Ep. 10: Rhondalynn Korolak - The Skills Needed to Thrive in Accounting and Business

Aug 5, 2019

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Contact Rhondalynn:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/imagineering/

Rhondalynn's Work & Recognition:

Finalist - Best Digital Start Up - 23rd annual AMY Awards
Top 3 Finalist - Female Fintech Leader of the Year, Excellence in Data and Artificial Intelligence
Top 10 Cloud Accounting Apps of 2016
Top 10 Small Business Apps of 2016

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Music: (00:00)

Mitch: (00:05)
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Count Me In as we bring you the latest perspectives on all things affecting the accounting and finance world. If there are other topics relating to accounting and finance that you're interested in hearing about or if you have questions from the industry that you'd like answered, please let us know by leaving a review and a comment or dropping us an email at podcast@imanet.org I am your host, Mitch Roshong and I'm joined by my cohost, Adam Larson. This week's featured guests joined us all the way from Melbourne, Australia and talked to you, Adam, about optimizing advisory services and client value. Tell us a little bit more about your conversation.

Adam: (00:44)
That's right. Mitch. Rhondalynn was kind enough to join us from Australia and discussed how our accounting background has helped her become a successful business professional with a unique teaching methodology. She helps individuals Excel in their careers by adapting to the evolving industry and future proofing themselves. Later parts of our discussion we'll tie in said that same idea as she discusses how these skills can be applied to positively effect small businesses and help others to also teach accountants. Rhondalynn is a well rounded accounting and finance professional with experience in tax, business development, operations and business coaching in addition to legal knowledge. It was a fascinating conversation that will span two episodes. So let's listen to part one now.

Music: (01:30)

Adam: (01:33)
So you have extensive experience in various areas of accounting, business operations, advisory through your time. What skills and resources have proved to be most important in becoming a successful accounting or business professional?

Rhondalynn: (01:46)
Oh, that's a excellent question because there's probably almost too many to name, but if I had to pick the top ones, this is probably how I would approach it. From the perspective of accounting, the thing about us as accountants, you know, we're numbers people, we love the numbers. You know, cash-flow was either right or it's wrong. So we're all about accuracy and numbers and that's fantastic when you're in an accounting profession or in an accounting job. But if you want to make the transition to helping small businesses or providing advice or coaching them or whatever you want to call that, transition. The thing is, is that we actually need skills that are diametrically opposed to the ones we're good at. So for me it's about figuring out how do we transition from being fantastic at accuracy to the other end of the spectrum which is managing uncertainty. And so I'm all about, you know, how do we make those transitions across? Because most of the things that we require, in my estimation to be really, really good in what accounting has kind of evolved to over the years really involves us relearning and unlearning a whole bunch of stuff that served us well in the past, but doesn't really apply or isn't really applicable to this kind of new job that we find ourselves in. You know, disruption has changed what I believe and what most people believe. It means to be an accountant. It's more now about accountability and it is about the accounting. So I think the biggest skill that I've learned is adaptability. You know, being able to actually unlearn things and relearn things and be flexible and change with the times.

Adam: (03:41)
So how do you make yourself adaptable? you know, especially for those who are, who have been accounting in accounting for their whole lives and been stuck in one role and then they're suddenly thrust into this other thing where they have to apply their skills in another area and then they're not used to that change. How what advice would you give them?

Rhondalynn: (03:59)
Well, you can't really learn to swim by reading a book on swimming. So the only way that you can become more adaptable is to basically get pushed into the deep end. You know, you've got to be put in situations where you need to react and you've got to see how you do react. You know, you can take courses. I know a lot of what we do. So I do quite a bit of training with accountants because people ask me this question all the time. And what I found is that sometimes we are not good in judging. We can't. Sometimes we have difficulty frankly in objectively assessing where we're really at. And so one of the things I like to do when I'm working with accountants is to ask them questions, get them to do tasks or put them in situations where they can self assess their level of competency in these types of skills. So it doesn't really do any good to tell people, hey, you're not adaptable because people get their backs up. But if they can see for themselves that, hey, maybe I'm not as adaptable as I'd like to be, it opens the door for them to be in a welcome to have the learnings and coming in with a mindset that they can do it. So I think a lot of it is just, you know, taking courses or putting yourself in situations which are outside of your normal frame of the four corners that you have yourself boxed in and realizing that, hey, it's okay to feel like a fish out of water, but it's about how do we react to that and learn moving forward. I mean, adaptability is something that you will probably always be learning. You know it's not really a destination. You don't say, well, I've mastered adaptability and that's the end of it because there's always going to be a more uncomfortable situation or a more complex or unusual or unpredictable situation that you could be put in. So I think, you know, as we grow more problems and challenges come to us that push us to learn adaptability again and again and again.

Adam: (06:12)
That's great. And so, you know, with technology constantly advancing and many things changing the accounting industry and just all industries in general, you know, we've already talked about adaptability, but what other skills and strategies do you recommend to help, you know, future proof your career?

Rhondalynn: (06:28)
Accounting and disruption, it's easy to get carried away and think that this is the first time, right? But it isn't, you know, for anybody who's listening to this, that was old enough to have been around in the 80's when the desktop computer showed up. That was another disruption, a major disruption. And that disruption fundamentally changed the way we as accountants did our jobs because it put our clients in the position of wanting to have stuff at their own desks. You know, back in the olden days, people brought all their things to their a...