Hiring Secrets from a 90-Person (Remote) Accounting Firm

 

 

Summary

 

• • Today we welcome back a well thought and experienced guest, Shauna Wekherlien, CPA and founder of Tax Goddess Business Services. 

• • This is part 2 of our interview with Shauna. Check out Part 1 here. 

• • In the summary and podcast Jetpack covers Shanua’s inside look at team building and recruiting. 

 

Check out Shauna and her team: 

 

• • Tax Planning on Steroids 

• • Tax Goddess Human Resources 

 

Shauna Wekherlien, CPA – The Tax Goddess 

 

Shauna is a returning guest on our show. She is the owner of Tax Goddess Business Services ® and a certified tax coach. Shauna also acts as an author, speaker, and investor. Skilled in many and all things, learn more about Shauna’s career here. 

 

The last time we had Shauna on the show, David and Shauna covered: 

 

• • Building her brand

• • Building tax advisory services 

• • Pricing

• • Time saving methodologies 

• • Sales

 

In today’s episode, our focus will be to cover key details we missed out on last time. For example, we’ll work on understanding: 

 

• • Building the sales team

• • How Shauna finds her employees 

 

We’ll talk through questions like: 

 

• • What is the recruiting process? 

• • What are the hiring and onboarding processes? 

• • How does she manage security & team integration? 

 

Let’s get right to it! 

 

The Top 1% 

 

Before we get into the team conversation, we have to give credit to Shauna achieving quite the achievement. 

 

Shauna is considered in the top 1% of tax strategists in the US. 

 

So what does this mean? 

 

Well, Shauna is a CPA, has a Master’s in Tax, is a Certified Tax Coach (CTC), and a Certified Tax Strategist. 

 

From purely a marketing perspective, her firm identified that only so many people in the US held the same qualifications as Shanua, putting them in an elite group of professionals.

 

Shauna realized that by naming her qualifications, it’s partly a marketing tool but also a reminder of the value she brings to the table. Other firms can try to remember the same as they consider their own training. 

 

“Don’t forget that your knowledge and all of your history and all of your training is worth a lot to the world out there. You can save people billions of dollars, so make sure they know it in your marketing.”

Staffing 

Tax Goddess has 89 people on staff around the globe in 20 different countries, and further is broken into 13 divisions. 

A portion of the divisions are considered ‘billable’: 

• • Tax

• • Payroll

• • Bookkeeping

• • Tax Strategy

• • IRS Notices

• • Sales Tax 

A second portion of the divisions are, in Shauna’s words, ‘teams supporting teams.’ 

• • In-house Tech

• • HR

• • Customer Services 

• • Administration 

Shauna also shares that they have a ‘programming department’ and an ‘automation department’, and many more that cover their diverse grouping of 13 divisions. 

As she and Dave break down her structure even further, she has 13 ‘head of department’ or HOD. Their job is a job we’re all aware of. They are the living body of the department doing check-ins and reporting the issues, questions, and direction back to Shauna, the owner of the firm.

Some helpful questions her HODs cover are: 

• • What is happening in their department?

• • What problems are arising?

• • What needs to be changed?

• • What is a 3 month outlook?

All questions aside, Shauna uses this structure to keep on top of what’s happening in her business. A prudent decision, to assure all things are running smoothly. 

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Playing to Your Strengths

Part of the success of Shauna’s team comes down to bringing on experts as the firm has grown. For Shauna herself, she knew as growth happened, she’d need to do less accounting work. The same happened as the team grew, and as she needed to continue hiring, an HR expert made things much more smooth. 

She said this approach of bringing experts who could play to their strengths led to a better client experience, and continued growth:

As it grew, I looked at what is the life that I want to have? Do I personally want to be the person doing tax reviews or inputting data? No. That’s not the skill that I’m best at.” she said.

“And so what I learned was I had to get the skills around in areas I wasn’t great. So I went and hunted down experts. And what ends up happening with that is once you have that team of experts that you’re happy with, the clients see that. So they’re referring and it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy from that standpoint.”

Funneling Candidates 

In 2023, there are many resources available for hiring staff. Dave asks Shauna about her methods. Does she use a recruiter or marketplace websites? What methods of her own does she utilize? 

This is a great question for anyone in the entrepreneurial space. Shauna tells us that, upon the start of Tax Goddess, they staffed 15-20 people with the goal of expanding to 250 people. Her and her team’s first move was to hire a HR expert. 

Shauna is a believer in growth. Her strategy was simple, get people to buy into growth .. by growing. Simple, yet effective. She would hire experts with specific skills that helped the business achieve its goals. Once the clients began to see they were working with experts time and time again, the story spoke for itself. 

Of course, hiring comes at a cost, literally. Shauna tells us to be mindful of these expenses as most business owners consider employees to be the most costly of their expenses. 

Training and education vary, as businesses will be hiring and firing almost simultaneously. Because of this, bringing new employees up to speed requires a team effort. Not all HR staff are 100% knowledgeable on Information Technology or vice versa. Having each team’s go on the new employee orientation processes calls for a much smoother effort.

If you haven’t been able to tell, Shauna is a busy professional! You can get in touch with her through the Tax Goddess Office phone: 602-362-7939 or at taxgoddess.com/sales-team/ 

To get the full story from today, make sure to check out the podcast on our website. 

If you enjoyed the interview, leave a review. It helps us get the word out. Also, if you really enjoyed it and there is a shift in how you think about the future of your firm, share it with a fellow firm owner that needed to hear something Shauna mentioned today.  
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