Go Full Send on Your Accounting Journey with Roman Villard

Roman Villard, CPA is the founder of Full Send Finance, which provides high-caliber accounting and data services for growing companies with the goal of changing the accounting industry for the better. A CPA for nearly 15 years, Roman kept his focus on seed through Series B stage startups in the tech sector when he founded Full Send. Having declined a position at EY Tulsa to work at a regional firm, Roman has constantly sought to work with smaller companies.

Full Send seeks to break down the walls of accounting and data services by identifying the best technology to support actionable data, and by identifying the best talent to yield high caliber service. Whether it’s the fundraising journey, pitching to investors, accounting, financial reporting, or the new idea that defines a startup, Full Send has the expertise to help startups grow.

Transcript:

Hey everybody, thank you for joining us for another episode of the CPA Life Podcast, the podcast where we really spend time connecting with leaders and industry pros who are working tirelessly to build a more people-centric profession, a place where people no longer have to sacrifice their life and their family at the altar of their jobs to build a thriving, successful career. Today, we’re going to spend some time talking about something that I know I’m passionate about and something I know that our guest is pretty passionate about—we’re going to spend some time talking about things that we need to look at that we’re doing right, things that we could be doing better surrounding culture and attracting other talent into the profession. Today I’m talking to Roman Villard. Roman, how are you doing?

I’m great, man. I love the focus on life here. I’m excited about this conversation. Thanks so much for having me.

Hey, you’re more than welcome. I enjoyed listening to you at the Bridging the Gap conference, and I knew that a lot of that would really dovetail into what it is that we spend a lot of time talking about. For those of you that don’t know, if you haven’t connected with Roman on LinkedIn, he is the co-founder of Full Send Finance, which is an accounting, finance, and data strategy firm that’s designed to enable scalability and growth for small to mid-sized business owners. Did I get that close to right?

Yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty accurate overview of where we’re at today. You know, a lot of details in between, but yeah, well done.

That’s a 30,000-foot view, right?

Right.

The really high view. One of the things that obviously I want to dig into is the Full Send story, your story, and to understand the name of the company, where it came from. But before we kind of get into all of that, usually one of the things we spend a few minutes doing at this part of the show is really hearing about your story, where you’ve come from, and how you’ve moved through your career to get to where you are today. So tell us a little bit about how it all started.

Gosh, where should I start? I’m going to go back to my college days where I was a finance major until my senior year in college. I remember my accounting professor, who I’d developed a great relationship with, he said, “Hey, listen, if you do finance, you’ll likely be doing a lot of finance work in your career. If you do accounting, you can do anything.” And it just struck me in that moment, like I need to have this as part of my foundational knowledge for success in business. I didn’t know where that would take me or how it would end up, but I ended up changing to a double major of accounting and finance, and ended up going the public accounting route for about eight years, then spent some time in various capacities across four total firms before launching Full Send about two and a half years ago.

So it’s been kind of a journey through traditional public accounting to where you are today. I’m sure along the way, there were a few late-night discussions because if I recall right, your background is on the audit side of public accounting, right?

Oh yeah, a lot of late-night discussions about auditing, for sure.

And probably a lot of late-night discussions of, “Man, there has got to be a better way.”

You know, yes, because it was a grind, but it was a time in life where I was able to dedicate that time without too much responsibility inflection. I think in the back of my mind, I thought culturally or firm-wise, there’s probably another approach that would also be highly successful, but not a lot of time entrepreneurially thinking about how to solve that problem.

Where did that mindset start to shift from employee to, “Man, I think I can do something here?”

Yeah, you know, I think it maybe started to shift the more and more I started working with small businesses and how a small business operates relative to how the majority of accounting firms and large firms operate—just seeing the dissonance between what small businesses were doing and how successful they were being by leading with culture, by leading with team, relative to maybe a staggeringly different approach that firms are taking on more of the billable hour, realization, and utilization side of things that wasn’t as conducive to culture.

So along that process, you kind of looked back and said, “There’s some opportunity here, there’s some gaps between where we are and where I think we could be.” So, I mean, you worked for a firm I’m a little bit familiar with, Embark, and Embark’s kind of got a mindset that is more consulting, more advisory, and even though they’re a larger firm today, the culture that they started with, and I can’t speak to where it is today, was really a culture that was built to kind of turn the accounting world on its head, so to speak.

A hundred percent. When I was coming out of Crowe Horwath at the time, you know, top ten firm, really large national firm, just looking at the culture, the branding, the way in which Embark displayed themselves in the market was really attractive, it was really unique, it was so different. It was people forward and, you know, all these kind of bells and whistles that folks would associate with a great culture. It was really attractive, so I kind of applied there. I had a preexisting relationship with somebody who I’d worked with at a past firm, and they kind of got me in the door and I applied for a consultant role there. When I met with the CEO and the woman who was going to be leading the Denver office, they said, “Have you ever thought about business development?” and that had never crossed my mind, but it was an opportunity to step into a different career and a different role within a firm. They gave me an opportunity. It was a really unique place to work.

So I’m assuming that probably was a little bit more of a driver and impetus to let you see not only the numbers side of the business but also the business development side of a business and give you a little bit more comfort of, if I took this step, maybe I can make it work, so where did the desire come along to finally take the step of entrepreneurialism, being a small to mid-sized business owner yourself? Where did that switch get flipped?

So it’s funny, when I took that business development, that sales role, if I look at it with hindsight, I’m like, “that was a great decision to make.” But at the time, I was like, “I have no idea how this is going to go. I’ve never sold anything. I don’t know how to sell.” So, it was really intimidating. I’d accepted a $0-base salary. Like, it was kind of nuts. I learned a lot through that role and then carried on a lot of sales expertise into my following role.

The impetus for launching something didn’t come until the last firm that I worked at. I’d left the firm and realized there’s a lot of opportunity here just from a demand perspective, and I was in a position where the firm that I was at was going upmarket. A lot of the deals and opportunities with prospects that were too small for what I was prospecting, I would send that out to other firms. And this was, you know, 2021, 2022, and I felt like these firms were either at capacity and didn’t have any way to take on new clients, or I didn’t think they were that good. So after I left that firm, I thought, there’s an opportunity here, so I commenced about a month-long discussion with my wife about whether this is the right move for me and our family. A lot of consideration there.

What was your wife’s initial reaction with you walking in the door going, “Hey, honey, I’ve got this idea?”

Yeah, you know, it’s funny. I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My father has run businesses for the last 30 years. At one point, my wife mentioned something to the effect of, “Oh, I always knew you would do that.” I was like, how did you know that? Because I didn’t even know I was planning on doing this until yesterday. But no, highly receptive, very confidence-driving, very supportive. Although, we had to make sure early on that we were in a place to be able to accept the ebbs and flows that come with business ownership and the financial stress that places on a family, and so we were very tactical about how to step into that and put very firm lines in the sand of if this happens, then I’ll go back and get a job. If this happens, then this is how we’ll navigate. So, it was a journey.

Yeah, I think so many times people don’t think about the work that goes into laying the foundation. It’s kind of like bowling: Let’s put the guardrails on. We know what we’ve got to do. There’s a plan in place. Now let’s go execute. And we’ll deal with the exception when it arises, but we’ve got to have rules in place. I’m assuming that was a process and not a real quick snap decision, “let’s do this.”

A hundred percent. I mean, it was a full month of dialogue of what are the right lines that we need to draw? How do we ensure that our family’s taken care of? At that point in time, we had a one-year-old son. Come to find out we would have two, and then just so many things happening at once. First priority was to make sure that everybody in my family unit was on board with that. That was a month-long discussion before finally pulling the trigger and on June 3rd, 2022, incorporating a new business.

It’s interesting, Roman, because I had a conversation about six months ago with a young man that reached out. He was at a senior manager level with a public accounting firm and was kicking around the concept and thought of starting his own firm. He was 31, 32, 33, somewhere in there. He thought it was perplexing that my very first question I asked him, and I knew he was married because we had some conversations over the years, the first question I asked him was, “What does your wife think about this?” He kind of paused for a minute and said, “Well, I mean, we’ve talked about it, and I think she’s on board, but, well, why do you ask that?” And I said, “Because when she married you, and they’d been married for nine years,” I said, “when she married you nine years ago, she didn’t marry an entrepreneur, she didn’t marry a business owner. She married a guy that worked for a public accounting firm that had a steady job and a steady paycheck. This leap that you’re getting ready to make, there’s a lot of ramifications to that, and you both need to be on the same page.” Maybe that was the marriage mentor in me that was speaking or, you know, doing it incorrectly myself a couple of times in life, but either way, that’s a critical thing. So, I applaud you for doing that. That had to have been a tough conversation. When I say tough, I don’t mean hard as in, I don’t know what she’s going to think, but just the risk and the scariness of stepping away from this now.

Right, right. You’re spot on. Taking all those considerations into conversation with family is so critical. The challenge there is that it’s just unknown. You don’t know what direction it’s going to take. It’s not just the financial component that impacts a relationship; it’s the time. You know, what I didn’t foresee at the time, and I kind of had an idea, but it’s like, “Hey, I’m going to be up at 5am, I’m going to work until our child wakes up, then I’ll probably be spending time after maybe you go to bed and spend two, three hours working at night to help get this thing moving,” because in no way did I ever believe that I was going to let this die. That’s just—it’s a lot. It’s a big commitment. You have to make sure that you’re aligned on that front before jumping into it.

Yep, so how did that daily schedule work for you? Was it that smooth and, you know, coming together pretty easily?

No! Not at all. So, I did say, okay, I’m going to incorporate, and then I’m going to spend two months working on internal operations. I set myself up for success to be able to serve clients really well because if I don’t do that from day one, I’m just, it’s not going to be successful.

Right.

The irony of that is I spent two months developing internal operations, setting things up, you know, some light automations, getting systems involved, spending some capital on getting that stood up, only for most of that to be unwound later once we started to bring some team members on board, but that’s a different story. But, you know, I really wanted to make sure that I was capable of delivering good service from day one. So, I turned on the revenue, website, and forward-looking sales activities about two months after I decided to jump in full time.

So that was in the ’22 timeframe, correct?

Right.

We’re two years down the road. Well, before we jump two years down the road, what’s the story with the name of the company, Full Send Finance?

You know, I started to think about the industry, and think about generations coming into the industry, what connects with them, what connects with the target market that I’d be looking to go after, and I thought most folks are not really looking at “Smith, Jones, and Hughes CPAs” down on the corner anymore; it doesn’t really excite many people. Not that a name is the driver of that, but you have a significant opportunity with the name of your company to be able to send a message. And so I had a whiteboard full of a list of names; shortly before that, I’d gone on a ski trip with a number of great skiers, and we were going kind of back country; you know, you ski your tips over the ledge of about a 10, 15-foot drop. I remember one of the leaders of that group saying, “Hey, just send it, go full send.” And it was just this mantra of like, alright, once you drop in, you’re committed. You are all in.

I just loved how that resonated with the thought of working with entrepreneurs, startups, and growing businesses committed to making their business a success. So I ended up naming the company Full Send, and seeing that come to life has been a lot of fun. It does indeed resonate with a lot of our target market and potential folks to join the company. It’s been a lot of fun.

I gotta believe that, again, with the market you’re going after, the clients you’re working with, the small to mid-sized business owners, they are all folks that resonate, not only with the company name but with the story you’re talking about, because it’s the same story, third chapter, fifth chapter, ninth chapter, every time you interact with one of those people because they’ve had those discussions, they’ve had those sleepless nights just like you have.

Spot on. I think the relatability to our target market is quite high because we’ve got a much smaller distance between having taken that leap and knowing what that feels like, the small difference between that, and then our client service. So, we relate to what our clients are going through, we relate to their problems, we can empathize with them, versus in larger firms, it’s just a little bit more difficult to accomplish that because you’ve got seven, eight layers between the folks that originally started the company, if they’re still around, and then where the service level is happening. So, hundred percent agree.

Absolutely. I think there just is, I don’t know if you want to call it, you know, on the positive side, synergies, or on the not-so-positive side, the misery loves company, whichever one, but I think there’s a lot of value when you get in a room with another person or other people that, like you, failure’s not an option, because it’s not about a corporation that’s not working out. It’s about my family, it’s about my life, it’s about all of the things that we do in our life are driven by this vehicle, which really kind of speaks to the types of firms that you guys are working with as well.

That’s right. That’s right. I often relate to things that our clients are going through in the sales process with our current clients and just try to level with them. I’ll say, “Hey, listen, I know what this is like, and here’s how we want to help you accomplish building X, Y, or Z or solving this problem.” So yeah, it’s a big part of our journey, our conversations with the clients every day.

Well, let’s talk a little bit about where you are today. You started the firm two years ago. What does the makeup of the firm look like today in regards to personnel, how many of those are core employees, how many of those are contractors, what does that look like—do you delineate between those two—and how does that drive the culture of Full Send Finance?

Yeah, it’s a great question. I realized early on, I wanted to be very culture-forward, and it’s a little bit more difficult to accomplish in a 1099 or contractor environment because not everybody is necessarily rowing in the same direction. I know you can set up rhythms that enable that, but I wanted to hire full-time folks, and I thought that was really imperative. So today, we have 12 members on the team, 10 of which are on the accounting services side, and 2 of which are on our data services side, all full-time except one on the data side, who will hopefully be coming on full-time next year. On our accounting team, we have six that are here locally in Colorado, and four that we’ve been developing in our Argentinian office. We don’t have a physical office space there now, but we want to enable the same culture and benefits to our team in Argentina as well.

How did you—when you mentioned Argentina—how did Argentina become the location of choice? Was it a strategic decision, or was it something that just happened that way?

Yeah, so we initially tinkered with how do we enable scalability while also enabling affordability for our clients, and what’s the right model to support that? So a lot of firms in our space look at the Philippines, India, South America for options. What we wanted to do was identify the closest level of culture-building that we can maintain with ease of communication and a high degree of service delivery. Culture is a big part of that, and we found that many of the folks we met and spoke with in Argentina shared a lot of the things we enjoy doing, the same benefits we have. It felt like a much better connection—it was kind of more of a gut thing that came from interacting with many other firm owners who had also gone that direction and spoke highly of their experiences. So that was our impetus for leaning into Argentina specifically.

How would you define the culture of Full Send? I love the phrase that you use, culture-forward. When you talk to people about Full Send, how do you describe the culture? What are some things that you guys have done from an intentionality perspective to make sure that it’s not just who we say we are, it really is who we are?

Hmm. Yeah, that’s a great question because it’s a living and breathing thing—it’s constantly evolving. That said, we want to enable an environment where our team can drive success in their personal lives yet also see success and grow professionally. So to the extent possible, we want folks to lean into the things that are “full send” for them. It’s an interview question that we have: “Hey, what’s your full send? What’s the thing that makes you come alive?” So, we’re constantly refining and trying to figure out how to make that happen.

It’s interesting—one of the biggest challenges I have is we want to be a culture-forward firm. We also want to have branding that speaks life into who we are, what we do, and the type of people that do it. One of the things that is constantly on my mind is I do not want to create a distance between the experience that our team has and what we’re marketing out in public. That’s something that I’ve constantly been wrestling with: how do I ensure that there isn’t a widening distance there? Because in the nature of professional services, it can be hard. You can have a client that’s really challenging, you can have a specific project you’re working on that’s really tough, which can drive angst and animosity towards your employer or your profession, so we want to handle those things really delicately, with grace, and make sure that we’re still putting our team in positions to succeed on the personal and professional front. It’s a constant battle that I have to make sure that we’re not just widening this gap of aspirational culture versus actual culture.

Yeah, because when you get going down the road with momentum, so many times, if you let enough time and distance get in there, you lose perspective. You’re two, three, four years down the road, and it’s one thing if you’re two, three weeks or two, three months down the road and you recognize that we’re starting to veer off course and you can hit the brakes real quick and say, “Hey, let’s fix some stuff.” It’s a whole other thing to be four years down the road, look up and go, “Man, we are way off course.” At that point, you can’t really hit the brakes because you’ve got a machine that’s moving, so you have to figure out how to change the tires as you’re going down the road at 65 miles an hour. That’s not an easy thing to do, so what are some things that you’ve done as a firm leader to ensure that your thumb is on the pulse of the business as you’ve gone from zero to 12 FTEs in two years? That’s a pretty big step.

Yeah, it is, and a lot of change occurs. I think there are a few tactical things that we’ve done, and I’ll share another story on top of that. Things like having weekly all-hands meetings—hey, we’re all in the same room talking, it may be virtually, we may have some people in the office—but making sure we’re all in sync with one another, just from a conversational standpoint of where the firm’s going, what’s happening, what needs to get done. Then also on our communication channels—so in Slack, we are constantly in communication with one another. It’s so important that we’re rowing in the same direction.

Then from a benefits perspective, we established the Full Send Fund and allocated dollars to each employee to be able to spend money on things that bring them joy and life. We have to reinforce that sometimes—it’s easy to forget. But I’ve seen these transactions come in of like buying a flight, buying a concert ticket, or buying trees for a garden that bring a lot of joy. I’m like, “Yes, that’s it!” That said, the story on that is my business partner, Stacey, who came on board in March of last year, does such a good job of keeping me in check, not being too aspirational, from the standpoint of what we can actually accomplish to not get people really excited about something and then not take action on it, she’ll reel me in on that: “I like that idea a lot, but let’s pause until we have a plan that we can actually execute to then deliver to the team to help enable their success.”

Yeah, I think sometimes as a visionary leader, you have these ideas of what you want to do. They look great on paper. They even sound—they sound even better in our heads. We’ll talk a little bit about the concept of remote, hybrid, in-office, whatever, but there’s a client we were working with earlier this year, and we were talking about the necessity to embrace some type of a hybrid culture. His reaction was, “I think it’s great. We’ll start next week,” and I had to say, “Hey, pump the brakes, because you don’t have systems, processes, or technology completely in place. You have no idea how you’re going to measure productivity, and what’s going to happen is somewhere in this process, people are going to slack off—it’s human nature—and when you don’t see productivity levels at where you want to be, your reaction is going to be back in the office. Everyone, back in the office. Now you’ve taken something away that they weren’t fighting for, they wanted, but they weren’t fighting for. Now you’ve taken it away; now you have to deal with turnover.” So I think sometimes it’s important to have that person like Stacey in our lives or like I have in my company—the person that says, “Hey, let’s take a step back, let’s figure out how we put this in place.”

Talk to me about the geography of your team. You mentioned that you’ve got a large part of your group there in Colorado. Are you in the office full-time? Are you hybrid? Do you look at each individual situation and make it work for that person? How do you structure that? Because it’s one of the biggest challenges that I still talk to firm owners about constantly, and one of the questions we get a lot of times on the podcast is, “Hey, how does somebody make this work from a culture perspective?”

Yeah. It’s interesting because all of our employees locally are within 25 minutes of our Boulder office. So, we do have a local office. I think it’s tremendously important to have a physical space where you can gather, where you can share ideas, you can whiteboard, break bread together. I believe that is so instrumentally important to developing a culture that I couldn’t envision an environment without it. That said, I’ve seen a lot of firms deploy a really great remote strategy and stay connected with their teams really well. I just like having the in-person nature of work accessible.

That said, we don’t have any mandated days or times in the office. The team will come in on a schedule that meets their needs, their desires, and how they work. I suspect I would like it a lot more than our team would like it because as our director of accounting has eloquently mentioned at times, “I don’t actually get any work done when I’m in the office because you’re distracting me.” That’s on me—that’s my problem. I recognize that, so I’m trying to do better. But I get it, I understand. But the ability to gather is really important.

Yeah, I’m with you on the whole concept of breaking bread. My saying is there’s a lot of forgiveness in friendship, and that doesn’t mean that the people you work with are going to be your best friends. But the more you hang out with people, the more that you have that term I like to use, hanging-around time, breaking bread together, you learn to look at the person’s heart, you learn to give a little bit more grace in an entire situation that you deal with day in and day out. In the culture you have right now, it sounds like you have people that may be in the office two, three days a week, and some people may be in the office one day a week. Somebody may be in the office five days a week, depending on what’s going on with their schedule and at home. Is that something that everybody makes their schedule and other people’s schedule work together?

You know, it’s worked well just allowing team members to work in the environment and the place that is most suited for their schedule. That said, I do believe it’s really important to gather, but, when you have an established trust with your team, it doesn’t really matter where the work is happening from. So I believe that’s something we’ve been able to do really well early on is have that type of trusting relationship where we’re not sitting there, Big Brother, overlooking the shoulder, asking if you’re getting your time in. Of course, there are things that need to be done and actions that need to be taken, however, I believe trust is a core consideration of being able to execute that type of strategy.

Another element I think is important to note is that I heard from Intuit’s Chief Commercial Officer—he mentioned something to the effect of “winners keep score.” When I heard that, I thought, “Wait a second, hold on. That feels kind of icky.” But then he elaborated by saying, “Have you watched a basketball game where they don’t keep score?” I said, “Yeah, I’ve seen that.” He said, “Have you watched a game where they do keep score?” “Well, yeah.” He’s like, “Well, when they’re not keeping score, they’re just playing, just having fun. When they’re keeping score, they’re working together, working against a clock or another opposing factor or team, so there’s a lot more collaboration and teamwork that comes when you’re keeping score.” That’s something we’re working on developing internally—how do we ensure we’re keeping the right score, and we’re making sure the team feels like they’re contributing in a manner that makes sense for their role, that we can measure that and drive professional success through keeping score more intentionally. So I think that’s probably another element of remote work that’s really important to developing a collaborative team culture.

I think when you look at that whole keeping score concept, it’s understanding also that we may have a baseline for what we’re going to score, but there might be pieces of what we’re tracking, score-wise, that are unique and different, or important to each individual person. Because this guy might be great at scoring, this guy might be great at delivering assists, so the guy that scores can score. Let’s not hold this guy who’s great assists guy accountable to the scoring numbers this guy aspires to because he’s probably never going to hit it. And if we make him focus on that, he’s probably going to leave.

Yeah, and then you’ve got rebounds and turnovers, and you’ve got Caitlin Clark just jamming three-pointers from half court. How do you balance all of that? To your point, it’s all in the intentionality of how you attribute that to individual success.

Yep. One of the things I’ve told my team for years is that the crazy job of me sitting in the chair I sit in is creating an environment and culture consistent enough across the organization that we can all move forward, but it’s also crazy and whacked out enough that you believe this environment is built strictly for you. When you’ve got a team of four, eight, or in your case 12 people, you start to have to be able to have enough differences in there that each individual person is motivated to deliver and score, if you will, or at least keep track of the things things that are critical to them, that motivate and drive them, keeping them pushing forward on a daily, weekly, monthly, annual basis.

When you look at the makeup of your team, and when you look at the makeup of most firms growing organically, that are moving forward consistently, you have teams and organizations made up of a younger generation—when I say “younger generation” I’m not talking necessarily Gen X, Gen Y, or millennial—I’m just talking, they’re younger. They are people more focused on life outside of the office and how to balance that with inside the office. Talk to me about how you’ve been able to speak to those things, to the audience of not only your current employees but prospective employees, and also I’m assuming, business owners you’re dealing with as well?

Yeah, I think there are two major components to messaging as it relates to generational differences in the accounting sector. One, I think, is brand. We hit a little bit on this in the Full Send story and why brand is important to us. I believe, when you’re able to put forward a brand, website, colors, all these things that make up the brand narrative, when you put forth something that resonates, and that looks and feels different, feels positive, it feels culture-forward, and just different—especially in a sector like accounting—I feel that’s a great entry point for younger generations to latch on to.

The other side, I think is likely more important to some degree, and it’s the technology you use. How have you articulated a tech stack to enable high degrees of transparency and visibility into the work that’s getting done, the communication amongst teams, and making sure everybody has access to the information they need. So if you think about generations that are coming up in the last 25, maybe 30 years, the access to information is instant. You just hop on your phone and google something, and there’s the data you need—unlike most traditional accounting firms, it might be hard to get that information; it’s not all centralized. When somebody goes into an environment where they don’t have that same level of access to information, it’s really polarizing. In your personal life, you can get that instantaneously, but at work, it just feels like a really sticky process. I think that’s a big component to bringing in the next generation and younger folks that expect that from their employers.

It’s a unique challenge. I’ll talk to firm owners a lot that are later in their career, close to my age, and one thing I’ll try to get them to understand is what you’re talking about—that the target audience they’re going after is gathering data instantaneously. And speaking in terms that hopefully they’ll get what I was telling them, I say, “Look, you could have a 13-inch tube TV sitting in your bedroom, and there’s a 75-inch 4K Ultra HD TV in your living room. The movie you’re watching is the same movie. The movie is the same. But how you’re consuming that movie, and the feeling it gives you, and the emotions it elicits, and the things it does to you visually and audibly are completely different.” The movie itself is the same, and we’re dealing with one, two, three generations in the workforce today who don’t want to watch that movie on a 13-inch black and white TV where you have to get up and walk and change the channel on. They don’t. Firm owners who get that are winning a little more in the talent game, you know, like you’re talking about. I mean, the fact that—what’s the population of Boulder?

Oh, I have no idea. It ebbs and flows with CU, whether or not they’re in school or not, but I don’t know the numbers.

So you’re in a college town, you’re not in a major metropolitan area like Denver in Colorado. But you’re able to attract talent into your organization in two years, adding 10 people. We have clients that can’t add two people a year because of what they’re selling from a culture standpoint. Do you find when you engage with people who’ve looked into your firm that there’s more excitement about who you are, what you do, and how you do it because of what they’ve been able to pull from your website or presence on LinkedIn? And do you think that’s a big difference in how you win that game?

One thousand percent. We’ve had more opportunities of potential recruits than we have had potential clients, by nature of people reaching out to our firm cold—that’s through our website, through LinkedIn. It’s interesting, you know, senior managers from Big Four reaching out, staff-level associates engaging in podcasts and different media types learning about their industry that wasn’t accessible for firms ten years ago. And so we’ve seen these folks reach out, and it’s great when we have a specific rec out, but we’re not always in a position to hire folks in specific states or there’s various reasons why we wouldn’t be hiring. But just having that pipeline and knowing it resonates with our core recruit audience, I think is important and testament to the time and effort it takes to build a brand, to be present on social, to be very active and consistent, it pays dividends on the recruitment side. And the beauty of it is it also relates to clients as well, and so it’s a bi-directional strategy for content creation.

So if you were talking to an audience of small to mid-sized firm owners, and they said, “Hey, Roman, two or three things, what would you suggest we can do, as an organization today? Our biggest challenge is staff: acquiring and retaining. What are two or three things we can do today, right now, that could impact us in the next three to six months—the flow of people coming in to at least consider our organization and holding onto the people we have?”

That’s a good question. Two or three things. So, I would start by looking at brand. I would start by looking at your brand narrative. I would start by looking at things as simple as a logo. I kid you not: Whenever I’m looking for services or a product, that’s something I will notice first. The biggest brand marketers and companies in the world understand how important brand is, yet that hasn’t really translated down to the accounting segment. They just rest on their laurels and what’s worked for the last 50 years. I believe when you start to refresh in a more modern, digestible approach that works seamlessly when somebody engages with the website and clearly understands your positioning, understands the problems you solve, the type of people you hire, that really helps prospective recruits put themselves in those shoes: “Oh! These are the clients you work with, the team I’d be working alongside. Here’s the type of service you provide, and potential upside opportunity for me at the firm, because you guys do X, Y, or Z.” By having a cohesive brand narrative and a really attractive, easy-to-use website, it enables a lot of connectivity between the recruit and the page. So I think I’d focus there first.

Two, I would probably start looking at compensation. I’d look at the benefit package. I’d look at the total salary relative to where the industry is at as a whole. Because as you well know, it’s getting more competitive, it’s getting more demanding. When you come in at a lower position relative to your peers, you’re not going to get eyeballs or looks on that front. Take a hard look at that. Then identify unique ways to support your team, whether that’s through things like a Full Send Fund, or team events, or ways you can incorporate people into your rhythms. That’s something that’s really connected with our audiences and it’s helped us a lot. But I think that’s a really personal thing. It’s unique to you, and you need to get a little creative about it.

Yeah. I think if people think outside of the box—for lack of a better way to put it without sounding cliché—I think that we’ve gotten to a point in the marketplace today where if you try to do the same old thing the same old way, you’re going to get the same old results. And being able to think outside of that box gives people the opportunity. And the beautiful thing about it is that we’re not talking about 180 degrees different from what you’re doing today. A lot of it is a twist of the dial here, a pull of the lever there, and some drastic change can occur in holding onto your people or getting a better flow of people in the front door to consider your firm as an option.

You’ve obviously done a lot of things right to get on the track you’re on right now. If there are people out there looking to explore better career options, which may include starting their own firm, or just finding out more about career options at firms like yours, what’s the best way to reach you? What’s the best way to get a hold of you and get some direction or advice, connect with you from that standpoint? Or if they’re a firm owner that is looking at, how they can do things more effectively or efficiently?

Yeah. I probably spend too much time doing this, but I love spending time with young folks entering the profession, love spending time with young, aspirational firm owners that are just trying to take that next step in their career. So I will take a meeting just to help support, and make connections, and help people feel like they’ve got one step further down the path of doing whatever it is that will bring them joy, whether that’s with us or anybody else. So LinkedIn is usually the best place to find me. Easy to find, Roman Villard, CPA. Send a note. You could also reach out via email at howdy@fullsendfinance.com. Outside of that, if you just start looking at the people on LinkedIn who are active, who work at firms you find interesting or aspirational for you perhaps, send a note. There are so many people in this industry that are so generous with their time. I know it’s intimidating to send a message like, “Hey, I’ve been watching you. I hope you’re doing great. Would you mind spending a few minutes answering a few questions?” That’s a cool message to receive for anybody. So many people like giving back, so just take that step to send a note.

Absolutely. It’s funny you say that, Roman, because I was talking to somebody, a young candidate called, a gentleman graduating, reached out, was interested in a couple of firms, and I let him know, look, I know the guys that own those firms, they’re not a client of ours, they do a great job of their recruiting internally, but I’d be more than happy to introduce you, though.

Yeah.

So I sent an introduction to one of them, and he replied back and said, “Just tell him to send me a message. What’s he afraid of?” So I picked the phone up and called him and said, “What he’s afraid of is your title on your website is CEO.”

Yes.

“He doesn’t know you’re just another guy, you know, that’s a goofball like the rest of us. You’re the CEO. That’s all he sees.” So you’re right. There are a lot of people out there doing everything they can to blaze a path and let people know there’s some opportunity here.

Yep. And the absolute worst thing that can come out of a cold outreach like that is that somebody ignores it, or they say no. If that’s the worst thing that happens, you’ll be alright. So just take that step, get out of the shell. Would recommend.

Absolutely. I want to thank you again for being with us today, Roman. You’ve shared a lot of information I think people can pull from, whether it’s people in the profession, people looking to get into the profession, or people that are building firms within the profession. So thank you so much for your time.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Keep doing what you’re doing. I love the angle of spending time focused on life and life-building activities. So keep putting out great content like this. Appreciate the time, John.

Hey, I appreciate it. And for those of you listening, thank you so much for investing a little bit of time with us today. If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a comment. Also, subscribe on the platform of your choice, make sure you’re in the loop to hear all the conversations we have coming up in the future, just like Roman, where you can find out what it’s like to live a little bit of CPA Life. Until next time.

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Go Full Send on Your Accounting Journey with Roman Villard

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