Preventing the Cycle of Burnout From Repeating: Twyla Verhelst

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My guest for Episode #73 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Twyla Verhelst.

She lives and breathes accounting. As a CPA, tech entrepreneur, and now leader of the Accounting Professionals Program at FreshBooks, she’s working to empower accounting professionals with the tools they need to thrive, as well as helping them discover their most valuable tool — their authentic self.

In this episode, Twyla talks about her “favorite mistake” — a past episode of burnout and what she learned that allows her to prevent things from getting as bad when she detects signs of burnout starting to appear.

Questions and topics include:

• What caused her burnout?
• Why was a 7-day silent retreat helpful to her?
• What does it mean to be your “authentic self”?
• As an accountant, an introvert, she had created a representation of herself… speaking up, doing things she decided “weren’t her”
• Being authentic vs. getting out of your comfort zone?? Where is the balance?
• Being a mentor to women in accounting and entrepreneurship arenas…
• Is the name “Twyla” more popular after the show “Schitt's Creek” aired?
• Find Twyla on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Scroll down to find:

• Partial Episode Video
• Quotes
• How to subscribe
• Full transcript

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Watch the First 17 Minutes:

Due to a technical problem, the video recording cut out after 23 minutes. The entire audio is available in the podcast feed. I just made an edit to end the video after 17 minutes, as that was a reasonable transition point between topics…

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Quotes:

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Automated Transcript (Likely Contains Mistakes)

Mark Graban (0s):
Episode 73 Twyla Verhelst, leader of the accounting professionals program at FreshBooks.

Twyla Verhelst (8s):
My favorite mistake, honestly, is one of overwork.

Mark Graban (11s):
I'm Mark Graban. This is My Favorite Mistake. In this podcast, you'll hear business leaders and other really interesting people talking about their favorite mistakes because we all make mistakes, but what matters is learning from our mistakes instead of repeating them over and over again. So this is the place for honest reflection and conversation, personal growth and professional success. Visit our website at myfavoritemistakepodcast.com. For show notes, links, and more for this episode, you can go to markgraban.com/mistakes73.

Mark Graban (51s):
Please follow rate and review. If you liked the episode, share it on social media, share it on LinkedIn or Facebook. That'll really help get the word out about the show and our great guests. Thanks for listening. Well, hi, Welcome to My Favorite Mistake. I'm Mark Graban. Our guest today is Twyla Verhelst. She lives and breathes accounting. She's a CPA tech entrepreneur, and she's now the leader of the accounting professionals program at the company Freshbooks. She's working to empower accounting professionals with the tools they need to thrive as well as helping them discover their most important tool, their authentic self. So we'll have a chance to explore a little bit of that today.

Mark Graban (1m 33s):
Joining us. I believe this is not a mistake on my part. You're joining us from Calgary.?

Twyla Verhelst (1m 39s):
That's right. Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Mark Graban (1m 51s):
Well, thank you. Welcome. Welcome to the podcast. First question, before we get into mistakes, is the name Twyla more popular now after the show is Schitt's Creek has been so…

Twyla Verhelst (2m 2s):
A good question. I, it was funny because when I, I had obviously had my name for all my life and usually people would say, where did that come from? And then when should screen became popular, I actually didn't catch onto Schitt's Creek until people started to say, did you know, are you from, have you watch? And so then I started watching Schitt's Creek and I was like, all right, I feel comfortable having the same name as a character from that show because that show is just brilliant.

Mark Graban (2m 28s):
It was, and, and Twyla was amongst the most level headed of anybody in that time. That's

Twyla Verhelst (2m 35s):
True. And I ended up being the richest as we learned at the end, so

Mark Graban (2m 40s):
Right. Well, it's spoiler alert. I think people have had a chance at this point. So, so Twyla, you know, diving into what we normally talk about here, looking back at the different things you've done in your career, what would you say is your favorite mistake?

Twyla Verhelst (2m 57s):
My favorite mistake honestly, is one of overwork overwork that led to burnout that led to not taking care of myself and not taking care of my relationships. I mean, as you've kind of highlighted an intro to me, I am an extremely motivated person on top of my career. I'm a runner. I like having goals and having things to work towards, but that caught up with me about five years ago. And so at the breaking point of this mistake of overwork and burnout, I took a trip to Bali. So of course the superficial reason that I would call this, my favorite mistake is because I got to go on a trip to Bali, but it was more than just a trip to Bali.

Twyla Verhelst (3m 43s):
It was a trip that I took by myself and a trip that I enrolled in a seven day silent retreat. So I know that you're also an introvert. So as a fellow introvert, I'm sure you can imagine that no talking no communication for seven days straight was actually really refreshing. And it actually refueled me and got me really grounded and really brought back my perspective of what's important. And even though I am still a motivated individual, and I recognize that inside of that journey, I could be a motivated career woman, but still have that perspective of what's important and keep grounded with my relationships.

Twyla Verhelst (4m 32s):
And I can't achieve big things if I'm not healthy and my relationships aren't healthy. So this trip to Bali really teed up the next chapter of my personal development. And it really queued up my exploratory journey to being in this constant mode of learning and learning more, not just about technical skills, as you mentioned, I'm an accountant, but more about myself and who I am, what I'm really passionate about, what I have to offer the world and what skills I want to continue to develop and what I really want to do next to contribute and have a big contribution.

Twyla Verhelst (5m 16s):
And so little did I know also that this was also prepping me for what was next meaning since that time, about five years ago, I've, co-founded a FinTech company contributing to the evolution of the global accounting industry. I'm now supporting my mother who has been severely impacted with health challenges and I'm nurturing a daughter who's on the autism spectrum. That's now become a teenager and has having to adapt to all the things that come with being a teenager, even though she's not cognitively ready to be a teenager. So this mistake of burnout is really, you know, the result of overwork that became a pivotal time for me to back into the driver's seat and to really be intentional about what I want to spend my time and my energy doing both professionally and personally, and to remember, to keep space for my relationships and also for my industry and for the companies I work with and as a mother and most importantly space for myself.

Mark Graban (6m 22s):
Wow. So I think there's a lot, maybe we can kind of go back and unpack some of the, the journey that you took to, to that point. So it sounds like not doing that trip or not doing some getaway like that to reset would have been a mistake. That really was a pivotal moment. And, and what, what led you to the point of saying, Hey, I need to do this or something like that? Yeah. I mean,

Twyla Verhelst (6m 47s):
Really, I would say the mistake was that I wish, you know, talk about doing something over. It'd be like, I shouldn't have let myself get that far. I shouldn't have gone to that point, but to be honest, what called it out and what prompted that trip was somebody else calling me out on it. And it took somebody else to say, Hey, this isn't good anymore. And that particular person was my husband who was like, hello, remember us over here. And at the same time, I knew that I wasn't giving, giving myself the attention. I wanted to give myself my daughter, the attention that she deserved, because of course being on the autism spectrum, she tends to get a lot of my attention, but she still didn't get what she deserved at that time.

Twyla Verhelst (7m 32s):
And then my husband who was, you know, being an extremely patient who finally said, wait a sec, what about us over here? How do you expect for us all to continue as a family unit when we're so detached, because you're working so much and you're so deep into these goals and initiatives professionally that you didn't, you know, you kind of neglected the other side of the equation. And so he called me out on it. And when he first called me out, I was in denial. I was like, what are you talking about? There's no problem here. And everything's good. And then he called me out again. And I was like, all right, now that I've come off of my ego trip.

Twyla Verhelst (8m 12s):
And my bit of a self-defense mechanisms that come into play. When you get called out on something, then I was able to say, all right, I think that there is something here and I want to fix it. And it needs to start with me before it goes to us. And then before it extends to my daughter and my parents and, and, and all those relationships that really matter. Yeah.

Mark Graban (8m 36s):
So how did you decide that, like this trip and in particular, a silent retreat or doing that in Bali, how did you decide that that would be a good reset or gave you an ink? What gave you an inkling? That that would be a good thing to go to go and do?

Twyla Verhelst (8m 53s):
Well, it wasn't the first time that I've done some self-reflection. I know enough about myself. I knew that I was introverted. I know that being around other people, is it what refills me or reenergizes me that time alone or time in quiet spaces is what reenergizes me. So it just re when we got to the point of recognizing, okay, I need some time, I need to take a break. This is burnout at its finest. This isn't healthy for any of us inside of this family unit. And especially for me, then it was kind of this experiment of what do I think would be what I need and just sort of doing some good old Google research and checking out what, what is it I want to do next and, and be able to get a real reset.

Twyla Verhelst (9m 40s):
And I first just thought about doing a trip alone and taking some time and some space for myself and do journaling and do reflection, do the things that I needed to do, or just do plain nothing, and then started to explore a silent retreat. And then there is some here in north America that I explored first and then found this one in valley. And it just got me super excited. And, and to be honest was as a reasonable, if not more reasonable investment wise as the ones here locally, and I've traveled to other places alone before. So it wasn't my first adventure on a train or a plane by myself. But it, it just prompted me.

Twyla Verhelst (10m 21s):
I like warmth, even though I live in Canada, I like the warmth of the sun. And I enjoy being heated by the sun and being outdoors and not skiing, but rather in the summer when it's, when it's nice out. And so it all just kind of started to align the dates and timing started to align and, and started to make sense.

Mark Graban (10m 43s):
Now, w I, I, it sounds like you were saying it was, you know, there was no speaking, was this also a digital detox? When you say no communicating that mean no devices, no social media, no. Nothing. Tell me more about how that works. Yeah. And you were supposed

Twyla Verhelst (10m 58s):
To check everything. So you did have access to your phone, should an emergency come up, but they highly encouraged you just to turn it off. And so I did. I turned it off completely. Once I had let my family know I've made it unsafe. I know all is, well, I'll see you in seven days or you'll hear from me in seven days. And so I did turn it off entirely. We didn't talk to one another inside of the, the retreat. So there's other folks taking the retreat. Along with me, there was no speaking to them. There was no speaking to wait staff. So when you got your meal, there was no speaking to them. It was very, very quiet, very serene almost at times, would catch you going, like what, what is happening?

Twyla Verhelst (11m 41s):
And you kind of get really aware of the thoughts in your head when there's no other distractions and no other voices. So putting the phone away was tough because I am very connected on social media. And, and, you know, it's hard now with emails and that's something that we didn't have slack, but, you know, you're just so connected with text messaging obviously. And so putting that away was quite refreshing in and of itself. Let alone then not having any sort of music, not having any other conversing. The hardest part to be honest was when you had to staff at the facility, put your meal in front of you to not say, thank you.

Twyla Verhelst (12m 23s):
That was the most difficult thing. Or somebody, you know, you're walking and you meet somebody on the path to not, you almost didn't, didn't make eye contact with them because it would naturally be you start to get to know them because you'd see them. Not because you could talk to them, but you would see them. So then you almost didn't make eye contact with them anymore because you're afraid that you would say something until a few days in when then the eye contact actually started to mean something and you would create eye contact and you'd smile at them. And at least have that human interaction in that way. But certainly no voice, no voice talking or no hand gestures of any sort. Yeah.

Mark Graban (13m 1s):
So then with a week of that, what happened when you come back to the world, your family back to the idea of work? Yeah,

Twyla Verhelst (13m 12s):
It was a different perspective. And to be honest, when, when I first came out of it, I spent two or three days still in valley because I was like, this is going halfway around the globe. And I might as well take advantage of a little bit of time, even though I knew I needed to get back to my work and my family, but I did take a couple of days. And to be honest, in those couple of days, everything was overstimulating. I had these big intentions of I'm going to go walk the streets of Aruba, and I'm going to see the tourist sites. And it was busy in that city center. And I bought two hours in a day of walking and exploring. I was like, I got to go back to the hotel room because this is just too much at once. So certainly there's a bit of a, you should really re-introduce yourself with something like that.

Twyla Verhelst (13m 57s):
But because I had that time in Bali afterward, and then gosh, it was like a full day of travel to get back to Canada that I had time to really do a lot of reflection and think about what does this look like now when I see my family again, what does it look like on Monday morning when I go back to work and I see all these emails that have accumulated since I've left and I've got my staff who needs me because I haven't been there for over a week. And so I had to kind of prep myself for what that was going to look like and feel like, and how I was going to settle into that. But when I was so grounded, I felt really confident in knowing that, okay, this, this needs to be a portion of my life, meaning my work, not all of my life and with my family.

Twyla Verhelst (14m 43s):
I was just so excited to hug them and, and to reconnect with them and, and to share a lot of out of my experience because you spend this time really going through this journey and you don't share it with anybody. And it's not even like, if you're on a trip by yourself where you send your, your family members, messages or pictures, look at what I just saw. You don't do any of that. And so there was lots to share, but I had more gratitude and, and wanting to just embrace them for as a way of thanking them for giv, for giving me that space and giving me that time to be able to kind of disconnect and reconnect with myself.

Twyla Verhelst (15m 27s):
Yeah.

Mark Graban (15m 27s):
So then once you had the opportunity to reflect on that trip and to think about your burnout and the causes, and what led to that, were there any insights that came to you or other lessons about how to prevent falling, getting back into the same cycle? And I'm sure a trip to Bali against some years later would again be nice, but what did you do to try to prevent falling back into old patterns, old causes of burnout? You

Twyla Verhelst (15m 57s):
Know, part of it was the journey of learning more about myself that has helped me prevent going there. Now I'll tell you, it's easy to think about slipping back there. It's like, you know, if you're a ex smoker and then all of a sudden you had some of the other habits kind of come around you, and then you're like, this is the time when I would light up a cigarette. It, you could still have that insight of burnout because it's burnout. That's not due to a bunch of life circumstances happening all at once. It won't necessarily align again, this was pure overwork. And I like my work. I really enjoy working. So it's easy to slip back there.

Twyla Verhelst (16m 38s):
So part of it has been recognizing more of myself and what I need or don't need in order to kind of keep that balance and to catch myself earlier in the stages of kind of slipping there versus getting all the way there and like, whoa, that soap is super slippery. And here I am, again, I'll tell you, I would love to go back to valley. It's on the bucket list to go back there. My daughter desperately wants to go. When I came back, she saw the pictures and that I had taken. And now she's been talking about going in at that time. I told her 10 years now we're at five years, she's counting down, she's got a memory. That's incredible. So I expect to go back there someday, but you don't necessarily need to do that again.

Twyla Verhelst (17m 21s):
Or I don't feel, I need to do that again, in order to reconnect, it's more of a predict, a prevention strategy, and then a, well, this is going too far, pull back. And the, the reality with pulling back as you can usually take a personal day or cut yourself off of connections for a weekend or whatever that is it, that would just be enough to alright, pull you back. And I even did this over the past weekend where I spent Sunday going through, okay, what are the things that I'm working on right now? And what deserves, how much of my time and literally doing it like a pie chart. I mean, you had mentioned I'm an accountant.

Twyla Verhelst (18m 2s):
The numbers mean something to me. And so it was a time for me to, I kind of finished off some things I was doing for my parents. It was time to settle back into my, to my work, make sure that my husband and my, my daughter are getting what they need for me. It was a time to be like, okay, pause. Let's make sure I'm not totally out of alignment here and actually taking the time to do that and recognizing when you need to do that. And that's very individual obviously, but for me, it's the, Hmm. Something's feeling off here. It's got check. Let's just put this on paper and make sure that we're where we should be so that we don't go into old habits.

Mark Graban (18m 43s):
Yeah. Catching it sooner rather than letting it get this far progressed as it had been before. Yeah. Yeah. So Twyla, when you talk about, you know, learning more about yourself and as you talk to others and a talk about the power of being one's authentic self can, can you share a little bit more about what that means in the context of how we are at work or more broadly? What does it mean to be your authentic self?

Twyla Verhelst (19m 13s):
Yeah, for me, there's a few layers in what that means, as you mentioned, I'm, I'm an accountant I've shared that I'm an introvert. And I recognize now that as an accountant and an introvert that I had kind of created this representation of myself, that this is just the way that I am. So when it comes to things like speaking up in a meeting or having confidence to do something that seems really uncomfortable, or to come onto a podcast, like all of these things were things that I had really decided that that's not, for me, I'm an introvert, I'll support other people doing that.

Twyla Verhelst (19m 54s):
I'm not the one who does that. And so I recognize that I was doing that within my professional career. And that I noticed that I was really getting in my own way and holding myself back and put myself then into a challenge as to how am I going to comfortably get uncomfortable and break through some of that. And then the other layer to this is that I also recognize that as an accounting professional, our industry is evolving and as an authentic professional, that isn't necessarily in our minds, the same as an accounting professional. And so where these industry is going, is it, the technology is advancing.

Twyla Verhelst (20m 37s):
The relationships that accounting professionals are having with their clients is changing and evolving. And the relationship is really more so valued on the human element of that engagement, as opposed to did you file my tax return. And so that also is a spot where we can't be too professional and not be our authentic selves and be human the way that if you rewind to even 10 years ago, but I'll call it even say go further. A 20 years ago, accountants were very good at being introverts and sticking behind the deliverables or the numbers and not really being very personable, almost described as the doctor with poor bedside manner, but you needed the doctor.

Twyla Verhelst (21m 24s):
So you went to the doctor. And so this has all changed inside of our industry. And now that I have spent some time on this personal development journey and really recognize this in myself and started to chip away at the lack of confidence and build up more of the confidence and kind of flex that muscle more, then I've been sharing that with other accountants who are similar, where they're saying, okay, I know I need to be more human. I know I need to have different relationships. I know I need to do this advisory work that everyone in this industry is talking about support my small business clients differently, but I know I'm a really intelligent accountant, but I don't know how to do that.

Twyla Verhelst (22m 5s):
And my response is be you. And then it comes back to, well, I don't even really know who I am or who I should be inside of this relationship. So I do a lot of mentorship and coaching in that kind of realm of accounting. I do more of that than I do of traditional accounting. I don't actually do much traditional accounting at all anymore. I work really closely with other accounting, accountants and accounting professionals such as bookkeepers and texts, tax agents

Mark Graban (22m 36s):
And entrepreneurs as well. Yeah.

Twyla Verhelst (22m 37s):
Yeah. I mean, I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I grew up in an entrepreneurial home. I really actually became an accountant as my plan B. I knew I wanted to be some sort of entrepreneur, but felt like, oh, I better have a plan B. And that felt better for my parents too, is here's your money to go to university. So do something with this. And if you want to be a business owner out the other side, do that, but they showed me a new, it's really hard to be a self-employed entrepreneur. And so they wanted me to become educated and I was all for it. I was, I was enough of a geeky student that I was like, okay, let's do this. And I'd become an accountant only to know accounting and finances inside of whatever's next I despise tax, to be honest, I enjoy operational accounting and looking at what do these numbers mean?

Twyla Verhelst (23m 27s):
And how does this help us make decisions inside of the business, which has far more entrepreneurial focus than traditional accounting focused.

Mark Graban (23m 38s):
Yeah. Is managerial accounting, the right phrase then, and sort of subset of accounting. I'm trying to think back to my forever ago. Accounting.

Twyla Verhelst (23m 47s):
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It is. When thinking about managerial accounting, that's more you think about an in a corporate environment where you're part of the accounting team and you're providing internal reports to the stakeholders inside of your company. That's typically managerial accounting. Would, you could take that and just take that corporation and put it down to a small business. It's the same in that your stakeholders, your business owner, and what are the reports and what type of information do they need in order to make decisions. So same, just kind of scaled down to a small business. Sure.

Mark Graban (24m 23s):
Well, one other question I want to ask about your thoughts on authenticity or how you help coach or mentor others. Like where do we find the balance between being authentic? Let's say to one extreme somebody who's just very quiet. They don't like speaking up, but requirements of their job in one way or another are forcing them to try to get out of their comfort zone. How does somebody help navigate that and find the balance and not just falling back on like, well, I am the way I am versus having to challenge yourself to do something new or do something in a new way, or is there, I guess maybe as that choice, can you get out of your comfort zone or do you have to quit or leave or go and do something else?

Mark Graban (25m 7s):
How do you help someone navigate that kind of scenario?

Twyla Verhelst (25m 11s):
Yeah. That's a great question. Because to think about becoming somebody that feels like someone that you're not is extremely overwhelming and it would be easier to be honest, to quit and go somewhere where you think I don't have to be like that. If I go somewhere else or I can stern over and just keep doing this job inside of an environment or an inside of a company where, okay, I'm going to do this now for a bit. And once I get to this point, then I'll keep just pivoting. And so that could be a pattern that somebody's doing when they feel like this. I don't want to be that person, but there's a way to be more, whether it's outgoing, more confident with your voice or a bit more of that extroverted without becoming an extrovert without actually changing completely.

Twyla Verhelst (26m 0s):
And so part of that can be just taking baby steps. Cause I think it's the complete change that makes that feels so uncomfortable. You don't have to pivot 110 degrees or 180 degrees in order to be somebody else. You just have to make baby steps towards it. So that was a big part of it for me is how do I ever take a stage? How do I ever be on a podcast? How do I ever host a room in clubhouse? How do I ever do that? And a way to do that for me was to break it down into babies, babies, small steps. And the analogy I like to use is running a marathon.

Twyla Verhelst (26m 45s):
So if you think running a marathon and you decide Mark today, I've decided that next Sunday, I'm going to run a marathon. And if you're not a runner, right, right.

Mark Graban (26m 58s):
That's a bad idea. Sounds like a mistake.

Twyla Verhelst (27m 1s):
Yeah. There's your favorite mistake maybe. So if, if you, you know, whether you're a runner or not, you know that you don't go from coach to running a marathon in a very short period of time and you certainly don't do it overnight. So you don't go from introverted, shy, keeping to yourself person to overlay confident, loud, big voice, really taking the stage and grabbing the mic and running the meetings. And you don't go to that overnight when you're running a marathon, you know, all right. If I want to get to a marathon, firstly, I need to put that goal out a ways.

Twyla Verhelst (27m 42s):
I reasonable ways I need to start to let's start, walk, run, let's get some better shoes. Maybe I find an accountability partner that I start running with. Maybe I run a five kilometer race first. And then I go to a 10 K maybe like there's all these things that you do in order to make progression towards running a marathon. So it's the same goes with building the muscle or changing who you are or what your skill set is when you formerly been a shy, introverted accountant or a shy, introverted professional or somebody who's just not, not confident in their own ability to communicate.

Twyla Verhelst (28m 25s):
You break that down in a way that would cycle what I call it is comfortably uncomfortable. So you get a bit uncomfortable, not to the point where you're sweating and you never want to do it again. And you have all your nerves are shot, but just a little bit and a little bit more and a little bit more. And I've mentored a number of people through that process. Only because I went through that process myself. I always think the best vendors are the ones who they've done it before. And now they're trying to share it with somebody else. Yeah. Well,

Mark Graban (28m 56s):
And if you had concerns or you were nervous about being a guest on a podcast Twyla, I think you've done quite well. So hopefully it felt like it was not a mistake to come and share with us today.

Twyla Verhelst (29m 8s):
No, this won't be a, you can have me back on. And I say my biggest or my favorite mistake is joining the, my favorite mistake podcast. That will be

Mark Graban (29m 17s):
Good. So Twyla, one of the things I wanted to ask you of the different things that you do, one of them is the accounting professionals program at FreshBooks. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Twyla Verhelst (29m 28s):
Yeah, sure. So FreshBooks itself is an accounting platform that was, has been around since 2003, started as an invoicing platform revamped itself in 2016 to be a full cycle accounting platform, including instilling, voicing as a big piece of that, that feature set, but it was designed for business owners. So professional services, creatives, and marketing. Those are all the types of businesses. Anyone who needs invoices inside of their business is who FreshBooks really designed their platform for. And last year in 2020, we made the decision as a company to start to support and engage with the accounting professionals who are working alongside of these business owners to then collaborate inside of the technology.

Twyla Verhelst (30m 24s):
So this was a very, very much a different strategy for fresh books, where they still do have their platform and they still work directly with business owners, but then to also embrace the accounting professionals and really support them in their journey of collaborating with, with clients and small business owners, especially as the industry has evolved. So we kicked off the channel last year and the accounting professionals program last June. And so myself, my, my role, my role is head of the accountant channel and then leading this, this program. And so I get to work really closely with the industry at large the partners joining the program.

Twyla Verhelst (31m 4s):
And of course our team to really embrace these accounting professionals and support them in their evolutionary journey of how they can best support small business clients.

Mark Graban (31m 17s):
And if people want to learn more about that program, I guess this would be primarily if someone is a CPA and accounting firm that works with small businesses, how would they learn more about this program and what th they can find it on the FreshBooks website?

Twyla Verhelst (31m 33s):
Yeah. So if you go to freshbooks.com/accountants, you'll get to that page as well as if you are a business owner and you are looking for a new platform, or you're already using fresh books, but you want to be matched with an accounting professional who can support you on your journey. That's also an opportunity to reach out to us and, and be connected with one of our partners who's FreshBooks certified, and really understands how to use fresh books with, within the engagement between the accounting professional and the, and the business owner as a client.

Mark Graban (32m 7s):
Yeah. So a small business owner like myself, I have a CPA partner. We use different software, but at some point, sometimes I'm not saying that's me, but people might want to make a change. They will either want to change their software or their CPA firm, or maybe they're starting off with one. So that makes sense. There's something there on the website for people on both sides of that relationship, the businesses and the accountants. Yeah, no, we're great. And Twyla can be found on Twitter and LinkedIn we'll post links to the social profiles in the show notes. So it's, I thank you so much for being a guest today.

Mark Graban (32m 48s):
Our guest again, has been Twyla for our house and you can learn more about the accounting professionals program at fresh books. We'll again, have a link in the show notes. So I'm really enjoyed having you here. Thank you for sharing your story. And, you know, I think there's a lot there to help the listener think about, you know, if they're feeling like they're in a state of burnout, Bali might not be the exact same solution, but you've given us all a lot to think about. So, whoops, there's my most recent mistake. You've given us a lot to think about. Thank you, Twyla. Thank you for being here today.

Twyla Verhelst (33m 23s):
Okay. No problem. Thanks Mark. I appreciate you having me.

Mark Graban (33m 27s):
Thanks again to Twyla Verhelst. Again for show notes, you can go to markgraban.com/mistake73, and I hope this podcast inspires you to reflect on your own mistakes, how you can learn from them or turn them into a positive I've had listeners tell me they've started being more open and honest about mistakes in their work. And they're trying to create a workplace culture where it's safe to speak up about problems because that leads to more improvement and better business results. If you have feedback or a story to share, you can email me myfavoritemistake podcast@gmail.com. And again, our website is myfavoritemistakepodcast.com. Since every podcast asks you to do it, it would be a mistake if I didn't ask you to please follow rate and review, but most importantly, thank you.

Mark Graban (34m 13s):
Thank you for listening.