firms built on heroics instead of systems eventually crack.
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the disruptors
with liz farr
ashley carroll thinks burnout is a design flaw, not a personal failing.
“i’m a big believer that burnout is a business model flaw,” she says. in response, carroll created operations house to help founders reduce burnout and “step out of that role as the provider, the doer, the practitioner, and into an ownership level role.”
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according to carroll, burnout stems not only from long hours but also from processes that lack four key qualities: reliability, efficiency, integration with existing systems, and psychological safety.
psychological safety means processes are structured so they don’t have a single point of failure, and the culture allows honest sharing of emotions and challenges. when a process like payroll or bank logins relies on just one person, the result is that “any one person can make or break a process or function in your business,” carroll explains.
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when processes ignore human needs – such as people getting sick, taking vacations, and having lives beyond work – this creates unsustainable pressure that results in bottlenecks, recurring crises, and inevitably, burnout.
her solution is to help firms build processes that provide people breathing room through systematic redundancy and documentation. this also counteracts the tendency of type a accountants to blame themselves – or the people in the organization – for failures instead of seeing it as a process problem.
citing an example of a tax firm client who complained about late tax organizers, management’s initial response was to blame a lazy team. however, an investigation into the root cause revealed that a software update over the holidays deleted custom organizer information that the team had been manually updating. “that is why i’m always going to recommend you first assume it’s a process problem before you assume it’s a people problem,” carroll explains.
carroll calls for balance in leadership. some swing too far to an extreme of servant leadership: “they’re doing too much for their teams. they’re always available. they’re correcting their work. they’re answering client emails on their behalf. they’re catching the mistakes,” she explains. at the other extreme are the toxic leaders whose attitude is “figure it out on your own. beg for a fair wage. who cares how that client treats you, so long as they pay me and i get my margin.”
in a balanced workplace, “everyone from the c-suite to the intern should be excited to come to work, paid a fair wage, and understand how the business operates from beginning to end, and what everyone’s role is, what everyone’s contribution is, and what their place in it is, and have someone to speak to who listens to their feedback, and not just hears it like one ear out the other,” carroll explains.
part of being a leader is leading through change. while “people don’t want to be seen as complainers,” carroll says it’s essential for leaders to create the container in which that feedback is welcomed.” she encourages leaders to take the extra step of being vulnerable themselves by sharing when they are overwhelmed by the unsustainable anxiety from the “400 emails in my inbox.” this helps create an environment where team members can work together to resolve issues without blaming each other.
looking ahead, carroll sees a rebound in the numbers of smaller firms. “i want to see smaller firms that understand that the net profit margin at $750,000 in recurring revenue is the same as $2 million,” she says. the difference between the two sizes of firms is “how much time you want to spend working in and on your business, and how many team members you want to take care of, and how many clients you want to have.”
13 key takeaways
- business operations can be split between three buckets: sales, delivery, and delegation.
- sales operations require clarity and consistency. is the scope defined? what’s the process for the first meeting?
- delegation requires documented processes so that others can do the work to the same level of quality.
- delivery requires integrated feedback loops to enable process improvements.
- documentation should capture not only what to do but also why the process exists and who to contact when a problem arises.
- create processes so that the right way is both easy and the only way.
- operational failures most often stem from communication gaps, not laziness.
- clients will show extraordinary reciprocity in kindness and respect when they are treated with consistency and care.
- teams need clarity around communications when problems arise. who should they talk to, when should they speak with someone, and how should the communication occur?
- leading people and technical leadership should be considered two separate career paths.
- sustainable firms are built around human capacity, not endless growth.
- consider your own capacity as a leader. do you want to provide steady jobs to 20 individuals, or do you want to hire two people and change the lives of 20 clients?
- measure your success by whether you’re living the life you want.
more about ashley carroll
ashley carroll is an operations strategist with over a decade of experience in accounting and c-suite consulting for professional service firms. she builds systems that reclaim time, restore clarity, and make weekends sacred again for founders who are overwhelmed, bottlenecked, or stuck personally managing every client relationship. her unique approach zeroes in on root issues, clears operational bottlenecks, and equips teams with the tools and expectations they need to take work off the founder’s plate. this allows her clients to step into authentic leadership without micromanagement. known for her clear, calm demeanor, carroll brings structure to even the most complex workflows, avoiding jargon and unnecessary complexity. her ultimate goal is to build businesses that give more than they take.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr 00:03
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 my guest today is ashley carroll, founder of operations house. how are you today, ashley?
ashley carroll 00:19
so good. how are you? liz,
liz farr 00:22
i’m so glad that i had you on there. you know, it’s kind of funny. we we almost met, but didn’t quite meet at bridging the gap. we were both there and you were near me, but we never actually met. so i’m glad we get to do this today.
ashley carroll 00:40
yeah, absolutely. i think every time i turned around, someone was like, have you met liz, yeah. have you met liz? and there was a line out the door every time to speak to you. lucky for everyone, yes. so just just missed each other, but i felt like i was following you around like a little puppy dog a little bit so highly recommended that we speak,
liz farr 01:03
yes, well, i’m glad that we have a chance to do this. me too. yeah. now, can you start off by telling listeners a little bit about your business, what you do, where you’re located, what services you offer, what kind of clients, things like that.
ashley carroll 01:22
yeah, sure. so i’m an operation strategist or fractional coo, and i work primarily with accounting firms to help founders who are burnt out, bottle necked, overworked, constantly relying on still managing all the client relationships themselves, to step out of that role as the provider, the doer, the practitioner, and into an ownership level role, and we take a really unique approach that i’ve learned from my background, growing as a staff accountant up to the coo of an accounting firm, and we just take a different approach that focuses on building processes that are not only profitable, but are psychologically safe, so that there’s less turnover, more intrinsic motivation from your team to do a good job, to innovate and come up with better ways to do things and to ultimately treat their client with the same care that you treat them with.
liz farr 02:26
i love it, and i love that you focus on operations, because this is something that a lot of firms just kind of think of as an afterthought. the firms where i worked, we didn’t really have too much in the way of standard processes, really, you know, there was a lot of siloed references, but in your work, you’ve been demonstrating that focusing on operations can have a really big roi. so can you tell listeners some of the ways that you’ve helped firms fix their operations?
speaker 1 03:15
yeah, so wow, i tend to see things in three buckets, and that’s sales, delivery and delegation. typically, as a small business owner, you’re wearing a million different hats. and so we could break those three buckets down into the million different things we all know that we’re probably going to bed thinking about at night, but most things tend to fall back to those three primary functions in your business that aren’t the technical work, and that’s right, bringing in your clients and onboarding them. so we do things from building out that workflow, from your intake emails to your outreach emails, which some people might think of as marketing, but we’re thinking from a what are you promising in scope? what’s the process and how they schedule their first meeting with you? are there reminders for that meeting? are you asking questions ahead of time? so we’re starting we always think about it more from that operational perspective. so that’s a sales kind of scope from delegation. it’s a lot of documentation on our end, which was definitely an area that even when i was coo of an accounting firm, i felt like i just never had the time of day to do. so we document a lot of processes, and along the way, will help find gaps or make recommendations for things, and our whole perspective on that is reduce clicks. we’re not a automation house. ai is so big right now. we’re not a software recommendation house, although we do technology implementations and recommendations, we’re. we truly believe software is the cherry on top, and that’s just me coming from a background of not having a vendor at my fingertips for every single problem that i had, you know, when i originally started my career, like we do now and then, it’s it’s a delivery, right? a lot of people worry about, are my clients really happy? is the work getting done the way that i wanted it to get done when i offloaded it to that team member? and that’s more about confidence and feedback and so building out those processes that make those scary conversations easier to enter into, so that the hard work is not scheduling it and asking and making it happen, right? it’s not. it’s not. oh man, something went wrong. let me now reach out to my client, to, you know, have a conversation with them. it’s building them in rhythmically. so that, good or bad, you’re getting feedback and you’re getting peace of mind. so those are typically, you know, different examples of the things that we’re working on. it’s, the glue that’s holding everything together and aligning your team from first contact with the client and what you’re promising them through what it says in the project management system that team members should be doing to ultimately what gets delivered to a client that’s going to be held up in a court of law. you know, because at the end of the day, we are a business.
liz farr 06:45
i love it and i and i like those three buckets that you’ve set up, the sales, the delivery and delegation. because, you know, the firms that i worked in all three of those were failures and were sort of random. you know, the the last firm i was at didn’t really have an onboarding process or an intake process, or at least they didn’t really have one that they shared with me.
ashley carroll 07:20
or do you mean clients, or for you?
liz farr 07:24
oh, either. all around, all around, you know, i came to that firm because we merged in and so that’s challenging, yeah, so, you know, we had two software systems and two different ways of doing things. and, you know, it was, it was kind of like we were operating within a new space that we were sharing with a bigger firm. it was kind of like that. it was kind of weird.
ashley carroll 08:00
of course, it was because nobody in the room just said the thing that, like, things are going to be different, things are going to change, and to provide the space for everyone to ask the questions, communicate their their feelings, good or bad, fear or excitement, and then take those into consideration and build those around the plan, right? because, if you really start to quantify how much time you’re losing with people working in different systems, now, we’re all doing the human natural thing of like tucking our tail between our legs and saying, it’s all going to be fine. nothing’s going to change. it’s going to be great, but you ignoring it is disrespectful to people’s common sense and intellect. yeah.
liz farr 09:03
no, no pushback from me. there no it was more like, well, here’s your keys. this one goes to the front door, and this one goes to your office. and you know, i had, you know, the small firm i was at had created a bunch of processes that i brought from another firm. so we had, i had a process for doing the work. i have a set of work papers, standard work papers that i used, and the partner who brought me over with him wanted me to distribute that, to share that with the rest of the firm, because he liked that. and so i would share them with other people. i would email them and and demonstrate how you used it. and they go, huh, that’s kind of cool, but i kind of like this other thing that that i’ve created, like, okay, never mind,
ashley carroll 10:19
yep. that ends up being one of the biggest roadblocks that you have to make the right way the easy way, and you have to make it the only way. and if the only process that the you know, the only one right way to do something is the one that’s agreed upon and documented and followed by our entire team. there are so many solutions and so many ways to solve the same problem, just depending on who you ask. and to your point, right? like either they have an old way of doing things that’s more natural, or they’re more familiar with or they’re just stodgy and they don’t want to change whatever the reason is, if somebody identified you’ve got a great way of doing this. one you need to be compensated for that. and we can get into that, because there is an roi on that, no matter how much you end up paying that person, right? like there’s a clear roi on that, but then you have to create the container. it’s not enough to just have a good idea, and it’s not enough to just execute it. it’s to monitor and maintain that. that’s the only way that it’s happening, and that can only happen if you build a culture of safety around identifying when things aren’t going well. because i want to know all the secret work arounds that those team members were preferring, and i want to know why they preferred it, so that i can consider it, and then i can have a conversation with them, like maybe there was something there that we took from it and we built into the process, and now their buy in and ownership on that process is tenfold what it was before. maybe it’s not a fit, right, and you have a better reason for why you need to do it this other way, but now you come down to their level. you’ve respected their thoughts and their experience and their ideas. you’ve heard them out, and now you’re simply responding to it rather than saying, you know what? now i just i know better than you, so do it my way. that person has no reason to feel incentivized or motivated to do it your way, because we’re all grown adults. no one wants to be told what to do. i’m an operations consultant. i know no one wants to be told what to do. what they would like is for someone to hear out their experience and show them if there is a better way and why it would benefit them to go that way. now, it takes extra time, and no one’s paid or incentivized to your point of i brought these in, and then they asked me to share them. no one’s incentivized or rewarded for doing that kind of work. so why would they
liz farr 13:24
exactly, yeah, the very last day that i worked there, we had a tax department meeting, and i shared with them how this whole how this tool worked, and showed them all the advantages of the liz farr method of doing the work. and you know, i’m not sure it made any difference, because i wasn’t there after that to make sure that that was what was being done, a and b, that firm had a rather toxic culture. so within about a year and a half, everyone below the manager level was gone in the tax department, everyone so and that had happened periodically in that firm, so they really didn’t have any interior receptacle for capturing how things were done
ashley carroll 14:49
in terms of process or in feedback,
liz farr 14:52
everything, anything,
ashley carroll 14:58
for process, i think you know. a lot of people think it’s time, and i think ai helps a lot with that. you know, i am a pro ai, i have, i have an email that’s seven years old at this point, when i was advocating for a job that i wanted, that said, ai is not taking our jobs. it’s going to make our jobs better. it’s seven years later, and ai still is not taking my job. so i’m going to continue to be pro ai until i have a reason not to be. i like to operate from, you know, an abundance mindset, if at all possible. and you know, i think with note takers and some of the process clicking softwares that have come out right, that helps with the time factor, but the conversation, though the psychological safety part that we really focus on, because i just have found that, like without that, the most beautiful process will gather dust and cobwebs in the closet, right? is the second part of what you’re talking about. the there’s no place for feedback. and how do we give feedback? and how do i give feedback? and who do i give it to? when do i give it? and sometimes people swing. i see a lot of people swing so far and the idea of servant leadership almost a lot of times, that’s where clients who really resonate with my approach come to me, and they’ve, they’ve they’re doing too much for their teams. they’re always available. they’re correcting their work. they’re answering client emails on their behalf. they’re catching the mistakes, right? and we have to find a balance right? so there’s like these two environments, like the very traditional toxic figure it out on your own, beg for a fair wage. who cares how that client treats you, so long as they pay me and i get my margin. and then there’s the far other spectrum of it, and i see both, and i just think there’s a balance for everyone. everyone from the c suite to the intern should be excited to come to work paid a fair wage and understand how the business operates from beginning to end, and what everyone’s role is, what everyone’s contribution is, and what their place in it is, and have someone to speak to who listens to their feedback and not just hears it like one ear out the other. that’s kind of like what i feel when you say receptacle only because i love that word, but i’m also like the twinge in me is like the worst thing you can do is ask for feedback from people and then do nothing about it, to ask them to be vulnerable and then let it be forsaken eventually.
liz farr 18:19
yes, yes, i experienced some of that also. there was a firm i worked at where we had this pre tax season tax department retreat. they took us off site, and we talked about, you know, well, what would you really like to see in the tax department? would your dream be? and we came up with a lot of really good ideas, but nothing was implemented, nothing, and they only did that once, just once and so.
ashley carroll 19:07
and then you said, everyone slowly started to leave yes, because it’s a huge breach in trust. if i when you asked me that question, i could keep my guard up and say, i love it. everything’s perfect here and be putting out my application and whatever right or i could say, i i like working here, and i would like this thing that happens to not happen. is there a solution to that? but it’s just no one teaches us conflict management in school. i mean, we can go back to that.
liz farr 19:51
you know, that’s very true.
ashley carroll 19:53
it’s it’s hard. change management is hard, and people don’t want to be seen as complainers. and so it’s the responsibility of ownership and management to create the container in which that feedback is welcomed. and then they have to just take it one step further, and they have to be vulnerable first. they have to say, man, i’ve got 400 emails in my inbox, and it’s unsustainable, and i can’t keep living like this, guys, and it just gives me so much anxiety. and we have this new thing where we’re going to bring processes and things to the table that we don’t like, that aren’t working for us, and we’re going to work on fixing them as a team. no judgment, just fixing. and here’s some frameworks for how to speak if we need to use those so that we’re not blaming other people, this, that and the other. but then you take it the first you put the first thing on the table, you admit somewhere that’s broken for you, that’s not someone else’s fault.
liz farr 21:08
that’s right, that’s right.
ashley carroll 21:11
but we’re so enticed to be perfect. we’re all on linkedin, very successful. you know, we don’t want to admit that. i’ve got 400 emails. i’ve got a two week turnaround time on my responses like that. we just don’t want to admit that. and that’s just the number one roadblock for making any of this possible is getting vulnerable yourself. and people are changing. i can see it changing. i can see people out there talking more and more about these kind of things. do you talk to your team about it?
liz farr 21:54
you know? i don’t think that most firm owners do. i don’t think they really do, you know. and one thing you know, as you’ve already brought up something that you talk about a lot in your work is psychological safety, and that’s not something that people usually associate with business success. so we’ve got this disconnect that you have to be hard driving and disciplined, but yet to keep people happy and productive, they’ve got to feel psychologically safe. so can you talk about this and how you help firms with this?
speaker 1 22:47
yeah. i mean, when i first started operations house, i would just try to give people the very like visceral example, i think that we’ve all felt, which is, have you ever cried in your car before work or a meeting or a client’s office or a review or after right like we are all experts in our skill set because we’re being paid to fulfill that job description, and we should not be in an environment that makes us question our self worth or dignity. what i find in our industry is the biggest risk to people’s psychological safety is not malicious intent, but in this concept of lean, of hustle, and for me, it’s really a simple question of, does any one person make or break a process or function in your business, because that would make them a single point of failure, and the pressure that that puts on person. if you have one person running payroll and they’re sick on payroll day for hourly payroll that comes in at the last hour on a holiday, and the business doesn’t pay the extra fee for 24 hour processing. right? all these things out of their control. they’re a single point of failure, that stress accumulates, that builds on their immunity system, the chances of them actually getting sick are higher. why is there not a backup? because, oh, well, the time you know that it would take to train two people, it’s worth it. it’s worth it for that person to know that they can go on a vacation and they are not the single point of contact for an entire portfolio of clients that when they get back, they’re going to have 100 emails and potentially a fire could happen while they’re gone, and they’re the only person who knows the dynamics of the relationship and who to go to for what and how to log into the bank using this special code that only comes with their personal cell phone. these are all the components of an unsafe psychological process. they all rely on one person. and we can play the game of, imagine they won the lottery or imagine they got hit by the bus, whatever your mindset is, but it should not rely on a person as you rely on a process, and that gives people breathing room.
liz farr 25:50
i like how you connect processes and documenting and sharing them, not making them just this little bit of tribal knowledge in connecting that to psychological safety that you know, there were things that somebody in a firm can do that nobody else can do, but if you document that, then they know what’s going on. you know, i remember one of our clients was being audited by new mexico taxation and revenue for gross receipts, our version of sales tax. the main auditor at the state of new mexico suddenly went on medical leave, and all the information was on her laptop, her work laptop that nobody could get into. they eventually hired somebody else, and he had to start from step one, which meant that an audit, which should have been wrapped up weeks ago, was now going on for another eight months.
ashley carroll 27:32
and the cost of that both internally and externally. i mean, it’s quantifiable in so many ways, both from the stress the annoyance from your side, from their side, in terms of getting that team member up to speed, the probably embarrassment that they felt knowing that you were annoyed about having to do the work. it just puts everyone in an awkward situation, yes, and that’s just an emotional labor that a good process could alleviate, but by doing nothing, that is also a process, you know. and so it works how it’s designed to work, and if it’s designed, you know, to not capture save any information or to let anyone else in, then that is how it will work. so regardless of whether you think you’re actively choosing to do it or not, you are choosing,
liz farr 28:41
absolutely i agree with you. now i’ve heard you talk in a few places about burnout and how this is a design flaw, so i love that. can you talk about that?
ashley carroll 28:59
yeah, um, i, i’m a big believer that burnout is a business model flaw, because the the burnout comes not just from long hours, but from all these things that kind of wrap up into both psychological safety, but also these three, four kind of qualifiers of a good process, which i have, as reliability, integrated, if it’s integrated with your systems, psychological safety and efficiency, and if a process doesn’t meet those qualifications. there’s all these kind of like manual handoffs, risk of lack of context, transfer, rework, data reentry, multi, re, keying, hierarchical. whole, you know, conversation so like, oh, i want to know more, but i’m afraid to ask you another question you don’t like when i ask questions, right? lack of feedback loops, as we talked about, there’s all this stuff that is clearly missing from the process, and that stuff wears on people and creates burnout. and so if these processes took those natural human needs and desires and pieces of knowledge and habits into consideration and baked them into the process, rather than saying, okay, no, everyone’s robotic. this is a ford car factory. we’re going to do everything the same way every single time, right? and just completely negates the fact that their core cogs are humans, and what that means, then you’ll burn out. and that’s just it’s it’s not something that has to happen, and that’s why i call it a business model flaw. and it takes a long time for me to personally come to that that kind of thesis and idea, because i burned out, and the first place that you go is, well, what’s wrong with me? why can’t i keep up? i’ve worked so hard to get here. things should be getting easier. i’m not meeting expectation. i’m never asking myself if the expectation is reasonable, but i’m not meeting it. i know that, you know, and you just turn inward. it’s just very natural. you’re going to blame someone, and for us, type a, accountants, people pleasers, the first place we typically go is inward, and so i think just putting all of that on the table, operating and managing, from a human standpoint, people are going to get sick. they need backup. they’re going to go on sick leave, they’re going to go on maternity and paternity leave like they there’s more to their lives than where they’re not a machine, they’re not ai that then the business works around it. i don’t have to freak out, i don’t have to lose a client, i don’t have to lose money. i don’t have to have a awkward conversation with a client, because i didn’t build again that single point of failure in the process of how i was delegating and delivering things to them. and i didn’t sell them on something that would require a single point of failure. i didn’t hire someone on my team to do a magic trick and then decide to sell them to every single person in my portfolio, so i could raise my prices 20% and then that person can’t sleep at night because they know it’s all riding on them, and they leave you hanging high and dry after six months, because you’ve put an unreasonable expectation on them, burned them out, and now you have to have an awkward conversation with all your clients, or do that work. that’s why it’s a business model flaw. it will happen. the impact will ultimately happen, because we’re all human at the end of the day, and so if your businesses take that into consideration, rather than saying, well, everyone i hire is going to be in a perfect mood, a perfect 40 hours a week, a perfect 60 hours during tax week, tax season, which is completely unreasonable. nothing bad is ever going to happen in their life. nothing good is ever going to happen in their life. they’re always going to want to be right here with me at my office, available when i need them, and that’s how i’m going to build around the system. i think that’s silly.
liz farr 34:08
i agree with you 100% yeah. and i remember being burned out at work because the work never really stopped. and another thing was that it just felt like an endless hamster wheel that there wasn’t ever any end in sight or any vision for how i might get to a different place, different set of responsibilities, it was just endless.
ashley carroll 34:58
that’s how it feels, because. we’re on this cyclical cadence, you know, every week, every two weeks, every month, and then we’re all lumped together as accountants as to who we are and what we like to do. now, don’t get me wrong, when i graduated with my accounting degree, i turned around in my fall semester and i was like, oh, what’s a big four? i just i didn’t come from a family of accountants. i came from below the poverty line. i didn’t know what a cpa firm was. my family never made enough money to file tax returns. that was never anything that i had ever been familiar with, and i thought i was so ahead of the game. and i turned around and realized i was so, so so far behind the game. then i started hearing the fine print, you know, and what it what it looked like to make that big commitment to these firms and what that lifestyle looked like. and god forbid, what happened if you changed your mind and needed to pay that money back for that degree because you decided you didn’t want to work there anymore or fulfill that commitment on your end. and yeah, it just, it felt, felt like you had to make your bed. but 20 years old, i know that was a different experience for you and your path, but it just feels like such a big commitment. and then once you’re in the game, it feels like you can’t get out of it. and then when i learned that tax season actually extends to october 15, i thought, when do you people relax? when do you go on vacation? you know, i like you don’t. yeah, that’s what i’m hearing you don’t, you know? because i was, i never a tax accountant. i went right into nonprofit work, and then remote financial management accounting, and then the coo and so i was just always out on the other side of the cycle. and it just it was never ending, but not until i built in. i mean, we had a very small team of three bookkeepers, and still i managed, for every client to have one backup, support, your main poc, and the second person on the team who was there when we onboarded the client would speak to them once a quarter, once every six months, and if our person was ever on vacation, they were specifically pointed to. i was like, i’m taking a break. speak to this person. but those people would work, those clients would work so hard not to reach out, because they then felt a gratitude to you because you you showed up for them so consistently and so lovingly and so thoroughly all throughout the year, because you had the capacity to do that because of the resources and space that your employer provided you. now, when you did go on that vacation, there wasn’t all these fires, there wasn’t all these emails. they would hold emails. then you can’t get clients to hold emails to save your life, but send a good poc on vacation, and they would love to return the favor to you. so you talk about, like the roi on preventing your team from burning out, and building in these little things over and over again. yeah, these cycles feel never ending. if you feel like you can’t escape them, i mean it, it, that’s where the burnout comes from. it’s undeniable, absolutely.
liz farr 38:33
now, what are some ways that you have helped firms build workplaces that really support the the human part of it, so that they don’t get burned out. yeah?
ashley carroll 38:47
i mean, that’s everything in our approach, you know, which is starting with the people who, who actually do the clicking. think management has a good pulse from 10,000 foot view, feeling what’s not working. they get more client feedback, i think, than the people directly do not about what’s going on in client businesses, but about the the experience working with the firm. and then when you actually speak to the people on the ground level, speak to the people who touch the process all along the way, you get a lot more valuable information, you know. and so for a client, it could just be, i didn’t get my organizer this year until march. like, what’s up with that? like being very disappointed in you know that goes and so from the management’s perspective, it’s, well, the easy answer is, our team’s lazy and came back from the holidays. oh, you’re not doing their job. they’re not on the ball, right. and then you get in there, and you realize that some genius decided to update the software over the holiday break while everyone was out, and it removed all the custom organizer information from the software, and your team’s been working diligently to rebuild it for every single client, instead of just sending out the default one and capturing as much information as they could, because they wanted to recreate the same experience. and no one was there to guide them, and there was no feedback loop. and now you’re telling me we’re lazy. that is why i’m always going to recommend you first assume it’s a process problem before you assume it’s a people problem.
liz farr 41:06
yes, yes, because when you have processes that work well, then everybody knows how the work will show up on their desk, what their task is, what they need to do, and then they will move it on. they know what their function is in the whole,
ashley carroll 41:38
yes, and it always comes back to communication, which is your big point. you know, the way that this communication happened could have happened so many different and better ways, right? yes, it’s always stressful as the owner to hear from a client with negative feedback always, and so i’m not going to tsk tsk the client, although i wish that they had felt more comfortable going directly to their tax preparer that they are comfortable with, but that would mean that you as the owner are not also preparing the tax returns and pocing the client relationship. so that goes back to the processes and job roles and the descriptions and the delegation, because then you are the first person you’re not buffered from those kind of things. and maybe if you were that team member, would have been able to explain the situation and what’s going on and prevented you from ever having that experience emotionally, and that’s the roi on you of letting this stuff go, you know,
liz farr 42:51
yeah, yeah, well, in that situation, i wonder why somebody didn’t take it to the owner’s group immediately and say we had a glitch with the software update this happened. what should we do about it? you know, maybe they would have called in the person who did the update and said you messed up. you need to redo it so that it works properly. you know this, this speaks to a lack of psychological safety between the people on the front lines and the owners.
ashley carroll 43:45
yeah, and would it surprise you to know that this was during a time of great discourse along the management team that was not ever brought down to the team. but of course, the team knows and feels it, and at that point they thought, let’s just solve it ourselves. you know, they’re trying to be helpful. that’s a big thing about the psychological safety part, assuming people are operating with their best intentions, yes, but for some reason, they didn’t do what we expected or would have anticipated or would have liked. now the question that we all have to ask is, why, without blame and be willing to listen? you know how a little uncomfortable that was for me to go back to ownership and say, guys, the real reason is because they knew you were fighting and they literally were tiptoeing around you. no one wanted to speak up, no one wanted to raise their hand for fear of getting their head bitten off. because you guys were in bad moods all the time, right? you know, and that’s just a natural human thing. but if you also, going back to our original kind of point earlier, created a container where you could be vulnerable as a leader and say, guys like things are tough right now, and we know that. and also, here’s a container of space where we can talk about things that need improved or problems, because i can’t hear it all the time, and you shouldn’t be available to hear it all the time, like that example of having a buffer for the client, complaint, right? swing too far to servant leadership. this is for everyone’s benefit.
liz farr 45:54
yes, communication is always better.
ashley carroll 46:01
it’s the toughest thing. it’s the toughest thing. that’s why i create the container for it. don’t spend your energy on that. plan it into your system, so that all you have to do is show up, and the hard work is being vulnerable and saying what you’re really thinking. but then also create frameworks for that. i mean, i give my team every friday a feelings wheel, and it’s just we spend the first five minutes in silence, and i say, document every thing that you feel as you’re leaving this week. and it just makes it so much easier to just take the pressure off of blaming anyone else, because they always say, oh, start with i feelings, but you’re in the middle of it. you’re not. that’s so much easier said than done. but if i ask you to literally document for me how you’re feeling and why, and then you go down, i feel happy because i crushed this client call this week, and i got this great feedback, but i feel angry because i was 10 minutes late to the call because my previous call ran over, because they were asking questions i weren’t expecting and i didn’t have a buffer between the calls. okay? now i hear an operational problem. i hear that we don’t have a buffer between our meetings, right?
liz farr 47:14
we need to, we need to revamp our scheduling so that we have buffers. yes, and then we need to talk about, well, how much of a buffer do we need? will five minutes be enough? or do you need 15? or would you prefer half an hour?
ashley carroll 47:36
now you have their buy in, and you understand why, and you’re not pissed off at them for being late to a client call, right? even though it ended positively or, you know, it’s important to us, they pay for maybe one call a month. you don’t want if it’s a 30 minute call. you don’t want to be missing the first third, right? and it prevents you from slipping to that toxic, you know, crap talk that we can do about clients who save your questions for the last minute, right? you know, it just keeps us in a very productive place, but also vulnerable, because i’m getting down to the ultimate impact that it made on you as a human, and i can build a process around that to make it a better experience for you and the client, and the profitability the roi on that is is just studied and proven, and that’s not ever the thing that i ever have to convince people of. the hardest thing is getting people one to admit that as outwardly successful as they are, things can be messy and challenging and hard behind the scenes, and they might want help with that without someone judging them or running and telling everyone and then to demonstrate their vulnerability first, so that they get that good feedback from their team. once we cross those two bridges, it’s pretty much smooth sailing from there, but those are two really big mental mindset changes to make, and i have immense appreciation for the clients of mine and any owners out there who are doing it so that they can lead better, and like you said, leave it better for the people who are coming behind them, right?
liz farr 49:25
that’s right. now, one of the other really cool things you do is you have a burnout recovery kit, which i found on your website, and i i recommend every one of the listeners go to operationshouse.com, and look for the burnout recovery kit and sign up for it. so how did this come about?
ashley carroll 49:54
so there was a time where i didn’t have very many clients. i think everyone can relate with that. yeah, i had more time than money, and i had started my business out of my journey of burnout, you know, i was coo of an accounting firm by the time i was 28 i didn’t get there from, you know, not overextending myself a little bit and and i saw the profit margins that we were making and the processes that we had built and the questions that other people were asking, and i knew i could, i could do this for other people. and and when i first decided to leave my w2 job and and do this full time, it was a very big risk for me. i didn’t have the option of keeping that job or having any backup in common, so i didn’t have as many clients as i was hoping for. i was burned out. big hobby of mine is writing and writing since, gosh, i was young and in writing groups and i just started writing letters to business owners that i kind of wished i had had at the time. and it’s written kind of in five tiers or phases that are meant to take you from burned out, overwhelmed, inwardly judgmental, through the emotions of kind of ease, going easier on yourself, reflecting on yourself, being honest with yourself about maybe what’s really going on, or that you’re still working on, that you’re not as happy with, or it doesn’t bring you joy anymore, having courage to admit those things maybe release a little bit of that identity. i’m the practitioner, i’m the provider, and maybe go into another role. or maybe i don’t want to be ceo. i want to be something else. to that final step of commitment, i commit to this change. i recognize it. i have the courage to say it to myself, and now i’m actually going to do something to it. so it’s just 10 completely free emails they kind of read like small poems or stories, and they have reflection questions at the end of them, and when you sign up, you just get one in your inbox for 10 weeks. that leads you through that kind of journey. and i think it’s just a very nice way if you’re not ready to talk to anyone else, i think right, that’s the biggest thing is, i’m burned out. i don’t want to talk to anyone else about this. just want to hide. i’m going to go inward. this is a good place when you are ready to acknowledge it and start to think about it to maybe just be seen in a very honest way. you know, this is something i got to write without a boss. for my first time, i was very free. i could say anything
liz farr 53:22
that’s right.
ashley carroll 53:23
and then there i really just got to say how i was feeling in the way i was experiencing things, and the thoughts that i was having and the the jokes that i was making in my head about things and the irony of things and the pain and the grief and the joy and the everything that comes with burning out or realizing that something you worked so hard to get to or to build is actually not making you happy anymore, and that instead of having to throw it all away or getting caught in sunk costs or all this, that you can take it and move forward from there, if you’re just very honest with yourself about what exactly isn’t working, rather than letting it overwhelm you and eat you up, that part of you is unhappy, because i bet when you look at it, there’s so much more there to work with, but there’s something clouding you, and people typically know what that is. they just need the space to think through it, have the courage to admit it, and then once they do, make the commitment to change it, to have someone very non judgmental, to hold them accountable to it and to help them through it.
liz farr 54:51
always helpful, always helpful. we we all need something like that at some point in our lives. you know, i know i could have used something like that when i was getting burned out in accounting, because i knew i needed to change, but i didn’t really want to start over again. i’d already started over a couple of times. i didn’t want to again, and eventually what i ended up doing was what i’m doing now. so you know, it’s, it’s the best of both worlds. i get to talk to really interesting people doing really cool things. i get to write about people doing really cool things, and i didn’t have to abandon my accounting
ashley carroll 55:51
exactly. and did you ever imagine that this would be what it evolved into when you were see all those years? yeah, exactly. no one ever does. you never know.
liz farr 56:05
no, you never really know. you know you can. you can project out to the future, but there will always be random things that you can’t predict. you’ll meet that random person at a conference who will convince you that they that you need to go into business with them. you just never know.
ashley carroll 56:31
you never know. you never know. i love they say, like, you make plans and god laughs, and it’s just like, yeah, absolutely. i’m not an incredibly religious person, but i love the idea of a bigger spirit or energy out there just having a nice little giggle at how certain we all wake up every morning with how our days are going to go. and you just never know. but if to your point, you don’t abandon what you’ve put time and effort into and what feels right for you, then it will all work out for the best. you will find a unique sweet spot that you never would have previously imagined.
liz farr 57:19
you never know. i think that will be the refrain for this episode. you never know.
ashley carroll 57:25
you never know. i love that. so, dream big, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
liz farr 57:34
now you’ve been a professional for long enough that i’m sure you’ve made a few mistakes that you learned from, which is how we generally learn our best lessons, because that’s how humans learn. so can you share with us one of the biggest mistakes you made that was valuable in terms of what you learned.
ashley carroll 58:07
and this one haunts me. yeah, absolutely. i ii learned the very hard way that anything that you write on company software belongs to your company and can be accessed there. yes, and that’s also why i put such a big focus on creating containers for safe communication now, because look, when you’re 22 and you are used to running your mouth with your friends, and then you get a slack channel with a bunch of other 22 year olds, right? because these companies are hiring qualms of young people at the same time, yeah, you start to think, this is, oh, i know aim. i’m comfortable here. i write instant messaging. no big deal, yeah, and i said things that just were unprofessional. you know, just a casual you’re talking like you would talk casually to your friends, but you’re talking about work, you’re talking about your boss, you’re talking about your team members or your clients, you know. and part of that is a symptom of not having any other space to to release those thoughts or feelings. part of that, again, is never being taught how to have give constructive feedback, and that being a very difficult learning lesson once those messages were accessed and read, very humbling, very humbling, yeah, and it’s just a big lesson in respect and. and never saying anything that you wouldn’t say if someone was listening or in the room in how to give appropriate feedback, when to give feedback, who to give it? to creating spaces as a leader, to allow that to happen in a productive way. because naturally, if you don’t, people will chatter anyway, and even if they’re not chattering on company property, because they’re smarter than me when i was 22 right? they’re texting, they’re going out for drinks after work, they’re talking and and you want to know what they’re saying, for better or worse. and so while i will forever be humbled and humiliated by the way in which i gave that feedback, i will never make that mistake again. i will forever, as a leader, make space for my team to give me feedback, even if it’s hard to hear, so that i don’t have that same, i’m sure, very horrible experience that my leader had when they ultimately found those messages and read them, and how heartbreaking for them. you know, as a boss now, having hired people and putting the trust and the investment in them, i will forever be sorry for the way that that that happened, you know, but it’s not something that i shy away from telling people, because it’s not something that i could have learned any other way, and it framed a lot of my experiences moving forward, both as an employee and an employer, and how i i run and operate things, knowing that i have and continue to have immense respect and love for that, that leader and i was just a dumb kid, and it’s not it doesn’t take malicious intent to be harmful. it just takes lack of empathy and understanding.
liz farr 1:02:13
yeah, sometimes you don’t really intend to be cruel when you are just joining in with the rest of the crowd. i can see that,
ashley carroll 1:02:29
yeah, and that people can grow right? that i was obviously a toxic team member at that point, and now i work against that. that’s just not to say that everybody has, like a perfect spring record, you know, and i just, i can appreciate the growth and the sleepless nights and humbling that it gave me for many, many months following that, yeah,
liz farr 1:03:04
well, i suppose i should count myself fortunate that my early work experiences were well before any kind of slack or instant messaging. i don’t think i even had an email account and work email until about my third job.
ashley carroll 1:03:37
that saved you a lot of heartache i feel for the children growing up now with so much social media and just all the documentation, you know, it’s, it’s, it is haunting.
liz farr 1:03:52
yes, it can be
ashley carroll 1:03:55
yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah.
liz farr 1:04:00
you work with a lot of firm leaders. what advice do you have for accountants who want to be better leaders?
ashley carroll 1:04:14
i always try to put them in the perspective of what their experience was when they were not the leader, and what would they have wanted? and usually that’s transparency, directness, notice ahead of time, those same old communication related clarity on their job, good feedback, positive reinforcement and understanding that people are money motivated, and that’s okay that they don’t have to care about the company like the owner does, because they don’t own the company, and there’s no reason for them to and that if they’re properly incentivized, they will take care of the company in the way that they are supposed to think like some switch turns when you become a manager, where you just whether through pressure from the environment of other managers, or what you’ve learned, or what we’ve seen on movies. you know, it’s becomes very us versus them. there’s secrets, there’s talking. you know, all management on knows that derek is on the chopping block, but, you know, no one’s talking about it, no one’s giving derek feedback. everyone’s just talking about derek in management meetings, you know, but you were sitting next to derek two weeks ago, why, all of a sudden, is something different now, if you were in that seat still, wouldn’t you want someone to just have that difficult conversation with you, to say, we’re losing clients, we’re not going to do christmas bonuses this year in september, instead of just letting december roll around and not giving them out and thinking, well, $600 isn’t a lot of money. $600 is an entire christmas for families.
liz farr 1:06:32
yes,
ashley carroll 1:06:35
you know, it’s just, it’s a lot of that stuff that we hide from as leaders, i just encourage you. let that be the stuff that the eat the frog right like, let that be the hard stuff that you eat first thing in the morning so that you can focus and do your job. because we all know that it prevents us that emotional burden, all that stuff floating around his mind prevents us from doing i’m cto, i’m coo, you know, my actual skilled job outside of people management. so don’t shy away from the people management part of it now that you’re a leader, and if you don’t want to be a people manager. be clear about that, because there’s nothing wrong with that. so many people, the way that organizations are structured require that as you move up the technical ladder, you also move up the people management ladder, especially in accounting. and i think that’s a huge mistake. yes, you know so to even be adequate with, you know, separating from that identity, i don’t have to be in the c suite. if i don’t want to be a people manager, i can be the vice president of something i, you know, whatever title makes me feel good at night, right? but like i want to wake up and enjoy my job, and if you’re not enjoying your job as a leader, it’s going to be so impossible for your team to enjoy their job because they’re working for someone who’s unhappy.
liz farr 1:08:16
absolutely
ashley carroll 1:08:16
so take care of yourself first. always, right? and then, really, if you’re gonna step into a leadership role, commit to that. commit to being a good people leader. and if that’s just not what you enjoy doing, cool, amazing. you are not alone. so many people hate people management, ask anyone right and and find your seat in the organization where you can still add value, but to give people a leader that enjoys being there for people, oh, oh, the difference that that makes. you know, those leaders don’t need advice on how to be a good leader, because they are constantly seeking it out. they’re striving. they want it intrinsically. feel like, how do i be a good leader? how do i get away from these people? listen to your gut. get away from those people. you know, you’d probably be doing them and you a favor, and that’s fine. it doesn’t mean anything good or bad, other than you’re not happy. you’re not as happy as you could be right now. and that’s something to carry on when you’re looking at your team, too. if you give yourself that kind of grace, which you should can look at it from your team, build out roles in your organization for both people, leaders and technical skilled leaders, because you need both. trying to force everybody into the same role is just a recipe for disaster.
liz farr 1:09:54
yes, yes, you know the person who is a master at creating excel worksheets and automating them and connecting all the apps together. they’re not necessarily going to be the best one for being the people leader, the manager.
ashley carroll 1:10:22
different things give people different people energy. you know? i think that’s a great question to ask people, even during interviews or during just like check ins like, what work energizes you that you could go all day long and forget to eat your lunch, because you just love it. you’re just in it, you know, and what’s that work that you will sit there all day if you’re scheduled to do it at 3pm and not do a single thing else, because you’re just thinking about how much you dread having to do that thing, and it’s five hours away, and now it’s four hours away and it’s two hours away, and i had time. i don’t know why i didn’t do anything else all day. i just kept thinking about this thing that i don’t want to i want that day just disappears, right? you know, they disappear either way. so fill them up with something that is enjoyable,
liz farr 1:11:16
that’s right, that’s right. now we’ve been talking a very long time, so yeah, and this happened the last time we chatted to i think we had signed up for half an hour and it was three times that long.
ashley carroll 1:11:37
yeah, sounds about right. yes, that
liz farr 1:11:40
sounds about right now. where do you see the accounting industry in 10 years? i’ve been asking everybody this,
ashley carroll 1:11:54
you know, i hope that it has modernized in some ways. and reverted back from today in some ways. think we all hope that ai auto reconciles and pulls our bank statements and all that good fun stuff, fantastic. the number of reduced clicks are amazing. i think those systems will never work without human monitoring and maintenance, and i want to see roles built out for those people, just as much as roles are built out for the quote, unquote advisors and client facing people. and i want to see smaller firms who understand that the net profit margin at $750,000 in recurring revenue is the same as two million, and the difference is how much time you want to spend working in and on your business, and how many team members you want to take care of, and how many clients you want to have. and i haven’t seen much else difference. you know, either way, you’re kind of taking home 250 to $350,000 and i think that’s a great margin, and you should really think about what your why is, and if it’s just some arbitrary number in your bank account, or if it’s i want to provide 20 stable jobs to 20 individuals, because i’m capable and i have the capacity and the emotional capacity and bandwidth to provide that, and so that’s what i wanted to give, or i have the capacity to do that for two people and change the lives of 20 clients a year, you know, but to figure out your why and to be a little selfish in it, if your why is to support you and your family and to not have any employees that to be okay with that and to not take on work, you know that, or employees that you’ll just be doing a disservice to. yeah, i just, i really, i really believe in just taking a moment to to go back to the smaller firms that we used to have where your cpa was like your neighbor, and they came over for dinner and they had in person meetings, because it wasn’t so many that they couldn’t manage it. and so that’s where i hope to see it kind of go back that we’re not in this scarcity mindset, where one provider has 800 clients, that we’re we see the value in enough and that we operate from that place. we still hit our goals and we still live the life that we want to. but it’s more. it’s more about really knowing what’s going to satiate us as a personal human being and our team, and less about all the billboard numbers out there. $1 million, $2 million, $5 million, vc money, whatever is flashy right now. ai, you know that, let that stuff come but to stay with your foundation in being neighborly and having integrity and being helpful in providing a good quality service and getting paid what you’re worth, and living a good life and providing it for other people, letting that ripple effect happen.
liz farr 1:16:17
i like that. i like living a good life, and defining it on your terms, about whether that is providing a living for 20 people or two people, it is your choice what you want to do. i love that, that emphasis on the human side of it.
ashley carroll 1:16:46
success is defined in many different ways.
liz farr 1:16:49
yeah, absolutely, absolutely. i think that’s the perfect place to wrap up our call on now. thank you so much, ashley for being on my show and sharing with listeners your very human centric and very psychologically safety oriented approach to operations, which seems so so technical, but yet you make it so human and kind.
ashley carroll 1:17:35
thank you.
liz farr 1:17:39
now if listeners want to connect with you. where is the best place to find you?
ashley carroll 1:17:44
yes, so the first thing for me to go when i get busy is social media. but if i’m online, i’m on linkedin at ashley carroll, but you can always find me at my website, at operations.house, or operationshouse.com. that’s where you can get my free burnout recovery kit. see my blogs where i’m constantly posting and just belong, believe in sharing as much information as i can about what’s going on with my clients and processes there. so you can get some ideas. if you have some similar things that you’re going on there, or reach out for a free call.