Episode 74: Poets V Quants: Creating A Well-Rounded Team Is The Secret To Success With Scott Fleszar
You need a well-rounded team to help your business succeed. Amy Vetter discusses with Scott Fleszar the importance of having team members whose strengths complement each other. Scott is the CEO at SafeSend, a company that provides automation technology tools to CPAs and tax preparers. In this episode, Scott shares his journey and the lessons he learned to build effective teams. Fostering a culture of having fun and helping each other is essential. Join in the conversation to learn more!
We are honored that SafeSend sponsored this episode. SafeSend provides automation technology tools to CPAs and tax preparers. Learn more here - https://safesend.com/
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Poets V Quants: Creating A Well-Rounded Team Is The Secret To Success With Scott Fleszar
Welcome to this episode where I interview Scott Fleszar, CEO of SafeSend, where he's responsible for overseeing the operational and growth strategies and running the business. He has a passion for fostering a dynamic team environment, promoting company culture. He truly believes that people are the company's greatest strength. His focus is on driving growth, delighting customers and developing a high-performing managerial team. He is a customer advocate and has served the tax and accounting profession in various leadership roles at technology organizations for many years. Scott excels at seeing the big picture to help tax and accounting firms at every level work smarter.
Well-Rounded Team: Take advantage of the people that you have, the talents that are there. Foster a culture of fun, communication, and hard work.
In his free time, he enjoys hiking, skiing, golfing and spending time with his family. During this interview, we discuss his journey from understanding that hard work and determination can only take you so far. His path from being an individual player to understanding how to not only be part of a team, but later lead it, taught him the importance of how to bring out each person's authentic self and maximize their unique gifts to create success. Scott shares lots of insights that will help you at any stage of your career journey. I look forward to seeing what you've learned from this episode.
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I'm with Scott Fleszar, the CEO of SafeSend. I would love, Scott, if you give a little background on yourself as we begin.
Thanks, Amy. I'm the CEO of SafeSend. At SafeSend, we provide automation technology tools to CPAs and tax preparers. The tool is to help firms be more efficient, serve their clients better, mitigate security risks and drive down their operating costs. All centered around the professional tax preparation engagement and streamlining how firms communicate and collaborate with our clients throughout that process, how they deliver the completed tax return, how they capture e-signatures and streamlining that whole process to bring efficiency of the firm and provide a great experience to clients. It's an area that, with the pandemic and more firms having to work from home, serve clients remotely. The technology was already something that firms were looking for, but with the pandemic we've even had increased interest. We're happy to be helping firms manage operating a little bit differently now.
I've known Scott for many years. His innovative mind has always fascinated me of the things that he's done in his career. This is exciting being a part of this organization and then leading them. I would love to start though, before we get to your transition to CEO, because that's an interesting story as well. Let’s start from the beginning, where did you grow up? What'd your parents do? What was your family life like?
I was born and raised in Southeast Michigan, the Ann Arbor area, which is not far from Detroit. My father was an early technology worker. He worked for a university and was responsible for their early database management. Early on, watching him work, I got some sense for how technology can help businesses and people. I knew that they had big mainframes that they were working with. The technology was obviously a lot different. I think back to going into his office one day, he took me to where the mainframe was. I'm sure that monstrosity probably didn't have the power that an iPhone does now, but at the time, it was cutting edge. Early on, I got a sense for technology and how that can help in terms of innovation and making things easier for people.
Do you remember what he was trying to solve for?
It was mainly managing student records. This is back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, so I don't know exactly what they were doing, but it was probably basic student records, archiving student records and bringing new students of board. That process would have been all probably paper files before that. It was the first step towards adding some level of digital digitization to that.
What did your mom do as you grow up?
She mainly worked from home. She did some part time jobs. For the most part, she was focused on being a homemaker and raising me and my brother. For the most part, probably traditional for the time, my dad was focused on being the breadwinner and working out of the home and my mom was focused on working in the home and taking care of things in the home and taking care of all the details around myself and my brother. My childhood was probably pretty traditional for the time.
Were you the oldest or the youngest?
I’m the oldest. I always like to think that the oldest has the more difficult path and lay the groundwork for my younger brother, who didn't have to negotiate for curfews and getting a car.
When you were younger, what were the things that you love to do as a child? What were your interests?
I have a lot of athletic interests. I played basketball and baseball. I always looked forward to recess in grade school where you'd go out and compete. I liked athletics and competing in team sports. I always had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder in that. For male standards, I'm not the tallest guy. If you're out there and you've got a couple of people picking teams that weren't normally, if you didn't know me, one of the guys you'd pick early on, but I'd love to get in and prove that you guys should've taken me earlier. I’m capable. If I think back to that, I had an edge about proving myself and surprising people. Maybe that was more of the impetus.
When you say that, in order to surprise people and know what your skill sets, what did you do to prepare? Was it a natural ability or was it things you worked on, on the side? How did you know that you were going to show them that they made a mistake?
It was more a competitive drive. Let's say basketball for instance, I would take advantage of my strengths, which is a shorter player is more about quickness. It's not going to be being close to the basket and shooting inside shots, but it's going to be quickness and getting open and making players around you better because you're one of the quicker players on the court. I would always look for what are my opportunities to leverage my capabilities against whoever I was competing against in basketball in particular because that would be the sport that I played the most.
Especially at the time, it was always considered the taller you are, the better you are. It wasn't the case. I would find ways to be better than these taller players because there are different ways that you can contribute. The way the game is played, you can leverage your quickness, your court awareness and your ability to make other players better and leverage teamwork with your other players. Maybe that was always a motivation for me. Taller players out there, there were always ways to beat them. You had to be driven and focused on that regard.
I love that because it's something you can take anywhere in your life, is finding where no one's looking to make your own success. It's a hard story for children. I was never picked first either. I was the shortest girl. That whole thing that happens as a child when you're not picked the first. There are two directions you can go. It’s either be negative inside on yourself about it or it's a mindset of like, “I'm not going to let this affect me because I know that the result will be good.” Where do you think you got that mindset from? Did that come internally, from a support system? Why did you think you were capable?
It was more from hard work and not letting failure set you back. Each failure was a learning moment. Early in my playing days for basketball, you'd get your shot blocked a lot because you were short. You had to figure out how to maneuver inside so that these slower, taller players couldn't block your shot. It’s the trial-and-error process. Once you start having success moving away from trial and error, that feeds the confidence and then you develop that edge where it's like, “I’m capable at whatever I'm going to do because I've learned from my mistakes. I know how to take advantage of my capabilities and leverage my capabilities.” It was probably a little bit of influence from my dad in terms of never allowing me to have any excuses for not being successful. It was, “You can do this.” We'd practice in the driveway. He instilled in me a little bit of, “You got to put the time and effort in, but it'll pay dividends.”
Those little things that happen over time, I grew up playing violin. I wanted to get into the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. This was a goal of mine in high school. Every time I'd audition, the conductor detested me. He got this look on his face. I knew walking in, every time I had to overcome that. My mom and I had season tickets to the Cincinnati Symphony. We were sitting in our seats before it's starting. She said, “What about viola?” I’m like, “No. I’ll play violin.” I sat there through the whole concert going, “I would be the top viola.” I did. In a year, I switched it and I made it into the orchestra. It is those little pockets of opportunity you have to look at. Sometimes it's not exactly the path you thought you were going to get there with.
That's a beautiful instrument in and of itself.
I ended up loving it, but it wasn't what I thought was my instrument.
You're an accomplished musician now. Obviously, you were able to dial in on that instrument. It expands your musical capabilities.
All those stories end up reflecting into your future. I wasn't a natural accountant. I always kept that viola story in my head. That's why I went into client accounting services before it was cool. A lot of CPAs looked down on me at the time for doing it because I wasn't doing tax or audit. Everything that you're talking about is innovation. You're going to fail over and over again and how do you keep the mindset to keep learning and finding those pockets of opportunity and those a-ha moments of like, “That worked.”
When you figure them out on your own like that, it instills a lot of confidence. You know that the next failure, which is going to be there, is just a learning experience.
It's not that you're going to stop. It’s like, “I got to figure out a different path.” You figured this out for yourself, but were other teammates figuring this out about you? Did you start noticing that they were seeing this in you as well?
No. Once I got into building a career, it took me a while to become self-aware, but when I did, that was helpful for me to grow as a professional and become more of a leader. Whether it was in grade school or high school or college or even my early career, I probably wasn't processing any feedback I was getting from others, or at least not effectively. I wasn't self-aware. I was always a hard worker and a doer. To solve any problem, you work harder. For your early career, that can work, but then later in my career when I was able to take on more responsibility and get into leadership roles, you needed to be much more self-aware. Getting back to your fundamental question, I wasn't self-aware. I don't think I was paying attention much to feedback from others necessarily. I was more focused on hard work and a doer. That was fine for getting through high school, college and getting into your career, but it wasn't going to be something that would allow me to take on more responsibility, different leadership roles and different types of acumen that I got involved with.
What was the moment? When did you become self-aware?
Well-Rounded Team: Hire leaders who have skills complementary to you.
Before I came to SafeSend, I had a 24-year career at Thomson Reuters. Probably ten years into my career at Thomson Reuters, maybe 7 or 8 years in, my boss at the time had his team of managers, I was a manager, do the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment. It was this assessment designed to go through almost like a Myers-Briggs type questionnaire. It's designed to zero in on what your strengths are. I remember sitting down to take this thing thinking, “This is silly. This is not going to be beneficial.” It was a pretty in-depth survey. You only have a limited amount of time to answer the question, so they want the gut reaction. I finished it and it gives you your five top strengths. I was like, “This nailed me.” I knew what I was strong at, but I was amazed at this tool could dial into my strengths.
That's when we went through a process as a management team where you shared what your strengths were. Everyone else did. It got me to be more aware of being self-aware and being a little bit more introspective about what are you strong at and what are you not strong at? One of the foundations of this Clifton's strength assessment is you want to focus on your strengths. Because of your weaknesses, you can only improve so much. You can kill yourself trying to improve them. They're only going to get marginally improved, but if you leverage your strengths and understand what your strengths are, that's going to propel you. That was almost liberating.
First of all, having the validation of my strengths from this assessment, which was good, and then beginning to understand that I'm probably not good in these certain areas. I already knew I probably wasn't good. Maybe I shouldn't kill myself to try to get better at them, but instead, build a career where I can leverage my strengths. If I'm in leadership roles, have people around me that can serve to fill in my weaknesses or compliment my capabilities. That was probably the first time where I said, “I can't just power through and figure things out and use hard work and determination and brute force to accomplish things. I needed to be more aware of what I was good at and where I would need to lean on others for help.”
We did something similar. The right-hand person I was working with, we came out completely opposite on this test. We were in New Zealand when we got the results back from HR. We were going on a plane to another island. I walked away from it. I was like, “That's right.” He had said to me on the plane, it was obviously bothering him. He was like, “How do you feel about that we're completely opposite?” I'm like, “I hired right. I don't want to do what you do. You love doing what you do.” That validated it instead of trying to think that you're going to be good at everything. I'm clear at what I'm not good at.
It's pretty well documented now, but you don't want to hire people that are exactly like you. You can fall into the trap of doing that because, “This person thinks like me.” That's not going to make you stronger as a team or puts you in a position to cover all of the areas that you're going to need to be good at as a team.
It's like your story of basketball. You'll never be as tall as them and they'll never be your size, but you need them both. If everyone's the same height, they're running into each other. What was your degree? What did you choose to do in college?
I went to Eastern Michigan University, which is in Ypsilanti, right next to Ann Arbor. I knew I wanted to get a business degree. I didn't know what type of business degree, Accounting or Marketing or Management, Finance, but in one of the accounting courses that you have to take no matter what business degree you're going to get, essentially Accounting 201. I remember the professor saying, “The kind of degree can do a lot of things. Also, the accountants in the business are usually the ones determining who gets laid off. It's never them.” I said, “Good enough reason for me.”
I went down the path of getting an accounting degree. What's interesting about that is I got to my senior year and I thought, “My grades are good, but not great. I don't have any professional experience. I better get an internship.” I did an interview with Deloitte & Touche back then, to do an internship in Public Accounting with Deloitte & Touche. The interview went horribly. I was completely unprepared for this interview. I then began to question, “Do I even want to go into Public Accounting?” I went back down to career services. I said, “Is there any other internship opportunities?” They said, “There's this software company down the road, a small software company. They do something with accounting software. You might want to check them out.” I went to a job fair there at a company called Creative Solutions, which later became Thomson Creative Solutions, which later became Thompson Reuters.
I got an internship there supporting, if you have any accountants reading, it's the UltraTax DOS product. UltraTax is the brand. It was the DOS product of UltraTax. I got in. I felt great about the internship because I said, “I can use my degree, but I don't have to be in Public Accounting. I'm in a different part of that equation. I'm working for a company that provides tools to accounting firms.” I loved the job. I loved helping people. That's what we didn't in product support. The internship was product support for UltraTax Dos. I got hired on and the rest is history. That started a 24-year career at Thomson Reuters.
You took a lot of turns in your career at Thomson Reuters. How did you end up in the role that you were in innovation there?
At Thomson Reuters, I started in the services area. I was in product support, then I got involved with training. This was before webinars. I'd go around the country and train our customers on the software. Fortunately, my career at Thomson Reuters was fantastic. It's a great organization. I have nothing but gratitude for my time there. The leadership team there saw that I had some leadership capabilities. They essentially sponsored me to get an MBA. I got an MBA at the University of Michigan. That allowed me to pivot my career. I got the MBA. During that process I became interested more in marketing and strategy. I moved into a leadership role in marketing at Thomson Reuters, which was a big shift for me. It got me out of my comfort zone, which was great. I was in marketing. I led marketing for five years, then I got involved with product management.
You went into a department you've never done before. Where did you find your pockets where you could be successful with a background you didn't have?
It was a great team. I had a fantastic team that supported my ramp up. It was a quick ramp up, but I had a couple of managers underneath me that were strong, probably new coming in. I knew the business well and I knew our customers well, but I wasn't, by any means, a marketing expert. They helped me. I owe them.
That's a good lesson because a lot of people come into leadership roles that maybe they're not completely qualified for, but can try to represent themselves that they know more than they do versus asking for help or being open for help. That's a hard skill to have. Did you feel, at any point, that wasn't a good thing, or you felt like, “In order to be successful, I need to be transparent about what I'm good at or not good at?”
Fortunately, I had worked with this team some, so I wasn't a complete unknown. I came in and I very much strive for an authentic and genuine leadership style. I came in and I was transparent and said, “I know a lot about the business, our products, customers, markets, but I'm not a marketing expert. I'm going to lean on you guys to help me quickly ramp up in that area.” They appreciated the fact that I didn't try to come in and fake it. They knew that I could bring immediate insights that would be helpful.
My first year, I was drinking from a fire hose and learning something new every day, it seemed. We had a great team. They appreciated the fact that I was authentic and genuine. I wasn't afraid to say I didn't know. I wasn't trying to fake it and also that I was much team first oriented. I gave them the credit that they earned because I wouldn't have been successful in that role had I not had great support from my team. It was a year of learning a completely new discipline and then continually getting better over the next four years that I was in that role.
It takes both sides of the coin to help that basic task flows. You would have to have a leader that knows you don't know, but believes in your leadership skills and says, “Help figure this out.” Your team has to feel supported by you that you're not trying to tell them something they already know that you're trying to learn from them. When we're in these structures, for any leader, you have to look for both like, “Do I have someone to support me as I learned the role and not come in and feel like you have to fake it? Do I have a team that's open to supporting my learning process?” Some of that you do on the interview process coming in too.
You know Teresa Mackintosh. She's the one that hired me into that role. She knew I wasn't a marketing expert, or I didn't have the marketing background that would be ideal for the role, but I had all these other attributes. She was supportive of my ramp up there. She was a great mentor to me and helped me with that particular role, putting me into that role and having the confidence there, but overall, with managing my career and different opportunities that came my way. It was great having the support of her and also then the support of my team. I couldn't have asked for a better situation.
I know, with your story that you went into product management and then ended up on this innovation team and ended up around the world. That was a big risk to take with your family. What did you learn from that?
Further along in my Thomson Reuters career, I had an opportunity to do an overseas assignment in Switzerland at their Enterprise Centre, which has focused on emerging technologies and innovation. I remember the day my boss came in and said, “What do you think of this opportunity?” I was not expecting it. I had kids in grade school, middle school and high school. I said, “I'm going to have to go talk to my family about this.” I remember talking to my kids, myself and my wife said, “We're not going to make you do this, but think about the opportunity because you might not ever have this opportunity again, an opportunity to live overseas.”
There was an immediate no from a couple of them, but they went off and connected to the international school they’d be going to on Instagram. They chatted with another colleague of mine at Thomson Reuters who had chatted with their kids that had been through that. They came back a week and a half later and said, “Is this still a possibility?” I said, “Yes, but I already been hinting to my boss. It's looking like no.” They said, “We're in.” It wasn’t an easy decision for them, but they could see bigger that, “This is an opportunity that we're fortunate to have.”
We did this assignment overseas. We were overseas 2.5 years. It was fantastic personally, professionally and for our family. My kids all have friends overseas. I know they're going to not pass up on any opportunity in terms of study abroad or working overseas or in another country there. I was happy for them to have had this opportunity to get out of their comfort zone and experience something new. They have no idea how lucky they are. It’s a great opportunity.
It changes forever their outlook on that type of thing too. Let's fast forward to what you're doing now. How did these things help you in this transition to more of a startup company and leading this company to scale?
When I joined SafeSend, it was with this idea that I could help grow and scale the business because that's what I had been doing for years at Thomson Reuters. My partners in the business were entrepreneurs, great at starting companies, building great products, but not necessarily thinking about, “How do we go from serving hundreds of customers to thousands?” What we do is process these completed tax returns. We were doing thousands. How do we potentially get to doing millions of returns? It was able to take advantage of all the experience and background that I had with building teams, working with people, being mindful of culture because we're fast growing. I was employee number nineteen in the US. We're over 50 employees now. We're continuing to hire. We'll probably be 70 or 80 employees by the end of 2021.
My mindset has been growing fast, so we can take advantage of the opportunity but having a real focus on culture. I want the staff and my team, when they wake up on a Monday morning, to think, “I'm going to have fun at work this week.” It's not a dread to go into the office or dial into a Zoom as it were. It's been fun to essentially take a lot of what I've learned over the years, working in a larger organization that can benefit our company and then being more mindful, in a smaller organization, how you take advantage of the people that you have, the talents that are there. In a smaller organization, oftentimes people are wearing multiple hats and fostering an environment where there's cross-company communication, collaboration and people are helping each other.
That's a big part of the culture that I try to foster, is we have fun. We help each other. We work hard and it's a place where you're not territorial. You're not only focused on the one task that you might be the core part of your job, but you're going to pitch in where the business might need it at that time. We've got the peaks and valleys of work in the business. We have people shift around and roll up their sleeves and appreciate the diversity in their work.
Taking all the learnings that you had, you ran big teams, but it's different taking on a CEO role and being ultimately responsible. When you step back to think about that transition in that role and taking on this, what was your first steps in your mindset of how you wanted to go about this role having not done a CEO role before?
One of the things was making sure that the leaders that I either had in the business already or that I was going to hire had complementary skills to me. When I was getting my MBA at the University of Michigan, they always talk about poets and quants. I'm more of a poet. I'm not a quant. I'm not going to be cranking through spreadsheets, but I need people on my team and have those kinds of capabilities. That's a simple example. One of my mindsets was I need a team that is well-rounded across all of the different disciplines that are needed in our business and complement me and each other. Going back fundamentally, I'm a doer.
I had to be focused on delegation. I need to empower my team to be executing on the plans that we talk about. I can't be micromanaging how we're doing things. I have to be helping my team with direction, but delegating the tasks and letting my head of sales run sales, letting my head of marketing run marketing, letting the head of product run the product team. I was always, typically at Thomson Reuters, in roles where I was running one of those teams, but it's a little bit different once you get into the CEO role. You need to make sure your leaders are the ones that are responsible for their team and accountable to their team and that you're helping them be successful.
I like to wrap up with some quick-fire questions. You pick a category, family and friends, money, spiritual or health.
Let's do health.
What are the things or actions I don't have that I want with my health?
More discipline around a regular exercise regimen, especially if I have to do it myself. I'm pretty good about, “Anybody want to play basketball?” I got into pickleball. I love that stuff, but being disciplined about regular exercise on my own, I'm not good at it.
What are things or actions that I do have that I want to keep as part of my health?
Love of competitive sports. Basketball, pickleball and skiing, which is not necessarily a competitive sport. When I go out and play basketball for hour and a half, it's a great workout and didn't feel like a workout. It felt like I had fun. I want to always be involved with others and doing things to stay active because it doesn't seem like exercise, but you get great exercise.
What are things are actions that I don't have that I don't want?
I might have a big blind spot to this, but I'm not one to say I want to go vegan, or I want to cut these things out of my diet. I feel like I want to try and eat relatively healthy, but I want to be able to eat across a broad spectrum of things.
Last question, what are things or actions that I do have that I don't want as far as my health?
Love of food that's not good for you. I love bread and carbs in general. I go to a nice restaurant. I eat too much bread even before the meal gets there, or I go to a Mexican restaurant. I eat too much chips and salsa. I like to eat and drink. I like a good drink.
Anything that we didn't cover or any message that you want to make sure that you get across before the end of our conversation?
This is some epiphanies, but it's been well-documented. Authentic and genuine leadership style works well. People that you're working with, when they see that you're authentic and genuine, they like working with you and want to work with you. They want to help you in areas you might not be as strong in. You shouldn't ever try and fake it because people see right through that. It doesn't get you anywhere and you're not going to learn. Don't be afraid to say you don't know, make fun of yourself and get out of your comfort zone. Those are some of the leadership philosophies or principles that I try to live by. I try to work with the leaders in our business about being authentic and being genuine. That's how you grow. That's how you get others in the business to want to be happy to help you and work with you.
Thanks so much for sharing your story. There were so many great lessons that came from it that people will enjoy.
Thanks. This is great. I really appreciate it.
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For our Mindful Moments on my interview with Scott, which began with talking about him growing up and playing sports and how sports has driven a lot of his belief systems as he grew older into his career, and also what he's shifted over time and understanding success. We talked about how competing on a team brought the whole belief system of understanding how you don't always have to be what's obvious to be successful such as being on a basketball team and being the tallest guy, but also what strengths each of us has in order to bring a team to a win or to success. This was an important lesson for all of us to take away of taking stock. The things that we are good at, might not be as obvious, but the things that bring teams to win. That can be a team on the court or a team in the workplace of what is our specific skill set that we use to balance the rest of the team in order to bring us to success.
As he was younger, this lesson was about all individual contribution. Many of us starting out in our careers is that is our focus on what we can do and how we get to success ourselves. For him, most of his focus was on hard work and dedication that he had that competitive drive to make sure that he could help the team succeed and win, but it was mostly thinking about his own individual contributions. That proving through time through school and through his jobs of when he works hard and is determined and puts the effort in that he can achieve success.
For many of us, as we go through our careers and make that shift to leadership, that is where, sometimes, we hit fail points, because we've seen over time what works for us as an individual contributor. What works for us as a team leader may be different. Pivoting our skillset so that we are aware of what makes us successful as a leader versus an individual contributor can mean everything to be successful as an organization, a team within an organization or in your own business.
Through our discussion, we got to that point of inflection in his career where people were noticing him, there were people taking him under their wing to drive his career. In order to be successful as a leader, someone can't do that for you. You've got to figure out what needs to change. That was something that was important in this interview of allowing yourself to be self-aware. Sometimes that can be the hardest thing of being honest with ourselves of what's working with other people and what's not working and understanding how others see us. Many times, I give a talk about personal branding. We can think about branding as our clothes or the way that we look, but branding is how someone feels when they work with you or when they walk away from you. What do they remember about the experience?
It’s not necessarily about any one thing that you did. Do they enjoy working with you? He had done a StrengthsFinder assessment to help him identify where his strengths were, but even more importantly, to understand where his gaps were, because not only do we have failure points in leadership and self-awareness. Our next one is making sure that our team is well-rounded to fill in all the holes that we need. That we aren't just hiring someone like us and that we hire people that are strong in things we aren't strong in. That does take confidence, because a lot of times I've met with leaders that they can feel insecure once someone knows something more than what they do. There's no way to be successful and be the expert in everything.
You might know enough to be dangerous in certain areas, but you also may need to learn what you don't like doing and what you're not good at because those are the things that you're going to avoid in the work that you do. Hiring people that do enjoy those things are important. When I work with businesses, a lot of times, we talk about different indexing and profiling that you can do to make sure that you are hiring people in those roles, taking the bias out and looking for those gaps. A lot of times it's hard to hire someone that's opposite from you because maybe they don't have your same personality or your same way of thinking. Those are the things that make us all smarter, is hiring in the people that we don't know what they know and respecting their experience.
Well-Rounded Team: Be more aware of what you’re good at and where you would need to lean on others for help.
As a leader, it isn't always about being the smartest person in the room. It's sometimes being the best listener and understanding how to take away those roadblocks and make sure that the team is succeeding. It's not about you as an individual. The reflection is always that you're a good leader if your team is doing well. If your team is not doing well, the reflection is going to go opposite as well. I thought he had good advice about not being afraid to say when he didn't know something and where he gave other people credit for their expertise and what they knew so that he could keep growing in his career. Sometimes that's a hard thing, is understanding when you need to move to the next phase and make space for the next person. Making sure that you take the time to focus on helping people learn their jobs, on helping people learn to grow and how they think and how they do their work and bringing out the best in them and empowering them is sometimes the best thing you can do as a leader versus trying to do everything yourself.
This was such a great episode of learning another leader's journey. I've known Scott for a very long time. Everything he talked about, it's true. He is that authentic. I have appreciated watching all the things he's done in his career and also what he's doing with SafeSend to grow that business. It's an exciting time. I appreciate the collaboration. Make sure to subscribe, share this episode with anyone that you think it would be helpful for. If you're interested in learning more about SafeSend, if you go to SafeSend.com and choose schedule a demo, you can learn more. This couldn't be a better time to learn more about some technology that could automate what you do in your practice so that you can be more efficient, more scalable going into the next busy time of your work.
Scott is responsible for running the SafeSend business and oversees operational and growth strategies. He has a passion for fostering a dynamic team environment, promoting company culture, and he truly believes that people are the company’s greatest strength. Scott’s focus is on driving growth, delighting customers, and developing a high performing managerial team. He is a customer advocate and has served the tax and accounting profession in various leadership roles at technology organizations for more than 25 years. Scott excels at seeing the big picture to help tax and accounting firms at every level work smarter. In his free time, he enjoys hiking, skiing, golfing and spending time with his family.
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