Episode 44: Don't Wait For Someone To Create Your Path; Create Your Own With Angie Grissom
Listen up, aspiring entrepreneur. There is something you ought to know: nobody is going to create a path for you to succeed; you have to create your own path. What exactly does that mean? You may want to sit down and learn something from this episode’s amazing guest. Joining Amy Vetter in this interview is Angie Grissom, owner and Chief Relationship Officer for The Rainmaker Companies. Angie shares her journey coming from a creative family and how that led her to entrepreneurship and consulting. Learn the leadership lessons that she has incorporated into her career along the way that has led to her success and the people around her!
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Don't Wait For Someone To Create Your Path; Create Your Own With Angie Grissom
Welcome to this episode where I interview Angie Grissom. She's the Owner of The Rainmaker Companies and serves as the Chief Relationship Officer. Her role in the firm involves high-level strategy, strategic partnerships, thought leadership, consulting, and program and curriculum development. She works with managing partners and firm leaders and transforms the lives of clients through innovation, goal-setting, coaching, training, and accountability development. She is consistently recognized as one of the most influential people and recognized thought leaders in the accounting industry. She is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences and a regular contributor to publications and podcasts.
She was published in a national Ask Angie column for several years and is the “She” in Accounting Today’s column known as “He Said, She Said” and the developer of the RainChecks series. Her reputation and passion are renowned and she brings all this to her role at The Rainmaker Companies. During our interview, she shares her journey coming from a creative family and how that led to her entrepreneurship and consulting. Learn about her leadership lessons that she's learned along the way and has incorporated into her career that has led to her success and to the people around her.
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I'm with my good friend, Angie Grissom. She is the Owner of The Rainmaker Companies and Chief Relationship Officer. Angie, do you want to give a little brief introduction on yourself?
I am an owner at The Rainmaker Companies. We are based in Nashville, but we do work with professional service firms all over North America and internationally. We work with accounting firms primarily, law firms, engineer firms, and consulting firms and help them grow their practices and help with culture and leadership development.
What the work that The Rainmaker does is helpful for accounting firms looking to grow and transform and so forth, but we don't always start there in our careers of that's what we're doing with our life. I would love to start back in your history of where did you grow up? What did your parents do, siblings and that sort of thing? Give us a little bit of your family background.
I grew up here in Middle Tennessee. We're in Nashville. I live in Franklin, which is a suburb of Nashville. As much as I've traveled over the years, it's hard to believe that I haven't lived all over the world. I've been here for most of my life. I had very supportive, empowering parents who taught us that we could achieve anything that we wanted to and both very creative with two siblings. I always knew from the time I was a little girl that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to go into consulting. I went into pre-Law and focus on possibly going to law school, knowing I wanted to go into business, and ended up with a business degree and decided to go into consulting early in my career. I did not know that I would land in the accounting space. I never thought about that one of my first roles out of school, I landed with a company, which eventually became The Rainmaker Companies. I fell in love with working with professionals and CPAs and found that I was able to do the things that I always wanted to do within that niche. It's been quite a ride. It's been lots of fun.
Let's go back to your parents. What were their jobs?
My father was in the lumber industry. My grandparents always owned lumber companies and things like that. My father's family moved from North of Atlanta, Georgia to Tennessee because my mother's father who owned a lumber company and several companies recruited him. My mom was in medical administration. My parents lived in Atlanta for several years after they were married, but moved back to Middle Tennessee where her family was. I have family here.
Is it truly the middle of Tennessee?
No, it's just middle Tennessee area. Tennessee is long and horizontal. It's Nashville and Franklin areas. It’s different from East Tennessee where the mountains are in West Tennessee, where Memphis is. It's almost like three different states. I have family down in Georgia and also in the Nashville area.
Were you a part of that lumber business much?
No.
Did your dad work a lot of hours doing that?
He was busy, a hard worker, and was up early in the morning. He went out on his own early in his career to start his own business and then worked for other people as well. He’s outdoorsy, into nature and being outside. When I was 10, 11 years old, his hobby was actually woodworking. He has made incredible furniture. He passed away several years ago, but I have beautiful cutting boards, library chairs, and beautiful furniture that he has made. He was very artistic. He would sit on the couch and he would draft out something he wanted to build, a table, or a piece of furniture. He would find the wood, buy the equipment and he would make these things and stain them. They were absolutely gorgeous. My mother in her spare time was a poet. She wrote many poems and she was a great writer. My sister's also a great writer. She was very creative in her own right. They are creative, supporting, and empowering parents.
You don't hear a lot of people that focus on poetry. It's a forgotten language.
When we had projects, when we were kids, a lot of my friends would beg my mother, “Please, Evelyn, write my poems for me for English class.” I don’t know how well they would translate that to rap songs. At some point when I have a spare minute, I would love to have them published because they're pretty great.
Growing up with creative parents, did you have a creative hobby?
I was always drawing and painting. I was always involved in a lot of extracurricular things that were creative. I remember art classes and dance. I was in dance lessons, ballet and tap, and all of those things before I was even in school early on. One of the things that I remember doing that was creative that probably gave way to some of the things that I do is I remember just putting collages together. Remember back in the day before Pinterest, where you could grab magazines and cut out pictures of things that you liked and put them together on a poster board. I would cover my door with these amazing collages that I love that were creative. I loved the idea of creating. I would start businesses when I was little.
I started dance with a star before Dance With a Star was a thing. I remember being a child and cutting out the faces of celebrities and then creating these bodies with notebook paper coloring them and then charging my family to dance with them. My uncle Fletcher still brings it up and laughs. It was completely my idea, Amy, before it became a show, but I didn't get on that quick enough, but it was super fun. I’m always creative and always doing stuff like that. I wanted a career where I could continue to be creative. I couldn't do the same thing over and over, and I could be stuck behind a desk and things like that. Consulting was one area that excited me because of the ability to create whatever you wanted to create in terms of change management and where your job looks different every day. That did stem from being a little girl.
When you said you wanted to be an entrepreneur, how did you know what that looked like or why?
Create Your Own Path: Being a leader to a team is incredibly rewarding, but it can also be terrifying.
I knew that I to be in charge of my own destiny in terms of travel and how much money I could or could not make. I knew that I wanted to be my own boss from the time I was little. My mom's father was an entrepreneur as well. He had several businesses and was successful. That was certainly an influence. From childhood, I grew up starting my own businesses. Another one, which is not super creative, but you do what you can. I would buy things like gumball machines and charge them to come into my room and then charge them for the gum, which lasted a day until they literally said, “Forget this. We’ll just steal the gum,” but I get it. Finding fun ways, babysitting and stuff like that from early on.
I know what my brother would do at that age. I was a swimmer and my elder brother was a swimmer. Sitting through swim meets was so boring. My youngest brother decided to sell Cabbage Patch Cards. He rent them at the swim meets and my parents caught wind of like, “What is he doing?” It’s the same thing when you've got that mind. You have this vision from your grandfather of what an entrepreneur looks like. I'm the same as you. My grandmother was an entrepreneur, my grandfather, and my mom. As a child, you can look at all of that. You see them making their own money or you see the outside stuff. What surprised you about being an entrepreneur that you didn't know then?
I don't know what surprised me. It is a roller coaster. The highs are high, the lows are scary in terms of day-to-day. I've seen graphics that show a day in the life of an entrepreneur. I'm sure you've seen them where successes are so amazing because of your successes through your teams. I love to empower people and build a team. I have an incredible team and they're all very entrepreneurial. It's great working as a team and seeing the successes and the challenges that you overcome. It's up to you and livelihoods depend on you. Upturns, downturns, and all of those things. It's tough. I have a heart for managing partners and people in leadership that are dealing with those kinds of things. I coach a lot of firm leaders and managing partners as well as up and coming leaders around those challenges. They are real. It's rewarding and so incredible, but also, it can be terrifying as you know, for sure.
I use my yoga studio. I've had a studio manager with me the whole time. It's been open for several years and we've taken a lot of hits with COVID and the business looks totally different. With the fitness industry, we don't know what's going to happen with it ever again and what it will look like. She gave her notice to go back to being a school teacher. You sit there as the owner and you're like, “She wasn't a partner because she was a manager.” I viewed her just the such. We balance each other running that business. That's when you realize that it's all on you. Everyone else can walk away.
As you become more mature and you've run more businesses, you know these times are going to hit that are hard and you’ve got to take the challenge. The culture you create is important, how the other teachers have stepped up finding out this news and supported. Also learning how to regulate your own energy through it because there's nothing more stressful, where you get those moments of like, “What am I doing now?” You’ve got to step back, breathe. I took an evening to myself, and if I need to cry, I need to cry, whatever it is. Those are some things for me that I think as an entrepreneur, you can't know when you start out because it all seems so exciting.
I agree with what you're saying about regulating your energy and engagement. That's one of the lessons I've learned as well as attitude. Days are going to be hard, days are going to be long. You're going to have a lot going on, but you've got to go back to the silver lining of why you're doing what you're doing and focus on the successes that you've had. When you get those emails from people that say, “You transformed my life. You helped me,” you’ve got to keep those because sometimes you’ve got to open them back up.
I keep them there for that reason to have a reminder when I need it.
Sometimes it's difficult that you have to remember with your team, they're feeling the same way. Whether they're business owners or not, you’ve got to remember to say you're doing a great job.
You graduated with a business degree. What were you originally doing for a while in the company?
I started out in a marketing assistant role and was given the choice to move into training, consulting or our international alliance division and chose to go into consulting pretty early on.
What was consulting defined as?
Our consulting arm focused on partnering with public accounting firms and working with them to help them to create a strategic growth plan, focused on goals, and partner accountability. We work with different segments within the firm and work on areas like strengthening culture. Also, business development efforts, partner goals, and accountability, things like that. Anywhere from mid-size CPA firms, I typically worked with the executive committee and the partner group of firms to help them develop a plan and roll out a plan over several years.
This is a good part too. You go into this business, you're not an accountant, and then you're put in a position to do strategic growth plans for an accounting firm that you've never actually walked in those shoes and done that. A lot of people as entrepreneurs, you can go into a business or as a consultant and think you know. It’s right until what your job's going to be or encounter, and then you get these opportunities to take on something that you've never done before and challenge yourself. How did you get yourself comfortable with consulting on things that you hadn't done before?
First of all, I was 24 and a lot of my clients were my parents' age. One barrier being, “If you're not a CPA, you're not older and you don't have gray hair,” and these things were said to me, “How are you going to be effective in consulting?” I remember very early on thinking, “I don't have to know what you know, I just need to know what I know and to be able to effect change management positively.” I did things like reading every book I could get my hands on. I did all kinds of research and worked long hours and I still do a lot. It was difficult to get up to speed that I wanted to, and I was curious about it. I actually met a gentleman named Blaine Lee, who was one of the Founders of FranklinCovey. I met him at one of our conferences early on.
He pulled me aside and he said, “I see something in you. I think you're going to be successful. You're going to be a leader of people. Let me tell you what you need to do.” It was fascinating because I didn't know him. He was Oprah's mentor at some point too, which was super cool. I thought, “I need a mentor like Oprah's mentor.” He drew this picture saying, “You’ve got to have credibility, you've got to do this. You've got to work hard,” and I still have it. He has since passed away, but he was excellent. He would check on me every six months or something until he passed away. That was a boost for somebody to grab me and say, “I see something in you.” My parents were very much that way. I’ve had a handful of people that have been that for me. I was very driven and tried to figure it out. Every time you have a success, she built on that.
That takes confidence in yourself because consulting, entrepreneurship and going into it. You know that you're not going to know everything. You might have a base layer and then every experience you go in, someone's going to throw something at you that you weren't aware of before was a new issue. It's having the confidence of how you respond in those situations and still have credibility. How do you think you've been able to do that?
I was told early on by my former boss that you need to position yourself in a way that you are working with the leaders of firms. You need to be credible in that way. I went into it that way. I was never afraid of authority. I wasn't one of those kids that were afraid of teachers or anything like that. I felt like I had a seat at the table or I should have a seat at the table. I feel like everybody should have a seat at the table. One lesson I did learn though, was nobody's going to draw the map for you. There's not going to be somebody that's going to say, “Angie, here's the map. This is what you need to do in order to be a successful trainer, consultant, entrepreneur or whatever.” That doesn't exist necessarily. There are people that can lead you certainly, and you can learn what to do and many times what not to do in people that you meet clients otherwise, but nobody's going to draw you a map. I think that you just have to determine what it is that you want to do, what is your vision for where you want to be. You might not know exactly, but then you forget your own path and you connect with people along the way to help you do that and you help other people do that.
You've mentioned a couple of times mentors or people that have reached to you that have helped your success. Where do you do that yourself? This is something we pass on. It's those moments that are the ones that were the confidence builders for you as well in your career.
I am blessed and lucky enough to be in a position where most of the work that I do, I have the ability to influence other people through coaching that I'm doing with individuals, whether they're firm leaders or up and coming firm leaders. Maybe it's a team member. Many times, they coached me right back, which is important and so needed. Different industry consultants in the profession where we help each other out. It takes a village like raising children. I do that through my work. Sometimes I have people that I meet that connects with me and say, “Will you coach me? Will you connect with me?” We’ll do that. It's part of my day-to-day but I do have specific relationships where I work on through clients and people that I meet.
I like to end with some rapid-fire questions. You can pick a category, family and friends, money, spiritual, or health.
Create Your Own Path: Nobody is going to draw you a map to success. It doesn’t exist.
Let’s do family and friends.
Things or actions I don't have that I want with my family and friends.
I want more spontaneity and making plans with making memorable plans and activities. I don't want to be stuck in the rut of, “We get together, we do this.” I want to do better about reaching out to people, even virtually. Reaching out to people and even people I haven't spoken with in a long time and creating some interesting memories.
Things or actions that I do have that I want.
I have the best friends and community on the planet. I love my circle of people and I love how it grows and their friends from when I was four years old to new friends that I made all the time.
Things or actions that I don't have that I don't want.
Everybody growing up has friends on the peripheral that aren't friends, just groups of friends and stuff like that. We all at some point in our life have ended up in circles or around people that maybe we weren't super close to and it was not genuine. I know a lot of people still deal with that as an adult. I don't have a lot of that. My people are my people and it's good and authentic. I don't struggle with, “I don't want to see them or hang out with them.” I don't have that.
Things or actions that I do have that I don't want.
Reluctance to reach out to people that I haven't been in touch with. I have friends that I was close to that have moved away or we've gotten busy and I haven't reached out to them and I need to do that. I need to change that and open that up. It’s important.
Before we end our discussion, are there certain things that you want to make sure people come away with from our conversation that we didn't cover in your story?
I would say, don't wait for somebody to create your path, create your own path. Your path changes and your journey changes, but don't be afraid that you're not smart enough, good enough, old enough, gray enough, or whatever it is. Don't let that stop you. One other thing that I would say is, even though it's difficult to be a professional or a working person, have children and balance the whole thing, don't make that all that you are. It's easy for it to become all-consuming. It's with kids or without kids and with jobs. You lose what lights a fire in you. For many years between juggling our two boys and trying to build and run a business, I think I lost a lot of the hobbies and things that gave me energy. Whether it be hiking, photography, or traveling for leisure or cooking. I picked cooking backup, which is awesome. Try to blend that in the whole time, because work will always be there and blend it in so that you've got a good balance. That's probably a lesson that I would tell myself from 10, 15 years ago.
It will all come together. Just trust the process. Thank you so much for being on and sharing your story.
Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. I love this. This is great.
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For our mindful moments with my interview with Angie Grissom. It's interesting how many people in different leadership positions that I have interviewed come from a creative background. How we have these hobbies or these things that come naturally to us as we are children and things that we spend most of our time on that as we get older and start shifting to our career that we lose sight of. It's important to think about what in your life have you given up along the way that when you were a child, you spent a lot of time doing, and it's when time disappeared and how you can go about incorporating that back into your life. During Angie's story, she talks about her creative parents and the creative outlets that she had as a child, and what that created as far as thought process to become an entrepreneur one day and just know that whole dimension of what is possible and how you have the confidence to go after it.
I have always thought about my background in music and how it prepared me for my career going forward. It’s because of the time that you had to spend rehearsing and practicing in order to get the final product good. For all of us, if we're going to be good in the roles that we have, coming back on that knowledge, those things we trained on as a child, whether that be sports, art, or whatever that might be. The time that it took to be good at it and remembering that, so that we can take that into our career and put the same kind of rigor into learning the things, practicing to make sure our final product is just as good. She also talked about how there have been people along the way that have helped her in showing her that she had the potential to do the things that were her dream.
Her dream of being an entrepreneur, her confidence to be a consultant at 24 years old in an industry that she didn't grow up in. Many of us will use those outside things as an excuse and say, we can't be good at it because we're being put in the position to do consulting and a profession that we are not a part of. What you'll find is there are many similarities between all professions, with the things that we do and the fears that people have in their own jobs as they go to leadership, making sure you're making the right decisions for business. When you can step back and look at, “I have something to offer,” which I thought was an important line that she said is, “I don't have to know what you know. I just need to know what I know.” That is typically why someone hires you.
You are giving them some knowledge or enhancing the things that they do because of the time that you've spent grooming yourself, practicing, rehearsing, researching, reading, having experience with other people similar to them. When you can back up and understand the credibility that you do have, you don't necessarily have to have the same resume as the person next to you. It's getting yourself confident in the skills that you do have. If you haven't done this before, I think it's important for you to step back and write down the things that are awesome about you and are different. Not to feel like you have to be the same in order to do the work that you do that. What is it about your skillset, your particular way of working, and background that is going to contribute to somebody else's life? Somebody else's work life, someone else's personal life, whatever that is so that you feel that your worth matters.
The other thing that was important when she talked about the people that have tapped her on the shoulder and said, “You've got this,” is giving the advice of how to make sure you have credibility and that nothing comes easy. You can have all of the natural skills, tools, talents, or communication skills, but if you don't work hard, if you don't put rigor against it, then you know, you're going to get what you put into it. It's important to understand that no matter who you look at that is successful, how much work went into where you are seeing where they're at now. That you haven't actually been there through all the trials and tribulations and ways that didn't go well and had to learn from them.
There was another great line that Angie said, “No one is going to draw a map for you to be successful.” Writing down what is good about you and what is differentiated is important, but also writing down your vision of what you want your future to look like, what kind of things you would like to do. I think it's important to always go back and review that again, maybe each year, maybe twice a year, whatever that is because we pivot as we get more experience and learn more things, then we find other things that we can be good at and excited about and so forth. It's important that we don't just write that down once and let it sit and never look at it again. We constantly go back and make sure that it still applies to who we are and what that next vision looks like, what kind of learning research and growth do you need because we're never finished. It is always going to be on us to keep moving our path forward. It's important that we design that and know that it doesn't have to look like the person next to us, that we can create our own path.
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About Angie Grissom
Angie is an Owner of The Rainmaker Companies and serves as the Chief Relationship Officer. Her role in the firm involves high-level strategy, strategic partnerships, thought leadership, consulting, and program and curriculum development. She works with Managing Partners and firm leaders and transforms the lives of clients through innovation, goal setting, coaching, training, and accountability development.
Angie is consistently recognized as one of the most influential people and a recognized thought leader in the accounting industry. She is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences and a regular contributor to publications and podcasts. She was published in a national “Ask Angie” column for several years and is the “She” in Accounting Today’s column known as “He Said, She Said” and the developer of the “RainChecks” series. Her reputation and passion are renowned and she brings all this to her role at The Rainmaker Companies.
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