Rachel Phillips, president of Fully Accountable, emphasizes the importance of empowering employees to create their own destiny within the company. She shares her unique journey from a law intern to a co-owner, highlighting the significance of collaboration and a flat organizational structure in fostering a culture of growth and innovation. Rachel discusses how her team members are encouraged to take ownership of their roles, leading to increased responsibility and personal investment in their work. The conversation also delves into the company's commitment to core values, particularly kindness, which shapes hiring practices and client relationships. With a mission to provide opportunities for women in the accounting field, Rachel's vision illustrates how a supportive work environment can lead to success for both individuals and the organization as a whole.

Takeaways:

• Rachel Phillips emphasizes the importance of creating a collaborative environment with minimal hierarchy, allowing employees to shape their own destinies within the company.
• The company's mission is to impact 10,000 businesses, highlighting their commitment to growth and service expansion.
• Rachel believes that kindness is a crucial core value, and she personally interviews candidates to ensure alignment with this principle.
• Team members are empowered to own specific categories, fostering accountability and professional growth without relying solely on traditional titles.
• Fully Accountable promotes remote work, allowing women, especially military wives, to maintain careers despite frequent relocations.
• Celebrating team achievements through public recognition and social events enhances company culture and team morale.

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Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight - Welcome

Welcome to the podcast

Excited today.

So welcome to to everybody and welcome to the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast where we uncover game changing insights that propel leaders to new heights. Today, I am thrilled to share and introduce Rachel Phillips, a visionary leader making waves in her industry.

She is known for her bold strategies and empowering leadership style. Rachel has consistently transformed challenges into opportunities, inspiring those around her to achieve greatness.

Join us as we delve into her journey, uncovering the principles and pivotal moments that have defined her success. Get ready for an inspiring conversation that will ignite your own leadership potential.

So, Rachel, welcome to the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.

Oh my gosh, Jacqueline, thank you for such a warm welcome. I'm delighted to be here.

So, Rachel, I was, you know, I was reading your bio, you know, and we just shared a little bit beforehand. I mean, you were, you, you, you, you were, you know, in college, you were an intern in retail, then you interned at the company.

You also have a law background.

Yeah.

So tell us a little bit about your journey to now president of this awesome company.

Yeah, so it's actually crazy.

So I was in law school, finishing up my first year and who was the original founder of Fully Accountable had gone to the law school and said, I need a new intern. Can you give me the number one kid in the business class? I'd like to interview them.

And so the dean called me down one day and said, hey, we have an interview opportunity for you. He's taken multiple interns. They've all been wildly successful. At the time he Fully Accountable wasn't around. He was running a few other companies.

But I went and interviewed there and was like, wow, I can gain a lot of experience and just learn and grow so much. And so I started as an intern with him, over the course of the next two years, worked in several different businesses.

He did a lot of buying and selling companies. So that's really where I got my start would have been mergers acquisition, corporate law.

And so I actually incorporated Fully Accountable during my lunch on the first day of the bar exam.

I know it's one of my very favorite memories, primarily because we just celebrated our 10 year anniversary, but I remember it being July 30th because that was when you take the bar exam. So it's like always this fun little thing for me every July 30th to be like, oh, we're another year in.

Right?

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

So I finished taking the bar, I got back and I said to them, I love this idea of what you've come up with. I know it hasn't really launched yet, but I want to be a part of it. So rather than going out on the open market, how. How can I be in this?

Like, I want to be a part of it. I love what we're doing here. And so I started. I went from being a law intern to like, business manager.

I did a little bit of everything from accounting to sales to marketing. And we just continued to grow the business.

And then most recently, my business partner Chris and myself bought the founding partner and majority owner out in July of this year. And so now he and I co own the business together. Thank you.

Yeah, I gotta celebrate that. That's huge. Oh, my God. Yeah.

So it's really like intern to owner, and I've done everything from, you know, the most basic of administrative jobs that help keep the company running to some of the most crazy, complex situations we ever find ourselves in that we likely never will.

And one of the things I'm most proud about is everybody on my team I've interviewed and hired and have some personal connection with, because I just think that people make companies and it's important that for a company of our size that we make people a priority.

Okay. So there's. There's so many different questions I want to ask. I'm like, oh, my God. So, first of all, kudos to you for seeing the vision that they had.

I mean, if you go back to or in. And I would say even kudos to the two guys that brought you in as the intern and sharing the vision that you were able to see that.

Because I think that is something that, I mean, I feel like I talk about that all the time, but I feel like it's one of those things that so many companies, they do in the beginning. Right. They talk about their vision and they almost kind of forget about it.

Yep.

And so. So, like, kudos to you for seeing that. And See and be able to do that.

So how do you keep that going for the people that you're bringing in like that, keep that vision going?

Totally.

So a couple of things, like, number one is one of the things I always try to encourage my people is like, you are your best asset and you are our company's best asset. And the more you love your job and the more that you want to do more at this company, the better we all are.

And so we have a very, very collaborative company. We don't do a lot of hierarchy. There's not a lot of middle management. Like, you got to go up through the chain.

And for us, it's been able to let us do a couple things. Number one, a lot of people have been able to create, much like I did myself, their own destiny at their company.

So we've had people that have been like, I want more.

And we've built certification programs where people can go and learn and be a next level controller, accountant, that they're able to do more for our clients. All because somebody said, I want to learn a little bit more and do a little bit more for my clients.

We have people that run training programs within our organization because they see the need of training other people and how it impacts their job. And so now we have an entire training department with multiple trainers who are actually training on the stuff we do.

Like, one of the things that always grinds my gears the most is somebody will come in and be like, here's this outside training program that you need to do. And a lot of times there's a lot of really good, valuable stuff. But we're training on the actual mechanics.

And the way that Fully Accountable does work wants you to exhibit core values and make sure that you're being equipped to do your job the way that you actually need to do it, not the way that me, Rachel, who does not do your job, thinks that you need to, because I don't do that job. Right.

And so because of that, we are constantly trying to create more opportunities for our people based on the holes that we have in our organization. Much like I saw a hole and took a chance on it, I want them to take a chance on themselves too.

So, again, a lot of great things and, and couple things like, you know, listeners, as you're hearing.

One of the biggest insights that I think that you just shared, Rachel, is that what you said is that you help people create their own destiny and there's not a lot of hierarchy. So in that vein, how do you help? I mean, obviously giving people the advance, the ability to learn, which is in investing in the people.

But how do you keep people vested in there without, you know, because some people are always like attaching the next thing on the title or the.

Totally. Yep. So I think one of the reasons our people get attached to it is because we don't have all of that hierarchy.

We get a lot of things done really fast.

And so the plan to implementation, rather than having to go up through a bunch of channels, go through a ton of project management, we can work one on one with you to going and executing on what your idea is and then empower you to run with it. So maybe you don't look like the senior VP of accounting, Right. You're not getting that job title.

But you, you're now the lead controller that is managing all of the training platforms that all of our people do. And all of them are reporting to you on what they want.

Like our people came to us on the trainings that they want, which I don't think a lot of people have companies that raise their hand that say, here's the trainings that I want. But our people are saying, here's what we want to learn. Like here, go get us this type of stuff.

And so I think it's because when we say we are going to do it, we actually go and do it. And it's done in a time frame that is exciting for people that they're getting to be a part of it and then go do it too.

That's, you know, I really love that. So then not to get into the nitty gritty. So.

So if somebody starts like, you know, at the entry level, I mean, it's not necessarily a title that they're going to obviously get to change. Is it more of a. So is it financial or is it responsibility? Like, you know, if I start here, how do I know my path?

Yeah, it's a combination of both. So it could be some responsibility. It could be, in our case, a lot of time. What it is is owning a category.

So it could be sales tax, it could be income tax, it could be training, it could be being the liaison between our CFOs and our controllers. So there's a category that as you continue to grow in business, you need people to own pieces and parts of it.

And so what it look usually looks like is you become the owner of that category that you want to be the expert in. And that comes with more responsibility. And it oftentimes, if not most time comes with more financial success as well.

Yeah, right.

So so again, I want to just kind of hone in on this point because I think it is so critical, which is people create their own destiny and they get to own the category and it's in the it's. And the bigger word is to own it. I think that is the, such a, such a game changing insight for people.

So as you're as leaders listening to this, like how can you do that for your own company?

Because the ripple effect, you know how I'm, and I'm going to have you answer this, you know, when somebody owns something, how do you feel that it impacts the company and them?

Yeah. So I learned early on that I'm a bit of a perfectionist by nature.

And so as a result of that, often perfectionists can be control freaks where you need to be in on everything. And what I learned is that when I do that or when my leaders do that, they're stealing away the authority and what we've empowered our people to do.

So our big thing that we're always trying to do when we do that is take a step back and continue to be a resource. I see that as asking good questions rather than coming in over top with my thoughts and opinions.

I'm seeking feedback, I'm asking questions, I'm asking if I can be helpful.

We may not launch something live to the world or our team without some sign off, but I really am trusting them and setting milestones and markers that they're responsible for.

And if they believe in it and they want to go do it, they'll hit those milestones and markers because they see the vision of it and you've been supportive to them in a way that allows them to go and actually execute on it.

So one of the things for us is like just not stealing the thunder or trying to be somebody else's hero, like let them be the hero of their story and celebrate them for it.

And, and that's just another key thing to celebrate them and to celebrate the people. So what do you do to celebrate your people?

Yeah, so try to do a ton of different things. Number one is I do think that there is an element of title for people everywhere.

So anytime somebody gets a version of what I'll call a promotion or goes and owns a category, we really do try to make a title for them that is representative of the new responsibility that they're taking. We're really, really big on team culture, so that'll look like announcing it to the team publicly when we do our all team meeting, which is weekly.

It'll do Some version of a little celebratory lunch or if it's somebody that works remotely, we'll do it by sending them some version of here's a lunch for you, you're joining in. We'll zoom them into the office with us.

But we also have different times of the year in which we have our entire team come into where we have our corporate office.

So about half of us are in the office, half work remotely and we spend a large amount of time celebrating our team from promotion standpoints, from tenure standpoints and achievement standpoints during our company retreat and then during our other company meetups just because that face to face time celebrating them is something that's really important and so we make sure that we make the time for it.

That's. I really like that. I love that.

So, so, you know, getting people together is quintessential, particularly in a hybrid, you know, scenario or even in a completely remote scenario. I, I would agree with what you're doing, which is, you know, getting that face to face time. So, so you share that.

You know, you guys started the company and it was, it started as a hybrid model. So you know, great, revolutionary, you know, you were ahead of the curve.

How have you been able to maintain that team environment, do you think best from the get go?

Yeah, we just really invested in what we believed were good opportunities.

So we use Slack as our communication platform, but we just have a couple non negotiables that we have that all of our managers, all of our leaders and all of our team just participate in because it is that important to our company. So it's a weekly all team meeting that includes video.

It is twice a week trainings with your department that includes different people training on different topics. We have different Slack, I would call them games kind of, but that we participate in each week. So one of them is get to know your fully family.

Where each week questions posed and everybody goes in and answers it. But because we're so dedicated to that, it fosters so much communication. On top of that we do things such as brainstorming sessions.

So once a month we'll get on the phone with the team, we'll have a pre decided topic that we've pulled and voted on like what's the next big thing that we need to solve.

And everybody from intern up through myself gets on there and throws ideas out there and Kendall on our team is out there jotting down all of the notes, reorganizing it, putting in a format so we're starting to solve problems with each other. Live. We also do team social hours. So once a month, we have a social hour. End of the day on Wednesday, if you want a glass of wine, have a beer.

We all get on chit, chat about what's going on in life and grab your, you know, cheese and crackers. But it's just ways, because we commit to it and the people at all levels commit to it. Everybody gets excited about it.

It's not relying on one person showing up with their two or three friends. You've got 50 people that hop on and engage in it, because that's what we do. And they see the value and the benefit each time that they do it.

You know, a couple of things that you said that I think, you know, it's.

It's another really huge insight, which is getting people together, whether even for the happy hour, for the brainstorming, because the way I look at it, it's getting people vested in the company that they're feeling heard. And as you said, which to me is the quintessential piece, is it's fostering the communication. And communication is so important.

Oh, I couldn't agree more. And, like, the one thing I keep, you know, a couple years ago, one of my team members came to me. He's our chief of staff, and he's wonderful.

He's been with us for nine years.

And he says, you know, when you told the story of what happened at your Thanksgiving, I laughed because for the last few years, I just assumed you went and you had this beautiful Thanksgiving where there were no issues and your family was perfect and the turkey was never burned. And I was like, I'm a human. Like, the turkey burns. Right. And grandma has a bad day on Thanksgiving every once in a while.

We love grandma, but some days she doesn't show up her best version.

And so I learned, like, sometimes the happy hour is actually more successful because we're all humans and we realize, like, we all have good days and bad days, and we're all just in it together as opposed to, like, always needing to be the person that has the answer for something where I look, like, almost not human sometimes. And so those things have been really monumental for our company.

Yeah. And it does. It humanizes everything, and people understand, and it's. It creates a different form of a relationship.

Yes, yes.

And so what I am hearing from is that by doing these things, you are truly fostering a. The entrepreneurial environment, which is a family environment.

Yes, completely.

You know, and that's, you know, I think that is something that, that even as you Grow, you'll still be able to maintain that? Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. We just have more people doing it now. It's not just me and five other people.

You know, I've got six really, really strong managers that are also doing it alongside me.

Yeah. And that's really, really fantastic.

So I could talk to you for hours and hours and hours about all this stuff because it's like, it's so great to hear a great leader like yourself share what you're doing and fostering this great communication and helping the people on your team, because when they go out to the world and they are interacting with the person at their, you know, local coffee shop or the, you know, at the grocery store, because they are almost at an elevated level because they're, you know, when people. When you do that and you're investing in your people, they rise up to the world.

Exactly. Yeah.

And, you know, the other piece of what we do that I think that's big for our leadership is we're just very dialed into who we are as a company, what our mission is and what our core values are, and we don't stray for them. So if we have a client that's just so misaligned with us and mistreats our people, we'll fire them.

Like, I know some companies do, some companies won't. It's just nobody is going to treat my team in a way that I would not treat them, and I'm not putting them in that position.

And so when we say kindness is one of our number one core values, I interview every single person for kindness here, and if they don't meet the scale of it, they could be the best candidate. They will not get the job.

Because it is more important to me that I have good, kind people on my team that want to be a part of a community than it is to have the absolute best person to reconcile a bank account.

You know, I'm glad that you brought that up, because that was another thing I wanted to talk to you about, which was when you said core values. I'm a firm believer in what you just said.

And so I'm curious, what question or how do you ask or discover whether you know that core value of kindness?

Yeah. So what I usually start down the path of is what. What happens when you're in a conflict in your business. Right.

Or another one is what happens if you're in a conflict at home, friends, family, et cetera, and you just get people talking. Right. Most of what we learn from people are just asking good questions. They People love To talk about themselves. Right.

Like good, better and different. We're our favorite topic. Right. I'm myself included. But they can't help it to expose themselves. Here's the key that I've learned.

You're always looking for a reason to say yes. That's what people want to do. I want to be able to say yes.

What we try to do is we're always starting at no and getting a person to make us want to say yes to them. And if you flip that filter of it to being like, I'm automatically going to assume that this is a no. Get me to say yes.

You will ask better questions because you're not leading them to where you want to be. You've already started at that. They're not there.

And get them to communicate with you or answer questions that actually answer the heart of what you're trying to solve. So in kindness, I want to know how they deal with conflict. And I don't want to hear about how, you know, they disagreed with a manager. Right.

Like everybody has disagreed with a manager at some point. What did you do? What did you say? How did you solve it? Did you run from that job? Did you run from that manager?

Did you actually sit down and talk through what happened? Right. Going through all of those follow up questions and digging is how we find out that type of stuff.

That's. Yeah, that's great. And it's, it's, it's quintessential in terms of finding that core, those knowing your core values.

And what you said, I thought, you know, again, it's another insight that I think people should, you know, listeners, as you're hearing this, take note to know your company's core values and bringing people on that align with those core values. And as you know, that's really key.

And as you said, Rachel, which I think is really important, that if there is somebody that doesn't align with those core values, whether it's a client or somebody that's working for you, they're not meant to be. Part of the team is.

You're not going to change that. In my example, I can teach somebody to reconcile a bank account. Right. That's a teachable skill. Kindness is not a teachable skill.

Like I wish it was because I would love to teach people to be a little bit kinder, but that is not a teachable skill, unfortunately.

Yeah, right. There are some things that, and it's, it's true. You, you know, I, I think we share this all the time that we can say until we're Blue in the face.

But it's really key to understand that know your core values. Values you are not going. They are traits that are inherent in somebody. You cannot teach them. People can change, but you cannot be taught the values.

Right.

You can't teach somebody how to, as you share, like, you know, balance, you know, do a balance sheet or know what, know what a debit and a credit is or you know. Right. Like, yeah, those are teachable things. I think that's really key.

So where, where, where do you see you going in your, like, what's your next leadership expansion?

Yeah, great question. Two things. One, we're getting very heavy into the tech space.

Not from a perspective of building softwares, but our company has a very large development team that is constantly building APIs, solutions, efficiencies so that we can better serve our clients more quickly and reduce errors. Right. So we're an all human business. We deliver reports to you. The more we can get them to you quicker, the better you can make decisions faster.

And so our whole thing is continue to deliver to you objective data.

And so by using APIs, all of these platforms such as Plaid Meta, they're allowing us to deliver you better reporting quicker so that you can be more proactive in your business.

For me personally, my mission here at Fully Accountable has been and will always continue to be provide women with as many opportunities to be both a professional and mom.

I think that the accounting world in particular that I'm currently in has not always done a great job of allowing what we would call work life balance. I don't think you can truly have work life balance. You're either all in on work or you're all in on life.

But when you're all in on life at the soccer game, I want you all in on life at the soccer game. And when you're working, I want you to feel supported and know that we believe that you're the expert and that you're going to go do the job.

And so continuing to provide women jobs and opportunities that aren't really available to them in the accounting world because of the way that it works is something that I will continue at least as I am the CEO here at Fully Accountable. It will always be in the forefront of my mission.

You know, I, I absolutely, I absolutely love that. And as you shared work life balance, it's the scale may be like this, but because that's where the balance is at that moment. Right.

And it's, it's always going to flip it depending upon, it depends upon what we need to be focusing on. But it's great that you are. That that's something that you're. That you're bringing to the table as part of your mission.

Yeah. So our company oddly started scaling early on with team through Army Wives or military Wives.

Because we hired remotely, we cared more about having the better accountant that fit our mold as opposed to having somebody in Akron, Ohio, that could come sit in a seat with us.

And early on, we had a gal join us whose husband was in the army and was like, this has been the most amazing job for me because my husband gets moved or deployed, and I can't keep an accounting career because every time I have to move with him, I have to quit my job. And so nowhere that requires that will hire me because I can't commit to them beyond the 12 months or whatever.

And so she was like, I hear we're hiring somebody else. Why don't I post it in my Army Wives board? And then we had another one.

And then she had a friend that lived really far out in the middle of nowhere, Wisconsin, that to get to an accounting firm, had to drive an hour and a half each day.

And I was like, there are pockets of women all throughout the US that aren't able to be accountants because they can't get to a big city or that big city requires them to work so many hours they're sacrificing time with their children. And I was like, we can solve this because I don't care if the balance sheet is balanced at 6am or 4pm as long as it's balanced.

Like, who gives a hoot and a holler, right? And so we. We our entire controller base, not on purpose, but is actually all moms who left big firms to be able to have this work life balance.

And they account for 56% of our company.

Oh, my God, I'm gonna cry. That's awesome. I just. That is. I mean, you know, I moved from Mass. You know, Massachusetts, to Reno, Nevada. And Reno, Nevada. Right.

Has Fallon is a big, you know, army base. And we're, you know, the one thing that I.

I hear a lot with people that are in, and I talk to women and professionals all the time, is that we have some tiny, tiny towns. Like, you know, you may. Your husband may be a rancher, but you're not.

Right? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I have two women that work in South Dakota. Like. Yeah, like who? South Dakota. You know what I mean?

But they're really talented people in South Dakota. There's just not a lot of big cities in South Dakota for them to go work.

Yeah, yeah. So I absolutely love that. So I hope you grow to be like, you know, to be a 10,000, you know.

Yeah, I'm right. Me too. Yeah.

Because then, like, all the great, amazing people that you would be able to employ would be fantastic. So, speaking of that, so do you plan to like, what are your growth plans like, you know.

Yeah, totally. So we have actually just the beginning this year, we have expanded both our service offering and the demographics that we serve. Just trying to.

Our mission statement is to impact 10,000 businesses. And so for us, we felt we have done a great job growing to where we are over the last 10 years.

But in order to hit that 10,000 business marker we want to hit, we need to expand. So as a result of that, we have expanded, like I said, more demographics and increased the level of service that we'll provide to them.

I see us continuing to do that over the years until we really encapsulate that full back office solution. So hr, accounting, finance, legal, light it. And we're just, you know, we're really into the accounting piece of it.

We're dabbling and starting to grow into the legal and hr. And I think that adding on eventually the IT piece will be how we round that out.

I love that. And your workforce remote. Are most of those people US based?

Yeah, they're all us based. Fantastic.

Fantastic. So if you could, you know, as a leader, pick one thing that you would say to.

Oh, definitely. Listen to your people. I think that, and I said it earlier like my team is by far the best asset.

I think what happens a lot of time in leadership is leaders feel like they've been tasked with solving the problem, but they've not asked what the actual problem is or what actually needs solved. And so to me, it's ask good questions, be kind and listen.

Like, if you can do that for your team, your team will feel heard, they will feel seen, and they will. You will get more done because you will actually be solving and fixing the things that need to be fixed.

Again, I am not an accountant, so for me to go in and solve an issue that the accountants are having seems silly because I'm not facing that issue each day. So I feel like it's my responsibility to learn what needs fixed and then listen on how that needs fixed and then make sure that that gets done.

Yeah, no, those are. That's really key. Okay, so everybody. Did you hear that? Listen, listen. Listen to listening.

It's. Yes.

Open. Open your ears. Chip clip. Yeah, I was. I was doing the visual for those that can't see me on the podcast. It's a chip clip.

Close your mouth as a leader and open your ears.

Yep.

Yeah. Well, Rachel, I have just loved talking to you. I could talk to you for hours. I think you're so inspiring.

And what you're doing, both as a company and as a leader, is truly game changing. And I really want to thank you for being a guest on the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.

And for my listeners, as you're listening to this, if you love the show, share it. Share, subscribe.

Make sure that you let other people know about this, because if we can change how we lead today, we will make better people for tomorrow.

So I'm Jacqueline Schominger, your host of the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast and your high performance coach that helps you get more shit done. Thank you for listening. And again, hit subscribe. Thank you.