Freedom comes from systems.
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The Disrupters
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines
Sharrin Fuller isn’t your typical accountant. For one, she’s not a CPA. She doesn’t have an accounting degree. She didn’t even go to college. But despite lacking what most consider the usual credentials and following “the most unconventional and broken path possible,” she managed to build and sell two successful accounting firms. Fuller recounts this story in her new book, Unfollow the Rules: The Messy Truth About Burnout, Bad Decisions, and Building Until It Works.
MORE DISRUPTORS: Candy Bellau: The $350 Pricing Mistake that Nearly Broke this Boutique Firm | The Disruptors | Poe: What P.E. Really Wants from Firms | The Disruptors | Blake Oliver: Build a Biz that Runs Without You | Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm | Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time |
Fuller wrote this book to help entrepreneurs see behind the social media images of success. “All you see are their wins and their glorified wins, but you don’t know what it took to get them there,” she explains. Her book was originally intended to be a how-to guide, but halfway through the process, she changed her mind. “I don’t want to write this book telling people this is how you should do it,” she explains. “I needed to be vulnerable so people could understand how I got to the point that I got to.”
One of her secret weapons is her ability to absorb information rapidly and see things differently, which she attributes to her ADHD. “I’m very high-functioning ADHD, with a lot of perfectionist and a little bit of obsessive-compulsive in there,” she explains. “And while that can be crazy, it works really well for being an entrepreneur.”
A turning point came when she hit a wall while scaling Core Financial Pros, a firm she recently sold. Like many founders, she was measuring her success by the size of her team. “I wanted that big team. I wanted to get to 20 people because that was pure success for me,” she recalls. “I think the most I ever got was 16, and I was like, this is a nightmare.”
“I didn’t have a people problem. I had a systems problem,” Fuller realized. While she’d been teaching other accountants a system that allowed for small, highly efficient teams, she hadn’t been following that herself. She was “literally the definition of insanity,” so she opened up the playbook she’d created for a conference and decided, “ I’m going to go step by step and make sure that I’m doing this.”
Through ruthless automation and documentation, she took Core Financial Pros from 12 employees to just two. Employee hours dropped from 45-50 to just 30 per week, while client capacity increased. “The amount of money this company just saved on payroll alone is just absolutely insane,” she recalls.
One employee, who she thought would quit and seemed to hate everyone and everything, completely transformed within three months. “I didn’t even know you could smile,” she said at the time.
The best part for Fuller was that she reduced her own time commitment to just three hours per week on Core. “I only worked three days a week across all the companies I run,” she says. Those three hours consisted mainly of weekly check-ins and creating new templates as needed.
Fuller suggests that firm owners who feel they are the bottleneck “have a little bit of trust” in their people and stop micromanaging. If talented people aren’t working out, “it’s not a ‘them’ problem. It’s likely a ‘you’ problem,” she says. “That’s the hardest thing to accept.”
She offers tough love to firm owners who say they don’t have the time to document processes or make changes in their firms. “You do have enough time. You just don’t want to take the time to make the time. You’re afraid of making the changes,” Fuller says. The key is deciding between the status quo of doing the same thing, or “do I want to stop doing this and actually start living and letting my company run itself?”
To the naysayers who say, “It just doesn’t work that way,” she says, “It will work out that way. But you’re the reason it’s not.”
Key takeaways
- Failure isn’t the opposite of success. It’s the path to success.
- ADHD can be a superpower. Some can use it to absorb information quickly and identify inefficiencies that others miss.
- Losing client-facing employees almost always means losing clients as well.
- Treat your employees well, overpay them, give them bonuses, make them love their job, give them lots of support, and they will never leave.
- Consider paying employees to complete their onboarding tasks before their start date. This identifies the go-getters.
- There’s nothing wrong with working in your business if that’s your passion. But no one will work on your business the way you will.
- Each time you complete a task, take an extra 10 minutes to document it thoroughly.
- By documenting processes, owners only need to do it once, then never again.
- People will make mistakes. The key is to set people up for success so those mistakes can be caught and fixed.
- Get paid before you do the work. No exceptions, no excuses.
- Trust your intuition if something doesn’t feel right.
About Sharrin Fuller
Sharrin Fuller is a powerhouse entrepreneur and strategist and the author of Unfollow the Rules. As the founder of Glass Wallet Ventures, she has built and sold two accounting firms for seven-figure exits while running three companies in just three days a week. She created The Clone & Conquer Method™ and is a Top 10 ProAdvisor known for helping businesses scale smarter and leaner.
Transcript
Liz Farr
Welcome to The Disruptors. I’m your host, Liz Farr from CPA Trendlines, and my guest today is Sharrin Fuller. She is founder and strategic advisor for Glass Wallet Ventures, the former CEO of Core Financial Pros, chair of the Women Who Count Conference, and author of a new book, Unfollow the Rules, the Messy Truth About Burnout, Bad Decisions and Building Until It Works. Welcome to the show, Sharrin,
Sharrin Fuller
Thank you. Liz, thanks for having me.
Liz Farr
Well, I knew when I first met you that I had to have you on this show sometime, because you have such a big, vibrant personality. Anybody who meets you will come away with that impression. But as I’ve gotten to know you, I realized that behind that big and vibrant and sometimes pushy and sometimes bossy personality is a heart of gold.
Sharrin Fuller
Oh, well, thank you. Yeah, thank you for that. I just took a couple personality tests yesterday, and I think my color is red, which is not surprising. And I think I would say EN JT, and I was like, Oh, yep, this all lines up.
Liz Farr
That’s about right. That’s about right. Now, recently, you released a book called Unfollow the Rules. Why did you write this book?
Sharrin Fuller
Well, essentially, it was supposed to be a book. It was honestly supposed to be a how to I was actually writing a book based off of a my startup to seven figures. And then as I started writing it, I was trying to put in my stories, and I thought, we kind of need a prequel. I don’t want to write this book telling people this is how you should do it. I needed to be vulnerable so people could understand how I got to the point that I got to, and not make a lot of assumptions, and also know that there are many paths and many different ways to get the get there. And mine was the most unconventional and broken path possible, where I veered off and, you know, took side streets and came back. But, you know, I really just wanted to help, as I started writing it, help other entrepreneurs or people trying to build to know it’s okay, like you see all these people, especially with social media, the way it is now, and all you see are their wins and their glorified wins, but you don’t know what it took to get them there. And we start, we start comparing ourselves to people’s social media, and it’s just not real. So I wanted to say, look, you’re seeing all these great things about me because I have this wonderful marketing team, but let me tell you what it took to get here. So I’m not on this pedestal. I’m just a normal, not that I’d be on a pedestal, but you know how it is, I just wanted to be real, and I wanted people to really know how many times I failed and and just got back up. And that’s really what it’s about. Just keep getting back up.
Liz Farr
That’s right, you know. And something I loved about your book was this unconventional path that you just referred to. I mean, you’re not a CPA. You didn’t even go to college, and yet, you’ve built two firms, and you advise accountants and other business owners about how to build firms that serve them. How did you manage to go from high school to millionaire?
Sharrin Fuller
Basically, I’ve always been a go getter. I’ve always been the, you know, if there’s a team project at school, I’m like, you guys, I’m just gonna do the project. I’ll, I’ll give you your part on on Friday, right? So I’ve always been that person that just took the lead and said, This isn’t working. Let’s do it better. That looks terrible. Let’s do it better. And even when I during high school, like I mentioned in my book, I started taking college classes, and I thought, This is terrible. I’m not paying for glorified high school like this is I can go check out these books and learn these same things, and that’s kind of where I went. And then I started working for companies, and I thought, I’ll just work my way up a ladder. And that’s where I learned that it’s not that’s not the the way the path for me either, and for I’m very fortunate to where my ADHD is my superpower. It allows me to absorb a lot. I’m very high functioning ADHD, with a lot of perfectionist and, you know, a little bit of obsessive compulsive in there. And while that can be crazy, it works really well for for being an entrepreneur, because I just absorb things very easy. And when I see things I I See them differently. And as I just got moving, I would just say, Okay, you’re doing it this way, and this is great, and you don’t want change. So I see this as potential. I’m going to go do it this way and do it better. And that’s kind of how I think I’ve done everything. It’s just learned and absorbed as much as I can, very quickly and then go try to find a better way to do it.
Liz Farr
I like that, you know, optimizing and taking the best and just making it better, making it fit you in the way your brain works, in the way that it would work better for others, I love that. It’s so great. Now, another thing that I really liked read about reading this book was that you found success by scaling down.
Sharrin Fuller
Oh yes, yes, yeah.
Liz Farr
In some part of the book, you say, I didn’t have a people problem. I had a systems problem. What does that mean? What was happening?
Sharrin Fuller
I think when you build a company, everybody measures their success by how many employees they have. I have a team of this many. This is how many people work for me. And I see it all the time in accounting firms too. Hey, you have a firm, how many people do you have, and that is not a way to measure, especially not this day and age and what we especially if you’re not, if you’re really underwater and whatever, we’ll talk accounting, because this is all accounting. When you’re underwater in your firm, you don’t have time to look at the system. You need to throw a person at it, and that’s what you do. Hey, so and so and so is out of time. Great. Let’s just get another person in to handle that time. Instead of analyzing and evaluating what’s happening and where there’s a miss, we just throw another person. Well, then what you’re doing is that person is now going to have a ton of misses. And you’re you have three people for what could have been, you know, a soft a piece of software. And that’s what I started doing. I wanted that big team. I wanted to get to 20 people, because that was pure success for me. I think the most I ever got was 16, and I was like, This is a nightmare, especially in professional services, right? Because they’re so attached to the client that if any of those people leave, you always lose a client. You never lose a a front facing relationship person. You would never have them leave your team and not lose a client. I’ve almost never seen it happen, because they follow that relationship. And I just realized this is, how do I scale this? How do I scale this? Because I all these people, I’m training them in all my methods and how to do things, and now they’re going to starting their own company, which is great, good for you. That’s what I really wanted you to do, but now I have to teach somebody else, and it’s great for them, but it’s a revolving door for me, and it was becoming just exhausting. So that’s when I thought, okay, technology goes nowhere. Let’s figure out what I can implement so I can have very, very few people and just be able to focus my attention on those couple of people. Treat them well, overpay them, give them bonuses, make them love their job, and give them so much support to where why would they want to go anywhere else? And that model ended up, I’ve been teaching it for a while, but I wasn’t practicing it in my own firm. And finally I said, Okay, something has gotta give. I keep doing the same thing over and over. I am literally definition of insanity. And so I did. I went in and I said, Alright, I’m just going to, I’m going to open up my little playbook that I made for, I think a I did a course for Intuit Connect or something at one point, like, I’m going to open up my my workbook that I did. I’m going to go step by step and make sure that I’m doing this. And that’s what I did. And I cannot believe just the we had one employee that I thought she was going to quit. I thought she hated all of us and hated her life, and within three months, she was so happy on Zoom. And I’m like, I didn’t even know you could smile. I didn’t even know it was a thing, and it was just, it was amazing to me. Just the the the turn of everything and our client base didn’t go down. In fact, hours went up. Client base went up. But our our team, went from 12 to two and it was just and they had more time before they were each working like 4550, hours a week, and now they’re only working 30. So once I finally looked at them, like the amount of money this company just saved on payroll alone is just absolutely insane. Yeah.
Liz Farr
So what were some of those systems that you created?
Sharrin Fuller
So we it’s, it’s really, can I name can I name them? Is that okay? Yep. So sure. My accounting firm uses ClientHub, which has been great for us. It’s all in one spot, and then we use Anchor. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to automate as much as possible. So I wanted to make sure, if we onboard a client when they sign their contract and Anchor we have it sends, it creates a zap, and the ZAP then sends an email automatically to the client to start onboarding them. Here’s the email, here’s our link, here’s what we’re going to ask for get this done, and then kind of sends him an automated here. Sign in, and then when they sign in, they’ve already got our templates have already launched. So now our team, our accounting team, and our operations, which now it’s just one of each, each have a template. They know the client started, and then there’s tasks assigned to the client, right? And then every single task, every single we made sure everything that we had was scoped and measured. Everything was measurable. We don’t do anything unless it can be measured, which is probably the hardest part. So now, when we’re when we are working on clients, we go, okay, we only do 200 transactions across three accounts. They have 400 transactions across five they are out of scope, which is a measurable thing. And we would make sure that every single thing was templated. Every scope, every service that we had that was in Anchor was template tied to a template in ClientHub. So when it launched, there it was. And we would have a loom of me showing you how to do that exact task, and then also a Scribe, in case you just need to look, and then any of the other how tos that link to it. So no matter what, whoever came in, they could go do that task. And here is everything you need to know to get this task done. It’s really kind of the I used to say hit by the bus when I say win the lottery method of you know, if so and so isn’t here tomorrow, I can jump in. I know exactly where it’s off, and I know where I need to go and what to do. And doing that allowed my team to stop asking me things, to stop searching so much time was going and looking for things. Where do I find it? How do I do it? And it’s there. It’s done. And it pulled it pulled me out. I’m no longer the bottleneck. And it came to the point to the only thing I was doing was when they came to me and said, Hey, Sharrin, this client came to us and they need a, b, c, b and c are not in Anchor, so I need you to go create a service. And of course, if it’s not in Anchor, that means there’s no template in ClientHub. So teaching them this process, they know there’s an immediate stop, and they also know to not if it’s if it’s not in there and they don’t have something that they could check off to get done. It is not in scope, they don’t do it. So just really going through that, creating the process, documenting and make sure they understand the flow. Just allowed everybody to get their job done so much more efficiently.
Liz Farr
I love it, and I love how you’re using technology to create leverage, which is one of the other themes in your book. So what are some other ways that you created leverage with technology.
Sharrin Fuller
One of the things I’m actually doing now, because now I’m in advisory, I’m helping a company their onboarding process now they actually, they’re a professional services and they actually have to have people. It’s they have to. So she says, I’m onboarding people all the time, and it’s so it is so manual. So I have this whole process. I do use Rippling for this, to where, once the offer letter goes out, you you sit back. It sets up to where the person signs an offer letter, and then a laptop is sent to them, and the laptop is configured from the warehouse, and it’s all their software is uploaded, and their passwords and everything are sent to their email, but they don’t get their email until, like, three days before they start, and then in those three days they can log in. And then once they log in, here’s all of your onboarding to handle. Here’s everything you need to do to work at our company, and you have an option, I will pay you to do it prior to starting if you’re a go getter, or you could do it the first day, either way you’re being paid, which also allows us to kind of measure the type of employee you’re getting. I’m a go getter, I would want to, I would find getting paid, I’d want to get that done so I could start on the day of and start doing the work. So it kind of lets you also know what type of person you’re you’re working with. Do I have a go getter or do I have a doer, and both are okay. There’s nothing wrong with it, but you, you can kind of, right off the bat, know where you are with people, and that is just that. I’ve been using that method for probably two years, and it’s I don’t even I even onboarded outsourced bookkeepers from Pakistan and New Delhi, and I didn’t have to do anything. They did all of it on their own while I was asleep. And that, to me, is what’s important, is that the company can run, no matter wherever anybody is, without somebody bottlenecking the things that don’t need to be bottlenecked.
Liz Farr
That is just such a breath of fresh air, and I’m saying Hallelujah, sharing this out, compared to all my experiences with onboarding, where I would walk in and I’d say, Hi, I’m starting today. Oh, really well, I didn’t know that what’s your name? Let’s find a place for you to sit. Oh, you, you’re starting today. Oh, we don’t have your computer ready for you today. So here’s one we think you can use. We think the login is. This. Try that, and
Sharrin Fuller
you’re spending the whole entire day, not just you but them, right? And so whenever you onboard someone, you’re losing the time to onboard this person. You’re losing somebody else’s time to onboard this person. And that was the other that was the other point I made, is with the younger generation growing up with only social media, only technology, their first. Oh, my goodness, their first. Why can’t I impression? I don’t know why that word didn’t come to my mind. Their first impression of the company is onboarding. And if they’re like, Wow, they got this together, this is great, they’re on top of it, then they’re going to want to be with you and be far more happy. But when it starts like that, you’re like, am I going to get paid? You didn’t even know I was here, and you feel unimportant because you interviewed and you were the one that got the job, and they were like, we don’t even know who you are. So it’s a two way street, especially with employees, it’s not just you to them, it’s them to you. And especially in professional services, in an accounting you need those people to love working with you, because losing, like I mentioned, losing that person, could destroy a business absolutely.
Liz Farr
You know, one firm where I worked had huge problems with turnover. Within 18 months of when I left, something like 100% of the tax department below manager level was gone, and this had happened repeatedly, to the point that things that I know they knew how to do years ago, no one knew How to do anymore. So you know, this is 20. This was 2017 and there were still people keying in numbers on business tax returns.
Sharrin Fuller
Yeah, that’s crazy.
Liz Farr
Yeah, because they didn’t know how to connect engagement and ProfxTax, they didn’t know how to do that.
Sharrin Fuller
Yeah, yeah, that’s crazy. We’ve come such a long way, and it’s positive. And I don’t want it to seem like I just, I mean, this stuff that I created took a long time, but you have to think of it as I just have to do it once. I just need to stop focus, do it once, and then I never have to do it again. So I could either do this every single time, and you lose eight hours of my life, or it could take 10 hours of my life right now create this and never have to do it again, except for maybe some updates. And it’s scary for some people. And of course, you know, if you don’t have the time, you can’t attack it all, but piece by piece by piece. I always tell them, look at what’s in a project management list, and just from now on, everything that you do, take the extra 10 minutes and document it right? And then you’re then you’re set, and it’s, honestly, it’s habits. You have to get yourself into that, into that habit, and it’s change, and you just have to get used to it, which some people aren’t comfortable with. But I don’t think we have a lot of choice.
Liz Farr
Yeah, and the other thing that leverage does for you is that it gives you the capacity to work on your business, yes, and not just in your business, to quote the eMyth,
Sharrin Fuller
yeah, I agree. I agree. And and I tell people, there’s nothing wrong with working in your business. Some people, that’s their passion, and that’s what they want to do. And, and that’s great. You absolutely should, but somebody’s gotta work on the dang thing too. And nobody’s going to run your business like you are. No one. Because if they were, and they could, they’d probably run their own and that’s so whenever people are like, I need to go find another me. I said, Well, the other you already started their own business. That’s the problem, right? So you need to do is, you need to document and set it up to where other people can follow your lead very easily, and then you’re training a bunch of people to work just like you, who couldn’t do it without your direction.
Liz Farr
That’s right. So you’re making yourself indispensable,
Sharrin Fuller
exactly,
Liz Farr
but virtually,
Sharrin Fuller
yes, yes. And then everybody’s trained perfectly, and they know. And then you, if you can start them from the beginning even better, like I said, it’s those habits. Don’t let them, don’t let them have bad habits. So and again, I didn’t just this. I haven’t always done this. I’ve done it wrong 27 times, right? I had a firm before Core, and I’ve, I’ve gone through employee after employee and couldn’t understand why, until finally, I just said it was like an epiphany. I’m like, Oh, oops, I’m not listening. I’m teaching it, but I’m not listening and and, lo and behold. So you know, you have to, you have to touch the hot stove a few times. I feel like
Liz Farr
some of us do. Some of us do have to learn the hard way?
Sharrin Fuller
Yes, it’s stubborn. I’m stubborn that way. I’m like, I don’t know. I think I could do that better. I’m like, okay, maybe they were right.
Liz Farr
Another thing that I loved learning about in your book was that when you were the CEO, of Core Financial Pros, you set it up so that you only had to work three days a week, which just sounds unreal to most accountants. So how did you make that happen?
Sharrin Fuller
I make this sound even more unreal. So my three day work week is across all the companies I run. My Glass Wallet I have. I’m a fractional CFO for a for another company that I really don’t they’re private, so I don’t mention them, but we own a bunch of properties. And then I also do some I also have another company that I I do some more. I work with more family offices, and then I have Core. So I only work three days a week across Oh, and I’m developing property in Utah, so I only work three days a week, but Core, I only work three hours. And it really, and it really the time was spent on I met with the team, like the my two gals. It was just two of the two of them once a week, and it got to a point where the hour only needed to be a half an hour, and it really was more of a catch up over what we did on the weekend instead of actually work, because everything ran, and the other two hours that I worked were, if they said to me, Hey, Sharrin, we don’t have a service for this. We don’t have a scope for this. We need a template for this. So I would go in and create it. Where I failed in the past is I expected my team to create those services, the scope, the templates, and I assume, because they’re doing the work, that they would know how to do it. And I think that’s where a lot of business owners fail again, the this is your team, and they all have amazing skill set, but that if you’re really good at knowing how you want things done in your company, then you need to lay it out for them. So once I was able to lay it out for them, I didn’t have to do anything anymore. Everything was done. And like I said, their their time was wide open because they didn’t have to search, so they had plenty of time and I wasn’t having to jump in for them. So yeah, so I was only working three hours a week on Core and the other honestly, last year, most of my time went to Women Who Count, which I’m not paid for. So a lot of AFWA, Women Who Count stuff. Last year was probably 50% of my time that I worked. But that was, that was my goal. I wanted to my husband’s I retired him a while ago, and I wanted to, I just wanted to do more things. I wanted to or do nothing, and I just didn’t want to be stuck at a desk. I didn’t want to work anymore and, and that was I’m like, I can work 3 10s like, I’m fine with that if I needed to. Or, you know, it’s been more three eights, but if I had to work a longer day on one of those days, no big deal. But it allowed me to have freedom and weekends, and it felt less like I was working, like it feels like I’m more free time than work now
Liz Farr
that’s that’s amazing and and for so many accountants, this is just sort of a fantasy.
Sharrin Fuller
Yeah, I would have never thought it about five years ago. I There’s no way. There’s no way five years ago,
Liz Farr
no, but, you know, I’ve talked to a couple of people. I’ve had a couple people on this podcast who have managed to build things like that. So I
Sharrin Fuller
the mindset change. Yeah, it’s definitely a mindset change, and it’s a making sure your team doesn’t need you. They only need you like you should never be the bottleneck. Don’t hold anything up and then find your bottlenecks. But most of the time, owners are bottlenecks. They bottleneck everything because they can’t let go.
Liz Farr
So what is your advice to owners who are that bottleneck? What is the mindset shift that they need to make
Sharrin Fuller
they need to have a little bit of trust. They need to understand that people are going to make mistakes. But what matters is, can it be fixed? Can you catch it so you just have to set people up for success. And micromanagement isn’t the way to do it. You doing everything is not the way to do it. If people are not working out, if they’re very talented and they’re not working out, it’s not a them problem. It’s a likely a you problem. That’s the hardest thing to accept. And if you don’t fix it before you bring people on, you’re going to waste more of your time and money, because they’re going to come in, you’re going to train them, they’re not going to work out, they’re not going to get their work done, they’re going to leave. You’ve lost all that time, then you have to do the work that you couldn’t get done anyways. See, it really is about stop saying, I don’t have enough time. You do have enough time. You just don’t want to take the time to make the time. You’re afraid of making the changes. So you really have to, you really need to decide, can I keep doing this, or do I want to stop doing this and actually start living and letting my my company run itself and and that’s where, that’s where it is. I’ve talked to many people are like, well, it just doesn’t work that way. I’m like, okay, so when you’re out of that mindset and you hit rock bottom, you let me know, because with your It doesn’t work that way. It’s not going to work that way for my firm. I’m like, no, yes, it will. It will work that way. It’ll you. But you’re the reason it’s not
Liz Farr
Yeah, yeah, it’s hard. It’s you gotta get out of your own way.
Sharrin Fuller
Absolutely, absolutely,
Liz Farr
yeah, yeah. I loved your book because it was so transparent and so vulnerable, and that was a big part of how I got to see this amazing heart of gold that is in Sharrin Fuller. And you also go into detail about a lot of mistakes and errors in judgment. So besides what we covered already, what would you say is the most valuable mistake you’ve made? And that’s valuable in terms of what you learned,
Sharrin Fuller
get paid before you do the work. I don’t care what the excuse is, what the reasoning is, the I’m going through it again right now with, with a situation I didn’t even think I would need to, but I should know better, like, that’s the ones that you’ve gotta do it. I don’t care who it is or where it is, get paid. Get Paid. Um, don’t do the work if you haven’t got paid. Especially as accountants, you’re doing the work. If you want to bill half and then half at the end, fine. But I still don’t even love that. I’m like, No, I’m going in. I’m doing all the work. Why am I going to get paid at the end? When? Then what? You know, I can’t take this time back, but that’s probably been, I mean, I think I list like seven mistakes I made, but my biggest one is that, and then trust your gut. Trust your gut if something is telling you it’s not right, it’s not right, that’s just we, we tend to be an accountants. We tend to be a little bit more logical and factual and black and white. You know, one plus one is two, but sometimes just have to go, this client’s a red flag. And, you know, I don’t think I should work with them. It’s going to be great money, and that’s where we really get, really get backed up. But trust your gut and get paid before you do the work.
Liz Farr
Yeah, yeah. One of my friends, Al Anderson, always says the best way to get out of a bad client situation is to not get into that bad client situation,
Sharrin Fuller
exactly. And, you know, I’ve done it a couple times because, of course, somebody comes in with a sob story, you know, and I’m like, Oh, it’s okay, because I like to fix everything, and I want to help everybody, but then what I’ve got to pay for everything, I’ve stopped everything, and now I have liability, because I took on this work and I didn’t get paid, but now I’m liable. So that’s where it comes into play that people don’t really think about either, is that if you don’t get paid, and now you’re you’re on the hook for anything that comes across from it because you got involved. It’s a lose, lose, lose situation, absolutely.
Liz Farr
Now, what are some other things that you want readers to know about this book?
Sharrin Fuller
Um, even though, I mean, I, even though I am accountant, it’s not just for accountants. I really. And because I start that way, right? I It’s, it’s, I’m not telling you how to do anything. I’m not I’m just giving you it’s my journey. It’s my path. It’s how I got here. It’s a lot of people were expecting that. They’re like, I wasn’t expecting that I’m like, I know I changed it, but it’s, I really wanted to, honestly, have people go, dang, she fell so many times, and she seems like she’s doing okay. I can do it right. That’s, I just want it to be something maybe more motivating and inspiring to people, to to to just like I said, just keep getting back up. Like, just keep getting back up.
Liz Farr
That’s, that’s a perfect message to give to readers. Now, since we decided to do this podcast, and since you wrote this book, you recently sold your firm, Core Financial Pros, and now you’re focusing on advisory work. So how did this come about?
Sharrin Fuller
So when I sold my last Firm A Simple Office solution, I told myself, I’m never doing this again by somehow, ended up with another firm. And I do go into the details of that in my in my book, I won’t go buy it, but And as I’m in it and I got it to where it needed to be, I just my passion was gone. Whenever my team would say, hey, Sharrin, can you go do this? I realized I really love the the advisory, the process, the fixing of things, but I didn’t love the work itself anymore. It just wasn’t exciting. What? But I do love when people come up to me and go, Hey, Sharrin, I have this problem. What do you think? And I and I would give them the solution and tell them how to fix it. And I thought, This is what excites me. I want to do this. So I decided on a whim to put Core on Facebook. I think this was like last June, and it, I had so many offers right away. It was just insane. And the one I decided to go with it, you know, it was an SBA thing. So it took a little bit of time, and we finally, we decided was best just to cut on 1/1 instead of a middle of a quarter just made everything really clean. So she took over as of 1/1, and yeah, it’s been a whole different world. It’s been, I don’t feel about this one like I did the last one. This one, of course, I love my team. Monica is on my team. Have been with me for eight years across many companies, so I’m sad, but she’s going to stay with the company. And Melanie has been with me going on four years, and she’s going with the company as well. But I’m so excited for the new path. I’ve already working with new advisory clients, and I’m I’m helping them automate and process, and I help another one decide what their growth is, and just really strategic advisory to help people grow their business with whatever it is that they need to to to be efficient and to to make smart business decisions. And I think a lot of people like working with me, because I have that, that strategy, the operations, the efficiency, but I then I have the fractional CFO background, so kind of get a little bit of a two for there. Some of the clients that I’m working with the are account. Accounts are like, I love it. I can ask you cash forecast questions, and you can actually answer them. I’m like, Yep, there you go. And then I have the community. So my focus, really now is just, I just want to help people. I want to help people. I want to see everybody succeed. I want everybody to take an eight week sabbatical over the holidays, like I do. I want everybody to work three days a week, you know, I I just want everybody to be successful and happy and not struggle. I don’t want to go to nothing makes me more sad than when I go to one of the conferences, like Scaling, and I’ll ask somebody, Hey, are you coming to the event tonight? And they’ll go, I can’t. I have to go upstairs and do client work. And I’m like, how long you had your firm? Like, 20 years. Do you have a team? You have four people? I’m like, oh my goodness, I don’t want you to have to do that. And they do. They have to work the whole time and again. Some people choose that I want to help. The ones that don’t want to do that.
Liz Farr
I love it. I love it. And now, now, as you mentioned, your new focus is the Clone and Conquer Hub, which is the method you describe in your book, so go out buy the book, and now it is a membership community. So yes, what? What’s going to be inside this community?
Sharrin Fuller
We are planning. I am teaching everybody how to do everything. There’s a lot of content, a lot of templates, handouts, giveaways, how tos videos. I basically show how I do everything, my entire process, my entire process. I do a weekly call with anybody who wants to hop on, and we have a topic, and I will basically advise, or, you know, talk through whatever, whatever may be. And I’m very I’m active in there, so I respond, and really it’s just solving for any of the needs that are out there. I think one of the ones somebody asked about is, how do you come back from vacation with your emails? Like, what do you do? Because I’m an inbox zero person. So of course, I went in and showed them. This is what I do. This is how I plan it. This is how I schedule my day. So it’s really a lot of just, this is how and then solving for anything. I kind of pay attention to all the other groups, like, what are people worried about right now? Okay, let me show you how I do that. Let me, let me create a solution for that. So a lot of a lot of content, a lot of how to and solves. Yeah.
Liz Farr
And now, will this just be for accountants, or
Sharrin Fuller
it’ll be so right now, right now, my audience at this point is a lot of accountants, because that’s my community. We will eventually branch out a little bit more, and then I’ll have within it, we’ll have like, sub areas, like, Hey, this is just because some things will be very are androgynous, right? They go across, they’re open. Other things are very accountant related. So in the long run, it’ll be professional services, and then I’ll be able to, you know, hone it in a little bit more, which will kind of also be a good thing, because then people can hopefully find clients and such. So there’s, there will be a lot in there. We have a lot, a lot coming, and a lot of ideas and some vendor participation that we’re really excited about. We’re going to do some monthly challenges and with with prizes and giveaways. So we really want it to be something that people want to be a part of, and it’s their go to like, I have a question, Hey, I’m going to go in here, and I know I’ll get an answer right away and and that’s what we’re striving for. So that’s really where our focus is, at this point, is the community, and then advisory kind of just falls in to my lap from there.
Liz Farr
Yeah, yeah. So before we hopped on the call, you mentioned that you were taking on advisory clients that weren’t accounting firms.
Sharrin Fuller
Yeah.
Liz Farr
How exciting is that? What? What is, what are, what kinds of things are you doing for those clients?
Sharrin Fuller
Yeah, that was it’s really it’s weird to me. Well, it’s not really weird because my clients haven’t been accounting firms for forever, right? But now it to advise on a higher level. I guess it’s not any different than I have been. It’s just, so it’s just, I’ve been doing accounting for. So long it’s fun to go in and do this other so one of, one of the clients I’m working with, they’re, they’re buying a lot of different firms or a lot of different other companies, and they’re, how do we merge them together? What do we do? So we’re working on that. Another client we have is they’re growing, and they have no idea which direction to take, and so doing a lot of analysis with that. Because, of course, it’s not just to hire this person or do this one thing. It’s a What are your goals? Where are you going? Because everything I do, I need to have your your your road map, your in game in mind, because the decisions you make today affect you from three years from now. It could be very, very costly. So I really kind of take all of that and the along with business, you got to really take in the emotional, right? You have to get to know people and what they want, what matters to them, and, you know, kind of like, dig down into why they’re doing what they’re doing, and making sure they even like what they’re doing. Because if they don’t have that passion, no matter what you do, they’re not going to be happy. And that sounds really like, you know, psychology, and they’re but it really is like you kind of have to talk to people and get things out of them, but it’s really fun. It’s fun to hear people. It’s so much fun to talk to people and hear how passionate they are about their their businesses and what they did and why they did it, and where they want to be and what their future is going to be, and then help them get there. And that’s, again, it’s, it could be tech, it could be onboarding. It could be, I was, you know, like I said, an analysis on on whether or not they should get, have a, have a brick and mortar. So it really just anything. That’s why I call it strategic business advisory, because it really is just different for every person. We’re solving for something different for every business. And sometimes we solve and then move on to something else. So yeah, just, just kind of all over the place, on, on business growth and efficiency.
Liz Farr
I love it and and I really like your emphasis on having a North Star, because that, I think, is something that my generation of accounting firm owners, you know, the boomers and some of the the older Gen X people, we didn’t really do that. We would just say, Oh, I’m going to have an accounting firm.
Sharrin Fuller
Yep.
Liz Farr
And you know, without really any firm idea of what you were aiming for, it’s just well, you know, let’s get to 3 million this year, or let’s grow our team to 25 but I love how your generation and and the younger accountants coming in are really zeroing in on this. So what would you say was your north star when you were with when you had Core Financial Pros.
Sharrin Fuller
So my North Star has always been I want to make sure that it’s it’s family, like I always I want to be able to buy my sisters houses. I wanted all of us to be in one place. I want to make sure that if anybody in my actually I take a step back. It started my mom. I wanted my mom to be able to retire. The bigger I wanted. Excuse me, my dog. I wanted my mom to be able to retire. I wanted to be able to buy her a home so she’d have to work anymore, and when she passed away, that is where everything kind of changed for me. And I thought I have been busting my rear end so hard for this for my mom, and I no longer have my mom to do that, and so I had to change things. I needed to be able to still do this while not taking for granted the fact that I have my sisters that are still with me, right? So that has always been my thing is just making sure that my my sisters, my my husband’s parents, that if anything happens, I can, I can take care of them, that they have somewhere to go. I mean, in a perfect world, I have a little compound, and all of our houses would be in a in a row, and we’d have a big pool in the middle right, which nobody wants to live in the same place. So that’s never gonna happen. But little too close, then nobody want I told me it’s gonna be a Vegas guys. And my sister’s husband’s like, well, we kind of like San Diego. I’m like, Well, so, but that’s, that’s, it’s family. It’s, you know, at the end of the day, is, is, is anybody struggling? And that’s, that’s kind of what, what matters to me.
Liz Farr
I like that. And, you know, I’ve been talking to a lot of people about what their North Star is, and that’s a really good one. It’s not, it’s not just, you know, making money to grow the top line, but making money for a reason, for something, yeah, bigger than you.
Sharrin Fuller
Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes you have things that happen in your life. That that happen, and just push you into that realization or that shock of everything that I thought, I wonder, I thought I was doing no longer makes any sense, or no longer matters to me, and now I now understand and the loss of my mom is, I write my book, I gave her a whole chapter that is kind of what did it for me, is made me go, Wait a second, everything I thought, everything I’ve been focused on, and how I’ve been focusing on it, is no longer relevant. So I need to shift without being in the situation again and having it happen with, you know, maybe one of my sisters, who I’m very, very close with. I’m the oldest of oldest of four of us. So you know that it’s just like I said, it really just shifts and and sometimes things just happen in life. But as long as you take a step back and adjust, I think we’re I think you’re good.
Liz Farr
That’s right, that’s right now, now I want you to pull out your your best forecasting software. Maybe use Jirav, maybe use something else. Maybe you have your own spreadsheet, but where do you see the accounting profession in 10 years?
Sharrin Fuller
Ooh, that’s going to be a rough one. Um, it’s going to be highly, highly automated. And I think what we’re still going to see is there’s, there’s going to be a lot of advisors, because as much automation and chatGPT and everything that we have. I think people are still going to want to ask a person, but I think it’s going to turn more to of we all end up we either have our own advisory or we’re working for someone as advisory. I think we’re going to start seeing less and less people come into our profession because of it. And I mean, I I think if I look at like we’re in Demolition Man, the movie, right? We’re all sitting there. We all work for into it, and we’re all answering the phone, helping people that are calling in. But it’s, it’s really going to be less of the the data and and more of the Somebody, help me, somebody. I need a voice. I need an actual person. But it’s, yeah, I if you can’t do something that’s very relationship based, and you’re still doing, if you’re doing anything that software can do or should do, and it’s not a human connection, I think we’re going to really get replaced by software. So build those human connections, no matter what they are, because that’s that’s something that just can’t Well, I’m sure it could be, but for the most part, for most of us, I’ve seen too many movies, Liz, most of us, we really need that human connection. And that’s, that’s what, that’s what sticks,
Liz Farr
that’s, that’s it, you know, and it, and from what you’re saying, from what a lot of other guests have said to me, we’re going to need a completely different skill set when we look for accountants,
Sharrin Fuller
oh yeah, we’re going to need people that are empathetic and can talk to people and understand and read, whereas a lot of CPAs became CPAs because it’s numbers. They don’t have to talk to people. Just give me the number. I’m going to do it in the background. To do it in the background. We’re like, Yeah, the software does that now. So yeah, it’s, it’s going to be interesting. We’re already in the shift we are. How many people hire, except for very large corporations, how often do you see somebody hiring for an accounts receivable clerk? You just don’t see it anymore because there’s software. It’s and we’re just going to start seeing it more and more. So just find something that’s human, human connection,
Liz Farr
that’s right, right, be the human in the room, exactly. Be like Sharrin.
Sharrin Fuller
I don’t know if I’d give that advice, but, you know,
Liz Farr
yeah, well, at least be human and larger than life there.
Sharrin Fuller
Okay, that works. Okay. I don’t even get mad at me for trying to be me, you know? It’s a whole other it’s a whole other topic.
Liz Farr
Well, I love having Sharrin be Sharrin. And if you ever go to an accounting conference and you see Sharrin, you will know what I mean, that she is a big personality.
Sharrin Fuller
Yes, I am
Liz Farr
Yes, and we, we love her for that.
Sharrin Fuller
Thank you. I appreciate that very much.
Liz Farr
Yeah, now it is been so wonderful having you on here it was sometime coming, sometime getting all of our stars in alignment to make it happen. So thank you so much for being here. Sharrin,
Sharrin Fuller
thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I was, I was excited when, when this was on my calendar, I was like, yay. I made it
Liz Farr
Yes, yes. And that means that the next time I see you at a conference, I will give you a little Disruptors badge ribbon for your badge.
Sharrin Fuller
Oh, wonderful. I’m. Excited. I will rep that,
Liz Farr
yes, as only Sharrin can, of course. Yeah. Now if listeners want to connect with you, where is the best place to find you?
Sharrin Fuller
The best place is just my website. It’s GlassWalletVentures.com and you’ve got, you’ve got a million different ways to get a hold of me on there, Facebook, email, text, I’m all over Facebook too. I I’m I’m Gen X, so I just can’t let go of Facebook and go on to the other things. But yeah, my website’s probably the best way. Or Google just Google me.
Liz Farr
That’s right, that’s right, yeah. And it Sharrin with two r’s and an i.
Sharrin Fuller
that is accurate, yes, yes.
Liz Farr
Well, I want to thank you so much, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Sharon,
Sharrin Fuller
you as well. Thank you. All right.