ditching corporate america: the bold story behind pbs accounting’s rapid rise | the disruptors - 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间

after years in corporate roles, samantha hallburn created a firm where people come before profits—and business thrives because of it.

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this philosophy extends to her treatment of team members: “we have a human first approach, and that is our culture, internally and externally, and treating your people like they’re people first is huge for leadership.

because she’s spent time in just about every part of a business, she brings a whole-business approach to her work. “i actually know the inside of a business and what every single department needs to accomplish to be part of the big picture,” hallburn says. “the line i like to use most with my clients is understanding the story that their numbers are telling them because every piece of information you need to know about your business is hidden in your numbers if you know what you’re looking at and how to read it.”

her comprehensive approach means her team isn’t just doing data entry and churning out financials. “we really hold their hands, we really talk about their numbers, we really help them go, ‘oh, you should pivot.’”

hallburn offers two pieces of advice for accountants looking to start their own firms. “my very first piece of advice, top of list, is boundaries,” she says. “two things: boundaries and know what your end game is.” when she started, she had zero boundaries. “i let people contact me 24 hours a day, she laments. “i responded to them as soon as they did because i didn’t want to seem like i was unavailable. i let my customers dictate to me how i was going to run my practice.” implementing her own boundaries, hallburn explains, was transformative. “i’m not kidding… within a month of me going, ‘okay, time for sam to have boundaries,’ people respected them,” she says.

when hallburn started her firm, she “just wanted out of corporate america,” so she didn’t strategically design her growth in a healthy way. she counsels firm owners to consider their long-term goals for starting a firm. she says they need to ask, “what is your actual vision for this practice? is it to retire? is it to scale and grow? is it to become a silent owner that just makes money while everybody else does the work?” even if this goal changes over time, simply having a goal will help create the structure to make the appropriate business decisions.

hallburn’s leadership philosophy centers on an open-door policy and a human-first approach. “we really pride ourselves on having a culture of openness with our team members,” she explains. “a great leader doesn’t know everything—they know somebody who knows those things, and they put them in place around them.”

11 key takeaways

the debits and credits taught in academia don’t capture the real-life experience of business owners. real-world experience can help you think outside of the academic box.
don’t share your personal phone number with clients. don’t let your team members use their personal phones for work, or you risk clients calling at all hours with their emergencies.
establish clear boundaries with clients from the beginning. they will respect you more.
include a booking app like calendly in your email signature and auto reply to offer different types of meetings, including paid and unpaid consults.
be open to putting people where they excel, which may not be where you thought they should be.
don’t let accounting 101 determine how you structure your firm.
protect your well-being and your team first. this is required for sustainability.
seek mentorship early. surround yourself with successful people in your field.
automation allows accountants to use our knowledge and expertise to guide business owners where they want to be faster.
if you don’t invest in yourself and your future, no one else is going to. do the thing. pick the software. do the research. go to the conferences.
don’t be afraid to pivot or evolve your services as you discover what fulfills you.

more about samantha hallburn

samantha hallburn, founder of simplified accounting management and pbs accounting and tax solutions, provides expert quickbooks consulting, financial guidance, and training for accounting professionals and business owners. with over two decades of professional experience spanning finance, marketing, human resources, and sales, she brings a comprehensive business acumen, further enhanced by 25 years of entrepreneurial leadership. a recognized industry leader, hallburn is an alumna of intuit’s accountant council, an advisory board member for insightful accountant, and part of the woodard trainer/writer coalition. for the last three years, she has been honored as one of insightful accountant’s top 100 proadvisors and was a 2023 up-and-coming proadvisor.

transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)

liz farr

welcome to accounting disruptor conversations. i’m your host. liz farr from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间, and here i’m talking to owners of firms who are doing things differently than our fathers’ and our grandfathers’ cpas. my guest today is sam hallburn, founder and ceo of pbs accounting and tax, owner and consultant of simplified accountant m sanagement. welcome to the show, sam.

sam hallburn

thank you. thanks for having me.

liz farr

well, i’m glad to have you. you know it was nice meeting you at appy camp and i’m always thrilled when i meet people who are on the big stages. you know, i just heard that you were nominated for the third time for the top 100 proadvisors. so congratulations, everybody. send your vote in. if you hear this before the deadline.

sam hallburn

yes, thank you. and yes, please do well, even if it’s not for me, there’s so many great names on that ballot. it’s just incredible to be amongst them, for sure.

liz farr

yeah. now, sam, can you tell listeners a little bit about your business, where you’re located, what services you offer, what kind of clients, that kind of stuff?

sam hallburn

sure, so we’re a fully remote firm. now, for about, i would say, since about 2022, we became fully remote. but prior to that, we did have a regional location in our little mountain town in idyllwild, california, where we were born and bred. but after covid had been going on for probably a good year, we shut down the office because it wasn’t even allowed to really use it to meet customers. so it just became a place for me to leave my house and go to work. and you know, i decided not to carry the overhead for such for that. so we’ve been fully remote. we help clients all over the country. base of our clients is a california basis, but i do numerous speaking events events across the country each every year since 2019 and so that’s really how we find our clients, more than anything, we do almost no advertising or marketing, because our marketing is me going out and speaking at these different events. we do have two firms like you mentioned. one is pbs accounting and tax, which is a full service done for you, accounting firm, and then our consulting and training firm, simplified accounting management focuses on done with you so consulting and training mostly of quickbooks online, and we do also offer financial literacy workshops and a host of other kind of webinars and training events. we’re just adding to that repertoire more and more every year.

liz farr

fantastic. now, something that intrigues me about your background is that you didn’t come up through public accounting, and i’m finding that a lot of the people doing the most creative things in accounting did not follow that. now, you worked previously on the industry side. you were in finance, you were in marketing, you did hr, you did sales. so how did you end up owning an accounting firm?

sam hallburn

i love this question so much because it takes you back to the beginning of time every time we have to answer it. so i was working in banking. i mean, through the progression of sales, marketing, hr, pr, i ended up as ops manager for a tele telecom company, telecommunications, and in that role, was asked to do some project management. i think it was some out of desperation, really, anything of having a body that could do it. but i’m also that girl that never says no, because i always just, i’m looking for the next opportunity, and i’m always looking to learn something new anyway. so i said, sure. so that brought me into project management. from that, was in construction, and then from there, i went into auto. when i went into auto, it was in fleet and finance, and that’s where i got my big education, first education in the world of finance and banking and lending and underwriting and all of that. from there, i went into banking proper. and i was doing business to business banking. and these business owners would come to me and they would say, i need this. i need a loan. i need cars, i needed whatever. and i said, okay, great. i need financial statement. i need a, p&l need this. i need that. and they had no idea how to what i was even talking about some of the times and other times, they just were like, how do i get. that to you, what does that look like? so very long story short, i started helping my my banking clients by going to their offices on my lunch break, after work, before work, on the weekends, days off to help them be able to get me what i needed to produce, their loans, credit lines, whatever. in that process, i really fell in love with that, with doing that, and they were so happy and so thankful to have someone helping them, because they really just didn’t know what they didn’t know. and a lot of them were smaller businesses that were owner operator all the hats and didn’t really have a dedicated person with the financial part. and so they started asking me, can you keep doing this? can you come back and do it again? can you come back every quarter or and over time of not again? saying no to anybody, i, for three years, was kind of doing this as a side gig. and yes, i did go back. i just started saying, sure, i’ll help you. i can do it here and there. and in 2015 i had a really terrible corporate america day where i just thought, i’m not doing this anymore. and i the next day, handed in my 30 day notice, because i did give 30 days instead of two weeks. and i just thought, i’m going to roll the dice. i’m just going to do this full time, because i actually really enjoy it. people appreciate me, appreciate what i’m doing, and it’s far more what’s my word. i liked it. it just was more rewarding than, you know, data enter into a computer system all day long, and i didn’t have to deal with corporate america. so back here, i mean, right at now, in 2015 i absolutely had no idea what i was really getting into, in that it was just going to be this snowball. and we grew so fast because there was such a need and such a demand. and after people realized i wasn’t at the bank anymore, they just started flooding. can you help me? can you help me? can you help me? and here we are 10 years later.

liz farr

yeah, that’s fantastic. now, how does your experience in industry and in all these different areas impact the way that you run your firm?

sam hallburn

well, it really impacts it, because i can, i actually know the inside of a business and what every single department is needing to accomplish to be part of the big picture. you know, i understand what the sales team needs to do. i understand what operations is trying to do. i understand what marketing is even trying to do, and then how to reverse engineer knowing your numbers into understanding how to make all these pieces work together. and the line i like to use most with my clients is understanding the story that their numbers are telling them, because every piece of information you need to know about your business is hidden in your numbers if you know what you’re looking at and how to read it. and so that’s what we really help people do more than anything. and we’re not, we’re very boutique type of of accounting for a meeting. we don’t just take masses of clients and, you know, and just do data entry and get a p&l. we really hold their hands, we really talk about clients. we really talk about their numbers, we really help them go, oh, you should pivot. and did you know this is option based on your numbers? did you know this is an option? i should say we use strategic alliances every chance we get. we pull in other people, because we know what we know, and we can see that in their numbers, and we know they can benefit from someone that they don’t even know exists yet. so i think it really helps, because i’m a business owner, as well as a former employee, as well as an accounting professional, doing all those things at once for our customers.

liz farr

those are really good points, because i know that a lot of those that practical, real world experience is not what you get in in your classes for the cpa. it’s just not.

sam hallburn

it’s not and in fact, i helped so many accounting professionals now who have basically said to me, i feel like i didn’t learn anything in school, like anything, because you get accountant school, and then you go to put it in to practice, and it’s like, it’s not even remotely close to what they taught me in school. i mean, the fun, the fundamentals and the foundation of it is and the debits and credits, and that’s not real life, as far as like, how to implement your your knowledge. and that is the benefit of having somebody that knows all those different facets, because they can think outside like an academic box that way.

liz farr

yes, yes. some of the auditors i’ve talked to say that when they’ve gone to out to their you know, their first client, and they try and tell the control. controller, well, you’re not doing your job right. and then the controller kind of pats them on the head and says, oh, well, you’re new. you’ll learn.

sam hallburn

you’ll get it someday. yes.

liz farr

now what? what advice do you have for people who want to start a practice?

sam hallburn

my very first piece of advice top of list is boundaries, two things, boundaries and know what your end game is? maybe not end, end, but what is your actual vision for this practice? is it to retire? is it to scale and grow? is it to become a silent owner that just makes money while everybody else does the work? is it a big firm, a small firm? do you we will want employees? the reason i say that is i had no clue what i was getting into, like i said, or where i wanted it to go. i just wanted out of corporate america, and i wanted to pay my bills, so i did not strategically design my growth in a way that was healthy for me, and i probably missed opportunities or lost opportunities because i didn’t have that structure in place to make those business decisions based on my my goals. so i would say, have a goal, even if it changes over time. there’s nothing wrong with that, but to have a goal, and then also boundaries. i had zero boundaries. i let people contact me 24 hours a day. i responded them to them as soon as they did, because i didn’t want to seem like i was unavailable. i’ll let my customers dictate to me how i was going to run my practice. i let others influence my decision making, even though, when i knew it wasn’t what i wanted, because i didn’t want to seem hard to work with or hard to work for, you name it. i’ve made every mistake in the book, but i would say boundaries and then a vision, a strategic vision.

liz farr

that’s really good advice, and especially the strategic vision, because, as i’ve talked to many, many different people on this podcast, i’ve realized that there are just as many ways to operate a firm as there are firm owners.

sam hallburn

right? yep, and not everything works for everyone. then my way might seem asinine to somebody, and might be brilliant to another, with really what works for you, and over time, i’ve really figured out what works for me, because, like i said, i did not have a vision to gage for but i have figured it out. i just took the really long way.

liz farr

so now super

sam hallburn

passionate about helping others figure out their way and know the types of things to expect, expect and also circumvent them. if they don’t have to go through the challenges and the trials and the tribulations, then they don’t. they shouldn’t have to.

liz farr

that’s right now. one of the big challenges that firms have these days is talent and and i say these days, but it actually has been a problem for years and years and years, yeah,

sam hallburn

what we’ve actually been challenged as well.

liz farr

i’m sure, like everyone you know, what ideas do you have to make things better? and both for firm owners and for team members

sam hallburn

we have, we really pride ourselves on having a culture of openness with our team members. i am also of the mindset that a great leader doesn’t know everything they know somebody who knows those things, and they put them in place around them, and then they lean on the people with the expertise, the knowledge, the you know, zone of genius for whatever their role is. so i really think that being open to putting people where they are best suited, and not necessarily where you thought they were going to be, is huge, because i’ve had to make some shifts internally over the years where somebody started out as one thing, and that really wasn’t great for them, but i noticed over here that they were really excellent at this other thing, and so we made those shifts, which now means i have to hire back for this thing over here. so, you know, it kind of creates one of those, oh man, here we go again scenarios potentially in your mind, but then this person’s happier because they’re doing something they’re really good at and they enjoy doing. maybe you find a much better fit for this person over here and you’re not frustrated now that that person isn’t kind of living up to your expectation. all that other thing, there’s many benefits to that. having an open door policy is what i call it. if i could be doing something better. tell me if i’m missing the boat. tell me if there’s a better solution than what i’m suggesting. tell me, come to me. you know, i really want my employees. i don’t even call them them. i call them team members, because we are a team. when i 1,000% guarantee you, i could not do what i do without my team. we’re a small team, but it’s still mighty, and i could not do what i do without them, because one person just can’t do everything. well, at least, you know, you really need a support system, but i’m sorry, my point was, i want them to come to me and feel comfortable, so that no one’s ever just sit sitting back, just collecting a paycheck, like she’s not going to listen anyway, or it doesn’t matter what i think, because no one cares, and then they do their bare minimum to get by, and that that makes the business suffer. your results suffer, your customers suffer. customer service suffers, morale suffers. so i always want them to feel like they’re really invested and part of the real team and the growth and big picture of the company.

liz farr

i love that, and that’s a big contrast to the way that i moved through the world when i was in public accounting. you know, there were, there were the people with the corner offices and right not gonna rock that boat, because ain’t gonna change.

sam hallburn

and that’s part of my role as a firm owner. i have decided to be the antithesis of everything i hated about corporate america, and one of the things i did hate was that you were just a number, your that your real life didn’t matter, that there was no such thing as my kid has a play. it starts at three. i need to leave at two. nope. sorry. you’re the bottom of the barrel employee. so you can’t go to your kids thing, and then you’re missing the most important parts of life. so constantly, you know, for a couple hours of paycheck where it really should be made the most important part of life, and your work revolves around it, and so that’s the definite path that we take internally.

liz farr

i love it. now, you said you’re a small but mighty team. so how big are you? how many employee how many team members do you have? members?

sam hallburn

we have three bookkeeping team members. we have an operations manager who’s in charge of all things technically challenging, because i suck at that, as well as more of an hr role, internal systems, processes, all of that. and then i have my my admin, who does all of our marketing, all of our website management, all of our calendaring, all of the customer communication, coordination, travel plans, you name it. that is something that is an admin task. she’s doing it all.

liz farr

i love it and and i like that you have a somebody in charge of operations that that’s not just something that’s outsourced or do it yourself.

sam hallburn

i did the do it myself for far too long, and i i only hurt me by not delegating it, because it’s not what i need to be doing in my business to move the business forward, because it’s very time consuming and it takes research and diligence and phone calls and all kinds of stuff when you’re especially with technology, as rapidly as it’s changing and coming at us. so i just really needed someone else to have their eyes on that ball. oh, good.

liz farr

now, as i’ve listened to you on a couple of other podcasts, you talk a lot about self care and how important that is for accountants. you know, why is this such a problem for accountants?

sam hallburn

i think we go back to the boundaries, and i can personally say that’s what it was for me. i had zero boundaries with my customer customers, but i also didn’t in that was not setting any boundaries for myself, especially not myself, because i was i had this fear of appearing unavailable, not dedicated. it sounds ridiculous now to say it out loud, but in those moments, it was really real, like, if i don’t prove my worth to every person who’s paying me to do a job, i’m not going to have any customers. no one’s going to want me. and then over years of looking around, seeing how others were doing things. after i started actually going to accounting conferences and learning that how other people did things, i realized people aren’t doing what i’m doing. they’re they’re saying no, they’re saying they’re setting time blocks. they’re ending their day and going to have dinner with their family. it’s like, oh my gosh, you. and through this process of not having boundaries, i let myself go so terribly. i think i gained about 30 pounds in a couple years, tired all the time. you know, i just i was not motivated in other parts of my life, just because i was just so overwhelmed and consumed old times with my business. you know, it just got hard for me. i lost many friendships because they were tired of me. always having to say, no, i can’t go or no, i’m on a deadline. or one person even said i just, would i appreciate being, you know, involved in in a friendship in some way, because i just wasn’t able to do anything. and through those processes, i learned, you know, i’m not helping myself at all by doing when my customers, i mean, they didn’t care that either way, they they weren’t the ones saying to me, these were truths. i was the one deciding these were truths for myself and letting people take advantage of those internal truths, which was all my fault. so i’m really, really, like i said, passionate now about helping others not do that to themselves. and to be very honest, i’m not kidding. liz, within a month of me going, okay, time for sam to have boundaries. people respected them. people would say, start saying things like, well, i know our hour is up now, so i’m going to respect your time and let you go. because before that, it had been like we had an hour call, but it went two and a half hours. or, you know, you go to back in the day, when you go to people’s homes or businesses to do your job, they would keep you and they would tell you their whole life stories, and they would not expect that you had it somewhere else to be and on and on and on. you know, when you answer somebody at nine o’clock at night, they keep texting you till 11. when you answer somebody at six o’clock in the morning, they don’t stop until four or five in the afternoon. you know, they just expect you’re always on. and that had to change, and it was all up to me to change it.

liz farr

yeah, well, i’m glad you did. thank you. i yeah, now, now, fortunately for me, i was in public accounting, kind of, kind of at the really beginning of being connected to our phones that much. so i left before that. so i think there was only one client who ever had my cell phone number, yeah, and, and that was actually because i would i’d been pulled out to be a warm body on an audit. and this was somebody who was involved in a gross receipts tax audit, and they needed help with something urgently that was just the one person who had my cell phone and nobody else did

sam hallburn

see and that’s one of the boundaries i had to set as well, because i will no longer accept calls, take calls, do calls from my personal phone. and man, was that a challenge for our existing customers and people who had known me for years thinking, oh, well, i’m i don’t count in your little rule, because i’ve known you for 10 years or whatnot, whatever it’s been, when i would have to say, no, really? because now there’s a system, and there’s a team that can see the messages coming in, that can actually respond to you and give you expectation management and give you our calendar link for booking and and let you know that sam is in meetings for the next 10 hours. she can’t get right back to you instead of you just sitting there wondering why i’m ignoring your message. it was a really hard lift, but it’s a it is a hard, hard cost for me now to use my personal phone for anything, and i also have my team members, they’re not allowed to use their personal phones for anything at any moment. i mean, that’s, that’s like an immediate termination offense, in my opinion, because it just starts the snowball effect of a customer saying, well, they’re not answering the business line, so i’ll just try her on her personal phone, you know. or it’s saturday, i know her business line isn’t going to ding her, so i’ll try her on her personal phone, because it’s my emergency, you know, those types of things,

liz farr

yeah, you know, i mostly worked, relied on our receptionist to be the gatekeeper, right? and there were a couple of people who did get my direct number. and there were a few who, you know, i’d see their number come up on caller id, and i go, oh no, no, no, no, i i’m not picking that up. they can leave a message. yes,

sam hallburn

we have the same thing as far as my office manager and. there’s, i would say, 98% of our calls, and the only time i actually do is when i’m actually expecting it in that moment, because otherwise i’m i’m in a meeting, i’m on a podcast, i’m traveling, i’m working on something, and for me to stop what i’m doing to answer a random call just throws everything out of whack, because i’ve already pre planned, you know, my rhythm and my schedule for the day. so she does and then she can give those people their answer, or just set everything up so beautifully where they feel taken care of. but it didn’t rely on me having to actually answer the call

liz farr

perfect. and we’ve talked about using the phone and setting hours. what are some other ways that accountants can take better care of themselves?

sam hallburn

well, i definitely highly recommend a booking link or calendaring link of some kind. we use calendly, and absolutely love it. it’s in all of our email signatures. it’s our on our auto reply from our voice over ip phone line for the business. it’s when people reach out to me in any fashion forum platform, i just send them the calendar link. this is the best way to book your call, because then you’re not going back and forth. they can see your availability. you can schedule different types of events, paid or unpaid. so now you’re not having to facilitate invoicing or setting them up as a as a customer somewhere to be able to invoice them. you really take back so much of your time and your admins time, which is money out of your pocket, then to have something like that in place, and you could put it on your websites, on your blogs, on your socials, and just have it so easy for anybody and everybody to get you so i would say definitely that i think having some sort of time blocking, we do time blocking, and that’s a that’s a way to do your your daily management, task management, but pick yours. pick which one works for you. part of our operations managers job is to review task management. so every day, she’s looking at everyone’s tasks and saying, where are we with these tasks? and then she’s able to follow up or move things around. i think that’s also very helpful. so you know at all times, kind of what’s on deck, what’s coming up, where capacity is, and so it’s important to keep your eye on the ball, but not have to be in everybody’s stuff personally as the firm owner at all times because you’ve got somebody looking out after it.

liz farr

those are really good ideas. i like that. thank you. now, in as far as leadership goes, it seems to me that we’re at a transition point, you know, from the old style corporate top down leadership model to a more distributed and collaborative business model and for leaders. so what advice do you have for accountants who want to be better leaders.

sam hallburn

the open door policy is where i’m going to go with this again, because it’s so important to take in your team’s collaborative feedback, so many of our great ideas have been a product of my team, not me, and i’m the one that might be the visionary, like i’d like to do this thing. they’re the ones that have come back to me with we should do this or that, or this would be a great way. or they’re more in tune, especially if they’re younger, they’re more in tune with current trends and technologies and how to use social media or how to position things that actually get the attention of your ideal clients. and i don’t think of us like i said yes at the end of the day, it’s my business, and i would eventually have the final say if i was really stuck on a way of doing things. but i almost look at it like i’m dumb not to take other people’s knowledge, education, experience, zone of genius and use it to get to where we are from, from where we are to where we want to be faster than me in a hamster wheel just spinning and spinning, hoping i somehow figure it out. so that’s what i would say, is don’t close the door on other ideas or other ways of thinking that might not be your way of thinking, but might be great for the end result that you’re looking for.

liz farr

i like that. and you know, if i had worked. with firm owners who were a little more like you. i might have stayed in public accounting, but instead it was, you know, well, that’s a nice idea, and maybe i’ll implement that when i have time, or i’ve heard about that.

sam hallburn

yep, and i we also pbs actually stands for people business service. it’s kind of our value proposition. we’re all people first. we all have businesses next, and we’re all providing a service last, and that’s us and our customers. so we have a human first approach, and that is our culture, internally and externally, and treating your people like their people first is huge for leadership, because then they feel comfortable coming to you and expressing themselves as a person, their frustrations, their their angst, their whatever they’re dealing with, and they also don’t feel afraid to be a human who has a sick kid who needs a break, who whatever happens, because they know you’re on their team as well as they’re on your team.

liz farr

i liked it, and i like how you incorporate your values into the firm name, and your values are something that is so apparent in the way that you operate, in the way that you you run your firm, you know your your vision. it’s it’s not like many firms where the vision statement is this beautiful piece of paper in the break room that people look at and go, oh,

sam hallburn

okay, yeah, yes. well, this, i can tell you, is a direct result of having some really terrible customers and some not so great employees over the year years, who have put us in a position of taking a no tolerance stance. and also, you know, especially for me and the way i started out, i just like, i said, said yes to everybody and everything, but once you start a team, you are like a mama bear. you’re protecting your team. and when you start treating my team a certain way, then i come out swinging. you know, it’s really hard for me to not feel that protection, protectiveness, over them. so we just started really thinking about who we want to deal with, both internally and externally, and this is how we’re going to what type of behaviors and culture we’re going to accept or not. and it’s been beautiful because we have, at this moment, every single one of our customers is idyllic, and every single one of our team members, we it. we’re a family, for sure,

liz farr

that’s it’s great, and i like how you do that. and i wish that i’d had a few firm owners and supervisors who had had been more of a mama bear with the clients. yeah, i remember walking back from a meeting with a client with one of the other people, and she said, oh, you know, the the other the client, says that it’s all my fault that i did things wrong, and that i’m just doing it stupidly, when really, when i got to work more on that client, i realized that, no, it’s the client, it’s that person. and i’ve had

sam hallburn

the same thing in my career over time, and i’ve had, i’ve worked for other people and had them a client say, well, sam screwed it all up, or it’s sam’s fault, or if sam can get away with doing it like this, then, you know what? what else is going wrong in the firm? and honestly, it was not, i mean, i guess i was there. why do you say it? culprit of the problem? because they needed someone to blame it on. but the business owner then should have gone back and said, i’ll take care of this. i protect my team number one, and you know, sam is doing the very best job she can do under these circumstances. and if you don’t feel it’s right, let’s talk about it. let’s figure out what’s not right about it, and we can all address it. and sometimes that happens, and sometimes it doesn’t with me, it always happens. i i my team could be lit lighting a match on fire on someone’s house. and i would say, i don’t think she did that. i’m not, it’s not that bad, but it, you know, i would protect them first. i’d be like, so let’s talk about why they thought they had to light your house.

liz farr

why was burning it down the best solution? yeah, exactly.

sam hallburn

so that’s yes, that is why we do what we do, because of results of the past, trying to create something better. that’s right. that’s right.

liz farr

now, many of us, unfortunately learn best when we make mistakes. i’m guilty of that, and most accountants are, what would you say is the most valuable mistake you’ve made? and i mean valuable in terms of what you learned? yes,

sam hallburn

i definitely have the answer to this, and that is to not have protected my business first, which also then protects me, being too concerned about every body else, trying to make everybody happy, which you will never do, ever in your life, which is for someone like me, who is pretty much a people pleaser, it is hard to wrap your brain around this decision i’m making. might upset someone else or might not feel great to someone else, but it’s what’s best for my my world, my little thing i’m protecting, which is my business, and now it’s definitely my well being, mentally, physically, emotionally, because, yes, you’re supposed to separate business and personal. but my business is so personal to me that when things go wrong in it, it affects the rest of my life. i can’t just turn the switch off and say, well, it’s five, so i have no more problems today, you know? so not protecting me and my little world was then is the number one most valuable lesson i’ve learned because of all of the things that happened by me not doing that, and all of the ways i protected others and their feelings and their wants and their desires, and i am the only one that kind of got screwed in the end for doing that, then, honestly, it then affects the rest of the team when i’m not doing well, or when the business isn’t doing well because of the of a decision i didn’t make. so i could protect someone else’s feelings in a certain way, because they feel that the stress and they feel the turmoil and the frustration. i’m not as great of a leader as i could be. i’m i’m more to manage for them in some way, so they have to think about what’s going on with sam, instead of just, you know, what’s going on in our daily jobs. and because we’re a small, tight knit family, they do feel it. it’s not just, i’m not just removed, and they don’t have a clue what’s going on with me, because we’re all a family, and i’ve had friends, i would say, if you can avoid working with friends, even if they’re in desperate needs of time, it just every time i’ve worked close with a friend, it hasn’t worked out well, because again, there’s that. do i say what i want to say? because they’re my friend, and now this is going to hurt the friendship. do i do what i need to do for the business? are they making my business suffer for their actions? how do i handle this? getting rid of employees waiting on, getting rid of employees that you know are not working because you’re afraid of taking food off of their table and upsetting them and making them hurt, you know, dislike you. that’s a decision i really made a couple times that i can’t make anymore, because it just only hurt us. and then at the end, they’re like, they either quit or they’re like, okay, and they didn’t even care, because they were never invested, which is why they didn’t do their job the way they should have done it in the beginning, so i’ve just learned that lesson so many times. protect you and yours first. and if it doesn’t align, then it’s the good news. you don’t have to be bothered with this alignment that’s not right by a customer or an employee or something like that.

liz farr

that’s i love all the different aspects you brought into protecting your business, because many times, firm owners will look at one aspect, but not everything else. and there are so many different facets to that now, the friendships, the employees, the clients, boundaries.

sam hallburn

i’ve lost customers because of employees. i’ve lost employees because of customers. i’ve lost friends because of the business. you know, they lie, steep and chill because lie, steal and cheat, because they think they can, if that’s the person they’re inclined to be, because you’re friends and you’ll never know or you’ll never say anything. yeah, it is just, it’s people continue to surprise me, because i never think that this thing could happen or that they would be like this or like that, and other people say people never surprise me, because i never expect anything out of them anymore, because about how often i’ve been disappointed. so i kind of try to keep that in the back of my mind. you really as well as you know someone, as much as you like someone, you just can’t trust that they have your. full interest at heart. ever they have their interest at heart, always,

liz farr

always, always, always, yes. now accountants have been told all these things that they should do, but what are some things that they should stop doing immediately.

sam hallburn

i think letting, letting you know, accounting, 101, guide their lives and their firms. and you know, be be creative. think outside the box. go remote. if your dream is to travel the world, then accounting is one of the best ways you can make that happen, because you can take your laptop anywhere, and you can create a firm that allows you to work those hours, that allows you to travel, and you can have a remote team. and i just feel like letting people, other people’s opinions and other ways of doing business affect your decision. is what you could stop doing. you can really choose how you want your life and your business to look and then design a plan around making that happen so you don’t feel stuck and overwhelmed and unhappy with how things are going, and also the freedom to pivot. i have gotten so stuck in the past of i said i was going to do this thing, therefore i have to do this thing, even though now i really don’t enjoy doing this thing, and i don’t even want to do this thing, but that’s what people know that i do. you can evolve, and you can pivot and shift, and you can incorporate other things you love into the thing you originally decided to do, and over time, maybe this fizzles, and this is what becomes you. and i think there needs to be maybe more of acceptance over that, even if it’s within yourself and not worrying about what other people might think of that.

liz farr

those are all really, good ideas. i love that. now another thing that accountants know is that they need to make some changes, because the future of accounting is really changing. but what are some of the things that block accountants from making those changes.

sam hallburn

i think time you know everything, to learn something new, to implement new technology, to train yourself in different methods of doing things, to go from corporate to remote to all of that, it takes time. it takes investment, and it takes a will to go through that, that learning curve, and i would say, and personally, those are probably the top things that ever keep me from maybe implementing something new. for example, we’ve been paying for a new practice management software since december. we’re just implementing it tomorrow morning. and it’s, it was the training, it was the moving over all the data into the new system. it was the who does what part. it was the, oh, wait, i’m traveling for two weeks, so i don’t want to take on another thing. it’s, you know? and so now, yes, now it’s happening, but i would say time. i would say time. and the scaredness to change, the scarcity of changing, is huge. and accountants tend to like things kind of the same way and in the same box. and if you’re going to be creative and you’re going to walk outside the box, it’s just it’s all changed. and no one loves change unless it’s like you won the lotto.

liz farr

that is very true. we like things to be the same. our favorite acronym is saly, same as last year.

sam hallburn

okay, yes, i but if you don’t invest in yourself and your future, no one else is going to period. mel robbins says no one is coming, and that is so true. no one is going to implement the change. do the thing. pick the software research, go to the conferences, spend the time. if you don’t for your business,

liz farr

that’s exactly right. now i want you to get out your crystal ball and gaze into it and think about the future. where do you see accounting in 10 years?

sam hallburn

i i’m hoping, actually, that technology does come to a place where there’s almost no need for a human to spend their time, data, entering information. i’m hoping it actually does get there, because what i am hoping it does then is it flips the narrative to using the actual human experience like. talked about earlier, my experience in pr and sales and marketing and hr allows me to guide a business owner through stuff that they wouldn’t even think about otherwise, if i didn’t also have to be spend my time doing invoicing and payables and downloading bank feeds and categorization, i could do so much more for our clients in the time that i have in a day. i could also stick to a time in a day. i could decide i want to work six hours in a day and get the same result and have more work life balance. i can also delegate to someone potentially less experienced easier, without having to babysit them. and so now i’m doing double the work i’m delegating, but i’m still reviewing their work, instead of spending that time teaching them how to use the information that’s being provided to them by the systems to help their client better. so that’s what i’m assuming, is the trend we’re going on, and i’m kind of hoping we do get there. it doesn’t seem like it may even take 10 years, but that’s where my brain goes. is helping with the data entry so that we can really use our knowledge and expertise to guide business owners to get where they are to where they want to be faster. and there’s certain things ai will never know, as far as i can conceive, that a human would know to help with that.

liz farr

that’s very true. and you know, and when i think about how far accounting has come in the past 20 years, when we didn’t really have bank feeds, when quickbooks was desktop only. we’ve come a long way since then,

sam hallburn

even when i started, i mean, 13 years ago, when i really started doing this, i was still in spreadsheets for most of our clients, helping them track with spreadsheets and csv downloads and then creating filters and pivot tables and buckets and things like that to help them get the result. and then came quickbooks desktop into my world. and then came, i think, my very first job when i was 19. i had a floppy, a quickbooks floppy. oh my gosh. and it really was just like a glorified checkbook. it really, really was. so that’s how i’ve seen that evolution as well. and now, you know, we we do everything in quickbooks online. we don’t touch any other softwares at all, unless it’s to convert them to quickbooks online. so yeah, it’s come a long way.

liz farr

that’s very true. now i was wondering if you have any final advice for listeners,

sam hallburn

yes, i do. business mentorship. i waited far too long to seek mentorship. i didn’t even know to seek mentorship. i really thought, i’m this girl figuring this thing out. this is a decision i want to make for my life, so i’m just going to figure it out, and i’m just going to do it. and i think had i intentionally sought mentorship, paid or unpaid, i could have gotten, i could have not wasted a lot of my time, a lot of others time. i could have gotten where i am now faster. i could have even been further than i am now that i didn’t even know that i could be at i don’t regret that, because now i can help others with that, this process and decision. but that would be my advice for sure. seek mentorship, go to conferences, meet people in your industry, join forces with others who are doing what you’re doing, who are doing it well and who you want to replicate. don’t spend your time on people just bitching in the quickbooks online forum all day long and commiserating on you know why this feature doesn’t work? put yourself within the room with people who you want to emulate, not that you’re copying them, but your their success stories or their you know, ground zero to where they are now is a story. and use their brains. pick their brains, talk to them. there are lots of groups out there that are both industry mentorships as well as just business mentorships. the one i ended up joining. joining was pinnacle global network. absolutely had a fantastic experience, and it opened my eyes to so much about business that i really didn’t know, because we’re all in the same boat as our business owner clients. they build the thing. they don’t know how to run a business. they know how to build the thing we do the thing we don’t know how to run businesses. we’re doing our thing. and so getting yourself ahead of all those learning curves by seeking mentorship is, i think, so valuable.

liz farr

i would agree with you there. and you know, i’m always grateful to the mentors that i’ve had as a writer and in the accounting world. you know, i’m not really doing accounting anymore, but all of these really highly intelligent people have figured out how to do something, and i take that as inspiration for what i do, and as a reason to keep doing what i’m doing, which is to try to make accounting better, exactly,

sam hallburn

exactly. and i can, i can tell you that i was really afraid to feel and look stupid in front of those people i just talked about, who were doing, were so successful, and who had it all together, only to find out and learn eventually, but they’re all going through the same journey. they, at one point, didn’t have all their stuff together. they may not even have their stuff together, but they know how to make it look like they have their stuff together. now they just, but they’ll have knowledge, education. don’t do that. definitely do this. i can help you with that. they’ll have all that. and if you run into somebody that’s not willing to share or not willing to be a part of that with you, it’s okay. they’re just not your people move on to the next who might be really, really willing and able to help you.

liz farr

i think that is perfect advice to end our conversation on. thank you so much sam and you and i am waiting for us to meet in person again. i’m looking forward to that time. me too. thank you. yeah, yeah. now if listeners want to connect with you, where is the best place to find you?

sam hallburn

well, we have two websites, but in general, i’ll just give you my email is info@samincservices.com they can start there, and from there we’ve got our calendar linking, like i said, or they can reach out on either website, samincservices.com, or pbsaccountingandtax.com and all of the you know, contact us here. stuff is all there.

posted on may 20, 2025

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