Episode 119: Focus On What You Are Good At: Be Curious And Try New Things With Liz Scott
One thing that sets many entrepreneurs apart from the crowd is their willingness to try new things. Liz Scott, Owner of Liz Scott Consulting LLC, is one such person. She considers herself a thrill-seeker who never ceased being curious throughout her career. In this interview, she talks about her beginnings in Oklahoma and how she learned to overcome her limitations and take risks, be adventurous and learn what she was good at. Those lessons helped her to eventually tap into her entrepreneurship strengths and run multiple businesses with the confidence that she will succeed. Join in and pick up some lessons from Liz’s journey.
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Focus On What You Are Good At: Be Curious And Try New Things With Liz Scott
I interview Liz Scott, Owner of Liz Scott Consulting. She is an advanced certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and a member of the exclusive Intuit Trainer Writer Network. She takes upcoming apps to new heights. She is the co-host of the QB ‘Appy Hour with Liz and Heather, a webinar series devoted to building awareness in the accounting community about the latest technology trends and best practices, and a fun, relaxed environment. Liz was also named the Insightful Accountant, top educator, trainer, writer, and pro-advisor.
During this interview, we discussed her beginnings in Oklahoma, and how she learned to overcome her limitations, take risks, be adventurous, and learn what she was good at. Those lessons have helped her to eventually tap into our entrepreneurship strengths and run multiple businesses with the confidence that she will succeed. You are going to find her stories very helpful in understanding how to uncover what you are good at versus focusing on what you are not good at and taking the risks that maybe you haven't taken the leap at yet. I hope you enjoy this interview, share it, like it, and enjoy it for the lessons you will have and be able to implement in your life.
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I'm excited to have my guest, Liz Scott, on. Liz, would you give a little background on yourself and then we'll get started?
I am happy to be here and with Amy Vetter. It’s super cool, very exciting. A little bit about me, throughout my life, I have been inside of small businesses working with our own family businesses. Growing up, that's what we did, and it was a natural progression to owning my own firm. I have worked with small businesses and over the years, lots of integrations. I love working with integrations, and so I started focusing on consulting and developing, and what do we want to see as accountants in a solution? That has been my jam for quite a while. The other thing is that has led to this relationship with Heather Satterley where we created the ‘Appy Hour together, and that's all about apps and accountants and sharing how-tos.
Great stuff that both you and Heather do. Heather was interviewed prior. I'm happy to get into your story in this episode. To get started, we are going to go all the way back to your beginnings. Where were you born, grew up, and what did your parents do?
I live in Oklahoma. I was born in Oklahoma, and I have never lived anywhere else. It's cheap living here, and so that allows me to travel a lot. Travel is super important to me, especially with my kids, because I want them to get out of our community and see how other people live.
What did your parents do growing up?
My mom is more of financial analytics. It has been her background. My dad has always been in some type of security. I'm all over the place. My grandfather was part of the group that developed the Flight Simulator Program. the programming and development for FAA. My dad was exposed to programming, then decided to get into computers, which grew into this huge need for security. Part of my story is that my dad and grandpa have been these huge influencers in the developing world.
Did they take you into what they did? Did you ever go to their workplace?
Yes. I'm working from home. My very first computer was one of those that had a huge tethered cord that you couldn't bend the wires at all, otherwise, the entire computer would break down and your cord was $1,000. It was like, “Don't touch it.” I played Pong. Fun times.
Did your dad see that you had an interest in it? How did you grow your interest there?
There were computer parts all over the place. He loved to build and design computers and based off of whatever the needs were. A lot of programming or a lot of memory. Whatever the needs were and cases that lit up and cases that had little flashy things and cooling elements. To this date, whenever it comes to buying a computer. I'm extraordinarily picky. Mine lights up, liquid cooling, and everything that I can possibly have in my machine because I'm hard on him.
Did you learn how to build a computer with him?
Not to the full extent that somebody could order a computer for me, no. I did learn enough to be able to be savvy and work my way around what I needed.
Did you have siblings?
No. I'm all my parents could handle.
They said or you said.
Although, I can tell you this truly does happen. Since I'm an only kid, that means I'm the favorite and I'm the least. They are divorced, so I get a chore list from both directions. The thing that's crazy about it is every once in a while, they will keep piling on the chore list, and I'm like, “You need to call my sibling,” and they are like, “You don't have one.” I'm like, “That's not my fault. It’s still their turn. Tag. Where are they?”
I am my imaginary sibling. When did your parents get divorced? How old were you?
Three, so little.
You never knew any different.
No.
How did that visitation work? How often were you with your mom versus your dad?
I was predominantly with my mom, but when I was with my dad, it always made a huge impression because we did make the best of our time together, we would do things. My dad's very hands-on. He had a ranch and there were cattle and there were horses. Being able to go out and give them medicine and take care of them. That was part of what we did. He had like three different killer Jeeps, but they were like literally killer Jeeps. They didn't have floors in the bottom of them like rusted out. One of them had a bucket. You just hang on, but it was always adventurous. I'm a thrill seeker at heart. I was like, “Let's hold on. Let's go.”
You said your grandfather had an impression on you. How was your relationship with him?
He has passed on now, but everybody loved him. When we would go out to FAA together, he knew everyone there, and everybody adored him. He was the baby of nine, super social and loved everyone. One year, he had me dress up as Santa Claus. I think it was five. I found out about Santa early. Thanks, Grandpa. One of his great friends stitched together this Santa Claus outfit and I went to his work. We went around the entire base and we had an absolute ball giving out candy and talking to people. I think that's part of why I like community so much was him.
How did you see him build community?
Networking is important. People need people and they don't know of each other unless they are introduced to each other. If there's a need over here, then being able to take that to the other person. That's all that mostly has to happen is this little introduction. This little fifteen-minute thing to be able to say, “Here's why you need to know each other.”
Try New Things: Networking is really important. People need people and they don't know of each other unless they're introduced to each other.
You saw your grandfather doing that?
Yeah. He was never a stranger. Restaurants we'd leave there and the wait staff was always besties. Whenever he was older and he went to the hospital, the nurses would start to bring him things because they loved him. He was charming.
When you were five or little, what was your dream? What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
I thought that I would go into some type of healthcare professional.
Why did you think that?
I get something out of like there's a spark there that happens for me whenever I'm helping someone, and I thought that was the only way to do it.
As you went through school, did you play sports? Did you have any hobbies or activities that you did?
A hundred percent. I'm 5’2’’, so I'm super short. When I was in middle school, I had all my height early and so I started running during PE, and we were doing these little timed sprints. We started doing timed miles and then led up to 5 miles, and I was always in that pack of the first group, even with the boys. The high school recruited me to run for them when I was in middle school. I'm in the track and ran sprints and relay. I was the last leg of the relay team.
Did you do cross-country too or track?
I did. I wasn't as competitive in cross-country, but I did go and was part of the team to stay active and running.
My kids have both been in cross-country. It's the most efficient sport ever. You go twenty minutes, you are done, and the track meets. However, you are there for hours.
They are on the pavement. High school is not friendly.
Do you still run now?
Only because I have a trainer who makes me.
Didn't you enjoy running? Was it just something that you do?
No, I loved it. I loved it there. I loved it all the way until I was probably about 22, and at that point, it was like I was ran out.
Burned out on it. You went through school and then where did college come in or did it come into play?
In my first experience with college, I passed the ACT and so the big university in Oklahoma is OU. I was accepted into OU and I had a huge list of classes and I felt great until my first day, and this was one of those lack of planning. I had never gone out to the campus and scoped out where my classes would be and I got there on my first day and I was extraordinarily overwhelmed.
The campus is miles apart in buildings. Most people bicycle. I'd never been a biker. I'd always been a runner. I thought that I could do this by running to class. That failed. That didn't work. It didn't make sense. It was logical to drive because then parking, you are like way far away from the building. During my first semester at OU, I flunked out. It was honestly 100% due to I couldn't find my classes.
Most people say, “I was partying too much the first semester.” No, it's just you couldn't find your class. Could just think of how much maps on your phone could have helped you back then.
There are so many things I could have done to help myself, but I think that was an experience that taught me with my children. It’s to be very aware of they need help getting to college. That's not something that you can do easily. I have one kid who's in band and he wants to go to OU and I'm like, “Here's the deal. We are going to the campus annually. He's comfortable with, “Where's the cafeteria? Where's the football field and where's the band room?” We have been doing that because of my failed experience.
It is something that is important as an observation, like I didn't have any help when I started. I remember going to orientation. Everyone had their parents there and I was like, “I didn't know parents came to this,” because my parents weren't paying attention. Trying to navigate that all when you have all these questions. You don't realize how hard it is until you have your own child go through the experience and how many questions and how much help you are giving them, and you are like, “I'm so happy to be here for them to make this process easier.” You realize how much you missed out in that period of time of your own life of having someone to ask.
My daughter is in college. She graduated early. She graduated halfway through her junior year. It was like, “Let's go put you in college.” About the time that everybody else was graduating, she had eighteen months of college credits, and for her, that was huge. The thing that it did teach me was she's like me. Community college was the great place for her to start, but then it's scholarships. How do you apply for those and the fast buds like what do you mean? She needed help with a bunch of those pieces of it.
You dropped out and what did you do?
As I was good at math, I was immediately hired in a position where I was paid too well and I got comfortable. I stayed there for a couple of years in the finance department.
Where?
Hobby Lobby. I worked in the finance department for them.
How did you get that job?
I walked up.
Didn't you know anyone?
No clue. What happened was is I started out as a cashier and they were like, “Your till is always perfect.” I'm like, “I know.” They are like, “Can you come back into the office?” I was then transferred into this role of counting at the morning registers and then counting them down the evening and then it moved over to, “You are great at this piece of it, so let's try you out in bookkeeping.” I was like, “There are family businesses. I'm comfortable with this.” I was like, “Maybe I don't need college.” That was so dumb.
I remember when I was in college, I was paying my way through. I had a server job and we were getting drinks for our tables. There was a guy and I asked him, “Are you at UC?” He said, “I took a quarter off six years ago.” I will never forget that because that was the problem of serving is you start making better money than you would in hourly jobs, and then it's hard to stick it out.
That's part of the other thing that I feel like with our kids. I said to my daughter when she started college, I was like, “You don't have to hurry up and move out because getting that job makes it so difficult to maintain your grades and everybody wants to move through college as fast as possible. You are done. You've had eighteen years of school. You want something else in your life besides college, more education.” We told her, “Do all of your being wild and experiencing everything that you are supposed to do, but without a job. Go school.” Your job is college. That's worked out well for her. She's almost finished with her Associates and she's getting ready to go over to the university to finish at UCO.
That always feels so good to watch that. It's been similar with my son. Not that he hasn't been working here and there through school or doing co-ops, but being able to take advantage of all the opportunities at college and the exposure to things. For me, college was a means to an end and I rushed through it and didn't get to experience much of it because it was financially hard. It is so nice when you can do that for your children and allow them to explore.
Explore who they are too. It's such a unique time period in your life.
You'll never have again.
No. For me, it was 18 to 27. I didn't grow up and I wasn't an adult until I was 27. Prior to that I was playing at life. I had a good time. That's what changed me, being a parent.
All of a sudden, you are like, “This is me now.”
I'm grown up. I think.
You are at Hobby Lobby. What happened after that?
I wanted to try everything. I did. I got jobs as a hostess at Black-eyed Pea. They had corn on the cob that was fried. Who does that? Only in Oklahoma. It was totally like a weird thing. You had cornbread and yeast rolls that were brought to the table. It was like double bread. You need this and your mashed potatoes and the whole thing.
What happened with that job was hilarious because they were like, “You do such a great job of seating people.” Organizing and never double booking my wait staff, and then they were like, “Why don't you try being a waitress?” What a totally different experience and I learned that I suck at it. I was the person who got the penny tip.
What do you think the difference was for you of orchestrating versus being the one dealing with the customer service?
It was the lack of appreciation that a lot of people get as a waitress or waiter. At the time, the shift that I was working was a lot of the coffee shift. People would come in and they'd want a little bit of egg and some coffee and then want to hang out all day. It was like kept on asking for things and I'm like, “I'm literally making $2.13 an hour,” and that was frustrating.
That's another lesson right there, too. We promote people not necessarily to their greatest strength. People believe that's the next step for everyone, but it might not have been, based on your personality or what your opportunities are. It's always interesting how that happens because we see it so much in accounting firms, corporate, and so forth where it's like you get promoted to this place of this like, “I'm not a people person. I'm a person that organizes, structures, and directs. That I'm good at. I do the math or the accounting behind the scenes, but don't put me in that position to deal with negativity or someone being rude.”
Try New Things: We promote people not necessarily to their greatest strength. It's just people believe that's the next step for everyone.
I think that's a huge struggle even in our industry that we faced. We wanted to go through this rapid growth and we hired ten people. Thinking that people would be able to move into these spots of managing and moderating all of the activity of the projects that were coming in and reoccurring tasks. Also, being able to go in and do the work.
That was a big learning experience because I have always been very hands-on. I like seeing the entire picture. I want to be able to do all of it. I'm extraordinarily independent. If I don't know it yet, that's an opportunity for me. What was interesting is hiring into these different positions like you said. Some people don't shine across a lot of different streams.
Those people I have found, too, when you are more malleable and taking on different types of roles. They don't understand someone that's not a one-channel person where head works like that. It's either like you are a subject matter expert in this or you can dabble in a bunch of different areas, but it's hard for the two brains to understand each other when they are like that.
My brain, for me, I get extraordinarily underwhelmed with routine.
That's what I always say. Once I'm in maintenance, I am unhappy. I'm suffocating, but other people in maintenance, that's where they want to be. That makes them happy. You need both because once I have fixed a project and so forth, I'm ready to move on, but other people are like, “No. I like the routine knowing what I'm going to do every day and so forth.”
That's funny because even in accounting firms, we had team members who loved the projects. They wanted the new to come in and so that was exciting, and they were hard-hitting on the projects and would go in and dig in. I wish I can relate to it. We also had a bookkeeper who cracked me up. She was on the opposite end of the spectrum. She's like, “Give me my assignments and a pizza. Shut the door and don't come back.”
While you were going through this process of trying to find yourself, what was some of the advice your parents were giving you or talking to you about during that time?
I think that my dad was more of that influence of try everything. I always saw him as somebody who was extraordinarily capable of a wide variety of things. He's also an adventure thrill seeker and my mom she's strong and steady. The two of them were always supportive in whatever it was that I was doing and they were interested in whatever I was doing, but they didn't have a lot of push into any direction except for with my mom strongly influencing the financial side.
How did that happen?
Early on, I was brought into the family budget. How do you make the dollar stretch to make sure that you can eat and have a place to live? My mom, for many of those years, was a single mom and we needed to make sure that we were able to manage all of the expenses of a young teenager and so I became very much a part of that. I think that was a great exposure to being able to manage money.
After you were a server, what else?
Along the way, I was always this entrepreneur. I didn't realize it. I didn't call it that at the time, but I'm somebody who I don't think will ever be broke. I didn't enjoy that growing up and so I was extraordinarily resourceful. One of the jobs that I did was I did resells for gas stations. I'd go in and I'd buy wholesale stuff, and then go into the gas stations and I'd resell it. That was super fun. I finally came to my senses and went back to school.
What triggered that?
Stability. I like to be adventurous, but not in, “Am I going to eat?” It's like good to have some healthy boundaries there. Let's have fun, but let's make sure we can afford it.
Where did you decide to go back to school?
I decided that time I was going to go to a community college. It was 4 miles away from me. I changed the location so that way it was something I was familiar with. The campus was all inside of one building, and the professors knew each other and it was easy to walk from class to class, sometimes it cramps the hallway and I did great there. I thrive in that environment.
What subject did you want to be as a major?
At the time, I thought I wanted to be a physical therapist because we went back to the idea that the only way I would be able to serve people was in healthcare. The reason I didn't stick with it was because it didn't appeal to me. The more I got into something about me that I don't know anybody, the more I got into the pieces of training that were definitions and spelling them. That's one of the areas in that I struggle. I have always been dyslexic.
Do you know that? I have thought back I had a very good friend that had trouble reading. Unfortunately, he passed away many years ago. I have thought back on that many times and I'm like, “What if he was dyslexic and no one had known and had diagnosed him?” Were you diagnosed?
I was. I was diagnosed a couple of different times because it was during that phase of, “We have this whole new term called dyslexia. Does this person or that person fit into this box?” I fit into the box several different times. What that allowed me to do was learn that about myself. It crippled me for a long time because I felt like it was something that I wasn't going to be able to pursue a career in healthcare because I had terms that I couldn't pronounce or spell. I wasn't forgiving to myself. I went back to what I am good at and I'm great at mathematics, puzzles, and science. Those are things that I'm strong in. I pulled back my roots of family entrepreneurs and developers. I decided let's go with what I'm good at and went towards finance and accounting.
It’s powerful because we get stuck on what we are not good at versus stepping back and asking the opposite question, “What am I good at?” We can have all this negative self-talk and mindset on, “I'm not smart,” or whatever that is that comes up for us instead of trying to go toward what we are good at.
I agree. It's one of those self-discoveries that you have to allow yourself to say, “I'm failing at this, but I excel at this,” and that's okay. I think that that's why you are supposed to, in your early twenties, experiment. You are supposed to try multiple different things. Even with my kids, I tell them to date. That's how you figure out who do you want to be with for the rest of your life. If this is a partnership, then you need to know yourself.
Try New Things: Experiment in your early 20s. You're really supposed to try multiple different things.
This goes toward what we were talking about a little bit earlier in business is realizing when you hire people that you should hire people of the things you are not good at. Versus trying to hire people that are exactly like you because that's another important thing to understand is what am I good at so that I hire the people that are good at the things that I'm not good at.
You balance each other out. That's how you create those strong relationships.
Get those maintenance people in if that's not your thing, that they are good with the routine. They are good with dotting the Is and crossing the Ts. Let them take care of that. I fully appreciate that. The dyslexia, how old were you when you discovered it?
I was in fifth grade.
How did that feel as a fifth grader learning that? Did you feel bad about yourself with it?
It sucked because I had always been a straight-A student. To suddenly learn that I had this deficiency. They wanted to put me in special classes and I was like, “You are taking me away from my friends.” Now I feel singled out, isolated, and different. Part of what I learned was it's okay to be different during that time period, but it took a while to get there.
I had to fight hard to be able to say, “I don't belong in these special classes. Let me go back.” I can adapt. I can accommodate and I did. By the time that I was graduating high school, I was in honors almost everything to be able to prove to everyone, including myself, but the teachers, because it was my fifth-grade teacher who was so hard on me. I think that I was always proving to her, “Screw you. Look, I'm in honors and I'm doing well.”
I had a bad fourth-grade teacher.
It makes a bad impression.
You don't forget those ones that make it so hard on you. Did the kids treat you any differently?
No, they had no idea. They were like, “Why are you out of class? Where are you going? Can I go too?”
Was it this teacher that was hard on you was the one that helped them discover that this was the case?
Yeah. She was extraordinarily public about it. At the time, in fifth-grade, they didn't understand. My friends didn't quite get it, so they were like, “What does that mean? Do you have spots? What does dyslexia mean?” They were oblivious, thankfully, but it did make me feel isolated and I had to overcome being separated.
This is always interesting, too, with these kinds of conditions because my youngest son stuttered a lot younger. It happens with him being older every once in a while, but where he didn't stutter was when he sang. It’s because your brain is going at the right rate. It's interesting with dyslexia that you didn't feel that with numbers. Why do you think that is? Did they ever tell you why that is?
It uses different parts of your brain. There are some of those people who are dyslexic with numbers too. I have not been affected that way. What it did force me to do, which I find hilarious, is start writing. I wrote and I was like, “I'm going to overcome this.” I don't remember. It was the seek and say or seek and spell I think it was what the name. There were these games.
You put in the letters and it would say, “You spelled it right,” or, “Try again.” It was a game at that point. As I got older, they created different versions of that. I was able to correct my spelling. It took me longer, but it didn't matter. It's like, “I'm going to prove that I can do this.” It created this writer in me that to this day I work extra hard at. Whenever I create decks, somebody's like, “You've misspelled a word,” and I'm like, “Okay.” It's a letter A through Z.
You correct it.
I'm sorry that that was wrong.
I come with package instructions that there may words misspelled. When did this flip happen? You were going for physical therapy. When did you decide to switch to accounting and finance?
I switched when I was in my early-twenties and then I didn't finish education until I had my first daughter, my first child.
How old were you?
I was 30 when I finished my education.
What did you finish in?
Finance.
How did you decide to do that? Is it because of your mom?
I had this background and I excelled in mathematics, and so I thought I'm going to stay in finances. It had always been fun to me to figure out how we can make our monthly budget stretch. That then carried over into, “I could make my own money and do things in an odd little random way and make money and have it in my pocket always, and how could I make that stretch?” At the time, being a teenager, I was like, “I can live every day off of one bean burrito.” Back to that, there were times I was like, “I can't finish this. I can't eat the whole thing. Are you kidding me?”
It shows how circumstances can change your mindset as well on those.
I got married and it was like, “We need three meals a day.” Then I suddenly thought, “That's what you do, cooking the meals.”
When did you start doing what you do now or how did that evolve?
After I had my daughter, I did not want to have a career anymore which took me away from being able to be a mom. I wanted to be there for my kids. I became a QuickBooks certified, and then I started reaching out to find who in my local area needed somebody who was QuickBooks certified, and knowing that I had worked with some of the family businesses and QuickBooks.
I reached out to lots of different CPA firms to be able to say, “Do you need somebody like me who could come in and be very part-time?” I found who is now a dear friend Ann Lee, and she said yes. I went to work for her at the time and she was an open book. She taught me everything that she knew and then she encouraged me to go further. I want to be that for other people and I hope that I'm that for others because that made a huge life change in the direction of where I was going to spend the rest of my career.
When did you start your own practice?
She and I stayed together up until 2019. Then the year of COVID, I was completely on my own. Now I had other businesses that were happening in the background, but the accounting firm was not mine until 2020. Consulting and we have some rental properties. We do a couple of other things.
When did you figure it out? Did you become a QuickBooks Certified ProAdvisor to get involved with technology? Did you do that because it seemed like the right thing for what you were doing in accounting and then got more involved in technology and were like, “I remember doing this with my dad?”
My dad has always been somebody who's part of that beta test for Microsoft. With him, I saw certifications as something that he kept up and I thought, “Certifications matter,” and that's what I did. There was a six-week course at the vo-tech. I was like, “How I'm going to go and get certified?” After six weeks, I had already been using QuickBooks, so I felt comfortable but I wanted that piece of paper.
What do you think has been in what you do now? Where do you feel like you emulate from these things you've learned from your past and where do you feel your strengths best are and your confidence to do what you do?
I'm an adventure. I love the thrill of a new conquest. I do best in discovery mode. Whenever I stay in discovery, I wake up excited to go and learn more. I get energized. This is why I love having the background of accounting and using that to propel the development of the tech and that never gets boring to me.
How do you do that now?
The firm Liz Scott Training and Consulting, predominantly what we do is we work with solutions to be able to say, “Are you utilizing best accounting practices? Are you resonating with our industry to be able to hit the market? Is there not enough of a distinction between what you do and what other firms like you do or applications?”
Testing, “Do you have bugs? Do you have enough training that's out there?” Those are all areas. Then integration is a big part, so do they have an open API that I can pull in and I can connect to other apps and what does that look like? Then foster those relationships and connections to make sure these apps know of each other and that they are talking.
One of the things that I find extraordinarily frustrating as an accountant is connecting apps and they do not work with each other. It's hard. You've got to have this little Band-Aid glue. I know everybody thinks about Zapier as the glue, but sometimes that gets broken and you've got to go in and you've got to manage it. Apps are never set it and forget it. There's always maintenance there.
Do you consider that being a technologist?
I do.
The terms sometimes that people might think it's more like your dad that's doing the building of a computer and networking of computers or servers, but accountants are often, especially when we work in client advisory services, bookkeeping, and that type of thing. We get put in the role of a technologist. How would you define that?
For me, what I would say is that my mind rushes to thinking about all of the different apps that are available now and looking at what those possibilities are and how does that further what I'm already doing and allow me to either one gain time back or to be able to say, “I'm offering an additional service to my client.” Business analytics. Being able to pull in reporting.
Learn it once, set it up, and automate the heck out of that. That's a huge lift and clients love being able to look at pie charts and graphs and setting those kinds of things up. I'm always looking at what can we do as an industry to better ourselves? One of the things I find fascinating right now is Microsoft and they have lenses that you can wear and have this virtual environment experience.
We are moving to stuff like that because we are all in these Zoom worlds. This is great, but I want to also be able to have in a conversation like this, my data pulled up. Wouldn't it be awesome to have this conversation virtually inside this realm where we can also look at the QuickBooks data? Maybe we are looking at it in a way that makes sense to you. Instead of it being on a flat screen, we are able to move it and look at it from different perspectives and think about forecasting in a whole different way. That, to me, is exciting. Those are the possibilities.
Great things that you shared. I like to end with some rapid-fire questions. You can pick a category. Either family and friends, money, spiritual or health.
Family and friends.
Things or actions I don't have that I want with my family and friends.
More time with them.
Things are actions I do have that I want to keep.
I'm proud that I'm doing things to take care of my health. Hiring a personal trainer was a huge thing for me. Big commitment. I love it.
Things or actions I don't have that I don't want.
I'm thinking family and friends. I'm like, “I don't want more jobs to take away from what I'm doing.” One of the things that I'm thinking about right now and that I'm in the process of is the succession of the accounting firm.
I don't think enough people think about that. Make sure they have the bench strength or opportunities of how that goes.
We can outsource the firm 80% of it. That's been great and a nice big lift, but I want the other 20% to also be gone.
Things are actions that I do have that I don't want
Accounting firm. I want to share the experience that I'm going through. One of the things that I'm starting right now is working with a brokerage and I want that to be something that's very public. I want other people to know what we are doing and what we are experiencing. It's like sharing your dirty laundry. Everybody's got it. Let's go ahead and talk about it.
I went through selling an accounting practice many years ago. It's an interesting experience because the buyers that come think they have to be you, and it's like, “No, you have to be a business owner that knows how to run a business.” Learn enough that you can deal with these components and you'd be there along the process. It's interesting watching how people think and look at the opportunity. I'm happy to be here with any questions you have as well.
I appreciate that. The workflows that we have designed in the automation are a huge asset for the accounting firm. The reoccurring work, all of those things, are the pieces that people want to purchase.
With all of that, is there anything that we haven't talked about or that you want people to walk away with as something you want to emphasize before we end this episode?
One of the things that resonates with me personally that's part of your messaging is creating this balance. I don't know that work life balance is a thing that I will ever be able to achieve. I think that it's always a bit of a juggle. I'm a thrill seeker. I'm always going to probably have too many balls. That's okay, but I think of the forgiveness of you might fail. It's okay. You learn things along the way. My failure at college, my first go around, was something I could teach my daughter and my son. They don't have to have that same failed experience.
Try New Things: Give yourself forgiveness. You might fail, but you’ll learn things along the way.
Thank you so much for being on now and sharing your story.
I enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me.
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For my Mindful Moments with my interview with Liz, there are many great tidbits here to take away from this discussion. Overall, she understood her beginnings, and how we get influenced over time and can eventually go back to those things we didn't even realize as a child we enjoyed. These were some of the things she talked about with her father of building computers, working on the ranch, and taking risks. Her mom being a financial analyst and understanding how putting together a family budget uncovered this whole area of Liz where she liked numbers.
One of the big discussions we had was her telling us about her story of finding out that she was dyslexic and how that affected her in fifth grade. Rather than taking it feeling negative about herself and pulling herself away, she worked harder to prove that she could not only keep up with everyone but excel as well and be back in her community.
That leads to the other important thing that we talked about was community. One of the things that she learned from her grandfather was about building community and how important it is to create that network and relationships, and how that influenced her to make sure that she was helping people in those ways.
When she looked back at what it was that she wanted to be when she grew up, it was in the medical field because she felt that was the way she could help people. What's interesting is when we look at those traits of ourselves and what we bring into our adult self, we find that we are helping people as well. A lot of times, we define ourselves by a title or by what we do instead of truly understanding who we are.
A big a-ha moment with Liz is that it wasn't about what she did or how she did it. It was about was she living her purpose? Her purpose is to help others, to create community, and to also feel adventurous and taking risks. When we stay aligned to that and stay true to that, anything we do feels exciting, good, and purposeful.
When we start moving away from that, as we talked about when she talked about being in maintenance mode, how that doesn't make her happy or doing that routine. Instead of being hard on ourselves, those things don't make us happy. Instead understanding what I need to do to fill those gaps and stay in our strengths and stay in our purpose.
It's important that we all walk away with not trying to be everything for everyone because we step back and understand what makes us special? What is it that makes us unique? What is it that when we wake up in the morning, we are so excited? As of that, we want to find things we do in our life, whether that's our career, the people we are around, friends, or family. That aligns with that or we understand that in ourselves as well, so that is celebrated and promoted and it's not holding us back.
I hope you enjoyed this discussion that I had with Liz. There are so many great stories here. It’s so inspirational about her sharing her dyslexia story with so many people. We don't realize that people are going through these things and we assume from the outside that everything was perfect for them and it happened.
When we get into people's stories, we can come to a place of understanding that creates that connection that maybe we didn't have before. Take a moment and think about what is special about you. Also, maybe understand somebody else's story that maybe you see them different from the outside, but when you learn their story, it creates that next special connection where you can create a bond that maybe you didn't have before.
Important Links
Liz Scott - LinkedIn
Heather Satterley - Past episode
About Liz Scott
Liz is an Advanced Certified ProAdvisor and a member of the exclusive Intuit Trainer/Writer Network. Along with running 2 accounting firms, she is the owner of Liz Scott Consulting LLC, where she takes up and coming apps to new heights. Liz is the co-host of the QB ‘Appy Hour with Liz and Heather, a webinar series devoted to building awareness in the accounting community about the latest technology trends and best practices in a fun, relaxed environment. Liz was also named as the Insightful Accountant Top Educator/ Trainer/ Writer ProAdvisor.