Being a business owner can be quite lonely when you don't have other people to help you. Tony Martignetti’s guest explains why you shouldn’t try to do everything on your own and why you need coaches and outside eyes to help you in your progress. Jamie E. O'Kane is the owner and operator of Abundant Beans Tax and Accounting. Listen to this episode and dive into Jamie's struggles of becoming a business owner. Today, her goal is to better equip business owners to take the next step in growth and fulfillment by sharing relatable and insightful content. If you want to grow as a business owner, then you definitely have to listen to this conversation. Tune in!

---

Listen to the podcast here:

Equipping Business Owners To Take The Next Step With Jamie E. O'Kane

It is my honor to introduce my guest Jamie O'Kane. Jamie is the Owner and Operator of the firm Abundant Beans Tax and Accounting. Her firm focuses on providing advanced tax planning strategies, tax preparation, growth consulting and accounting services for women-owned veterinarian and dental practices across the country. She's also the Founder and the Host of the Abundant Beans Podcast. It is a show that brings to light the struggles, successes and purpose of entrepreneurs all over the world. Her goal is to better equip experienced and inexperienced business owners alike with relatable content that helps people take the next step in the growth and fulfillment of their potential. Jamie was born and raised in Golden, Colorado. Her hobbies include lifting, reading, knitting, sleeping and enjoying whiskey. She has two school-aged kiddos and one engineer husband. I want to welcome you to the show, Jamie.

Thank you for having me.

It's going to be so much fun. We have had a chance to connect in the past. I have been on your show and I have so much fun. I love your energy and excitement.

I’m going to try to bring it. It's cloudy here and I want a nap. I'm going to do it again.

There are so much that we are going to be tapping into. You have a lot of eclecticness to what you do, which on the surface seems like taxing and accounting. There are a lot of things behind the surface that we will dig into. We are going to do that with what's called flashpoints. These are points in your story that have ignited your gifts into the world. We are going to help you share your story. Along the way, we are going to pause and see what's showing up. With that, I'm going to pass it over to you.

My parents met at a brewing company. My mom was the first female Manager. I come from a long line of pretty independent women. I was taught how to change my oil and how to fix things. One of my aunts was like, "You are so competent." I'm like, "Have you met my mom and my dad?" I was raised by extremely competent people who were very world or savvy about common sense and things like that. My brother and I didn't have much choice. My brother fixed his cars. We learned how to do stuff. That's how we are. I wouldn't say we were DIYs. My family is more DIY than I am. I have learned as a business owner to not DIY everything. There are things I should work on and things they shouldn't work on. That's hard for a new business owner to figure out. You are usually an employee and then you are like, "I'm going to start my own business. It's twenty hours of admin time. I can never get anything done."

I have the typical story. I grew up in Colorado. I went to Colorado State University. I thought I wanted to be a chemical engineer. I loved my chemistry class in high school. That was one of my favorite things. Something I'm like, "I want to be a chemist. I want to be a chemical engineer. I love Chemistry." I failed Engineering Calculus. After I had done calculus in high school, I was great. I'm great at Math. I also looked around. I went, "These people for the next four years, it wasn't my people." It ended up not being what I wanted to do. I hopped around a lot. I tried Spanish. Finally, I ended up in the business school at CSU. I took my first Accounting class.

If the whole world thought like you, it'd be a boring place.

This is one of my flashpoints. I went, "This is what I was built for. This is what my brain does. It does debits and credits. It understands both sides. It understands the balance." Accounting is a balance of yin and yang, debits and credits, how does that affect things. I ended up teaching the people in my class that couldn't figure stuff out. We would be in groups. I would be like, "This is what needs to happen." I was teaching people how to do accounting and do those entry-level things. It ended up being the thing that made the most sense to me. That was good out.

Seeing this practical as the word that keeps coming to mind of all the things that you have done, you thought engineering was very practical in the sense that there's a logic behind everything. To be told that you are competent is almost seems like an insult. It's table stakes. You come in like, "I'm competent. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" In reality, it's like, "I know that it was probably meant well." The word that probably would have been better suited is that you are practical and yet there are much more to you.

It was interesting. My aunt and uncle were in Mexico. We were watching their house. This is this whole story. It sticks with me for some reason. They needed one of my cousin's birth certificates faxed to them or something. I was supposed to go with my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time to his parent's house for dinner. I took it with me A) It’s because they have a fax machine. B) It’s because my aunt and uncle were going to call me when they found a fax machine for me to fax it to. This was years ago. My aunt calls me. I was like, "I'm at Nick's parents." She was like, "We need that." I was like, "I have it. I'm ready. There's a fax machine right here." She assumed that I was going to blow it off or that I left without understanding what needed to happen. I don't even know what it was. I love my aunt so much. It was funny because she was like, "You are competent." This stuck with me. I knew what needed to happen and I made it happen. I was 22 at the time. I was like, "I brought it to the place where there is a fax machine. I'm ready when you are ready."

That's the thing. For you, it makes so much sense just like that. It's the way things get done and it’s natural. You get into this world of accounting that some people would say like, "It's hard to figure that out." With you, it's practical, logical and makes sense.

I always say if the whole world thought like me or the whole world had this brain that I have for accounting, it would be a boring place. We would all be debts and credits. I've gotten beyond the debits and credits but most of us don't. That's fine. That's what we are built for. To the accounting, that was one of my flashpoints. My career journey is not interesting. I worked for a tiny firm. I would go to the clients, get their checks and bank statements every month, come back, do their work for them, do their financials for them, turn around and take it all back. It was a small firm, very salt to the Earth people in Colorado Springs, which is South of Denver here. It was a good experience.

I also did fourteen Wendy's store franchise payroll. This thing was weekly. It required all the managers to send me their spreadsheets. I worked with a guy to help me create macros for this situation so I could get it into our software so I could print the route. I had to stamp them. They all have to be mailed. It was this whole thing. When I started at this firm, it was right out of school. I was 24. We’ve got married. Everybody who had done this job before might did it two days a week. I don't know how they ever left on vacation. I’ve got this process down to four hours with some help. I was like, "This is ridiculous. I don't want to spend my life doing this." It was one of those projects. It's part of the reason I don't do payroll quite honestly. I'm probably a payroll expert. I want nothing to do with it. That's not what I want for my team. That's not what I want for myself.

Payroll is one of those services that tie you to your firm or to your job. It doesn't create a lot of flexibility. It's one of the reasons we don't do it. All of our clients go to a third party. I don't even do my own payroll but I know what I'm looking at. I worked for that small firm. We moved back up to the Denver Metro area. I started at a firm that does more consulting services, tax planning and things like that. I became a tax manager in that firm. It got to the point where I had two kids. I had chronic fatigue syndrome. I could not work the hours. I didn't want to be there anymore. We were at church and the sermon was about, "What do you need to let go of in your life so things could happen?" I looked at my husband I'm like, "I'm quitting tomorrow." We were in the middle of buying a house. We were middle of moving house. We had sold our house. We were living with my mom at the time. I don't know what's happening or what's going to happen but I'm out.

I want to hear more about this. Part of it is hearing this here you are in the world of being very practical, understanding risks but not taking risks. Even going from small into a bigger firm, that's a big step. It's also not necessarily that risky. How did you get to wrap your head around the fact that you are not going to go into an office the next day?

I had been looking for jobs. I had been interviewing. I had recruiters I was working with. It was this whole thing. There was never a good fit for me. I had an interview. It was more of a family office situation. I came into the office off of the firm. I did both. I was trying to leave a firm. We had mandatory 60 hours during tax season. It was like 55, 60. The industry standard at that time was not that much. I go into this interview. They are asking me all these ridiculous questions. “Would you still work if you won the lottery?” I was like, "I have a 1-year-old and 3-year-old at home. I wouldn't." They were like, "We only work 55 hour weeks year-round." I was like, "This is not the place for me."

I did the interview. I left there. The recruiter calls me, the gal who had sent me on this interview was like, "Call me back. We will talk about how you could do better to answer those questions next time." I called her back and left her a message. I was like, "Do not send me another interview. I am not looking to work more hours than I'm working. I'm not going to be dishonest in an interview about whether I would work if I won the lottery or not especially at this time in my life." She never called me again. I was like, "You sent me on an interview so you could get a commission if they hired me. You did not care about the fit all." I called my recruiter and I was like, "Don't send me on these again." He was like, "I didn't know it was going to be that. I apologize. We won't work with her."

I looked and I finally was like, "I don't know what's going to happen but I’ve got to hop." That was scary. I have always made half of the money in the household but it also needed to happen. If I hadn't left, I don't know if I would be where I am. A couple of weeks later, I’ve got hired into a family office for what I like to call Scrooge McDuck. This guy has more money than he should. It's one of those situations where I was doing the tax returns for Scrooge McDuck. It was a partnership. I sat in a little cubicle doing tax returns. It was miserable. I was sold a culture that wasn't true anymore. It had been true but it wasn't true anymore. They hired a new CFO for this family office. This is one family.

Do the math of what needs to happen to make it happen before you take the plunge.

I sat in the middle of the accounting department for this family office. They would be like, "We need somebody here on Fridays to print checks." I'm like, "Show me how. I can happily take over things if people need to not be here on Fridays or occasions." They would never show me how. I wasn't helping anybody. It got to the point where I was almost depressed because I already left that other job. It's where I learned I'm built for public accounting. I am built to help multiple business owners grow their dreams. What can we do to help you move forward within our skillset? I worked there for about a year.

A friend of mine or a colleague I had before was like, "I have all this work." He works full-time. He also has a little practice on the side. He was like, "I need help. You are the only person I trust to do this stuff. You are the only person I know that's competent enough to do the tax returns, get them right and not make me have to fix them.” I’ve got it. I talked to him one day. I’ve got a call from somebody that I had talked to a couple of years before that. He was like, "I need help during tax season. Will you come to contract work?" My husband and I sat down with our spreadsheets because he was an engineer. We did the math of what needed to happen to make this happen. I have to get it. I was like, "I'm starting my firm." Here we are.

I want to jump into that a little more. Are there parts of that journey where you are seeing yourself like, "Is it me? Is there something wrong with me?" Did you get clear for yourself like, "I'm not going to let this bother me? I'm not going to let this get to me. I know that it's them, not me?"

There were parts working within the family office. It wasn't the best environment for people. I feel that. It was stressful for me when they were firing people in. We were all in the cube firm. Anytime they bring somebody in the office, we see that. I have worked in a situation where it was cubed but not like this. It was so stressful for me to be in that environment. A lot of it wasn't what I needed. I was still coming back for my, adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue. We know adrenal fatigue is not a thing. It was chronic fatigue probably after I had my daughter. It was coming back from that. I wasn't doing my best work. I also wasn't in my best headspace. As well as the environment, it wasn't conducive to how I like to interact with people, how I work best, who I work best with. It was hard and stressful. I didn't sleep, things like that. I was super grumpy with my poor family. I realized I was like, "Private is not for me. Accounting is not for me."

There's something about this that feels like you have this sense about being out of integrity with who you are as a person. Many people start to feel like when they get into an environment especially after jumping in and you feeling like, "This isn't the right place," you feel guilty about jumping. When you know you are out of integrity with your body, with who you are as a person, you’ve got to make a decision that is right for you, toughing it out or sticking with it.

It's hard with any accounting job. There are always deadlines and stuff that needs to get done. Hopping out of a public firm at any time is hard to do. It's like you have all this pilot work and things. It's interesting. I had been the Tax Manager of the firm that I was with for years. I don't know what happened when I left. I talk to them still. I'm friends with them. I help some of their clients still on the accounting side or a consulting basis. People leave. It was a mess. I'm like, "I did everything I can. I'm super process-oriented. I have documented everything. Here's where everything is at. It's not my problem."

In some ways, that's exactly the right way to approach it. To think about it as you do what you can or you hold on to things that you want to take responsibility for. At some point, you have to realize that it's not your responsibility.

They are not my clients, which is the hard thing about being a firm owner. There are a lot of emotional. There are a lot of labor there, which I understand. I left the private office. I had a couple of contract situations lined up. I started our firm. That was 2013. We were a traditional firm, tax returns, whatever accounting and clients I can get that we could get to. I talk about tax planning or tax projections. Nobody would ever want to do with them. I hate tax season surprises. I hate having to tell people they owe money that they don't know about beforehand. There's no reason for this. I'm not a tax shop.

I worked in a tax shop during the contract. It was high-volume work. It was not the most quality. It wasn't tax services that help anybody move forward. It wasn't compliance because we have tax planned. It wasn't anything but, "Here's what you owe and/or we are going to make that person a different entity than they are without talking to them about it." I would have moments of like, "You are messing with their business without consent. Are you going to tell them what conversion to an escort requires?" "No. We will have our payroll person do it once a year."

How people make decisions is not how you make decisions. We're all different.

One of the things about this, which is interesting is that it's speaking the language that they understand too. One of the biggest challenges is that when you know something so deeply and you are engrossed in a world but also knowing that not everybody gets that. You want to package it in a way that they can relate.

One of the things I did as soon as I started my own firm is I became a birth doula. That is one of the things I wanted to do so badly. I had birth doulas with both of my births. I wanted to be a birth doula. I wanted to help people with their births so I became a birth doula. If anything shows you about people's motivations, how they learn things, how they make decisions, it's being very intimately within that birthing space. I learned so much about humanity and people. Understanding how people make decisions is not how I make decisions. We are all different. We all have our own experiences that create our own biases. Having to explain birth things to people has taught me. I have always been pretty good about trying to do layman's terms on the accounting things. It's taught me also how to understand how people make decisions and how they learn. It also helped me understand who I work best with. When you are in that raw environment with raw personalities, who are the people that are a good fit for who I am and how I like to work with people?

It's so funny that you say this because I was going to get there. I was like, "We have to talk about why you focus on such a niche of business." It's awesome because you understand them well.

I found this through birth doula. It's become clearer in the last years. I don't birth doula anymore. Once I started the show, I was like, "Something's got to give." I stopped birth doula. It was hard on me. It's hard to be on call. It doesn't pay all that much. It was a situation where I needed to focus on the show. I stopped doula. All of our clients were finished having babies. The clients that I had had their 2nd or 3rd. They were all done. We are all good. I'm sure I will get a call at some point where they were like, "I'm pregnant. Will you be my birth doula?" It's those type-A personalities that I work well with.

I had lawyers, business owners and C-Suite execs. Those are my people. Those are the people I support the best. I took that very seriously into consideration when we finally picked a niche. I had been kicking around niches forever. I had thoughts and feelings. I have had a sampling of clients, different industries and things like that for many years. I have had pretty much the spectrum from restaurants to working in a family office. I have seen that spectrum. It was hard for me to decide one that I knew that I could work with well or that we could work with well and help the most.

A good friend of mine, Brandon Rains, who has been on the show a few times if you all want to go find his episodes, was an estate lawyer. He was like, "What about veterinarians?" We had lost our golden retriever. We had gone through a whole thing with him in the hospitals, dealing with veterinarians and the whole thing. I was like, "I never even considered veterinarians. We have a lot of consultants, IT people. There are a large population of people who serve veterinarians in the area in Denver. I went out to my network. I'm like, "Who do you know that you can introduce me to you that works in this niche?"

I talked to all those people. I’ve got a better understanding of who are veterinarians. What's happening in that space? What they do need? What are their pain points? What's happening? I have worked with doctors before that doesn't generally go so well. I'm an expert at what I do. I expect people to treat me like an expert. If they will hand over their stuff and let me handle it for them, it usually goes better. That's who we work with best. Women are graduating at high rates in the veterinarian and the dental industry. Most of them go on to be practice owners at some point. They were either doing startups, an associate on the track purchasing or purchasing up. They were buying up practices. Veterinarians tend to be good at what they do but they don't have business backgrounds.

The business comes to them generally. They shouldn't be spending their time worrying about their taxes and accounting because they have production to do. That's true for both dentists and veterinarians. The thing we are seeing also in both of those spaces is that they are changing the game. They want to work for weeks especially the women. They want sustainable businesses where they are not working 80 hours a week, which has been the standard. We have an aging population of veterinarians and all industries with the Boomers. There was a large number of aging populations in both of those industries. There are a lot of opportunities to help them and start businesses. Veterinarians are the least at risk for practice loans. They rank the medical people.

The great thing about the way you described this is that you are modeling the way for people who want to take something that they have been passionate about. They have built skill and you are shown the way as to how to take that logical approach to find your niche. It's powerful. You have been able to see how one can take your expertise and bring their expertise to the people who are experts in their little space. You've gotten to know everything about them.

I'm still learning. I learned all the time. One of the criteria for us to is our bread and butter is tax planning. What are your moving pieces? How can we put cash in your pocket so you can move towards your goals? Practice entity and tax planning are how we help all of our clients move towards their goals. That's how we create an impact in their businesses and help them move forward. It had to be an industry where that's possible. A lot of them have moving pieces. They were business owners. A lot of the time their spouses are also business owners. They have buildings, practices and equipment. They have the moving pieces to do robust planning. That was important to me as well. Who are they psychographically? What kind of businesses are they building? How can we best impact them?

You model the thing that you want people to show up as. You are deep in terms of your expertise on this. I want to know more. You have come to this place. What brought up the podcast? It's an amazing podcast. It has been received very well and everything. You are eclectic in your interests and the things you've gotten yourself into. The podcast is complementary but also different. Tell me more about what brought that about.

The podcast happened before the niche. I have had people in my life. They were like your different accountant. People need to see you. You need to be visible. I was talking to some people about getting videos done for the website and things like that. One of my friends was always like, "You need to be more visible. You need to be doing Facebook Lives." I'm like, "I'm going to talk to myself on Facebook Live." He was like, "I want you to talk to this podcast creator." I had never listened to a podcast before I started my own. I listened to Dirty John because everyone was like, "Dirty John is the one you need to listen to." I talked to the podcast creator. He was doing some deal. That's not why I talked to him. He was like, "Do you mean there are no accountants doing podcasts?" If there are, others like too.

That was the year I said yes to things. I was saying yes to things that scared me. I also said yes to doing a Spartan Beast. Never again and I'm still recovering. I decided whatever was scary or something I was going to say yes to. I said yes to a podcast. We sat down to talk. What are we going to do with this podcast? Do I talk about tax stuff? That is my expertise but more than that my expertise is getting to know people, understanding what they want and how they work. I have this huge network of people who are small businesses or work with small businesses. It's usually both, a lot of B2Bs. I was like, "Let's do it interview style. I will get to interact with people. We will get to learn what they do, how they build their businesses, obstacles, successes, basically what the byline says." It exploded on us.

Make boundaries to help facilitate your ability to work optimally.

We started recording in June of 2017. We released it in November of 2017. We were at 100 and some episodes. It's weekly. We were not stopping. We have 1,000 downloads a day. I'm told all these things are good. I don't know. My producer every once in a while was like, "This thing happened." I'm like, "I'm assuming that's good." I don't have any understanding of why people would listen to me talk all the time. It doesn't make any sense to me. I'm waiting for somebody to stop me in an airport and be like, "Are you Abundant Beans?" It's this wild thing I said yes to. It opened doors in our niche and the ability to be like, "Why don't you come on the podcast? Get to know me. You can hop on my platform." It's given me the ability to talk to people I don't think had ever met me before like you, people that I connect with.

One of my coaches has been on the podcast before. He was my coach. The podcast has opened doors to things that I never dreamed of to open doors to and things I didn't even know existed like the Intuit Tax Council. I sit on a council with Intuit. A lot of it is about advisory services, the shift in the industry, how to help people do advisory services, how to shift from the data entry to doing more advisory for their clients. How clients want to be helped is through advisory. Helping into it help people. Accountants have a PR problem because we do. I have had access to things I never thought I have access to. A lot of that is because of the podcast. I will say, "I have a podcast." Somebody's like, "You would be great for X, Y and Z. I'm going to introduce you." I didn't even know the Intuit Tax Council was a thing.

It's not just having a podcast. It's about who you are on the podcast and how you have evolved the way of approaching it. I think about it from the way that you have approached life in general. You are always very logical but also you make things interesting that seemingly some people would not be interested in but you make them exciting.

I always say on the podcast, “I ask about what I'm interested in. I love to learn. The things I have learned on the podcast I still have to learn them a lot of the time.” Some of it is very confusing to me and how it works. It's not logical. I always liked to learn. The best way to do that is through people who do the thing. I believe in experts. If I can't do something or I shouldn't be doing something, I need to hand it to an expert. I have to trust that expert to handle it. That's what I do. I talk to experts. Hopefully, we can get good nuggets out of that to move our listeners forward, which is a lot similar to what we do in accounting practice-wise. We dive in. “What's going on? How do we help you? How do we change your tax situation? How do we implement those changes? How we do the compliance on the backend? How do we take care of you so you can move forward in your business?” The outlook for a lot of businesses is bleak. It's scary police out there. I don't know the statistics but it's something like 80% of businesses die in the first five years.

That sounds about the size of it. We want to see the people who we want to champion make it through by continuing to support them with coaches, advisors, people who can help them to get through it.

Being a business owner is so lonely. It's hard when you don't have other people. You don't have coaches. You haven't hired your outside eyes. You don't do those things. It's hard to make progress when you don't have those outside eyes or accountability. I learned that for myself. That's something we do with our clients. "Here's what you said you wanted. Has that changed? You need to do these things. Here are your bullet points. That's what's going to move you forward." We have a couple of vets that are startups. We do projections for them. We sit down with them. We do outside eyes.

We talk about numbers but we also talk about increasing their prices. We talk about their marketing, what's working and what's not working. We talk about how we get people to reschedule before they leave. All these things, they don't see on the day-to-day because that's not what they are doing. It's hard to see your own mess. From the inside, we don't see it. We also provide those outside eyes. It's honestly one of my superpowers. Hand me something, I will probably find the holes in it or places we can fix things and tell you how.

Not because you are flawed but because you are busy. We know that your brilliance is not this but we can help you.

My coaches all the time are like, "What about this?" I'm always like, "I dropped the ball on that one." Part of it too is I'm a doula at heart. We do nonjudgmental support. People will be like, "Don't judge me. My books aren't done." I'm like, "I don't care. That's not what you are supposed to be doing with your time anyway. Give it to us or give it to somebody else. Work on your business, not on that thing."

I feel like there are so much we could continue to talk about here but we are coming to the last question here, which is always a challenging one. What is one book that has had an impact on you and why?

I don't read business books. I have tried. They put me to sleep. I will. I do Blinkist sometimes. I will do Audible. Sometimes I like to listen to books while I work or podcasts. I'm a huge Freakonomics fan. I love how it's logic. I have always been a huge romance fan from the first Danielle Steel I read when I was twelve. Was that appropriate? Who knows? I don't even know if my mom reads these things. My stepmom had boxes of paperbacks. I like romance novels. I went through them like a crazy person. I still do that. I do it on a Kindle, the free Indie downloads. I'm a huge romance fan. Part of that is it's an escape from reading about tax law or worrying about debits and credits. It's not the real world. I need that for myself. That helps calm my brain.

One of the big flashpoints for me was I was diagnosed with ADHD a couple of years ago at 40. I'm pretty sure I have always been ADHD. I have had processes. I have systems I have done. I do Pomodoro. If there's a system, I have tried it. I finally went to my doctor, I was in tears and I'm like, "Here's my questionnaire." She was like, "I was going to have you hold that." I'm like, "I know. Here you go." I need to be medicated because it's in the way. I'm tired. I can't get anything done. I'm not nice to my family. I have nothing left at the end of the day because I have spent so much time trying to focus and get stuff done to move the needle on my business. I don't like medication. That's not ever my first choice. If there's a natural modality, I have probably tried it with chronic fatigue and all of that. Everything from going to pretty much a voodoo doctor to Western medicine. Anything in that spectrum, I will try it.

It got to the point where I was like, "Nothing's changed." I have been gluten-free and dairy-free. I have been doing all these things. A lot of it was to come back from chronic fatigue and things like that. With the super low-dose Adderall, I can get stuff done. I'm reaching my goals. I'm checking stuff off. My coach was like, "You do get a lot of stuff done. You are amazing. You were doing that before the Adderall." It felt so stuck. This tiny little dose of Adderall turns the sound down on my brain. It helped me focus on what's important instead of what I want to do. Most importantly, I have something left for my family at the end of the day.

Admitting that you need help and having help is so powerful. From that perspective, it's okay to admit that. Those are the things that sometimes were invented for a reason for us to be able to have some help along our way. We all have challenges. We all need ways of being able to get some help along that way whether it would be from medication, from people helping us along or from a coaching perspective. We are not meant to be going on our journey strictly behind on our own.

I can't preach enough that we need advisors, outside eyes, people helping us and go do that thing for myself. I know that a lot of the time its cobbler shoes. It was at the point that it's like, “I can't struggle with us any longer. I'm struggling.” My doctor was like, "It hasn't been an issue before." I was like, "It may have been. If I can't reach my own goals, if I can't move the needle on my own business, that I feel like this all the time, something has got to give or change." Understanding how the neuro-diverse brain works have been extremely helpful for me. I listened to some books and stuff before I’ve gone and got diagnosed. Everybody doesn't do that. Everybody doesn't think like that. Everybody's brains don't work like that.

It's helped, my daughter. I'm pretty sure she’s ADHD. We are having her evaluated. I understand her so much better too. We all do that. You and I do that. Our brains are wired differently. It's funny because I look around me and I'm like, "You are ADHD too." I recognize these things. People know that I understand about myself especially my family members. We are all highly successful. We are tired all the time. That's a hard place to be.

You want to be fully there for everyone in your family. Be effective in business and in your work. There's an element of being president in all those places that it has this draining effect of thinking about it. Knowing that you have to step away and say, "What do I need to be able to bring what I need for me?"

It's also given me permission to make business decisions or boundary decisions. I have always been pretty good at boundaries. To make boundaries decisions that helped facilitate my ability to work optimally. If you call the office, nobody's answering. You can leave a message but you probably should email. We will get to you when we get to. We will get to you as thoroughly as possible. We can sit down and dedicate that time to you. I don't switch back and forth well. I always need a few minutes before I hopped on here. I’ve gone and got a cup of coffee. I walked around a few times. I have to get myself ready to go into a different mode or schedule a time so we can focus on whatever it is that you need and a lot of time for you.

Don't call because no one is going to answer the phone. It's not fair to my staff for you to take them out of what they are doing or for me. Leave a message. We might get back to you but more than likely, I'm going to listen to your message, send you an email and reply for a couple of reasons. One, I can sit down and think about thoroughly whatever your question is and compose a thoughtful email. The second is CYA for us. I have to document everything. If it's via email, it makes my life easier because then I can document it. I can save it in your file and we can all move on with our lives. There's always a method to this madness.

Jamie, this has been so much fun.

Thank you for having me.

It has been a pleasure. I want to make sure that we can tell everyone how to find out more about you. Where is the best place to find you?

The best place to find us is AbundantBeans.com. The podcast is up there. We moved the firm into the Abundant Beans brand. It's not Abundant Beans Tax and Accounting. The podcast is also on the same website. That was a six-month project. We were all up there. I'm on LinkedIn. I occasionally hop on Twitter, @TaxTwitter is a good place to get a lot of good information for me. You can hit me up on Twitter. You can join the Abundant Beans community on Facebook. We have a lot of links for you probably. The big one is our website. That's how you can figure out how we work. You can find the podcast episodes and how to get to all of those. We are working on moving all of our blogs over as well. We have stuff coming down the pipe to help small business owners with the basic things they need to know about their taxes and accounting.

I can't thank you enough for sharing that. I'm so thankful to the readers for coming on the journey with us. It has been a lot of fun. Thank you. Have an awesome day.

Thank you.

Important Links:

• Abundant Beans Tax and Accounting
• Abundant Beans Podcast
• Blinkist
• Freakonomics
• LinkedIn – Jamie O’Kane
• Abundant Beans – Facebook Group
• Show - The Abundant Beans Podcast past episode

About Jamie E. O'Kane, CPA, CTC

Jamie is a Colorado native who doesn't ski and prefers beaches over the mountains. She received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from Colorado State University in 2003 and from there practiced in a couple of small and medium firms before starting her own firm.

Jamie loves problem-solving, goal-based tax planning, and being an advisor that focuses on moving clients towards their dreams.

When she is not whipping up customized tax strategies Jamie likes lifting, reading, knitting, sleeping, and enjoying Stranahan’s whiskey. She has two school-aged kiddos, one engineer husband, and a beautiful stealth expert cat.

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.inspiredpurposecoach.com/virtualcampfire