Can you build a six-figure advisory business working only 15 hours a week? CPA Erica Goode has—and she describes exactly how she did it (think serious boundaries):

The lessons corporate burn-out can teach you about how to construct your own business.

How setting rigid boundaries on her time allows her to meet all her work + life commitments.

The value of time blocking (and another way to look at productivity).

Why defining her version of “enough” allows her to stay focused and avoid chasing shiny objects.

Introducing a potential new KPI for soloists—and why it needs your “happiness” factor to be complete.

LINKS

Erica Goode | LinkedIn

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

BIO

Erica Goode has been a Certified Public Accountant for 15 years. She runs a virtual accounting firm supporting coaches and consultants with bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO services and also hosts the Coaches, Consultants, and Money podcast.

She’s a former Director of Finance at a Fortune 50 company and started her career as an auditor at a Big 4 public accounting firm. Erica is also the mom of 2 and the wife of a fellow CPA. She lives with her family in the mountains of Idaho.

WORK WITH ROCHELLE

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TRANSCRIPT

TRANSCRIPT 

00:00 – 00:26

Erica Goode: We fall back into this idea of like always being disappointed. Like we didn’t set an expectation for ourselves, so we don’t know if we hit it, so we kind of feel melancholy about it. But when you set an expectation and you can kind of see if you were close or if you exceeded it, well, then you get to give yourself a pat on the back and acknowledge that what you’re doing is a good thing. And I think we tend to be pretty hard on ourselves. There’s more often than not, there’s time to give ourselves a pat

00:26 – 00:27

Erica Goode: on the back.

00:32 – 01:12

Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to the Soloist Life podcast, formerly known as Soloist Women, where we’re all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I’m Rochelle Moulton, and today I’m here with Erica Goode, who’s been a CPA for 15 years. She runs a virtual accounting firm supporting coaches and consultants with bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO services, and also hosts the Coaches Consultants and Money podcast, which is terrific. If you’re not already a listener, sign up. She’s a former director of finance at a Fortune 50 company and started her career as an auditor at a big 4 public accounting

01:12 – 01:41

Rochelle Moulton: firm. Erika is also the mom of 2 and the wife of a fellow CPA. She lives with her family in the mountains of Idaho. Erica, welcome. Hey, thanks so much for having me. Well, you are our first guest repeat, which I honestly didn’t think we’d do until at least 50 or so episodes. But after reading the LinkedIn conversation about your work schedule and all those really interesting responses, I just had to have you back on to talk about this.

01:41 – 01:49

Erica Goode: Oh, thanks so much. Yeah, I’ve been interested in that as well. The reactions are not necessarily what I’ve expected.

01:50 – 02:11

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. So the post that I’m talking about was when you explained how you put in the 15 hours a week that you usually spend on your business. And by the way, That’s a 6 figure CFO business. And some of the comments were so illuminating, but let’s start with what your typical work week looks like. Yeah. So like

02:11 – 02:47

Erica Goode: you said, I work a 15 hour a week schedule on average, and I stick to that pretty well every week on Friday or on Mondays I work 9 to 3, Tuesdays 9 to 3, I don’t work at all on Wednesdays, Thursdays are 9 to 3 again and then Fridays I’m off with the rest of my family who also does four-day school and work weeks in our town. So that totals up to 15 hours when you consider a one-hour lunch in there which I forced myself to take away from my desk. But I, that is all I

02:47 – 03:00

Erica Goode: work. I have a 3 day weekend every week and I have time off for myself on Wednesdays as a buffer day or as an alone day or whatever needs to be done that day.

03:00 – 03:19

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, I really, I like that concept too of the flux day and when I looked at your schedule the first time I thought well That’s what allows you to really stick with your 15 is to know that you have this day That’s not Friday when everybody else is with you if you need to flex to work more or to do something personally more?

03:20 – 03:56

Erica Goode: Yeah, absolutely. Especially my kids are 12 and 8 and you cannot predict when somebody is gonna get sick or have to stay home from school. And so when I have that day, that keeps me within the whole week whole. Because if somebody shows up sick on Tuesday or Thursday, I know that I have a day to make it up, either this week or the following week, and it allows me to be present in the moment for whoever needs me in that moment that I can focus on them and without in the back of my mind worrying

03:56 – 04:03

Erica Goode: about gosh I was supposed to do this today and when will I get this done I know exactly well I’ll get it done It’ll be on that flex today.

04:03 – 04:31

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, that’s the insanity that comes when we’re in these kinds of professions where we do our best to create boundaries, but there are things beyond our control that we just have to flex with from time to time. And so I think the way you’ve done it is really interesting. It’s kind of, it’s in a little bit, in 1 sense, it’s like saying in order to work 15 hours a week, I have to create the conditions that I have more hours available if I need them. And then most of the time I don’t need them, because you’re

04:31 – 04:37

Rochelle Moulton: not going into that time. You’re not burrowing in to do more work presumably on Wednesdays if you don’t need to.

04:38 – 05:08

Erica Goode: Yeah, absolutely. I’m very good at time blocking my schedule, so I know what I’m going to do on every day that I’m working, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. And so if something comes up, I just know what I need to shift. And then I always, it’s like I’m being true to myself. I’m not always feeling like I’m behind. I also don’t feel like I’m ahead a lot of the time because I just have expectations of what’s going to happen that week. And I so rarely need that flex day. I need it when I need it. I can’t not

05:08 – 05:45

Erica Goode: schedule it. But what that allows for is, the world is my oyster at that point. For me, that looks like I love grocery shopping by myself at 7 a.m. When nobody else is in the store. So I do grocery shopping on Wednesday. I volunteer on Wednesdays. I might go for a hike. I might just get things done around the house that make our weekends better. We don’t ever do laundry or grocery shopping on the weekends because it gets done outside of that time. So really on the weekends is true family fun time where we could go

05:45 – 05:47

Erica Goode: out and adventure in the mountains of Idaho.

05:48 – 05:52

Rochelle Moulton: And you’re not wondering how the toilets are going to get cleaned. Absolutely not.

05:52 – 05:57

Erica Goode: Well, the kids get to do some chores too. So that’s who cleans the toilets in our house. All

05:57 – 06:30

Rochelle Moulton: right. Well, they’re the right ages to be doing chores. I love that. They are. So Erica, I know that you’ve been a hundred percent committed to working this kind of flex schedule at least as long as I’ve known you and I can almost hear the sighs as other consultants and especially CPAs during tax season, right? Imagine that schedule. Like talk to us about how you got to where you are now. How deliberate were your choices? I mean, obviously they’re very deliberate right now, but did you start out that way or was this like a path of

06:30 – 06:32

Rochelle Moulton: experimentation? Yeah, that’s

06:32 – 07:04

Erica Goode: a good question. I think a lot of people assume when you build a business that you work your tail off 60-hour weeks to build a business. And then if you’re lucky and you do it right, you can take your foot off the gas and relax in a hammock and work 15-hour weeks after that, or the four-hour work week, as we all know it. And mine was actually, that’s actually not true at all of what happened to me. I did it the opposite, where I grew into 15 hours. I had come from a background personally where I

07:04 – 07:41

Erica Goode: was in corporate finance. I had hit a season of burnout in my life and it was very traumatizing and it was very telling. And it actually, I’m so grateful for it because it forced me to have a reckoning with myself and what I wanted my life and my career and everything to become. What was I really going after? And because I had that experience, I wound up leaving my corporate career and staying home, quote, just to be a stay at home mom, which is a job in itself, but I wasn’t working for a couple years. And

07:41 – 08:21

Erica Goode: I just so desperately missed finance work. I so desperately missed accounting that I wanted to come back and do something, but I was so truly traumatized from this burnout experience that I put up the fiercest boundaries that wouldn’t allow me to go back to that place because if you’ve ever been in a terrible place and you don’t want to go back, you do everything in your life to not get back to that place. And so I had honestly accidentally created a business, accidentally picked up a client number 1. And at that point, our kids were 6

08:21 – 08:56

Erica Goode: and 2. And I was committed to only work when they were not around when they were at school. They must have been 3 because a three-year-old went to three-year-old preschool. If you ever had a three-year-old in preschool, they’re barely out of the house. Three-year-old preschool is a cute stepping stone into other things. Our little guy was out of the house max 3 to 4 hours a week. Between drive time, that only allowed me to really work for 2 hours a week max. And I didn’t tell anybody that I had started a business except for this 1

08:56 – 09:29

Erica Goode: client. I didn’t market, I didn’t have a website, I had nothing. So there was no fear of picking up another client because nobody knew about me. And I just committed to this 1 client for 2 hours a week. And I did my work and I told myself that as the kids grew, my business would grow. And it could only grow as fast as the kids grew because that would allow more time to open up for myself and so it started off at 2 hours a week eventually it went to 6 hours a week then it went

09:29 – 09:59

Erica Goode: to 10 hours a week and here I am at 15 hours a week. I actually thought that eventually I’d keep going into 20 hours a week, but it kind of fit it. Found a happy medium at 15 hours where the profit is good, The work schedule is good. It’s very holistically healthy. And I don’t feel a need to add on more hours at this point, though I could probably carve some out of that flex day if I really wanted to.

10:00 – 10:04

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, it’s kind of like you find that sweet spot and you don’t want to mess with it.

10:04 – 10:30

Erica Goode: Definitely. Yeah, what more would I be going for if I wanted to do that? And I got to be careful what I’m chasing. And I’ve chased the wrong things in the past. I’ve been in places where I’ve chased salary and I chase title and I’m very good at chasing things and getting them. It doesn’t always feel good when you get them. And so I’m very conscious of what future Erica will feel like if we chase the wrong thing.

10:30 – 11:01

Rochelle Moulton: Well, the other thing I love about this is some moms have told me that they actually scaled back when their kids were teenagers because they felt like the kids needed them more in the teenage years than they had when they were younger, which is the opposite of what most people would expect. But the other thing is that then you’ve got the ability to flex back up once they’re off to college or living their lives or keep it the same and just take on a hobby or work for a cause you care about. I mean, the flexibility

11:01 – 11:04

Rochelle Moulton: of what you’ve created is really the bomb.

11:05 – 11:20

Erica Goode: It’s the benefit of being a solopreneur. You’re accountable to yourself and your clients, and you get to create what you’d like to create. And there are not many people in professions that allow you to do that. It’s a blessing for sure.

11:20 – 11:37

Rochelle Moulton: Well, you’ve worked hard to do it. So how important are automation and people leverage with sustaining both your schedule and your revenue? I mean, how much of either of those 2 are you using?

11:37 – 12:14

Erica Goode: Yeah, that’s a really great question. And I find that because I haven’t historically spent time growing very fast, I’ve grown very thoughtfully. So as my business has grown, albeit slowly, it’s given me the extra time to think through the automations and to think through what’s the tech stack in my business and in my industry that if it’s just going to be me and if it has to be 15 hours, because in my mind, everything I do has to fit in 15 hours. So if I can’t fit it in in the way I’m doing it now, there

12:14 – 12:53

Erica Goode: is not an option to add hours in my mind. I have to find a system to help me do it faster. And so that’s been really, really instrumental in making sure that I’m not being inefficient as I grow because I can only grow through efficiencies if I’m forcing my time to be capped. Now, and in my industry, there is no limit to tech stack options out there along every step of the way. For me, that looks like I use 1 bookkeeping system. I am 00I always say a one-trick pony I don’t want to learn multiple systems

12:53 – 13:20

Erica Goode: I want to live in 1 system and know it really well And if you want to be a client of mine, I’m gonna be the best person to work in For me, it’s QuickBooks Online. I’m gonna be the best person who does QuickBooks Online for you. But if you’re on 0, then I’m not the right person for you because it won’t fit in my system to learn a new system to help 1 client in a different tech stack app.

13:20 – 13:44

Rochelle Moulton: Oh, I mean, I could tell you so many stories about consultants who have veered out of what has been working for them with the idea that, Oh, I’ll just do it this 1 time for this client, only to be really surprised by what a challenge it can be to learn a new system. And it’s not that learning is hard, it’s how it impacts everything else that you do. Yeah, absolutely.

13:45 – 14:19

Erica Goode: I actually just in the past few months, let go of a beloved client of mine because they were outside of the niche that I had committed to and I had built all of our systems and processes around coaches and consultants and small agencies and everything I do works really well in that. And I had a client who I loved and I’m still friends with outside of work who didn’t fit into that system well. And I actually let them go kindly with lots of notice and I sent them off well, but they didn’t fit in my system,

14:19 – 14:22

Erica Goode: and that was gonna really start to impact my efficiencies.

14:24 – 15:02

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, I mean, there’s a, and I mean this in the best way, there’s a rigidity about the way you’re describing these boundaries, right? There’s a boundary around how many hours, there’s a boundary around efficiency, around tech efficiency, on streamlining processes in your day that is, I think a lot of people when they go hang out their own shingle, don’t realize that they have the ability to create these kinds of boundaries. Yeah. Right? Because we think, oh yeah, I’m on my own, so I have to do whatever the client wants versus really understanding yourself, understanding your offerings,

15:02 – 15:08

Rochelle Moulton: and how you want to live the soloist life, to coin a phrase, right?

15:09 – 15:38

Erica Goode: Absolutely. Somebody listening to this, lots of people listening to this are going to roll their eyes when I say it like this, but it’s actually very hard to work 15 hours a week because you have to create these boundaries and you have to say no and it’s actually extremely difficult to stick to what you committed to because I wanna help everybody and sometimes a lot of weeks I wanna work more but if I work more than it means I’m pulling away from something else, and that’s going to feel an impact too. And so it’s actually really,

15:38 – 16:05

Erica Goode: you’re kind of holding yourself back in a lot of ways. You’re not able to help everybody you would if you had a 50-hour week ahead of you. You’re not able to, I don’t know, to just to reach out to people or to do a project that’s on your list. I know I could get this project done if I had an extra 10 hours, but I know that it’s not going to feel good in the long run. So I’m going to commit to that 15 hours. And that’s, it’s hard work limiting yourself almost.

16:06 – 16:42

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. Well, you’re choosing. You’re making choices. It’s like you’re a concentrated version. That’s how I’m thinking about it, right? Because it’s so down to the essence that there’s no extra, there’s no fluff, it’s the essence. Yeah. So I want to go back to the LinkedIn post for a second because there was an observation by someone on there and he was just starting out and he said, I couldn’t possibly work so few hours because there was so much to do starting a business. Do you remember what you told him?

16:42 – 16:44

Erica Goode: No, I don’t. Will you remind me?

16:45 – 17:14

Rochelle Moulton: Well,...