If you would have told me, Betty Collins, you will be a shareholder of a regional CPA firm with 4 offices and a 180 employees and be in the top 200 of the country. And if you were to tell me that you would be the managing partner of one of those offices for, well, 40 plus people, if you were have told me that you'll be elected to the board of directors and you'll be the first woman to do be on that board, If you were to tell me that you're gonna direct a women's initiative where they would have an annual conference with 250 to 300 women, and we would be on our 79th podcast, and we would be in 20 states in that podcast and over a 1000000 hits, I would have just gone there will be no way I will go to those heights in my career. I'm an accountant. I'm an everyday person, and I still really am an accountant and a everyday person. Right? But it would be amazing to me if all of you looked at your journey and you look back and you see these are the heights I was able to get to. These were the heights I was able to climb. It would be pretty cool. Because not only on top of that, I am your everyday accountant with clients.

I have a fairly sizable book of business and and people I a team of 10 that run that book. I'm directing, a division now within Bernie Ware. I mean, all these things, I I don't think I would have ever told you that I was gonna scale those heights. I would have kinda laughed at you back in 1988 when you when I was starting my career in accounting, but it did. I started with a small firm in 88 and my journey at that time was get a job, get your paycheck, raise your kids, have the house, get the second house, do all the things that we think are in that that season of life, especially when you're in your twenties. But really my journey's been full of very, great circumstances and people, and I've learned a lot of lessons and I've applied them. And I want to share those with you today as you're trying to scale those new heights in your life. I want you to hear my journey a little bit of where and where I started and where I am right now.

And everybody's scaling is different. Right? It it doesn't mean you have to get to, I've gotta be the shareholder of a company or I've gotta have this many clients. Scaling your heights can be set different things for different people. But I have had some really, really good stuff. And sometimes when I talk about my journey, the emotions that I have, because I just look and go, wow, I can't believe that I got to do that. Even though they were uphill climbs and there there were a lot of mindset changes. But at the end of the day, it's full of failures, it's full of success, it's full of rebounds, and it's full of resets, but it's mine. It's my journey.

It's my scaling. It's my client. And yours should be too. It's not somebody else's. But we're not gonna go back, fortunately, all the way to 1988, but I do wanna share some lessons that I have learned, and I hope it inspired you today too as you're in your journey. 1st, the first thing I would tell you is how much do you say never? Because I did that a lot in my the beginning years of my of my journey. Everything was about, I'm never gonna do this. Right? And when I think about that, sometimes I when I hear myself say never, I stop and I go, what am I giving up? What is the opportunity that I'm not going to to have because I've really got a mindset of never? I was never gonna use my accounting degree.

I was never gonna become a CPA. I certainly didn't wanna work for somebody. I wanted that guaranteed paycheck. I never wanted to be part of a larger company and yet here I am. I did all those things, and those really those things made my opportunities. So when you're saying never in your journey, you're not maybe gonna scale where you could because guess what? It's probably your opportunity. Maybe you're just scared of it. Maybe you don't know how to deal with it.

Maybe you don't even know what you don't know. Right? But I would tell you when you say never, think of the opportunity, maybe there isn't one. It's okay. I look back and I'm really fortunate, though, who I worked for or did I work with them? And I'll explain that in a minute. I have a podcast called My 5 Guys. So I did have 5 different individuals over my journey that were very impactful. The first person was a guy by the name of Austin Swallow. He was my first job out in New York, Rochester, New York.