Ep. 44: Sarah Elliott - Accounting, Entrepreneurship, and Leadership

Contact Sarah: 


https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahelliottcpaacc/

https://twitter.com/selliott99



About Sarah:
https://www.intend2lead.com/sarah-elliott/
Intend2Lead: https://www.intend2lead.com/


Sarah's favorite quote: “As we let our own light
shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the
same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence
automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:05)


We are back with Episode 44 of Count Me In, IMA's podcast about
all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Our
conversation for today is between Adam and special guest, Sarah
Elliott. Sarah talks to us about how her accounting background
and skills enabled her to start and run multiple businesses, and
she really emphasizes the importance of leadership. Let's go over
to the conversation now.


 


Adam: (00:33)


So Sarah, can you please tell us a little bit about your
accounting experience?


 


Sarah: (00:38)


Of course. So I am a CPA and I practiced in public accounting for
14 years in the audit space. So I spent 10 years at big four. I
worked for PWC. Eight of those years were in Austin, Texas, which
is where I am now. They had some really great experiences and
challenges that PWC, I feel like somehow I worked on a lot of
engagements where the company was restating which made things
extra interesting and challenging. And so I just really got to
learn a lot, love digging into the messiness of some of those
things and making it through it. A couple of years later when it
was time for me to become an equity partner, actually instead
chose to take a leap of faith to start my own business because I
had learned more about myself and I knew I wanted to make a
bigger impact in the accounting profession. Then just one from, I
really wanted to expand the impact to the profession as a whole.
So I took that leap of faith in 2014 and I was five months
pregnant at the time. So it was scary and exhilarating and fun.
And I, I'm somehow here to tell the tale.


 


Adam: (01:56)


So, you know, you've mentioned that you started your own business
you know, you, you've started elevate and ultimately intend to
lead. Can you tell us like what contributed to wanting to start
those and then what areas of interest of yours spark those spark
the initiatives?


 


Sarah: (02:12)


Sure. So it's a, it's a bit of a convoluted story how all this
came to be. So the, the short answer is both businesses are
something that I wished I had had for myself at a point earlier
in my own journey. So I saw a need. It was a need I had in me and
I thought, wow, I really want to give this back to others. So the
longer answer, and by the way, there's been a lot of twists and
turns with elevate, so it feels stick with me. You'll see it's
kind of an interesting story and I think as an entrepreneur it's
not all that uncommon that we end up in a place where we didn't
see setting out. We're really just figuring out as go. So
initially right when I was in the practice of accounting, I had
done some volunteerism through the AICPA on a couple of task
forces. And my work there helps me see that there was a real need
for leadership development in this profession. I saw the
challenges that were not just at my firm, that they were the same
as the entire profession. And so I started to see that there was
alignment in our leadership challenges with my own gifts and my
own passion. So that really inspired me to take that leap of
faith, right, to leave the firm and the career that I had built
in the security of that to really make a bigger impact on my own.
So the first business I started was actually, it was called
elevate advisors back then. And my intention was to provide
strategic consulting services to the profession in leadership
development. And I was five months pregnant, if you'll remember.
So I had about four months of a runway before I had my kiddo. And
what was interesting was in those four months, it's more of a
generalist consultant, I realized that there was really more that
I wanted to bring. I wanted to bring that magic of coaching,
which had such a profound impact for me. I wanted to bring that
to the accounting profession. So I made a decision in December of
2014 when I was nine months pregnant, about to pause, to go back
to school for my coaching certification. So I went back to school
for a year a couple of months after that when my baby was, I
think he was about eight weeks old at the time. And then I
rebranded elevate advisers to elevate coaching. And my focus at
that time was really on coaching women in the profession because
I really believe that we need more women leadership in this
profession. We need more diversity and women leaders have so much
to offer the profession what we really need right now. And I
think women bring a really strong different type of leadership to
this profession. We're really human side of leadership,
collaboration, empathy, compassion, inclusion, creativity, and
really need more of that. We need more balance in this
profession. So I was focused on coaching for women in accounting
[inaudible] then I met Brian Kush, who's my amazing partner for
intend to lead. So I met him in the fall of 2015, you know,
another coach, another CPA who had turned into a coach. But he
was a few years ahead on his journey than where I was. And so a
mutual friend said, Oh, you two need to meet. We met via phone.
We instantly connected. We shared the same values and vision or
innovating leadership development in the profession and for
bringing the magic of coaching right to accounting. 


 


Adam: (05:54)


So since this is a podcast for accountants, I have to ask, how
did your accounting background help in starting and efficiently
operating each of these businesses that you've just described?
For us?


 


Sarah: (06:06)


I said, it's an interesting question because some obvious things
come to mind, which is being good with numbers is great when it
comes to running a business, right? So right from the start I
knew how to create a budget, how to set goals, right and, and
revenue goals, then I could project what it would cost to deliver
a project and what cashflow needs I had. So those things just
came to me. Second nature, a lot of things that I think
accountants take for granted that much of the world is not adept
with. And, and the work in audit is, well, it's just given me a
lot of exposure to business things. So entity formation at
contracts, how to write and use a contract. What payment terms
you want with your customers, right? To make sure you can manage
cash flows. So those are some of the obvious things that are
helpful and necessary to run a sustainable business. And then I
think there were less obvious things that really support
entrepreneurship. So I was an auditor for 14 years and I worked
with a lot of different businesses. So I have an innate knowledge
through that experience of how business works beyond just the
numbers because you're always learning what is the business to
do, right? What is their model? And I learned a lot about what
works and what doesn't work. So when you work with companies for
a few years, you see the good, the bad, and the ugly. What makes
the business really great and what actually makes businesses
fail. Okay. And then becaus...