Breaking Boundaries: From Firm to Freedom with Kelly Rohrs

With over a decade of experience in public accounting, Kelly Rohrs is the owner and founder of Kelly A. Rohrs CPA and Fiscal Minds. She specializes in providing tax, accounting and advisory services to small to medium sized businesses in the professional service industries. Kelly is highly respected within the accounting community, having been named Top 40 Under 40 CPA by CPA Practice Advisor in 2024. She is active in professional organizations from which she has received numerous awards and mentions for her work in the field.

An active member of the AICPA, NYSSCPA, and Whoggga, she serves on the AICPA Tax Practice Resiliency Committee, dedicating her time to enhancing the practices of fellow CPAs. She also runs Fiscal Minds, a monthly mastermind group that supports current and prospective firm owners. In 2023, she co-founded the podcast From Zero to Millions: Accounting Edition with Bilal Mehanna, CPA. The podcast has achieved thousands of downloads and features leading voices in the accounting world.

Transcript:

Welcome to another episode of the CPA Life Podcast, where we spend time talking to forward-thinking firm leaders and industry professionals who, like us, are pretty passionate about rebuilding and reshaping the public accounting industry into a place where you can build a career, have an amazing life outside of the office, and not have to sacrifice your family or your life at the altar of your job to build your career.

And today, we are excited to finally be able to sit down and talk with someone who is doing just that. Kelly Rohrs is the owner and founder of KRohrsCPA, she’s been recognized by CPA Practice Advisors as a Top 40 Under 40 CPA. She’s a podcast host that not only talks about accounting issues on her podcast, but the thing that I love about it is it’s overall business advice that’s applicable to really any type of business that you run, whether it’s a lawn service company, a dental practice, an accounting firm, a recruiting firm, manufacturing, it’s solid business advice. And on top of all of that, there’s a new venture that she’s putting some energy and life into called Fiscal Minds. Did I get that right?

Yes, you did.

And we’re going to be spending some time talking about that as well. Kelly, welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you so much for having me and for such a nice, warm introduction.

Well, you know, I know that most people, and I’m kind of this way, I’m not going to pat myself on the back or talk about things that I’ve done or the firm’s done. It’s just not how I’m wired. And most people just don’t like doing that. And you’re wearing a lot of hats, you’re doing a lot of things, and you’re doing a lot of them very well. So I want to talk a lot about those things. We’re going to uncover a lot about what I mentioned just now, but usually at this point in the show, we like to spend some time talking about where you’ve come from, how you’ve gotten to where you are today, so tell me a little bit about your journey.

Sure. So born and raised on Long Island, lived here, you know, all my life, probably will never leave. And, you know, I did not have a straight path to where I am today. I always had a love for numbers. And I always had a love for starting my own business. I always had that entrepreneurial spirit. Like I was selling bags, handmade bags that I would make out of old jeans. When I was in middle school, I was tutoring kids. I was babysitting, handing out flyers around town. So I always had that hustle inside of me like, “Hey, I can make money. I can help people. I can do this.” I started off, I wanted to be a math teacher, actually. I got almost a full scholarship to Hofstra University here on Long Island, and, you know, my father passed away when I was 10 years old.

Oh, wow.

So, I didn’t really deal with a lot of it at such a young age.

Yeah.

I ended up dropping out of college, getting involved with a bad group of friends, like bad boyfriends, like dealing with life. And so I took a couple of years off and I, you know, dealt with my ****, and, you know, decided that I wanted to go back to school, and I was actually going to go back for actuarial math. I ended up meeting this guy at one of my former employers, and he was a CPA. I joked around with him and I was like, “I’m gonna have to come work for you one day,” and literally, that same day, he hired me. And I decided to pursue accounting.

So, did you end up getting your degree in accounting?

Yeah, I ended up getting my degree in accounting. I ended up having 150 credits after finishing my bachelor’s because, or I had like 149. I had to take one extra class before I sat for the exam to meet that 150. But yeah, I ended up going back to school for an accounting degree while I worked full-time, I went to school full-time, I studied for the exam while I was working full-time, and I spent about 10 years at this firm just before I decided to go out on my own.

And if I remember right looking at some data, you started your firm at a really great time, right at the beginning of COVID.

Yes. So, you know, I had my first child in 2020. As in most accounting firms, there’s a lot of marriages and divorces, right? And there’s a lot of expectations of partnership and what’s going to happen, and a lot of times those ideas don’t align. And so, you know, when I started, they were like, “Oh, you’re a mom now. You’re not going to want to do this.” And I’m like, “Yeah, nothing’s changed. I’ve always been this way. I’ve always wanted to run the show and, you know, do my own thing and provide for myself.” So I had started putting things in place, like setting up my company and putting, you know, I had an online presence, but I was unsure of how to really market myself when I was working for a firm that didn’t have my name on the door. So it was like a lot of moving parts. And I think, you know, COVID definitely had an explosion of entrepreneurs.

Yep. I think that was the impetus for a lot of people to recognize and realize, “Hey, no one’s promised tomorrow. We don’t know what it’s going to bring. So if I’m going to do something, I might as well do it now.” So when you were with the firm, did they go through any type of reduction in force or layoffs or anything during COVID, or did you just make a decision at that point, “Hey, you know what? I think I need to make the step.”

Yeah, you know what? We worked from home like most people did, right? And then after I had my son, they’re like, “Hey, you know what? It’s time to come back to the office.” And I’m like, “Well, things are working really well, and I really enjoyed working from home.” Like for me, it was more about having fewer distractions around me, like having to deal with drama from other employees. I love working from home. I get in the zone. My kids go to a babysitter, so I have no distractions here, and I like to work. So when they were resistant to that, and me having that sort of flexibility in my life, it was a no-brainer for me that this wasn’t going to work out in the long run.

Yep. I think that when people flipped the switch during COVID and sent people home, I think that there were people like you that said, “Hey, this is kind of working. I don’t see the reason why I need to go back.” And I think those people were probably the more strong-willed employees, the more outspoken employees. Then there was a group of people that were like, “Hey, I can’t wait to get back to the office for whatever reason, whether it’s because of kids, distractions at the house, not a good work setup, whatever it may be.” There was that group of people. And then I think there was this middle group of people that just rolled with the punches. They may not have wanted to go back, but they just rolled with the punches.

And what I’ve seen since then, from a recruiting standpoint, is there have been firms that post-COVID, brought people back, or even if they didn’t bring people back, they’ve now decided they either sent people home and tried to make this thing work. And they’re at a point where they want people to come back. And now those people that were on the fence of, “Hey, I’ll just do this.” Those people, today, and over the last two or three years, they’ve said, “No, I don’t want to go back,” or “I’ll go back one day a week or two days a week, but I’m not going back full-time.” It’s just a completely different mindset. And I’m with you. It’s 20 years ago. I tried to work from home. There’s no way I could do it. Part of it was technology. Part of it was kids at the house. But today, we’ve been remote since ’18, and I can’t imagine getting back in the car and commuting for 30 to 45 minutes or like you in New York. How long was your commute before you were remote?

Well, luckily I wasn’t going into the city, and I didn’t have an hour commute. It was really only like a 10 or 15-minute commute for me. So I was fortunate. But I feel for my neighbors and my friends who had to go back to the city and now spend three hours a day traveling.

Yes!

That just seems so counterproductive. And, you know, to your point, it’s not for everybody, right? Just like certain jobs are not for everybody, certain focuses are not for everybody, like, but if you’re disciplined and you’re determined to get the work done like you and I, like, you’re probably better off being in a closed environment.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it is a discipline that you’ve got to work on some new mental muscles because you can have distractions flying at you. You can have, you know, you’re in the middle of something, you’re trying to get in the zone, and yesterday I was in the middle of a Zoom call with a client, and we’re focused on talking about some issues that they’re having. And all of a sudden, and my wife’s not here that day, all of a sudden, and we live in the middle of nowhere, there’s a knock at my door, and I’m wondering, “Who the heck is here?” And it was, you know, some guys that were lost that needed to try to find something. So there’s just little things that happen to you, but you roll with those and you put the uniform back on mentally, so to speak, and get back at it.

So here’s the big question that I saw, a lot of times that always perplexes me. So you step away from your firm. At this point, you’ve been in public accounting for what, almost a decade now?

Yep.

And I’m going to make an assumption here that the firm that you’re working with at that time is doing business the way it’s always been done.

Yes. I think that was like one of the struggles too, like there was always so much resistance to me bringing in new software, a new way of doing things.

Mmm hmm. So how did you go about going out on your own and making sure that we’re not going to make the mistake, and three to four years from now, find out that all I’ve done is rebuild what was driving me crazy all this other time.

That’s a great question. And, you know, certainly there were some bad habits that came along from the firm, right? I didn’t get experience in a lot of different firms. I stayed at one firm for a long period of time. But being able to connect with other CPAs across the country and watch what other people are doing or going to conferences and seeing what the next best thing is, really made a framework for me of what I wanted to follow and what I wanted to do with my own firm.

So, there were some non-negotiables when I started. Like, my old firm was billing, sending paper invoices, and not collecting fees up front, and they would have small 1040s that wouldn’t pay for a year, and we’d be doing the next year’s tax return. It’s like, well, this is such an easy fix. Like, why are we even doing the work without getting paid? So from day one, I’m like, I’m getting paid up front for everything. We’re not doing the work until we get paid. Everything is going to be electronic. We’re going to set up, you know, I use Ignition and I’m a big proponent of it. I have an engagement letter for everybody. We have payment ahead of time for everybody.

You know, there’s always your one-off instances where, oh, I need to collect a check from this person, or I’m going to do this project for a client that we have that we’re not sure what the billing is going to be yet. But, you know, that was one of the main things that I was like, I have to do this.

Yep. Taking that off the table, it’s interesting because we use Ignition also. And I’ve said this to probably everybody I’ve had on our podcast, and I’ve talked to people about this a lot. There’s a lot of similarities between the recruiting business, staffing business, talent acquisition business, and public accounting. It’s a professional service business. It’s a knowledge-based business. Basically, you’re selling the knowledge between your ears and you’re delivering solutions for clients.

Again, our business has always been a back-end, collect-the-money-on-the-back-end kind of thing. Kind of like you, I work for firms that are working on positions for clients that still owe us for something we did three months ago, six months ago, nine months ago. And about two years ago, three years ago, I was talking to somebody in the public accounting space about how they do that. And we talked about Ignition and I reached out to Ignition and they were like, “Yeah, we can support you with that.” So yeah, it makes life so much easier.

So talk to me about, you know, you stepped out, you started your own firm. What were some of the non-negotiables that you stepped into and said, “Hey, these are some things day one that I know that I know I want to do different. I don’t want to deal with the same things I dealt with before.” Obviously, you mentioned one of them, upfront billing. We’re not going to be banks and collecting money.

So outside of billing, it was very much about setting boundaries with clients too, like, “Hey, I need the information by this day. If we’re going to do your books, we need read-only access to your bank account. We can’t be requesting bank statements every month or every single person must be using the portal, and we’re going to obtain electronic signatures for tax returns.” You know, it sounds like small things, but if you don’t have those boundaries in place, things can go haywire pretty quickly.

And managing the workflow, we never had a central location for, you know, what tax returns need to be done. Who’s working on them? What stage are they in? I implemented Tax Dome pretty early as well. And it just gave me so much more control, internal control over the workflow. So that was one of the things that I really was insistent on too. Again, there are so many firms out there that are not doing this—it’s scary.

There’s a whole lot of firms out there that are not doing this, and it’s amazing how many large firms out there aren’t doing this. That’s the thing that’s just astounding to me. I was talking to a candidate out of a Big Four firm; I won’t say which one. And I asked them, you know, we talk about technology, what type of technology are you working on? What are you comfortable with? You know, what tax software have you been dealing with? And my next question was talking about your workflow management software. What’s that? And he said, “I am our workflow management system, me and my Excel spreadsheet.” You’ve got to be kidding me!

And I think that is what happened. I held a lot of information up in my head, and we weren’t able to get that out there or manage that within the firm. So using things like, “Hey, we’re going to use a password manager so that everything is centralized.” We’re going to use something like Tax Dome, or I use other things in coordination with the workflow too. Now, I use Keeper. I use Microsoft To-Do. Keeping track of these things in a central location and not having everything just up in my head is a game changer!

You know, one of the things I want to ask you about along those lines, and not just with accounting firms, but kind of keeping with the same thought process of the podcast that you do, as I mentioned in the intro, one of the things I love about your podcast is you guys talk a lot about just business in general. You’re talking about software, you’re talking about technology and tools that make your life more effective, more efficient, more organized, it flows more smoothly. I think one of the challenges that people sometimes face whenever they go out on their own, or they’re thinking about going out and starting their own business, is how do I compete with larger firms that have access to all these tools that I can’t afford. What do you say to firms like that, that think that, which I’ll go ahead and lay out in my opinion, that is an erroneous belief.

Yeah, that actually was my gut instinct when you said that. I mean, it’s like, that’s a self-limiting belief. I think that, yes, subscriptions do add up, but you have to make sure that you’re pricing accordingly too, because if you price accordingly, then you can afford it. And there’s plenty of business out there to go around. There is nothing but opportunity, as we know. You know, the criteria of most firm owners is on the later part of their life, right? And the number one complaint from clients, new clients coming in, is like, lack of communication. “Oh, I can’t get in touch with my accountant. I think that they died. They’re sick.” Whatever the case is, like, unfortunately for them, fortunately for us, if you want to take that leap, there’s nothing but opportunity. And don’t be afraid of all of these little subscriptions that add up. Just because you do commit to something doesn’t mean you need to stay with something forever either. And not only that, but sometimes the prices on the website are not the real prices. You can negotiate.

Mmm hmm. I’d also add to that and would like, again, your thoughts on this: You may be sitting at a larger firm today or you may be sitting in a larger business that has the top-of-the-line tool that’s in that space. There are a lot of other tools in that space that either as a sole practitioner or a small four or five-person firm, you don’t need the car that drives 150 miles an hour and has every bell and whistle. What would your thoughts be about that?

A hundred percent, you know, there are so many different softwares out there, and it can be really overwhelming. But once again, going back to the community of small firm owners is important to see what other people are using. It’s going to be a game changer to hear feedback directly from a small firm. You may not see this if you’re at Big Four and you’re, like you said, using the top-of-the-line software. But if you go to a Facebook group for accountants, you’re getting the best feedback you could possibly get. People are going to be real with you and give you their genuine experience.

Yep. When we started, we implemented a CRM applicant tracking system. It was a great tool. It was $199 a month for one seat. It’s not cheap. And as I started to add recruiters, that adds up. Out of the blue, a firm reaches out to us. Well, no, excuse me, they didn’t reach out to us. I was talking to another friend of mine that owns a firm, and I asked him, “What do you use?” And he said, “We’ve been using X, but there’s this new firm that’s been around for about two years. They’re in another country, but they built a great platform similar to this. And right now, I think it’s $49 a month. It doesn’t have all the functionality, but they’re working on building it.”

And the cool thing about that, we’ve been on that platform for three years now, and it’s almost the exact same platform we were spending $199 on three years ago, plus a lot of other really cool tools that go with it. But it started at $49, and it was a small firm that their mindset was, “Hey, tell us what you want. Tell us what you want and we’ll see if we can add it.” And since we were one of the early adopters of their platform, I think they’re online now at $119 a month. We’re still paying $49.

Wow.

So there’s all kinds of tools out there that, again, you can, like you said, you can negotiate, you can talk to them about what’s available out there. What do you really need to make sure that you are delivering for your customers. And that kind of dovetails into one of the things that I really wanted to talk to you about, and that is the new community that you’re creating and starting to kind of launch and build. First of all, I love the fact that you are building something to take your knowledge, your experience, your ability to say, “Hey, don’t go around this curve because there’s a pothole 16 feet past it, and I’ve hit that pothole a few times and busted out a few tires, so don’t go that route. Let me tell you the route to go.” That’s huge. Talk to me a little bit about that. How did that come about? What does that look like?

Great question. So, as I said before, I’ve connected with people all over the country for years, and what’s better than finding out what’s going on in a real practice, right? A lot of my social media content has just naturally gone towards supporting other accountants because these are thoughts in my head. I’m like, “Oh, well, other people can benefit from this,” or, “Hey, this is going on. This is good content for other accountants, but it could also be good content for potential clients or referral sources.” So over time, people have reached out to me, “Hey, how did you do this? How did you go out on your own? How did you grow so quickly? What are you using? What works for you? What doesn’t?” And it’s not just my knowledge because I’ve had access to so many people and just built these genuine relationships and seen what other people are doing and integrating some of that into my firm or not, or whatever the case is, I’ve been sharing it with other people who have then made the decision to go out on their own.

I can remember very distinct conversations with several people and now see them flourish and be doing the same thing that I am and having the freedom. You know, is it hard sometimes? Yeah. It’s tough running a business. But is it 10 times better or more than that to be working for somebody else and being miserable? Yeah, it is. It’s worth everything that I do. And I want other people to have access to that information.

So at some point, it became a little overwhelming with people reaching out. So when I had my second child in 2023, I had my daughter. I said, you know what, why don’t I have one hour a month where everybody can come together and collaborate in one place, as opposed to me taking all of these separate phone calls for free. And so we’ve been running this mastermind community for, well, the calls for almost a year and a half now, and it’s been great. I mean, we have a lot of reccurring people, people have built relationships with each other. It’s not just me who’s providing the value, it’s the community who helps each other out, right? I have like a general structure and I’m the leader and the mastermind, but everybody contributes something. People have referred business to each other in the group. Community and collaboration are so much better than the competition, old-school, school of thought that’s out there.

So now I’m going to take this a step further and I’ve actually come up with the “Virtual Firm Blueprint” where I’m going to be launching a seven-week live course. If you can’t make the course, it will be recorded, you can view it afterwards, but it is going to be interactive. So, we’ve come up with templates and resources and homework to go through the framework of what it takes and some of the things that you brought up, like what kind of software should I be using? What kind of boundaries? How am I going to be handling billing? Or just from the very bare bones, like, how do I have an address as a virtual firm? What does that look like? How do I set up my emails, websites, social media presence? People want all of this information and I don’t think it’s readily available in one place. So that is how this birth of my next child is coming together.

So question for you, dial the clock back a year and a half ago, you start this community and this is speaking from experience: How do you create a community like that, that doesn’t end up being an hour-and-a-half bitch session?

Good question.

Where people are just getting on the phone, and hey, especially if you’re a solopreneur, and you’re sitting in your office, you don’t have anybody that you can turn around to after you hang up the phone with a client and go, “Can you believe that person?” So you’ve been storing this stuff up for a month, and it would just be natural because I’ve seen it—you get on that call and it just becomes, there’s no value. It’s just literally an hour-and-a-half bitch session. How do you keep that from happening?

So that’s a really good question. And I’m part of other communities where I’ve seen this happen before too. And it’s like, okay, I need to remove myself from this because the mindset is not there. And I think the mindset of our community, and what I bring to the table, is a positive spin on things. Let’s not get stuck in our problems—we all have problems. Let’s talk about solutions. Let’s talk about what we can do to move forward. How is John doing this differently than Kelly, where we can make a positive impact on our firm and our life, really.

And by reaching out to new people, by talking to new people on our podcast and getting new ideas and bringing them back to the table and saying, “Hey, well, you know, Marcus is doing this,” or, “You know, Bilal just implemented this in his firm and it’s working.” One simple tweak can make a huge difference in your life, and I’m going to continue to pursue those new and positive things that we can bring into our firms.

Yep. It’s so easy to get caught in that loop of the negative mindset. Years ago, I started doing something with my teams when we would start brainstorming about certain ideas. Inevitably, the human nature of things is, “I’m going to tell you all the reasons it won’t work.” And so I started to get to a point where I would let my people just verbally diarrhea, vomit all over the place about all the reasons this won’t work. You know, as we were in an office, and I’d write them all down. And when we would get done, whether it was 10, 20, 30, whatever it was, all the reasons that they said this couldn’t work, I would say, okay, this is great. And usually what happened, we would have these strategy meetings in the morning, and I would tell them, okay, nobody leaves the room. We’ve got 18 things here why it won’t work. I need 19 things telling me why it will work. So I need one more reason than the negatives of why this would work.

They finally got to the point of understanding, hey, we’re not going to say the reasons why it won’t work because John’s going to make us come up with one more reason why it will work. And the beautiful thing of that is that, you know, you could see a transition mentally of people starting to go from, no, I’m not going to tell you why it won’t work because I know what you’re going to make me do after this, and that’s hard. So I’m just going to go ahead and start telling you why this will work. And when you start to see the transition of mindset, there’s so many more positive things that come out of that because you start to have people that want to engage more when they hear all the possibilities that come out of it. And I’m sure those are some things that you’ve seen in the group that you have right now.

A hundred percent.

So with the new group that you’re creating, I’m assuming you’re going to have some people that are there already in this other one, step into this. So will it only be for seven weeks or will it continue past that, or what’s the plan at this point?

Good question. So it’s really going to be twofold. We’re going to continue on with the community, and we’re going to still hold our monthly meetings. We’re going to add additional resources like the templates and, you know, vendors and tech stack information, and I’m going to share all of that information with the community. And then, this is the first, the Virtual Firm Blueprint is going to be the first course that we’re going to do. It may repeat after tax season. We may launch this again. We also may be launching additional courses, like deep diving into some areas in the practice that people need specific help with. So the community will be one thing with our ongoing monthly meetings and resources, and then the course launch is a part of the community, but it’s like a separate fee. So we’re going to charge a fee for the community and then a separate fee for the courses.

Okay. So who’s your ideal avatar, your ideal target? Because obviously the solopreneur that is doing this on their own today, whether they’ve been doing this for two months or two years, they’re at a different point than somebody that maybe is at five, six, eight, ten employees, but still struggling with some of the issues, maybe just on a larger scale.

So, you know, the ideal candidate is really anybody in accounting because we have people who attend our mastermind who have been in business for 30 years and are kind of dealing with a legacy type of practice, and they’re looking to change their practice and implement different strategies and streamline. Those people can absolutely benefit—this doesn’t have to be somebody who’s just looking to go out on their own for the first time. But the ideal, ideal client is going to be people who are not happy with where they are, they don’t have balance in their life, they’re working long hours, they want the flexibility, they want to go out on their own, and they just don’t know how to get there. This is going to give you the confidence and the framework to go out on your own and build your own firm.

Nice. You hit on something about, just a little statement you said, they’re working long hours. As a firm owner today, a mom with two kids, is that right?

Yeah.

Talk to me about what your hours load looks like today versus five years ago, working in a traditional firm environment. And let me make something very clear: I’m talking about everything. Because there are hours, I’m sure, that you’re working in the business, there’s hours that you’re working on the business. But if you look at it all, what would you say kind of a stereotypical week, non-tax season, tax season, looks like for Kelly today?

So for today, you know, I drop off my kids at the babysitter at 7:30 in the morning, and I pick them up from school at 2:45.

What?!

I get to spend almost every single afternoon with my kids. I make dinner every night. Are there times in between that I may need to do a webinar later on or schedule a call at three or four o’clock? Yes, but it is very few and far between. You know, I’m able to go out during the day if I need to go be the class mom at school or, you know, maybe meet at a networking meeting. But generally, I’m working from like 8 to 2, 2:30, And I will answer emails later on at night. I like to make sure that I’m caught up with everything. If I don’t answer everything, it’s on my to-do list for tomorrow to follow up. And that’s really my typical, I mean, how many hours am I actually working? Probably like 30, 35. And I took a lot of time off this year. Some of it was for actual travel and things that I was doing with my family, and other things were like sick days with my kids or sick days for myself. And I would love to tally it up, but it was definitely a lot more than I ever have.

Yeah, so, okay, mental space question here. More of a counseling question. When you say that, hey, I work 30-35 hours, are you at a point yet in your life where emotionally and mentally you can say that with pride, “Hey, I work 30-35 hours?” Or do you still carry a little bit of that baggage of, “Can I really say this and is it okay to say this out loud?”

Good question. All of your questions have been very good. I think I can confidently say that I’m working 30-35 hours. Does that mean that I’m not working constantly in my mind or not accounting for all of those other things, like at the end of the day, or while I’m going to pick up my kid, am I thinking about how I’m going to handle this situation or how I’m going to delegate work, or what other things am I getting myself into? I have a lot on my roster. And when my kids come home, boy, we are in the thick of it. We are in the thick of it with my one-year-old and four-year-old right now. But I think I can confidently say that 35 hours a week is probably the average number.

Yeah. It’s amazing how, just culturally, we’ve been driven, if you will—it’s kind of the whole mindset that’s driven me up a wall for years, when you run into people you haven’t seen in a while and you say, “Hey, Kelly, how are you doing?” And the first response that we’ve said for years is, “I’m busy. I’m busy.” And we wear that like a badge of courage. And I’m just waiting to run into somebody that when we start talking about work hours, they’re like, “Look, I don’t, honestly, I can’t tell you how many hours I work, but I can tell you that last week I spent 16 hours with my kids. The week before that, I was with my kids for about 22 hours.” I’m longing for the day that we can flip that script and get back to understanding there are things that are a lot more important than, you know, what we’re doing in the four walls here. It doesn’t mean that what we’re doing isn’t important. It’s very important, but at the end of the day, there are things that need a little bit more of our time, energy, and juice that we can pour into it that are going to leave a little bit of a bigger legacy.

Around the question about hours, what you’re putting in, and how you’re controlling your life a little bit more. Kelly, if you had to say, Hey, day one to today, these two or three things are paramount, critical, and these are the foundational things that allow me to do what I’m doing today in the space that I’m doing it in.

Honestly, it all comes down to boundaries and mindset. And keeping your mind right, keeping your eye on the prize. I believe when we met at Bridging the Gap, we might have talked about The Secret a little bit, did we?

No.

No, we didn’t? Okay. When we were speaking earlier in the recording of the episode, I was like, I think he understands this mindset. I’m a big follower of Bob Proctor, just really keeping your mind focused on the positive. I think that’s super important. And you have to constantly readdress your boundaries, reaffirm your boundaries. You start making exceptions or you say, “Oh, is this really something that I need to put in place?” Like your deadlines. That’s like the most concrete form of a boundary. Or, “I want to charge for a consultation,” or, “I charge, but I use it as a deposit towards services, and sometimes I let that slide a little bit.” and then I’m like, “You know what? These couple of people really screwed me over or didn’t show up to the call. There’s a reason why I have these boundaries and I need to keep them. And if I don’t keep my boundaries, then I start seeing it affect other areas of my life.” So I think those two things are really key and can be applied to everyone in every walk of life.

Yep. One of my mantras for a long time, Kelly, has been that we try to run life and business by the exception and deal with the rule when it arises. And the reality is we need to get back to understanding that you need to have boundaries, you need to have rules, and then you can deal with the exceptions when they arise. But if we’re always dealing with those exceptions, because you’re making space to move things, but at the end of the day, you really don’t have boundaries. You really don’t have rules. You really don’t have things that guide you, that “Hey, this is what we do. This is how we do it. This is where we do it. This is why we do it.” Because there’s always going to be something different. There’s always going to be an exception. And nobody wants to be the bad person that says, “Sorry, I can’t do that.”

And it sounds like you’ve been really good about doing that. What do you think has allowed you to do that? Because again, going out and starting your firm, you can sit there and say, “This is who we are. This is what we do, and we’re not going to deviate from that.” You know, let’s just say we do tax advisory, consulting, strategic solutions, outsourced accounting for pick something: doctors, dentists, ditch diggers, warehouse workers, whatever it is. I don’t care. Pick something. But then something always comes up, especially early on, that we look at and go, “Well, I do need the money.” How do you manage that? What’s your advice for people?

So the lines get blurred, right? An example in my own practice is like, I don’t want to take on individual 1040s. I don’t want to be a volume firm. It’s very difficult to work a firm like that and not work a ton of hours, especially during tax season. And that was one of the things, I don’t want to work six, seven days a week during busy season. I want to be with my kids. Having that boundary and telling, you know, a lot of referral partners are looking for that resource because there’s not a lot of people out there that are doing that. And, you know, it’s really hard to stay firm and say, “Hey, you know, the only thing I’m taking on are 1040s that may have a more complex situation where they need some planning throughout the year.” But 95 percent of our clients are business clients. Yes, we do tax returns for everybody. We do 180 1040s, but I’m not going to continue to take on every Tom, Dick, and Harry that comes through the door that wants a personal tax return. Unfortunately, with personal tax returns, you have a lot of legacy behavior with comments like, “Oh, I want to drop it off,” or, “I only paid $150 last year.” And we both know that places like H&R Block charge $400 for a tax return. Just sticking within certain boundaries like that.

Yes, do I take on clients that are not 100 percent within my niche? Yeah. I mainly work with professional services, which is a pretty broad term. A lot of my clients are attorneys. We work with a lot of healthcare professionals. Do I have a jewelry designer? Yes. Do I have a construction company? Yes. It’s okay to take those things on, but it’s also okay to say, “Hey, I can’t help you in this area. You’re not an ideal fit for us, but here’s somebody who can,” and having other referral sources makes it easier.

That’s a great point. You’ve built a pretty good presence on social media. It’s real easy to say on a website or in a vacuum, “This is who we are. This is what we do.” And then that one-off scenario constantly comes up and you take that on. I think it’s a whole other thing when you’re in the public square, social media, constantly putting a stake in the ground saying, “This is who we are. This is what we do. This is who we are. This is what we do.” It’s tougher from my perspective, and I want to get your thoughts on that. It’s easier to hold yourself accountable to who you are when you’re out there constantly saying, “This is who I am.” Did you find that from an accountability standpoint, personal accountability, that hey, it’s easier to build these fences around me of, “This is who we are,” because I’m constantly out there saying, “This is who we are?”

Yes, yeah. I think that you need to be really clear when setting that expectation or those boundaries. Writing it is a huge part of it, whether it’s on social media or within a business snapshot about my business, or a new client information sheet. This is what we do. This is what our pricing is. This is how we’re going to work. We only want to work with nice people. This is the type of clients that we take on. It helps to have a firmer boundary like that in writing. It’s not as easy when you’re in person and having conversations with people, but I think it gets easier over time. It’s harder at first to set boundaries because it’s uncomfortable, right? But as you go on and as you grow, and as you see other people who are successful at doing it, it becomes a lot more comfortable and a lot easier to have tough conversations.

I think you’re right about that.

I have a nice quote to end us off here: “Easy conversations, difficult life. Difficult conversations, easy life.”

I like that.

So I think that goes with our theme about boundaries and mindset. It’s not easy.

I think that is a great way to put that, and you’ve obviously done a lot of things well and probably a few things not so great that have brought you along this path today.

Oh yeah.

If there are people out there that are looking to explore career options, which may include starting their own firm, or just finding out more about what their options may be at a firm like yours or somebody else’s that you may know, or if there are firm owners out there that are struggling to flip the switch on beginning to build a more modern-minded CPA firm where they can regain some control over their lives and not be in the proverbial “tail wagging the dog” kind of situation, what is the best way for some of those folks to find you and reach out to you?

You can find me on LinkedIn, Kelly Rohrs, or if you’re interested in the mastermind or community, you can go to FiscalMinds.com.

FiscalMinds.com. Okay, we’ll make sure and put all of those in the show notes. And it’s Kelly Rohrs, R-O-H-…

R-O-H-R-S. “Rohrs” like a lion.

Got it. So the H, not the A. So R-O-H-R-S. Okay. Kelly, thanks a lot for joining us today. I appreciate it. I’ve enjoyed our conversation.

Thank you for having me.

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Breaking Boundaries: From Firm to Freedom with Kelly Rohrs

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