Accounting thought leader Amy Vetter talks about the need to understand your own story -- so that you can then rewrite it. Drawing on her new book, "Disconnect to Connect," she dives into how self-knowledge, vulnerability and authenticity can make you a better leader, and a better person.
Transcription:
Dan Hood (00:03):
Welcome to On the Air with Accounting Today, I'm editor-in-chief Dan Hood. It's become clear and clear that you can't divorce the personal from the professional and that we sort of take our best and our worst selves with us wherever we go so that any improvement in any area is going to be contingent often on all the other areas of life, the personal, the business, all that sort of stuff. Our guests in this episode has written a new book that offers a vast wealth of useful advice for making that kind of holistic improvement. It's Amy Vetter, she's a CPA, a yogi, a technologist, and Accounting Today columnist, CEO of the B3 Method Institute, and most recently the author of "Disconnect to Connect." Amy, thanks for joining us.
Amy Vetter (00:36):
Thank you. Very happy to be here.
Dan Hood (00:38):
Yeah. I should also mention that Amy is going to be keying at our Accounting Today firm growth form in early May in San Diego. She's going to be talking about becoming a cherished advisor there, so we're looking forward to that. But today, as I said, I want to talk about disconnect to connect the new book that you've just, or that's coming out shortly. I dunno when people are going to listen to us. So I hesitate to say a specific date because it might have been yesterday. It might be tomorrow, who knows? But it's very soon. You should be able to see it soon. And it's a really unique book in some ways because it is not like any other business book I've ever read. And it's certainly not like any other personal book I've ever read because it combines the two. It talks about both, right? There's things about business success, there's things about your business success, there's things about your personal life in it. We're going to get into that because it is full of that in a fascinating way. But how do you describe it? When would you describe it as a business book? Is it a personal book? Is it self? What is it?
Amy Vetter (01:26):
It's a self exploration. So I actually describe it as my other book as Business Balance and Bliss. So that one came out a few years ago and has been very helpful to many about creating work-life harmony. And so many times I got asked the question, so how did you get to that point of writing business balance and bliss? I considered this book the Prequel to Business Balance and Bliss.
Dan Hood (01:56):
Excellent.
Amy Vetter (01:56):
So it is really the work to do personally in order to give yourself space, to make the pivots you need to make in your life the changes. And it is all about the patterns that we create in our lives personally, professionally, all the belief systems that feed into our own belief systems where sometimes we can't even decipher between what is ours and what is somebody else's. And that work that we have to do on ourselves as we grow and learn about ourselves throughout our life so that we can constantly become better for ourselves and better for the people around us.
Dan Hood (02:34):
And it is, I, as I was going through it, I was constantly struck by it is intensely personal, literally about you in the sense of it shares a lot of your personal struggles and triumphs and hurdles and bears all through throughout your life in personal arena, in business and all kinds of things. And I want to talk about that vulnerability specifically in a little bit because you really do open yourself up in a great way and share and to deliver. It's not just here's terrible things that happened to me or terrible things. I struggled through what this means and how you can become better through it. But I want to start by saying, sir, you know, what originally inspired you to write it?
Amy Vetter (03:12):
Well, so when I was 32 years old, that was when I became a partner in a CPA farm and I also became a mother of my second child and really had this kind of moment that all of us have these different moments in our life that kind of stop us in our tracks. I didn't know why I felt off, but I felt off. And for me, I took a big leap and went to a therapist and growing up therapy was one of those things that people talked, at least in my family, it was for weak people. It took a lot for me to walk through the door of a therapist and even doubted myself going all the way there. I had a bad dream the night before about it. But once I started going down that path and really reworking thoughts and all these belief systems that we have that we might not assess in our life at all up until that point, I got through very intense therapy during those years of being a partner in a CPA farm.
(04:21)
And during that time, once I was getting through the worst of it, my therapist actually said to me, you need to write a book. And his purpose behind it was that it just so many of us that you so many and the profession that have achieved success, people look at successful people and say, oh, things must just come easy for this person. Or that was just luck. And they don't understand the trials and tribulations that each person's story. Everybody has a story to get to where they are and the wherewithal and he's like, you really need to share this. And now I am 49, so it's taken me this long to write that book, but I actually took notes in my phone all those years and had decided one day I just wanted to have it all together. And through putting business balance bliss out there and really seeing people open up more authentically and feeling okay to do that in these business situations, I realized it was time.
(05:33)
And so the timing actually worked out pretty well with Covid happening and so forth. And I think now more than ever a book, this is so important for people so that everybody's got the toolkit, the actionable steps that they can choose from everyone's path is going to be different. And what I'm trying to in this book is different ideas and brainstorming you can do in your own life by exposing my own as well, but also research and all of these other things that I have done through my lifetime to really help that journey. And the journey's never over. There's constantly things that happen in your life, but this is really to make sure people don't feel alone in the paths that they're going through on a daily basis.
Dan Hood (06:26):
You say the exposing yourself in a way you really do. I mean it is. People will go through people like, wow, I don't know that I could share this level of detail about my own life with other people and with strangers. Strangers and bookstores feed on Amazon I've never met before. But you really, like I said, you open up a lot share from your childhood. I mean throughout your life you probably couldn't written half the book in when you were 32 because some of the stuff happens afterwards. Exactly,
Amy Vetter (06:52):
Yeah.
Dan Hood (06:53):
And it's interesting because what that helps the stories you tell, right? Because you then draw lessons or practices from a more things just say, listen, this is what you can learn from this. But you also talk about the importance of other people opening up of the people who are reading it have to be opening up. There's a sort of emphasis on vulnerability or willingness and ability to be vulnerable. Why do you think that's important? I mean obviously for writing this book you had to be vulnerable and open and explaining things, but why do Norma Schmos like me who've read the book maybe why do I need to be vulnerable?
Amy Vetter (07:24):
Well, I think more than ever in the times that we are in, people are just hungry for authentic relationships and human relationships. And I know probably you as well, when we started in this profession, when we started in business very much, it was not like that. It was put on your navy blue suit. Everyone is supposed to look the same, everyone's supposed to act the same. And there was a way of going to work and what the appearance of every level should be at work. So no matter what was going on in your life, you had to put on that mask every single day. And there's definitely a bubbling up of, I don't want to put on that mask. I don't want to be someone I am not. And these are kind of the stories and the actions of thinking about how do you integrate the two of showing up authentically so you can better connect with the people around you. And as a leader, and for many leaders, this is not a comfortable area at all. It's not how we were trained to be leaders. There was always supposed to be, there's a line between you and others,
Dan Hood (08:33):
The burden, the loneliness of command.
Amy Vetter (08:36):
And so this is really more about, there's so much change that's happening in business and personal lives and first we have to start with ourselves. And if we don't get raw about ourselves and really observe, and the big part of this is not judging the stories that you have or the life that you had, it's more of the research of yourself. It's the observation of I'm going to take accountability for the patterns that show up for me at work or at home or whatever that is. And when I do that work, it can help me to better understand the people around me. So when I see people digging their heels in because they don't want to implement technology or they don't want to make a change, there is probably something three levels deeper that's causing that behavior of belief. And instead of doing a one toman push, changing your leadership style to be more authentic, to show more vulnerability yourself so that people can feel like they can relate to you and open up a little bit more so that you can help nurture them and make sure they are successful as well.
Dan Hood (09:44):
I want to talk a little bit about leadership and I want to make it clear this is not a leadership book. It, it offers tremendous lessons for leaders in it. There's a lot of stuff, but it covers so much more, has so many more wider applications than that. But I do want to sort of narrowly focus on it for a second cause you're sort of describing an idea of what what's called a connected leader. And you've talked a little bit about why it's valuable for leadership, but maybe we could dive a little bit. What does a connected leader look like?
Amy Vetter (10:09):
Yeah, so it is really somebody in a leadership position that knows everybody's name, knows their spouses or their
Dan Hood (10:17):
Kids, but you would think that would be the lowest possible bar.
Amy Vetter (10:21):
So I'm starting there, right? But so many times as a consultant we go into these workplaces and that is not the case, that people do not know all the people's names, that they're not walking around meeting people. Now we're in these remote situations and they're not just reaching out to say hello and where people don't feel like they're in trouble if a leader contacts them that it's
Dan Hood (10:48):
Really why is he talking to me
Amy Vetter (10:50):
That they care? And so why this becomes important is because people are looking for meaning in their workplace and they want to know that they matter. And there's a whole piece in there about self existed because a lot of times what happens is the days coming at us, every single person is going through their individual journey feeling stressed, thinking that other people are thinking things about them that probably they aren't because everyone's just worried about their own world. But as a leader, we have to have the time to help others that that's our job is to lift others up and give them the skillsets and nurture them in the way so they can be successful. When we leave everyone to their own devices and then we define it as a failure or that it's not going in the way that we did, a lot of times what's happening is we're working in the business and not on it and really stepping back to connect better so that we do get to know people and they feel like we care. It's not just to know their name, it's that. So that helps. We're being authentic and really trying to get to know the people, what makes them tick so that we can make sure that they've got the best path forward as well.
Dan Hood (12:13):
And I always like to think talking about low bars, there's all kinds of reasons that's a good idea to do. It's just good being a good person kind of thing. But there's also at the very early of you, if given the staffing problems that the profession has now this is right, there is a very practical reason to be this kind of connected, compassionate, caring leader. And it's not just because it's a good and decent thing to do, has tremendous applications in a staffing crisis.
Amy Vetter (12:41):
Well, and the other thing is, again, with no judgment as we're having this discussion, this may not come naturally to you to go out and talk to people and really understand their lives. It may not be interesting to you, you've, that's not your way of being. You may have to put reminders on your calendar even to thank people for the work that they did. But that's okay. This is how we drive new patterns of habit. We have to do it if we want to get in shape or diet or whatever. It takes consistency, it takes repetition and we have to drive a new habit. So if we are intentionally trying to change how we connect with other people, we actually have to take little, we do little things at a time and cape repeating those things until those become natural and we add another one.
(13:37)
And really it goes back to what you said of this book is really vulnerable. You get there, it took little things over time for me to be able to expose myself in this way so that people could also connect with me and understand that I get them and I want to make sure that they've got a path of feeling better as well and find their own journey with it. But those things take time and it doesn't happen overnight. And there's constant, when you think you've got it, then you don't and you got to shift again. But it's that self observation, that pause that's stepping back so that you can readjust.
Dan Hood (14:18):
You have mentioned patterns and stories and personal histories a lot and that is a big focus of the book of understanding your own patterns and histories. And I want to dive deeply into that, but we need to take a quick break. Alright, and we're back with Amy, better the author, excuse many things. But for our purposes today, she's the author of Disconnect to Connect. It's a new book that is, it's about a lot of things as you've listened to the rest, the earlier part of the podcast there, it's about a lot of things. But a big part of it is examining and looking at your stories, the stories you care about. You talk about the importance of stories throughout the book. You tell a lot of stories personal, as we've mentioned, very sort of personal raw stories about your life from your childhood right up to fairly recently. Can you talk about what's the importance of these stories that people tell themselves and that they carry with them and how you need to handle them?
Amy Vetter (15:15):
So I think there's a lot of things that happen in our life that are generational patterns that we don't even realize become a pattern of us because that's the only way we knew it or that's what we saw. And it doesn't mean some of those patterns are bad. It's actually realizing what served you, what aligned to you and what doesn't. And unfortunately, and I tell a lot of my own story in the book, I learned as a young child of people blaming past generations for their own behavior. And I think we see that personally in our lives because it's hard to take responsibility and actually make change as an adult because we do get into a way of being even as an expert in the work that we do or at home and what we expect and so forth. We have ego and ego can get in the way of us actually breaking through and really being observant of how we are affecting others.
(16:21)
And in order to be observant, we have to allow ourselves to get still. And in my journey, that was a hard thing because most of us are that are real go-getters or type A personality. We don't slow down a lot, we keep ourselves busy all the time. We're really laser focused on whatever the next goal is. And when yoga came into my life, and that was the first time I think I had ever been still and stop running to just be alone with your thoughts and what's going on in your body, you get a lot of things come up for you that you're not even aware of that are happening because you're not allowing yourself to give that space. And so when you can start making that a practice of more observing different experiences that happen through the day, whether that be something that happens with your child, a caregiver, a spouse, or someone at work, what happens is usually at the end of the day where our minds go to is we get it's gossip.
(17:26)
It's like, oh my God, can you believe what that person did? And there's a concept I talk in the book about a hundred percent responsibility. And so a lot of times in that what we're looking for is everyone from the outside to say, yeah, I feel really bad for you because I know what's happened in your life and you're right, you know, should feel that way and so forth. Instead of saying, what was my hundred percent responsibility in that interaction and what could I have done differently that might have changed the course? Not saying that you're wrong or right or the other person's wrong or right, but in each situation we each have responsibility of how an experience goes. And that is really what we can go along just blaming what happens in our life or the trials and tribulations, the traumas and so forth and say, that's why I behave the way I behave. Or we can do the hard work and say, you know what? I'm going to stop here. I'm going to observe myself and I want to make sure that I don't repeat that pattern. And that could have been from a boss or teacher or whatever belief system hit you that you're like, this isn't working. I can tell from the environment around me that it's causing friction and what can I do different as my a hundred percent responsibility?
Dan Hood (18:50):
Yeah, I know it's fascinating. You're talking about it's very difficult for type A people to slow down. I am not a type, I am a C maybe type A, so it's very slow, it's very easy for me to get very still, but it's not of an observational stillness, it's just sitting here doing nothing kind of stillness. But after reading some of the stories in the book, and I started particularly about generational patterns, you tell some fascinating and sometimes scary stories about patterns between your parents and their grand or your grandparents, their parents, so on and how those repeat. And I just got to think about all the patterns in my own family that have repeated throughout time, very different ones, but still that repetition is there. And you start to think as you read your stories and listen the way you talk about them and think them, think about them and as you observe them as opposed to just, some people think about the stories of their lives as just an excuse for grudges, but if you think about them as you say, for responsibility or for the potential to change going forward, it's a very different way of thinking about them.
(19:44)
And it was pretty eyeopening against someone who was mostly still in an observational way. I was like, wow,
Amy Vetter (19:50):
I love that. Well, and that's, that is such an important piece of feedback for me because I can't tell you how many times I rewrote this book and it's taken where I feel like it's ready for the world, but that was exactly what I wanted to happen with the book, not to get so immersed in my story that you're not in your own, I'm telling my story in order to help you brainstorm your own so that we are in that shared experience together. But it's not about getting so immersed in my story that you lose yourself in it. It's like noticing, oh, that's something that I do in my life and that's really interesting. If I went back and shifted just 25% or 50%, what would the difference make? And would it be something I'd want to shift? And just like you said, and why do I even do it?
(20:44)
And we don't question those things. But for me, when I was in my thirties and I started this process, that's when I was having children and becoming a new mom really changed everything because I was like, I do not want to repeat these patterns for my children, so what can I do? Not to say I would've done it, but it's work. And if you don't want to repeat the pattern, even when you see behavior out at a restaurant or at work or from a boss that you don't agree with, well the problem is that's who you're learning from and that's what you see. And so you can unintentionally repeat that behavior instead of going, I, that's not what I want, but if I don't want it, I have to work to change the neural channel and change the habit so it doesn't repeat.
Dan Hood (21:43):
No, it's fascinating there. And we could spend three or 400 podcasts on this subject, but particularly there's a whole scientific slash philosophical debate that says, right, we don't have any actual free will, we don't have free will, we just think we have free will. We don't, and there's a, I'm going to get into arguments about it for it, but there is a degree right there when you think about these patterns, there is weird degree to which you are actually, your behavior really is determined by these patterns, which you have no idea where, I mean when you start to think about it, you're like, Ooh, that came from my mother's side of the family or that came from a bad boss that I had. I do these things because that's what's been ingrained in me and it's sort of scary and weird cause you're like, wow, maybe I have less free will than I thought I did.
(22:22)
But the trick is, and this is the point of one of the big points in the book, so you can change it, but it requires great work and it requires some time. I want to talk briefly because there is a terrifying story. I mean there's lots of terrifying stories and there's lots of some just plain sad stories and it all works out well. You write a book and everything's successful and it's great. So it ends well. But there's one particular, and then we go through a lot of stories because I'm sort of focusing more on the businessy aspects of this just because it's accounting. Today's podcast, there's a story about an impact that an early manager had on you and the way she interacted with you. And one of the things that comes back to is the importance of feedback, getting it for yourself and how you give it to other people. And maybe you could talk a little bit about that. Cause I thought that one, that story was terrifying. But also, and I don't know if think we necessarily need to tell that story, we should tell people to go read the book to find out that story. But maybe we just talk about the importance of feedback, like I said, both giving it and getting it.
Amy Vetter (23:16):
Absolutely. I think that is a skill that is not trained enough. And actually in the accounting profession, if you're in public accounting, you start giving feedback as a senior accountant when you start giving review notes to a staff person. And it is really important that when we think about giving feedback, that we're doing it in a way that's actually helpful to the person and that the words that we say are helpful as well. And if we don't get to know the people, we have no idea on how we're affecting someone with the feedback that we're giving them. And to get to know someone from that human le level on that connected leader standpoint so that we can give real feedback on a constant basis because they know we care. And so that story was really about early in my accounting career and someone attacked my looks basically early on to say I wouldn't be successful.
(24:26)
And those things affect you because as you and so many people have stories like that with a teacher or a parent or whatever, we have no idea what we're carrying in our bodies and we believe them because someone said it. And that's what we have to realize about feedback of that. It is an honor to give someone feedback that this is something that's been granted to you because someone believed in you as a mentor or a manager or supervisor or a leader. And they're believing in the words that you say. And we have to make sure they're not personal opinion. It should be something that's valuable to someone to be able to educate, teach, mentor, to get them to the next level, not a personal even before we give the feedback, we should step back, observe what we're going to say and how we go about that feedback to make sure that it's going to be valuable to that person and all the unconscious bias that we have. And that is really important that we have people we bounce off of that are peers too, even to have them listen in when we give feedback where we can constantly learn as a leader to say, oh, this might have been a better way to have approached that. That might have been why they reacted. Cause when we're doing it ourselves, we don't necessarily clearly see it. Right?
Dan Hood (25:56):
You got to get some feedback on your feedback.
Amy Vetter (25:58):
Yes.
Dan Hood (25:59):
But then it's a feedback loop and it just, it's distortion and it becomes the sound is terrible. No, excellent. Just one last thing, I mean obviously the first thing everybody should do is go to go out and get this book and read it cause it's great. But assuming they're waiting for the book to arrive from Amazon or wherever they voted for and they want to start right away, they can't wait. If you had to give people a way to start this journey again, their book is coming, it's in the mail, they've ordered it, they're going to get it soon, but they want to start. What would be something they could start on this journey to get ready?
Amy Vetter (26:31):
I would say just to begin, so this is one of the things that gets in the way for adults is that we think there's a million steps to get to where to begin. Instead of what I said, you step into the therapist's office, you learn how to meditate, you learn how to go on a walk by yourself with no music and just listen. Whatever it is, just do it. Pick the one thing that you're going to do and start. And too many times when I'm going through the business balance, bliss talks, people are like, where should I begin? And I always tell this story about that as you go on this journey, there's like different hobbies that come up. And one of the hobbies I wanted to get back to was art. And I wanted to paint and I was at an art auction and there was an artist that I really liked his work. And so afterward I said to him, oh my God, I love your paintings. I totally relate to what you're doing. I'm thinking about getting back into painting. What should I do? And his answer was, get in your car, go to Michael's by paint, paintbrushes and canvas and just start the paint. Right?
Dan Hood (27:44):
That's what makes you a painter. He's painting. This is,
Amy Vetter (27:46):
Yeah. And this is really, that journey is like everyone's going to start in a different place, but wherever that place is, begin today, begin tomorrow. You'll find what works, what doesn't work. And just because one thing doesn't work, then try the next way to do it and you'll find your path to do it. Everyone's going to have their own journey, but try not to put up reasons or excuses why I have kids. My work's due demanding what we all have five minutes in our day to get silent, even if it starts with that. And then you go from there.
Dan Hood (28:21):
And as you say, you said earlier, it's a lot of it is small steps, right? Make small steps and then that becomes a habit and then it becomes part of you and then you make another small step and so on. So that's great. All great advice, but obviously the best advice is to go out and get disconnect to connect, which should be available now or if it's not available now, we'll be very shortly depending on when this comes out. But it's soon and it's great. Amy, thank you so much for joining
Amy Vetter (28:44):
Us. Thank you.
Dan Hood (28:45):
I should mention again, if you want to hear more from Amy, she will be at the Firm Growth Forum in early May in San Diego. That's May 8th to 10th. We're looking forward to that. But in the meantime, you should be ordering your copy of the Disconnect to Connect. So thanks again.
Amy Vetter (28:58):
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Dan Hood (29:00):
It was great. And thank you all for listening. This episode of On the Air was produced by Accounting Today with audio production by Kevin Parise. Rate or review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our content on accountingtoday.com. Thanks again to our guest and thank you for listening.