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Cool Careers in Accounting Ep. 5 - Leaps of Faith, Constant Learning, and Loving What’s Next with Leah Fitz
252 Plays2 months ago
Leah Fitz started her career in the capital markets group at a Big 4 firm, loving the learning until it was time for a new challenge. Learn how maintaining early relationships for years helped her find her next 3 roles, including taking a company public and building an accounting and finance function from the ground up. Now VP of Finance, Leah Fitz shares how to take your career from licensed CPA to wherever you want to go.
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Transcript
Introduction and Role at AirDNA
00:00:09
Speaker
Here today with Leah Fitz, thank you so much for joining us. and Leah, but rather than me introduce, can can you just share with us your title and and maybe what does that mean and what you're working on these days? Yeah, definitely. so I am the VP of Finance at a company called AirDNA. We do essentially data analytics around the short-term rental space. so People who own short-term rentals and list them on Airbnb, VRBO,
00:00:35
Speaker
We gather a lot of data around those rentals and essentially compile it and give them feedback to situations where like maybe they're maybe they want to know how much to price a property at a certain area. Maybe they're looking to buy a property in a specific area and they don't know where to buy it. We can give them rental scores and tell them, hey, this is a good area. Maybe this one isn't so good because it's more expensive and you couldn't get as much revenue from this one.
00:00:59
Speaker
So we we do a lot with revenue potential for properties and kind of just give people the tools they need to be able to price a property appropriately.
Acquisition and Growth Strategy
00:01:07
Speaker
so Okay and I would imagine that business has been booming in the last three years especially. Yes it it definitely has and we've we've seen a lot of change so we were actually acquired by Alpine investors um in 2022 in February of 2022 so we're a little over a year anniversary, two year anniversary right now with that, I was brought on in May right after that. And so we've seen a lot of growth kind of leading into that acquisition. And then since then, now that we're backed by Alpine, we've been doing a lot of organic and inorganic growth. So we've acquired two companies since then. okay next
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, which has been a really big learning experience. It's cool to see we're working on integrating those in our products. And for me on the back end, like figuring out how all the accounting and finance works behind it, how to appropriately report those, what to look at in terms of measures of success for those acquisitions. So that's been a lot of my focus recently. I would say taking a step back and looking at kind of what I've done for AirDNA.
Building Finance Foundations
00:02:09
Speaker
I was really the first higher up finance hire for the team.
00:02:14
Speaker
So before I joined, there was essentially one person doing all the finance and accounting. And as you you know get into a private equity ecosystem, there's just a lot more rigor and yes a lot more requirements to build a more sophisticated system that can kind of grow in scale as the business grows in scales. So I spent the last couple of years doing just that. We did a massive yeah ERP implementation with NetSuite. We went through our first ever audit.
00:02:41
Speaker
We built our first budget. We built our first forecasting tools. We've looked at you know how to provide ROIs around certain decisions that we haven't been doing in the past. So like we've basically been setting up the foundation on the accounting and finance world to be able to help the business move forward and make decisions from a strategic and data-backed lens.
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, and I'd love to and love to go back and understand what path led you to be able to do all those things. But maybe first, um that's a lot to have done already in a year and a half-ish, it sounds like, since you started there.
Evolving Role and Influences
00:03:17
Speaker
ah Could you share a little bit more about what was the job you were hired to do?
00:03:22
Speaker
and has has your actual job been what you thought it would be more, less? And then and then also, where where does this go for the next year? It sounds like you've done a lot of things, but what else is on the radar or skills you're looking to develop or projects that you and your team are looking to handle over the next, say, 12 months? So again, what what brought you here? What was the job that sold you? um Has it lived up? And then what's what's next over the next year?
00:03:49
Speaker
What brought me here was I wanted to find a company where I could be one of the decision makers who really could help dictate the direction and the strategy of a company. So every time in the past that I've been a Harvard organization, I've done a lot of really cool things and learned a lot that's brought me to where I am, which I think we should talk about a little bit. But I wanted to be a part of something where I could really help, like I said earlier, build the foundation and be a part of kind of growing it to the next level.
00:04:16
Speaker
So I got this role through um through a previous colleague of mine at PwC, which is where I started. And essentially they reached out, they knew I'd been kind of interested in something like this. And this role came up through their network. So he just said, you just take a look at it, like see if you think it's interesting. I talked to the CEO. I was very intrigued by it. I, before this had been in another private equity backed company. So I knew what that entailed.
00:04:43
Speaker
And I knew it would mean I would see a lot in a short amount of time. And to your point, we've done a lot in the past year and a half and it were, they've all been things I was expecting to do. I think there are certain things that always take longer than you think they will. Like an ERP implementation, for example, you always kind of like hit kinks where you're like, wow, this is a new thing. You have to tackle an issue that arose that we weren't expecting. So.
Team Building and Strategic Finance
00:05:10
Speaker
We had some delays and some, some hard moments there to try to get across the finish line and some of those things, but we were able to accomplish it. I think a big reason of that was because I had, and I still have a great team behind me. So that was the other kind of key piece of what I've been doing over the past year and a half is building out the right team. And like I said earlier, there was one person previously on the team. We're now at a seven.
00:05:33
Speaker
yeah So that's a pretty big amount of growth in a year and a half. And as we get bigger and as we get more sophisticated and need to do things like audits, there's just more required specific skills that I need to fill because I can't do all of those things myself. So it's finding the right people who can help me do those and then I can trust to kind of help me succeed in those different areas.
00:05:58
Speaker
yeah um and what's on the ra What's on the radar for the next year? right Are there still other big projects out there? or with One to seven people, is it now a little bit more? ah We're just going to get our KPI straight, no understand how we're doing all this stuff, but what's on the radar for the next year? Yeah, I feel like in the private equity world, there's always the mindset of growth.
00:06:19
Speaker
so yes youre not changing anything, you're not really moving forward. And I think for us, we've laid a lot of the foundation. And I would say what I've been focused on in the past year and a half is the reactive side of accounting and finance. so I don't think that you can have a good finance system and finance like you can't basically can't help inform decisions unless you have the appropriate accounting foundation set up because you need accurate historicals to be able to help you decide how you want to project into the future and what to look for and what the drivers are all of those things.
00:06:54
Speaker
So my first focus was on building the accounting side, getting that accurate, getting it to the point it is today. And now we've kind of started to flip it over to the finance side of the house. So we still have had to do a lot of things, I would say, in a more reactive way than I wanted to, like building a budget. We knew we had to do it. We knew we had to do it before year end. So we're going to scramble to do it because we haven't had time before that to do it. So we're still stuck in this kind of like, if something happens, we react to it.
00:07:23
Speaker
Where I really hope to take it in the next year or two is to a more proactive function. So we're identifying areas where there's something in the data that's telling us we should consider something. We're seeing someone wants to make a decision about something. We can help them with an r ROI analysis around that decision to see if it's actually a decision that we feel comfortable making and a risk we feel comfortable taking.
00:07:47
Speaker
So I think there's a lot of other pieces to the finance world that we can do now and we can be more strategic about because we have that foundation set. So I'm really excited for that for the future.
Challenges with Acquisitions
00:08:00
Speaker
I would say another key piece that we've been doing recently is with these two acquisitions is just integrating them, figuring out how they fit, figuring out what it means in terms of how we sell the products in the future, what it means for budgeting and forecasting, like every time Every acquisition is different. So it's kind of figuring out what that means and what you can expect in terms of like what it looks like when you combine everything together. Yes. And one thing I want to highlight if I got my timing correct.
00:08:30
Speaker
ah pe company comes in and invest in fab of twenty two you're hired in may of twenty two. And one of your one of your projects in that first six months is actually making their first budget. So there's a P.E. investor there's bringing on a V.P. of finance and there's not actually a budgeting process yet I want to highlight that for folks of.
00:08:49
Speaker
And again, like sales and building a business and are their customers and is their product market fit comes first and oftentimes people like you will come in and you coming from PwC, I'm guessing there might have been, well, you already came from a private equity company, but there might have been a little like This is not what they teach us in the books. This is not as clean as I thought it was going to be, but your job is to go take that and and make that data all clean and sing and make it actionable for people to then it sounds like over a year and a half. Get it all cleaned up in a way that then next you can proactively do things like.
00:09:23
Speaker
but We bought these two businesses, our core business does X, they do Y and Z. Our previous average order value might have been just to make up numbers, $1,000. But now with these ancillary products, we can get that up to $1,500. What does that mean for the projections for our entire business? and Now you can play a little bit more of an offensive role of doing things like that. But you can't do that until
From Reporting to Strategy
00:09:43
Speaker
you build that foundation. for Exactly. and When I came in, it was just AirDNA, so it was a little easier in that sense. But I also came in kind of knowing where we were and what the state was. And i I came in knowing I would probably have to do a budget and it was going to be stressful and it was going to be on a tight deadline. But at the same time, like it's kind of what I wanted and what I signed up for, because I'm someone where I really like to be thrown in the weeds of things. And sometimes I really regret it, like what I'm right in the middle of it, just because it feels overwhelming then. But when you look back and realize what you've accomplished, it's pretty cool to see.
00:10:19
Speaker
And I think it's something where it's like, you have to start somewhere. I also felt like if I was starting at that ground level, I would get to know the business so well. And that's what I feel like I've done over the past almost, I mean, year and a half, year and nine months, where it's like.
00:10:36
Speaker
I've seen all of the details and i've been I've been able to help put them together. I've been able to do this bottoms up budgeting process to where like I really know and understand a lot of the components in a way that if I would have come on when it was already built, I might not have gotten to appreciate as much as I do now just because I was able to kind of see it along or're from its early stages to where it is now so I could grow with the business. Yeah. And and if I may, it sounds like part of that too is is as a CPA coming in to be able to do what you've done. you're going from youre you You're transitioning also your skill set from I can report on the numbers to now over the last year and a half with underlock with understanding the business and understanding the levers that are there and how we get to margins and all things like this. You are now
00:11:28
Speaker
You have elevated kind of what you are able to accomplish to almost you you're more of a strategic thought partner to the CEO as opposed to someone who's just supposed to close the books every month, right? And it's not that that's a pretty cool place of where you can take this accounting background in a CPA is again like. Everyone needs their books closed. That's a necessity. We all need that right. And when you understand those things well, you can also rise to be a strategic decision maker in the business, which is exactly what you set out to do. It sounds like that's exactly what you're doing. So congratulations.
00:11:58
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. And I mean, I think I sort of took the non-traditional route through my career anyways to where I started at the big four. I did an audit internship. I wasn't super thrilled with what audit was. I thought I should still start in this career because it makes sense. It's a great foundation to start at. And I think it's like you learn so much in such a short amount of time that I knew it was a great place to start.
00:12:23
Speaker
Before I actually started full time, PwC reached out to our starting class and was like, we have this capital markets and accounting advisory group opening up in Denver. Does anyone have any interest interviewing for that instead?
00:12:36
Speaker
i took some classes in college, one of them was evaluations. And to me, this sounded really interesting because it's the capital market side. It's the technical accounting side, which I also liked kind of the research component. So I thought that this aligned with my skill set and like my interests a little more than auditing. what else So I made the choice then to go into the capital markets group. It was really cool because I was one of the first people in that group in Denver. So I got to see,
00:13:04
Speaker
Again, it being built kind of from the ground up. Yes, there were other capital markets groups throughout the country that we could kind of use as models, but we were really building that out for Denver. So I got to see a lot in a short amount of time and I got to be a part of things that I think as an associate, I probably wouldn't have gotten to see otherwise. But I think the really cool thing about working at a firm like that is You get so much exposure to different industries, to different types of companies, to different sophistication of companies, to different systems, to different like problems that they're trying to solve. And so it's just such a good learning ground because you're always trying something new and you have a pretty big research pool to draw them from.
00:13:52
Speaker
So not only did I have my team, but if someone on my team hadn't done something, you have your whole national network to tap into. yeah Chances are someone's seen something somewhere before. And so it's just such a good knowledge base to be able to have. And so it's just like a really nice thing to to kind of have as like a safety net in a way too, because you're making these decisions and you're building these things, but you have a lot of good thought partners too to kind of help you along the way. And they really help you grow. I think they help you grow your skillset to help you figure out how to look at problems. You kind of get a sense for, you know, the standard of work. They expect all of those things. And I think you just get to see it in a very condensed amount of time, which I thought was cool. Cause I feel like I learned,
00:14:39
Speaker
a lot in those couple years I was at PwC that would have taken me a lot longer to learn elsewhere. Yeah, I mean, 100%. And you alluded to different projects, different clients, different industries, and something else I i want to call out of a potential benefit right of kind of going big for a very large company like that, is you're also seeing different managers and different bosses.
Mentorship and Career Transitions
00:15:00
Speaker
and they have different styles and you get to then have a front row seat of the potentially the type of manager boss that maybe you would like to emulate or not emulate whereas in some other roles right there might just be one boss and there's no such thing as seeing other styles right and so that's a whole another aspect of kind of going big four that's again a benefit especially as as a younger professional to kind of take what's good and what you don't like about all these different experiences that you get to have and try to mold a little bit. I want less of this and I want more of this. I may not know what I want to be when I grow up, but I know I want less of this and I want more of this. And it's really hard to know that unless you see a lot of those things, which you got to see in those first couple of years at PwC. Yeah. All right, so we've we've got bought it to capital markets, PwC. And it sounds like you were there for two, three, four years. three I think it was about three years.
00:15:54
Speaker
OK, and help us understand what why leave then? What did you what did you go do next? And why was that the right time you felt to go do something else? Like many people face that first that first experience of um I'm in my first job out of college. When is this the right time to leave? Do I stay here? Is now the right time? How do I know? How how did you face that and unpack that for yourself?
00:16:18
Speaker
Yeah so I would say when I started my intention was to stay until manager because I thought you could like like I said earlier they have pretty set career paths and like a good foundation at at places like the big four to where you know kind of the level you're at you know what's next they have very clear steps on how to get there they have great feedback processes great coaching courses all of those things that kind of help you progress So I figured the higher up I could get there and then I could transition over to industry, it would just help me in the long run. So my thought was that I was going to stay until a manager. I wasn't really looking outside at anything at that point in time. The piece that that started to wear on me a little bit though was I was in the capital markets group, which is more of the consulting side of the house. And I was traveling a ton. So I was on the road Monday through Thursday, most weeks.
00:17:09
Speaker
It was really fun at first. I loved it. I got to travel with a lot of people who were you know similar ages to me. I got to see a lot of cool cities that I otherwise wouldn't have seen. You got to be a part of like transactions at pretty big name companies, which was really cool. And so I loved all of that, but as I got a little bit beyond that. And I grew up a little bit, I was kind of like, I'm missing having a foundation back home to where it's like, I feel like I'm gone so much that I don't have a meaningful way to build kind of what I want to be doing back in my house. And I wanted to be, you know, starting a relationship during this stuff where it was like, being on the road that much is kind of what started to
00:17:51
Speaker
to get at me. And I think some people love it. And some people can do that for so much more of their careers. But for me, I just felt like I wanted to kind of build something that was more stable. I think the other side of that was I saw a lot of transactions and I specifically saw a lot of IPOs during my time at at PwC. And I really enjoyed that process. I thought it was such a cool thing to be a part of the hard part about being at PWC or at any client services company is you're not the person who's at the company who sees it really from start to finish. So you come in, there's a specific problem that you're there to solve. You get them from point A to B and then you move on to another project. You're never there to really like experience the upside or downside of when something happens.
00:18:43
Speaker
And like specifically for IPOs, I just thought it was such a cool thing to be a part of with companies. And you see these people who have worked so hard to get to that point and you see them get there and celebrate and get to like reap the benefits of them being public, but you don't really get to be a part of it in the same way because then you pack your bags up and go home. So.
00:19:05
Speaker
What I was kind of like starting to noodle on is I really wanted to do that as part of a company. I wanted to be on the other side of the fence there in terms of like, I wanted to really be there to see it from start to finish. And so I kind of started to casually look outside of that. I think the but thing about starting in in big four or in public accounting in general is you get recruiters knocking on your door quite often.
00:19:32
Speaker
and Another benefit out there, everybody. Another benefit. Yeah, another benefit. And so I had some recruiters knocking on my door. There was one offer that sounded particularly interesting for me. It was kind of a technical accounting and special projects type role where I had done a lot of that stuff at PWC. And like I said, I wanted to do it as part of a company. I also really wanted to do the IPO route. And this was something that was on the table for this company. And when I joined,
00:20:02
Speaker
I was able to do a lot of the technical accounting pieces, but I had found kind of quickly that the role itself didn't really match my expectations for what the role would be. And I wasn't working on quite the stuff I was hoping to be working on. So this was also around the same time that the new ASC 606 revenue recognition standard came out.
Career Challenges and Milestones
00:20:22
Speaker
Everyone was trying to figure out how to assess it, how to implement it.
00:20:26
Speaker
So my role quickly kind of turned into how do we do this 606? What do we do? What's the answer? What do we need to put in place to be able to actually recognize revenue in this new way? And so it was a very small, like niche technical piece that I was really focused on for a vast majority of my job there.
00:20:45
Speaker
It was interesting because I learned so much about revenue recognition, but like taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, I was kind of like, this isn't really what I want to be doing for my life. And so I was a little bit disappointed in terms of like what my actual day to day looked like there. I wasn't super eager to jump ship or anything like that quite yet.
00:21:09
Speaker
I had put this, again, like mental goalposts in my mind that I should stay for at least a year before deciding to move on. um When it less than a year came around, I had still had conversations and I still kept in touch with a lot of people from PwC.
00:21:26
Speaker
Which like I mean, I think that's another great thing about the Big Four. Your current job is because of someone you met at Big Four, so that network doesn't just go away after you leave. It sounds like it's it's it's added to you multiple times over the years, even after leaving.
00:21:40
Speaker
Exactly. And like my partner at PwC, who had brought me into the capital markets group, he's been a huge mentor for me, like pretty much my whole career. So I kept in touch with him. And we had talked throughout that and I kind of told him, you know, this wasn't quite the role I was thinking it would be. I really wanted this. We just kept in touch. He gave me advice. We talked about it. And then he came to me I think I was like at about 10 months into the role. And he said, Hey, look, there's this company, they're in Denver. They're going public. They're looking to go public. Like obviously it's never a guarantee, but they're wanting someone who's going to be a financial reporting manager who can really help them through the S1 registration statement process, who can stand up their financials, who can kind of get everything in place for that. And I think like, it seems like this is what you want to be doing.
00:22:33
Speaker
yeah You should just go and you should interview. And I was pretty hesitant at first, just because I said like, You had this block in your mind of like, I'm only 10 months in, I gotta get to 12. Yeah. Exactly. And I was like, I don't want to leave a job because I don't want to feel like I just look like a job hopper and I'm all around all over the place. And so I interviewed just cause I figured like it wouldn't hurt. I interviewed with who was going to be my boss. I really liked it. I interviewed with multiple other people at the company. I ended up getting the offer and
00:23:05
Speaker
I could just tell from the cultural perspective of it and from the rigor of the team and from what they were trying to do, it was a private equity backed company. Like I just felt like it was a really good fit for me. And again, I went back to my, my former boss at PwC and I was like, I really like this, but I don't know if I should do it. Cause I don't know if I should leave. And I think he gave me what I would still say is advice that I think about a lot, which is like,
00:23:34
Speaker
What would you think if you stayed for two more months in this role and you passed this other one up because you feel like you have to stay just for 12 months? And so that kind of like put me in my place a little bit. It kind of made me realize like this is an arbitrary thing that I've set that like won't actually affect anything. I have this next job in hand. It seems like it's truly what I want to be doing. Like the only thing holding me back is this weird preconceived notion I have about timelines.
00:24:04
Speaker
So I ended up taking the role. I joined the company, it's called Ping Identity, um about a year before their IPO. So I spent that next year preparing them, helping with the S-1 registration statement, getting their financial statements stood up, getting them quarterized because most companies pre-IPO only like get annual audits, they don't do quarterly reporting.
00:24:31
Speaker
before you're public, you need to spend some time doing some kind of like dry runs, trial runs to make sure you're prepared for when you go public to be able to hit certain deadlines. So it was really setting up a lot of kind of the processes around financial reporting and around being a public company. And I really liked kind of rolling my sleeves up and getting my hands dirty. And and again, like the building of the foundation piece, I just found that really interesting. It also,
00:25:01
Speaker
I was able to kind of tap into a lot of the skills that I had learned at PwC in terms of, you know, what to do for the S1 registration statement, what to look out for, what public company policies I should be considering that like is incremental to what you'd need for a private company. So there was a lot of my background at PwC that really helped me kind of get to that, that role and succeed in it. And it was,
00:25:27
Speaker
It was about a year later that we officially went public. I got to go to New York. What did it feel? And now you are. You said earlier, right? Yeah. You helped other companies go public, but it was kind of their celebration. You were flying in and then you were flying out. Now all of a sudden you've experienced this thing you wanted to experience as being part of the team who did it, who was part of the process.
00:25:49
Speaker
How did that yeah feel? was it Was it what you thought it would be? It was pretty awesome. I was invited to be on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange when we went public, so a handful of people from the company, including the founder and including like some key members of my team, like our our CFO, obviously, our chief accounting officer. A lot of these people who had been kind of a part of this this journey with me got to go to New York and celebrate together.
00:26:13
Speaker
and I think still like being on the floor when our CEO and founder rang the bell is one of the coolest experiences that I've had in my career. Just because it's like such a cool culmination of everything you've done up to that point. yeah And then the switches flipped and you're public and to like see it happen while you're on the trading floor is a pretty surreal experience.
00:26:36
Speaker
so I thought it was awesome. I really loved to have hit that milestone with Ping. We had a fantastic team, a fantastic group of people, and it just felt like it was ah it felt like it was a really, I don't know, a feel-good circumstance in terms of the people who were there with me. We had gotten there together, and like we had been through the trenches on things, and we had late nights trying to answer SEC comment letters, stuff like that, where it was like,
00:27:04
Speaker
It wasn't an easy thing to get to that point, but once we were there and we did it together, it was a pretty cool thing to look back on. And I feel like it was just such a good kind of milestone that I was really happy to be a part of at the company, because I do think like it feels different when you're a part of the actual company versus being on the consulting side because you sit there, you build the scar tissue, and then you have to live with it. so like For me, I feel like for the first time, I really understood the difference between like you know coming in as a consultant, understanding the theory behind something and why something should be done, and then being the operational boots on the ground doing it and and knowing that you need to set it up in such a way to be able to do it into the future as the company changes and grows and shifts,
00:27:51
Speaker
And so like, I feel like for the first time, I sort of felt that shift into a more operator mindset, which was an important shift for me, because I do think it's something that being an industry helps you kind of realize.
Handling Self-Doubt and Transitions
00:28:04
Speaker
Yeah. And one thing I'd love to highlight and go deeper on if we could is Well, first of all first of all, I no longer have to ask, what's the coolest professional accomplishment? Because it sounds like we already got there. You lit up when you talked about that story. But one thing I do want to highlight and go deeper on is, so we got about three years or so at PwC, then your first your first role leaving is one that, hey, there for less than a year, it wasn't quite what you thought it was going to be. And then you transition to this new role and you have like a peak moment in your career a year later.
00:28:38
Speaker
So we've got this boom, boom, boom. right that's a weird That can be a weird career trajectory that can play with some people's mindset of like, for a year did I make a mistake? Am I as good as I thought I was? like There's a lot of things that can go into your mind when you make that first move to a new job and it's not what you thought it was. You, however, then found a ah new role that, again, had a peak experience of exactly what you wanted to do. Can can you just kind of help us understand your mindset from I don't know, call it months six through 10 at that first company after PwC before you made the move um that you did. of Again, what was your self-talk? Were you doubting yourself? Were you wondering if you made the wrong move? Will you make the wrong move? Could you just help us understand as you go from kind of this isn't what I thought it was to this great experience? like what What was your self-talk? What was your mindset through that time period?
00:29:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think the other piece I didn't touch on about my time at that company was when I was there, I had a manager and he was helping me through a lot of this. And then he left when I was about halfway through my role. So that was another piece that was really hard because I had someone who I was working with on a daily basis who then left and they didn't backfill his role. So that I was reporting up to the controller who just wasn't in the weeds in the same way. So I didn't feel like I had the adequate support there.
00:30:00
Speaker
that I needed to be able to succeed in the role. And so that was, but that was kind of like weighing on me quite a bit, I would say. And I definitely went through the mindset of like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I made such a bad decision. Should I go back to PwC because I liked that so much better? Is the travel worth it? Maybe I was just getting tired of that and I could do something else. So like, I was kind of starting to game plan, like,
00:30:26
Speaker
what should I be doing because I'm not super thrilled right now? yeah And I think I'm definitely guilty of this and I think probably other people are, is you get sort of caught up sometimes in ah in a role or in a position where you might be kind of miserable and you might not be super psyched with what you're doing, but it's scarier to think about going to something that's an unknown than sitting in this known that you aren't super, super thrilled with.
00:30:51
Speaker
So I've been there and I've been there too. This is why I'm curious to hear how other people kind of have faced similar experiences. Yeah, so I I'd spent a lot of time thinking about that and I felt like taking that next step was super scary. But at the same time,
00:31:07
Speaker
I didn't really see a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of things changing in my current role. And I figured if I didn't go change something myself, I would be sitting in this role in a year and be feeling the exact same way. yeah And so I kind of saw this opportunity at ping and recognize that like, this is all also what better aligns with like what I want to be doing and building out the skills that I want to be honing. And so like those types of things really made the decision easier for me, I would say in terms of like,
00:31:38
Speaker
I wanted to always make sure no matter what role I was in, I was growing my skill set and learning. I didn't want to be stagnant and I didn't want to feel like I was doing something that wasn't something that I didn't want to be pigeonholed. I think that's probably the best way to put it. Yeah. And I wanted to make sure I was rounding out my skill set. And so I felt like this was another thing to kind of look towards that I could do that for. So like taking the leap, it was scary. It didn't necessarily feel great when I was trying to make the decision because You know, you get to the point where you have to leave one job for another. You're going to let someone down inevitably, but I think you always have to focus on what you feel like is best for your career because you're your biggest advocate. And so I think recognizing that where I was, wasn't the right fit for me, it was a super important piece for me to be able to then shift into something that I could, I could identify felt like it was a better fit. And I think sometimes you don't know what you don't like and what doesn't work until you go do it. So I think like.
00:32:38
Speaker
Again, with the big four, you learn so much of what you don't like because you see different industries, you see different projects, you can get a good sense of something because you're on a project for a short period of time and you know whether you like it or you don't. yeah I think it's a good kind of like breeding ground for some of those discoveries. But this was a different one that I had outside of that where it was like, OK, I feel like I know I have a better idea of where I want my career to go. And I think that this this path is going to get me there in a more efficient way.
00:33:07
Speaker
ah hundred percent um And i'll echo I'll echo that on um multiple projects, like seeing a little bit what you like, what you don't like, et cetera.
00:33:18
Speaker
um I also got the, well, I got the M and&A bug early, right? When I was on my very first M and&A project, I was like, this is fast. This is chaotic. This is a lot of stuff happening all at once that has to all be coming together at the same time. This is fun. but yeah some right and and And to some people that was like, I don't want to touch, I don't want to touch that world. But but for whatever reason, right, that was that was, I was attracted to it immediately. but outside of working for you know a company where you see a lot of different projects and and you're expected to kind of rotate and see different industries and different um you know different types of projects. like When you get to see that, you get to hone, where do I like to play and where do I not like to play? so I just want to echo the same thing. One thing I do want to come back to is mentors. and yeah It sounds like you know your first three years at PwC and then you leave for a year, one of your old PwC mentors
00:34:16
Speaker
almost cut and maybe not found this role for you, but at least brought it to you and kind of advise that it was a great fit for what you wanted. And then after and then in your current role, it sounds like you found that through another old colleague at PwC. So can you just help me understand kind of these relationships that you build in those first three years? How did you maintain them over time? It sounds like you've done an amazing job more so than most of of maintaining kind of a long term relationships with great people that you've met along the way.
00:34:45
Speaker
Can you just share with with us a little bit of how you've approached that and how you've kept those relationships up for such a long time where even in your current role, you're still having people who, I'm going to go ahead and guess what you hadn't worked with in five years, who are still kind of fighting for you, advocating for you, or finding things that fit for you. So how did you develop those relationships and and allow them to to still be nurtured over such a long period of time?
00:35:09
Speaker
Yeah, i think I think the starting point of that is, like you said, developing those relationships. And I think some of it is just, you know, spending time in the trenches working together. I think someone gets to know you and they get to know your work style and they get to know your strengths and weaknesses when they're really in the weeds with you working through something together. And I took the approach at PwC and in a lot of my roles to like figure out specific ways that I could add value with my skill set. And I think kind of knowing that angle and knowing maybe I could do this here really helps with some of these projects in terms of like
00:35:48
Speaker
I could just sort of run with something and my manager, who was like one of these mentors, for example, didn't have to focus on on that piece of the project because I could do it. And maybe it wasn't right every time, but if I gave it like a good solid try.
00:36:02
Speaker
And I tried to work through it myself and I came to them with a proposal or maybe I didn't know the solution, but maybe I had a couple of recommendations that I needed to work through. It was so much more effective for our collaboration to be able to come to them with, with that. yeah And by just saying, I don't know what to do. I have a million questions. Can you help me with this? Yeah. Yeah. So I feel like i've I built a really good foundation for those relationships by building up that trust and I think over time you, you work with someone long enough, you really start to understand that. And I think you just, you gravitate towards certain people. And I think I always gravitated towards the people too, who felt like they were very big role models for me in terms of, you know, not only their hard skills, but I would say their soft skills too, and how they approached leadership.
00:36:55
Speaker
And so i I spent time like kind of trying to figure that out for them and what that meant and what it could maybe mean for me in the future. And I just really tried my best to keep in touch. so Even though it's not like, you know, meeting every month or anything like that, like just keeping a pulse on things and never closing a door is really like the main kind of approach I took with some of this to where I was like, I always want to leave the opportunities open, the doors open. I have these great relationships. I never wanted to leave something on a bad foot.
00:37:27
Speaker
And I think that really helped because I think with some of these situations, it was that and it was kind of like the understanding that, you know, we would still be in touch and I would still, we would still have these conversations and we would still like, you know, grab coffee or something like that. That helped me kind of keep, keep them in my network. And then I think the other thing too, is this is so silly to say, but CPE events, like everyone who's a CPA has a continuing, there's CPE courses they have to take.
00:37:57
Speaker
And there was a lot of in-person runs in Denver where like one of the big four would host it and you would go and you'd spend a day getting CPE credit. As an alumni of PwC or even I would go to the other big four ones.
00:38:10
Speaker
The community of Denver CPAs is not a massive community. And so I would see people from PWC at these because maybe they were still at PWC or maybe they had moved on to a different role. So I think like having those touch points was a nice way to do it too, because you would kind of just have, you know, an annual check-in on somebody because you all were going to the same place and doing a CPE event and happy hour or what have you. And so it was like a nice kind of way to also stay in touch with them a little bit more.
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. um And one thing, it sounds like it' it sounds like the answer to this question is yes.
Balancing Career and Personal Life
00:38:45
Speaker
But one thing that I love to ask folks is, are are you are you happy in your role? right are do Have you achieved a work-life balance that feels good, where you're able to sink your teeth in the work that's meaningful to you?
00:38:57
Speaker
and still have the ability to live the life that you want to live. um And one thing, i I don't want to just always get caught up in work things, even though they're fun and they're exciting. And how do I thrive in my career and things like that? But I would love to understand, yeah, how is this life that you've built? Are you enjoying your career? Are you excited about the trajectory of of where this goes for not only career in your life? can you Can you just help us understand and how you approach how you approach career within the context of your of your life and living the life that you want to live?
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I think first from like the career standpoint is I I start to feel, I don't know, restless when I get to a role where I feel like I'm doing the same thing over and over. So I feel like, and I feel like it's probably something because I learned it at PwC where you're always doing something new. I kind of want to always be doing something new. And when I got to the point where I was doing 10 Ks and 10 Qs over and over and over again, it started to feel a little bit repetitive. And then I was like, we took you public. And now that we have the maintenance going like this, all right, yeah. All right, what's next?
00:39:59
Speaker
So I raised my hands at paying and I was like, I want to do something else. And I kind of wanted to start getting into finance because that was the other piece where I thought my next step is sort of get into that side of the house. Cause I've done the accounting side.
00:40:12
Speaker
And I don't have experience in finance, but I have experience at ping and they know me and they know what type of worker I am and they know what I'm capable of. So they're more likely to take a chance on me in the finance world than me trying to apply somewhere else. That's like a complete blind, like I'm going to apply for an FPA a manager role, but look at me. I have no experience in FPA. So I raised my hand and I basically said,
00:40:38
Speaker
Is there anything here that could be an option for me because I'm kind of wanting to try something new. And I also wanted to think about where I wanted to be in the future and what that meant. And I'll get to the work life balance piece in a second, like what that meant kind of for how I wanted to build my life. So at that point in time, I had, I had looked at another company externally too, just to see what else was out there. And the roles I was getting were like, you know, senior manager of financial reporting who wanted to do another IPO and take that company public.
00:41:08
Speaker
or I could stay at ping and I could take a more vertical move into finance and it wasn't up, but it was over and I could learn a whole new skill set. I made that intentional decision to stay. And I think like ultimately it's what set me up for success and it's why I ended up where I'm at because I did i did a stint in investor relations where I helped them build out the investor relations team. They had brought that in house. That was a really cool thing to experience, but it still wasn't technical enough for me to get the finance experience I want.
00:41:38
Speaker
So after a year rotation there, I got into the corporate finance side at PING. And that's kind of how I started getting some of those finance skills. And I think that's really what kind of laid the groundwork for me to be able to get the role that I have today because I had all of those different experiences. I think if I would have taken, you know, that senior manager of financial reporting role,
00:42:00
Speaker
I probably would still be in financial reporting maybe at a higher level, but like that would kind of be my thing. Whereas now I feel like I can be a VP of finance over both finance and accounting and do all these different things because I have experience in a lot of different things. And maybe I'm not like the expert in this specific thing, but if I can build out a team where I do have experts in those specific things, it just works. I think well, because I haven't pigeonholed myself in one specific subset of finance or accounting.
00:42:31
Speaker
So it was an intentional thing for me to kind of take these lateral moves, which ultimately I think put me up higher when then I i got this next role, which I think set me up kind of to the position that I'm in now. And I think getting there, I mean, I definitely had struggles with work-life balance throughout my career. Cause I think in accounting and finance, it's so deadline driven that it's hard not to. And I think you have to recognize sometimes that sometimes you have to put your head down and grind through something and it's,
00:43:01
Speaker
Maybe not super fun, but if you're with a fun team, it it feels a little bit cool. Cause like I said earlier, you're in the trenches with people. It's a really cool place to be, but it's not sustainable forever. So I put my head down. I had you know the occasional long nights. I had them at my current role even. And I feel like I got to the point where I kind of had built some of that up to where I could have a more sustainable go forward part of my life.
00:43:27
Speaker
yeah And the other thing I haven't mentioned is this was kind of me leading into my maternity leave. So I had a baby eight months ago and thank you. And again, it's it's a tough thing because it's like, this you're you're really forced to confront this work-life balance kind of at that point in time because you have to.
00:43:46
Speaker
And i I really tried to intentionally set up my role and my team to where like, we were all, you know, not incredibly strapped for time and running on empty all of the time to where it was like, you're kind of running this, like, it's all work all the time type mindset, because I really think a lot of success is achieved by like spending time outside of work, doing other things, recharging yourself in different ways.
Importance of Work-Life Balance
00:44:14
Speaker
in terms of whatever makes you happy, whether it's, you know, being outdoors, exercising, reading, whatever it is, like, I think that's such an important piece to being a successful professional because you want to have that time to unplug. Cause I think it sometimes helps to take a step back and see the bigger picture. So I, I was, I mean, I don't want to say I was forced to do it because of maternity leave, but like, I really was trying to be more intentional about doing it then. And I think it really did help.
00:44:42
Speaker
I would say like coming back from maternity leave, I've still had to kind of get things rolling again that maybe were put down when I was gone. So I'm kind of working through the kind of rebuild of that. But for the most part, I'm trying to really be intentional about keeping that work-life balance because for me, it's it's how I sustain a career. Like i I think now I couldn't be working insane hours all the time just because it's A, not what I want to be doing at this point.
00:45:09
Speaker
And I'm in a role where I don't have to be in the trenches every single time because I've built a team below me that can help me with stuff. And you have to learn to rely on them and you have to hire people you trust and build on a team below you that's successful. I think to be able to have kind of that sense of security and that ability for you and for your team to be able to establish that work-life balance.
00:45:32
Speaker
Yeah, 100% and then you're right as you as you ascend in the working world, right? You are no longer paid as much for the work that you are doing right now. You are. You are paid for making great decisions.
00:45:47
Speaker
yeah And oftentimes great decisions happen when you are, I can't tell you how many times, I'll go out for an hour long walk thinking about a problem with no, I mean, no phone calls, no podcasts, no nothing. Just like, let let your mind wander. If I do this, what will that lead to? Well, that that's going to a place I don't really want to go. What if I do it this way? And it is fascinating how I will say I've picked up walking a lot in the last year, maybe a year and a half.
00:46:14
Speaker
45 minutes to an hour to stretch and it's amazing what happens when you just let your mind wander, right? When we're always doing stuff all the time, right? We just let your mind wander. Sometimes it's like, why am I spending my time on this? This is a way bigger opportunity. Why don't I go do this instead? um So it is, i will I will echo the grading space. Once you have that foundation, right? Once you've built up all those yeah foundational things, it's kind of younger in your career um when you're when you're now a little older and now it's time to like get paid to make decisions. Sometimes you need quiet to go make good decisions, not tons of tons of activity. Yeah, I totally agree. And it's also like you need to see the forest through the trees too. I think you just have to take a step back and you have to see the bigger picture. And sometimes it's hard to do when you're trying to grind through one specific thing, one specific deliverable. So it's like you do need to take a step back and kind of I think reevaluate everything. At Alpine we talk about working
00:47:08
Speaker
on the business versus working in the business. And it's really easy to get caught up working in the business by saying, I have this deadline I have to complete by x day. And it's always a deadline you have to complete by some day. But taking a step back and working on the business from the higher level is helpful because it's laying the groundwork for the future. So to your point, it's like not focusing on the immediate, this is what I'm doing right at this moment in time.
00:47:34
Speaker
It's saying, what do we need to be doing to still be around in five years? What do we need to be doing for setting ourselves up for competitive advantage because this is coming down the pipeline? like It's really focusing more on the strategic side, which, I mean, it's scary, but it's fun. Yeah.
00:47:52
Speaker
And it's a lot more fun when you build the foundation with all the things that you've done beforehand. um One thing I just want to i want to highlight and then i I would love to go in a couple of just rapid kind of quick hitter questions that are more fun. yeah um So one thing I want to highlight from what I've heard on your career path, right? We've got PwC, nice rocket shit up up it bracket ship up, constant learning, like great experience.
00:48:14
Speaker
We make our first move and then it's, ah, it's not quite what I thought it was gonna be. Maybe it's horizontal, maybe it's even, ah, this isn't what I want. maybe it's Maybe it's not quite as good as I hoped. Then we've got this rocket shut up ah ship up with our next move of, you got the experience you wanted the whole time. i I took a company public with the team, I was part of it, right? And then that starts to become, well, now filing all those quarterly annual reports is kind of maintenance and maintenance doesn't get you as excited.
00:48:41
Speaker
And so now you take this horizontal move over into the finance realm of the house that then is allowed you to take a monster move kind of up into where you are today. And the point I'm making is everyone who thinks a career is just this straight line up and to the right over a number of years, that is almost never the case. There is almost always an up and then there's a down and then there's a horizontal and then sometimes there's just a parabola spike. um yeah And so I just want to highlight that seems to be your trajectory. And I know mine has definitely not been this There are very few people I know who just do this straight up and to the right. There's usually some hard paths and some treading water along the way and some big, all the sudden swings that you look back and you're like, where did that come from? i just The last year I crushed it. um So anyway, I just want to highlight that seems to be the the path that you've taken. It's very common. So if people who think, I'm just going to do this every year, that's not that's not often the case of how things work out.
00:49:34
Speaker
It's definitely not. I think, like I said earlier, you sort of have to be your biggest advocate in your career. And you kind of have to pave the way you want to, you want to pave it. Like I would say I in my current roles have always thought about what does that mean for the next sex role?
00:49:48
Speaker
Yeah, because if I wanted to do something like stand financial reporting, I could have done that. But then I would have realized if I got to that point, maybe it would have hit a ceiling. So I was always trying to think about how does this play into like the broader thing that I want to be accomplishing. And so I think like, yeah, it's maybe a crazy way to get there. But ultimately, you can do it. It's just not straight. It's not linear. Yes, yeah. And be comfortable knowing that sometimes you take a step back or take a step sideways. If you have the broader picture in mind, sometimes that's the right move.
00:50:18
Speaker
And it can be a hit to the ego really quickly. It can be a hit to the ego because sometimes it's hard to take a lateral move just because you're like, I want to be promoted. I want to do this. But like I think putting that aside and really seeing how it plays into your future is has been entirely helpful. And that's definitely something that I learned from my mentors and talked through with them.
00:50:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. And a couple of quick hitter questions to to kind of round us out here a little bit. So any crazy wild, what's the weirdest wildest craziest story? I can't believe that actually happened, that you're allowed to share with us. Anything anything come to mind over over this career of yours that has been consulting to multiple IPOs. Anything that's just, you look back and say, I still can't believe that happened. It's weird, weird wild, crazy story from your career so far.
00:51:09
Speaker
the The first thing that comes to mind is at my PwC days when you're on. a team, I was in a small town in Indiana with a group of people who were my own age. And you're you're traveling for work, right? You have like an expense account essentially that you can you can use for meals, et cetera. And I remember so vividly, there was a person on that team who essentially like bought bought dinner or something and paid an absurd astronomical tip on that dinner because it wasn't his.
00:51:40
Speaker
And so he just felt like he could he had, you know, he could do it, because why not? It's not it's on TVC. I would say don't do that. Probably not not how you want to approach that. Are you allowed to share the absurdity of the tip? Like, are you allowed to put something crazy like 200 percent or something? It was just like something you never should have done. But like, you know, you're young, you're reckless.
00:52:04
Speaker
you're gambling with someone else's money. So it's like, Hey, why not just try to go for this and ultimately not the call. But it was an interesting thing to be like, Oh wow, I am actually a young professional and have to make decisions like this. And maybe I should think about, you know, making a more rational one. Yeah. Got it. And, um, or For folks who are maybe considering getting a CPA, um maybe they're taking it right now. and Any advice as you look back on when when did you knock out your CPA? right Did you do it while you were working? Did you do it before you were working? And myth maybe also, your advice you you may have done X, but you're like, I wish I would have done it this way. So kind of how how did you approach the CPA in terms of timing? And and what would your advice be to folks who were kind of going through it or thinking about going through that soon?
00:52:53
Speaker
I got pretty lucky with timing, I think, because I started my CPA when I was in grad school. And at that point in time, I had already had an offer with PwC to start in September. So I started, I took my first test when I was in grad school. I yeah took, I think, BEC is my first one because I was still also taking other tests and doing other homework and stuff like that.
00:53:14
Speaker
So I could kind of do both at the same time. And then I spent, I think we graduated in in May. I spent the next couple of months before my internship with PwC really sitting down and treating that like my full-time job. to To study for the CPA, we used Becker because PwC subsidized that for us, which was really great. And so you sit there, you do the books, you do the videos, you do the flashcards. I really focused on doing that so I could get everyone done on my first try.
00:53:44
Speaker
yeah because I wanted to start into PwC having done it. brush yeah yeah And I was lucky to be able to do it that way. I would say it really helped because once you're in the thick of it, and especially if you're in a role where you're working like in audit busy season or something like that, I think it's really easy to push it off to the side.
00:54:06
Speaker
yeah and because the work becomes the priority. So I would say to the extent you can do it before you start, I think that for me was the easiest. I was glad I did it that way. um I definitely had coworkers who who did it you know at work while while we were at PwC and they were able to do it, but I think you just have to be a lot more intentional and careful with your time if you're doing it that way. Yeah, and that's what I've, ive that's I have so far not heard one person say,
00:54:33
Speaker
Yeah, I took it. I took it while i was working and I wouldn't have chang I wish I would have gotten as much of that done as possible before starting f those who still had to do it while working and for those who finished it like you did before working it's like yep that was definitely the way to do it It was. It definitely was. Awesome. A couple of real quick errors. Any recent book um that was you just couldn't put down, um something that that maybe was from Alpine, maybe it was from someone a work colleague, and any book that came that you're just like, this is fantastic. I can't put this down. I've i've i've got to get through this because it's that fantastic.
00:55:13
Speaker
I'm a big reader, so I read a lot of books. I would say one of the most recent ones that I really, really enjoyed, it's not business related at all, was called Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. It was just, I thought it was a great story, really well written. i There's a lot of business books out there and I do try to read them, but I think sometimes, like we talked about earlier, I need a little bit of break from that side of my brain. And so I usually find find reading a little bit of an escape instead of like an informative thing.
00:55:40
Speaker
Yep, awesome. And is there any any number one biggest piece of advice you give to current accounting majors or folks who maybe are about to graduate or a one year into their their first accounting role, um any any one biggest piece of advice you might give them or set another way, if you could go back and give yourself advice in your first year in or in your last year of college, anything that you might tell yourself that might apply for folks currently in that in that stage of their life? I think in the first couple of years,
00:56:09
Speaker
try to learn as much as you can and be a sponge for everything around you because there's so much and there's so much learning that can be done just on the job and in when you're in it. And so I think like just being open-minded to that learning and figuring out, you know, what pieces of it you do like and what you don't like is super helpful, I think. And I touched on this earlier too, but I said, I would say like figuring out a way to add value, even if it's small, even if it's helping something become more efficient. Or like I said earlier, it's trying to work through something and it's coming to your boss with with solutions or proposals or something instead of just trying to come to them for for help. Like I think having sat down and thought through something yourself yes and becoming informed on your own is really, I would say something that helped me a lot in those first couple of years. And I think it goes a long way.
00:57:02
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. And if you can even sprinkle some of that adding value, here's how I thought about this. Here's a way that we might do this. Another thing that I did, you also mentioned a lot of times making it fun, right? Having a team that there's long days, there's long hours, so you got to make this stuff fun somehow. One thing I did at one project was a team of four of us cramped in a small room, also traveling, right? Monday through Thursday, every every week for months.
00:57:26
Speaker
is I got like a WWF championship belt for $10 on eBay or something. And whenever somebody like made a great comment or something something happened, I would pull out the belt like, you are the champion today. Just something stupid, just to like make the experience just fun. So you can also get younger in your career, be a sponge, do those things. You can also bring just a good energy to the experience because we're all looking to just be arm in arm with people and have fun with the experience while we're doing it.
00:57:56
Speaker
That's such a good point. I think at some of my roles, like the people I remember the most are the people who did that and who brought the team together. Yeah, it's awesome. Any last words of wisdom, Leah? although if If not, like this has been awesome. Any last words of wisdom folks out there? I don't think so. I think just keep an open mind and don't close the door.
00:58:16
Speaker
That sounds like good advice we all should take. Well, thank you so much. This is a great, great career rundown. So many twists and turns and great nuggets for people out there. So thank you so much for sitting down and doing this. Yeah, thanks so much Spencer.