Accounting with Confidence Podcast

37: Behind the Scenes: A Day in the Life of a Firm Owner

• Beth Whitworth • Season 2 • Episode 37

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This episode is a confidence booster designed to give you an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at my daily routine as a public accountant and business owner. I've been in the industry for 29 years, and my work-life balance has morphed significantly, especially since the pandemic. Now, my team and I operate 100% remotely, providing flexibility and a more casual work environment. I'll share how I plan my week using the Full Focus Planner, prioritize my health and wellness, and maintain productivity while enjoying my personal passions. Join me as I walk you through my typical day, from morning dog walks to evening workouts, and learn how you too can manage your business effectively from home.

Full Focus Planner: https://fullfocusstore.com/

Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less: https://fullfocusstore.com/products/free-to-focus

 Hi, and welcome to another episode of Accounting with Confidence. I'm your host, Beth Whitworth, and today I'm bringing a. Confidence booster episode that is just giving you a behind the scenes look at what a day in the life for me, as a public accountant who runs their own business and has been doing this for a very long time, what does that look like?

So. It has morphed over the years. I just finished my 29th tax season, and so when I look back over the years, it has gone from having to dress professionally, including heels and skirts, and going into the office and working a ton of overtime every day and sometimes six or seven days a week to then moving to something a little more casual, but still professional and still going to the office every day.

Still working at least six days a week. To having my own office space, getting to be more business casual, still coming to the office every day and really having that expectation that the office is open from eight to five. And you know, clients can come by and we have client appointments there. Well, as we know, you know, the pandemic came along and morphed.

Pretty much almost every single business in some way. And for us, it took what I was starting to do, which is being able to work from home when I wanted to work from the road, those types of things and full blown make us into a remote firm and. As far as the brick and mortar office, while we still have it, nobody comes in every day.

I keep office space there to meet with clients. I keep office space there so that someone can drop off their tax documents because I do have some people who, you know, they're just not equipped to be able to upload their own documents or scan their own documents. And so we still have that drop off location.

But for the most part, the team and myself have become 100% remote. For me, that means I am working from my home office and you can see I've got some mess behind me that I haven't quite cleaned up. I could go close that curtain, but I wanted to get this recorded and so I'm just, I very casual at this point and the entire team works from home.

But for me as a business owner, that has absolutely changed what I do and what my workflow looks like on the daily. So for me, my weeks start on a Sunday night when I use my full focus planner, which is a product that comes from full focus. Michael Hyatt is the developer of that and comes with a, a book that I read, which has to do with planning and, and kind of scheduling.

But I review that on Sunday nights. And what that allows me to do is go back through my week. Capture anything that didn't get done. Kind of look at what my wins were and how I did on getting some goals done. And I go through that and I try to do it religiously on Sunday nights, and that allows me to kind of do that week at weekly recap.

And set what my priorities need to be for the next week, and this particular planner allows me to kind of give some feedback on what worked, what do I need to change, what happened during the week that maybe derailed some of my plans. It also allows me to track things like sleep and exercise and my state of mind, my level of joy, my level of stress.

How much water I'm drinking, maybe what my meal plan was, and for me, that's pretty important. I try to make a meal plan and stick to it daily, just from a health standpoint. So Sunday nights, I'm, I'm looking at my calendar, I'm filling in what's gonna happen that week. And for my week. I only take meetings on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and only from the hours of nine to three, nobody can get on my calendar.

Before nine or after three, or on Thursdays or Fridays. Thursdays and Fridays are completely blocked. Only I can schedule something. I typically reserve those for more of the internal meetings for the firm. So that's when I have my coaching sessions with my Woodard coach. That's when I might be scheduling a standing meeting for.

Things relating to the firm like marketing. What I don't typically do is have any standing team meetings, unless it's firm related and I don't have any client meetings and they can't, nobody can jump on there. So Fridays, it started out for me to be able to take some time off. And what happened is it, it kind of morphed into, it's just a day that is on my schedule.

So I can work out in the morning, I can go to lunch, I can, and then spend some time in the afternoon doing some work or it's a travel day. We race a lot and we travel a lot starting in May and through, um, October. And so I, those Fridays, a lot of times I'm on the road, so it's nice to have. That knowledge that nobody can jump on my calendar.

Now, Thursdays I set aside for what I consider overflow days. So when something didn't get done in those first three days, or I had to reschedule for some reason, uh, you know, if it was on me, you know, I wasn't feeling well and canceled a meeting or had something pop up and I need to get it rescheduled in the week, I know I can try to get it on a Thursday because I'm the one in control of my calendar.

So my week, you know, I, I call this a day in the life, but really I'm starting out with the kind of the weekly overview and. It all works together. So typically I do the same stuff all the time. All the time. So I go to bed early and I know I need nine hours of sleep, so I try to get that regularly. There are occasions when I stay up later to watch baseball game that runs late of hockey game that runs late.

I am a big St. Louis. Missouri teams type fan. So I'm a Chiefs fan for NFL. I love the Cardinals, I love the blues, and I will stay up late if it's an important game. But otherwise I'm getting to bed by nine o'clock and then I sleep or get, I usually get outta bed between six 30 and seven. When I get up, the first thing, and the reason I'm actually getting up 'cause I really love my sleep, is because I have a dog that needs to go out and it's my job to do the first walk in the morning.

It's offset by my husband getting to do the last walk at night so I don't have to walk him outside at night. So it's great. So I walk the dog and then it just comes into this very routine system that I have created. And one of the things that. I have tried in the past is to start my day with some meditation or breathing, and you know what?

I can't really, I just can't get into that to where it's something that relaxes me. I know the more you practice, the better it gets, but what I have changed is that I've decided to start setting a timer and doing some reading. So I've always been a reader. I started reading when I was three years old. I love fiction, so I read all kinds of fiction, but currently I'm in some Sarah J.

Moss, some fantasy fairy type series, and I set a timer for 10 to 30 minutes before I start my workday, before I've checked my phone. Before I've checked my email, before I do any of those things, I make my coffee. I set a timer for 10 to 30 minutes, depending on how much time I have available, and I read some fiction and I've been doing this for most of this tax season, so this current tax season, instead of trying to get that meditation in, and I'm not a workout in the morning kind of girl, so that.

Has set a good tone for me in having kind of relaxed my mind. I'm not walking into my day with this urgency, and instead it's kind of a more of a mellow start. And once I do that, I update my planner for the day. Is there anything that has changed or I need to set? What big three things I wanna get done?

And then I check my email. And then I flag and delegate emails that need to be worked on by somebody on the team or something that I need to follow up on now. It was just recently, I was listening to a webinar that Dawn Brolin did that Becky, my admin, said, Hey, you should probably listen to this. This might be something, there might be something in here that, and one of the things she said is, instead of starting your day with looking at the email, start it with whatever project you need to get done.

And I need to adopt that principle, so I will give you an update sometime later and let you know if I manage to get that adopted. So I get my big three, if it's a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, I am starting with meetings or reviewing Canopy, which is our tax practice management software, and figuring out what is on my focus list, what is due this week, and I have those lists kind of identified.

People know that if it's something that they need something from me on the next step, they have to flag it waiting for Beth. I look at that, I. Also will then I work on internal firm work. You know, I will do some of the fixed price agreements. I will do some, some of the sales processes. I will have client coaching meetings or tax planning meetings for just my high tier clients.

And then the rest of my time is really keeping the team moving and supported. I have standing meetings with my admin. I have standing meetings with my unicorn. And we have those set on Monday, Tuesdays, or Wednesdays, we have a standing team meeting. So those are all fit into my day, typically between nine and three.

Now I start working typically before nine, but nobody can hop on my calendar until nine. Then I will schedule some time and block some time for cleanup projects for clients that have kind of extra things that are happening and they need some extra support from me and just kind of following up. And then I try, I try, I will say.

To end my day with the same shutdown routine every day, which is the final email check for the day. I will check in with my, my admin if I need to, and, and forward things to her or flag in my email for her. And then almost every day I am ending with a workout. So I do Zumba. I do it about five days a week.

I work out with a personal trainer that I drive to her house, and she works me out a couple times a week. And because I'm not, I don't work out in the morning, so I end my day with that workout, and then I start my evening routine, which is typically figuring out what's for dinner. I cook and I like to cook.

My husband doesn't cook and that's okay. And so he, and he doesn't complain about what I make or cook, so it's, I will try to plan what I'm gonna have for dinner. On that Sunday when I'm working through my calendar and just get some ideas for what my dinner options are, and then I will do the cooking, you know, so I'll come home for my workout, I'll start dinner, or if it's in the crockpot or whatever, we'll have dinner and we end up, you know, watching usually a sporting event or some series that we're watching on tv.

And like I said, I get to bed by nine. So really that is. That's my day and what makes it great and what I love about being remote is that I don't have drive time except to get to my workouts and back. Or if I have, if I decide to go meet a client for coffee or one of those types of things, I don't have drive time.

I am getting up and getting ready in whatever. Level that is for me, which is typically workout gear, is what I wear on the regular and daily. I no more heels. I don't know that I'll ever wear heels again in my life. And I just have that. I walk into my office, I have a reading chair where I start my day, um, and I hang out a little bit with James the Greyhound.

And then, um, I move over to my desk and it just is very calm. There's not. The interruptions that I would have at my office. And so I'm trying to create a space that just makes me feel productive and has space for things. And yeah, so that's what I do. So that's my typical day. Now during tax season, it changes a little bit.

There's a little bit more pressure because there are those looming deadlines and there's a lot more things on that waiting for Beth List. So things are happening. Daily that are increasing that list things that the team can't move forward until I have looked at them. And so I have to ha have the team help me prioritize those.

What do they need from me to keep moving? I also do a better job, I think during tax season in blocking my time for similar. Items, so meaning when there's a bunch of returns to be reviewed, I will do those in a block of time because I'm doing similar activity. If there's meetings, I try to block those all on the same day.

If there's research or projects to do, I try to do those usually on a Thursday or Friday when I'm not clogged up with meetings, and so that's the difference. I'm not necessarily working a lot more hours. And my goal, you know, during this season, moving out of tax season is to really kind of fine tune my schedule and when I block time I stick to it.

So I make that promise to myself and I don't cancel on myself. So that is podcast recording days. That is internal focused work days that is working on projects for the firm. It is things where I am working on a cleanup project for a client and I block those and stick to 'em, so that is my goal for this year.

And in the meantime, I don't know that it really changes my daily schedule. I'm still gonna be working, you know, from seven 30 in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon with some gaps there sometimes. But mostly that's where what I'm doing. And then on Fridays it's a little different because I start my day a little differently.

I work out in the mornings on Friday, but not until 10. You know, it's 'cause I'm not a morning person. So that's it. I thought I'd share a little bit of that behind the scenes of what it used to be and how I have kind of embraced this work from home and how I'm managing, you know, my schedule, my goals, my workload, my team, and my health and wellness.

So hopefully this little confidence booster gives you some insight on what can be done, and I look forward to talking to you soon. And remember, you are the only one who can build that business that you love. See, see you later. Bye.

Thanks for listening to another episode of Accounting with Confidence. My hope is that my experiences can help you navigate the realities of owning and operating your business. Please subscribe or follow the podcast on your favorite podcast listening platform so that you never miss an episode. Feel free to leave me a text by using the, send us a text message link in the show description and let me know how I'm doing.