The value of stay interviews; also, are business cards becoming extinct?

The latest Journal of Accountancy podcast episode is a wide-ranging conversation with two likely familiar names to listeners.

April Walker, CPA, CGMA, AICPA & CIMA lead manager–Tax Practice & Ethics, and author John Garrett joined the show to discuss employee engagement in the hybrid and remote era, the importance of sharing and asking about hobbies, and why they are less likely these days to carry business cards to events such as conferences.

Walker is the host of the Tax Section Odyssey podcast and the Reimaging Your Tax Practice webcast series. She has also been a host of tax-focused episodes on the JofA podcast.

Garrett is a speaker, corporate consultant, and former Big Four accountant-turned-stand-up comedian. In previous episodes of the podcast, he has shared presentation tips and explained why our passions are essential to work success.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• Reviewing the concept of “bringing your whole self to work.”
• Why, in Garrett’s mind, employers should “value the worker as much as you value the work.”
• Should you start a virtual team meeting with an icebreaker question? Why Walker says “yes.”
• The speakers’ opinions on business cards.
• Words that could create “stronger and deeper connections” on a business card.
• Why we should “shine a light” on outside interests.

Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:

— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.

Transcript

Neil Amato: Hey, this is the Journal of Accountancy podcast. I’m Neil Amato with the JofA. Joining me for this conversation are two repeat guests. One is John Garrett, longtime friend of the program. The other is April Walker, who I can also consider a friend of the program. She’s also a host of the program, a guest of the program, and a colleague of mine. John, welcome to the podcast. April, welcome to the podcast.

John Garrett: Thank you so much for having me on. It’s an honor, and I’m glad that they sent two of you to chaperone me. I appreciate that.

April Walker: Yes, thanks for having me.

Amato: Definitely, we’re going to need the chaperoning in this episode. I’ll only jokingly say that this is the new and improved, more mature John Garrett. For those who might remember him as the comedian who also was a CPA, or the CPA who also was a comedian, he’s moving on to bigger and better things, but still you can never take the comedian out of the guy.

Garrett: As a CPA at heart, the risk averseness is I got a couple of coupons in my back pocket, you just can’t take it away. Absolutely. No, I’m excited to be here. I just appreciate the encouragement that you’ve both shown toward the What’s Your And? message. It just gives me more confidence to know that what I’m doing is good and different and is needed. I just appreciate you wanting to share that with everyone.

Amato: One of the themes of our discussions in the past and one of, I guess, the themes of your book is about the importance of bringing your whole self to work, or organizations allowing individuals to bring their whole selves to work. How does that happen? How can someone bring their whole self to work when their whole self may never even be in the office, some or all the time?

Garrett: That’s a great question. The firm or the organization hired the whole person, and yet oftentimes they only care about the technical skills part to that person. But that’s such a small percentage of who you are, really, when you really think about it. You have family and faith and passions and hobbies and interests and all these other dimensions of who you are as a person. For some reason, we allow the work side of us to become 100% of our identity. It’s really sad and alarming.

That’s, when I work with organizations and when I speak, is just value the worker as much as you value the work. We value the work so much in this profession that we even put a dollar amount per six-minute block, per hour, whatever, and we track all of that. But valuing the worker, and that starts with you valuing yourself, but also valuing the people around you. And not just valuing them for the work that they do and their technical skills but who are they as a human being.

What lights you up on a deeper level? Behind that job title is a human. Then inside that human’s a soul. What lights your soul up? If you’re like, balance sheets. No, you’re lying. You’re saying that because you feel like you have to. There’s something else that lights you up. Sure, there is a small percentage of people that do. But for 92%, based on my research, is people have hobbies and interests outside of work.

Even when you’re not there in person, it’s finding out what somebody’s “and” is. You’re a CPA and a ballroom dancer and a runner and a beer aficionado and a college football fan and an ice cream junkie. Whatever it is, find out what someone’s and is and ask them about it. Then have time at the beginning of a meeting or when you get on a Zoom call or a Teams call and have those moments where it’s like, “Hey, I know you were going to a concert. How was it? I’d love to see pictures of it or videos of it.” Or even have virtual meetings that just talk about that water cooler, those moments when we would bump into each other in the hallway.

Just have those moments that are not work-related at all or even an open room. That’s just, if people want to jump in there, go and do that, or I know some people have Slack channels or employee resource groups or things like that, where it’s encouraging people to share those other sides of who they are. Because if you’re able to tap into that and the enthusiasm and the passion that someone has for those things, and then you can bring that to the work that they’re doing, man, it’s amazing the engagement level and the retention level that you’ll have at your organization if you just, like I said earlier, just value that work.

Amato: I think that’s a good point. I think April and I have become friends because of those shared outside work passions. It’s way more than, let’s talk about this tax topic for a podcast collaboration between the Tax Section Odyssey podcast and the Journal of Accountancy podcast. I think that’s a key part of it is bringing those outside interests.

Walker: I totally agree. As you were talking, I was thinking, it’s never too late to find more ands because when I came to the AICPA, I’ve been here almost nine years, I never would have thought, I’m going to become a podcaster, I’m going to start speaking at conferences. But as I lean into things that I enjoy and what do I enjoy doing? I enjoy talking to people. I enjoy finding out what their and is and finding out what makes them tick and — spoiler, it’s not balance sheets, for sure, or tax code. I think it’s cool when you find those things. Neil and I have several interests in common, and it’s sometimes hard to get away from those things to talk about, to get to the real work stuff we need to talk about. But I think that’s really cool.

One other thing I was thinking about, I instituted this on our Teams call. So we’re a completely virtual team, which lends itself to not being connected, but icebreaker questions. We have rotating hosts, and you have to have an icebreaker question. Some of the people do not love bringing an icebreaker question to the meeting. But we’ve learned so much about each other, which I think is so cool. Even in a virtual setting, you can really find out, you start with what’s your favorite Thanksgiving side dish, and it evolves into something totally different.

Garrett: That can be really controversial. For sure, legit. I think that it’s also great, too, because especially for the remote environment, it’s show and tell or even in person. Each week during busy season, we do a Monday morning huddle or whatever some places call them. You know what? Take three minutes out of that and have one person do a three-minute what they love to do outside of work. Here’s a couple of pictures. Here’s a story, three minutes, we’re done. If you think that your team doesn’t have three minutes to make that connection, then maybe this isn’t for you because the dividends that you’re going to reap from this are huge.

It just adult show-and-tell time. We have adult money now. We have cool things. We’re not in sixth grade anymore or third grade, with stick figures and painted rocks. I want to see what lights you up. I want to see the things in your house or the painting. I have a Notre Dame football helmet. How cool is that? This means a lot to me, and there’s a whole story behind it that I can share. You just see it when people talk, their eyes light up, and they’re very passionate about, and they’re alive and they’re activated.

One thing that’s amazing, I’ve read a lot of Carl Jung, and he has a great quote where he says, “The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.” Here’s the problem is through education and CPE and work and billable hours and all of this, we are being spun around and being told that we are a CPA, hard stop. And you are not. You are way more than that. If you forget who you are and the other parts of who you are and what makes you you, then the world will tell you you’re a CPA, and then you just take it and go. And deep down inside, you know that you are so much more than that, and I do, too. I’ve never met most of you, but I look forward to.

Amato: Speaking of that, “Don’t forget who you are,” as maybe independent, smaller CPA firms try to continue to make their way in the profession, what’s your advice to staying true to who they are?

Garrett: Man, that’s an awesome question. Lean into it. There’s a lot of firms that are choosing different paths. Some of them are merging up or looking to be acquired and rolled up. Some of them are looking for the private-equity investment, and then some of them are like, look, we’re independent and we’re going to stay independent and we’re good with that.

I feel like the first two groups are taken care of, and I feel those independent firms sometimes can feel like, am I doing this right? Am I making the right choice? I don’t even know if we’re all alone or it feels like that. I just want to say I’m out here for you, and you’re not all alone and lean into it.

If you’re an independent firm and you just report to yourselves, so build the firm that you want it to be and make it what you want. I would say that you’re going to have to think differently and behave differently than all the other traditional accounting firms. And having a blue wall doesn’t make you different. You have to be different to the core.

And showing talent when they walk in the door to interview, they can feel it and smell it and sense it right away. Wow, this is different. Yes, we do audit and tax and advisory work, but what this looks and feels like in the organization itself is completely different than what these other maybe bigger firms are doing. You don’t have to be the same, just a smaller version of. All the clients that I work with, I always tell them just because you’re an accounting firm doesn’t mean you have to act like one. Just be you and lean into it even more now.

Amato: In your work consulting, I guess you do leadership retreats as well.

Garrett: Yes. One-on-one coaching even now, which is really fun.

Amato: What does the word “culture” mean to the people that you’re consulting with?

Garrett: Honestly, I feel like it’s not been intentional. I feel like culture has just happened accidentally, and they don’t always know how to make it what they want to make it. Or they even think, leaders think that, well, I don’t know what they want type of a thing. First of all, you can just ask. There’s that. Second of all, you’re the leaders, so you can make it whatever you want to make it. I feel like in the accounting profession, we’re so afraid and so risk-averse to shut the door on any opportunity. We’re for all clients. No, you’re not. We’re for all talent. No, you’re not.

Figure out what’s the talent you are for, what are the clients you are for, and then triple down on that. That’s who we’re for. That way, then when people walk in the door, they immediately know, this is the place for me or this is not the place for me. I’d rather know that now than two years in, somebody quits because it’s not the right fit. Well, we should have known that coming in.

A lot of the work that I do is working on the employee journey from never hearing of the firm through recruiting, through onboarding, through the employee experience, and even the exit. What are the experiences that we’re creating along the way? Because those are the things that matter and those are the things that we remember.

Amato: April, anything?

Walker: I love that. What I took from that is intentional. I feel like that is definitely what I see with firms is they are not intentional. As you were talking about being different, that’s definitely a passion of mine and something I do from my side. We have a series that we call Reimagining Your Tax Practice. Reimagining can really be so many different things. It can be, I just need to tweak this one thing and then everything’s great, or burn the thing to the ground and come up again. I think that’s really important for firms and people to hear is it doesn’t have to be one way like your grandfather’s CPA firm. That doesn’t work for a lot of people.

So, I love that we’re talking about this. I love that it is a message. I think I hear people talking about like, oh, is it all going to be just big firms at the end of the day? Is that what’s going to happen? Gosh, I hope not. Big firms are great for what they are. But these little CPA firms are really where it’s at for a lot of people.

Garrett: Well, that’s where it’s at for a lot of clients, too.

Walker: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Garrett: When big firms come in and they acquire the smaller firms, then a lot of people leave talentwise, but also a lot of clients because they don’t meet a dollar threshold. Then a lot of clients are in the lurch because they’re like, well, I don’t know where to go anymore type of a thing. There’s always going to a need for that. Yeah, it is being intentional with it. I appreciate that, April, that you picked up on that because it really is, just have you even thought about this?

Do you have to bring in somebody from the outside to reimagine, which is such a beautiful word, that bringing that creativity in that, well, if we started from scratch, what would it look like? What would we do differently? Then you don’t have to do a complete overhaul overnight. It’s just small little things. It’s being intentional with just creating the place where people can be seen and heard and valued and loved, just cared for and even doing simple things that people are like, well, how do we do that? Do some stay interviews.

On the anniversary of someone being here, it’s literally, why are you still here? But not that. But what keeps you here? What are we doing well? What are things that we used to do well that we should be doing more of? What ideas do you have? Those things. Those stay interviews are huge.

One question I love is ask them, what’s your dream job, find that out, and then, oh, I can help you get the skills to then be able to go interview for that job. That’s where it’s you caring for that other person. Instead of caring about yourself and your own dollar amount going into your bank account, it’s you caring about that person. Well, here’s what’s going to accidentally happen. They’re going to stay longer, and they’re going to do better work, and it’s only because you cared about them and where their journey is.

Amato: The stay interview really benefits both parties.

Garrett: Huge. It takes just a little bit of time. The dividends on the back end are huge. There’s such a huge ROI to this. It’s also having someone on your team that’s maybe in operations or a marketing or an HR person that is responsible for culture and engagement and doing these stay interviews and creating that environment that leaders and staff want to be a part of.

Amato: I’m going to seize on one word you use, and then I’m going to turn its meaning — core. You said core. That, of course, made me think of an apple, and thinking of an apple made me think of your really old business card in which you had a green apple on your head. One, I want to know how many takes did it take to get that picture? Because I’m sure the apple had to fall off your head or you were making some joke.

Garrett: I can’t believe you still have that card, which is also amazing because they might be the only one in existence other than the one I have in my closet still. But yeah, there was a photo shoot in Brooklyn, and it was when I was doing the message was more of the Green Apple Podcast, which is that be independent and lean into your independence of. In a bowl full of apples, the green one you’re going to remember, it’s going to stand out, and it’s still an apple, but it’s its own kind of apple.

It was a photo shoot. I think, honestly, it was a one-take thing. It was a bunch of shots with the apple, hold the apple. I was like, what if I put it on my head? They’re like yeah, like the old Robin Hood where they would shoot the arrow through the apples on top of your head, crazy thing without the archer and without the arrows. But it was one take. I am not Jim Carrey, but I can do weird faces on accident that I didn’t know that I do. That’s what came out in that picture, and it was just a beautiful moment. Man, that’s like three or four headshots ago. I don’t even know where it is now. It’s probably on the interwebs somewhere.

Amato: I think the thing that’s interesting to me, and I’ll let all of you talk about this, was, I came to this conference. I got my podcast equipment, my laptop, my phone. I don’t have any business cards. Does anyone even carry business cards anymore?

Walker: I don’t. I’m not sure mine are updated per brand. Don’t tell on me for that as we’re broadcasting this to the world. But no, I think there’s so many different, like I’ll go find somebody on LinkedIn, and that’s the way I connect with them, or the conference app gives you opportunities to find people. A piece of paper really means nothing to me anymore, but I’m sure there are people that a business card is still important.

Garrett: Or the QR code with a Linktree. That’s what I usually have. It’s one when I speak, it’s also at the end, but it has my music videos, if you want to reach out, if you want to be a guest on the podcast, all these other things as well. I have one [business card] just in case, but I think it’s hilarious that people still have fax numbers on their cards, too, on the bottom of their emails even. It’s like, hey, maybe instead of that on the bottom of your email, put, “I also love to go mountain climbing.” Because I promise you that’s going to create stronger and deeper connections than your fax number. There we go. Now that I’ve ticked off half the audience.

Amato: Well, that was me that led us down that odd detour of let’s talk about networking and business cards. But I really appreciate the time, both of you today. I’ll give you a chance if you’d like to give a closing message before we sign off on this episode of the JofA podcast.

Garrett: Wow. Well, I just appreciate you having me on again and for you guys being such a supporter of me and my work and what I’m doing because it really means a lot because sometimes when you’re in this thought leadership space, you’re in outer space all by yourself. It’s good to know that it works and that it matters and it makes a huge difference.

And everybody listening, just value who you are and really ask yourself, am I living my best life? Doing your ands is very much a part of your best life. If you’re doing your ands and you’re living your best life, you’re going to do your best work. It’s just going to happen. If you make sure that the people around you are living their best life, they’re going to do their best work, too. It’s not a distraction. It’s not anything that’s going to keep work from happening. It’s not anything that’s to be shunned or shamed. It’s the opposite. Bring it to the center, shine a light on it.

I promise you that you have some really awesome people that you are around more waking hours than your friends and family and you don’t even know how awesome they are. If you just find that out and ask them about it, I read a study just recently, Johns Hopkins University did a study last year where 40 seconds a day, 40 seconds of genuine interaction, creates a greater sense of belonging and less anxiety, less depression. If anything is needed now more than ever, [it’s] belonging and a sense of value. If you don’t have 40 seconds, then just stop, really. Make that time to care and to ask.

Walker: That was great, John. Neil, thank you for having me. I don’t have anything philosophical to end with. I just want to say, it’s super fun to be a guest on a podcast instead of the host because then I can just like, yeah.

Garrett: No, absolutely. I agree. It’s very fun to be a guest.

Walker: I thank you for the opportunity.

Amato: Well, that’s great. I could never foresee myself being a guest. I’m scared to death of being a guest. I’ll stick to being the host. Thanks for being on the JofA podcast, John and April.

Again, that was John Garrett and April Walker. In the show notes for this episode, we will include a link to the Reimagining Your Tax Practice web series that April Walker hosts. She is also the host of the Tax Section Odyssey podcast, which will be linked to in the show notes. This is Neil Amato with the JofA. Thanks for listening.