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Hey there, everyone. Welcome to From Stuck to Scaling. It's your one million dollar journey.
And I'm of course, Sharon Fuller, your host and entrepreneur and a business strategist and your go-to for cutting through the noise and building a business that actually works for you. Today, we're going to get real about a question every business owner thinks they have answered, but they usually don't. And that is what the heck are you building? It's really easy to get caught up in growth for the sake of business, but is your growth and your business actually leading you to a life you want? So in this episode, we're going to break down how to define the success on your terms, align your business with your personal values, and stop chasing goals that don't serve you.
And remember, if you've got questions out of my way, even if we don't tackle them on the show, I'll make sure to get you the answers you need. And I'm really excited to announce my guest today. Today's guest is someone who actually makes accounting fun.
It is actually possible. This is Matthew Fulton, who all of his friends know him as Spot. And he is the brains behind Parkway Business Solutions.
He's also a total rock star when it comes to merging tech with an accounting. And a little bragging rights here, he's an award-winning educator, innovator, and the guy who makes complicated workflows look easy. And he's also the founder of QuickBooks Community Live, where he built a whole network of thousands of accounting pros who actually help each other instead of gatekeeping the knowledge.
So Matt, thank you. I know it's been so long, and it's like one of those things where it's like, let me get used to it. I call you Matt Lovingly, right? Spot, I'll get used to it.
Thanks for joining me. I love chit-chatting with you, so I was kind of just looking forward to this. I appreciate you bringing me on in such a kind introduction.
I mean, you make me sound so professional and successful already. So thank you. I can't get real with you.
Chad GPT wrote that for me. So I'll thank her. I'll thank her.
Beautiful. I sort of did. But you know, I also just think you're awesome.
Matt, you're just a, regardless of the fact that you're good at what you do, you're also just a good person and a fun person, which is hard to find in this industry, right? Well, you know, there's that good old saying, like, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. I think that's BS. To some extent, you're still going to work, but at least you're going to love what you're doing while you're working.
And our community is a big, big part of that for me. It just helps fuel me and feed me and keep me going. Right? I love going to conferences.
To me, it's like, I'm terrible. I know it should be for the education and such. For me, it's the networking and the connections.
A hundred percent. Yeah. Everything I learned from people there, even just in like one-on-one conversations, the stuff that you learn is priceless.
I mean, I can learn a lot of the things that people teach and I shouldn't say this, you and I both educate. So I'm not, you know what I'm saying? But when you're in this field for awhile and you're kind of teaching it, you kind of, I don't want to say you forget to be a student, but it's not that, it's that we're always like, we just went to Epicamp, right? And that's a ton of accounting educators. So we were just sitting there for a week, just talking to other people that educate on things.
And it's just, you just get so much. One of the best conferences I've been to because it was like-minded individuals. We got to collaborate on things, but I do believe like when you're first getting started and you're trying to grow your business, if I had known how powerful social media could be sooner and actually engaging in your community, asking other people within your industry questions, I would have, I would have done it way sooner.
It has fundamentally changed my life and helped me build a business by going to conferences and getting them. So, but I do agree with you at a certain point, it becomes about the networking. You can learn so much in a class, but if you know the people you can call them anytime and pick their brain.
Yep. And you make friends. They become in the very beginning.
Well, when did you start? I call it the conference circuit, because I feel like we have a circuit of conferences we run every year. I just started in like 2021. So I am, I, you know me, I come in with, I come in on fire, come in as a blaze.
I don't, I, I come in making noise. We know when you got there, that's for sure. Yes.
You've been around much longer. My first conference in the accounting industry, because my prior career, I was in car audio for 14 years and I got to go to different conferences there and speak there. But in accounting, it was actually in 2017, I went with a company called Ledger Sync.
We did like a one-day trip to QuickBooks Connect and back. I know Ledger Sync, we're implementing that right now, but keep going. 2018, a really good friend of mine, Linda Artesani and I, we, we started to put together and we created QB Community Live, the Facebook group, and we decided we were going to just go to the conference and kind of crash it and try to live stream and record our experience.
And we just showed it, pretend like we were somebody. And we went to a QuickBooks Connect in San Jose, then went up to Toronto after that, which was amazing. 2019 was the first year I had a chance to actually speak at Intuit Connect or QuickBooks Connect and just kind of evolved from there.
And it's, it's been a fun ride. Awesome. Well, I mean, I guess I always say you got to fake it till you make it.
Yes. Yeah. I mean, I guess that kind of leads us into our topic for today because we, there are so many very strong voices and so many smart people.
And, you know, I took my, my audience for this is all professional services entrepreneurs, but of course everybody finds I live in the accounting industry because that's where I am. But I find that as smart and knowledgeable as everybody is, and you're like, oh my gosh, they must be super successful. Their idea of success is not my idea of success.
Right. So they're like, what they're doing. And I'm like, I'm doing this.
And they're going, wow, that's amazing. I'm like, we're at different places. And it's, I always, I remember in the beginning, I would think, oh, I'm not as successful as they are.
I was like, oh, well, we're in different places. They're doing all of this, but they have 20 employees. They have, they're working a ton of, you know, they're doing all these different things.
So their idea of success is not mine. So I would love to know right off the bat, what is your idea of success? You know, I liked the way you were talking about that. Cause it, I think your definition of success evolves with you as you grow in your practice and your, and your experience in growing a company.
Before it was all about growing this firm, making it larger, getting a bigger team, having a global team, all this different stuff. And now that's changed, you know, it's after taking a bit of a hiatus out and really restructuring the stuff I want to do. To me, success now is taking time to actually live life and go and do things and working as much as I want to work and doing the type of stuff I want to do.
I want to be able to spend more time with friends and family than just sitting and working all the time, 60 hours a week. I just, I don't like to do that anymore. I want to work as least amount as possible.
And if I'm working, I don't want it to feel like work. I want it to feel. Totally.
I love it when somebody hits me up with a brain twister. Like if you, it's the whole thing with the workflows. If you've got this weird wonky challenge and you're trying to figure out how to get this to there or how to fix this or that, you get my attention on it.
I'm going to just dump, jump into that rabbit hole and go for it and try to figure out a solution. That's, that's my passion. That's the fun stuff.
I take it. You and I could talk zaps for hours then. Yeah.
Matter of fact, next, uh, QB power, we're going to be talking about using Zapier. So we should talk about this and I love it. It's even that technology evolves, evolves over time, right? So you, you have to shift.
Um, I think I've been really fortunate that I've always been on the forefront of technology and always playing with new pieces here and there. So it's allowed me to stay in front of, um, what businesses are able to do. And it keeps feeding my company new opportunities to grow.
Well, that do you write, I know I get into zaps. I, some people think I'm nuts. I have like 200 plus zaps running anything that requires me to put data from one thing to the other.
Because like I said, I don't want to work success for me is not working. And when I do work only doing what I'm excited about. So it doesn't feel like work, not the things that I'm like, Oh, I have to push that off.
If I had to push it off, I'm like, how can I either find somebody that loves to do it? And they, they can do it or, or it's a piece of technology. It makes me never have to do it again. So Zapier is like, in fact, I was just writing zaps this morning.
I like to zap things that come in for my email. If I like consistent things that come into like, and the subject's always the same or even if there's pieces of it. And I know it's a deliverable I'm going to have to create.
I have a zap that goes from my email to my project management tool. And it goes into my, what I need and when I need it by, and it's just completely automated. So I, and then I auto archive the email because I don't need it.
Get out of my way. You're already in my project management tool. I can see you there.
I wake up. I know exactly. And I'm mad.
I'm ADHD, right? We just completely schedules everything. So I don't want to spend time cleaning stuff out. That's my level of success, right? Well, sometimes you have to make mistakes to learn more.
So one example of a zap that I did, which really didn't work out as well. A long time ago, I started to zap that every time somebody would follow me on Twitter X, I would send up a picture to be like, thanks for the ad type thing, but then I never went on Twitter X at all. So the only thing you'd see on my feed was just this same picture over and over and over and over and over again.
Exactly. So sometimes you need to think a little bit further into the future when you're trying to create these custom integration. I have some auto responses for things like if somebody messaged me on Facebook or something, and I send a bit, an email comes into me and then I have an auto email that says, Hey, here's my link book on my calendar.
But the calendar link I had was so old that it doesn't work. And people like, you can't even link it, Sharon. I'm like, oops, that makes me look.
Come to me for process and efficiency and solutions. Nevermind. Right.
And then my team, and then I promise we'll move off from zaps. I love, I love that you're in tech because I love tech. I love it.
But my team gives me crap because I used to have, I have a zap set up. So we have a calendar. We use a calendar of court, of course, but we have a team calendar.
So whenever anybody has PTO or birthday or their anniversaries coming up, I have a zap set up that says, Hey, you see this upcoming seven days beforehand, create a slack notice that says, Hey team, tomorrow it's this, whatever. Well, however, I had it set it up. It was like, it was going in wrong.
So I can't remember. We'd be like, it was doing it. Like it was not even like a set amount of time.
It was totally random. It was shooting in random. I don't know what I wrote, but it'd be like Wednesday and say, guess what? Tomorrow is 4th of July.
And everyone's like, enjoy your day off. And then, so they always laugh whenever that comes through. Cause it doesn't come through, right.
I had to adjust them, but something about like the, the today feature or something, I need to figure it out. But they, every time it comes through, they're like sharing. I'm like, well, at least you guys know there's a holiday coming at some point soon.
Right. It's coming. Yes.
It's February, July. You will have 4th of July off. It is reminding you exactly.
And if we don't test these things ourselves and play around with them, we can't effectively officially do it for others because I don't want to fix mess ups in somebody else's stuff. It's why, like we're doing integrations. We do different things.
We have playgrounds. So it's part of the nature. When you're hired by us, it's look, I'm going to push buttons and try things out.
It's better than trying to implement it, implement a new software for the entire team every two months. Yeah, absolutely. That's a hard thing.
Matt, how's my, how's my phone ringing? Didn't I turn on do not disturb. That's how things go, right? Well, I like to know, and I struggle with this sometimes. And like I said, everybody's success is different.
And what's, you know, one man's trash, another man's treasure. But have you ever felt guilty for wanting more or maybe wanting even less, right? Than other people? Absolutely. So, you know, I should give just a quick bit of context that drives around a lot of this conversation that prior to the pandemic, I was growing my business with a business partner and things were going powerful and truly the pandemic helped us a lot because we were able to help a lot of other people.
Ended up ending that business partnership and taking some time off after just trying to do too much all at one time. The reason I'm sharing that is back before, I felt like I always had to take on every single opportunity to keep myself relevant and not lose that momentum. And that just led to burnout.
It was just ridiculous. It was, you know, you thought by if you missed something by not taking it any worse, but when you burn out, you end up missing a lot more. So now that I've come back and I've refocused and I like to call it life work harmony because I don't think work life balance is real.
Life first then work. It took some time for me to commit to myself to not overbook my calendar. Like I don't, I don't book anything before 10 a.m. ever on purpose.
And I only allow a certain amount of appointments. And a lot of people initially kind of expected the old Matthew to come back and be just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I'm not going to do that again.
So I, sometimes I feel bad cause I say no more, but there really is power in no, it's actually helped a lot. I, I, I agree with you. I have a story.
I might have a story a little bit like that, but two years ago, was it 20? When did Don, Sean and I do BFD that one year? I think it was 23, right? End of 23, end of 22, I think end of 22. Anyhow, but I, it was a QuickBooks connect and I was just, I burned myself out every year. So I take off usually Thanksgiving until January 7th every year because I, I love what I do, but I burned myself out.
And during the holidays, I just want to sit on my couch and do puzzles. But that year we were going into like December and I had a mental breakdown, like complete breakdown. And when I came back, I was like, that's it.
I'm taking Slack off my phone. I'm taking my email off my phone. I need my time back.
And yeah, right now you can't, I only work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and I'm not getting on a call before 10 unless like you're bribing me because I don't want to for my own peace and life. And that is important to me, right? Cause I hate setting an alarm, Matt. I hate it.
I don't want to set an alarm. You know, and I want to be transparent about something. Like I'm sure you'd agree.
I'm not saying that I'm sitting here able to work half time and making a bazillion trillion dollars. No, I've made the decision in my life to figure out what I want to make as an affordable income to live the quality life I want. It's no longer about having the multi-million dollar firm for me.
I prefer to niche down, be more specialized, make a good living and truly make an impact for businesses that I'm helping and choose to help. That's more important now. My dog is being a turd.
I absolutely, I agree with that. And I, it's also, it's about balance, right? And when you build something, you can build with just you and what you can handle, or you can build and bring other people in, but then that adds a whole other factor to it. Now, it's not just you doing what you do.
You have to manage what these other people are doing and they can be amazing, but if they win the lottery, you got to cover for them, which means now you're working again until you find another one of them, which is, we know in the accounting industry is almost impossible. I remember again, looking back to when I had a business partner, I love working together because we would collaborate and brainstorm on things, but there were absolutely times like if we were trying to change our own workflow or the software we're using, it became difficult because it's two different opinions. And sometimes things wouldn't get done, wouldn't get completed because we couldn't decide.
So when I started to redo it myself, I recognized now's the time to set up the systems and the procedures the way I think I want it before I bring other people on. So I don't have to have those conversations again. There's always room for evolving, but I can get the core base done.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
I always look like I want to do so much and make such an impact. And then I'm like, Oh, that's so much work. Do I want to do that? I'd rather do a lot of little things that I love, have a lot of smaller businesses doing a lot of different things and finding people that love it too, or finding ways to automate it.
Then I do want some huge thing that's just going to consume my life. Right. Cause like, for example, I feel really bad when I go to conferences and I see people that are like, I can't go to that tonight because I need to go get my work.
I have to work on client stuff. And I'm like, amazing. But then again, that's not my level of success.
That's their level. And, and they could have last year been an employee at a big four working 90 hours a week. And so only having to work an hour at a conference is nothing.
And that's where it's, it's really, it's good to remember that we all have a different viewpoint, right? You have to know what it is for you and for me. So, um, how do you, so you're, you do a lot of fun things. I watch all your, and I always look whenever you do, um, whenever you go to conferences, like you and Linda usually take some trips before, after, and you drive around, you post a lot of pictures.
So I know you do a lot of fun things. You live in a really great part of the U S. So how do you personally balance your business goals with your personal priorities? Because we know your dog is your number one priority. Just like mine is right now barking at the door to get out.
I'm going to let you start talking because he's yelling at me. There you go. There you go.
See, this is the nice thing with technology. Everybody is, we don't actually hear the noises that she's hearing, but I definitely understood. We don't hear any of it, but earlier I was doing a live and I had a chainsaw go on and I was like thinking everybody was going to hear it.
All right. Um, the fun of doing like, I love doing video, but there's the, the nuance stuff when your brain's like focused towards perfectionism, that can be difficult. So, uh, but back to your question, like, how do I try to balance it? You know, I'm, I'm, this is something I'm always working on and trying to evolve and do a better job with.
But the thing I really did last year was like you were saying is I took vacation time entwined into the conferences. So I busted my butt really hard to make sure I got everything done before I had to go. If I'm going to spend the time and money to go to a conference, I want to be present when I'm there, which means I'm telling the clients I have, I'm not going to be available.
There's no such thing as an accounting emergency and except for payroll basically is what I always say. So they're not going to be able to get back, like get ahold of me right away. I give them the extra attention ahead of time because I want to be there.
I want to be present, whether it's for like just connecting with people or doing whatever, and then sprinkling in the vacation stuff, doing other fun stuff, because guess what? That's how we get to write some of it off too. So like, you know, Sorry, IRS, this drive home across the entire United States that took a month was, I had to, I'm, I'm on a no fly list. I can't, I can't fly.
And I had to go to this business conference. I feel like that's something that people would expect out of my mouth. Yeah.
Might not be the reason I'm on a no fly list, but you know. The nice thing is we stop and we go visit people. So actually my, the other thing I try to do is I find I do better when I have some kind of event on the horizon, like three to six months out to like look forward to, because otherwise it's easy to get lost into the, I wake up, I work, I go to bed.
I wake up, I work and go to bed. So at the end of April, I'm going out to Florida. I'm going to go meet up with Linda.
We're going to a Pearl jam concert and we're going to set up and for the people in the area, see who else we can connect with. Like try to do math of how old we are right now. Please don't like, yeah, we're that old.
You know, when your music's on the airport bar, that's, that was always my thing. Like when they're playing that, you know, you're toast. Is it, they're like yesterday's hits or, or we're not even like the pot anymore.
It's like the, Oh, it's so sad. I don't even want to, that's a whole other episode. Well, that's really cool though.
Are you're going to, so are you driving, flying or there was something else aligned with that? You guys are just going into that. Yeah. This one is just, it's a fun trip to go do.
And we're, you know, pretty soon I'm planning to post and like Dan DeLong will be out there. We're going to reach out to other people that live in the area and be like, guys, let's just get together and just have lunch or dinner. And you know, the in real life meetings are so important whenever you can do it.
It really helps solidify the relationships. Absolutely. And when we're on the internet, all they're stuck in our offices.
In fact, I just had this conversation. So last week I, I sometimes I get called Kurt. I get it.
Yep. I get my direct I'm blunt. And, and I don't usually, and I know when I am, I put a smiley face at the end of a sentence.
So people are like, okay, she meant that nice. But when I'm like in a hurry, I'm like, no, no, no, no. And I keep going.
I don't think about it. And I am not saying it in a F you tone. I'm more of like a, Hey, real quick, but that's not how they're reading it.
And I don't know what's going on in their life. So last week I sent a message and it just got completely perceived and, and they took it extremely wrong and it got so blown up out of proportion. And we met in person and we talked it through and we realized if we had sat down and talk like this before they would have known Sharon doesn't mean it like that.
And they also would have known, I could have just picked up the phone and Sharon would have been like, oh my goodness, I'm so sorry. But they didn't know because we never sat down and have that call, but now we know, right? So it's so crazy how sometimes just that one-on-one communication of getting to know people is just so important, even though I love Slack. One of the best lessons I learned in sales training or however you want to say it, you can take a sentence like, I did not say he stole her purse.
And depending on the way I say it and the way you hear it, it can have multiple different meanings. I did not say he stole her purse. The lady stole the purse.
I didn't say he stole her purse. He sold her dog instead. And all of these different iterations based on tone inflection, all of it can lead to miscommunication.
So if we can all just do a better job of saying, you know, I apologize. What I was trying to say is. Or I'm sorry.
I think I misinterpreted or I took what you said incorrectly. And I just, I don't, I want to, can we clarify it? And I'm sure there's a better way to say something like that, but I've, I've learned and I'm, you know, in my, in my old age, I'm learning. Ask more, assume less, like, don't assume you don't know, ask.
It was probably an accident. It may have been a typo. They didn't, they probably made a call you a, I don't know, or maybe they didn't mean to call me Curt.
And that was a typo. Well, so this goes back to the idea of. So I can make comments like that.
It goes back to the idea of success because for me. You're not, you're, you're never going to please everybody. I don't care about that.
Right. We all have people that like us and others that maybe just, we can be an acquired taste. But I do like to live my life, smiling and happy and being kind to people.
So it requires me to not think the worst of people's intentions all the time. And to be willing to step back and be like, maybe this was perceived incorrectly. And that's not a weakness.
That's a strength. If you can actually try to do it. You know, some people think you're, you're being submissive.
No, you're just trying to be, get to the point. Like, I'd rather smile. And you can't be in a professional services industry and not have some sort of connection to people.
You need to be able to have a level of understanding or empathy or reading the room of, Hey, read this person's face. Whatever I said was not like yesterday on my plane ride home. Um, we were on the way to Vegas where I live.
And I sat down next to these two girls and she said something about Vegas or, and I said, well, I'm okay. I actually lived there. And she goes, Ooh, that's unfortunate.
I went, I sat there for a second and I was like, okay, do I just fight her? What do I do here? And I'm like, you're, you know what? I hope you lose all your money in this city and remember me. And then the fact that you just paid my income tax, cause I don't have any, but I really, I looked at her and go, Oh, I love living there. But I don't know.
I still am thinking about that. I'm thinking, I think I handled it well. Cause I went, I really enjoy living there.
And I, then I wanted to like attack Arizona and I thought, don't do it. Don't do it. Oh, you should because the daylight savings time.
Absolutely. I mean, Well, I'm just jealous. That's all really, but I was just like, wow, not to sit on the, God, this flight's only an hour.
So anyhow, it was just really crazy, but yeah, it really is not what you always, what you say, it's how you say it. It's definitely been by my motto this week. I know it's a little bit different, but, but it does kind of tie into your why, like everything you do, every trip I take everything I do in life with my business, my business revolves around my life.
My life doesn't revolve around my business, right? I want, I have to work. I have to, um, I haven't won the lottery and I have a shopping problem. So I, my husband has a ridiculous hat collection.
There's not a hat. He has a lid store in our closet. So I have to keep working or he'll leave me for somebody else that'll buy him hats.
Um, so, but, but I work enough to do that, you know, to do what I'm going to do, but that's my success, right? That's my success. If you buying him hats makes you happy, you keep buying them hats. Okay.
That's important. Oh, I don't buy them. He buys them.
I get it's that, um, for forgiveness, not permission. I'm like, Oh, wow. Look at you.
Look at you. Good for you. I do work a little bit too much.
Cause my, my schedule now after I used to do Monday through Thursday, and now I just do Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. But I told him, I said, I'll work. I'll be at my desk from like 10 to five.
But from like, I try to hold any other stuff from five to eight and I'll be on my couch on the laptop with him. And we can watch hockey and stuff, but it allows me to kind of be in the room with him and not be stuck in my office at my desk while still getting work done. Um, so it makes it not so terrible because we're just going to sit on the couch and watch hockey anyway.
So it's not that big a deal, but again, it's, it's, it works for me, but then I have four days off and it feels every week feels like a vacation now. And even though I'm working longer on those three days, like 10 to 12 hours, like that's crazy. Yeah.
I love it. I'm so much happier. Stress is like almost gone because I get so much time to unwind and be, and be refreshed.
So, but it's a matter of aligning and it's a matter of setting up your tasks and telling your, setting your boundaries and adjusting your calendar and telling your clients, no, I'm sorry. I'm not available that day. I'm sorry.
I'm not available. Like this is when I'm available. If you want to work with me.
One of the nice things, I guess a good thing and a bad thing that came out of the pandemic is the use of zoom and being, it really forced me more towards becoming a cloud accountant, meaning I can actually work from anywhere that I want. Right. One of the challenges though, I used to have an office space, got rid of it.
So now I work out of my home office, which is in my California, it's expensive in California folks here in Ventura. So it's not a big, big place. But it doesn't get in the
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