Dave: My guest today is Ilse Rew, the COO of the Houston based CPA firm of Briggs & Veselka. Ilse, welcome to the podcast.
Ilse: Thanks David.
Dave: So, we've had on my other podcasts, the IC-DISC Show, I had two of your partners on there actually, the former managing partner, John Flatowicz, and the current managing partner, Sheila Enriquez. So, this completes the trifecta by being the third person from the firm that I've interviewed, and you have the unique position of being the very first guest on the new podcast, Podcasting Story. So, thank you for being on the podcast.
Ilse: That's great. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. I think I'm part learning, and I'm definitely interested in understanding more about how this is going to work.
Dave: Well, excellent. So why don't we just start by just talking a bit about the firm in the time since you've joined. So, wen did you join the firm, and then just tell me a bit about the firm for our listeners who are not familiar with the firm.
Ilse: Yeah. I'm a newbie, but in pandemic years, it's been a very long time. I joined in February 2019, Sheila and I talked about the position for 18 months before I started. So it was a very enlightened start to the position. I kind of knew what I was walking into, everything that was going on, and she just won me over. She has this amazing passion for this company and for the people that work here, and through that course of that 18 months, I also spoke to John Flatowicz, you mentioned, and between the two of them, they're hard to say no to. So, I started February 2019, and tasked with getting our operations ready for exponential future growth. I'm responsible for all of operations, marketing, HR, accounting, operations, administration, and information technology.
Dave: Wow, that's a lot. It's a lot on your plate.
Ilse: It's exciting. Yeah, it's a lot and it's exciting, and I couldn't do it without the team that I work with, for sure.
Dave: That's great. Now, as some of the listeners may know, I actually worked at Briggs and Veselka for several years in the early 2000s. 2002 to I think about 2004, and back then the firm, when I worked there, there were about 50 people that worked there. Now I understand there's a few more people today. How many people are you all up to today?
Ilse: I don't have our latest count, but I believe it's around 324.
Dave: 324. If I'm doing my math right, that's a seven X growth, almost seven X growth-
Ilse: Yes.
Dave: ... from when I was there. And it's interesting, I was just going to say, because when I was there, there are other firms in Houston that were in that same size. There were maybe a half dozen firms I think in that 50 to 75 range, all local firms like Briggs and Veselka, but I look today, and those firms have either been acquired by larger firms, or they've stayed independent, and have not really grown much. They've maybe grown up to 75 or 100 people. So, what's going on over there at Briggs & Veselka that they've had just such phenomenal growth?
Ilse: I think there's a commitment to staying independent, and it's a combination of organic growth and acquisitions. I think the culture wins people over the same way John and Sheila won me over. So, there's a very focused effort on finding organizations that fit our culture, and once they get to know the leadership team and understand how we operate and how people focus, the entire organization, it comes in an easy yes to become part of Briggs.
Dave: Okay. I know when I had John on my other podcast, that he had mentioned because even back to when I worked at the firm, John always had a growth focus, and I remember I asked him one day, and he said, "Look." He goes, "Here's the deal. We have so many great people, and if we follow the path of the traditional firm that doesn't grow much, there's a limited opportunity. There's only, X amount of partner slots." In fact, when I was there in the early 2000s, I think it was either seven or eight partners, and John said, "If we don't grow, and a partner retires only every five years, then we have only one new partner slot every five years, and we have all these great people that we're going to lose." So, I remember distinctly that that was part of John's rationale, was he wanted to ensure that he could keep and have a growth path for his best people. Is that still a part of the plan, would you say?
Ilse: Absolutely. John is always so eloquent. I love the way that you expressed to me how he put that. Yeah, they are fantastic people, and there's a huge focus on succession planning. It helps when you're out talking to people the fact that we do want to grow and nurture people, and show them the path. Sheila always was talking about show them the path, show them where they can get to, make sure that we don't limit them in their growth.
Dave: Sure, that makes sense, and it's obviously worked because... And I'm curious, how many partners and directors do you all have today?
Ilse: I believe we're up to 32 partners, and I would have to look up the director number for you.
Dave: Wow, that's still amazing.
Ilse: Yeah.
Dave: That gives me an idea though...
Ilse: That's the growth if you visit, yeah.
Dave: Yeah, it has grown a lot. So, let's just talk a bit more about the firm for the folks who didn't catch my interviews on the other podcast with John and Sheila. So, could you give me a little bit of the history of the firm, how long it's been around, how it got started and such?
Ilse: Yeah. As I said, newbie, so I usually am the one listening to these stories, and I'm absorbed by them, but for sure, the company started in 1973, so around for 47 years. I always remember that because that's also the year Sheila and I were born.
Dave: Okay.
Ilse: So, it's been an evolution of partners, probably the early years of which you can speak to better than me. When I started in 2019, we were just on the tail end of several acquisitions, that had expanded us from Huston into... The Woodlands was possibly forensics, a Woodland CPA firm, we had three in Austin, we always had the location in El Campo. So, I started on the tail end of that exponential growth that we saw right before 2019, and I was there for the integration of all those companies into the Huston processes and systems and culture, and what I can speak to is watching that people focus, and that focus on ensuring that everybody finds a place and that they're compassionate and empathetic, as we incorporate everybody into the organization.
We're still the largest independent firm in Houston, and I believe we hold the third largest accounting firm in the Southwest as well, top 100 firm nationally, just a truly wonderful culture and place to work at. Sheila and John and the executive committee are continuing to look on how they're getting to expand, they're focused on being Texas-based, that has not changed, they're focused on continuing to stay independent, it hasn't changed. In terms of what we offer our clients, we've organized it very well into three departments, consulting, audit and tax. In tax, we offer all the traditional tax services, including international tax, audit, we've organized by lines of business, everything from SCC to employee benefits plans.
And then on the consulting side is where we do the forensics, digital forensics, and e-discovery through pathway forensics, cybersecurity, IT advisory. Honestly, we are a one-stop shop for clients, to help them get their house in order, make sure that their data is secure, getting them ready for whatever their plans may be. And through the Capital Advisor Group, we're also able to help them transition, if their succession plan is to exit their business.
Dave: Okay. You're right, that's a really comprehensive offering for those mid-market companies. So you'd mentioned the SCC work, so you all are doing public company audit work now?
Ilse: That's right, yeah.
Dave: Back when I worked there, the focus was still on the private company. So it's been fun to watch the firm grow over the last couple of decades. Well, thank you for that background on the firm. What I'd like to do now is dive into some of the current marketing initiatives, and maybe talk about where the marketing was when you arrived, and some of the changes you've made, and because it's just a recipient of the marketing, I've always been very impressed with it for at least the last four or five years. It just seems like the marketing function just seems to be pretty well organized. So, could you talk a bit about the marketing as far as where it stood when you got there, and what additions you've shepherded?
Ilse: Absolutely. Marketing when I started... Look, the company has got a great reputation. It's easy to market a company with a good reputation, right?
Dave: Sure.
Ilse: That's half the work done. When I started in 2019, we had a strong focus on events, on the PR business developments of marketing, and honestly I thank my lucky stars for this in that first year off the starting, I spent quite a bit of time in getting us organized around pay-per-click campaigns, SEO, a very strong focus on the marketing that works while you're sleeping. There's only so many events that you can go to, but once that event is over, your marketing is no longer working because it's over. So in 2019, I spent quite a bit of time with the team in figuring out how we want to organize the website, what our initiatives are, what our core growth areas are, what the areas are that we want to expand in, and with both marketing campaigns and pay-per-click campaigns specifically in that first year to serve that. You know as well as everybody else, that pay-per-click campaign, you invest in it once, and then it's an asset that you have that you turn on and turn off, as you move through your marketing or business development year.
That were, unbeknownst to us at the time, served us very, very well when COVID hit. When COVID hit, we had got our house in order, in terms of our CRO, in terms of our SEO, we were seeing great numbers on that side, and we had the pay-per-click campaigns that we basically just ramped up in the absence of being able to do any events. Something that we did on the information technology side, which I was very unpopular for at the time, I got rid of desk phones and we moved to our full telephony platform is Zoom. Which also served us very well when the pandemic hit, because you literally just take your computer home with you, and you have everything. You have your telephone, you have your systems, we still had some straggler systems that were server-based, but the IT team did a wonderful job of building those applications on Azure.
So, the combination of being able to never lose touch with our clients through the Zoom platform, whether it be a phone call or a meeting where you can see the person's face, combined with the efforts that we did on the pay-per-click side, really helped us have it very quickly and see what you saw, that big webinar spike that happened right off the COVID hit. So everybody was hosting a webinar. And it was never more critical for our people, for the customers that we serve, because at the same time, the regulatory market just exploded around it.
Dave: Right.
Ilse: It was everything. And the government kept changing the rules on them. So we had this constant need from clients that they genuinely had a loss for how to navigate this new market and Tax Regs and loans and everything on, what do they need to do? And our approach very much was to be able to help them through that. That was our focus, that's why we're here, and we were able to use all these various platforms that we have, to really connect with them and understand what they're looking for and serve them well. On the back end of all of that, we have HubSpot as our CRM, which is connected to our web activity, it's integrated with Zoom and it's integrated with our Outlook. So it's allowing us to move our conversations forward with clients, and really understanding their pain points, sometimes better than they do, because we can sometimes see what they're looking for. Like our conversation that we had about podcasts, you don't know what you don't know. But you kind of go down this path of trying to understand how things work, and we're able to help our clients because we can see that path of what they're searching for and what they're looking for, what webinars they attend, and then we're able to capture all that data, and really be efficient, and therefore them in a timely manner.
Dave: Mm-hmm (affirmative). No, that makes sense, and thank you for some of that detail, because I suspected that you guys had a pretty robust system, and thanks for going into the detail to confirm that, and I did not know about the Zoom transition, and boy, that was tremendous foresight on your part to anticipate COVID, and switched to Zoom before COVID arrived. Right?
Ilse: Yeah. I'd love to say that I had that foresight.
Dave: Understood. I assume that the firm experienced the same increase in revenue due to all the COVID related items, the payroll protection program, the other things. Is that a fair assumption that the firm had an especially busy 2020?
Ilse: 2020 was busy, absolutely. 2020 was busy, different than any other year, as you can imagine. And we're beginning to see 2021 being busy, different than 2020 was. At this point I feel that, from how we serve our clients, I'm so grateful that our foundation is there. That Sheila spent that time in working with the partners and figuring out what our matrix of service offerings looked like. Because it really creates the foundation for how we service our clients. So, when these interesting things happen, like PPP loans, and now we're in the forgiveness, and I feel like we're in constant PPP world because my accountant has to deal with it as well.
Dave: Sure.
Ilse: We're not building the plane as we're flying. It doesn't feel that frantic that I notice from people trying to run their businesses, because we really took the time to build our service offerings from the ground up, and really think it through and be thoughtful about it. So we're very clear about where the service offering, or where the government's initiative folds in, and who can serve the clients, and who can be on that task force, and move it forward. So, from a revenue generating perspective, that has been very helpful that we've mirrored our matrix line of business service offerings with our marketing efforts. I've replicated that everywhere with the team. So, what our service offerings are, is mirrored in our marketing efforts, and it's mirrored in our accounting. So when we get to revenue generation or new initiatives, they're not wondering. They know whose initiative this is, they know who needs to take this ball and run with it, and I don't have to continue to create new ops or new systems or new processes for them, because it fits into what is already happening.
Dave: Mm-hmm (affirmative). No, that makes a lot of sense, and I can appreciate that that made 2020, not quite as frantic, because you had a framework within which to overlay the PPP programs and such. So I'm curious, since everybody was busy, and the disruption of working from home, did anybody ever happen to mention last year, "Hey, Ilse, why are we spending this time and money on marketing, when we already have more business than we can handle?" Just out of curiosity, did that conversation ever come up?
Ilse: No, it genuinely did not. From a budget perspective, if you think it through, last year was not a difficult year for marketing, because essentially all funds for in-person sponsorships or-
Dave: Lunches and...
Ilse: ... Yeah, events planning, all of that was delayed. And it's not genuinely delayed because, you're only going to have a gala once a year, right?
Dave: Right.
Ilse: So, it was genuinely just the pivot to online and digital emails, phone calls, webinars, but no, that question did not come up because there was a large chunk of what we usually do that we just simply couldn't get to.
Dave: I see. I hadn't thought about it that way. So you actually ended up with excess marketing dollars, didn't you? Or at least partway through the year, you had excess dollars that you could either redeploy to more online, or just save for a future year. Is that right?
Ilse: Absolutely. And as I mentioned with the pay-per-click campaign assets, we made sure to expand that so that we had more assets, and we also worked through a massive restructure of our website last year, which was always in the budget. And that launched last week. So, in terms of the initiatives that we had going on, that was foundational. The core of our marketing functions and strategic initiatives, those still happened. We restructured the websites, we continue to expand our pay-per-click campaigns, and then when it came to sponsorships and to events and things like that, we didn't reallocate all the funds.
We used some of the funds to invest in tools that gave us better data, like ZoomInfo, which provides you with lists of people that you can target for specific webinars, or for specific marketing initiatives, which is the next evolution in our marketing cycle, which is why I was always excited to talk to you about podcasts, because it will be our first foray where we're really not just marketing to clients and referral sources, but actually dipping our toe in the world of marketing to people who have no relationship with us.
Dave: Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that makes sense. So with that, let's drill down more into the podcast. So, as we had talked about before, you're considering a podcast to supplement the current marketing, from what you've learned so far, what are some of the aspects of podcasting that seems intriguing to you? Or some of the benefits of podcasting that seems intriguing, other than that you just mentioned of reaching audience that you may be haven't reached already?
Ilse: Since we've last talked, I've done quite a bit of reading on it. And I think where I've landed on, what is the most important addition to the marketing mix, and it's genuinely not even an addition to the marketing mix, it's a different way of sharing knowledge with our clients.
Dave: Okay.
Ilse: Webinars are great, they're fantastic. You're sitting at your desk, you're working, you turn the webinar on in the background, but a podcast has a different feel to it. You're out walking, you may be missed the webinar and you've got the recording of the webinar, but you're still tied, to a certain extent, to your device to go through and listen to it and read the slides. What I like about adding podcasts is who we are in this constantly evolving landscape at the moment. And people are thirsty for this knowledge and how to practically apply it to their business. And I just see podcasts from that perspective. The regulatory constant change, being a great way to be able to have a more conversational tone, educational experience for our clients.
Dave: That's an interesting approach. I hadn't really thought about the regulatory aspect, but you're right, it would be very easy to have some new regulatory item. You could record a quick podcast, and have it live in a couple of days, and be able to reach eight billion people on earth potentially, or the ones of the 8 billion who are interested in hearing about it. That's really interesting, because having had a podcast a couple of years, I've thought about a lot of the ways to use it, but I hadn't thought about it in that perspective as far as a way to give regulatory update.
And the other nice thing about a podcast, it's appropriate for what Tim Ferriss calls long form content, or said another way, podcasts that go on for more than an hour. So that's a good point because if somebody really wants to drill into the detail, you could have an hour-long podcast that goes into, I don't want to say excruciating detail, but into great detail. So, thank you for that idea. I hadn't thought about that. Any other ideas that you have around how you might use a podcast?
Ilse: Yeah. In my research, having worked here, recruiting is always a constant endeavor, and at Briggs we have amazing stories. We have people who have come up from being interns, some of the partner stories are incredible. I would say that Sheila hiring me as a consultant single mom into the COO role is an amazing attestation to what the approach here is about, how they look at people and what they can do, versus what their situation is. Which you don't often... We sold a good tool, but you don't really see it often in the markets. And as a female CEO, and as a female COO, I think on the flip side of that, the diversity and inclusion conversations that are happening are very important at the moment, and I'm seeing students really gravitate towards that.
Interns that are looking for a place, they're looking for a place to land where they know that people are being put first. So I see great potential on the recruiting side, in terms of just telling the stories of the people who work here, because they're incredible. I love even listening to your story about having worked here, where I don't have necessarily that depth of experience and history here yet, I love capturing that because every time I talk about Briggs, then I know a little bit more, and I understand the history more, and I understand how Briggs helps people get to their leadership role, or their place in the organization, irrespective of what would be considered a limiting set of data in their lives. So that's critical for me. I think that on the recruiting and telling those stories, that would be very powerful as well.
Dave: Okay. I want to just accentuate something that I think is so indicative of the firm's inclusive nature, and that is that not only are you and Sheila both females and who, based on what you let slip, I'm guessing you're both about 47 years old because you said you were born the same year as the firm.
Ilse: Yes.
Dave: But the other interesting thing is that if I'm correct, neither you nor Sheila were actually born in the United States. Is that correct?
Ilse: Yeah, that's correct. Sheila's from the Philippines and I'm from South Africa.
Dave: So that's the accent. I thought it was an Alabama accent all this time, but it's actually from South Africa. Okay, okay. Well, that's good.
Ilse: Further south.
Dave: Further south and east, or west. I guess it'd be more East. So, you're imagining for recruiting stories, and what about like, do you plan, or would you imagine any client, spotlight stories or client success stories?
Ilse: Yeah, we've actually just launched a client appreciation calendar, that's what I'm calling it. I'm sure my marketing team will cringe when they hear me call it that, because it's that. We just had International Women's Day, we've Black History Month, we've had clients who've been with us probably since you've been here, or probably since the start honestly-
Dave: True.
Ilse: ... who are extraordinarily loyal, and our clients' stories are equally as amazing as our employees' stories. So as part of this, it would be so wonderful to get to explain their story or give them a platform to tell their story to a broader audience. And as we're moving through launching and solidifying that calendar, I really did think that having a podcast, and just having them on there and having whomever the person is that brought them into the firm, perhaps having that conversation with them about where they started as a client with us, and where their business is now, because some of those growth stories is worthwhile telling.
Dave: Oh, that's a really interesting idea. So just to make sure I understand, you have maybe a client who's been with the firm 10 years, and you would have the partner who maybe initially brought the client on board interview that client, and tell the whole story, and have the continuity of that same client and the same partner through the duration of the relationship. Is that what I'm hearing?
Ilse: Yeah, exactly. Wouldn't that be fun to listen to?
Dave: It would be, it would be. Huh, that's another great idea. I've got to tell you, that is the most enjoyable part for me of having a podcast. Like when I interviewed John Flatowicz, one of the founding partners, Johnny Veselka, he sent me a really nice email after he heard that, and he said, "Dave, this is probably the best one-hour recorded history of Briggs and Veselka that exists." And that was so... I've always just adored Johnny, and emotive fine gentlemen, in his observation of that, it was just a great sense of stewardship that I had the privilege of being able to have the platform that allowed John to tell the whole story.
So I can tell you firsthand that that is a really unique experience that, I don't know how you get outside of a podcast to share those stories. Because like you'd said, a webinar's not where you would do it, a long email is not really the appropriate place for it, you could have a live event that you could tell a portion of the story, but you probably don't have an hour to tell the story, but then only the people there get to hear it. So, yeah, I think it is a great storytelling platform.
Ilse: I agree. So I just have an add on to that. I think, as you diversify to all the platforms that you have available, like Briggs & Veselka has a Facebook. There's a place for that, and there's content for that. We have LinkedIn, there's a place for that and there's content for that, but all of those are snippets of information. Those are shout outs, or perhaps a longer paragraph. We have webinars, we have emails, but to your point, if something grabbed you in a snippet that's provided on LinkedIn at the moment, my intent or my goal is to allow a place for you to go to actually listen to the full story. Because to your point, you cannot tell the full story of that client evolution, or how amazing that employee's story is, or getting to know a new partner, just through the two sentences that you could congratulate them on LinkedIn. It's just not possible, and there's so much behind it, and so much hard work that brings into that accomplishment, and that's just kind of lost at the moment.
Dave: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, I've read an interesting statistic that the average YouTube video watcher, watches for less than a minute before they go to the next video, but the average podcast listener, and I'm working from memory here, I think it's about 15 minutes of engagement. Which is to me astonishing, a 15 X increase in the duration of the participation by the listener. That is unique because I can't think of any other platform that you could get an engagement of 15 minutes, let alone an hour.
Ilse: That's a great statistic. Yeah, you're right. But we see people hover for seconds on a web page and we get excited.
Dave: Sure, sure. So, while you have me here, did you have any questions for me about my experience with having a podcast, or any lessons learned, and would that help?
Ilse: Yeah, absolutely. I guess one of my biggest questions is whether you've come across something while you've done podcasts that you would just say, "Just avoid it. Don't do it."
Dave: Let me think about that. I've done 24 podcasts on the IC-DISC Show, 21 of which have been released. This is my first episode here. Here's what I would say. So, the biggest thing I would say... Let me answer your question this way. If you're asking me, what's the biggest mistake I've made with podcasting, or the biggest lesson I've learned, the thing I wish I'd done differently, could I answer the question that way?
Ilse: Yup.
Dave: It's that I wish I'd started sooner. I've always been an avid podcast listener, I shouldn't say always, but probably for the last seven or eight years, and for probably five or six years, I wanted to have a podcast, but every time I would look at it, I would just get overwhelmed with the complexity of it, and all the different equipment you needed and the complexity of getting it published, and keeping up with it. And then when I was able to piggyback on what another company was doing with their podcasts, and they basically just let me piggyback mine on the, my biggest takeaway was not just taking action sooner, but I guess if I think through that, I didn't really have an option to do something sooner, but I would say the lesson is, don't overthink it and don't overthink the technology.
Like I was just looking at a couple firms that do done-for-you podcasting, and their process from start until you'd have your first podcast live, it was like 90 days. Because there was just so much complexity in their model because they maybe had an audio engineering background, and they wanted to make sure that it was like world-class audio, fit for public radio quality podcast, whereas for our clients, from the time somebody says, yes, they're going to have a podcast until, your podcast is live, it isn't three months, it's three weeks. So I'd say the biggest takeaway is, it's so easy to get a paralysis by analysis with a podcast, it's so easy to get too hyper-focused on... Like I'll give you an example.
As soon as we're not interviewing I'll record what's called an intro. Where it just kind of sets the stage, it gives a summary of what we talked about, and it's usually a minute to a minute and a half long. When I first got into this, I would spend an hour just recording and re-recording and re-recording, so it wasn't quite perfect, but I'd say the last 10 podcasts I've done, I do my intros in just one take, because I've discovered that when it comes to podcasting, perfection is the enemy of good or really good. So, I know that was kind of a long-winded answer to your question. Did that answer your question?
Ilse: It did, it did. Don't overthink it, don't shoot for perfection. I think I got it. But I think it's easier because I'm not trying to do it from scratch, right?
Dave: Right.
Ilse: This is a question, it's going to come across as a statement. I think that if you have a really lean marketing team, I have a very lean marketing team, the burden to add a podcast to the mix can seem overwhelming. So to your point, I recognize how you say, "Don't overthink it." which is why I've genuinely seen the value of what you've proposed, because there is set up from what I understand you're saying, that would be time-consuming.
Dave: Yeah. And just to be clear, just for the listeners, we've been helping companies informally for a while, and I formally launched a company called Your Podcast Team. The website is yourpodcast.team, and our service offering is called, Podcasts Done For You. And what we've done is we've tried to make it as simple as possible, to where all that really is required to do a podcast is just what has happened today, that both parties call into a recorded dial-in line, and then at the end of it, you hang up, and the interviewer then immediately gets an email with a link, they click the link, you enter a few sentences about the podcast, just record the intro, and then the podcast gets transcribed, so you now have 45 minutes to an hour of transcribed content, and then, we prepare the email, the first draft of the email to go out, and then we also create the artwork for the episode for social media posting.
Anyway, I didn't mean for this to be a commercial about our service, but that's the idea is that... And the other thing about a podcast, a good podcast is better than a potentially perfect podcast that never gets launched. And the other thing is, I heard it said that if you have a technology product and you look back to your original product from three years ago, and if you're not embarrassed about it, about that product, then you waited too long to launch it. Or said another way, if you wait till it's perfect, you'll never launch, and that what will happen is you'll just get better over time.
Your 20th episode will be better than the first, because you just will have gotten better at the questions, and the experience and... But anyway, I'm off on a tangent. But yeah, that's the idea that our clients tend to have lean teams, and you also pointed out something so profound when we spoke last time, that you said you're a big fan of outsourcing, not so much because of the economics of it, but as far as the institutional knowledge, that if you rely on a... And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you said if you rely totally on internal people, that if one of those people leaves, you lose all that institutional knowledge, where if you're using strategic partners, that institutional knowledge doesn't get lost just because an employee left. Is that an accurate recount?
Ilse: Yeah, very accurate. I'm constantly striving for the perfect mix of internal and strategic partners. There are just certain things that if the skill is with an employee and they leave, I'm really operationally in a tough spot, but if I have that, like a podcast is a great example. If I have that with a strategic partner, that seamlessly continues. Right?
Dave: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ilse: If I think of a turnover on my side. From a business continuity perspective, I'm always striving for the perfect mix of that, and I try not to take on in-house, very technical in-depth type of endeavors that if somebody leaves, I'm going to have to try and really back to building the plane as I fly. Trying to figure it out from that perspective, where what you and I were discussing, and I do appreciate you going back over all of it, I know you didn't intend to do an advert, but it just reminded me of all the components of it again. But doing it this way, I have an easy agenda and I go and find somebody new to just call into the line, and everything on the back end is taken care of, versus trying to figure out how the equipment works, and do I have equipment, and where do I post it? What happens? That's a different experience, for sure.
Dave: Sure. Well, as I told you that we were targeting a 30-minutes for this, and I told you that the time would fly by, and can you believe it's already been 45 minutes?
Ilse: I just looked myself and realize that, yeah.
Dave: So with that, why don't we wrap up? Is there anything that you wish we talked about that we didn't?
Ilse: No.
Dave: Okay.
Ilse: I'm pretty good, but I'm going to email you if I come across something that I wanted to know more about.
Dave: Yes, absolutely. So, if people want to learn more about the firm, or they want to reach out to you, what's the best way to do so?
Ilse: Absolutely, yeah. So our website, I would love for people to go through our new website is bvccpa.com. Everybody has a bio page, you can click through and find my email and contact details there, and I would love to hear thoughts, feedback, any additional tips on what people have seen working, and what they want to hear about.
Dave: Okay. So if people who listen to the podcasts, you'll want to reach out with comments or questions, they could just go to the website, go to your profile page, and go ahead and send you an email from there?
Ilse: Yeah. I would spell my name on the podcast. Many people would never get to find my email. I mean, I could try.
Dave: Yeah, let's give it a go. What is your email address?
Ilse: So it's my full name, Ilse Rew, it's Ilse, I-L-S.R-E-W@bvccpa.com
Dave: Excellent. Well, Ilse, this has been a real treat for me, and I really appreciate just your openness, to speak about the progress you've made with the marketing initiatives, and your willingness to explore, making additions to the marketing mix with a podcast, so this has really been fun, and I really, really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to talk to me.
Ilse: Yeah, thanks David. My intent was get on here and I learned the process by doing, and you really have shown me that it is very easy, and I appreciate it.
Dave: Well, that is great. Well, thank you again so much for your time, and this episode will be live in about a week. So, have a great day Ilse.
Ilse: Thank you too.
Dave: And there we have it. Another great episode. Don't forget to check out the show notes at www.podcastingstories.com. This podcast is brought to you by Your Podcast Team. If you have ever considered having your own podcast, head over to www.yourpodcast.team, to learn more about how they can help you. That's it for this episode, have a great week, and we'll talk to you next time.