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Cool Careers in Accounting Ep. 3 - From Auditor to Entrepreneur with T.C. Whittaker
255 Plays3 months ago
T.C. Whittaker went from CPA to audit expert to business builder. He’s now Co-Founder and CEO of Audit Sight, a leading technology platform that eliminates manual work for auditors, diligence and private equity providers by automating financial transaction verification —with exciting projects in the pipeline, including a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Learn about his unique approach to building companies, the passion that has inspired his journey, and how an accounting background can grow into successful entrepreneurship.
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Transcript
Introduction and Meet TC Whittaker
00:00:09
Speaker
Spencer Payne here with Becker and another episode of Cool Careers in Accounting here today with TC Whittaker. And TC, can you introduce yourself? Maybe how how do you tell friends and family what it is you do for work? What's your title and and what lights you up?
00:00:26
Speaker
Sounds great. Spencer, thanks so much for having me on this. I was looking forward to speaking with you and doing this. So thanks again for for the invite. It depends on who I'm talking to. ah and A lot of CPAs might actually relate to this. When when you're your mom or your grandmother finds out you're a CPA, they just automatically assume you you do taxes. and And that's what you do. So I've i've spent the better part of more than a couple decades trying to explain my mom that i've never done taxes you don't want me to do your taxes you don't mean you don't do my own taxes my wife is a cpa we don't even do our own taxes so it kinda depends on who i'm talking to but generally when i tell people what what i'm up to and what i do as i say i build businesses just like some people build houses some people build
00:01:15
Speaker
ah buildings, i I build companies. And that's what I've i've kind of done over the the latter half of my career. It's something I really enjoy doing. Awesome. And what's ah what's the business that you're building now? And also, when you're building businesses or companies, how do you know you're doing it well? like what's What's the scorecard that you look for? like So what what are you building right now? And how do you know you're doing a good job?
Building AuditSight: A New Venture
00:01:38
Speaker
ah current Current company is a company called AuditSight, and that's S-I-G-H-T. We build software that financial statement auditors use and also transaction advisory professionals use, so we sell it to firms all across the world. And how do you know if you're doing it right? You know, honestly, one of the most difficult things about my job and about My position is you don't get and this is it actually one of the things i think was really great about being and i yeah i was an auditor i start my career in public accounting one of the great things about doing that is like i would you get like these things you can accomplish right like you got a checklist you can go down that checklist you can accomplish things and at the end of the day you can kind of look back on your date man.
00:02:26
Speaker
Like I crushed it like I'm not five things off that list. I was getting 30 right. i My job is nothing like that. um It is very difficult sometimes on a daily weekly or even monthly basis to say like,
00:02:41
Speaker
Are we moving the needle and moving in the right direction now with with time you can look back and tell it was past quarter how do we how do we do that honestly i was a big adjustment for me to say like okay how do i know i am.
00:02:57
Speaker
having the team and we're working on the right things and we're copying the right things and there are certainly milestones that happened kind of along the way like from a company when it's born like just like ah when a baby is born and it becomes a you know it goes to the baby stage and becomes a toddler and then kind of becomes like this.
00:03:15
Speaker
this weird little thing that's more like a person and then like a teenager and they're horrible and then, you know, so it kind of goes through the same similar life cycle. um But oftentimes it's like very difficult to know, like, are you on a daily basis, weekly basis, are you accomplishing the things you want to accomplish? It's just a hard thing about the job and something you have to get comfortable with when you do this. um And so that was a big learning for me, certainly and in my first couple goes.
Mentorship and Guiding Principles
00:03:43
Speaker
Any practice of how you got comfortable with that, again, going from this task based five things in the list crossed out, I did great today to then all of a sudden like, well, what should even be on my list?
00:03:56
Speaker
Maybe that thing that I crossed out actually doesn't matter. Or what's what's so important that actually it's on my list, but it's going to take weeks or months for this thing to happen. So can you help us understand maybe a little bit of that bridge and did you get any practice in any way of going from task-based success to ah some other version of success that that you needed to find along the way of what what feels like success when you're building a company?
00:04:19
Speaker
Yeah, lots, lots of practice, lots of failure, lots of like doing it the wrong way and being like, I don't want to do it like that anymore. I was also very fortunate to have some mentors who I could go to and say, Hey, yeah, I'm thinking this, like, is this insane? Or is this directionally bright? Like, what what does that look like? um And ultimately, and What what and the way i kind of think about it now and i like how you said do i even know what should be on the list like that's a great question with a good question to start asking. ah But ultimately what i've kind of morphed into and where i'm kind of moved and doing this is i like to think about.
00:05:02
Speaker
um What are the, we call them, I call them guiding principles. um So I think of these, and I think of these things like laws of the universe. So you can, you can believe in gravity or not. But if you step off the top of the building, gravity is going to take over because it's a law of the universe. and you can You can say you don't believe in it, but then you're going to see it real quick. That's right. You can't violate it. yeah and with Every company that that that I run, I think about what are the guiding principles for this business. And in essence, what I'm trying to do, I develop those guiding principles, is I'm trying to put guardrails
00:05:42
Speaker
guardrails around the road and then hire as the best people and the smartest people I can possibly hire to do all these unique things. God's given everybody like a gift and some people are good at this, some people are good at that, other people are good at these other things. But basically what I want to do is to create these guardrails. We call them guiding principles.
00:06:00
Speaker
that they can't violate so it keeps people from like driving off the cliff in either direction and so a lot of people think that like well like this like if you have these guardrails and you're building something brand new and you're creating something that's never existed before like you're stifling creativity all that kind of stuff that's that's completely wrong it's actually completely wrong if you are in a vacuum and you're trying to be like crazy creative it's actually very difficult.
00:06:25
Speaker
But if you have these guardrails and you know that anything I do in here is on the table, you do anything I want in here. I can be as creative as I want. I can think about solving this problem in any way that I want, provided I don't just violate these guiding principles. Man, it's this very powerful freeing thing. And so I think about how do I build an environment where all these smart men and women who who I get the opportunity to work with can can then do all these great things that that they're really good at doing right and then ultimately push the company forward and push the company forward way farther and way faster in a way that's just me by myself like ticking boxes because you know a lot of the folks I get to work with are are way better at stuff than I am. and so
00:07:12
Speaker
if I can just create that environment which allows them to be the best version of themselves, then boom, like the the the overall the company can move move forward faster and farther. yeah Awesome. and and any Any quick examples of maybe one of those guardrails, for example, the size of client that you're trying to go after or the types of solutions that your product is offering, we're going to play here, but we're not going to play here. and Any particular Just just i could be a really dumb obvious example to you, but just can you give a sense of like what's one of those guardrails just as an example of a place where you and the team are not playing. Yeah, a couple of ours at audit site that we adhere to and these these are applicable to me like I can.
00:07:50
Speaker
you I can't violate gravity, you can't violate gravity, same thing. like it Whether you're the CEO or whether you're a software engineer or an account manager, like it doesn't matter.
Eliminating Manual Tasks and Data Security
00:07:58
Speaker
like you can't You can't violate these rules. ah For us, we have, ah what are some good ones for us? We have it anything that we build, because we build software at my company, anything that we build, it must eliminate a manual task that our customers otherwise would have done.
00:08:16
Speaker
People come to me with great ideas all the time. And my first question back to them is like, is this going to eliminate a manual task that our customer would have otherwise done, our customer being ah a CPA? yeah absolutely If they say no, I'm saying like, we can't build it here then, right? Like our principle. Another one is data security is paramount. So like everything we do and everything we build has to have a data security lens on it.
00:08:43
Speaker
And if we don't have that lens on it, then we can't build it. We can't create it and we can't do it. But then we have like guiding principles that are in contradiction to one another. We have a guiding principle that says for us internally, we want our economic margins to be equal to or greater than 75%. So you have to like, you could build all the data security in the world and you can see.
00:09:05
Speaker
millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars doing it, but you violate the 75% economic margins, right, that percentage. And so you have to like weigh these things against each other, which actually, I think creates this really healthy tension that that you can't violate either, and you ultimately get to a better answer on things. So those are examples, maybe of three of them.
00:09:25
Speaker
Yep. Awesome. Perfect. Thank you. and And just quick one too, like, is there anything really exciting over the next 12 months, right? As you look ahead with, uh, with audit site, is there any other any projects or there any things that over the next 12 months that you're, yeah, maybe it's a new product release. Maybe it's a new, a new client. Maybe it's bringing on a sales at bright. Is there anything that you're looking on in the next 12 months that just got you really energized?
00:09:45
Speaker
I'm fired up on two two things, two big things. And this, I say fired up for me, I'm fired up because again, I'm a CPA for her auditor. So like this, i I did this work. And so this is exciting me maybe not exciting to the general population, to my mom or to my dad. They might look at me like I'm i'm crazy.
00:10:05
Speaker
but We are working on automating the search for unrecorded liability. Some people call it the AP search. um It's this test that's pretty much done on every single audit that's done. um It is pain in the neck.
00:10:20
Speaker
yeah um And so it's right. And so we've been doing some testing around that and we've had some really nice results. and It's not ready for prime time yet, but I am super excited about what we are building as it relates to that one specific test. We have several audit modules that we have that eliminate and do all kinds of work for our customers. But this is one that I'm like really pumped about um on the audit side. And then for our transaction advisory folks, we're actually doing a joint project
00:10:51
Speaker
with the folks at Amazon right now, they are, Amazon is in a unique position with the advent of artificial intelligence and like what's kind of happening and in that world. And the reason they're in a unique position is the majority of software companies in the world and use Amazon Web Services or a lot of people here are called AWS to store their data, yeah audit flight is no different. and we We store our data in AWS. Now there are other providers that do that. AWS is pretty pretty dominant. I believe that business is now larger than their retail business. I might be i might be off there, but I could have sworn I read that recently.
00:11:29
Speaker
Yeah, so you know if you're not in this world, maybe it's not something to think about or know about. But since all the data is kind of swimming around inside their servers, or the majority of it is, and they're in a unique position. And so we're actually doing a joint project with, and we have some engineers on loan to us from the Amazon team, where we're building some incredible artificial intelligence into our transaction advisory offering um that's going to absolutely change how those men and women do their job. and um I'm really excited to think about making a positive impact on that world. and it's it's ah it's It's pretty cool stuff that we're working on there. right Awesome. and i mean Let's step back here for a second. How did you make this transition from
00:12:14
Speaker
audit to entrepreneur because that isn't necessarily the most common transition that I've heard or that most most people don't necessarily think of or your mom doesn't
From Auditing to Entrepreneurship
00:12:24
Speaker
necessarily think of. Well, you do taxes, wait, but you're starting and running these businesses. It's not exactly the most common transition, but people definitely do it. like how How did you make that transition? right like how How did you go about this? Did you know you were a little different when you were kind of in that audit world? how did what what What was the path for you to make that that move from kind of auditor to entrepreneur? I i did i always that I was not going to be an audit partner.
00:12:53
Speaker
um and And I was like really comfortable with that. like I had no problem with that. um The firm that I worked at, that my first job was at PwC, they had no problem with that. They were like, yeah, of course, no no worries, no issues. i So you were you were open about this. You're like, no, I i don't want i don't want that job. I'm going to do something like that. While you're here, learn as much as you can, contribute to the best of your ability. And those are all things that like I liked. And people there worked really hard, and people there were really smart. And so I was like,
00:13:21
Speaker
I liked it. I did get to a point where I was kind of like, OK, I've seen a lot of audits. I've done a lot of this work. I don't know how much more I can learn in in in this role. And so um I went back to business school. and So I went and got my MBA. After I got my MBA, I went up to Wall Street for a little while, worked in investment banking um and did that. And really what I was trying to do and what i'll my goal all along was I wanted to be extremely well versed in the world of accounting and finance, but um and kind of have that be the cornerstone of the core upon which I would ultimately build my career. And so I felt like my time at PFC prepared me well, I felt like my time at JP Morgan then prepared me even better to kind of understand like,
00:14:06
Speaker
How are companies finance what is that how do you do that ah and then from there i i started into my entrepreneurial journey which i knew i i always wanted to do which was. ah Building and and running a business my unit the men in my family are predominantly surgeons they're all doctors.
00:14:25
Speaker
ah I'm the weird one that got out maybe and but you know they they kind of ran these little small businesses right like a doctor's practice like you know the wives would work in them like be the business manager and like run it and it was just like this like thing that all that kind of happened and i got to see that and i wasn't very interested in the medicine part of like what my dad did or my grandfather mongols.
00:14:48
Speaker
but i was very interested in like the business part always asking tons of questions and like so i knew kind of early on like i like this this makes a lot of sense to me and and you can combine. Kind of the business side of it with this like building creating side yeah and and you put those two things together i was like okay like this is what i was put on the planet to do like i.
00:15:12
Speaker
I find this to be very interesting. I find it to be very challenging. I find it to be very rewarding. Awesome. And you mentioned asking a ton of questions. Could you maybe speak a little bit about ah asking a ton of questions in your time at PwC especially and being curious and maybe.
00:15:30
Speaker
It seems like, and correct me if I'm wrong, that's kind of just a natural superpower of yours. Can you maybe speak a little bit to again, curiosity and learning, not just how to audit this business, but what is driving the performance of this business and maybe the levels of depth that you were trying to go to in your time at PwC following your curiosity with this business mind and maybe how that helped set you up for MBA, JP Morgan, running your own business, as opposed to maybe folks who didn't necessarily follow that curiosity and they viewed it as I checked the lines off the list. Whereas you were adding, how the heck does this work? And you were probably adding some other things to that checklist. So can you speak to a little bit of curiosity and how that has um maybe set you up for what you're doing now and maybe how that's different from maybe some other folks you watched who didn't necessarily have that curiosity and were content to just, you know,
00:16:20
Speaker
do the job, which is fine, but might not help set you up for what you want to do later in life. Right, right. The, um you know, they had a you they had a ah unique, I don't know if it's unique, they had a practice group at PWC, which is a private company group. And I specifically chose ah the PWC is where I wanted to start my career because of that group. And I wanted to be in that group ah so much was that group did not have an industry vertical specialization. I mean, the companies were like,
00:16:49
Speaker
i I audited NFL franchises. I had quick service restaurants. I had drywall manufacturers. I had law firms. I mean, I got to see like a crazy amount of everything. Yeah. I mean, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. um And I love that because the interesting part to me wasn't necessarily, you know, did the AP search return materially accurate results that I can put into a work paper. But it was like, how do these people make money? Yeah. Why are they making money? Like, what's the risk in this business? What happens if there's a downturn? What does that look like? And talking to my clients,
00:17:30
Speaker
um and having those conversations with them was by far the best part of the job and that's why I like the job so much. I learned so much in that job is because I was getting to see all these different businesses and I was getting to ask all these questions and you know the the more senior people that I worked with on my teams, I had some great people and mentors that I got to learn from and they they welcomed the questions. No one was it. No one ever shut down the questions ever even if they were as sophomore right, even if I was maybe just book because I didn't know enough to like know that that maybe that wasn't a great question, but no one was ever like that, like the the culture was much more of like.
00:18:08
Speaker
hey, you're learning, and the best way for you to learn is to like ask us these questions. um you know One of the things I think and was an advantage for me was we were at our clients. So like I had a big HVAC manufacturer, HVACs, but I know a lot about HVACs now, but out in Arkansas, and we would go, and we would sit there, and we would talk to the CFA, and we would talk to the controller, and we would talk to the head of the internal department, and so we were and we would take tours around the facility, and I thought it was fascinating Like how they had set their facility up to like, get closer to just in time manufacturing versus just like building all these things and store them in a warehouse right and so that those sorts of things to me were like, terribly interesting. um And I loved, and I was just naturally curious about asking them, and you know, how did that carry on, you know, I think.
00:18:58
Speaker
You know, I think some people are just maybe, maybe a little more curious. My wife says it drives her crazy, like after church, like I'll run into people and just start asking them questions. She's like, Hey, kids are hungry. Let's, let's go kind of thing. But like, I just, I don't know. I'm just, I just always kind of want to know those things. and um i think I think that's something that you got to be careful with as you're if you're thinking about starting a career or or even if you're further into your career. um If you don't really care like how they do those things, don't don't necessarily like force yourself to ask those questions because I think it can come off like really disingenuous and people can see through that pretty pretty fast. so If I am interested and I do care, I don't hold- Genuinely want to know the answer. You're genuinely curious how X thing works. That's right.
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah, right but but if you're not don't don't maybe force that because I think that can be offensive to some people. Yeah, 100%. What's it seem like this following your curiosity is gives you a lot of joy in your work and has over time. Can you can you maybe speak a little bit to that and like do you do you enjoy do you enjoy your job in this career progression you've had?
00:20:07
Speaker
Do you genuinely enjoy your work and and maybe how have you balanced professional life with personal life and making sure you've got the time for both? And maybe can you give us a sense of like, how is that trended over time? You know, were there times where you were like, well, I was way overloaded on work at this time of my life, but it was okay. And it helps set me up to be able to balance it later. So I guess, can you speak to a little bit of enjoying work and balancing that with personal life and how is that trended over time?
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah. So certainly I really enjoy what I'm doing right now. I'm solving a problem and I feel I'm convicted on this of ah for like my former self. Like I can, when I can relate to my customers, when I say I can relate to my customers, like I sat in the window. was autoing in this it never i know ah you know I know firsthand. right um And so I enjoyed solving that problem. Now, work is still work. like There are hard parts of work that like I don't leave every day and say like, man, I can't wait to do that again. ah That's not true. and There are days when I'm just like, I've just gotten beaten up and down all day and like
00:21:19
Speaker
Man, I'll be glad when I can close my eyes tonight and put that one behind me. um That still happens. But what I but i find is is that if your kind of if your purpose is big enough, that even when you have some bad days here and there, you don't you don't wash out.
Purpose Beyond Profit
00:21:36
Speaker
right Like if the when the storms come or the waves kind of start cresting at the top of the boat, you don't you don't just say like, ah, I'm out. This is too hard. I don't want to do this anymore. um If your purpose is big enough. And oftentimes, what I find when people kind of like wash out of jobs and things, you know, they're their purpose was very small. The purpose was like make money, or the purpose was, you know, be be somebody important. It's like, man, when hard times come, and they always do, ah you generally wash out, like if your purpose is small. And so I think kind of like having that bigger purpose helps you with those days that are not as great. Now, I also have days that are like fantastic.
00:22:17
Speaker
yeah you know, highs of high, where it's like, you assign that big customer you've been working on for the past nine months, or you, you know, you accomplish this one big thing, you have this new release, and you're, you release your baby into the wild, and you get into the customer's hands for the first time, like, sometimes that's nervous, but it's also euphoric at the same time. So it's like, ah it's like a both, sphere it's like a both and kind of thing. But you know, that that can be um that can be really fun right like something from nothing it didn't exist and all of a sudden it exists and people are using it and they're paying you money for it like it's it's a pretty it's a pretty big deal and then um the work work life balance stuff like that's that's uh to me that's like an ever-evolving constantly moving
00:23:02
Speaker
thing that i'm that I'm trying to achieve. I find that being focused on it helps me. Like if I stop thinking about it, I will be consumed with work. um And so I have to, for me, I have to like actively think about that. I'm very grateful for my spouse. She is helpful in reminding me of that. Like if I get too out of bounds um towards work, she can she helps me get me back centered. So I'm very grateful to have a partner like that who's who's who can help me with that. I'm very intentional about some stuff with my kiddos on like coaching their teams and stuff like that. And so we put that stuff and this is how we do it at my company. We put that stuff on the calendar. We have shared calendars so everybody can see everybody else's calendar. And it's like they know like, hey, like tonight ah I'm coaching football for my fourth grader. And they know that like during
00:23:55
Speaker
this time, like, I'm, you can't get me, like, I will not answer the phone. It's impossible happening. Yeah. yeah yeah ah So we do, we do protected time like that and and try to do our best. But, you know, building, building a company is no joke. Yeah, it's no joke. um Can you speak a little bit more about purpose, right? Because building a company is hard. And you mentioned purpose. um And your purpose isn't, you know, purpose, like you said, people wash out if my my purpose is to achieve title X,
00:24:25
Speaker
or to have X amount in the bank or to have the respect of the CEO, like that's i let's that that's kind of stuff doesn't help you through hard times. can you Can you speak a little bit more about purpose and maybe what you've you've kind of landed on of like what keeps you grounded and what keeps you um you know coming back even after those hard days because that purpose pulls you back up?
00:24:45
Speaker
Yeah. ah So, you know, at Auditsite, we even have a ah ah purpose that we we talk about ah here as a company, and we talk about a lot, which is our our team's like shared ah purpose. But I think individually, you can have purpose in your work um as well. So it it doesn't have to be just like the purpose of the company, right? You can also have like and and an individual um aspect to that. And so, you know, at at audit site, ours is ours is lofty. And we talk about things like providing transparency, trust and truth is in the world's economies and capital markets and eliminating fraud as a process as ah as a part of that. And so when we talk about like this big idea of
00:25:33
Speaker
What does that mean to like provide transparency and trust and truth in the world's economies and capital markets? like that's it That's a pretty big statement. um And we don't say it lightly here, but we we say it and with was full respect for like what that means and what what we're saying we're trying to do. But we're trying to make a really positive impact on this world that we live in.
00:25:56
Speaker
And we think that by building a solution like audit it site, we can literally like protect Joe Smith's 401k account who lives in, I don't know, Iowa, or Cindy ah Brown's 401k account who lives in Texas. right like we We think about these individual people who sometimes get hurt by this um fraud that happens in our world and so we're trying to make a positive impact on that but not only just like finding fraud and doing that kind of stuff but also as our capital markets are more efficient then we have a more efficient use of capital then there as a species can like build more things do more good stuff for our fellow man and fellow woman that we get to live on the planet with and so we we talk about that big idea so that you know when times get hard and we talk about the hard times here all the time
00:26:51
Speaker
we remind ourselves that like, hey, what we're doing matters. Like if we're not doing this, no one's doing this. So we got to stick with it. We got to stay at it so that we can continue to make a positive impact on this big world that we live in. So we talk about this a lot. I mean, I just had my company-wide meeting. We do it every Wednesday morning.
00:27:11
Speaker
um And the first thing we leave with is this and then we open it up to the team and say okay where in your world have you seen this like what what have what have you seen so we spend. You know this is like some people think i'm crazy for doing this but i bring the entire company together once a week and. We just have like this free for all we talk about this purpose statement and where we've seen it and what it looks like and ah but i think it's really healthy just to help remind her to the team of like hey there's a.
00:27:38
Speaker
There's a bigger thing going on here rather than just like trying to make money or trying to create shareholder value. like Those are good things. I think they're good things and we we do talk about those things, but it's not the ultimate for what we're trying to do. Yeah, I think that's a really important point here um but to keep in mind for folks who are maybe maybe you're on if it's busy season. but maybe you're Maybe you're on audit hour number 82 for the week.
00:28:05
Speaker
And you might be, ah, what am I doing? This is hard. like i'm I'm tired. I'm hungry. like I didn't get to go to the gym the today. right And on some level, those those all might be true. right And there's a little bit here of like you're not just not just adding numbers up and down on a page. right You are literally responsible for the financial integrity of your parents' 401k. You are literally responsible for ensuring that the trust we have in the system, right that that it works. that When someone says they can pay for a loan, they can. right these they like like Our whole system doesn't doesn't work without a lot of this stuff. and If you can kind of have that bigger purpose in mind, again, on on hour 82, you might still be tired and hungry, but it's a little easier to take if you really keep in mind if you are protecting like your family's
00:28:55
Speaker
your family's 401k plan by making sure that the books are are correct.
Career Reflections and Team Achievements
00:29:00
Speaker
um That purpose is is is huge. um To transition to maybe a little more fun topic, um you've had you've had an expansive career right audit. All these private companies, you mentioned a drywall installer, fast food restaurants, NFL, france like all kinds of different things that I'd imagine in your investment banking world, you saw a whole bunch of different businesses and and industries as well. Do you have anything you look back on as weird, wild, craziest, funniest stories, something that you look back on and you might say, I still can't believe that happened at that HVAC company, whatever it may be. Is there anything you look back on that that still just makes you laugh or makes you kind of scratch your head of, I can't believe that happened in all this wide world that you've experienced? what What sticks out as crazy, funny, or I can't believe that happened that that you're able to share? Yeah, certainly will we'll protect yeah
00:29:50
Speaker
Protect everyone's names ah from and and names of course but we, we had to, we had a closing we had a closing dinner.
00:30:02
Speaker
and And we, we've just done a big, a big deal. Big, big deal. And we had a closing dinner and client was there. Everybody's having, I mean, clients obviously before, everybody's having a great time. It's kind of the but the hard works behind us. That's really great meal. And so we had some younger folks on the team and they had been they've been partaking and maybe maybe a little over served right there probably a couple of people over served right people were celebrating yeah normal stuff um but and the next day we were heading we were heading back and so we were we had been graciously offered a ah ride by
00:30:50
Speaker
by one of the owners who had just rung the cash register in a pretty big way on his plane and said, hey, I'm going anyway. I'll give you guys a ride back. right What's that private plane ride? Is that what I heard? Yeah, they're all like, okay, great. Perfect. Let's do that. That sounds great. We can get back earlier. Like this is great. And so we agreed. I agree to the night before. And so it's like, okay. So we show up on the the tarmac the next day, uh, owner, uh, his wife, um, our team.
00:31:22
Speaker
And one of the newer ah members of the team ah got sick like right as he was like get kind of like getting on to the airplane um and all kind of like all down the owners like the back of his wife's legs like into her shoes kind of like almost like into the plane right like one of those like projectile things I I thought my ND was going to kill this kid. Literally, I thought he was going to kill him. I'm trying not to laugh the entire time. I'm literally biting the inside of my cheek. We didn't have to get on the plane and fly with these people. Across the country. They didn't rescind the invitation after that. They were like, okay, you're here. We're going to get on. Oh man, I remember.
00:32:16
Speaker
it was It was an awkward plane ride, but finally the owner kind of cut cut a joke about it, like 30, 45 minutes into the flight, which like eased the tension yeah just a little bit. But man, that was. a I still can't believe that happened. for all For all of you out there, it's great to enjoy it. And it's great to celebrate a big deal with your team when it happens. But just always remember to eat. That's right. It still worked but work. It will work, especially when we have a private plane ride the next day.
00:32:46
Speaker
ah anything else that stands out as you look back on proudest moments or like things things that you and or maybe your team accomplished that you look back on and it's still something that lights you up or it's still a story that you're excited to go tell because it was just a really proud you know working moment of something that again either you or your team kind of accomplished that you look back on and still it still kind of gives you gas and lights you up anything stand out for you say the the greatest moments are the ones where collectively you you accomplish them where you get to be where I get to be a part of something bigger than me. So when it's those team environments, those are the things like the personal accomplishments. I don't feel like that near as much um as I do like when the team has achieved something I know.
00:33:31
Speaker
um getting the first dollar of revenue. Yeah, that's a big and I always make a big deal out of it. And we celebrate it like crazy. And people think that's weird too. They're like, dude, you just made a dollar. It's like, you have no idea the amount of the amount of time, the amount of sacrifice, the amount of effort that went into like getting to that first first dollar. Yeah. yeah Making the first million dollars is a big, um you know, we celebrate that one like crazy. I remember telling in my supper company before this, when I was telling my team, I was like, listen, from zero to one is one of the hardest things you'll do in your professional career. From one to a million is sometimes even harder. And I was like, and then going from a million and two, trust me, like you'll snap your fingers, you'll blink your eye, and all of a sudden it will happen. You'll be like,
00:34:17
Speaker
that was the easiest thing i've ever done like this was so hard how come this was so easy. yeah Remember my team when we were celebrating our so in our prior company we were celebrating getting to two million dollars of arr they were they came up to me and they're like man we didn't believe you we just thought it was all going to be just the hardest thing ever but they're like you're right like It was so hard getting to a million and now it's like, boom. I was like, yeah, well, we've created this business, right? Which makes it possible to to do these things. And so celebrating those things together and kind of like remembering those milestones. Typically the milestones are tied to revenue. They don't have to be. It could be like.
00:34:54
Speaker
you know, get a big customer in the boat or whatever it might be from that front or getting a new module released or getting a new product out into the marketplace. So those things can be great too but when you're there with the folks that you like locked arms with and you you sacrifice next to those people and you saw them sacrifice and they saw you sacrifice and all of a sudden you look at each other and you only the people in that room know.
00:35:19
Speaker
Other people outside, they just don't know. They might have an idea, but they don't know what it took. And you kind of look at each other in the eyes and you say like, yep, we did this. That's pretty, that's the good stuff. That's awesome. Can you share a quick version of that first dollar of revenue at audit site, maybe some details around like you know from the idea of the business to when it was founded to the first dollar took X number of months, or it took striking out 47 times before we finally got our first free conversion to actually pay for. like any Any short versions of of kind of what you can recall about that first dollar revenue at Oddsite? Yeah. think about I think about our our first module. we had this Our first module is and a accounts receivable module. and
00:36:06
Speaker
I mean, I'm talking to I can't tell you how many managing partners of firms ah I talk to you like, hey, this thing is going to change your world. And they're all like, OK, sure. about Yeah. ah And and finally, get get our first customer firm here in Atlanta. I'm in Atlanta, a firm here in Atlanta where I live. And I had I was very familiar with the firm. ah I wasn't sure they were going to take a chance on us, ah to be quiet to be quite honest with you. But they're like, you know what? we we're looking ah you know We're looking to streamline our practice. We're looking for different ways to do this. And so like this this makes sense. like
00:36:40
Speaker
we ah let's Let's do it. and Like, I was, ah we were on a zoom call, and, and I was like had slack, us this communication tool that we had had slack up and my co founder an hour like, I was like, you know, same timing hammer slightly I was like, Holy shit, like did he really say yes, like I was like, I'm gonna like double check with him like Did you just hear that? Yes. Did he say yes? Am I envisioning this? Is this like, are we in a desert? And I'm kind of like seeing this oasis? Or was like, did this, did this actually happen? So, ah Jonathan confirmed, he did say yes. I was like, Oh, my goodness. Okay, so here we go. And then the next week, we we got them up onboarded, the first audit team use solution and
00:37:28
Speaker
Wow, we sent our first invoice and it was it was awesome. ah And, you know, just take that first one and once you get that first one, man, then you can kind of get off the races after that. But the first one you never forget, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever that first person who's willing to take a risk on you, who's willing to take a chance on you, who believes in the vision that you are a You know, you're trying your best to explain to them of like this new world and what it could be, what it could look like. And, um and the you know, the people that take take put that bet on you, that's a special, special relationship. And it's, I mean, yeah, they're a customer, but like they're much more than.
00:38:12
Speaker
Yeah, earned is much more than a customer to us that here at outside. Yeah, that's awesome. A couple of quick hitter questions here to to kind of wrap us up a little bit. If you could go back um to say, you know, final year of college, or maybe first year in the working world, kind of in that type of an era.
00:38:30
Speaker
ah What advice, knowing what you know now, right? What advice might you go back and give yourself at that time in life? and And what advice might you share with folks who are in that same situation today or kind of in that last year of college, first year of work? um Again, knowing what you know today, you know, a lot more than you than you knew then we all do. what What advice would you give to yourself or to folks who are in that situation right now?
Focusing on Short-term Goals and Personal Purpose
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah, try. um would I would like to say this to my younger self, myself with more hair and less gray is don't don't think about your your life and like planning it out to like these way out far out years. It's just crazy. So many things happen in your life. So many things decisions that you make decisions that other people make that affect and impact your life and like I mean, so many things out of your control. um And so i could get and I could get bogged down in that. I could like get spend too much time thinking about like, oh, I want to be here in five years. I'm going to be doing this. and That's like it's like crazy town. That's like crazy world. What I found is much more effective for me is like, yes, I can have a plan or an idea where I might want to be in a few years. But really,
00:39:42
Speaker
Any more than a year is like too much. And I feel like it's a waste of my my time and my thinking to like think beyond that. But like really thinking through like, OK, for this next year, I want to accomplish these things and or I want to get these experiences. I want to learn this. I want to be able to position myself at the end of this year to be here at at X or at Y or at Z. I think that's appropriate and something that we can actually like wrap our brains around.
00:40:10
Speaker
um And it doesn't distract us so much with like the the future, the future, the future. you know Thinking about the future all the time really robs you of the joy that you can have now. um It's this like great thief of joy. I hear some people who who say they they can dwell in the past. I never really had that problem. My problem is more I have to pull myself back for thinking about about the future and what's over the hill because frankly no one's promised tomorrow. No one has any real a lot of people try to say they know exactly what's going to happen how it's going to work and they have all this confidence in how they're saying it but they don't know.
00:40:50
Speaker
None of them know. And so, but if I can shrink that timeframe down, it can start to make a lot more sense to me and I don't find myself constantly thinking about like, way wait, wait, wait out here. Now, we do all kinds of strategic planning at my company and we think about three years out and things like that, but where we spend our time?
00:41:07
Speaker
is on the next twelve months and then where we really spend our time is what do we want to accomplish over this next three months this next quarter so that we can ultimately land where we want to land in twelve months and then beyond that it gets really murky like really really really fast.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah. yeah um And is there anything you would like of the audience expertise or are are you hiring if someone is like, man, I like what I'm hearing. This audit site thing sounds cool. um I'd like to, I'd like to go be part of this. um Yeah. are Are you hiring? Is there anything that that you need of the audience expertise or anything like that that you'd like to ask?
00:41:42
Speaker
ah we We are hiring and and our we're growing. So we're adding new firms and and new customers all the time. And so we have a few different roles, certainly on the software ah development side that we are always looking for. But we also have some account managers and our account managers are CPAs and former auditors. And we're very intentional about that because we don't want our customers to call in and get like a generic ah Customer success rep that yeah maybe he understands the software but has no idea what they do ah for for a living, right? What an auditor does what a transaction advisory person does um and so we were looking for um those roles as well as as we grow so it's a it's kind of an exciting blend of.
00:42:26
Speaker
product and software and in the world of of auditing kind of combined and into one role. yeah Awesome. and Last question, is there anything the anything extra that you'd like to to leave for the audience or anything that that maybe it's it's worth going back and just re-highlight, double underline this thing I said earlier. i I don't have anything new, but I want to make sure this point is is really kind of wrapped up here at the end. so Any last words of wisdom or anything that you want to go back and kind of re-highlight or re-share because you feel like it's just that that that important of a message for the for the audience. I think one of the one of the really important things I learned over my career is this idea of of purpose. And purpose is not what what you do. You can do anything in this world. I mean, there's all kinds of great things that you can do in this world. I mean, like, amazing things. like i get I meet people all the time that have the most
00:43:23
Speaker
interesting jobs, doing the most interesting things, working with all these interesting people. I mean, it's like, sometimes I don't even know they exist. Like, since people tell me like what they do. And I'm just like, why do you do that? Like, this is, it's amazing. um So like, you can do anything, you can do anything like what, but you you need to figure out like, what's that thing that like, excites you? What's that thing that like, fires you up in life? Oftentimes, you'll hear people tell you, and maybe they've even been telling you this since you were young. Hey, TC, you're you know, you're really good at Hey Spencer, you know, man, you're like really good at that. Like that seems to come super easy to you, right? You've probably heard people say these things to you in your life, right? Those are like your passions. Those are like the things that you're like passionate about, right?
00:44:08
Speaker
Get your purpose role. What's your, and when I say purpose, I mean, like individually, like, what's your purpose on this planet? Like, what are you put here to do? Like, think about that. Like, really, really think about that really long and hard. Like, what is it that you are put on this planet to do? And it shouldn't be I was put on this planet to be a CPA or ah or a doctor or whatever. It should be not like an occupation. That's not that's not a purpose. that's just so That's just something that you do. It should be something bigger than you, something that like really matters um you know for for me, just because I'm um a person of faith. like i say what what What is that for you? yeah my my my and and i'm ah I'm a Christian, so my purpose on this planet is to number one, to know God.
00:44:54
Speaker
to know not know about him a lot of people have like head knowledge like but to know him to be in a relationship with Jesus and then to help other people get to know him that's my purpose now you say like well you're the ceo of a software company Like what? How could you even remotely get those two things? Like convoluted, right? Well, I was going to ask that question, but you asked it for me. Perfect. My passion, my passion, like the passion lane that I like to be in in life is building companies. That's what I, that's what it fires me up. I love it. I absolutely love it. I hope I build a bunch more after auto site.
00:45:30
Speaker
So I can marry my purpose with my passion because my passion can be anything. Your passion would be a doctor, a lawyer, whatever you want. Who cares? But my purpose is bigger because my purpose is like I care so much about the people that work inside of my company. I care so much about my customers that I want them to see in me something that they might want. And then when they ask me like, hey, man, like,
00:45:52
Speaker
Why do you talk so much about like why you love your wife so much? Why do you talk so much about like why raising your children to you know tell the truth and all that kind of stuff? Why do you talk about that all ah all the time? like What gives? It's perfect, man. Let me tell you about this this thing that that's really important to me. This thing that's really important to me is my relationship with Jesus. like What is that? What are you talking about? um Never heard a CEO talk like this. Never heard a CEO tell us he loves us. like I'm like, hey, listen, like I can be mad at you, but it doesn't change the fact that I love you, right? Like, I love you as as a person. I love you as a brother, as a sister, right? And so um that's how we can kind of marry those things. But you're that's for me, right? But everybody needs to understand what their purpose is. Like, why are you on this planet? um And hopefully, that's not just like a
00:46:37
Speaker
Hopefully that's not just like a blank space for people like um but I would encourage you, especially when you're younger to like think about this like really think about it and to understand what it is and then ultimately get get into a passion lane that helps you like drive drive for that purpose.
00:46:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. ah Well, TC, thank you so much for this. go find your Go find your purpose. Go really think deeply about that as great advice that I'm sure most people, if you look in their calendar over the last six months, the amount of time spent on that question is probably zero. So one immediate next step might be In the next two weeks, go pick an hour, go to some place that is calm to you, that is natural to you, where your head can be clear, and just go think about what your purpose is. Good advice. um So TC, thank you so much. From CPA to serial entrepreneur, who's got great stories about how that first dollar revenue came in. Thanks so much for sharing your story.