Keila Hill-Trawick started her accounting firm almost by accident.
Hill-Trawick expected she'd work for the federal government until she retired. From 2010 to 2018, she moved between agencies as an auditor — from the Defense Contract Audit Agency and the U.S. Attorney's Office, to the U.S. Government Accountability Office and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Prior, she'd worked as a corporate accountant at CNN, Comcast and the Home Depot.
But she had the habit of quitting her job every couple of years, and after two years at the USPTO, the itch to explore the next frontier returned. This time, several of her friends had the shared idea of quitting their jobs and starting their own companies. With time on her hands at an unfulfilling job, she began helping her friends-turned-small-business-owners manage their books and taxes as a side hustle.
Little Fish Accounting was born in 2018 when Hill-Trawick realized she needed a business email address to manage her new clients. The name "Little Fish" was only meant to be a placeholder until she decided on another, but it stuck and has come to reflect her firm's clients: small professional service providers — or little fish — that bigger firms would typically turn away. She currently has more than 60 clients.
A year after inadvertently founding Little Fish, Hill-Trawick was ready to leave her government job to manage the firm full time. What she liked about helping her friends was seeing the whole picture in the numbers: "When you work at a corporation, and especially when you work in government, there's so much bureaucracy that you only see a piece," she said.
She quit her job during the 2019 tax season — a purposeful decision so that in case this venture didn't work out, she'd at least have enough business to get by until she found a new role.
Never having worked in a public firm before was both a challenge and an advantage. Hill-Trawick didn't have a framework for what might be considered a "normal" practice, but nor did she have to unlearn any of the traditional workplace rules and expectations.
For one, she is a proponent of remote work. "I worked out of a WeWork for a little bit because I felt like I should have an office, and then I was like, for what? Nobody really needs to see me. If you do, I will go for the day, but I don't need to sit in an office all day," she said.
The same philosophy goes for her employees who work remotely across the country: "I trust people to work. And if they don't do their jobs, I trust for that to show up. You're not a better employee because you're here. Either you're going to do it or you're not."
She started out by hiring contractors, but after about 18 months, she realized that they just didn't have enough "skin in the game" for the kind of work her firm does. Now she has five full-time employees: two account managers, a senior accountant, a chief of staff who runs admin and operations, and a connections manager who handles marketing and public relations.
"I knew we needed people who could keep the client experience part going because I was going to burn out on it. It couldn't be a contractor that could just stop in and talk to them every once in a while. I needed to have a consistent presence," she said.
Client experience is a top priority at Little Fish Accounting. Her client managers act like client liaisons, and rather than offer individual services, the firm provides holistic packages. The issue with individual offerings, Hill-Trawick said, is they allow clients to pick and choose what they think they need for the lowest price like a buffet, rather than allowing her to use her expertise and choose what's best for them.
The firm offers two service packages.
1. "The Tax Prep Suite"
- Year-round tax support;
- Filing 1099s for prior year;
- Filing business and personal annual, federal and state returns;
- Quarterly estimates and taxes; and
- Tax planning calls to discuss business changes that may impact client's tax liability.
2. "The Fractional CFO"
- Advisory support;
- Bookkeeping;
- Monthly financial reports;
- Annual tax returns and estimates; and
- Monthly calls to discuss budget, forecast and future planning.
"We're able to charge more and have deeper relationships with our clients, as opposed to it feeling like this buffet where you are a tax client, I did your tax return, have a nice day, we are done with you, move on," she said.
Naturally, this package-only approach results in fewer clients, but that is intentional. Hill-Trawick wants to stay small. It allows for flexibility and agility in entrepreneurship, lessens the workload for her employees and reduces the slam of the busy season.
"I ran a business that I would want to work at," she said. "I didn't start the accounting firm or run it any differently than I would have run any other business. If I was running a marketing agency or a design agency or a talent agency, I would have run it the same way. Accounting just happened to be the vehicle that we were using to help small businesses."
Of course, founding her firm wasn't without its challenges. The experience is an isolating one, she explained. Entrepreneurship rests entirely on your shoulders and, not having worked in public accounting before, she didn't have mentors or reliable resources to guide her.
Hill-Trawick says there are two big questions an accountant should ask themselves before starting their own firm. First, what do you want your life to look like?
"The kind of work you want to do is directly informed by the kind of people that you want to serve," she said. "If you know that you only want to serve nonprofits, the kind of work that you do is going to be directly related to what they do. You're not going to be the person that is going to be the sales tax guru, because they don't need that. They need people who are specific and understanding how to work with the board, how to prepare for an audit and how to do it."
Second, what do you want to be responsible for in the business?
"There's a difference between being the worker and being the manager. We know that when we work for people, but I think people forget that when they go to work for themselves," she said. "If you want to do the accounting, you're either going to have to hire people that manage it or set up systems that do it. And then your ability to do the work is bound by your capacity. You can only do so much."
Hill-Trawick emphasized that she is not the only one challenging the traditional model for accounting firms: "We have room for a lot of change. There's a lot that has been working for the people who have been keeping it this way for a very long time, and there's so much opportunity for new and different voices to make it successful and grow our industry and make it different."
She added, "I like breaking those rules."
This is the first installment of a new series on how accounting entrepreneurs launched their practices. Look for more
