The Wize Way

Episode 73: Wize Factor Chat: Stephanie Anderson - Tax Prose Inc.

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 1 • Episode 73

Share episode

In this week's episode of The Wize Guys Podcast, we have Stephanie Anderson of Tax Prose Inc. as we chat with her about her Wize journey and experience.

Discover her path to making your business run on autopilot. So if you've ever dreamed of stepping back while your business continues to thrive, you're not alone. Stephanie was once in your shoes, and she's here to share her inspiring journey and the challenges she overcame along the way.

We begin with the early years, when Stephanie, like many of us, was tethered to her computer, struggling to find competent tax professionals. Then came the breakthrough with Wize that revolutionized her firm's management. Stephanie will reveal how she overcame the daunting task of implementing new habits and how the concept of having an absentee-run business both excited and terrified her. Stephanie will also shed light on her struggle to achieve work-life balance while building a team that mastered the nuances of the US tax code. She'll share her experience of managing an offshore team, her secret to making them feel connected, and the life lessons she's garnered from the entire process. 

Tune in to find out more of her story!

________________

PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 3 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm:

1. Download our famous Wize Freedom Strategy Map for FREE - Find out the 96 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here

2. Need to Hire right now? Book at 1:1 FREE hiring assessment with our WizeTalent recruiters to help find your next best employee locally or offshore – Click Here

3. Book a 1:1 Wize Discovery Session – Spend 30mins with our Wize CEO, Jamie Johns, a $7M firm owner who is ready to give you his entire business plan to build a firm that can run without you – Find out more here

Stephanie Anderson:

You've got to master leading yourself. So that's about self-discipline, that's about experience, that's about controlling your feelings. So you've got to lead yourself.

Wize Mentoring:

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Guys Podcast, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time-pull practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

Wize Claudia:

Stephanie, first of all, thank you for coming here and making time to talk with me. I promise I will make it short. You've been a Wize member for a while, so we appreciate you a lot and I wanted to know about your firm and about Wize, pre- Wize, post-Wize. I wanted to know how long have you been in business. When did you start your firm? September 2014? Quite a long time, actually. It feels like yesterday, 2014, by the way. But why did you start? Was it a family thing or did you always know that you would run a firm?

Stephanie Anderson:

It was something called necessity entrepreneurship.

Wize Claudia:

Okay, many people have that. Not everyone gets to the part of starting a business, so that's great. When you started running your business, and mainly way back before you found Wize, was there anything keeping you up at night? Regarding your business, what were the challenges that you were facing that were affecting how you were living your life, basically, how you were running your business?

Stephanie Anderson:

Well, the first year everything was wonderful. And then, as the client inquiries and the client base grew to hundreds of clients I was really overwhelmed, stressed out, and never really got away from the computer. I tried to hire local tax professionals to help me and I had a lot of problems with that as well, and it just seemed like the more we grew, the more complex it was in firm management.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, that's something that comes with growth. When you started out, that was only you, or you had someone.

Stephanie Anderson:

No, it was only me for a while, and now I used to have time to go exercise and eat healthy and hang out with my friends, and then all of that left, left the building.

Wize Claudia:

Oh so not fun to have to leave that. When you discovered Wize I think it was through Brent what were you hoping this would solve for you? What were you expecting this would solve for you the most? What was the key that Wize had to help you?

Stephanie Anderson:

Yeah, well, that was a while ago, I think. I saw on Facebook some posts that alluded to firm management in some way. I spoke about a current pain I was having immediately caught my attention and the more I dug into it, the more I learned about the program. I was like firm management is my favorite topic. Yeah, it's very interesting I want my staff, my vendors, my clients, and everybody involved with the firm to have a positive experience. I didn't come in to make everybody's life harder.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, exactly, and it's such a nice culture you have because that will make people really connect with what you do.

Stephanie Anderson:

Yeah, thank you, but I think that the client's expectation is unreasonable, first of all, so that was something that took me a while to unpack. And then you know how I have a positive experience and a normal work-life balance from myself and the team, and the more accountant friends that I made and the more professional groups and the more I hung out with other people in my position found out we all have the same problems.

Wize Claudia:

Actually, across the world, many firm owners have the same issues. That's why we can connect with people from across the world, basically because they're having the same issues in different languages. When this firm management thing spoke to you and then you started learning, you got into why, Like fast forward to a couple of months later. Do you feel like, once you started seeing all these resources and this training and the learnings, do you feel like there was also like, of course, a firm shift, like an impact, I'm guessing, but then a mindset shift since you started engaging with Weiss?

Stephanie Anderson:

Yes, that didn't come instantly. I do have to share that. So my first tax season was 1988. Okay, so I have a lot of old ideas to overcome and old methods that are super ingrained in me, and so it was really difficult to create new habits and to learn new methods, and I think that's just like the nature of the human mind. But I just knew, like in every cell of my body, that the Wize program has cracked the code on how to have effective, firm management so that it's a success for all parties involved, and I just had to keep plugging away, even if I took one step forward and two steps back. Also, what I learned was that when I implement something new and then I need to have a holding pattern with that and consolidate and let it marinate and get sunken before I start to implement yet another new thing. So those were kind of the problems that I found personally trying to implement the knowledge that's available to us?

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, very important impact because, like you said, the mindset shift does not come with the first lesson Absolutely. And then, once you have a team, they also need to adapt and be on board with this mindset and this structure that you are implementing. So it definitely it's like a learning curve that takes lots of patience. I think it's mainly patience and trust in the process. Now, it's been used nowadays, that phrase, but I think it's so important to trust the process and, like people who've done it, basically they know we cannot say that Ed hasn't tried or that Jamie hasn't tried. They have and they had to be in the trenches to know. So thank you for sharing that. That's super powerful.

Wize Claudia:

egarding the mindset shift, I wanted to trace back to a question I had. We talk about this business that runs without you, and that's one of the mindsets that Ed shared, like beginning with the end in mind that we talk about. Is there something about beginning with the end in mind or having a business that runs without you that motivates you, excites you, and scares you? Like, what kind of feeling do you have once you're taking the steps towards that? What do you feel about that?

Stephanie Anderson:

Well, the first thing my mind says is it's unattainable, because I don't know anybody that has attained it locally or that I know well. So the first thing you do is, when you start a business, you're basically creating a job for yourself, so you're basically an employee and then you can move up to being a manager, and then from there you can move up to being investor owned. But making that jump from manager to investor- owned position, I think is more advanced and I don't have a lot of faith that most people are going to get there really. But the awesome thing here is that I've identified what are the obstacles to that. Like logistically in real life, what needs to happen with systems and processes, building teams but like also what needs to happen mentally for the firm owner to allow that to happen.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, that's a big part of the whole stepping back from the business, delegating, and powering your team. There's a lot of that and I do agree with you Like some do get to do it, hopefully most. That's what we want. I know that there are a lot of people who don't want to step back from their business, like to work less, of course, as you said at the beginning, be able to go out with your friends to do more hobbies that you enjoy and basically get back your time and be a normal business owner and have a normal human life. By the way, speaking of hobbies, I wanted to ask you do you have anything apart from the business that you enjoy, like any activity or pastime or anything that you enjoy doing?

Stephanie Anderson:

Not anymore. I used to. I mean, I used to be very into dogs, you know, doing various things with dogs, and I was, before I started my business, extremely social, Like I was out every night with you know, and I have tons of friends. That's like a second job, I know I really, even to this day, miss all those really just being able to like if my friend calls me and wants to go to LA, you know we used to like go up to LA all the time and just walk around, so like I used to be able to do that. Now it's like no, can't. I want to get back to that.

Wize Claudia:

Oh, you want to get back to that. Okay, I thought it was like a social stage of your life, but that's nice. I mean, do you feel like you've gained time back? I?

Stephanie Anderson:

feel right now I've definitely gained time back. So I'm currently taking six units in college to finish my master's in taxation. That's cool. So even having the capacity to continue a master's degree, I think, is a win. Yeah absolutely.

Wize Claudia:

Hopefully, once you advance you will gain time back as you go and probably not withdraw from the business totally. But yeah, of course, get back to going to LA, and having back-to-back fun, parties. But yeah, it's impossible, I wish, yeah. I wish we were a party girl.

Stephanie Anderson:

Well, I mean, I don't drink, but I don't need to. I'm super out of my energy and super outgoing, so it doesn't matter.

Wize Claudia:

That's something that you seem like someone who's very outgoing.

Stephanie Anderson:

That's why I do well with clients, I think because I'm a high communicator, very social, and that's not the norm, I think, in our industry. Most accountants are very introverted and stuff like that. So the thing is I can bring out a lot of clients and I can be out there and meeting all kinds of people doing speaking events, but when I win that engagement can I effectively deliver quality work in a timely manner.

Wize Claudia:

Ok, yeah, it's like you have to balance it out.

Stephanie Anderson:

Yes, I'm very happy with what we have going on this year and that's because in August of last year, I started nitty-gritty stuff in Wize Pulse. My mind kind of overcomplicates things too, so I just took the time. It's like OK, how can I run, how can I have my P&L statement ready every week for the tactical meeting, you know? So I went through a whole thing on that. That's done now. That's great. In the withdrawal process, the first thing is withdrawal from accounts. First of all, I didn't know what withdrawal from accounts meant. I think that's more of an Australian term or maybe, but it meant getting somebody else to do the books of the firm. So I started with that.

Wize Claudia:

I know that you are now in the Wize selling process, so you're hiring people now.

Stephanie Anderson:

Oh my God, can I please talk about this, Claudia? Yeah, please go ahead. So that was so much fun. I love Danielle and Krizzia. They handled all of me like a tsunami of questions and concerns and there were a lot of details that I had to understand and unpack in this process and I feel like working with wise talent. I finally got that satisfied, that urge satisfied, and then we used the account test, that program. Ok, that guy is from New Zealand, he is in America right now and I had lunch with him on Monday.

Wize Claudia:

I think I know who he is Maybe Gils. Yes, that's so nice.

Stephanie Anderson:

I had so much fun having lunch with him. Talk about outgoing, Oh, I got that. I had no idea first of all that he was coming from another country. I also had no idea that he was a tax manager in the past, so I just thought this was going to be somebody without like personal tax experience. So it was awesome. And then I talked about I had a recent bad hire. We unpacked that and we talked about the test and he's joining my mastermind group on Friday. I'm in a mastermind group of 13 CPAs and so I asked them if he could come talk to us on Friday. So that's happening.

Wize Claudia:

Wow, you've created your own little group of super- important people on what you do.

Stephanie Anderson:

I have a lot to say, Claudia, and I need a lot of people, because, no, there's not one person that can listen to all of this.

Wize Claudia:

But it's so nice like I'm getting more than what I expected.

Stephanie Anderson:

Awesome, Claudia. One more thing I learned from that lunch is I'm getting the impression that doing taxes in New Zealand and Australia is less complex than it is here.

Wize Claudia:

Maybe tax seasons aren't as a killing as the US.

Stephanie Anderson:

Yeah, so it's a little more difficult to build a team that has that US tax knowledge and experience that is required for my client base. That has been a challenge, I think, and might continue to be a challenge for accountants in California, specifically because the California tax code is also brutal.

Wize Claudia:

Dani and Krizz are helping you with this.

Stephanie Anderson:

They helped me find me. I hired my first senior accountant, an offshore direct hire. It was a lot to mentally overcome. Yeah, I bet how did you feel about that what I wanted and it was the right thing, but it was a slow, tedious process and mainly, you know, because of the learning curve. Also, we tried first for the senior production manager. Couldn't find a senior production manager, can't find a senior client manager, or senior production manager, so I'm still in those roles.

Stephanie Anderson:

So we moved it down to senior accountant and then she scored 92% on the account test, which is really high. Yeah, I bet she's sharp, so she's learning, like our specific things, and I'm very inclined to just do it. And then I listened to a wise video last Friday. I listened and I learned how to hook up my phone to my car so that the YouTube videos play when I'm driving. Okay, got it Bluetooth, because normally, you know, I don't think of that. But so I started listening to the wise videos on YouTube and there was an 18- minute video there about enhancing the relationship with the offshore team members. Yeah, and thank God, I listened to it because I was doing some of those things that they were warning against.

Wize Claudia:

One big takeaway from that video you had. That was like really breakthrough.

Stephanie Anderson:

Well, it's two quick ones. One never does the work for them, so I kind of kind of have to walk them through it. Yeah, I'm so impatient I have to do like four jobs a day, you know. And then the other ones never dismiss the huddle meeting.

Wize Claudia:

Oh, okay, important. I haven't listened to that full video because I've seen most. I think I must talk. Really, I sometimes quote Ed, which is kind of scary. Actually, I told them oh my. God, okay, yeah, I know Like I sometimes quote Ed and I'm like I'm losing my mind, but yeah, there's great life advice. I'm not at all an accountant, but I know there's great life advice. Hello Claudia, you can run your own firm now with all this information.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, but numbers are not my thing, not at all but I do think that it's a trial and error thing with your offshore team. Maybe you're going to learn how to walk as it goes like you can walk before you run. So it's mainly like creating a relationship. As you can see, I'm offshore, I'm all the way across the world and I connected with these guys in such a way that I am so grateful. I met Brenton, Jamie, and Samee, who you've probably talked to. So, yeah, it's nice. It's important that they also know that they're part of the team and that they're not just behind a screen, that they feel connected. We do hotels, we do Christmas parties, and we chat every day. So I meet with Brent and then with Jamie and, yeah, it's basically a process like everything. Yeah, it's lovely for me to share. Awesome. That's your effect on people. That's so nice. I thank you so much for everything you share. If there's anything else that you want to share, please go. If not, I think you've said everything that I wanted to hear.

Stephanie Anderson:

Oh, okay, perfect, yeah, anytime.