Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories

Follow the Money with Albert Butler | Ship's Log #24

• Jeanne Andersen • Season 1 • Episode 24

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 42:56

"Accounting is the heartbeat of business and the key to personal finance success."  — Albert Butler 

Episode Summary 

Albert Butler is a CPA, MBA, and Resident Partner-in-Charge of a national accounting firm — but the conversation in Ship's Log #24 isn't really about accounting. It's about what happens when you treat your own life like a balance sheet. Albert walks Jeanne through the frameworks he's lived by for 25 years — Plan, Act, Review and Train, Practice, Work — and lands on a deceptively simple idea: you have to scale yourself before you can scale anything else. 

From there the conversation opens up. Albert shares the origin of his personal mantra — "I can because I will" — born from a back-porch conversation with his father two decades ago, and now the spine of the book he's written for his four children. He talks about being whole on the inside before the world starts pushing on the outside, about why discipline beats motivation every time, and about why most people get stuck in the in-between — that space right before a breakthrough where everything feels hardest. 

The episode closes with one of the most quietly powerful Two Truths and a Lie reveals of the show so far. The ICU headline turns out to be a twisted truth — and the story behind it is a tribute to Albert's mother that will sit with you long after the episode ends. 

  Guest Bio 

Albert Butler, CPA, MBA, is the Resident Partner-in-Charge of a national accounting firm, where he has led with integrity, strategy, and purpose for over 25 years. He's a father of four, a youth coach, and the author of LIFE: Truth, Love, Loss, Success & Failure — a book written for fathers, families, and anyone navigating their financial and personal journey. He lives by two principles: accounting is the heartbeat of business, and if you follow the money, you'll find the answers. 

Guest Links 

Website:  https://albertbutler.com/about/ 

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/butleralbert/ 

YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx6-wOn2tbc7Pkv0bc58NSQ 

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61577977890720 

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/albertbutlercpa/ 

Twitter / X:  https://x.com/albertbutlercpa 

Book on Amazon:  https://bit.ly/46prpmZ  (LIFE: Truth, Love, Loss, Success & Failure) 

Who do you know who'd make a great guest for the show? Please let us know.
Email: info@projectcandor.com

Website:   https://www.projectcandor.com

Social Media

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/ProjectCandor/
LinkedIn:     https://www.linkedin.com/company/projectcandor/
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/project.candor/
YouTube:    https://www.youtube.com/@ProjectCandorPodcast



Introduction

Jeanne

Welcome to Project Candor, where ordinary people share unexpected stories. I'm your host, Jeanne, and today we are welcoming Albert Butler aboard. Albert Butler, CPA MBA, is the resident partner in charge of a national accounting firm where he has led with integrity, strategy, and purpose for more than 25 years. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Southern University and AM College and his MBA in International Business and Entrepreneurship from LSU, graduating with a perfect 4.0 GPA. He is a lifelong learner, a father of four, a youth coach, and a servant leader. Albert lives by two guiding principles. Accounting is the heartbeat of business and the key to personal finance success. And if you follow the money, you'll find the answers. Welcome, Albert. Thanks for aboarding our little ship.

Albert Butler

I am so excited for our conversation today. I really believe that your audience will be able to resonate with some of the aphorisms and quotes and stories that I can share. And hopefully they'll have some great takeaways that your audience can put into their life and add to their toolkit.

Jeanne

Oh, that's wonderful. Because I know, stay tuned, people, because when we get to our Two Truths and a Lie, Albert's got some stories, there's really good ones, including an ICU. I am so excited for that. So what we do is start with questions. I hope you're ready for me to fire away at some questions, but I have to just say one quick thing, and that is in reading your bio, oh my gosh, a 4.0 in all those degrees in college. And they aren't small schools. These are like really nationally accredited colleges, universities. I'm just so, so impressed by you.

Albert Butler

So I'll tell you, Jeannie, the Woolprinter was in grad school. It wasn't in undergrad. So, but it in undergrad. Yeah, in undergrad, I did

Meet Albert Butler: Beyond Accounting

Albert Butler

very, very well. So, but so in grad school, yes, I was determined to really push for it and put the best foot forward to really try to make the stamp for that, you know, that people can follow.

Jeanne

Yeah, that's phenomenal. I'm just really impressed. So we're gonna expect a lot from you, Albert.

Albert Butler

Totally fine. I'm looking forward to it.

Jeanne

All right. I'm far away here. We'll put the gunboats on.

Albert Butler

There you go.

Jeanne

You often say accounting is the heartbeat of business. Uh, when you say that, what do you want people, especially families and entrepreneurs, to really understand?

Albert Butler

That's a very, very, very powerful question, Jeanne. I'm so glad you started there first. You know, as a CPA and through my walks in life, my clients that I've served, and the volunteerism that I've done, what I've learned is that without your numbers, you don't have clarity. And if you don't have clarity, you can't make decisions. If you can't make decisions, you will make mistakes. And that those mistakes can capsize the boat that we're on right now. And it does, you're gonna go out of business and it's gonna cause depression and it's gonna cause anxiety, and it's gonna cause heartache, and all these things are gonna take place. So when you roll that onion all the way back, it comes back to one guiding principle that accounting is the heartbeat of business and it's truly the key to personal finance success. From the smallest of the kitchen tables to the largest of boardrooms, accounting gives the clarity to allow you to make those decisions to ensure that you can begin with the end in mind and make and be able to forecast your business, forecast your life to get the result that you're looking for. So always tell people accounting is truly the heartbeat of business.

Jeanne

Oh, that's great. When you say accounting, you're talking financial, but as you were speaking, I know a little bit about you from our previous conversation and from reading a lot of your information. Accounting is being accountable as well. And you're an advocate for that. So I just wanted to bring that up.

Albert Butler

Well, let's talk about it a little bit because it is an accountability that you have to take for responsibility in your life. The accounting is the balancer, it's the storyteller, it is the messenger of who you are as a person. So, yes, I am talking about your numbers, but I'm also talking about you. Because if you can't be accountable to you, you'll never be able to scale yourself. You'll never be able to scale your family, you'll never be able to scale an enterprise. So, truly, knowing where you are personally, to be accountable, to give that balance to your life.

Jeanne

I love that. That's a great answer. That kind of wraps them up together because a lot of times people will think, well, money is something I shouldn't be so focused on. But I'm seeing your point. So I have another question along that line. You introduced the framework plan at review. I love simple structures because I'm coming from a project management background.

Accounting as the Heartbeat of Business

Jeanne

So why do you think so many people skip the review step?

Albert Butler

Because we're in a culture of go, go, go. We're in a culture of I want to have it now. And unfortunately, if you do not review what you've done, how can you possibly learn from your success and from the failure? So I advocate heavily. Plan, but plan quickly. Take action and put your plan into action to make sure you can get the feedback. What's the feedback? The feedback is the review. It's the most important part. And a lot of us skip that piece. Because if you take the time to go and look back at your results of what you came out from, you will learn so many more things because you got to go back to the drawing board and start all over again and put your next plan into action. That's the only way that we can see progress. Because if we just action, action, go, go, go, go, go, and never step back and say, what's the result? How did it work out? What did I learn? What mistakes did I make? How can I do better? We're never going to be able to progress. We're never going to be able to grow. So it's always plan, act, and you must review.

Jeanne

You must review. Yeah. So that's a lot of the structure in, like, say the PMP discipline, the project management professional discipline. And it's always at the end where, you know, you've gone through a lot that you do lessons learned. But where do you say the review comes in? Is it at the end of something? Like you've completed something and it could be enough failure at that point. When do you review? At steps along the whole process or just at the end?

Albert Butler

It's interesting because there's actually another framework that comes into play. One is that is just as simple, but it encompasses plan, act, review. I call it train, practice, work. And train and you practice and you work, you have to plan and act review in each step of those. So what is training? No matter what you do, Jeanne, you have to train. Training is by yourself. Training is when the doors are closed. Training is when you're all alone and you're trying to find a way to make something better better. But you can't do that unless you are really putting in the effort to train your mind, train your body, train your soul, train your spirit in a way that you're trying to get a result to come to answers for yourself. So what is practice? Practice is when you go out and go out with what like-minded people, when you work with a coach, when you work with a mentor, when you work with someone who knows it, who has been in it, who has experience, and you go into them with your training so they can fine-tune your training. So you can come to those final answers of the questions that you have. So what's the work? The work is fun. The work is the game. The work is the arena. The work is when it's time to show off all that training and all that practice. And it's enjoyable because you get to show the world how great you really are. So in each component of that, you have to train, plan, and review. If I'm sorry, train, train, act, and review inside of your training. You got to plan, act, review inside of your practice, and you got to plan, act, review inside of your work. You have to do a review all through

Treating Life Like a Balance Sheet

Albert Butler

those stages. Because if you don't, you're going to miss something along the way. And that's going to give you the opportunity to make it better every single time. So train, practice, work, and then plan, act, review. It all goes together for the culmination of a development process that's continuous. And it's not something you do one time, it's something that you do on a daily basis.

Jeanne

That's fantastic. So I know that uh in development and technology, they have this agile kind of mindset where you do something similar. You have short little sprints and you move forward. But I think you're tying it together in a different way, even better. Okay, so I'm thinking off on another question. What happens when you get to a review and you find out this ain't working? And you know, what kind of adjustments do you take? There's is there another framework in there that says, okay, I've done this and I've done this, and now I have to say, scrap it.

Albert Butler

The wonderful thing about that is that there's this concept that floats around in every entrepreneurial scene that's called the minimal value of product. Well, the minimum value service, the minimum value person, the minimal value experience. You want to have that because you want to be in a position where you can take something and put the minimal amount into it and get the feedback from it. So you can scrap it. So you can go back to the drawing board. It's very, very important. A lot of people miss that piece. And a lot of people get disheartened because they they put something together and they thought it was going to work and it didn't. Well, guess what? You learned the lesson. It did work because you learned the lesson. It gave you the opportunity to see something that you had an idea. You took it to market, or you took it to someone else. Let them see it, let them try it. And it didn't turn out like you thought it would. But guess what? You learn why it didn't turn out like you thought it would. So you get a chance to go back to the drawing board and readjust and then do it again. And then readjust and then do it again. Before you know it, it's going to work. And just because it didn't work the first time doesn't mean that it's not going to work the second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth time. But if you stop along the way, you will never know if your idea was going to be what it's supposed to be.

Jeanne

Yeah, that was going to be my follow-up question. Uh, when do people stop too soon? I guess you just don't know.

Albert Butler

You don't know. You don't know.

Jeanne

But I guess if their funds are depleted and they they just can't go forward, I guess, you know, they can stop then. But it's the shame that right around the corner there might have been that one breakthrough.

Albert Butler

That one breakthrough that if you just would have just leaned into it a little bit more and then boom. And once they once that boom happens, there's no stopping it. There's no it's motivational to a certain point. But I don't like to lean in so much motivation because motivation comes and goes, is discipline. If you're gonna be disciplined and you're gonna be consistent, that is the superpower that you need to have. Because if you're disciplined about it, no matter what the world tells you, and the world's gonna tell you a lot of stuff, no matter what the world tells you. Stay consistent, stay disciplined, and you're gonna reap what you're gonna reap what you put your purpose in, which what you put your energy into to define to get to your purpose.

Jeanne

Yeah, that's good. I like it. I I do think you're right about the discipline versus the motivation. I mean, just in a simplistic term, like, okay, I'm motivated to walk my dog, but I'm not uh disciplined enough to go where as far as he needs to. Yes, I love that. You're you're really like uh building something that's um very workable, but covering all aspects of what people need to do to get a viable business

The Framework: Plan, Act, Review and Train

Jeanne

going. I love that.

Albert Butler

That's right. And not just a viable business. This is really for the viable person. You know, advocate heavily that um you have to scale yourself before you can scale a business. And I'll go one step further. You have to scale yourself so you can scale your family. Then you can scale a business. Then you can take on these huge endeavors. Because the world in the world is it's hard. And you have to collectively understand that I have to be the whole on the inside for all the rejection I'm gonna get on the outside. And when that rejection comes on the outside, because I'm whole on the inside, I can keep going. Because the narrative out there is gonna be a whole, it can become a lot louder with a lot of noise if the narrative on the inside does not have the focus that you need to push forward. So scale yourself first, work on self first, understand that you have to be a whole person so you can take on this world that we're in.

Jeanne

That's wonderful advice. I appreciate that. I know the listeners will too. All right, more questions I have for you. So um, you're a CPA, you earned your MBA with a perfect 4.0, and you're also a father and coach. How has fatherhood shaped the way you think about money and leadership?

Albert Butler

So while I have four children. I have a son who's 19, I have a daughter who's 17, I have two 12-year-old daughters, they're they're twins, and uh being a father, well, I'm it it makes me pause, Gina, because the responsibility, the obligation, and the honor to be a father, to be a husband, to be that one who that's the champion for your family is is one that I have covered ever since day one. And I'm not gonna sugarcoat your audience and tell them that I was perfect walking into this. No. Extreme learning experiences is an extreme journey. So much so I wrote a book about it. And in the book, I really go into detail about my own personal walk and things that I have that I've experienced to give a level of a of a guide for my children that gives a gives scripture, it gives quotes, and it gives advice from a father to his children of different life living life endeavors that you're going to walk into, from health and fitness to wisdom along the way, to perseverance, to a value system that you can believe in, all the way down to traveling around the world and how do you deal with money. And those things are so critical because they don't teach you those things in school. You have to learn those things at the kitchen table. And some people don't have the privilege of having someone to be that that patriarch or to be that nature for them to give them that love of advice. That's the only reason why I wrote the book as well, too. It helps everybody. If you ever in a position where you don't have a father, where you lost your father too soon, where you play the role of mother and father, the the book that I wrote life, it it helps you with that love of advice. So in my own walk with my children, I have tried my best to stay grounded in foundational family values that have been passed on to me from my parents and my grandparents and my aunts and my uncles and and all those wonderful stories that they've told me at the kitchen table that I can instill in my children. So it's a journey.

Jeanne

Well, I know I I agree with you. When you start to become a parent, you're not prepared. It's like no manual there. I mean, they used to say, these are the baby books, follow these at age, whatever they should be doing this, but that just doesn't get to the core of it, does it?

Albert Butler

Not at all.

Jeanne

So your book is going to be super valuable for a lot of people. I just feel it, you know, already you're using it in your life. So I think that's a fantastic. But you're going to tell us more about how to get that.

Albert Butler

Yes.

Jeanne

Another question: if someone listening today feels financially overwhelmed, what's the first practical step you would tell them to take?

Albert Butler

I will tell you 100% to know your wise and why you feel financially overwhelmed. Every decision that you've made today is the reason why you are in the position you are today, be it good, be it bad, be it indifferent, you're still a culmination of the decisions that you've made in life. Now,

Practice, Work, Repeat: Building Discipline

Albert Butler

all of us start from a different starting line. That is very, very true. But as you start from that starting line, you have to make sure you make a decision for your future self, not for your today's self. I call it living through the decades. You have to plan long term, not for tomorrow, not for next year, but 10, 20, 30, 40, and for those of us that are younger, now 50 years into the future. Why? Because if you begin from that perspective, you're beginning in a space where you're starting to know your purpose and where you're trying to go. So becoming financially overwhelmed is based off of knowing where you are as a person. And how are you focused on going to where you're trying to go? That's going to help unoverwhelm you. Because a lot of times decisions come along us along the way, and we say yes to things that we probably truly shouldn't say yes to. We should probably say no. Because if it doesn't align up with that vision for where I'm going, it doesn't support my purpose. And when I say yes to things that don't support my purpose, I can become overwhelmed. I can become financially overwhelmed, which means I'm going to become mentally overwhelmed, emotionally overwhelmed, spiritually overwhelmed. The dominoes just keep falling. So you have to draw a line on the sand and know where you're trying to go.

Jeanne

You're making me feel convicted of all the stuff I have in my hobby room over there. That I should have thought about. Do I really need that?

Albert Butler

Do I really need that, right? Do I really need it?

Jeanne

Yeah. Well, I like to say I have it.

Albert Butler

Right. I I am notorious that every six months or so I will go through my house and go through my closet. That's the if I haven't worn it in the not been in the past six months or two a year, I'm not going to. So I need to go ahead and make more room because the blessings are going to continue to come in. If I don't make room for the new blessings, I'm going to be holding on to all these old things, and I need to go ahead and pass it on to bless somebody else. So I'm constantly cleaning out my closet. My wife goes back and forth. Like she likes to pack, she likes to keep stuff. I'm like, I'm no, let's get rid of it. Get rid of it. Clean out the closet, clean out the garage. Let's go ahead and give it away. Give it away. Because you're giving it away, you're going to bless somebody, which is a real blessing in itself.

Jeanne

Yeah, that's very true. That's very true. Yeah, I think I've heard that before. I can't remember what speaker said that, but um, yeah, I should take that advice. I haven't done that at one point. Well, this was a while ago, but I remember when we moved one time and I said, I wore that in college. And I'm like, oh my gosh.

Albert Butler

Right.

Jeanne

Why do I have it? I know. I really don't know. He still has this stupid hat he brought from Sweden when we first got married, and it's like a bumblebee looking hat, and it was leather and everything. And he still keeps that thing. I'm like, where what are you gonna do with that? It's the ugliest thing. He's like, I keep it because it's ugly, and it tells me not to buy on a whim.

Albert Butler

Right. Those sentimental things, though, it's interesting because you wind up collecting so many sentimental things that have a story behind them as well, too. I have a lot of those sentimental things as well. But what I do is that I'll I'll take a clipping up. My grandmother used to do this. She'll take a clipping of a shirt or a clipping of a blanket or something, and she'll take it and make a new blanket out of it. Do that a lot.

Why Discipline Beats Motivation

Albert Butler

And you still have that sentimental thought behind it, but the same token, you can go in and still clean out the closet as well, too. So that's a that's a habit that um I don't sew, but I but it's something that uh she used to do that that was a sentimental thing for me. And it's it's made me think about being able to clean continues to clean out the closet all the time.

Jeanne

Well, I do sew and make quilts and stuff, but there was a big business one time um in Georgia, but I think they've just shut down, called Shirt Off Your Back Quilting, and they used to take people's t-shirts from when they were little kids all the way up to out of college and make quilts out of them so that you had your memories that you could sleep with. I never kept t-shirts that long, and I always wore them out.

Albert Butler

Well, I'll transfer to have a t-shirt. I used to run track when I was younger. I have a t-shirt from a track um event that I won from high school that's still in my closet right now, and every time I go through it and I see it, and that those memories from from way yesterday kind of that just come flashing back. But I look at them like I should really just take this t-shirt and do what my grandmother used to do and cut this thing up and just make a little quote out of it. But it's still sitting in the back of my closet from almost years ago.

Jeanne

That may be why I kept that college thing, but it's gone now, thank goodness. And one last question here before we play our two truths in a lie. Uh if there's one takeaway you want every listener to walk away with today, what would it be?

Albert Butler

You know, that's a wonderful question. And and the the takeaways are what I call the items that you put into your toolkit for when turbulence takes place. You know, life is turbulent. And because it is, there is a valley that we all get into. We have our ups, we have our downs, but sometimes we don't ever talk about the in between. And the in-between is that space when you're railing. That that cause of a break of a breakthrough. And those are the moments when things get to be really, really, really hard. So I have a quote that I share as well. It's called I can because I will. I will because I can. I don't say can't because I can. I am a champion. I train like a champion. I practice like a champion. I work like a champion. Therefore, I will win like a champion. Nobody can beat me but me. That quote has helped me so much. It has helped my children. It has helped my family. And I like to share it with the world because nobody really talks to you about being in the in-between. And those are the moments when you have to really pull yourself up and really push through and know that you can because you will. Nobody can stop you but you. And if you stop, that's when you lose. So don't stop. Keep pushing. And you're gonna make it. You'll be great. I can because I will.

Jeanne

I love that. Did you is that your quote? You haven't it's not someone else's? Because I'm I'm hearing like this rock song coming out of it or something. Like a kid.

Albert Butler

Queen, we will rock you.

Speaker

Yeah, I mean, that is a that whole quote is like a rock song to me. Like everybody can get behind it, like a battle cry or something. I love it.

Albert Butler

But no, that's that's one that I I that's that's an original. I created that.

Scaling Yourself Before Scaling Anything Else

Albert Butler

Um, and it came out of a conversation with my father. And um, I write about it in the book as well, too, where he and I were, I was, I was much younger. This is this has to be 20 plus years ago now. He and I were sitting talking on his back porch, and I was coming to him in a very frustrated space that I was in, and I wanted to quit my job, and I I wanted he and I to start a business together. He was in the later part of his life, and he told me with very strong conviction, I can't do that. And it it shook me because this is my hero, this is my guy, this is this is a person that I believe can do anything, and because of him, I felt like I can do anything. And when he said I can't, I just was, you know, internally devastated. I respected him in his in his words, and we kind of ended the conversation, but I walked away from that saying, I can do anything. I can because I will. My willpower is stronger than anything out there, and I can do it. I didn't understand at the time because I was so young his reasons for saying he couldn't do something. And he was more so thinking about not he and I together, but he was thinking about himself that he would not want to put any burden on me as his son. He would want to try to bear the burden completely. And from his mindset, he was thinking if he and I do a business together, he would have to cover me completely, cover him completely, and make sure it's going to be successful. And he did not want me to go through the heartache of not being able to be successful. And that's the reason why he said, I can't in that moment, and that was, you know, I'm I'm 48 right now. He was, yeah, at the time, I think I might have been 22. I didn't understand that at that time. I do now, and I didn't at that time, but I can because I will came from that conversation, and I've used it as a basis to not just for myself, but again, for my children and for everybody in my family to push through and pull yourself up and do whatever, do whatever it takes to make sure your dreams come true.

Jeanne

Very awesome. I hate to pull us away from this because this is all such great information, but I I don't want us to run out of time because you had some fantastic uh headlines here. So it's time for us to transition to our uh my favorite part of the well, not always my favorite part, but I I just enjoy it to play Two Truths and a Lie with our guest. Um so for those listening for the first time, Albert has given me three headlines from his life. Two are true, one is not, or it's a twisted truth. I don't know which one it is. And you don't know which it is, so you can play along with us. And he won't tell us until he walks us through all the stories. So I am going to read out his headlines, and then we will start the explanations. This episode is sponsored by Rebel 180, the home of brave pivots and fresh starts. Rebel 180 is all about helping you rediscover what's possible when you stop settling and start listening to that little tug inside that says, Life can be different. Whether you're navigating a career shift, dreaming about a new direction, or standing at the crossroads wondering if it's time for your own 180-degree turn, Rebel 180 is a reminder you don't need permission to change your story. And now, as we open the door to our second sponsor, we're stepping into the world of tech. Simple socket print, the lightweight blazing fast label print solution designed for those who need reliability without the bloat. With version 1.5, you get instant printing in milliseconds, fully maintained print sequence, and automatic base640 decoding all without needing print driver installs. If you're running SQL Server 2016

The Space Where Most People Get Stuck

Jeanne

or newer, SimpleSocket Print 1.5 drops right in and gets to work. Keep your workflow simple, keep your label printing fast with Simple Socket Print. Thank you to our sponsors. So, Albert, he said that from the ICU to the boardroom, how a health crisis forced Albert to redefine what success actually means. His number two story is as a CPA who walked into a company on the brink, Albert uncovered millions in financial chaos and had to decide whether to fix it or walk away. And his last one, number three, Albert almost quit accounting forever after his first five years in public accounting. So I'm going to guess which one it is, so don't tell me uh until after you explain them all. But uh I think uh number three may be a lie. I think you really have a passion for accounting. I don't know that you would have quit that quickly because you're not a quitter, but uh, don't tell me that might I might be totally off. So hey, start walking us through those. Tell us about number one and the ICU.

Albert Butler

Number one is a very powerful moment in my life. Uh tell you that when you get to a certain age, I advocate this and I was talking to someone about this over the past this past weekend. Life truly begins when you make when you turn 40. And this is why I say that between 40 and 60, life really happens to people. When you're in your 20s, things are going great, you got all this energy, vitality, you think you're invincible. When you turn 30, you realize you really don't have all the answers. You're still trying to figure it out. You probably have started a family and you're just going through it right at the moment, but you're pushing through. When you turn 40, certain things take place. If you've had kids, your kids are probably starting to get older, or they're they're in their middle school age or high school ages, and they're getting ready to leave the house somewhere, somewhere in that space. Also, your parents are getting older, and if they're still with you, or they or they're they're getting elderly, and you gotta kind of step up there to try to help take care of them as well too. You might have lost your job, or you might have gotten a new job, or you might have gotten a big promotion. A lot of life is happening in this 40 to 60 window. Another key thing takes place. A health scare for you personally can take place where you might have an issue with your heart, kidneys, liver. For me, my scare came in in a myriad of different situations where I had a blood clot in my leg. And that that blood clot really resonated from a narrowing artery inside of my leg as well, too. And it just caused a domino effect of the blood flow inside my body that I didn't even realize that I had, and it was matriculating for years before it became serious enough to require me to have surgery. So those things are um they build up in that window of 40 to 60. I'm a man of of, again, like I said, four children. My parents are no longer with me. I've started my practice and I've been in I've been in practice for for several years now, and those life things just happen. And especially when something happens to you personally and from a from a health perspective, especially when you've tried to be healthy your entire life, it really has a paradigm-shifting moment that takes place inside of you to really think differently about life.

Jeanne

Oh, okay. Well, it's surprising though, because you talked about being a sports person, but it even sports people get those blood clots because they know there is a hurricane, Carolyn Hurricane Tockey guy that we love because his last name is Anderson spelled, he's Danish, spelled just like ours. So we have jerseys with Anderson on it. And I know that during some

“I Can Because I Will”: A Father’s Influence

Jeanne

of his hockey career, he's had problems with blood clots. So they're not they're not something to ignore for sure of that. Not at all. So I can imagine that was a big scare for you. So I'm glad um, I don't know if that was true or not, so I'll just go ahead and not make too many comments on that.

Albert Butler

Okay.

Jeanne

Tell us about number two, about that one's wild because uncovered millions and god chaos.

Albert Butler

Yes, yes. So it's interesting in this case. Um, I can't name the company name, but I will tell you that when you have an idea and you push for it and that it actually works, all of a sudden you start making all this money, but you don't have the proper infrastructure to support it. This is more one of my other um topics I talk about called the five muscles of enterprise really takes place. Those five muscles are leadership, operations, sales, IT infrastructure, and accounting, the heartbeat of it all. When those five muscles are not trained properly and then and that that entrepreneur is not set up in a way to really maximize those five muscles, and you don't have a support system around you for the areas that you're not strong in, you wind up scaling chaos. Like me, I come in, I try to do an audit, or I try to help you with your taxes, or I try to help you with your financial statements to get all those things together. And you realize that, oh my gosh, this might be unfixable. That happens. And you know, I'll tell you, that happens more often than not. That happens more often than not, where people just have an idea, but they never built the infrastructure around that idea to make it really, really scalable. And the idea works, and then millions and money starts coming in, and more money, more problems. More more problems, more chaos. It happens a lot.

Jeanne

Wow. Yeah. I know that a lot of audit I've been around and worked with auditors before when they come in, and but it hasn't been about money as much as it's been about processes, you know, and things that we had to fix around processes to keep us from getting in the chaos. But there, yes, I can see where that would have been a horrible thing to uncover. So why did you walk did you fix it or walk away?

Albert Butler

I'm a I'm a fighter, so I fixed it.

Jeanne

That's it, I guess.

Albert Butler

But I'm gonna say that's good. But stay there for a second because you made a powerful word just now. Process. Companies that don't have documented processes is where the system falls apart because they really don't have a system. If you are an entrepreneur and you do not have your policies documented, you don't have your processes documented, that means that you have to stay a part of that business because if you ever was to step away, that business will collapse. You have to make sure that you're running your business like you like you have the idea that I want somebody to buy this business for me one day. And nobody's gonna buy a business if you don't have processes and policies documented. So they're very, very important and very, very critical for success.

Jeanne

Absolutely. I totally agree with you on that. Yeah, and I've been in the most of my career is fixing, fixing, fixing. So uh let's see. Number three.

Albert Butler

Number three, I'm not gonna tell you, but um the holy grail of being an accountant is passing the CPA exam. You you have to pass the exam, pass the exam, pass the exam. And when I began my career in public accounting, it's required that you take the exam every time that was that it was offered. Now, this is gosh, 20 how old am I? 26 years ago now. And um back then the exam was written. It was given twice a year, and you had to go in and and in this huge auditorium and everybody's there together, and you have to go take the parts. Um, it's an eight-hour process over two days. And for the death of me, I just could not get the exam passed. And as I was matriculating through, I'm doing great work at work, but I'm struggling to pass this test. I'm also getting ready to start a family, but I'm struggling to pass this test. So I got to a certain point, I was like, you know what? I think this might not be for me. And I think that I might just go

Writing a Book for His Children

Albert Butler

and do something different and walk away from public accounting or accounting as a whole and just go a different route in life. So that was number three.

Jeanne

Okay. Well, I I actually saw something the other day. I don't usually like to name drop people, but I have already, uh Anderson, the hockey player. Now I'm gonna say Kim Kardashian, because she I saw some expose or something where she was trying to pass her bar exam, but she had bypassed everything to get there. She had only done some kind of internship with a law firm. She hadn't gone to school and she law school to learn, you know, and then she was trying to just pass it and she had failed it up like three or four times. And yeah. It's hard to pass these things because they design them to make sure that you either can think through something, you know, that you you actually know the answer, but they make it twist it in a way where you have to unpack it and then answer correctly after you've done that. So it's a lot of logic in there, whether it's a multiple choice or true and false, it doesn't matter. They have twisted those exams, so they they're terrible.

Albert Butler

Yes, yes.

Jeanne

I don't know if she'll pass it or not, but I'm not gonna follow that.

Albert Butler

No, it's it's it's special because it's required because you're working with the public.

Jeanne

Right.

Albert Butler

You you're working with people who are not experts. So having that gatekeep of making that exam, this is at least from a from a public accounting perspective, is supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be something that you have to really fight for. Because if if you didn't ever and everybody could do it, how would you really be serving the public the right way? I represent an industry that is giving back to the public to understand something that they are not working with on a daily basis. I have to be an expert in that space because people are coming to me because they trust. They trust me based on my credentials, and they trust me based on my experience, and they trust me based from that point in building a relationship with them to help them be a steward of their financial situation. So that gatekeep is critical and important to make that exam as hard as it's supposed to be because you're working with the public. Absolutely.

Jeanne

All right then. So here's the big reveal which one was the lie or kind of twisted truth.

Albert Butler

Drum roll is number one is the twisted truth.

Jeanne

Okay.

Albert Butler

Number one.

Jeanne

Great. I'm glad you weren't sick.

Albert Butler

Twisted truth.

Jeanne

What was the truth?

Albert Butler

Twisted truth. And and the the truth, the truth in number one is that I was sick. Everything I just explained to you was the truth. But the ICU piece, that wasn't related to my mother.

Jeanne

Oh, okay.

Albert Butler

That was related to my mother. My mother did pass away in this instance, and that health crisis that she went through was a major, major shift for me in that moment as I sat with her as she was getting ready to leave us. And when you go through that type of experience with someone who's so close to you, everything that matters comes on the table in that moment. And the last words my mother told me was that she loved me. And that's a life.

Jeanne

Oh, that's nice.

Albert Butler

So number one is very special to me, it's very emotional to me. My dead, my I dedicate my book to her in every aspect of it because she's the one who really had that entrepreneurial spirit, and she's my father, my father was my champion, but my mother was my hero. And that's the best connection I can actually put because those two people showed me this the tale of two different coins on how to live life. And I respect them and I love them for every aspect of what they've been able to give to me while they were

Being Whole on the Inside First

Albert Butler

here with me.

Jeanne

That's a great tribute to your parents because a lot of people don't feel that way. They just kind of don't give their parents um respect at all, and all of the hard work that they poured into their kids, they just kind of walk away from it and think, uh, I don't need them in my life anymore. I mean, that's a big phenomenon now, but you know, I'm just blown away by the tribute you've just given your parents. I think it's excellent.

Albert Butler

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Jeanne

So this was so much fun. I mean, your stories were really very thought-provoking. And I know people are gonna want to get in touch with you because everything you've said is just like so impactful to people that are working through finances in their businesses, financing in their home, um, just learning how to um build their family up. I mean, all of that. So I'm gonna show on my screen here how that people can get in touch with you. Awesome. You also have already said that you have the quote accounting is a heartbeat of business and the key to personal finance success. You also had that great rock song. I think you should get somebody to put that to music. It's awesome.

Albert Butler

I think I will do that, yes.

Jeanne

Yeah, I know. Yeah, I don't know. Just for the fun of it, go to Fire and get somebody to make it into a song. Um, but here are all the ways that people can get in touch with you. I'm gonna have all of these links in the actual transcript and for the show notes. Um, you actually have a call to action you'd like to present to folks if they'd like to get in touch with you.

Albert Butler

Again, 100%. If if you if you do want to get in contact, I'm I'm so readily available all over. If you just Google Albert Butler CPA, all of these social links will pop up. Also, the book Life is available on Amazon right now. The ebook, the paperback, the horror copy, and the audiobook are all available. And I make a very special thing that I make the ebook only 99 cents if you really want, because I I want to get that out. I really want people to be able to read it, and I don't want money to be any a a reason why you don't pick it up. So pick up the book, have a read at it, and I think it will be something that's transformational for your life.

Jeanne

Fantastic. So it's so funny to hear you say it's only 99 cents, and I don't want the finance to be a hindrance for you to get it. So that's very heartfelt because here you are a financial person, and you're telling people how to be accountable in their financial careers. So you're not doing this for making money, you're doing this to help.

Albert Butler

Just to help people. The reason why I do what I do is because I help people. I have, and it's a strong passion. I literally have individuals walk through my doors with an idea, but don't understand the business aspect of trying to grow that idea, and I help them grow something from nothing and give back to the world. It's a beautiful thing, and I've done it many, many times. And it's something that I take pride in. I go home and I smile and I sleep well at night because I help people.

Jeanne

That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining the show. And for those listening, this is your Admiral of the Unexpected, Jeanne Anderson, and I wish you all the best and smooth sailing until we meet again in the next episode. Thank you, Albert.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Jeanne. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

Jeanne

Thanks for joining me on Project Candor, where the doors are open, the stories are unexpected, and the treasure is always real. If today's episode made you laugh or think, follow the show and share it with your crew. Otherwise, I might just make you swab the deck. I'm Jeanne Anderson, your Admiral of the Unexpected. See you on the next voyage.