Episode 18: Ask For Help: You Can't Do It Alone With Melisa Galasso
For some people, asking for help is one of the most difficult things to do. This is especially true when you fear having your problems and concerns belittled by others or letting people know your struggles. In this episode, host Amy Vetter brings on Melisa Galasso, the Founder and CEO of Galasso Learning Solutions. In this discussion, Melisa discusses her transformation from being a perfectionist and believing she needed to do everything alone to learning that asking for help is not a weakness but a strength.https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/melisagalasso/
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Ask For Help: You Can't Do It Alone With Melisa Galasso
I interviewed Melisa Galasso, the Founder, and CEO of Galasso Learning Solutions. She is a CPA with many years of experience in the accounting profession. She designs and facilitates courses in advanced technical accounting and auditing topics. On a personal level, Melisa enjoys traveling, watching her daughter ride a horse, and spending quality time with her family. During my interview with Melisa, we discussed how she transformed from being a perfectionist and believing she needed to do everything alone. She learned that asking for help is not a weakness but a strength.
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I'm with Melisa Galasso. She is the chair of the Professional Women's Conference of the North Carolina CPA Society. She's also a prolific speaker. She does all sorts of topics that might sound uninteresting, but she does them completely interesting. I'm very excited to talk to her. Melisa, do you want to give a little background on yourself?
My name is Melisa Galasso. I own a training firm called Galasso Learning Solutions and we specialize in very technical accounting and auditing topics. The things people need to be able to do in order to serve their clients better. I work with CPA firms to help them understand the standard in a way that's practical so that they can then apply it to their clients.
I was telling her, every other speaker I’ve seen beside her was reading right off a PowerPoint and putting themselves to sleep sometimes. She makes these topics interesting, which is fun. I highly recommend you. To start off, I want to talk about your journey. What did you want to be when you grew up? How did you get to where you are now?
I have always thought back to my childhood. I was super competitive in the academic world, not on the sports side. Growing up, I always had that big dream. I wanted to do something big or important. Many times, I have been very fortunate to see lots of women getting into positions of power when I was growing up. I knew I wanted to do something important. I never thought I was going to be a CPA. That was not on the list.
What were you considering power important that you reached?
I remember in elementary school when Hillary Clinton became the first lady. At that point, I wrote a whole article and stories about her about how she was important. Even throughout the years, all of my essays and articles, even through college focused on powerful women. That has been a theme for me for a long time.
What was it you intended to do besides being a CPA?
I was definitely going to be president at one point in time. I hope all little girls want to be president. At one point, I wanted to be a big CEO of some fancy company and be in charge of everyone. I want to rule the world and I was going to do that.
I remember doing those job placement tests in high school and you look up what jobs and I saw the CPO. I was like, "That works." When I took the personality test, the only job that came up was a tattoo artist. I had to sit back and I'm like, "I'm artistic and then like very exact." That's a hard combination and I'm like, "It makes sense."
I love technical accounting, but I like working with people. I’ve been introduced at Christmas parties and they're like, "What do you do?" I said, "I'm a CPA.” They're like, "No way. You couldn't be a CPA." I'm like, “I swear I'm licensed for years. I’ve done this thing." They're like, "You don’t have the personality." I'm like, "You have the wrong stereotype."
That's what we're trying to change out there.
Being at the Professional Women's Conferences, we don't have to be cookie-cutter. We can be our own person and grow.
How did you end up becoming an accountant?
I applied to Georgetown University. It was my first choice. I applied Early Action and I was accepted. When I was applying for school, the one thing that my mom said, "You can go to a school you want, but when you graduate you better be able to pay for yourself." I'm the oldest of three girls. That was her only thing. I'd be the first to go to college and get a Bachelor's degree in my immediate family.
What does your mom do?
My mom was a stay-at-home mom. She did some odd jobs here and there but never worked in a profession or career. It was one of those things that I was like, "I wouldn't know what accountant was when I was in high school." It wasn't something I was looking for.
What did your dad do?
He worked in a hospital in a more clerical type of setting.
How did that shift within you?
Asking For Help: One of the reasons people don’t ask for help is because they don’t want anyone to know they ever struggled.
I'm not close to my dad at all. We haven't talked in decades. I didn't even let him come to my wedding. He was always of, “The women should be in the right place. You’re going to get married, you don't need to go to college,” type of personality which is so dated, given that I'm so young. That didn’t resonate with me and I was like, "I always see this as a challenge. I’m going to show you one day." My mom tells us a story about when I was little. I was told I had to clean my room and I said, "One day, I'm going to have someone who cleans my rooms for me." That was the one thing that as soon as we got married, the first thing we did was hire someone to come. I was like, "I said I am not going to be the one to clean this house."
I always thought it was a challenge that I was going to be different. I was going to have a different experience. To some extent, overcoming that was very important to us to be like, "My circumstances are not perfect." You have to believe in yourself. I'm a recovering perfectionist. One thing for me was that I will have to control. I can control this if I do everything perfect and I do it and I take responsibility for it. It’s serious over perfectionism. In my senior year, I took eight AP courses. I took AP French Lit, AP Spanish Lit, and AP English Lit, AP Government, AP Economics, AP Calc and AP Statistics. It was because I was like, "I'm going to take everything." I took every course that was offered there and then it was about overcoming that and being like, "I can do it."
It's interesting because I have definitely had those tendencies where I feel like I’m proving something by doing all of that. What broke it?
My biggest thing was I always thought it had to be me that I couldn't ask for help and I never wanted anyone to know I ever struggled. It had to look easy and it had to look perfect. It was a huge issue for me growing up. When I took my driving test, I didn't tell a single friend I was taking it because if I didn't pass, I didn't want them to know I failed my driver's test. All through high school and all through my early career was that I wanted to look perfect and to look like I had an end. Finally, I was miserable and I had gotten to the point where I was unhappy and I didn't have the tribe that I would want. I was looking to find something different. I finally decided that maybe I should ask for help. It was hard for me. It was something I doubted that if I asked for help then it's not my achievement.
From whom did you ask for help?
I went to a career coach. She ended up changing my thought process. She challenged me to think differently. I never thought I'd go out on my own and open a company, a super risk-averse personality. She challenged my thinking and then asking for help there, I started bubbling up. Around the same time, I started to get more involved with women's groups because now I was going out on my own. I knew nothing about what that was going to look like. I started asking for more help. I started to learn that there's this whole tribe out there of people who want to support you. It was life-changing for me because it was always about, I had to do it. I could not rely on anyone else. If I didn't do it myself and it wasn't real, it wasn't authentic.
It reminds me of a story with my kids because our kids have that figured out. I was watching my son trying to get to this next level and he wasn't getting it. He passed it to his cousin and his cousin got him to the next level and then he went back and started playing it. I used to spend hours and hours talking to him. I wouldn't have ever given it to somebody else. I went to him and I said, "Do you feel you got to that level? Did you earn that?" He did. It’s a different mindset that you become better with the people around you and asking to say, "I’ve got this weakness. How would you do it?" It’s where you can share and help each other because it's a two-way street.
What I have found is that when you help others and others help you, it becomes this agreement. It's grown. I've been involved now in different women's groups over time. The vulnerability of sharing and asking for help, it is interesting that we've gotten to this point because I know growing up, that would have been awkward. It’s like, "Why do you need help? Why can't you do this on your own?" To see women out there and conferences designed to help women get where they want to go.
The career coach, what got you there? That would've been a huge break in your belief system to do that. What happened?
I was tired, exhausted, miserable and I run out of ideas. It played a part, the person was a former CPA who was starting her coaching practice. We had casually talked about it at some meeting that I'd overlapped at a CPA Profession Conference or meeting. She's like, "I'm going out on my own. I'm going to start this career thing and I'm going to coach people." I saw that sounds nice. I was like, "You're a partner in a CPA firm and you're going to become a coach." It never clicked for me. It was before the holidays and I’ll never forget it. I was sitting there going, "I am so tired and so miserable." She seems like such a nice person. Even if we didn’t make any progress, she's someone to talk to.
My husband is incredibly supportive, but to some extent, I was like, "I didn’t know what my options were being in public accounting. I had done public accounting. I had done work in the industry. I’ve done work in internal audit, but there was something missing." There was a session at the conference called What To Do When You Don't Know What To Do. That topic resonated with me because what ended up happening is every time I changed jobs, it was never the right fit. I couldn't figure out why I kept going to different locations. For the first ten years of my career, at the longest, I had spent anywhere was a handful of years, like 2 or 3 max. I was like, "Why can't I find it? I love accounting, what's wrong? What am I doing wrong?" She's like, "We would keep going for the same wrong fit."
That realization, I was like, "I’m trying to do this." She goes like, "Why are you trying to fit into this? That’s not who you are." She did DISC assessments and all these other assessments and she's like, "This is where you shine." I was like, "I could never open up my own company. I can't do that." She’s like, "What’s the first step?" I’ll never forget that. "I don't know how to set up an LLC." She goes, "Your homework is to read the State Board of Accountancy rules for setting this up and come back and tell me.” It was one paragraph. I was like, "I can't afford a lawyer." It wasn't needed. It literally took me. We started meeting about November and I had an LLC by February.
It takes us moments of pause even when she told you or the coach, they're like, "Nice. I don't know who would need a coach." The next day you're like, "Can I have you as a coach?" Sometimes, it's when we step away from a situation that we realize that there's some truth in that.
It is hard to see yourself. She'd say things and I'm like, "That doesn’t sound like me. That's not how I picture me." It was cool. From there, I started having the opportunity. I had won an award for a women's conference. That conference didn't run the following year. I was like, "I want to do this." I had met a girl and we were at a business lunch. We were the only woman at the table. We sat near each other. This is a big, long lunch. We started talking and she goes, "I think I met you before." I'm like, "I don't remember." I figured out where it was. I said, "One day, I want to start a women's initiative here in Charlotte." She said, "I’ve always wanted to do that." Within six months, we had a booming women's initiative that's now been replicated all over the place. We were working together on that initial item and going back and forth on the struggles that we both had. It totally changed my point of view on how that would work. You can talk to someone and you don't have to be perfect and you don't have to have all the answers.
Why did you choose accounting?
I like to have my debits equal to my credits. I knew if I got the answer, it was perfect. In my senior year, I took consolidations. It was a take-home test. I knew when I turned it in that everything had tied out and it was perfect. What they don't tell you in college is that you spend almost all of your time in the shades of gray. It’s never black and white. As the profession moves towards things like a principle-based approach and less rules, you see it in people when I'm teaching. They're like, "Why don't you tell me what to do?" They're like, "We don't make decisions with that.” I'm like, "We do."
I was on a panel at a conference. I was talking about how it's very hard from a technology perspective the document process because, in the SaaS world, there are a thousand changes a year in every one software. Where there were all these written procedures, it's very hard. There was a guy pushing on me and saying, "We have to have rules." I'm like, "We have to have a framework." You’ve got fences but you're going to run around in it. You're going to have to find your best path to get to those answers. The way the world is changing breaks that perfectionist piece of what people love when they were going into it. There's no definite answer.
When you can have a lease and it could be 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 years and you can get to decide, they're like, "There has to be a right answer." I'm like, "There isn't a right answer." It's professional judgment and the more we add professional judgment to the standards, you can see people cringing. They're like, "No, take it back. I want to go back to my rules. I want to go back to having the right answer." That's totally why I went into accounting. I loved the fact that I knew when I turned something new. It was good. It was perfect. I was getting that A.
After my first Accounting 101 test, I went to the teaching assistant. I'm like, "You'll hang this test up one day." That's the cool thing about the profession is you find the path.
I find for freshman accounting in particular because I taught freshman accounting. You have Fs and As, it clicks.
Asking For Help: Asking for help is a skill you have to practice because it's not easy to tell someone you don't know, especially if you want to be perfect.
I kept thinking of it like a bank statement. I could not flip that that was in the credits in my head. I had to reconcile my textbook from the time I was twelve years old. That's what screwed me up.
It's like, "Hold on. You had been good at working with banks. You missed your opportunity."
I can't see this until I started co-oping. Co-oping changed everything for me because once I could visualize what we were doing and then I'm like, "I can do the mechanics underneath with you, but I’ve got to understand the end game."
What makes accounting interesting is that it tells a story and people forget that. It's more than the numbers because it was the numbers. Computers would replace us, but it's the story it tells and the analysis that we offer that changes how the profession moves forward and what we liked. I love the numbers and then I'm like, "Tell me the story." I'm like, "It's numbers." I look back and I was like, "There's so much more than the numbers."
How did you figure that out?
I honestly think it was a lot of trial and error. When I started, debits and credits and auditing, ticking and tying. Over the years, the further you move up the chain, the less and less you do that, the more you spend in those shades of gray.
Clients ask you questions that you don't know.
To me, I was like, "Bring those questions, but I don't know everything. If you email me, I'm happy to get back to you." That's always what I say in the classroom. It's like, "I'm not going to guess, I'm not going to lie to you and I'm going to tell you point-blank. I don't know the answer to that, but I'm happy to research it for you."
I pause on that because I talk about this a lot. Is that a skill you have to practice? It's not easy to tell someone you don't know. If you have that belief system inside of you, you're disappointing yourself. You're not disappointing the other person. If someone said that to you, you'd be like, "When are you going to get back to me? As long as you get back to me. I don't know how to research that answer but you do.” That's where we have to change how we value something. What made that flip that you get to a breaking point on some question. You're like, "I'm stuck. I'm forced in a corner."
I couldn't put it on a particular, but what happens over the years is that when you're in charge, I would go to become an assistant controller and I have all these different groups reporting to me. You're sitting there trying to figure out and you're like, "This should be so easy." Why can't I close this? Why is this not posting?" Your journal entry doesn't balance and you're like, "No." Over time, you realize that in the real world, nothing works quite like that. It's great in theory. That's what's missing from a lot of education is the practical element. It's great to talk about theoretical, but when you leave there, do you have a to-do list of what you're going to do next? You're like, "That's great, but I don't even have the first starting point." In the real world, nothing goes according to plan. Even though I wanted to journal entries to balance the debit and credits of products to work out, it's one of those things that it's hard to switch that over, especially if you go in because everything's perfect. It's a great profession for that as a student.
If I go back in your story, you talked about that you don't talk to your father and you push forward and then you come into hard business situations and you push for it. There's something inside of us that we need to give attention to and credit to that keeps us moving forward when things get hard whether that's in our personal life, whether that's in our business life. Those things that happen over our lifetime become these patterns that work in our benefit and against us.
I do think perseverance, and those things, it has to be an answer. You have to get something done.
You can't give up because someone's got to get it done.
That's one of the things that women excel in this. At the end of the day, this has to get done. What can we do to get there? It's a little bit easier to compromise when you’re trying to get an end result.
What's changed in your belief systems now that you're an entrepreneur? You’re going from a salary job to a very predictable type of work to what you do now.
I totally believe one of the biggest belief systems is that you do know your area and that you can't do it alone. In my first year as an entrepreneur, I did all my own travel, all my own invoices, all my own crap. I was like, "This is insane." I would talk to people and they're like, "Why are you doing that?" I joined NAWBO and I joined various groups and they'd be like, "You need to learn to delegate." I'm like, "I did it in the past. I’ll do it and I know it's going to be right." They were like, "Yes, but then you also move so much." I got to the point where I would listen to successful people and be like, "I have to do that." I'm like, "You don't?" They were like, "That gets outsourced." I'm like, "At home, I'm like that." When I am home, I'm like, "I need to do that." I hired someone to come and change my cobbler because I didn't like to do it. I'm like, "I can find someone to do this cheaper than me."
It was one of the things that my husband and I would argue over and I'm like, "I Google it and there was a woman who did outdoors for the dogs." I said, "Would you come indoors and do cats?" She goes, "I have to see, why not?" She came three times a week and change the cat litter. I was great at home, but at work, I was terrible at it. I would listen to these people and I'm like, "I learned their business and how they've grown it." They're like, "I didn't grow it by myself. I didn't give it away." I'm like, "It made sense intuitively." It took a lot for me to be like, "I need to do that too." The first time I wrote a job description to give work to someone else, I was like, "I know what seat I want to sit in on the airplane. How do I give this up?" That has been for me, the building up and giving things out in each year little by little. It definitely has not been like I miraculously gave up stuff I should live by.
Could you ever go back?
No. I don't want to book another flight ever again.
There's something to be said too because when we are a perfectionist, we put that on other people around us. When we decide to delegate, we have to provide them with what is the end result we want them to get to. We can't provide them all the steps to get there because they're going to find their way to get to the same endpoint. If we try to micromanage every step, then we’re paying someone else and doing it.
The first few times I was like, "I’ll have you save the airfare and then you'll send to me and I’ll approve it." I would go and reprice out. I'm like, "Why am I doing this?" I was like, “I want to make sure it was the right selection of times." I was finally like, "This is not the best use of my time." When I started seeing it, my calendar would appear and I'm like, "I’ve got an airplane to get on." It's already taken care of. When you aren't ready for someone to help you and you're afraid to ask for it and you're a super perfectionist that wants it to be perfect, it's hard to delegate out. As an entrepreneur, if you want to grow, then you have to let something go and that took a lot for me.
I like to end with some rapid-fire questions. You pick a category, family and friends, health, spiritual or money.
Family and friends.
Asking For Help: As an entrepreneur, if you want to grow, then you have to let some things go.
What are the things or actions I don't have that I want?
It’s more time. I travel three days a week. Sometimes, I miss that course concert or I have to adjust because I don't have the timing for it. For me, I would love to see a little bit more time in the week to be able to spend that time. I do make a good attempt at it, but a little bit more time would make a difference.
What are the things or actions I do have that I want?
I am grateful for the relationship I have with my daughter. She's twelve and everyone's like, "Just you wait, twelve is going to be a horror story. She's going to hate you and never talk to you." I still get hugs. For her birthday, she asked me to still come to middle school and bring her brownies and people were like, "No way." We have that bond and it's definitely something she's the only. To me, I’m super happy that we've developed that relationship. I don't know what's to come. I can't predict the future, but I'm still happy that I haven't seen that material twist.
What are the things or actions I don't have that I don't want?
For me, it's that inauthentic relationship. I’ve been lucky. I don't have a ton of friends. I don't have a ton of interaction, but with the people that I do, it's been pretty awesome. Everyone is all in and my husband is all in, my daughter is all in, my friends are all in and it's that nice feeling.
What are things or actions I do have that I don't want?
It’s calendar appointments for weekends. Things that I need to find a way to give me more space. A couple more extra hours in every day and a couple of more extra weekends would be great. In my calendar, sometimes when I look at it, it scares me. It makes sense to me but I get it. I hope you understand like color-coding. I can do four different time zones in one week. Why are you doubting me?
Is there any message that you want to make sure people take away from this conversation and anything you want them to know about your business?
The one thing is that if I can be a recovering perfectionist then anybody can. If I can ask for help, anybody can because it took a lot to be able to get there. I have some of the closest friends from letting people in and letting them see me when I wasn't perfect and developing stronger friendships from it. In terms of the business, reach out on LinkedIn or go to our website. We do have a lot of different spots, GalassoLearningSolutions.com. It's a very creative website and CPA site.
Thank you so much for being on and having this conversation.
Thank you for inviting me.
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It is time for us to reflect during our Mindful Moment segment part of the show in the interview that I had with Melisa. From talking to Melisa and going over her journey, many people go through this exact same journey of starting out in our career and academics, being super competitive and want to make sure all of our wins are our own. We do not realize that we need a team to help create our best successes, rather than trying to go with the loan. By stepping back, pausing, reviewing your life, and understanding what things we have to let go of is important. Melisa talked about how she started not enjoying her work anymore and not enjoying the things that she was doing.
When she stepped back, she realized, “I ultimately want to have a career. What are the things I need to pivot to make sure that I can accomplish the outcomes that I want without getting burned out?” Part of her journey was learning to relinquish control and that it wasn't a weakness. Getting involved with groups such as other women’s groups and networking groups that you could find support in the work that you’re doing. When you help others, they help you and it starts to be a multiplier, rather than feeling like it is reducing the amount of success that you have if you reached out for help.
It is important when she talked about experienced this vulnerability of sharing best practices and things that people struggled with. Once she decided to relinquish that control and become part of these groups and support one another, that vulnerability when we all become more human with one another. We start learning things that not only help us but help the people that we are with. In that way, we don’t feel like it is a weakness that we are being additive as well. Another important thing she talked about is having a career coach and understanding that it is not a weakness. Basically, it is a third-party observer that can look at your career, your life, your work, without any skin in the game. They can look at that and say things to you in black and white without having the feeling or emotion that you are going through every day. If you are open to that advice, it can start changing the trajectory.
She talked about a few tips about making sure that as you move forward, you relinquish control and you don’t do it alone. First off is learning to delegate. That goes hand in hand with not micromanaging. We have to realize as human beings, we all have a different way to get to an outcome, but that doesn’t mean that the path there is any less than another path. If we all get to the outcome, we should be happy that somebody else was able to help us get to the outcome that we wanted.
In order to do that, we have to be able to allow someone else to learn in order to delegate tasks so that we can have the delight of things like travel being taken care of. Instead of micromanaging it, somebody booked her travel and then you go back and review the travel and redo it again. It wasn’t worth it to have someone do that. If you feel that there are certain tasks that people are doing that you have to re-review, find different ones that don’t have many mistakes in the game in getting those done. If somebody does it, you don’t need to look over their shoulders.
The other thing she talked about was not being able to grow by yourself. The group that you have is important, but also the support that you decide to invest in around yourself or open up to make sure that you can accomplish what you want to accomplish. All in all, I think this is an important moment for us all to step back and review where in our life are we holding on too tight with too much control? Understanding that you can recover to that if you are open to it, but it is a process, it is a journey and it is work. Asking for help is not a weakness, it is a strength.
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