Listening, translating, and meeting clients where they are is just as important as adopting the latest tech.

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Michelle Vilms has a perspective that most small business accountants don’t have: she had a front-row seat to the explosive growth of Staples as it grew from 100 stores to a $15 billion corporation. Today, she brings her mastery of operational accounting to her own firm, Vilms Consulting, and the small business clients with whom she works.

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Vilms' final position at Staples was director of Marketing and Finance, where she worked with the creative people who were putting together catalogs or ads. “They were numbers persons in their specialty, but they weren't accounting numbers people,” she explains. “And so just learning to have empathy and explain it to them in the terms that they needed really brought me back to that corporate experience, is how I landed in operational accounting for our firm.”

Today, Vilms uses that same approach with her clients, focusing on understanding her clients’ concerns and explaining accounting in familiar terms.

Vilms: Proving the Power of People in a Tech‑Driven World | The Disruptors