65: I'm Back!: Update Episode

Starting Fresh: Reflecting on Tax Seasons, Hobbies, and Growth 

In this episode, I share my journey of resilience, self-discovery, and continuous learning amidst the busy tax season cycle. I discuss my passion for podcasting, personal hobbies like competitive shooting, and plans for upcoming industry events. 

Key topics 

• My motivation for podcasting and its impact on my daily energy levels 
• Reflection on my 30th tax season and lessons learned from staffing challenges 
• My journey overcoming breast cancer and sharing my experiences to inspire others 
• Discovery of competitive shooting as a new skill and a mental reset 
• Planning and excitement for Scaling New Heights, including new speaking engagements 
• Appreciation for community support, fan mail, and networking opportunities 
• Emphasis on personal growth, embracing challenges regardless of age 

Transcript

Beth 0:01

I'm Beth Whitworth, race car driving, quilt making, CPA firm-owning, wife, mom, and boss. I'm here to help you build a business you love by sharing all of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the excellent sides of working in this industry. It's not always easy, but after many years, I can finally say it's worth it. Let me guide you on your journey to accounting with confidence.

Introduction and Podcast Journey

Beth 0:32

Hey everybody, and welcome to a long-awaited, much overdue episode of Accounting with Confidence. Excuse me, it's actually pretty early. It's before seven o'clock here. And uh I have been missing for a while. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Beth Whitworth, and I am the host of Accounting with Confidence. I have been working on this podcast for going, I think we're finishing that the end of this year. We'll be finishing three years, four years. I started at the end of 2022. And here I am today. I am just going to go with the flow. So I haven't had time to record episodes. You guys know that I've taken breaks before, and it almost always coincides with tax season. And it did again this year. We thought we had the stuff in place that this tax season was going to be uh different and we would be ready, but things happen. Things happen. Some definitely on me, some definitely things we couldn't control. And what happened was that we ended up planning for some things that didn't ever happen. So today I'm just going to give you kind of a little recap of what's been going on and what is coming because I love to podcast. I don't know how many people are really listening or watching or doing any of those things. But for me, it is something that just brings me a lot of joy and it brings me a lot of energy. And so when I make the time to record a podcast, I then have this better day. I'm more productive. I feel like I've accomplished something because this podcast lived in my brain for a long time before I actually sort of pulled the trigger and did it in 22. And for those who have listened for a long time, or if you just started listening when I went to back episodes, you know that the trigger for that, for finally starting the podcast, was being diagnosed with breast cancer and going through that treatment and realizing that what I had right then in my business was worth sharing. Now that was four years ago. Four years ago, this month was when I had the surgery. And I spent the rest of 22 recovering. And then I jumped on and said, I'm ready to start doing this podcast. And so I learned all the things I could learn and I launched at the end of 22. So here we are, four years later, four years post-umcer and post essentially being cancer free. And I just have this desire to keep doing this. So I have a ton of content. I have a calendar full of episode ideas, and this one is going to be completely off the cuff. So I'm going to try to keep it concise and I'm also going to try to keep it a little organized. But if you know me, you know me. So where do we want to start?

Challenges and Reflection on Tax Season

Beth 3:50

I would say that let's start with tax season being my 30th tax season in a row. Yes, 30. When I was just a baby, I started doing tax returns. No, I'm I'm kidding. But I did start very early in my career. And I have always been in a tax season of some sort. I've always been driven by those deadlines. That April 15th deadline has always been a part of my life. I've also, this was my 30th tax season. This is also the 30-year anniversary for my husband and I being married. We got married after my first tax season. And so it being the 30th, one, I didn't think I would, I would still be doing the tax season grind 30 years later. Two, I thought we had set ourselves up to really have the right team in place. We were making some plans to allow me to step away and not be as involved in the season as I had been in the past. So I fully and firmly believe with my firm every single year that really nothing leaves the firm without having a second set of eyes. So I don't have any one preparer that can do the return, review the return, and say the return is ready. Everything really goes through some layers. And so that has always meant that I was going to be the person that in a lot of places had that final touch. So last year we had a goal that we were going to expand the team and add a tax manager. And I will admit, on me, probably didn't make that decision soon enough and didn't spend an adequate amount of time trying to find the right person. Granted, it was the end of the year. So there was holidays, there was all the things going on. We thought we had found the right fit, and we hired somebody who started in early January. And it turned out that what he was doing and what we were doing just didn't really mesh. We are a quick turnaround firm. We do not let things linger. So when there's stuff ready to be reviewed, we are reviewing within 24, 48 hours in case there's something we have to go back to the client for. We want to get that information back. We want to turn it around. And we put an internal deadline on ourselves of trying to get things out in 10 days. And we tell the clients two weeks. And we did not have the same timeline going between us and our manager. And it was enough, it was a remote position. Communication wasn't great. And we were really having to pull the work back and take care of that. So I will say that was on me. I didn't do a great onboarding job. I may have not done enough background and confirmed and stay in communication because we were busy. And so it was really hard to try to also say, hey, you know, I really wanted it to work. And so I tried. And he tried, I believe. So that happened. We also had a member of our team that had to step back for some medical reasons. So we were planning on that being her first tax season. And she actually did not get to really participate in tax season. So we were down some people and also having to reallocate some things. We also had some clients that came on board that were, you know, substantial and we needed to get them on boarded. And again, I promised I'd do the work and then we ran out of time. And so I feel like I spent a good portion of this tax season apologizing, not making excuses, but saying, yeah, I dropped the ball. I didn't get to it. And I hope my client base appreciated that, that it was not, it was, it wasn't intentional. On top of, you know, the tax season stuff and the staffing issues, you know, the tech was good. So I think we had some some good, kind of stable tech. We didn't have any major issues there, which was great.

Personal Growth and New Hobbies

Beth 8:16

I was working through some health issues during that time, but I will say I was still able to take two racing trips in March, you know, two long, longer weekends to go to Georgia and North Carolina. And I was glad that I did those and I will continue to do those. We just started that in the last two or three years, and I've been racing for a long time. And I was never taking any type of time off during tax season. And so I did do that, and I'm very glad that I did. Other things that were going on, I was helping an organization that I got involved with last year that to start a not-for-profit, and I became the treasurer. And it's an organization that is near and dear to my heart. Um, I think I've had some episodes where I've talked about, you know, I've kind of had this new hobby, this new competition, and I'm decided that, you know, the authentic self that I am, I'm going to share with you what I'm doing because I enjoy it. So, what it is is competition shooting. So I have learned to shoot a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun, but mostly I've been competing in pistol competitions. And it is very similar to the racing. And in that, I got started because, you know, we started going to the range and we discovered there was competition and we had some friends that were doing it. And I ended up with this ladies' organization called Lady Sentinel that they wanted to become a not-for-profit. And it it changed my life last year as far as what I decided I wanted to do. Now, I did not grow up shooting, I wasn't a hunter. I never, you know, I had been to the range a handful of times in my life. But what I discovered is that being involved in learning a new, completely new skill for something that I am, you know, is totally new to me, it engaged my brain in a way that I needed. And the competition piece of it was a for for me, it was a great place to just let everything else that was going on in my life go. You know, so whether it were, you know, work worries or health worries or family worries, whatever it was, I would have those two or three hours at a competition where I didn't have room in my brain to think about it. And it was a great reset. And in the winter, most of those are in the evenings, indoor ranges. So it was a good reset, you know, for that after work, go do this match. And then, you know, the next day, I was like reset. I was not in that zone of being worried about things. And so I just wanted to share that because I know I've I've kind of talked around it and I've talked around it because there are some people that, you know, there's there's politics around guns. And I'm not going into any of the politics around guns. I am telling you that I have discovered a hobby that is very fulfilling to me. Dave and I do it together. It's very similar to racing as far as timing and scoring and things like that. And so it was very familiar in that regard. And it's really something that challenges me. And I realized that I am not too old, one, to learn something new and two, to still want to have challenges in my life. Now, doesn't mean I want challenges relating to everything. I say a lot, oh no, not another learning opportunity. But it does keep you in this mindset that you can still grow. You can still grow, you can still learn, and that's what I've been doing. So during this past tax season, I really did make time and use that time to kind of reset and do some matches. And I was doing quite a few for the Lady Sentinel group. I went and I did some teaching. I taught how to get into matches. It is a very male-dominated sport. So I am very frequently the only woman at the match. I'm trying to get more women to recognize that this is something that is really fulfilling. There's a little adrenaline rush, there's strategy, there's there's a lot of things going on. And I think that just like racing, it is male-dominated, and it is harder to convince the ladies to actually that this is a place they belong. So I am kind of on that soapbox a little bit, but I'm really helping this organization or hoping to help this organization grow and kind of we're trying to get all of our ducks in a row so that we can expand. And it's just, it's very fun. I have not been in this layer of an organization in a very long time. And being able to help them get the not-for-profit, and we have a very good core group of leadership, and it's it's just something that I was was unexpected for me this year.

Team Expansion and Future Plans

Beth 13:35

So tax season, like I said, it was a little bit of a grind. It was a little stressful. We had some highlights being that our administrative assistant rocked it. She started essentially got pulled into the position in January. So she had been working for me and the just as like a personal assistant, and we had her step into the admin role. And oh my gosh, if you had any interactions with Kirsten, she's amazing. And really everything else was just teaching us what needed to change. And so tax season ended. We had a lot of catch-up to do. We had projects that had kind of sat there that then needed to be readdressed. And we knew we needed to hire. So we started the process before tax season ended. We started running ads, we started figuring out what we needed, and we did it. So our team is growing. We knew that needed to happen. Um, we were feeling that pressure of Sarah and I not having someplace to offload work to someone else so that we could do more things. And so we knew we needed more hours. And still living in our permanent part-time model, we hired an accountant another 30 hours a week, and and he has started and he's great. And we have uh hired a tax manager that is going to start later this month. And we are so excited. Now, we're also toning down our excitement because we did that before and we had all these plans, and it it really we were, it hurt more when it didn't work out because we were so hopeful. So it's really hard to, I mean, I'm excited. I'm so thrilled with these people. I think they're gonna be great additions to our team. We also have an intern that started last week, and she's waiting until her job at KPMG starts, and so she's helping us do just odds and ends um relating to anything from rolling spreadsheets forward for next year to mailing out tax documents, whatever. And so that's been a nice relief to have that little bit of extra administrative help.

Scaling New Heights Conference

Beth 15:57

So I'm excited, and this is leading us right into scaling new heights. So every year I do a scaling new heights recap and kind of a day by day, and I'm gonna do that again this year. But this year's different. So this was huge. I submitted four sessions, and of those four, I two of them were selected, and apparently it was a huge amount of people submitted for a smaller amount of spots this year. So I'm thrilled. And so I've been working that selection process took a long time. And then once it got there, I had the present the presentation, the PowerPoints, all of those things to do. Well, we leave in like a week, and I'm gonna be teaching a breakout session on converting legacy clients to subscriptions, which is an expanded, almost like a workshop on what I did last year in the 20-minute session. And I really I'm I'm passionate about it. I definitely had more than 20 minutes to talk about, but now this is almost a two-hour session. And so I am I'm so excited about it. And then the second session I got was back in the Woodard Theater, a 20-minute session on hiring hacks and essentially how I have this process to beat the box out, you know. So when you go to those hiring sites, everything is automated now, everything is using AI. People are responding to your ad, they're not even reading it. Someone, you know, AI is reading it, going pulling out keywords and saying, yep, respond. So hiring has changed. But my process that started before AI got super popular and more and more robust in all these programs, my process still works. But the trick is how do you get those people to your process? And so that's what I'm going to talk about in my 20-minute session. So if anybody going to Scaling New Heights is going and speaking on Tuesday's my breakout, Wednesday's my Woodard Theater. This was a goal. This was on my list last year in the strategic plan of things I wanted to do. And I am so excited. So I'm a little less excited about the fact that it's like a week away. I need to pack, I need to practice, and I need to make make all the plans. So Sarah and I'll be heading out. W e do strategic planning while we're there. I have a bunch of networking type events. We'll see vendors. I love scaling new heights. It's exhausting, but we're coming back, and the tax manager will start. So, so much to do before I leave. I'm very happy about being able to go. And we are, I think we're in a place right now with the firm and with the team, and even with where I am, with my hobbies and just everything. I'm very optimistic. I'm very happy.

Community Engagement and Listener Interaction

Beth 19:16

I will say that it is really good to be back recording. I have to thank my editor who has been patiently waiting for me to send episodes, and he's behind the scenes making some new content from past episodes. So I'm gonna start getting, you know, some more promotion out there. I wanted to do a couple of shout-outs here for people who reached out to me. One was a couple weeks ago, I finally got my first fan mail. So there's always a link wherever you're listening to this that says send Beth a text. And I get notified. And I got a fan mail from Derek, and he wanted to know where I was? Was I okay? And I so appreciated that. And we talked about get me getting to speak at Scaling New Heights, and so I'm I'm guessing he's gonna be there. But that was thank you, Derek. I appreciated that. And then also to David, who I know listens when he he's on the West Coast, and we see each other at scaling, we see each other at a couple of events a year, and he reached out earlier this year wanting to know if I was okay because you know it was a rough tax season. And my last episode talked about dealing with the stress of tax season, and I wasn't hadn't planned on doing that episode, but that tells me I was in that mode. I was very, very stressed out. So, David, thanks for reaching out to me. I appreciate it, and I'm hoping to see you next week at scaling and we can catch up. So, that is my update. It is essentially I'm gonna use this episode to start season three of Accounting with Confidence.

Conclusion and Future Outlook

Beth 20:57

So I it was a big hiatus for me, and I am going to start trying to get the episodes back out weekly. And really, with the team we have in place, I'm gonna say I am hopeful that this process will get to continue all the way through tax season. I honestly feel there's so much that happens during tax season that it's important to keep that connection with everybody because my goal is to share my experiences so that maybe they're helping one or two people, you know, whether it's about how to handle stress or whether it's about the big, beautiful bill, whatever it is, if there's some connection there that can brighten your day or make you go, oh, I didn't think of that. Maybe I'll try that. I that's what I want to do. So that's all I have for today. I'm keeping it short and I will have things that are more structured and uh topics coming very soon. And I'm like I said, if you're coming to Scaling New Heights, come find me or hit me up in the the app, you know, so we can connect. I would love, love to chat with you, give you a sticker. I have accounting with confidence podcast stickers, and I would love to share those with you, any of my listeners. If you're not going to Scaling New Heights, after scaling, I will have my my recap. And I would encourage you, if you're in the industry, to listen to that recap and consider going next year because it's an amazing conference and it is the place where I found my people. So I am not um endorsed by them. I am not paid by them in any way, but I have always said that my visit to Scaling New Heights in 2017 changed my life. So here we go. All right, so I look forward to talking to you all again. I hope to see you soon. And really, if you need me, you know where to find me. And feel free to give me a text wherever you're listening to this. I'm pretty quick to respond to those because I get so excited. All right, everybody, have a great day, and I will talk to you again soon. 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.