Every CPA has a story – we all have a journey we’ve taken to get us to where we are. Every entrepreneur also has a story and journey as well. This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Nicole Kehl, CPA. Nicole is a mom of two from Kentucky and became CPA MOMS fourth founding franchisee, having previously struggled with building her own practice and having the support and training she needed.
During the interview we discuss:
- She went into the United States Marine Corp right after high school because she knew she wasn’t ready for college
- She initially didn’t know what she wanted to do but since she was good at math and enjoyed working with numbers, she chose accounting and finance
- After serving for 5 years in the Marine Corp and starting college, she did really well because she was older and more mature but she also had to support herself with a job
- After college, she got a staff accountant job with a small private company that was very family friendly and nurturing
- That company was acquired by a large corporation and very quickly the culture changed to a more cold corporate culture
- She didn’t have children at the time so when the company required her relocating, it wasn’t such a big deal
- She had a dream to climb the corporate ladder and become a CFO one day but pretty quickly realized that that was not what she wanted to do
- She experienced a lack of respect and a cold environment
- She stayed there for a while, even though she was unhappy, because she had gotten comfortable
- When she became pregnant with her first child and she didn’t want a daycare baby because her mom was a stay at home mom
- She found the corporate world expected her to work 60 hours a week and have work be her life
- After she got pregnant with her second child she decided to leave her job and move back to where family was
- About 9 months after staying home full-time, she began wanting to figure out some way to go back to work but still be involved with her children’s lives as much as possible
- She had stumbled across CPA MOMS and got an email about starting her own firm
- She started talking with CPA MOMS Founder, Mayumi, and signed up for the previous Fast Start Program, learning how to quickly start her own firm
- When Mayumi introduced the Franchise opportunity, she initially had resistance because she believed she would have to give up control
- She quickly realized that that wasn’t the case and that the Franchise gave her exactly what she needed to grow her firm and have the processes, systems, mentoring and coaching she wanted
- She saw that CPA MOMS was the perfect avenue to create the vision she had for her firm and her family
- Each franchisee defines what success looks like for them and then CPA MOMS supports them individually to achieve their unique definition of success
- Her suggestion is to reach out to CPA MOMS, no matter what your hesitations are and be open to the conversation
- She shares that whatever she does, she puts her family first and that that is such a great feeling
To learn more about what it means to be a franchisee, CLICK HERE!