BONUS | Ep. 10: Rhondalynn Korolak - It's Not About What You Know, It's About What You Can Move Your Client to Do.

Count Me In Episode 10 (Part 1) with
Rhondalynn Korolak: https://podcast.imanet.org/10


Contact Rhondalynn:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/imagineering/


Rhondalynn's Work & Recognition:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/11/prweb13878827.htmhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb2rqTL4QW8&feature=youtu.behttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3rRoQUxb5g&feature=youtu.be

Finalist - Best Digital Start Up - 23rd annual AMY Awards

Top 3 Finalist - Female Fintech Leader of the Year,
Excellence in Data and Artificial Intelligence

Top 10 Cloud Accounting Apps of 2016

Top 10 Small Business Apps of 2016




FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)


Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. I am your host Mitch
Roshong and I am here to share another bonus episode of our
series with you. If you recall a few months back, my cohost Adam
spoke with Rhondalynn Korolak. She joined him from Australia to
talk about how accounting skills translate to effectively running
a business. Today we are going to hear the conclusion of their
conversation and hear some of Rhondalynn's recommendations for
adapting to the evolving accounting and finance world. She refers
to it as future-proofing yourself. So let's head over and listen
now. 


 


Adam: (00:43)


So how have you evolved your own career from public taxation to a
successful business professional in the accounting space? 


 


Rhondalynn: (00:49)


Well, I started off with PWC in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. So my
specialization I guess when I went through became a chartered
accountant and article was oil and gas taxation. So primarily as
you can imagine, me working with a lot of big firms, you know,
the sort of shells and mobiles of the world. And it wasn't really
until I immigrated about 14 years ago to Australia that I had the
opportunity to start working with some smaller businesses. So
when I became a permanent resident and a citizen of Australia, I
decided I wanted to go out on my own. And the natural inkling,
inclination, I guess for me is I wanted to work with small
businesses. So I thought that I would go out into the world in a
coaching capacity. So I thought I'm going to take everything that
I've learned from qualifying and practicing as a lawyer and also
a chartered accountant in Canada and I'm going to apply all those
skills and I'm going to coach small businesses. And I kind of had
a couple of aha moments, right? So aha moment number one is, no,
please, please, I'm, forgive me because this is a little bit
pre-cloud. So this is going back at least about a decade now. And
it was before a lot of the cloud accounting packages even
existed. And so I was going out and I was doing Excel
spreadsheets. I was printing a lot of reports from my clients. I
was giving them traditional dashboards and KPIs and you know, I
would go out and coach these people and I couldn't figure out why
nobody was actually taking action, you know, because I thought
what I was telling them was really important. I was going out
with all these KPIs and saying, do you know it takes 92 days to
collect your debts and you know, giving them kind of a wrap on
the fingers with a ruler. And people were listening to me a lot
and they were shaking their heads and stuff and nodding in
agreement and they, they knew that it was bad and they knew that
they had to do some stuff, but they couldn't actually action it.
They, they, they had no clue really what I was saying and what it
tangibly meant to their business. So this was my first aha
moment. I thought, okay, never worked with small business
businesses before. I'm now trying to coach these people, but
nobody's taking action. What's the problem? So I learned a couple
of things. I learned that the number one problem by far in every
single business is cashflow. But nobody wants to talk about it
because people hate or they're terrified of their numbers. So
that's kind of, you know, the big hairy, um, you know, wake up
call for me, number one, number two was 90 some percent of all
these people that we're working with, these small businesses,
they're completely financially illiterate. So that was another
big, huge surprise to me because I just sort of assumed as an
accountant that if you had your own business, you might take some
time out to learn about financial so that you could operate it
correctly. But that is not true. That's not what people do.
People go into business because they're good at what they do.
They're technicians, they cut hair really well, they do plumbing
or electrical contracting really well. They're excellent at
selling shoes or you know, operating a retail store or running a
restaurant. They don't want to become accountants. And so these
were huge revelations to me because I just thought that I could
take all this wonderful, you know, insight that I had and all of
my accounting and math skills and legal skills and go out and
coach people. But I realized that it is not about what you know,
it's about what you can move your client to do. And so the
biggest things that I learned about making this transition from
what might be traditional accounting to more of advice or
coaching or whatever you want to call it, is this, we need to
find better ways to get leverage on our clients and to actually
inspire them to step up and take some action. And that's all soft
skills, right? That has nothing to do with learning more about
cashflow or learning more about ratio analysis or or trends or
cashflow forecasting. You know, in my opinion, we as accountants
spend far too much time doing that stuff when, let's be honest,
you know, my first client, one of the very first clients that I
had was in the aged care business. And when I showed up on the
very first day that I was there to coach her, she found out that
she had just lost her, her top client. That was where 30% of her
revenue. And so all of the work that I had done in preparation
for that meeting, reading her financials, preparing cashflow,
forecast, all that stuff throughout the window, it wasn't worth
anything to her because she had just had a major shift in that
business. And so all of that past stuff was irrelevant. And even
what I thought the future was going to be like was irrelevant.
And the whole coaching was how am I going to put enough value on
the table and help her clop back the revenue that she lost so
that she can bloody afford to continue in business and to pay me,
be there to advise her. And so that was really the big shift for
me, right? Is I just thought that I already knew everything that
I needed to know from my legal studies and practice and my
accounting to do this, you know, job that I wanted to do and I
didn't. And so that's when I just became really curious about
things like neuroscience, you know, how do our brains process
information and make decisions. And that's when kind of my big,
you know, lightning bulb or flash moment came for the third time.
And what I learned from studying about the brain, and you know,
I, I took a deep dive, I read 200 over 200 studies published in,
you know, Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford on neuroscience. I
took courses on a clinical hypnotherapy so that I could
understand a bit better how the brain worked. And what I learned
from all of that was this, the parts of our brain that ...