Unbalanced

Nicole Nieves didn't set out to run a firm on her own terms — she got there because her health demanded it. After years of pushing through long hours in New York, she found herself repeatedly hospitalized and forced onto medical leave. What came out of that hard stop was a set of policies most accounting firms still resist: documents due 30 days before the deadline, a standing Wednesday off, and a...

Ashley Connell spent a year having 60 one-on-one conversations with accounting firm owners before deciding to go all in on the profession. What she heard most often surprised her: loneliness. Not just the need for peers, but the need for someone inside the business they could actually talk to. Ashley is the founder of Prowess Project, which matches accounting firm owners with fractional operators,...

Rick Meekins had built something real. Multiple companies running simultaneously, an engineer on staff, hands in product development, construction, and more. Then COVID hit, and almost overnight, everything stopped. What followed were months of debt, difficult conversations, and a slow reckoning with what comes next. In this episode, Rick, founder of Polaris Story and host of the Relentless Pursui...

Jan Haugo spent 40 hours a week for over 18 months learning, building, and breaking AI tools outside the accounting industry because she felt what was available inside it wasn't enough. What she came back with wasn't a collection of tips for writing better emails. It was a system: general ledger error detection, 1099 audit checking, brand voice training, and over 80 operations built to match how a...

A nonprofit's CPA said they didn't qualify. Their payroll company said the same. So did a second advisor. Richard Soo Hoo, owner of Richard Soo Hoo CPA and Associates, looked at the paperwork anyway, told everyone they were wrong, and three weeks later the organization had $425,000 in Employee Retention Tax Credits in hand. That story sits at the center of this conversation, but it's hardly the on...

Richard Roppa-Roberts did not plan to start a business. He bought a house on October 11, 2014, and was laid off the very next day. What followed was an accidental entrepreneurial career that now includes two businesses, over 7,600 hours of live peer conversation, and a near-coma hospitalization that tested every contingency plan he had built. In this episode, Richard shares what he has learned run...

Ron Stauffer walked in the door after his second layoff, gave himself one afternoon to feel bad about it, and had a check in his hand by the next day. That mindset, combining deep curiosity with relentless relationship-building, is at the core of how he has run Leader Digital for eighteen years without spending a single dollar on advertising. In this conversation, Ron shares why most businesses as...

In this episode, David joins Sam and Candy to talk about what really drives small business financial trouble, why the root cause is almost never what the owner suspects, and what it takes for accountants and bookkeepers to make the shift into genuine advisory work. They also get into the realities of building a first-year conference, why most accounting-adjacent advice stays frustratingly surface-...

Melissa Guinn once found $180,000 of loan proceeds misclassified as income. Her client had paid taxes on money that was never earnings. A corrected return later, the client received $40,000 back. That kind of discovery is not luck. It is what happens when a bookkeeper asks enough questions, runs a real onboarding process, and knows what to look for. Melissa is the owner of Lookout Bookkeeping in C...

Erin Pohan, founder of Upkeeping and creator of WAVE Seattle, joins Sam and Candy for a conversation about the parts of firm ownership no one really prepares you for. From building real community in the accounting profession to navigating a $100,000 IRS notice and a years-long fight to protect her business, Erin shares what it looks like to keep going when the unexpected hits. Along the way, they...

What changes when you go from doing the work to leading a team doing it for you? In this episode, Rachel Dauchy shares what growth actually looks like behind the scenes, from navigating client expectations that don’t evolve with your business, to hiring, letting go, and learning how to trust your team. She talks about building a firm rooted in systems, automation, and specialization, while still h...

Most accountants were taught to focus on the work. The transactions, the categorization, the details. But that’s not what clients actually need. In this episode of Unbalanced , Debra Kilsheimer challenges the way the profession has always operated. She shares why accounting should be about asking better questions, not just producing reports, and how AI is forcing a shift away from data entry towar...

What looks like growth on paper can quietly introduce risk beneath the surface. Tiffany Gonzalez shares how one client scaling rapidly forced her to confront client concentration, shifting power dynamics, and the pressure it puts on teams. She walks through how she navigated that moment without reacting from fear, including restructuring internally and returning to sales with intention. This conve...

In this episode of Unbalanced, Candy Bellau and Sam Hallburn sit down with Karen Reese of Starlight Bookkeeping for an honest conversation about the hard lessons that come with building a business. Karen opens up about trust gone wrong, cash flow mistakes, pricing clarity, and learning to put the right safeguards in place as her firm grew. It’s a grounded, practical episode about what firm owners...

Most founders don’t struggle because they aren’t capable, they struggle because they say yes to the wrong things early on. In this episode of Unbalanced, Blair Drake shares what her first year in business actually looked like, from a slow start to taking on work that pulled her away from what she really wanted to build. She opens up about the moment things shifted, not from doing more, but from ge...

Dr. Kristy Short returns to the Unbalanced Podcast for one of the most honest conversations we’ve had about mental health and what it really takes to heal. She shares the story behind her book Civil Warrior , the breaking point that forced her to rethink everything, and why high performers are often the best at hiding their struggles. Kristy also opens up about a psychedelic therapy experience tha...

Burnout is one of the most common experiences in firm ownership, yet it is rarely discussed openly. In this episode of Unbalanced, Lynnette Oss Connell shares her journey from building a CAS practice to becoming a burnout coach for women in accounting. She talks candidly about the pressure of trying to hold everything together while raising a family, managing illness at home, and running a firm. T...

Liz Farr joins Unbalanced to talk about grief, forgiveness, and the quiet ways work can become a shield. After losing her brother during tax season, her parents in a sudden accident, and later her stepson to violence, Liz reflects on how deeply she had internalized the profession’s expectation to push through and keep producing. This conversation explores how accounting culture shapes the way lead...

Emily Woods of Woods Financial Services shares what it was like to step into a firm that started as a “mom and pop” tax shop and grow it into a practice offering tax, outsourced accounting, and wealth management. She talks candidly about joining the firm by accident, navigating legacy clients, and carrying the weight of imposter syndrome, especially without the CPA or CFP letters after her name. F...

What does it really look like to take two separate firms and build one shared company, culture, and team, without losing your mind in the process? In this episode of Unbalanced, Kim Kelleher and Heather Deibele (co-founders of Luma accounting) walk through the real story, from “we should grab coffee” to “we’re calling attorneys.” They share how they tested the waters by cross-supporting client wor...

Firm ownership is often lonelier than anyone admits, especially when you’re the one everyone depends on. In this episode of the Unbalanced Podcast, Tedd Drattell shares what it was really like to build a firm from the ground up, navigate years of quiet isolation, and lead through an unexpected health crisis. Together, we talk about the emotional toll of ownership, the importance of community and h...

Starting a firm in the middle of uncertainty forces hard decisions, fast learning, and uncomfortable tradeoffs. In this episode, Marie Torossian shares what it was really like to build her firm beginning in 2020, including the challenges of delegation, charging for value, and getting pulled back into the work even after building a team. Sam, Candy, and Marie talk openly about giving away too much...

In this episode of the Unbalanced podcast, host Candy Bellau and co-host Sam Hallburn welcome Kelly Paxton, a fraud expert, to discuss the emotional toll of being a business owner, the importance of fraud awareness, and the human side of financial crime. Kelly shares her journey from finance to fraud examination, highlighting the prevalence of fraud in small businesses and the need for robust proc...

Phishing attacks, password protection, and cyber insurance are not “IT topics” anymore, they’re firm owner responsibilities. In this episode, Sabrina Burke of Fluffy Hammer Bookkeeping explains why security education has to be proactive, not reactive, and how quickly new phishing tactics show up in the real world. She shares how quarterly training helps her spot current trends, why document protec...

When growth hits before you feel ready, it can be both a win and a warning. In this episode of Unbalanced, Katie Helle of Scaled Accounting Solutions shares what it looked like to go out on her own and then get blindsided by how quickly tax work poured in once she told friends, family, and her network. Katie walks through the real tension of fast growth, building processes while serving clients, a...