Lessons learned in a decade of accounting, Part 3

It might not surprise you to learn that of all the paths you can take in the world of professional accounting, the one that led me to co-founding Zeroed-In was my favorite and best decision. Learn why I think that the Zeroed-In business model is the perfect blend of public and corporate accounting. Warning: I might be a bit biased here.  

After I had acquired skills in both public accounting and corporate accounting, it was only natural to try and mesh these two skillsets I had acquired together and see if I could build something of my own. If I’m honest, I was scared and didn’t believe in myself that I could do it; that was until I had reconnected with my co-founder Kyle Geers.  

Vision  

Our vision for the company was simple: we loved the fast pace, the project variety, and how much you learn in public accounting. We hated the hours, as well as the compensation structure and promotion tracks that are overly regimented. We set out to build an accounting firm with a work-life balance that allowed employees to take control of designing their level of effort and not get reprimanded for it.   

Essentially, we wanted to build an accounting firm with flexibility. By providing our team members with flexibility, they are more likely to perform at a high level in work that they truly enjoy. By capping weekly hours on client projects, they can have protected time to build their own personal and professional development, leading to innovation and collaboration with fellow teammates. Ultimately, we want to drive efficiency in an industry that historically has been overworked with few technological advances. The existing model of accounting is broken, and it is a downward cycle, especially with less people joining the profession. 

Experience  

We’ve had the great fortune to work with a variety of clients and topics ranging from technical accounting, outsourced accounting, and audit/transaction readiness services. We never imagined the range of clients that we have been able to help them in our journey; revolutionary leaders in new industries, ranging from out-of-home advertising, to media focused on empowering the female professional, to fractional investing in assets that have never been attempted before, to technology companies focused on helping musical artists and labels thrive…the list really goes on. We’ve been lucky enough to work with companies on the cutting edge and improve their existing processes or help them become compliant in their external reporting. We’ve even developed new skills thanks to our mission of continuous improvement; we dove headfirst into the world of business intelligence, and have had team members inspired enough to begin crafting an automated financial statement preparation tool. This is all while facing new challenges every day in growing the business and the team. 

A typical full-time employee at Zeroed-In does not work more than 40 hours a week. We cap our employees to roughly 30 hours of chargeable time per week and allot the remaining hours to be split on either innovation or anything else that fascinates them (or “the 70/20/10 rule”). We do not reprimand employees for not hitting the 30 hours and often celebrate that an employee was able to innovate or participate in an internal initiative (see the financial statement preparation tool above) when they don’t have the chargeable time. It’s always about balance. Kyle and I are transparent with our employees with deals won, revenues generated, and anything else that may come up. We pay our employees fairly and solely based on performance and no other factors, including where you live. You get promoted to a position when you’ve shown you can do that job, it’s that simple. 

At this point you’re thinking this is a marketing pitch, and I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t. But more so, it’s a message to everyone in a position of power at other accounting firms, that there is a better way. When your business model has significant turnover built into it, there must be something wrong. The motto shouldn’t be that only the strong survive. When we invest in someone’s career by hiring them, we should help them grow to their best version of themselves, even if it means the short-term gains may not be as high.   

That’s what we are trying to accomplish at Zeroed-In. We want to build something that everyone can be proud of in the long-term; something that’s sustainable. We don’t want our employees to experience burnout; we want them to come to work excited about what’s next. And we want to constantly find ways to bring our clients a wealth of knowledge and value that doesn’t come with an insane price tag. 

TL;DR: I’m obviously biased here, but I think Zeroed-In leverages the perfect blend of public and corporate accounting. You get the work-life balance of corporate accounting with the exposure to various projects and accelerated learnings that public accounting offers you, all while continuing to innovate in a field that hasn’t seen a lot of innovation over the past few decades. 

If you’ve been following along, I want to hear from you. Have you had similar experiences? Would you recommend one path versus another? Did I miss anything that you think should be in here?