Most business owners would like to do everything in their business and still not grow. Have you wondered why? That’s because you become the bottleneck of your business. In this episode, Danielle Hayden, the founder of Kickstart Accounting, gives an insightful talk on why and how to remove yourself as the bottleneck of your consulting business. As a business owner, you don’t have to recreate the wheel. You don’t have to be the expert because you’re not a finance expert. Tune in to this insightful talk with Danielle Hayden today.
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I’m joined by Danielle Hayden. Danielle, welcome.
I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
You are a CPA. You’ve also written a book and you’re a former CFO which we’ll talk about. Now you’re the CEO and Cofounder of Kickstart Accounting. You guys are a virtual accounting firm that provides accounting, bookkeeping, and other CFO types of services for entrepreneurs and businesses. I want to get into how you got to where you are and how you built up your business because you have 23 people in the company, and I’m sure it didn’t start like that.
Let’s pull the curtain back and figure out the steps you took and the lessons that you’ve learned so that others can reflect on your journey. I saw you spent about over a decade in consulting before you started your own business, and before starting your company, you were a CFO at a firm. Can you take us back a decade? Is 2014 when you started your business?
Yes, 2014.
Several years back, what was going on in your life? The decision to leave corporate and a career as a CFO to start your own business, why do that? Why not keep climbing the corporate ladder?
My story is very different. Corporate gets a bad rep these days. It’s like, “Quit your corporate job. Corporates are miserable.” I learned a lot from working in the corporate world and I loved the management team that I was working with. We were owned by a private equity firm. It had nothing to do with the internal turmoil of not enjoying the space that I was in. I had a ton of work-life balance too. My CEO at that time, I learned a lot from him. We have a lot of his values in the values of my company now where he wanted us to be able to get home for dinner or if there was a recital.
There was none of those driving factors, which I like to remember because it was a good time to be able to serve a bigger purpose. What I realized, I was doing some volunteer work for an entrepreneurship hub here in Cleveland, Ohio and helping business owners put together a budget as part of their business plan.
It was usually for a business owner who was going for a second round of capital. They had an existing business, but they needed additional funding to continue to grow. What I found was that these business owners couldn’t create a budget because they didn’t have bookkeeping in place. We were beating our heads against a wall asking them questions over and over again. Now, not only were they not sure. They weren’t approaching their business with confidence, but they were mad, angry, frustrated, and felt less than. They got to a point where they were like, “I know that I deserve this money. I can’t even answer your questions to build this budget.”
This became a much bigger mission on how I can take everything that I learned from the corporate world. How could I take everything that I learned from being an accountant and my love of numbers to be able to help as many business owners as possible? What I was doing was helping the rich get rich and serving our board of directors and our investors. I was helping them continue to grow rather than helping entrepreneurship as a whole continue to grow.
You felt the calling towards supporting more entrepreneurs in an area where many don’t have experience or aren’t even sure how to grow about things. We’ll get more into the business itself, and I want to break it down so that we can better understand how you’ve structured it and why you’ve done so. When I look at your title, you are the CEO and Cofounder of the company. Talk to me a bit about the partnership. What does that look like in terms of your other co-founder in terms of roles? What does that all look like for others that might be getting into partnerships?
We are no longer co-founders and partners as of 2022. My business partner stepped away from the firm and pursued other opportunities. I am now the sole owner of the business. The decision was made from both mental, emotional, and personal sides as well as how we grew in the business from my experience. I’ve worked with a lot of our clients throughout the years who have had partnerships. We grew in ways together but in most ways, we grew and found out who we were as owning a company.
Typical or average entrepreneurs dive in, take action and figure things out along the way. Click To TweetMy business partner came into the business with an audit background. She was an auditor and had a bit of experience in the corporate background, where most of my experience was in a corporate setting. Neither one of us had ever been the CEO of a business. We are both primarily accountants. That’s what we did and we went into this business really not sure.
We didn’t do a personality test or decide who was going to do what role. We threw ourselves into the business and got immersed in every single thing. It was as if one person had a liking for one task more than the other or we understood that it was a stronger skillset for one of us versus the other. We left it up to the guys to see who was going to flourish and what. Fortunately, the path led us to where we are now.
Did you have a formal partnership agreement in place?
Yes.
Even from day one or early on, you had all those legal and structural stuff in place to protect both of you. You said in some of your roles, you weren’t clear on. You figured it out as you went along. How much detail did you get? You can share whatever you’re comfortable sharing but oftentimes, in partnerships, people don’t necessarily think about what might go wrong. They’re thinking, “We’re good. We’re going to grow. Everything is going to work out.” Until you start realizing that maybe you’re spending a lot more time in the business than the other person, or you’re producing a lot more value, whatever it might be. Did you guys spend time on that stuff early on, or not so much?
We did spend a lot of time on that early on and luckily, we were both accountants in the business world, so we understood that piece. I am a CPA and my business partner was not a CPA, and the Board of Accountancy here in Ohio requires that whoever is the CPA holds 51% and the other holds 49%. We had a few things on our side that required us to think a bit further and we understood from a fundamental standpoint, legal contracts, and its impact. We had spent a good amount of time, in the beginning, understanding what was our company worth.
We had shares of stock in our business. When I bought my partner out, I bought her shares of stock in the business when we restructured. We thought through that if there was a dispute, how do we solve this dispute? Who is going to be the last person to solve that? How much money are you allowed to spend on the business without getting approval? We had a board of directors from day one so we had a group of people to who we were reporting and talking to.
Sounds like you’re very thoughtful in this process and more detailed than a lot of people would be. Maybe that’s your numbers and background. The way that you apply it and follow things are more typical or average entrepreneurs dive in, take action and figure things out along the way. Looking back, are there any lessons learned or maybe you would’ve done differently in terms of the partnership now that you are where you are a year after making that transition?
It’s communication, and I don’t mean that as communication in the way you communicate with your spouse, kids, or employees. I mean deeply communicate. We joked I got married about a year ago and that she was my first marriage and we got divorced. It was important for us to communicate and we didn’t hold those boundaries. We thought of a conversation at the end of the day via cell phone while I’m dropping my kids off at basketball and she was taking some classes after school to get her MBA. While we were commuting to those things, that was enough communication to withstand this partnership, and it was not.
There was something that I could do differently. Kickstarter Accounting, Inc. now runs on EOS. With my leadership team, we have a weekly L10 meeting, which is a 90-minute meeting where we have a set agenda and clear rocks. We know who sits in what seats, we have an accountability chart, we know exactly where we’re going for the year, who’s doing what to get us there, and then we have an opportunity to ideas, issues, decisions, and anything that needs to be solved. When I talk about EOS to other people, they’re like, “We’re not big enough for that,” people blow me off.
If there was one thing I could do differently, it would be to implement EOS from day one. Even though neither one of us felt like we had the time, energy, or focus, I would’ve had that accountability chart. Even though we were sitting in almost every seat, we would’ve known if everyone was responsible or no one is responsible. We would’ve been clear on that accountability chart and had that time for open communication for a quarterly time away from the business to plan our goals and our rocks. The annual retreat away from our business to say, “Here’s our VTO, where are we going?” I put a ton of EOS language out there but it is knowing where you’re going together.
What’s interesting about that is one of the greatest benefits of a system like EOS. There are a bunch of systems out there, and certainly EOS is a great one. It’s that structure, systems, processes, and the way that you communicate consistently about the things that matter to the business. What I find interesting is that you’re saying, “I would’ve loved looking back if we could have done this from day one.” It’s so uncommon to see people doing this from day one because you almost have to make mistakes, learn lessons, or push the business to a certain point and then you realize, “We’re at this level now where we could benefit more from systems like this.”
The mind starts to shift. I completely understand what you’re saying. Often, people are thinking about getting the business going. They’re not necessarily thinking about the benefit of having systems from day one. Take me to the business. When you and your partner at that time launched it, how did you get your first few clients for this business?
Everyone’s surprised by this one. This is unique. We were doing all of the networking. We were going to every networking event possible within a 45 to 60-minute drive from Cleveland, Ohio and we do have a pretty good entrepreneurship pub here. I had written to another accounting firm. They’re in Columbus, Ohio. It’s the Upsource Accounting team. It’s two gentlemen who started the company and I loved their business file. Everything about them, I wanted to be them. They were my ideal company and how we were modeling our organization.
What was it about them that their model or their business made so desirable that you essentially want to become or create something that’s like them?
I liked that they were a virtual accounting firm. Now mind you, we’ve come a long way. We’re having this conversation in 2023. These don’t sound like crazy concepts but we’re talking about 2014 or 2015. People weren’t doing business online in the same way now that they were then. They were doing business online. It was a fully virtual accounting firm. They were doing things in a systematic, automatic way that created efficiencies in their business.
How did you know this?
You could tell from their website and how they onboarded clients. They had their entire processes mapped out on their website and I called them. I emailed the gentleman and asked if there was anything that they would be willing to share like best practices, should have, would have, and could have. Anything that they wanted to share with an up-and-coming firm. The most beautiful thing happened and I believe I built my business on this because they did this.
They took so much time out of their day and they wrote me back a three-page email about what works well in their business, what doesn’t work, where they found their clients, and what they wish they would’ve done differently. It made me reach out to other business owners and say, “If they were willing to share, can I get other people to share?” They’re willing to show that value to me and shared a bit more about their business structure. I was able to learn more about them as well.
Did they give you your first client?
They did not, but they told what they wished they would’ve done, and it was to network more. We were networking our butts off but sales weren’t coming from it. The biggest thing that was coming from that was me gaining weight, drinking, and eating a lot about the whole thing that was happening at the moment. We went to Craigslist, LinkedIn, and Indeed and we were communicating with people who were looking for a CFO, controller, accounting assistant, or bookkeeper who are looking for these roles. We said, “Have you considered outsourcing rather than hiring full-time?
Accounting is one of those things where you might have an office manager who’s doing the bookkeeping but they’re not a bookkeeper so they’re not doing it well. We’re saving you a ton of time, money, and energy and you also know that it’s being done efficiently. We got our first few clients from Craigslist and that’s how we learned what business owners need, how they need it, and what form of communication they want. Eventually, the networking paid off in a beautiful amazing way but that takes so much time. We needed something in the business now so we could start to learn and grow.
As a business owner, you don't have to recreate the wheel. You don't have to be the expert because you're not a finance expert. Click To TweetI love the scrappiness of that approach in Craigslist and Indeed finding people that are looking for a full-time and saying, “Have you considered hiring somebody full-time?” This is something that a lot of consultants find themselves not being contacted by headhunters who will fall into the opportunities through people that they know.
Often, they’re unsure of how to navigate that. How can you turn a potential full-time job into a consulting engagement? If you look at everything that you’ve done over the years and the conversations you’ve had with people that might be considering like, “You should bring in a full-time CFO. We don’t need that, we can outsource,” what have you hit on in terms of the advantage or the focus to get somebody to see that they don’t need a full-time person that can benefit from more of an advisory type of engagement?
At the time we were talking to people about the team, they didn’t know that it was my business partner and me. We knew and understood that we were going to have a team so we were always building an agency model. It was not going to be us delivering every single service to every single client. We knew that from day one. When we talked to our potential clients, we were helping them understand that they weren’t hiring Danielle Hayden. They were hiring Lindsay and Danielle and our team. We had a team of resources. There was no paid time off, holidays, or sick days and you are not having to train somebody. We’re coming in as the expert. Now when you hire somebody as a CFO, controller, or bookkeeper, you usually still have to train them in some way.
Finding somebody who is confident in their expertise enough to be able to come in and say, “Let me show you best practices. Let me model the way for you. Let me take all of the models that I’ve created in the past and bring all these models like Excel models and dashboards to your business. You, as the business owner, don’t have to recreate the wheel. You don’t have to be the expert because let’s face it, you’re not a finance expert. Let us be the expertise for you. You can be the CEO.” We’ve created more of a partnership with them.
That makes sense and that’s helpful. Let’s now fast forward. You started off getting projects through these different websites. It sounds like you network all the time. You had to spend building the network and finally kicked in. Fast forward to now, what’s working best for you guys in terms of lead generation, building the pipeline, and having solid qualified leads coming into the business? What’s the main source of that? What do you find works best from a marketing and lead generation perspective?
It is constantly being immersed in the data and seeing the data points. This continuously changes over and over again. I was still doing a lot of in-person networking, traveling, and going to conferences. Pre-pandemic, I had somebody introduce me to podcasting and they said, “This is a beautiful way for you to have a conversation with somebody and potentially some business.” We started podcasting and finding a voice. What do business owners want to hear? What do people not care about? I started this podcasting journey, which has brought many beautiful, amazing relationships into my life and that was a source for our clients for some time.
To interject for a moment and to clarify. You’re saying that the strategy here was you created your podcast and you would reach out to people who you want to have on the podcast but you also thought that these could be potential clients for the business. You would interview them and have a great conversation. Is that what you mean?
No. It’s the exact opposite. I would pitch to come onto other people’s podcasts like what we’re doing here and create a relationship with podcast hosts, the audience, and that community. We do now have our podcast. I had a client, who was a potential client at that time, that said, “I’m waiting to hear when your next podcast is going to drop. When is it coming out?” I’m like, “I don’t have one. It’s whenever somebody drops the next one,” and he’s like, “You need to fix that because I would like one next week.” We do have a podcast now but finding our voice started coming onto the podcast and hearing what hosts wanted to talk about and tracking the data.
It’s important. I’m a numbers person. I love numbers and whenever you’re building a service-based business, it is important to know your numbers and that doesn’t mean your income statement. It is for every client that’s coming in, where are they coming in? Where did they find you? How did they find you? Built this data set of wherever our clients were coming from. Are they coming from face-to-face referrals?
Are they coming from me belonging to a community? Are they coming from Facebook groups? Are they coming from the podcast? Eventually, it became referrals. We were doing this amazing job for our clients. We started saying, “Do you have any friends that need help? Like you needed help.” As soon as we started asking our clients to tell us, “I didn’t know you were looking for more clients. I’m happy to tell my friends about you.” That has now become our number-one day to set.
For somebody who’s reading and thinking, “Maybe I could do that more,” because most people tend to be very reactive with referrals. When they come, fantastic, but they don’t do anything to get them. Here, it sounds like you figured out this is a pretty simple step but by letting our current clients know, we could help others like them and who they know that’s worked for you. When do you ask that? Is there any specific language that you use, or is it as simple as what you shared a moment ago?
Early on stages, it was when we felt like we had time to ask. Some time ago, we had somebody who was helping us with our email marketing so we would put it in our email marketing, our newsletter, and on social media. It was in a very strategic way at that time.
Did that work for you or not?
It did work. We did a 3 for 3 is what it was called. If you referred 3 clients, you got 3 months free of bookkeeping. It had to be intentional. You had to find 3 of your friends but the value was there. For some of our clients, the pricing that they pay us ranges. Let’s say on average, you’re paying us $500 a month for bookkeeping. Your payoff for referring 3 of your friends is $1,500, and they’re comfortable doing that because we’re doing a great job for them. They’re happy to tell their friends and then they got $1,500.
That was the campaign that we ran and we did it on social media and email. Now it looks a bit different. When our clients become clients, they go into an email funnel. There are time intervals in which we ask our clients to do a survey on our services and ask them if they’d like to become a referral partner.
It’s all automated now. You’re getting feedback from your current clients and when they’re submitting that feedback, you use that as the opportunity to say, “Do you know anyone else that might benefit from similar services?” Now, you have a team of 23 people. It was you and your partner when you started. Can you walk us through how you win it both and the thought process of hiring people to go from 2 to 23? It’s a significant increase. How soon did you make the first hire and what kind of intervals did it look like from the beginning up to now?
Sarah was our first hire and she’s still with us. Shout-out to Sarah. We brought Sarah on for about 6 to 8 months into the business. It was pretty soon after we had started. As soon as we got clients coming in on a pretty regular basis, we knew that we needed support and Sarah’s expertise was bookkeeping.
She helped us behind the scenes working on updating QuickBooks. My business partner and I were client-facing and she was behind the scenes. It worked out great for us at that time. She was a “stay-at-home mom” who wanted to be able to work enough time and evenings. There was a ton of flexibility for her.
We did that for her and one other hire. Eventually, we got to the point where we said, “This doesn’t work.” We cannot be client-facing for everybody. We are taking all the client communication. Everything that we’re learning in client emails and client calls is not getting back to the three team members who are doing the work. We are a barrier to them doing a freaking good job. We determined at that point that we needed to provide training and the framework for them to be able to work directly with clients.
That set of team members went through a training program. At that time, I also read the book Built to Sell by John Warillow. I understood that what we needed to do was create a product. We’re not service providers. We are a product provider. We created a very specific system for what we were doing and how we delivered our bookkeeping and financials. We trained the team to be able to be client-facing. That’s very specifically why and how we were able to get from the 3 of us to 23 people.
Did you have any fear or hesitation when you were making that shift from you being at the forefront to dealing with the clients? People often have concerns about the client because of you and you’re the expert. What happens if you pass it off to somebody else? If they don’t do as good of a job and they’re not the expert, how did you think through that and what was going on for you at that time?
There’s a lot that went into that decision and part of it was removing me from the business. The business wasn’t about me. When I came to speak on a podcast, I wasn’t saying, “Come work with me.” I’m saying, “Come work with my team and work within the framework that we’ve created and we see results within this framework.”
Trust your gut. We have to hear the answers and trust what we're hearing. Click To TweetThat’s how I spoke. On social media, that’s how we speak. Our Kickstarter Accounting Inc. page doesn’t have anything. My picture is on there because I am in sales and marketing. Other than that, it is not even a guarantee that you’re not working with me. You are working with the team and within that framework. Quite frankly, I talk about that book all the time because it saved my business. If I didn’t transition my train of thought in that way, I would’ve never gotten over it because that would’ve meant.
I had to download everything I knew to every single employee before they were allowed to touch a client. I’ve created a system and a framework. Now they’re being trained on the framework so I can hire bookkeepers who are trained within this framework. They can learn to work with clients and learn to become experts.
Can you talk to me a bit more about why you selected the firm model? You could have gone the path of, “I’m going to be more of a CFO type of advisor,” where you’re the expert and you’re providing more advisory advice recommendations. Instead, you’re using a firm model where your team is doing the implementation. They’re doing the work, bookkeeping, running numbers, crunching stuff, and all that. I know there are advisory services offerings that you do have but it sounds like pretty early on, you knew that you wanted to build this bigger than yourself and you didn’t want to be necessarily the one doing all the work. I’d love to hear your thoughts on why you made that decision early on.
There wasn’t a very specific decision that turned my mind other than I realized two things, my capacity. I couldn’t charge enough to make what I was making at my old corporate job. If I was going to do that, I was going back to work for somebody and maybe do consulting on the side. That wasn’t the business model for me because I couldn’t make enough to support me and my kids. Remember, I didn’t hate what I did. I freaking love being a CFO and I love building a team. What I’m doing right now for Kickstart, that’s what I did for other businesses. I was going to do another kickass job. My company sold and that’s what ultimately made me leave. I’m going to go do that again for another company that was a private equity firm that eventually wanted to sell in 3 to 5 years.
I could have made an entire career out of that. My capacity was first and foremost and then the market was a big dictator in this. What we learned over time and had I not been in tune with two things, the data and the willingness to change had let my ego go. What the market needed was a bookkeeping team. That gave CFO services without saying that they were giving CFO services. A lot of our clients, not all of them, but there’s a portion of our clients who are women business owners who have a difficult time saying, “I need help in my business and I’m willing to accept help.”
Most of them were doing between $100,000 and about $500,000 in sales. They had a business model that was working and it was growing. They were hitting the same threshold. They couldn’t do everything anymore. They needed some support. They didn’t understand the numbers, but they didn’t need a CFO. They couldn’t afford a CFO and they didn’t even think that they deserved a CFO in their business.
What they needed was a bookkeeper who could help them understand the numbers and provide some strategy. I remember having this conversation. My ego said, “I am a CFO. I’m not a bookkeeper.” I said, “It doesn’t matter. What my clients need, what these women need, what people need, and what entrepreneurs need is a high-level bookkeeper that can do the bookkeeping and help them understand the numbers.”
I didn’t need to be the one to do all of the bookkeeping because that’s not my expertise at all. I’m not the best one to do that. My team is. I have a team of awesome people who know their way in and out of QuickBooks. I could help teach them the strategic part, the coaching piece, and how to be that next-level bookkeeper. It’s data points and willingness to change.
What’s been the hardest thing about growing the business? Here you are now with 23 people. It’s been several years since you started it. You had a partner the partner left so you bought the partner out. Across all the experiences you’ve had to this point in the business, what would you say has been the hardest when you think about the growth of the business?
Trusting yourself and trusting your team. I have to trust my gut that I’m allowing the right people into the culture that we’ve created. I’m bringing the right people into the leadership team. We have five of us who sit on the leadership team. It’s trusting my gut and being able to react confidently. The biggest difference between being a corporate CFO to who I am now is that I have to make very quick decisions and be able to control my emotions in those decisions.
It’s knowing who is the right culture fit and who’s not. My job is not necessarily getting into QuickBooks and reviewing. My job is to maintain the mission, vision, values, and culture of the company. What the team needs from me is to show up and do that every day. That’s hard because as consultants, we were good at something.
Every once in a while, I’ll do this with our financials. I ‘m like, “I need to get in there and get into an Excel spreadsheet.” I get lost in the numbers and work out some issues. I do love that. That was my craft, but that’s not what the business needs from me. They need me to not get in the way and let them do their thing and be the leader.
Is there anything that you found that is a real best practice for all of you now in terms of the hiring process and finding people?
In terms of hiring, we do follow a methodology of the Who.
Tell us about the Who.
It is a book series that talks about not a series of interview questions but what to look for when you’re hiring. How do you ask questions and listen for the answers, hear the answer, or ask behavior-based questions? When they answer, what are you listening for? Does it matter how they answer the behavior-based question? Of course, it does.
Is it by Geoff Smart and Randy Street?
Yes. We implemented that book series in our hiring process. For every single interview, we have a standard operating procedure. That’s the other thing we implemented EOS. There’s a standard set of questions but we learned what we’re listening for. That goes back to trusting your gut. We have to hear the answers and trust what we’re hearing. I don’t do it alone. I have an amazing leadership team. Before we hire, all of us listen to an interview and one of us will hear something that the others don’t. We make the decision together whether or not somebody is a good fit.
The other thing I’m wondering is, as a team has grown, you’re leveraging a lot of proven systems and processes. When it comes to hiring or EOS and so forth, what does your technology stack look like? Now there are more people, leadership and bookkeepers and you have a good size team, how are you managing all the people and making sure that all those things are running the way they should be and there’s good and clear communication in place? Any kind of tools or services that you find to be key for you guys?
This has changed a lot throughout the years, too. Again, another willingness to be able to pivot, change, learn, and not be the expert anymore. We started on G-Suite where I was very much the expert. I knew how to run that and be efficient in that.
That’s Google Suite, for those wondering what G-Suite is.
We started there and Asana, which was a project management software and some Google Sheets. As we’ve grown, we’ve realized that doesn’t work. We’ve moved to all Microsoft products. All of our team members run through Teams and Outlook all of our document sharing is through SharePoint even with our internal and with our clients. We have an IT team who runs our computer system and has implemented Microsoft in terms of actual projects and making sure that we are keeping track of what we’re doing and when we’re doing it. We use Jetpack, which is very specific for the accounting industry so we have implemented Jetpack. Other than that, there are the common ones. We use Zoom and Teams. We would not operate without Voxer. Have you heard of Voxer?
You have to implement those strategies that you're learning. Click To TweetIt’s a synchronous walkie-talkie type of thing. I haven’t used that in years, but I’ve certainly heard of it. How are you using it now?
I love the walkie-talkie app. Every time I have to sit and read, write an email, re-articulate it, and proofread it, it allows me a very quick way to share thoughts, ideas, and expressions. I’m a verbal communicator. I believe that things get lost in email, social media, and all of that. If we can record a quick Loom video or send a quick Voxer, you can hear my tone, “I’m excited to talk to you. I want you to be here. I want to communicate with you,” but if I sent you an email, I might say, “What’s the status?” I don’t want to sit here and go through the fluff with you, but if I can talk to you, I’ll do fluff back and forth.
It’s more of a flavor or color that you can put into a video or a voice as opposed to you typing something. It’s hard to know if are you happy or not happy. There’s no emotion typically coming through in emails unless you are using a whole bunch of emoticons or stuff like that.
That’s usually unprofessional from your CEO. We go a Voxer.
I was thinking of my daughters when I said that because they love getting into the phones and hitting all those things but that makes a lot of sense. Before we wrap up, I want to go over a couple of quick questions. One is that here you are, the CEO of your company, have a leadership team in place, and a board of directors. I don’t know if that’s still active but you have a good size team supporting you and working with you. Do you think about how you’re able to maintain your performance as a CEO and as a leader? What habits are in your life? It could be anything fitness, nutrition, or meditation. How do you make sure that you are able to show up, do your best work and be the best leader that you can be?
I’m happy to say that I’ve maintained this throughout the years. During that giant networking phase, maybe it fell off a bit. Other than that, I’ve been cautious and careful about making sure that I have enough white space in my day and that I can show up for my team. My job is very energetic. My entire day is pouring into other people. If I haven’t poured into myself, I cannot pour from an empty cup. Every morning, it is waking up early. I don’t do the whole gratitude journal. I can’t do all that but I can jump out of bed and go straight to the gym. I workout for about an hour and that’s where I love to listen to an Audible book and Blinkist Podcast.
My kids are a bit older so I have to say goodbye to them and walk them out the door, and then I’m getting ready for my day. By the time I’ve sat down at 8:00, I’ve usually listened to 2 or 3 podcasts or an hour and a half of an Audible book, which helps pour into my personal development and helps me continue to stay fresh on ideas and strategies. I’m listening to everything from shows like yours to Fitness Nutrition. I have to be able to pour into that area of my life too. I need to continuously learn how do I take care of myself and the scheduling of meals. This is something that if my operations manager listens to, she’ll laugh. I’m great at breakfast but we’re working into my calendar to make sure that I have lunch every day.
You’re a much better person when you eat. Making sure that I have that time because you can’t learn about nutrition. You have to implement those strategies that you’re learning. Making sure that I’m taking time to have a full actual breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Again, that sounds silly. At night, we’re either going to yoga or for a walk outside at the track of the rock. It’s a lot of activity. I think this is common for CEOs. I have big energy so if I have to sit in a chair all day, I have steam coming through my ears.
It’s important that I’m setting up my day from the beginning to the end and having a lot of release for that big energy. Because we’re entrepreneurs, I also need to calm my mind. The last thing I do at the end of the day is I’m stretching and meditate. I am in bed by 8:30 in the evening. Again, my kids are older. They’re making fun of me, “Mom, you’re going to bed hours before us.” I’m like, “Good night.” It’s a lot.
It’s important and I’m very similar in terms of if I’m not at the gym, I start doing some class. I’m running every morning and that’s where I’m listening to podcasts, learning new ideas, things to explore, getting some motivation or inspiration. It’s important to have that space baked into your schedule. Two final questions. One, the last six months or so, it sounds like you consume lots of information, books, and things of that nature. What’s one book that comes to mind? It could be fiction or non-fiction. Also, what you’ve read or listened to that you enjoyed and you think others might find interesting?
This will show my personality, David Goggins. Have you heard of him?
I have. Is this his new book?
His new book Stay Hard. I knew it was coming out so I wanted to re-listen to his first book so that I’m fresh on the material. Now I’m listening to his new book. He is so intense. I ran in Ultra in 2022 and he is the person who got me to that race and to that finish line. Now I’m taking the same strategies that he’s talking about in his book and how I apply that to every area of my life.
Is the second book as good as the first?
I love it. It’s even better. His first book was more about his life and his stories. The second book is even more life lessons. It’s not just about the running and his life story. It’s life lessons. It’s powerful. In the Audible series, at the end of each chapter, he comes on with Adams Skolnick and they talk about the end of each chapter. It’s unique and you hear him live to talk about going deeper. He has his mom on one of them and talks about their abuse. It’s beyond powerful. Go read it.
I did read his first book and found it to be an experience. He’s very intense. Make sure you got the warnings up if you got kids around because he’s not afraid to let the words come out. I’m excited to check with that second book. Danielle, I want to thank you much for coming on here and spending a bit of time. There’s much more that we could cover but I want to be respectful of the time that we have on the calendar. Where’s the best place people can go to learn more about you and Kickstart?
You can find me directly @DanielleHayden_Oh and learn more about Kickstart Accounting. On Instagram, it’s @KickstartAccounting or KickstartAccountingInc.com. Learn more about the team, our story, and how we’re doing everything we’re doing.
Danielle, thanks so much.
Thank you.
Important Links
- Kickstart Accounting
- Upsource Accounting
- Built to Sell
- Who
- Asana
- Jetpack
- Voxer
- Loom
- Blinkist Podcast
- Stay Hard
- Adams Skolnick
- @DanielleHayden_Oh – Instagram
- @KickstartAccounting – Instagram
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