Who's Really the BOSS?

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Rachel Dillon: Hi, I'm Rachel Dillon, and together with my husband, Marcus Dillon, we lead Who's Really the Boss podcast, where we highlight the joys and challenges of running a business with your spouse or family. Our mission is to strengthen families and businesses by helping listeners avoid the mistakes we have made so they can lead and.

Marcus Dillon: Live happily ever after.

Rachel Dillon: Welcome [00:00:30] back to another episode of Who's Really the Boss podcast.

Marcus Dillon: Hey, thanks for having me back.

Rachel Dillon: Good to be recording again. If anybody's watching on YouTube, like watching the actual video and not just listening, you can see that we are recording from a different place today.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah, it's a familiar place. So I'm in our home office and you are in another home office. That was the girls or is the girls home office, but separated today by office but still working in the same, [00:01:00] I guess, house.

Rachel Dillon: I think you got the better setup. I have like masked chaos behind like that. I'm looking into because Avery's you know, life and study space is like just as she left it. And so there's a lot going on here, but she's been super busy, so not really giving her a hard time on that. We've been able to celebrate some accomplishments for her recently. So just in case people don't know what [00:01:30] Avery, our youngest daughter, does, go ahead and share. You know, what she does and what she accomplished.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. So she's a swimmer. She's still in high school. She's a junior this year. So pretty important year both from an academic standpoint and athletically if she does want to pursue swimming. So everything clicked. And she had a great, uh, meet last weekend at the Texas State High School Championships, came away with, what, three gold, one silver medal, two broken records [00:02:00] with her relay team. So couldn't be more proud of her and all the work that she puts in. Um, any parents out there that have kids that do extracurricular activities, even club activities? No, uh, it's quite an effort. She's 16 now, so she actually does drive herself to practices. But practice in the morning, practice in the evening. I think she gets home around, what, seven and leaves the house typically at like, what, 636? Yeah. 630. [00:02:30] So it's a full day for a kid for a 16 year old trying to balance, uh, academics and life and all the fun stuff. So we couldn't be more proud of her. She's got another big meet coming up next weekend. Um, so it just never stops. It's fun.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. So we are super excited and kind of her, um, achievements or her drops in her race times are opening up more doors for her, hopefully to swim where she prefers collegiately. Uh, we prefer her to swim in [00:03:00] Texas, so we're hoping that some of those Texas universities pay attention and start contacting her. Uh, more so than they have in the past. But as she was preparing for state, we were at her regional swim meet. And as we were leaving. I got an email that I assumed was spam at first, and then I thought, well, maybe it's not spam, like I need to check and see what's going on. But we got an email from one of our teammates that said resigning [00:03:30] effective immediately. And in our is it almost 13 years of DBA? This is definitely the very first that we've had in email form, but the very first that's been resigning effective immediately.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah, I think 13 years within DBA. Obviously I worked in another firm prior to that and never saw that happen, worked in even public accounting during the worst of the worst with Sarbanes-Oxley rollout and everything like that and never saw effective [00:04:00] immediately. I'm not coming back, you know, type thing. So it's very unusual. Um, so we kind of obviously thought it was spam, um, at first and didn't know what that was, but, um, yeah.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. So what I did when we received I received that email, I immediately, uh, called the team member to make sure to verify that she actually did send it. We get a ton of phishing emails and things like [00:04:30] that. So I wanted to make sure that she actually was resigning and actually just asked her, are you okay? Because that is out of character for her. And so I wanted to make sure that the team member was okay, first of all. But we were able to verify that, yes, it was effective immediately. And again, like I said, we were at a swim meet. It was a Friday afternoon. And so it was. [00:05:00] Our team only works until 1 p.m. on Fridays. It was after the 1 p.m.. So it was kind of you and I like, okay, who do we notify on the team first? What do we need to do first to make sure, um, that everything is going to work out okay in this instance. And so we arrived at obviously leadership team needs to know now. Like they don't need to wait until Monday and walk into what [00:05:30] might feel like chaos or a huge surprise. And so that's kind of where we started. But it wasn't it wasn't a huge freakout on our part. Maybe we were exhausted from the swim meet and all of the nerves and anxiety we had, um, going into that because that was her qualifying to go to state. And so but it really wasn't that bad. And I think a little bit of that comes from our team structure. So if you just want to talk a little bit about what our team [00:06:00] structure looks like, that allowed us to kind of calmly respond to those messages and calmly, you know, contact the other members of the leadership team and let them know.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. So having that team structure in place with that team of three. So this position, she was a full time CSM, which is that baseline, uh kind of building block for the team, if you will. Um, obviously you have a CSM and then the next part of that team of three is a client controller. [00:06:30] And then finally rounding out that team is the client CFO. So with that team of three model there is always overlap. And that's why we designed it that way. It's very unlikely that all three people would leave the team at one time. If you have two people leave the team at one time, that's drastic. Uh, but in this case, one person left and everything aside, her resigning effective immediately. Um, life happens as well. People fall and, uh, end [00:07:00] up in the hospital or take, uh, different types of leave, uh, unexpectedly. And so this structure was tested. Right. And so I think that's the piece where we walked away from this, even in while it's still so fresh, uh, being thankful that we did have a structure and we have other csms who can assist. They've got additional capacity. They can hold down that CSM role. The other thing is the client controller, the client CFO, they just [00:07:30] rolled up their sleeves and kind of continued to serve the client like the client knows. And the client really, we let the clients know, um, that interacted with that person on a weekly or bi weekly basis when it came to payroll or other questions that were maybe outstanding. But I'm so proud of the team and the structure that is built into the team because service never skipped a beat. We just kept rolling.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. So with the team [00:08:00] of three, we have like overlap or duplication of responsibilities. So the client controller and the client CFO are reviewing that work. But oftentimes they may have also been the person who trained them on that client. They sat with them to address, you know, challenges or problems or questions that have come in. So they've been in that file of that client. They've likely helped with some of the processes before. So not only do they [00:08:30] have this shared knowledge of just the client itself, but they also know what that person is responsible for. We have also within the team of three, just to make it easier when new team members are starting, have documented processes so that other client service managers will know what they're supposed to be doing and how to do it within that role. So really, that team of three allowed for the client to not feel, um, any [00:09:00] change within their service, even though we definitely felt changed within our team. It's very hard not not just from a client work standpoint, but in our team we're close. So the relationships that have formed, the time that's been invested both ways, um, it's very hard for people to leave. Uh, at least our team. I maybe not every team, but our team, it's more difficult.

Rachel Dillon: Like, it's usually not an easy decision. May have [00:09:30] been the reason that the letting us know came the way it did, just because it would be so hard. And maybe it was like, I don't want to get talked into staying. This is what I really need to do for, you know, that family and life on the outside of DBA. Um, and so this one was effective immediately. So we needed to make some quicker decisions and do some things a little bit differently. But when we just have a team member transition, we have had I [00:10:00] mean, we want to hire people for life, but typically that's not the way it works out. We do have a lot of long Terme team members that we are so thankful for, but we are thankful for every team member who has come in and out, no matter the amount of time or the role that they've served. And so when we have, you know, maybe a notice of leave, that's going to be either an just an extended leave or actually leaving the business altogether. [00:10:30] What does that look like first? What does that typically look like. And then we'll go into what did we actually do or what our procedures are for if someone resigns effective immediately.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. So I guess that's the piece where what happens typically is someone gives notice, right. You know, a two week notice. Sometimes we've gotten a 3 or 4 week notice just because of the transition that's going to occur recently. That happened with one of our part time [00:11:00] csms that went and based on her family stage of life, went and actually, uh, got a full time job back in industry, going back into oil and gas accounting. And so with that, um, you know, you're not trying to burn any bridges, hopefully on the team member or the, uh, team side, the employer side. And so you approach that with grace. We've always cared more about the individual person than their role on the team, and I think that's how we approach any [00:11:30] of those conversations. Obviously, we would love for them to continue to be a part of the team, but if it no longer aligns with their goals or their what they what their skill set could be if they did leave or the opportunities that exist, we're going to wish them all the best and hope for, uh, continued success on their side. And hopefully that's returned, uh, wishing us well on our side. So when that typically occurs, someone gives a two week notice, you know, at kind of the minimum. [00:12:00]

Marcus Dillon: Hopefully, uh, we start to think through, we start to loop in other people, uh, that are identified that could help with that transition. In that situation, it was no different than this previous one where it was effective immediately. We we went directly to leadership team and then we went to the pod. Uh, that the team that continues to serve those clients moving forward and let them know about the potential change. Obviously, there may be some morning, uh, that that person [00:12:30] is no longer going to be a part of that team of three, but it's usually met with the same level of acceptance that we had as owners or as leaders that, you know, you wish what's best for that person and maybe even knew that under the surface, they saw something that they wanted to go pursue. And you just, you know, you kind of wish them well even as a team. So when that happens, we as a team, as a team of three, we start to document the roles and responsibilities, even more [00:13:00] so than maybe what they had been done in the past of what that person does on a daily, weekly, monthly basis for their client base. And so it's also overlap with the client controller. The client CFO, who knows those clients, has deep, intimate knowledge of those same clients of that CSM and can review with that client CSM, who may be leaving, you know, hey, is there anything unusual, anything outside of scope that we hadn't planned for? Um, just because there is stuff that comes up with [00:13:30] working so closely with clients at that level, and that's really the client service manager, client controller, client CFO.

Marcus Dillon: If they were to leave, it would be the same thing. We would we would approach it with the team of three mindset. We would loop in other levels that other similar levels within other teams or other pods to see who has capacity, who can not make all of the burden fall on just the remaining team members. And so far it's been good. You know, DBA is fortunate [00:14:00] enough to have excess capacity, and we built that in for a reason for reasons like this. Right. And so we monitor our amount of work very closely. And we know that life happens. You know I think that's one of those things where it's not always someone leaving the team effective immediately. It could be a planned leave, like a pregnancy or like, um, some parent, you know, issue that comes up with things that people are dealing with on a day to day basis.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. And so [00:14:30] our structure looks like two pods within DBA. So we have two client CFOs. You are one Leslie's our other that are leading those two pods. And then within that pod we have one to 2 to 3 controllers. And then anywhere from, you know, 2 to 4 client service managers. So within that CFOs care, there are additional people that could potentially help out with that account. Typically [00:15:00] what that looks like, we go first to the people who directly already work day in and day out, or week in and week out with the clients that hold that relationship. They know the people there. So we try to divide up that work between the two of them first. However, they don't have. I don't think anyone in our team has full capacity to take on someone else's complete responsibilities. And so then we start looking at within that [00:15:30] pod, has any other team member worked on that client before? Obviously that's going to make the smoothest transition. If they had, you know, worked on that in the past, maybe when they started with the firm or something like that, that it had gotten transitioned at some point, or they had some type of knowledge with that client and then seeing from there. But let's just talk about you mentioned capacity, that we don't really over fill any of our team. We try [00:16:00] not to. So our team members might be listening, thinking, I'm super busy. But um, from our standpoint, what we are looking at, will you talk through what the capacity of each of those members of the team of three looks like?

Marcus Dillon: Well, first off, it's dependent on the amount of hours they want to give to DBA. And so we have some part time team members. We have some full time team members. And based on part time or full time, then we structure [00:16:30] their workload appropriately. And so given their role CSM, client controller, client CFO, we also know what percentage capacity they should be at max. And I don't have it in front of me. So you may have to help me, but I know that we typically don't want a CFO any more than 60% effectively utilize. So 60% production, 40% admin coaching, leadership responsibilities. Uh, a client controller is probably more [00:17:00] 70 to 75 is that limit. And that's based on a 20, 80, 20, 80 work year. This isn't 2300 2400 expectation like some public accounting firms may have. So that's where we look at okay. Given their week what is 75% production look like. What does the other 25% look like? Because as a client controller, as a client CFO, you're working closely with other team members, helping them come [00:17:30] along. You're looking at clients potentially to also look for efficiencies. But there is just that level of management, that level of leadership built into those two roles.

Marcus Dillon: And so we we talked about CFO, controller, client service manager. We would see typically around 85% no more than 90. We do have some part time team members that are closer to 90%. And with that that's just they're really useful. They're [00:18:00] really, um, productive when they are on if they. Aren't, uh, working, so to speak. Then that's where it's just they're not using that time just to go do admin responsibilities. And we do have a few client service managers where they are at 90%. And we have to make sure that they build in time for team uh, role and responsibilities learning. Um, just continuing [00:18:30] to evaluate and make them a full part of the team because they've got things outside of DBA that keep them busy, and they're doing everything they can to balance both sides of work and life. And we don't want to, you know, require them to do a training or anything like that to make them even more, uh, outside of the home. So we have to be careful with that. And so that's where sent um, so.

Rachel Dillon: In a situation like this, it could be [00:19:00] tempting, um, potentially when we were in our earlier days of DBA, it would have been tempting to say, oh, wait, we were able to just take all of that work, divide it up among the team members that we have. Everybody's okay. The work is getting done. We maybe we don't need to hire someone else. I think we've learned better. I think we've learned better that that's not the appropriate, um, action to take. And so [00:19:30] do you want to talk a little bit about how we've learned that?

Marcus Dillon: We've learned it the hard way. Uh, you know, whenever you burn out team members and thankfully, some of those team members that burn out, they've stayed on the team. We've restructured their role. We restructured their client list to make it more appropriate for balance. And, uh, the other piece with that is you take the client controller role, for example, and that 75%, uh, if I was aggressive as a firm owner, if [00:20:00] I, um, was your typical tax season shop, I would fill that other 25% of available capacity with tax returns, with seasonal tax returns, with annual relationships, especially at this time of year. And we've had to be more responsible with our team because we do want to keep them long. Terme that client controller role, which would be the equivalent of a tax manager, or maybe even a tax senior manager at other firms because of their skill set. Um, [00:20:30] they signed on with DBA. They are here for a reason because they did not want that life. So to build in capacity to their days and to their weeks and months, especially during tax season, we had to remove, uh, the ability just to reassign those annual relationships that come in once a year. And as we continue to grow, Cass, and as we structured the team this way, especially that client controller role, we had to become very [00:21:00] disciplined to remove annual client relationships. Even though tax annual tax can be a very profitable, uh, business line, it is not what we were going to grow DBA with. We were more focused on Cass, and so we had to make the hard decision to exit those annual tax clients that came in just in the middle of a year.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. So with that, also, um, and you may have mentioned it and I probably [00:21:30] zoned out. Uh, but with that, the team members, if they're at full capacity when a request comes in, that request can feel like a burden, because whether it's a request from internally, from a team member that has a question about something and they need to jump in, and it's like a learning opportunity or a training opportunity, or if that request is a client asking for maybe it's a change to payroll somebody [00:22:00] withholdings, or maybe it's a question of can you pull this? I need to send it to somebody, which may happen or may not. We never want those. The service and the relationships to be a burden on other people. So we never want requests and things like that where we have the opportunity to step up and help someone out. For people to feel like they don't have time to do that in their day, or that [00:22:30] if I help you with this, then I have to continue working later or longer. I just don't, or I'm going to miss a deadline on something because I stopped to help you. So that's one of the things. I was on a call with the prospect, and he was letting me know that he was calling us because his current CPA said that they couldn't talk until end of May or June, because his question wasn't necessarily about the 2023 tax return, but more of looking at 2024 and forward. And [00:23:00] so we never want that to happen, whether that's, you know, externally with a client or internally with team members. We don't want to push somebody off for days or weeks or months because we only have the capacity to do the work that's in front of us.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah, I agree, we come across so many opportunities during this time of year and we capitalize on those opportunities because we are available compared to other service providers, um, both with referral [00:23:30] sources, prospects and existing clients. Uh, we have a client mid-February reached out to me, was doing due diligence on an acquisition that I knew was in the pipeline because I serve as their monthly CFO, and it was ramping up, and he was like, hey, I need you over the next two weeks to really help with this financial due diligence. And I said, yes. And it's one of those where if I hadn't structured my capacity to be able to do that as the client CFO. Our client would have been in a rough spot, maybe [00:24:00] to seek outside counsel on that engagement. I think the same thing can be said of referral partners that are looking for guidance for their clients. I had one of our best referral partners reach out and say the the person this prospects provider, their CPA, said that they couldn't answer their their call or their question until May. They couldn't go sit down with that person until April or May. And that's just that's unfortunate. [00:24:30] Um, that's where you are too busy driving to stop and get gas.

Marcus Dillon: Um, you know, it's just it's unfortunate for the long, uh, vision of the firm. Unless you are planning to just maintain a seasonal tax practice, then that if that's your thing, then that's your thing. But for us, it was always, how do we balance out this year? How do we make it even? And when someone leaves effective immediately that test things. Right. And um, I think that's where not only the type [00:25:00] of work, but the structure of your team helps in that, um, the kind of roles and responsibilities we've talked about. So that was a Friday afternoon after that swim meet when we got that email. What did you do first? Um, like you said, you reached out to them because you thought maybe something was a little bit off. And in this situation that that that team member had actually been out of the office for an extended period of time dealing with some family issues. So, [00:25:30] um, it was kind of a. Even harder because they hadn't been in their seat for about a week, a week and a half. And, uh, it's almost like negative notice at that point. Um, and that's where it was even a little bit more strange, uh, than effective immediately or two weeks notice.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. So definitely was to check on the person. So we knew that there were some family things going on. I think any time that you get a notice, [00:26:00] um, you know, like resigning effective immediately, that you would. Immediately need to think, okay, something extreme has happened. So whether that's internal, maybe that there was a conflict between team members or, or client, something internally happened, or whether that's themselves, their immediate family or their extended family, like I think that that's the appropriate thought to have immediately is that something's wrong. And as a [00:26:30] leader, can you do anything to help? So that was first is first verify that the email was legit. Um, I think that those were my exact words. Um, is this email legit? Like, I, I didn't realize that there was you know, I'm not.

Marcus Dillon: Clicking on.

Rachel Dillon: This. Yeah, yeah. And and it wasn't, um, it wasn't within the firm. And so then immediately after that, we requested equipment return. Obviously, we want to make sure that [00:27:00] that just doesn't go unnoticed. Whatever is happening, you know, with that person in their life, they probably just need to tie up whatever they have with you and your business, um, sooner rather than later. So things don't get kind of lost, um, in the transitions. And so we requested equipment return and we are a fully remote firm. So what that looks like is they have to pack up, you know, a laptop, a docking station, a keyboard and mouse, a external camera. [00:27:30] So certain things, they box it up and send it back to, um, our address. And then we have to start looking at obviously like security and privacy of the clients. And so have to start taking measures to look at access to different things.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. And I think that's the piece where, uh, kind of the funny thing was that was the fastest equipment return we've ever seen. So, um, you know, that was on a Friday and that equipment showed up on a Monday. So [00:28:00] it it was kind of like hot potato. They didn't they didn't want to hang on to that any longer than necessary. So, uh, you mentioned disconnecting access. And that's a big thing. As a remote firm, I know that a lot of CPAs or a lot of professional service providers that do have brick and mortar, maybe they move to hybrid, maybe they removed remote. They want to understand how this could be done, especially in a remote environment. And so what what that did look like is she still had the box [00:28:30] from where we shipped it to her six months earlier. She was only on the team around six months. So she just repacked that box, which was great and great, uh, for thinking, I guess, or whatever you want to say on her on her side. Maybe it was a.

Rachel Dillon: Never a long terme decision.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah, yeah, which is unfortunate, I mean, but. So Friday afternoon, you were still trying to confirm if this was legitimate or not. Um, I think around 530, we got the, you know, text back that. No, this was it. Um, so what [00:29:00] we immediately started to do was go through protocol and go through the list of how she needed to be turned off and what that looked like. And so I think you and I handled most of that. We may have looped in Amy, our director of ops, later on Monday on certain programs. But for the majority, any client sensitive, uh, information that could have been viewed over the weekend, after we knew of her giving notice, we had to turn off. And that was, you know, we talked about that. Should we wait until Monday? And really, [00:29:30] at that point, you know, you have been given notice. So you have to start the process of taking down access, because if we would have been given notice on a Friday and then something would have happened over the weekend, we could have been liable for, you know, just being in a weird situation with a client or even the firm's data. So we started that process. It was that's changed over the years and become fairly, um, easy now. And so what we do is we log into our single sign on program, [00:30:00] uh, practice protect, and then we disconnect her from every login that she's done and start changing passwords or disconnecting her login, uh, deleting her login altogether.

Marcus Dillon: So that was easily done. Um, and we have that single sign on program in place for that reason for to make onboarding and offboarding of team members that much easier. Uh, because of that program and the single sign on benefits, she likely did not know some [00:30:30] of the passwords to those logins anyway. She may have known her username, but not the password. And so that's just the recommendation to use a software like that, uh, where it was single sign on behind, um, kind of a, a wall, so to speak. And it was easy to kind of go through the list of that single sign on and just go, okay, she had access to ADP and we go out to ADP separately as firm admins and [00:31:00] disconnect and then delete her as a user of the firm in ADP. And then we would follow that list. For each one of those logins. Um, the one thing that kind of came to light is, uh, during that process, she had. Had some separate logins for certain client access, and we just made note that that no longer needs to happen moving forward and even like improvement on our side. Um, even though we were able to work with the client to get those taken down, we now have the policy [00:31:30] and procedure that everything goes through a firm email, uh, a shared inbox, so to speak, to get set up and then to give access to the firm collectively, not just any one team member on the firm.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah, that's really important because all of our team members have, uh, pretty much all of our team members have direct access to the clients they work with. They actually do have the relationship with the client, not just the owner or not just the client [00:32:00] CFO. So our team of three, they all interact with the clients and the clients teams as well, whoever they've appointed within their organization. And so that's really important when we look at things like our secure messaging platform, when we turn that off, the client can no longer find that person to send a message. So when they go to reply to a message, the message is there, but they're no longer able to send [00:32:30] that message. They have to choose a new person to send that to. Um, also with that again, same thing. We use our secure messaging platform with clients because we can see as far as DBA internally, we can see all the messages that have gone back and forth with the clients. So it's very transparent and all of the team can be in the know as far as what's going on. However, we do have clients that like to send [00:33:00] email or they feel like, you know, sending an email might be easier. So that's also really important that on that email, obviously we're not just turning it off, but with a team of three, we're able to forward that to the appropriate people who need to have access to that email, who a client may have something that they're that they are reaching out for our email really internally we don't use it.

Rachel Dillon: And then [00:33:30] externally we do our very best to not use email. So there shouldn't be much coming in that is actually legit. And so we're able to choose for this team member. We were able to choose their CFO so that if anything comes back and forth, what's. Harder is that we don't give them the login information for that person's email. We forward. So anything that goes, um, you know, after that point. So making sure [00:34:00] that we can get access to or find anything that may have happened, you know, maybe within like a 24 to 48 hour period if something was sent or maybe something got missed, making sure that because we only want to go to the client if we have to, we really don't want them to feel our pain of the transition. And so really making sure I think the client, um, means of communication [00:34:30] are forwarded appropriately, saved, restored, whatever needs to happen on those so that no information is lost from the client.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah. So you talked about kind of how communication may happen internally and with the team. So internally we use Microsoft Teams. That just cuts down on the amount of spam or phishing attacks that where people get emails from me as the owner and say, hey, I need you to update this. Obviously all of those are fake and we post [00:35:00] about them in Microsoft Teams as soon as someone receives them. For a client communication, we either use a secure messaging platform, a portal if you will, or some clients still do use email. So in this situation, what we do is we go into office 365 and reassign that email. It doesn't go away. That email inbox goes as a shared inbox, and we can choose who on the team has access to that shared inbox. Like you said, we [00:35:30] can actually go into that shared inbox and add it to our outlook and go back through that team members messages. And we had to do that because a client had sent over an email with a document that was sitting in that inbox. And so not only are the messages after termination forwarded to the team in this instance, the client CFO, but then the client CFO also has access to all messages that were sent or received in that [00:36:00] team member's inbox over the life of DBA. So I think that's just a setting. If you are off boarding a team member at your firm, make sure that you are familiar with that within the office 365 to set that email address up as a shared inbox moving forward. Obviously, you would make it not visible to your team any longer, but only those who are responsible, um, kind of for client service moving forward.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. And then as we mentioned, so after we were, [00:36:30] you know, disconnecting access, making sure things were reassigned where they needed to go, then we looked at kind of her list of responsibilities. So we look at the team members list of immediate responsibilities and then things that are coming up, um, as well as just their client load like their client list, and start choosing who's the best within their team of three to handle which responsibilities, um, for the interim. And then also looking [00:37:00] at that client list and seeing, are there any clients within that list that could potentially be reassigned permanently? So we realigned our pods so that we had, for example, industry specific teams and made sure that the pods kind of lined up that way. So if there had been a client, maybe that would fit better with a different controller or a different CFO then we or a different client service manager, then we could go ahead and make [00:37:30] that. That was a good breaking point to make that transition. At that time, maybe one of our part time, um, team members wants to do more hours. And so maybe they had capacity or had lost a client for a reason, then they maybe had capacity to take one more. We could look at that list to see, are there any permanent transitions that could happen? Yeah.

Marcus Dillon: And I think the other reason why we're structured the way we are and why we've assigned clients to those teams, made that easier because we knew exactly what that person was in charge of. From a client standpoint, [00:38:00] we didn't have to go look through their email and see if they had these random one off projects or review their time. We started with a client list, and we knew exactly which clients were in her care and started with that. And so based on that, we we did. We looked at, you know, which ones still made sense. Um, from a team perspective, you also have to go with your gut. We kind of saw some inconsistencies or some warning signs that now were [00:38:30] apparent, um, leading up to this. Um, so just not fully engaged, not, uh, maybe recording all of where the time in the week was, was going, um, not giving feedback internally with their one on ones or their weekly kind of check ins. So some of those, um, were gut checks. Right? And you're always easier to say I kind of saw that coming on the after it's happened. But you also need to monitor, um, [00:39:00] as it's happening. And so what we did with that client list, we went to the client controller. We didn't let the client controller know until Monday because we didn't want to ruin her weekend. But the client CFO knew. And when the client CFO and the client controller met, because that's the most appropriate person to kind of talk through this, right? Like as leadership or anything like that. We didn't want to bear down that client controller. We wanted her and the client CFO to meet one on one to really mourn.

Marcus Dillon: Maybe [00:39:30] this this team member that's no longer here, but then also come up with the plan that they believe in. And so they actually came up with the plan. And you. As leadership. We all agreed that it was the best plan, and they had mentioned we were already doing a lot of her work anyway, and we were already helping her. Uh, where it was necessary just to continue to move client projects along. Now we give and have been known to give people way too much grace, way too much time to improve. [00:40:00] And this is just another one of those situations. So the client controller had been helping, you know, in areas where a client controller would usually not client CFO would be help had been helping where a client CFO usually would not. And that just all, you know, kind of was solidified. So the client controller, the client CFO actually said, we feel better about this now because it's not a situation that we have to dance around or work around. That person has given notice. Now it's [00:40:30] just executing the plan and getting the next CSM in place, making sure that they're properly trained whenever they are identified. And in the interim, we are okay. Continuing to roll up our sleeves, knock out the work. We would love some help if there's some available help, but at the same time it's easier just to get the work done over the next few weeks with the team that's remaining, then continue to dance around a low performance of a team member that may be going through some personal stuff. [00:41:00]

Rachel Dillon: Yeah, absolutely. And so really, all of that was done by probably midday Monday, I think. Oh yeah. So we got the notification late Friday afternoon and then by midday Monday, you know, all of these things had taken place. And so I think that's important to remember when something like this happens. Not that you have to be hasty in your actions, but if you have procedures in place, if you have structures in place, it makes it so much easier [00:41:30] to make wise decisions during that time. But you can just move quicker again, because we don't want the clients or we don't want to become a burden on the whole team. Like we don't want the whole team to, you know, feel the pain of this transition. And so we were able to notify clients of either their temporary transition in team, or maybe it was a permanent like a brand new introduction. And this is who we'll be caring for you going forward. Um, for some [00:42:00] it can just be you know, your controller and CFO will be your two points of contact until we identify the next client service manager. So it's not, um, we just like to be transparent with everybody. Like, we don't want to hide anything. We don't want to try to remember who we've told. What. Uh, so really, we're just open and honest with all of, you know, what happens with privacy, of course, of team members, but with the clients letting them know we have had a transition. [00:42:30] But you won't see any disruption to what we do for you. Yeah.

Marcus Dillon: And I think, uh, in this situation, we were very fortunate to actually have a pipeline of candidates for client service manager. And that goes to one the the position is always posted on our website. We are always accepting resumes for client service managers and client controllers. And that position is well defined. And so we know who to kind of keep in that pipeline. Uh, we had a great [00:43:00] prospect who is now a new team member. Um, and that happened over two weeks. And so that that's where like there was a bigger plan at place we didn't know, maybe, um, and we were safe, um, on that aspect. But in the interim, what the client controller and the client CFO did over that two weeks where there was a gap in the team of three, they either said, like you mentioned, this is your new client service manager or the language that we use was [00:43:30] your new client. Service managers may be being identified and trained on your account, and we will introduce them in the next few weeks. So that that is kind of what we used as language. And so if you do have a situation where you have a team member unexpectedly leave and you are looking for some language that was met with clients really, really well, it showed that the firm or the team of three was still in control.

Marcus Dillon: The client controller and the client CFO were still in place, and we were training [00:44:00] that next person on their team in the background. And so I don't feel like we were misleading or deceptive in any means, because that's what we were doing. We were identifying and training that person to then be introduced the following month. So that that's kind of how we work through that situation. Um, obviously we were very fortunate to have our new team member in the pipeline, and they were ready to join the team very quickly. So hopefully it's just a very, uh, smooth transition [00:44:30] for client service. For team service, uh, to not be disrupted. But in closing, uh, I think as you have. Have something like transition, which nobody is immune to. To turnover or transitions. It happens everywhere. The best of organizations, the worst of organizations. I think, um, having this structure in place definitely saved us a lot of heartache. It allowed for a new team member to [00:45:00] come onto the team and just pick up client service really easily. And from that aspect, is there anything else that you saw over this last two weeks and what could be in the middle of tax season, no less? A very disruptive. Occurrence, uh, if you will.

Rachel Dillon: Yeah. So one thing that I did want to mention there is. You as the owner didn't step in and say, [00:45:30] I have to take all of these clients and do all of this work. So that's one thank goodness for our team that we have a solid team that we trust, that does an amazing job, and that also will help out in a time of need. And they know it is never our expectation for them to continue, that they know that we have plans in place, and we have procedures in place so that they don't have to do [00:46:00] someone else's job for the next, you know, six months, nine months, year. It's going to be a very short window before we have help identified, and they're able to start training and passing along that work. But wanted to ask you, really we do introduce that client service manager or whatever that position that was um, left. We introduced them to the client. So typically how quickly do we introduce [00:46:30] a new team member once they've started with DBA?

Marcus Dillon: I would say there's a little bit of hesitation just to make sure that they are a culture fit, that they are coming up to speed. Um, some new team members have come up to speed faster than others, and I would say we never hold back on the introduction of a team member. Um, but we always make sure that the client knows that the remaining team members are there to support this new team member and get [00:47:00] them up to speed. So I would say after the first week or two weeks, we are introducing that team member, um, to that client.

Rachel Dillon: And like you mentioned, it really depends on the person. So we've had different, um, levels of experience of people join our team as specifically as a client service manager. And so it really depends on will, will that new position, will that person be interacting with clients immediately. So [00:47:30] we just want to make sure that the the new team member, when they start to become independent on their work, when they can start interacting with the client, that we introduce them just before that time. So that could be anywhere from, you know, within two weeks or maybe the second month that they're at the firm. Then they start getting introduced to clients as the person, as the the clients go to our client service managers, actually within DBA, they interact maybe [00:48:00] with the client the most or the clients team member the most, because a lot of times they're interacting with them on either questions on transactions or questions about payroll. And so those things happen more frequently than maybe the controller who's reviewing financial statements or tax return, or even the CFO who's potentially meeting with the client quarterly.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah, I think you hit it on all all parts on that. So, uh, we've kind of covered why the team of three and that structure [00:48:30] saved our tail in this instance, and how just the team stepped up in a big way. And any other parting words?

Rachel Dillon: No. We always like to share things that go right and things that go wrong. And so, you know, for us, we never like to lose a team member. So we would say somebody leaving, vacating a position is not something that we would want to happen very frequently, but also want to share. How did we address it, how were we able to address it, and that it wasn't as huge of [00:49:00] a freak out as it may have been 5 or 6 years ago? It would have been, uh, like we wouldn't have slept for days, you know, thinking about this and trying to figure it out. And what were we going to do? And so thankfully, we're just in a much better place now.

Marcus Dillon: Yeah for sure. Well, thanks for leading the conversation and look forward to the next.

Rachel Dillon: All right. See you on the next. Thanks for hanging with us to the end of another episode. Leave us a review with your thoughts, comments, and feedback on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Be sure [00:49:30] to subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. Join us again next week for another great conversation.