you fall into accounting and get on that journey? [laughter]
Twyla Verhelst 00:01:11.682 All right. Well, admittedly, I did not become an accountant to be an accountant. And that's probably pretty obvious when you now look at my LinkedIn profile and look at my journey as an accountant, that I'm far from a traditional accountant. I truly always felt like accounting would be my backup plan. And what I mean is, I grew up in a really entrepreneurial home. My parents were business owners. I basically lived inside their business when I was growing up.
Stuart McLeod 00:01:38.231 What sort of business was it?
Twyla Verhelst 00:01:39.618 Yeah. They had greenhouses and a flora shop that was essentially attached to our house. It was hard to get away from it. But it was really the hub of all things greenhouse and flower related for that general area where I grew up, in Manitoba and Canada.
Stuart McLeod 00:01:56.932 We had friends that had a nursery in Ferntree Gully if-- you probably have absolutely no idea where that is. But some people would know where Ferntree Gully [laughter] is. And their parents were constantly, constantly outside pruning, growing, shipping, trucking. It looked like hard work. I'm sure it was hard work.
Twyla Verhelst 00:02:17.241 It was hard work. And my dad was very much a hard worker. And my mum became the businesswoman as well as taking care of all the staffing and all of the personnel needs and the admin needs of the business. And I knew darn well it was hard work. I had to think about being an entrepreneur in my adult life, which is why I also wanted to be an accountant. A, I thought it would never be amiss to know my finances of my business, and B, in the event that it doesn't work out - because let's be honest, being an entrepreneur also comes with risk - that I can always go get an accounting job. And so that's really what started me on my accounting journey. And I went through university, got my designation. I had a controller position right after getting designated which-- I was really fortunate to gain that experience so early in my career. And then shortly after that, I got into what started my entrepreneurial journey, where I owned a mortgage brokerage. So I had a mortgage brokerage business. And then I relocated, and I then sold that business off. And I started to do a bit of recruiting for accountants just to get back into getting in touch with accountants and the accounting profession in a new city. And then from there, I actually met-- [work?] became my business partner. We together created a firm. We built a firm that was really built on advisory. And I'm using air quotes. But I say it like that not only because we're probably all a little tired of the word advisory, but also because it was advisory before it was called advisory. We didn't actually call it that, but that was the service level that we are offering to our clients. And so that was really kind of my coming back to accounting in a different way, where I was now a firm owner and an accountant and running a business, but also supporting small businesses.
Twyla Verhelst 00:04:09.519 And inside of that, that's what really kind of got me back into exploring and loving accounting again in a really entrepreneurial way. And then from that work, that's where my business partner and I, we built a technology startup. So that was a software for Canon professionals to use to do cash flow advisory. So that's kind of the fast track of my career that's brought me to today. So you might still be thinking, "Well, how did you get to FreshBooks?" FreshBooks, as you probably know, is a Canadian origin in terms of where it was headquartered. It's still headquartered in Toronto, despite having geographical offices all around the globe now. And it's a company that I was watching. I knew what FreshBooks was about. I had seen FreshBooks back to 2013, 2014 when I had my practice. And we were starting to work with them closer around, "Where were they going? Where are we going with our technology?" And we started talking from a technology standpoint, and that's where I learned that they were going to be doubling down on accountants and that they wanted to really embrace working with accountants in a way like they never had before. And at first, I was working closely with the gentleman that I had first been introduced to and actually was putting candidates his direction. I was thinking, "Have you talked to this person, that person?" because they were trying to find head of their accountant channel. It was when we had the technology company that I realized that I wanted to be able to work closely with accounting professionals. I wanted to take the knowledge I had as being more of an entrepreneurial accountant and share that. I wanted to really share all that we had done instead of our own practice with going to the cloud and streamlining and then building an advisory practice, had to embrace technology to build that advisory practice.
Twyla Verhelst 00:06:00.461 And so I started to learn that this was some skills and some experience that I had that others were wanting to learn from. And so that's also part of what led me to FreshBooks, is that I wanted to be able to share more of that and to have more of a reach and to extend the technology and the human side of accounting and how you collaborate those together to build your practice in a more impactful way. And certainly, FreshBooks is part of that journey that I'm on, is that we're making changes in our platform. We're building a partner program in a community. But there's also a level of education and sharing that we can do to support our partners and help them grow their businesses and support small businesses differently.
Stuart McLeod 00:06:41.445 And the FreshBooks journey has been a great Canadian success story. It must be a little bit like coming home to work with the team there.
Twyla Verhelst 00:06:50.608 Yeah. It's really interesting to be able to work with a local company, but not just a local Canadian company, but also one that, I believe, is built on a really solid set of core values. I'm truly a small business person. I mean, I told you about my origin story with my parents. I'm not a big company person. But what drew me into FreshBooks was the core values that they had been so rock solid on and that they're very protective of the culture that we build here at FreshBooks to ensure that we continue on that journey. And that's where it feels we are still a small business and still really are-- previously, we were called owner obsessed, which means we're obsessed with really understanding the customers. And now we've become partner obsessed, which, of course, I'm super passionate about because those are my peers, those are the people that I know so well that we get to be obsessed with them and really support them in a way that's more than just saying, "Here's the tech. Go use it. Come back to us if you have a support question." It's far more than that. And that's a culture that FreshBooks has really embraced since day one.
Stuart McLeod 00:07:56.748 Where do you think Canada is on the advisory journey? I mean, you sort of intimated that we're all a bit sick of advisory. But there's different countries around the world are at different stages of that journey. Where's Canada at? And where do you think some of the other countries are at, if you had exposure to that?
Twyla Verhelst 00:08:15.449 Yeah. I mean, from my exposure, I've heard people say that they feel that Canada is more progressive than the US. I don't know that that's necessarily true. I think that there's pockets of it. I've talked to some very progressive US accounting professionals. I've talked to some very traditional Canadian accountants. Right? And so I think that there's some of both all across North America. Certainly, I think, when we go over to talk to other locations across the seas, so whether that's Australia, New Zealand - which obviously having your background, you're familiar with the professionals over there - the UK, they have some different elements of advisory that they've leaned into far heavier or sooner than we have here, that I think that there's opportunity for us to learn from some of what they're up to. Again though, you can find very traditional accounting professionals in all those locations too. And so I think the technology certainly supports that progression to advisory. And I think that there's still people here, locally, that are sitting on some desktop technology that's kind of getting in the way of them offering those services.
Stuart McLeod 00:09:21.811 It's a little bit of an oxymoron, desktop technology, isn't it? You're not allowed to screen scrape and call it cloud. That should be banned. [laughter]
Twyla Verhelst 00:09:30.132 Yeah. That's not quite what we mean. And that's something that, I think, is pretty admirable about FreshBooks is, even though FreshBooks started as an invoicing platform, it's always been on the cloud. So the cloud is something that we don't even talk about at FreshBooks. It's always been part of that journey. Instead, we are now more focused on, "How do we really develop our features for accounting professionals so they can do their work effectively?" And I think that whether you're talking about North America or UK or Australia, there's different needs in different countries based off those services they provide and, also, different compliance requirements that they have.
Stuart McLeod 00:10:05.147 Let's band together and do that education piece because we're going to get a [inaudible] for the episode. But I mean, it should be fucking outlawed that people try and call screen scraping cloud technology. And those that cling onto the desktop and the server in the cupboard will ultimately fall behind. And probably their multiples just sort of decline each day, and their clients are probably struggling for the same reasons. Although there's vendors in Canada and vendors in the US that would like to keep perpetuating those technologies for as long as they possibly can. It's up to companies like FreshBooks to make sure that their slow and miserable death is accelerated.
Twyla Verhelst 00:10:55.695 Yeah. I mean, at some point, I think it'll become extinct. And whether that's more of the cloud technology just kind of eating up the market and also things like if you look in the UK where things like MTD are coming into play, and then desktop is no longer being supported in the jurisdiction. So I think there'll be a few things that need to happen in order for it to really become extinct per se. And [based on?] what I see in North America, the government's quite a ways away from being the one who's going to make that difference versus in the UK.
Stuart McLeod 00:11:29.652 Yeah. [laughter] They're distracted with some other stuff, although maybe MTD. But I'd have to look at the dates. Maybe Brexit wasn't on the cards when they did all the tax progression and stuff. But yeah, I mean, the UK is definitely sort of forced to be pushed along. And kudos to the government, with everything that's going on in the world, that they're progressing that agenda. The Australia with the slow ramp up into something similar with reporting your payroll numbers live and all that kind of stuff. Australia didn't need government help to sort of-- thank God because you'd be sitting around waiting forever, but to get progressive. My, not very qualified, but opinion is, COVID has actually sort of progressed the US, in particular, quite a number of years in its technology take up, and it's moving up the curve. I think there's just such more volume of firms that we work with that were behind pre-COVID and realized that if they want a job with a hybrid workforce, you need to change your technology, or if they want a thriving firm or at least a surviving firm, they need to change their technology with a workforce that's becoming more mobile or younger or all of the above. Right?
Twyla Verhelst 00:12:47.404 I think that's a great call out is that there has been a big adoption of technology over the last few years. And it was a bit forced per se due to the pandemic, but it happened. Now, what I hope that we see happens, and I'm trying to encourage others to do is-- that was very reactive. We had to do that. Now, how do we be proactive with it? Because I think that's the next step versus the last few years-- this is part of why advisory has become a bit of a word that nobody likes to hear anymore, is because, over the last few years, people in this profession were keeping their business and their clients and their staff and, in some cases, their kids alive. Right? They really were very distracted with all of those things, which meant embracing a new engagement, embracing a new technology that wasn't one that ladders up to, "Can I work remotely with this team?" There wasn't room for that, and then there just wasn't bandwidth versus now that's some of the proactive forward-looking sorts of elements to change as opposed to the reactive. I think that's where some of the next stage of evolution can come for our profession, which will go back to what you're saying, like, "How do we make desktop extinct?" It needs to be things like that that we start to have more folks just embracing this proactive sort of a view forward look with their clients. It's something that a lot of professionals are doing over the last few years, but in a very reactive way due to circumstances. This isn't a slight against them, more so [crosstalk]--
Stuart McLeod 00:14:21.465 [crosstalk] podcast. It's okay.
Twyla Verhelst 00:14:23.493 I've said that every accounting professional gets a complete path for the last 24 to 36 months of trying to embrace something that wasn't necessary. That's kind of where FreshBooks has been over the last few years around-- I think the team was smart enough here to not go up to an accounting professional and say, "Hey, while you're trying to do all those things, have you thought about, 'Is your client well-served on the technology that you put in front of them?'?" They would think, "Gosh, I don't have time to think about what they think about," right, versus, now, I think that there's an opportunity to start to take that further and to not just kind of hang out with what we came out the other side of the pandemic with.
Stuart McLeod 00:15:02.998 I have a lot of empathy for the profession. Right? And we talked about this at Karbon, Inc recently. I mean, it's a pretty thankless task a lot of the time. And governments around the world and clients have lent on the profession in a way that they weren't trained to do in terms of-- not financial support, but not only in sort of their role as advisor and accountant, but they're distributing stimulus funds, the pressure on clients that-- restaurants and tourism in businesses and all kinds of things. Their clientele went to zero overnight. And it's just really hard for a whole profession to bear that weight. And so I do have a lot of-- despite the bullshit I spat, I do have a lot of empathy for our customers and the industry as a whole. But speaking of the industry as a whole, you've got a passion around new entrants to the industry, the college aspects of the industry and accreditation, the industry bodies, etc. One of my biggest [laughter] selfishly concerns to some degree is like-- I reckon it's been one in, one out for a long time now. One middle-aged White male goes to a golf course in Florida, and one, hopefully, completely opposite diversity spectrum comes in at the bottom and helps improve the diversity. But the industry itself is struggling for a bit of sexiness and a bit of appeal to take on in business school, to take on in the colleges globally. Is that what you're seeing? And what can we do to try and do our part to help that?
Twyla Verhelst 00:16:47.593 Yeah. Absolutely. I'm seeing it, whether that's up here in Canada or in the US. Most of our partners are in the US. And so certainly, we talked to a lot of them about their struggle to find that brand new staff that would join their firm and be kind of coming through the ranks and coming through the workflows that new people come through. And there's a decline, absolutely. But it's interesting because I have started to do some work, at least up here locally, with CPA Canada, which I don't think is that dissimilar to what the US is also experiencing. And an interesting piece of information, which-- I'm getting to the actual data because, of course, everyone in, probably, all this audience loves their data. Let me at least share as much to make an impact, is that still they find that those who come into the profession, majority of them, have a close friend or family member that's an accountant. So this is really interesting to me because there's such an influence that the profession has on these new grads. So even though you talked about the person who retires at the golf course, that new person coming into the profession, if you want to see what [crosstalk]--
Stuart McLeod 00:17:57.600 They might have been carrying their bags. [laughter]
Twyla Verhelst 00:17:59.660 Exactly. Why we don't have as much diversity as we want is, that's that person's nephew or that person's son or that person's grandchild, for gosh's sake. And so there's some sort of a tie from the in and outside of it. And so, unfortunately, as we just talked about the last few years has been dreadful for this profession. And I think we're not really conscious about what we're sharing as a profession that we will only do the numbers a disservice, because we're going back to our friends and our family saying, "God, what an awful time to be an accountant!" It's going to turn even more of those students off of joining this profession. I think we don't do a great job yet of really showcasing that this profession is a collision between technology and accounting. And I've been called out before on, "Why call it a collision because that sounds pretty abrupt and even maybe negative?" But I believe it kind of is a collision. I mean, you talk about the people who-- even in the last few years, they had to come off of desktop and on to the cloud. That was by happenstance in some cases. You think about the progression of desktop to online to using a tech stack. Some people did that pretty begrudgingly and some people still haven't got there. And technology, really, all of a sudden was part of the conversation in this profession around how to do this workflow, how to start to do advisory work. You had to embrace the technology whether you liked it or not, otherwise, you were doing things so manually you didn't have time and space or clients with the budget to afford to let you and your team do everything manually plus offer them advisory. So I believe there has been-- it's not been this graceful dance. I think it came together quite suddenly. And every conference we went to was, all of a sudden, the talk about technology and how you're going to embrace it in workflows and efficiencies and advisory. [laughter] And so that happened quite abruptly for the comfort level of the profession.
Stuart McLeod 00:19:58.243 And so I think that was something that we haven't really done a great job of sharing with the new people coming into this profession around it's almost more of a technologist role in some cases than it is a debits and credits role. No more debits and credits, but you can actually do a lot for a client or inside of a firm that doesn't constantly be accounting expertise, technical jargon all day long depending on the type of firm you work with. I mean, one of the episodes I just listened to in preparation to chat with you was with security. Right? I mean, I'm friends with Matthew and Kenji. And they're doing some things right in terms of the technology that they've embraced and the service offering that they've provided. And now the type of professional or the type of person that could really do great work inside of Acuity doesn't need to be the smartest, top of the class, most technical accounting person. In fact, they would probably be well-served with the person who knows, understands accounting, but then can think really creatively about how to use technology and do something different that benefits the small businesses that they're really trying to support. So I think there's elements of-- we aren't doing a great job of recruiting new students. We also aren't doing a great job of sharing what this profession really looks like now so that people get an understanding of how creative it can be, how technology-focused it can be. And then I think there's also this element of inside of our firms that we probably need to do some rule division around those who are, like, "Give me the debits and credits all day long," or, "Give me the tax provisioning all day long," versus those who that's not where they want to support clients; they want to do something else. And there's a great career for them inside of these firms.
Twyla Verhelst 00:21:50.207 Yeah. No, it is a diverse career. There's a lot to celebrate about the career. It's just about combating the alternatives. Right?
Stuart McLeod 00:21:58.204 I get it. There's a lot of sexy alternatives to accounting. That's interesting what you say about the younger generations following some kind of influence in their life into accounting school. Maybe there's something there that we could pick up upon and try and work with at Karbon. I'll pass it on to [Lockey?] and team.
Twyla Verhelst 00:22:18.660 We're all recruiters, and we don't realize that we are. [laughter]
Stuart McLeod 00:22:21.418 Yeah, yeah. We need to shout it from the rooftops a little bit louder. Right.
Twyla Verhelst 00:22:25.021 Right. And the last few years, again, back to the defense of those working in this profession, it's been hardest-- it's been really brutal. So they go to their family gatherings now on the other side of COVID. And those people that are exploring, "What should I do with my life?" they're at that stage of their journey. What they hear is, "I sure as heck don't want to be an accountant. I know that for sure." Now, I think as we were thinking about recruiting and finding that new group of people that join the profession, the more that we can actually think of each conversation that we have is actually a recruiting conversation and inspiring somebody else to join the profession, that I think we would approach some of the conversations differently. I honestly think Tax Twitter would end up being a separate community that nobody else can see. Our CMO, one day, sent me a Slack message and said, "I just found Tax Twitter on Twitter." And I was like, "Oh gosh, please don't look at Tax Twitter. You're going to think that--" [laughter] I love Tax Twitter. I hang out on Tax Twitter. But it's not a representation of what we want necessarily everyone to feel about accounting. It could not be what we want people to know in terms of recruiting new people into the space. Believe me, I love it. I love that everyone's got that source of venting and sharing. And I believe in community. Gosh, I believe in community. But I think when we know that we're influencing without realizing we're influencing, I think, that it maybe makes us think differently about how we position the profession, even if it's positioned as, "It's been really hard. And now we need people like you, young nephew, to join [inaudible], to join," right, or a person of color, like all diversity, to join in order to really make this profession better instead of it kind of going on this path that can lead to burnout.
Stuart McLeod 00:24:18.320 And you're well involved in the diversity efforts at FreshBooks. You want to talk a little bit about that?
Twyla Verhelst 00:24:24.897 I do enjoy the diversity efforts. I mean, I will be first to say-- I mean, I'm a female, yes. But I'm White. And you what? I know that I've got some privilege and some bias that I'm really trying to learn more about. And here at FreshBooks, we also are on this learning journey. And I love how we position it as, "Call us in and call us out," when there's opportunity to learn and to grow and to be better and be more inclusive for everyone. So I think that that's work that goes on inside of FreshBooks. I think that's work that goes on inside of the profession at large. I think it's work in schools. I think it's work everywhere. I have a daughter who has autism. And so I've experienced firsthand what it's like for her to have judgment laid against her that people don't even realize that they're doing. And so different scenario than somebody of color or somebody who speaks a different language or has a different gender, but still something that impacts all of us when it comes to different types of skill sets, different types of needs or requirements or biases that are in the way for many of us that we didn't even realize are there. So I like the call in and call out sort of philosophy. And I'm trying to really embrace that with asking people to boldly call me out when I say something or do something that's really not going to contribute to my learning-- [laughter] or does contribute to my learning, I should say. I meant, if they ignore it, that it doesn't contribute to my learning, or if they kind of sweep it under the rug. It's like, "No, no, please tell me so that I learn, and I become a better professional," and can help to then call in and call out others as well. So I enjoy being on the DIBS Council here at FreshBooks and contributing to those efforts. We've got work to do. But I don't think those work ever stops. And so it's something that I really am passionate about learning more about so that I can grow and then, again, kind of inspire others to also learn about it, as well.
Stuart McLeod 00:26:20.167 Yeah. And in technology, I mean, it's predominantly been a White male industry. And it is important that we all do that work to encourage broader participation. But as a White male, it's like, "Okay. Help me understand. Help educate me." Hopefully, my team feels that Karbon is an inclusive place to be involved and that all those discussions can take place in a safe space. I mean, that's the least of our job. Right? [laughter]
Twyla Verhelst 00:26:52.473 Yeah. It creates some moments that are uncomfortable - no doubt about it - when you're trying to be better. But it's worth it. It's worth it to have those moments of vulnerability where it's like, "Ouch. Ouch. I--"
Stuart McLeod 00:27:03.506 Yeah. I wish I didn't say it like that. [laughter]
Twyla Verhelst 00:27:07.464 Because sometimes you don't even realize how it's interpreted. And you just say something that-- I've caught myself even saying some sayings that my parents used to say that I would say it out loud, and I'm like, "Gosh, that sounds like a really terrible thing to say out loud now that you really know more." And when you know more, you can do better. But it's those awkward moments of like, "Oh, didn't mean it like that."
Stuart McLeod 00:27:29.269 You'd never sat down and thought about it. Right? It just is. And it's our bias, our sexism, our just sort of ignorance, I guess, [laughter] as a generation. But hopefully, we do better than the one before and play our role in improve and leaving a better planet. But God, that's hard. That's such a hard thing to do [laughter] at the moment.
Twyla Verhelst 00:27:55.525 It is. Luckily, I think, the generation below you and I, that they're so darn smart with this stuff. They're the first to call us out on the things that we say or do that aren't appropriate. So I think we've got more learning to do in some cases than they do and that they're better about calling us out or recognizing something because it's within their line of vision versus for you and I; there's things in our blind spots. I think the impact is happening. It's probably slower than many would like it to be. But as long as we're all committing to trying to do better and being open to being called out and called in, then I think that we are headed in the right direction.
Stuart McLeod 00:28:35.249 Now, outside of FreshBooks and outside of accounting, I hear a rumor that you've knocked over some ultra marathons. Is that right?
Twyla Verhelst 00:28:42.441 Well, not some. I've done a couple.
Stuart McLeod 00:28:45.005 Well, that's some. Any more than one is some. And therefore, I know already you're a little bit nutty [laughter] because you have to be to just to push through 50 miles in-- plus, what's the longest one you've done?
Twyla Verhelst 00:28:59.774 Yeah. The longest I have done is 50. So that's been my max. My husband, he's working on a 100-miler in a few weeks' time. In fact, I got him into it, and now he won't stop. And I've decided that I don't need to run that far anymore. [laughter] Yeah. I actually think about doing something like an ultramarathon as showing myself that I can do hard things and then taking that skill set and applying it to other things. And it seems really kind of cliche when I say it like that, but it's true. I mean, another example of something I've done is, I spent a week at a silent meditation retreat, which some people think, "Dear gosh, I could never do that now." Now, I'm an introvert. I'm really okay with the silence. But it still was hard and it still was a learning experience. And there's things that I've taken from that journey inside of that week and apply to other areas of my life, including with my daughter, who-- she obviously has different challenges than parenting some other children. Don't get me wrong. Parenting, in general, is so hard. It's so confusing. But there's things that I use from other areas of my life that it's been uncomfortable-- or it's been challenging that I find myself almost subconsciously pulling on those in moments of my personal and professional life that have been hard. I mean, I won't lie that, even being here at FreshBooks, it has its challenges in terms of a 19-year-old company that's helped business owners the entire time. And now we're doing a different division. It's a completely different market. It's a completely different audience. You approach it a different way. And there's moments of push-pull inside of the org that I'm here to stand up for, and that I believe in this. But sometimes we forget why we're doing this and why we started it. We kind of revert back to having conversations that try on patience at times. And you think, "Gosh, if you just saw what I saw, we'd be halfway across the ocean by now." But it's not a marathon in terms of speed. It's a marathon in terms of going the distance and having others come along to go that distance. And there's times that are just challenging in any role that, I think, when we've done other things in our life that we were like, "I know I can do this. It sucks right now. But I know I can do this. And I'll get to that finish line, whatever that looks like or to the next kind of phase. I don't even call it a finish line anymore." [laughter]
Stuart McLeod 00:31:25.037 Okay. Because it just keeps moving if you do that.
Twyla Verhelst 00:31:26.595 Oh, yeah. And it's [inaudible] infinite game. Right? There's no end. You keep going. And I think Karbon is a good example of that too.
Stuart McLeod 00:31:35.400 We've got a few years to go to 19. But yeah, I mean, any organization that's got that legacy, that's got that ingrained, that's been doing something for that long, is going to have its challenges when you try and do something new. I mean, that's very normal. But organizations like FreshBooks' a best place because they've had a long culture of innovation, and they've had their challenges along the way, and business models and strategy that made the long game imperative. Right? [laughter] When you sell something for 5 bucks, you got to sell a lot of it to build a big company. Right?
Twyla Verhelst 00:32:12.121 And to be resilient. Right? I think there's an element of-- you got to keep changing and keep evolving in order to not just be a company today, but if you go back to the idea of, "If we're on the golf course later, that we've left a company that others are still thriving in and benefiting from and they're still making an impact." And that requires evolution. And evolution doesn't come quickly. It's something that takes time to embrace and get everyone inspired by and then committed to, etc. And when you have 19 years of being really successful with a particular market, this is a different methodology in terms of, "We still love business owners. But we also want to love the accounting professionals that also love those business owners. So let's lock arms with those folks to do the owners well and to also do the accounting profession well."
Stuart McLeod 00:33:01.834 Well, somebody's done a few half-Ironmans and Ironman. I think that living with somebody that's about to do 100-miler is probably way harder than working at a 19-year-old company, I reckon. Your husband's just going out for a quick jog. He's done a marathon a bit, [laughter] right, just in training. I mean, it's--
Twyla Verhelst 00:33:25.273 It's a commitment for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I won't say he's difficult to live with. I'm sure that he would flip that on me to say, "Wait a second. You're the one that's got how many balls in the air? How many things do you have on the go right now?" I think it goes both ways that we each have kind of our passions that we lean into. And I definitely do less of that training now. I have some other passion projects going that-- I do the fitness for my health as opposed to, "Hey, I need to challenge myself to run [laughter] 100 miles." The thought of that right now in my life just doesn't fit in. But for him, it's been a real outlet over the course of the last few years when gyms shut down and even travel shut down, and things that we love doing weren't available to us anymore, that he really embraced the [inaudible].
Stuart McLeod 00:34:10.490 He embraced the nutty side of COVID, that's for sure. [laughter] Getting out of the house, that's taking it a bit further.
Twyla Verhelst 00:34:19.080 Power drill for some people, marathon training for others, I guess.
Stuart McLeod 00:34:23.468 Just walking the dog and knocking out 30 miles for training is two different things. Good on him and wish him and his nuttiness the best of luck for that challenge. I mean, that's 100-miler's extraordinary. So I hope he does well. And I'm sure he's got a great family support ready and planned out for that day. You got his aid stations, all [laughter] his food, and all set up. Yeah?
Twyla Verhelst 00:34:50.588 Yep. It's an experiment every time. It's how he looks at it because there's conditions you can't control. But yeah, it'll be a good weekend for him.
Stuart McLeod 00:34:59.990 And you talked about some other-- what passion projects have you got on for the remainder of the year?
Twyla Verhelst 00:35:05.200 I have created a Women in Accounting hub. And that was something that came out of COVID. That was an opportunity to facilitate and foster mentorship relationships between women in the profession. And so I've got that platform that I'm really passionate about in terms of not just for mentorship, but also for women who are further along in their career that are looking to come together with others at that stage. It's become this really kind of sacred, safe space for women in the profession from all over the globe, which is really exciting that-- I have some real passion around that. Also, you may not be aware that I have real keen interest in video. And I've done a number of, what's called, the Video Per Day Experiment and inspired some others to come along that journey with me as well. And we're planning our next round of that in the fall. And having done that for a few years now, I feel like it's time to up the game to inspire some others to kind of elevate their game as well. And I started on that Video Per Day Experiment before Zoom was our normal day-to-day.
Stuart McLeod 00:36:13.848 Oh, you're ahead of the curve then. [laughter]
Twyla Verhelst 00:36:15.941 By happenstance. That was a coincidence. I certainly didn't know we were going to have a pandemic that would last two years. There's elements of that that I think, again, getting a little bit uncomfortable, leaning into something that we don't really enjoy doing, but that could really be part of our recruiting practice, our marketing practice, our relationship building with these clients that we never see face to face, that I think is something that our profession can continue to embrace and do more of. And so there's some things that I'm planning in the fall with that. And then, let's be honest, FreshBooks is a big role for me. We've got a big initiative. I've got nine people on my team now in terms of the indirect and direct team. We've got a big product announcement coming out later this year as with respect to accounting professionals. And I truly say this all the time. My team gets tired of me saying it. They were just getting started. We've got big shoes to fill based off of what we committed to doing for the profession. And that's not something that I take lightly, nor is it something that fits inside of this 30- to 35-hour workweek, which I would love to have someday. It's something that we're riding kind of the thick of it, and I want to give my best work to that. And that's something that I continue to be really passionate about, is building that out.
Stuart McLeod 00:37:35.137 Yeah. As you say, there's a lot of engagement with the industry, with vendors like FreshBooks, like Karbon, with the more progressive vendors. That is important. And it's really important that we do a good job of-- something we've always been conscious of, I think, is probably the best way to put it is, it's not up to us to tell the industry how to suck eggs, right? The industry is the industry. We're just here to support, enable, engage with, and help you do your best work if-- and I can tell, from the way that FreshBooks has always gone about their business, that they take the same stance. It's like, "We're just here to help and engage and enable. We're not here to tell you how to do your job."
Twyla Verhelst 00:38:21.663 Yeah. I think other words that I would layer on top of that because I think you're being on a-- the last thing I want to do is to tell any accounting professional how to do their job. But I think there's words like inspire and empower and educate that, I think, get layered on to the day-to-day. And that requires a high level of listening. And I talked about Tax Twitter. I mean, a lot of times when [inaudible] Tax Twitter, I feel like I'm there with my peers. But I'm also trying to hear what is it that is their biggest pain point right now and is there something we can do to support them through that or to build something in the few years to come that's going to alleviate that. And that's an opportunity that we have inside of FreshBooks, of being a tech company that's really dedicated to building product features inside of the platform to support accounting professionals, that I can look at some of these pieces of feedback and think, "Could we do something different in-app? Could we do something different for our partners? Could we do something different inside of our community? Could we build up some education? Could we inspire somebody somehow to start to kind of peel back something that might be uncomfortable or unnerving or is really just causing a real sore spot right now to make that better?" And so that level of listening, I think, is really important so that we don't just build the technology that we think people want, that we think will help them, but rather that we build exactly what they're telling us that they don't just need today or yesterday. But it's even half step ahead of what they're kind of complaining about or been experiencing some challenges with. And then not just the tech, there's obviously the whole partner program. There's embracing these partners to really wrap our arms around them so that they can feel supported by the tech company and not just feel like it's a tool in their tool belt.
Stuart McLeod 00:40:09.632 Twyla. It's been an amazing time to catch up with you. And congratulations on all the work that you've done at FreshBooks and also with the Women on Accounting Mentorship Program and the diversity program at FreshBooks as well. If there's anything that we can do in order to support your efforts, we'd be more than happy to do so. And I'm sure that Karbon would love to help with the promotion or expansion of mentorship programs, and particularly when it helps anybody. The White guys with one foot on the golf course have got plenty of help. Right? So anything that can benefit the industry, we're happy to assist. We'd love to be able to help wherever you think we can. [laughter]
Twyla Verhelst 00:40:57.216 I appreciate that. Thank you so much. I'll definitely tuck that into my back pocket, and I'll take you up on it. I just got to figure out how. But I will take you up on it. [music]
Stuart McLeod 00:41:05.691 No worries. No worries at all. Twyla Verhelst, thank you for coming on the Accounting Leaders Podcast.
Twyla Verhelst 00:41:12.052 Thanks so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Stuart McLeod 00:41:20.046 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 1,000 free resources there including guides, articles, templates, webinars, and more. Just head to karbonhq.com/resources. I'd also love it if you could leave us a five-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.