QB Power Hour Podcast

02.17.26 Unfollow The Rules to Clone & Conquer: Discussions with Sharrin

• Dan DeLong

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Meet the new co-host of the QB Power Hour. Sharrin Fuller has built and sold 3 businesses and is now focusing on helping others build systems so scale, grow, or provide balance and boundaries to get more joy out of your firm. We'll discuss her journey and the life experiences that she's leveraged to help others.

QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for accountants, ProAdvisors, CPAs, bookkeepers and QuickBooks consultants presented by Dan DeLong and Sharrin Fuller who are very passionate about the industry, QuickBooks and apps that integrate with QuickBooks.

Earn CPE through Earmark: https://bit.ly/QBPHCPE

Watch or listen to all of the QB Power Hours at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/blog

Register for upcoming webinars at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/


00:00 Welcome to QB Power Hour + Meet Sharrin (Unfollow the Rules)
01:09 Show Logistics: Schedule, CPE, Slides & Resources
02:30 Poll Time: How Did You Find QB Power Hour? (and a few tech hiccups)
03:37 Intuit Intelligence Chat in QuickBooks: What It Is, Rollout & Pricing
06:03 Webinar Glitch Break: Multiple ‘Sharrins’ Join the Panel
07:17 Back on Track: How Intuit Intelligence Chat Works in the UI
09:41 Unfollow the Rules: Dan ‘Reads’ the Book (Speechify/Snoop) + Why It Clicked
10:59 Origin Story: The Paper Route and Learning Independence Early
16:01 Door-to-Door Sales Lessons: Timeshares/Kirby Vacuums and the ‘Show’
18:41 Finding Bookkeeping: Costco, Salon Ownership, and Building a Mobile Office Biz
21:30 Scaling Up: Fractional CFO Work, SaaS Startups, and Getting Acquisition Offers
22:59 Failure as Fuel: Big Mistakes, Mark Twain, and Trusting Your Gut
24:53 Growing Up Too Fast: Protecting Siblings & Learning the Hard Way
25:11 Curiosity & Devil’s Advocate Mindset (The “Don’t Touch the Stove” Lesson)
25:51 Reframing Failure: Motivation, Resilience, and Hitting the Goal
26:40 Entrepreneur Pressure + Sales Rejection: Getting Through the “No’s”
27:22 Burnout = Fear: Letting Go, Delegating, and the Green/Yellow/Red List
30:40 Designing Recovery Time: 3-Day Workweeks, Holiday Sabbaticals, and Mental Health
33:04 Building Sustainable Systems: Automate Everything That Isn’t Human
34:32 Clone & Conquer Framework: Document, Template, Measure, Automate (Don’t Throw People at It)
35:53 Right-Sizing the Team: Profit Over Headcount + When Automation Shouldn’t Replace the Core
39:42 Tech Evaluation at Conferences: Solve One Problem + Prove ROI (Stripe Example)
42:16 How the 3-Day Week Actually Works (and Handling the Eye Rolls)
43:53 Teaching Others + Community/Book Offer, Then Webinar Wrap-Up & What’s Next

Dan DeLong

Well, today, welcome everyone to Fat Tuesday's version of the QB Power Hour, where today we're gonna be talking with Sharrin. Sharrin has graciously accepted the, co-hosting duties of the QB Power Hour. so I wanted to talk about kind of her journey, to this point and how we can continue that journey, together. And so the title of your book to Clone and Conquer, which is also of your community that you're working with. And so we just kind of wanted to unpack a little bit about, and, and talk about Sharrin, on this wonderful Tuesday. we know each other and clearly we were gonna try to do this backwards, and that was a epic failure. I think. so Sharrin's Sharrin's bio slide is really what we're gonna be talking about here today. So we're not gonna hover over this because we've got, guided questions about all that.

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah, some QuickBooks stuff too. You guys stick around at least for the QuickBooks stuff.

Dan DeLong

if you're just joining us for the first time, I apologize. a little bit about the Q Power Hour. It's another Tuesdays, at noon Eastern, and, our channel on earmark is still up for the time being. If you do need some CPE credit on some of our historical ones. current webinars are not eligible for, CPE Credit. Somebody, oh wait, you said for Sharrin's epic, nightmare, nightmare in the chat.

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah, that's me

Dan DeLong

or someone else? I'm some other Sharrin said that I don't,

Sharrin Fuller

no, it was definitely me. I'm just saying what everybody's thinking.

Dan DeLong

but if you need to, view the PDFs of the slides, the past recordings, we have, qb power hour.com/resources, for that. today's, slides and replays. I'm gonna be putting that in the chat as well, so you can grab that, at your leisure. So today we're gonna be talking about, the Intuit News is gonna be, the Intuit intelligence, chat. There's been an announcement about the chat inside of QuickBooks called Intuit. Intelligence. So we'll talk a little bit about that. and then we'll, talk with Sharrin on unfollowing the rules to clone and conquer, where it's some of the history, the foundations of, that forged her future, the role of failure dealing with burnout and how she deals and builds sustainable systems. So let's launch that first poll question. this actually does have two questions because we all are also curious, where you first heard of the QB Power Hour webinar? Was it something, are you launching the poll question, Sharrin?

Sharrin Fuller

no, that's right. I'm sorry. I'm backwards today, guys. It's my Monday and I'm so backwards. Okay, there we go.

Dan DeLong

so we not

Sharrin Fuller

you wanna, and you're right, the handout and the link you gave is to the digits thing from last week. Just so you know. Alright, you guys. It's okay. Dan's already been pre Mardi Gras party partying, so that's why he made this one super easy.

Dan DeLong

Oh, you're right.

Sharrin Fuller

It's okay.

Dan DeLong

I didn't,

Sharrin Fuller

everyone's fine.

Dan DeLong

it's, it'll, it's in there. I just haven't saved it for some reason. Okay, so I'll get that while we're chatting.

Sharrin Fuller

There

Dan DeLong

So yeah, we are curious about, how you learned about, the QB power Hour so that we can be intentional in our focus, moving forward, which was one of the reasons that we were trying to do this. Switcheroo today, which went horribly awry. And while you're answering that, let's talk about the Intuit intelligence, chat. so basically what is occurring is this is already, live, all skews except Intuit account or Intuit Enterprise Suite, which is something a little backwards because usually the top of the line product gets all the goodies first, and then it just kind of trickles down to the other ones. so they are incorporating this in all QuickBooks Online. skews out of the gate except for Intuit Enterprise Suite. Sorry, I've been talking about Intuit Accountant Suite so much over the past four weeks. So, Sharrin, this was kind of what we were talking about at Intuit Connect, where this whole idea of you can ask your QuickBooks anything, and where there's gonna be like a, oh, wait a minute.

Sharrin Fuller

I have opinions. I used you guys. I won't get into it, but I did the A FW and the treasurer for the A FWA this year, and the books have not been done in a year. I got in, I was like, ah, QuickBooks, I got this. No problem. I have never wanted to just, I was yelling. My husband comes in, he goes, what are you yelling at? I'm like, gray box. It was so bad. I turned off everything smart. It was stupid. It was making more time. I had to turn it all off. I couldn't, it took more time. So I have zero faith whatsoever. In this, go ahead, Dan, tell us about these amazing new features at Intuit. Bring it to us.

Dan DeLong

Well, it's an interesting thought that, you experienced it and you immediately turned it off, right? Because, you experienced

Sharrin Fuller

Well, I tried. I tried.

Dan DeLong

You had expectation.

Sharrin Fuller

Well, I tried. You know, I'm very tech savvy. I'm super automation. I automate everything. But that was not it.

Dan DeLong

Where, and I guess, let me just kind of talk about what this is and really what it's not, is that what will ultimately occur is on your home screen, you'll have. What looks and appears like a chat GPT, question. Right. Where you can just say, ask me anything. it'll look very much like your chat GPT in QuickBooks online because it kind of is because as we talked about in the past, Intuit, wait, how did,

Sharrin Fuller

oh, hey Greg. Oh, this is this Greg. Okay, so Greg is logging in as me somehow. Hey Greg, you are now a co-host. We can see you did good as me. We need to demote, we need to demote the as Sharrin Fullers that don't say cohost because somehow four people are logged in as me, but I don't know. I wanna actually turn on their cameras and see who they are.

Dan DeLong

Right.

Sharrin Fuller

Greg, I'm turning off your camera.

Dan DeLong

How did, okay, so where are you? Where are you socializing your panelists link?

Sharrin Fuller

I don't even look, I'm telling you. And look who is telling me, right? Who just said that? Greg? Oh, that was Greg left to rejoined. He's still showing is me. That's so funny. There you guys, I know you can't see this and what we're laughing at, but I am in here 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 times as a co panelist, which means four of you are somehow logged in as me, which is the weirdest thing. I have a password. I have two fa, this is a glitch. I wanna turn off all those ca turn on all those cameras. It's, see who? It's no go away. I'm so sorry. I am so sorry guys.

Dan DeLong

what Intuit Intelligence Chat is supposed to be. so it's supposed to have this, ask me anything, on your homepage. and you'll see, this icon, this blue icon, indicating the Intuit intelligence chat, which looks very similar to the Intuit assist ai, which is the little, I don't know, five, five greater than symbols that are kind of spinning around each other. but the Intuit intelligence chat is the gradating blue with the eye somewhere embedded in inside of it. So if you are, seeing this, which I was looking for it for. I was digging through, through QuickBooks trying to find it, and I know I saw it, but I couldn't see it, where I, where I wanted to see it. So, as with most new things that come out, your new clients are gonna see this first before existing existing companies because of the way that things kind of roll out. But this is all live as of today. with regarding, this Intuit intelligence chat, the idea is that you're able to ask 25 questions per month. if you need to ask more questions than that, then they will charge you,$10 for a hundred questions. And I'm not sure what counts as a question, like if it's a follow up question or how that all works out. but it should open up a sidebar, so that you can have this, conversation going with your QuickBooks as well as the screen that you happen to be on, in case you're looking at a report or something along those lines. So look for that. but it's gonna have that icon, a gradating blue icon, not the Intuit assist, icon. So if you see that around, then that's what we're talking about. play around with it. You have 25 questions, to ask, each month. So let's get back to, unfollowing the rules to clone and conquer. So, Sharrin, so

Sharrin Fuller

well Sharrin there four of us. There are four of us here.

Dan DeLong

Yes. the Sharrin that has her camera on. I'll ask you.

Sharrin Fuller

Five. There are five of us. There's not one of them. Maybe more, more entertaining, but go ahead.

Dan DeLong

now I, as I was reading your book, I ultimately had, Snoop Dogg, read the book to me, through my Speechify, which, I would highly recommend, as I'm not a great reader, audible is typically the way that I consume, books. But unfortunately Sharrin didn't have, it on Audible yet. so I wanted to find a way to have somebody read it to me that didn't require them reading the book. I found this application called Five. I'm

Sharrin Fuller

You're gonna have to gimme some snippets of that for social media. With something like where that's like super professional, like, I wanna hear Snoop talk about rippling or send me to Apple. Do it myself.

Dan DeLong

Yeah, yeah. It's, now he doesn't,

Sharrin Fuller

Dan, I will eventually put it in Audible with my own voice so I can read it in my sarcastic tone.

Dan DeLong

I think that's a splendid idea because I love when, you know, there's books about people that are read by that person and, and to have you being the voice behind the audible part of your book, I think is a great idea. Yeah, but as I was reading it, I mean, I was

Sharrin Fuller

sorry.

Dan DeLong

Immediately captivated by, we're kind of like the same person. I mean, we do look alike, right? I mean, we're,

Sharrin Fuller

Dan, you're a lot cooler than I am. I'm gonna tell you that

Dan DeLong

people would, confuse us if we were standing next to each other. But,

Sharrin Fuller

hundred percent

Dan DeLong

at the age of 10, I started a paper route. so talk about, the whole paper route thing and what you ended up learning, with regards to having your own paper route and why you started.

Sharrin Fuller

Oh man.

Dan DeLong

Paper.

Sharrin Fuller

So I started my own paper route because my dad and mom got divorced. My dad got remarried. We had yours, mine, and ours, and there wasn't money. And I wanted my own money. What I learned at 10 years old. Is that if I have money, I could do whatever I want. I don't have to go ask to go in places. So I thought, okay, what can I do? Well, at 10 years old, you've got one option paper route, which is slave labor back in 1990. By the way, you don't get a day off. You have to find somebody to do it for you, and it is every stinking day, regardless. They don't care. So, by the way, slave labor, I think I've made$50 a month for working every day of the month, two to three hours a day. But again, that taught me how it feels, first of all, to have my own money, to budget, my own money to buy what I want. Second to be in charge of my own destiny, right? Like, I had to wait. There was nobody, the papers got dropped off on my lawn and I had to take care of it. If I don't do it, I didn't have somebody behind me barking. I just had to be motivated enough to do it. it taught me that. And then as you read, you had to collect the money. You had to go door to door. You had to ask for money. You had to be responsible for, if somehow one of your butthead friends followed behind you when you're delivering papers and threw a paper on the roof that comes back at you, right? Yeah. So you learn all those things right away. And I was addicted from that point forward. I was addicted to making money. I was addicted to being my own boss. I was addicted to setting my own rules. I was addicted to finding the best way to do things that other people weren't doing. So that's what I learned at 10.

Dan DeLong

Yeah. And, there was so much independence, but also dependence. Mm-hmm. That came with that. Right. you had deadlines. Yeah. Right. Like if you were late, right. Because you had to get it there by five o'clock if it was an afternoon, and hopefully you didn't have a morning paper route because then you had to be there before school and eight 8:00 AM or something like that. especially on the Sunday, which was huge. You know, these huge monstrosity Sunday, Sunday papers with all the comics.

Sharrin Fuller

And what city did you live in that you delivered papers

Dan DeLong

it was the paper was the reding times. So it was,

Sharrin Fuller

yeah. But what Reding California

Dan DeLong

red Pennsylvania.

Sharrin Fuller

Oh, terrible. See, I was at least in Southern California,

Dan DeLong

right?

Sharrin Fuller

Like we didn't have weather. I had like rainy days. It was a little bit cold in the winter, and of course it was the afternoon route, but on the weekends it was 7:00 AM six to 7:00 AM And for those of you who used to get a physical paper, which is probably most of us here, right? you wait, you open up your doors so your screen doors open so you can hear that funk, so you can go grab the paper, because that was our social media people, so,

Dan DeLong

mm-hmm.

Sharrin Fuller

I feel like not enough people are reminiscing about the newspaper in the webinar chat. I feel like I'm reminiscing right now. And anyhow, keep going down. Keep talking about me.

Dan DeLong

that was the thing is that it stopped and started with you. I had a paper route at the time where the particular newspaper didn't have an insert stuffer, so we would have to do all the stuffing

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah.

Dan DeLong

Of the inserts.

Sharrin Fuller

The Abby, it came in a separate thing. So as you fold, you had to put the ads in, right? Yeah. And we were responsible for buying our own bags and rubber bands.

Dan DeLong

Yeah,

Sharrin Fuller

you had to pay for that bag. I mean, it was cheap, but we were responsible. They didn't supply those, right.

Dan DeLong

one of the lessons that I learned was, you know, as you were talking about collecting, right? That's where You built your relationships with your customers, is that Absolutely face-to-face, contact with them and, as it would've been whole lot easier for them to pay at the office. Right. To pay for their newspaper instead of waiting for this, you know, 10, 11-year-old to come around with a change, coaching machine. I don't know what those things are called.

Sharrin Fuller

I had a fan packed that I threw the checks in.

Dan DeLong

Yeah. you took checks?

Sharrin Fuller

Well, yeah. I mean, it was 1990, Dan, debit cards weren't a thing then. It was just checks and cash. Credit

Dan DeLong

cards were, but you had to know, you had to know who preferred. To be collected at the beginning of the month. At the end of the month, weekly, monthly, whatever. you had to make all these little notes on, on your little, see

Sharrin Fuller

that's where my efficiency came to place. I went door to door one day with my papers one day I put a thing in and said, I collect on this day and this day between this time and this time, if you cannot be here, please leave your check under the doormat. That's where I was fishing.'cause I'm like, I'm not doing this back and forth. I will be here these two hours. Aside from that, you mail that sucker in, but you wanted to go door to door because when you show up with little pigtails and they see that their newspaper delivery girl is 10-year-old with a pink bike and a little basket, they kind of feel really bad and they give you extra money.

Dan DeLong

Right. keep the change

Sharrin Fuller

a dollar, but a dollar was a lot. I mean, we're getting paid 50 bucks a month. So a dollar was a lot.

Dan DeLong

Exactly. and then after that, you got a job selling Kirbys. which

Sharrin Fuller

Curvy vacuums.

Dan DeLong

Curvy vacuums, which I was, well,

Sharrin Fuller

it was timeshare before I sold. Timeshare before Kirbys, Kirbys door to door.

Dan DeLong

But one of the things that you learned, like I sold water treatment, which is essentially a similar thing. Like we had

Sharrin Fuller

making people's lives better. We just for givers from the beginning.

Dan DeLong

Well, one of the main, thing that resonated with me as I was reading this chapter of your Life is that the companies were similar in that it was a presentation, it was a show. Like they would meet beforehand, have a rah rah, sales meeting. and for us it was, go give them a$10,000 show for what it is. And all it was, was a presentation that You simply just had to follow the presentation. Talk about, your experience with Kirby, which I just love saying that Kirby sucks is a good thing.

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah, it is. So it also has a patent I learned, so I learned more about that damn vacuum that I know about anything else. But yeah, so how we would get, we would go in, in the morning and they had this book of jingles to all sorts of like mariat little lamb jingle bells, but in Kirby, and we would sing three jingles every morning and they'd go, let's go, let's go. They'd tell, give us our addresses for the day that we'd go to and we'd go. And our thing was, if you go to the mall and you apply to win the motorcycle, the car, and it says backup win$500 of groceries. No, those, those things are actually, you know, no one's gonna win that. I don't think it was regulated back then. Those are actually going to timeshare Kirby. So we would get those, the appointment setters would book the appointment. Keep in mind I was also 18 and super cute at the time. I should not be going door to door with a vacuum to houses that I don't know alone, but I did. so yeah, you'd go up and you'd, you'd go knock on the door and you're like, hi, I'm here to clean your carpet.'cause they had a carpet clean attachment. So it was totally a, a, a, a gimmick to get your foot in the door. And they would watch me as I cleaned the room of carpet. And then I also did a dust mite on their bed to show them how disgusting their bed was. I sold like 25 vacuums in two months. I was a killer, but I don't know that I ever got paid. That place, I think ended up going under, they gave me a vacuum. Oh no. They're like, this vacuum is what you get. This is a$3,500 vacuum. I'm like, what do I do? Chop this up and pay my rent with it. I was 18 so I didn't last very long there. But two months door to door, Monday through Friday alone, cleaning carpets in people's houses with a Kirby vacuum was my life. Until I nanny, and then I'm like, maybe I like to, you know, selling vacuums better than children just to, so talk

Dan DeLong

talk about the transition from these jobs where you're doing it on yourself to how you got involved with bookkeeping and accounting.

Sharrin Fuller

So, as you can tell, I've always been kind of my own thing. So I, I tried to, I tried to work for the man many a times, and I worked for Costco for a while. I opened up Costco's, I traveled. Sandy says, this reminds me of an I Love Lucy episode and I don't know how to feel about this. I'm gonna assume that I am Ricky and you are Lucy, or I'll be Ethel.

Dan DeLong

got a lot of in the door.

Sharrin Fuller

Oh, yes. So I worked for Costco. I opened up a bunch of Costcos. I would travel with them. I worked in membership marketing, and what I learned at Costco is everything is by seniority. I didn't like working for co corporations because all these people that were just dumb dumbs, who no of ever listening, they would get the promotion because they've been there 10 years longer than me. And I'm like, but I, I teach them how to do their job. It was terrible. It was terrible. So I ended up getting my manicurist license. I'm actually a licensed manicurist in three states. Ended up buying a salon. When I bought my salon. That's where I'm like, oh, look at this. I have employees, I have payroll, I have taxes. What does this mean? I knew nothing. I'm just like, oh, I'll just own the salon that I do my nails and it'll be smarter. I'm here anyways. Right. That's just an industry that I just don't even want a part of. Anyhow, got divorced, sold it, moved to California again, I was in Washington at the time. and then I, I got back into computer cells and then I hated that. Oh no, there's a story behind that, but it's not my book. I'll tell you later down. ended up, operations manager for cold storage, company. And again, I didn't know what I was doing. A lot of these times I faked it till I made it. And when I was there, I did everything, books, operations, everything. And the owner came to me one day and he is like, Hey, I'm gonna be. retiring, I'm letting this all go. And I was like, oh my God, what am I gonna do? I can't go back to working for the man. I don't do good. So each of the people were like, I would love to hire you, but I only got like five hours a week worth of work. And I'm like, cool. So I started my first company, a simple office solution, and my tagline was your mobile office manager.'cause I lived in San Diego and I did not want to sit behind a desk. I wanted to work. When I wanted to work, I was 25. my whole goal was to work as least amount as possible, go to many bars as possible, right? I'm 25, and this new job condone that. So on Mondays I'd go drive around everybody's office, pick up their stuff. I'd still LogMeIn on their computers. I'd go home and within the next week, I'd have it already. Go back, file, print out the checks, go home and do the work. So I kind of just learned, I taught myself, I just knew I had to do it. And then just as I grew in my career working with tax accountants, CPAs, going, through audits, all these things, I just picked it up really, really, really, really easy. Keep in mind, there's no school in any of this. I decided school was paid high school, and I couldn't do it, and I was too impatient. that's where I ended up until I grew it to a fractional. Started from office management and bookkeeping, light bookkeeping to fractional CFO controller services. Start, in the VC backed, startups specializing in software as a service. That's, quite the journey.

Dan DeLong

You built something that somebody else wanted. and then you ended up finding someone to acquire it but that was kind of like by accident, right? I mean, you weren't looking.

Sharrin Fuller

Well, I didn't know I had any, I mean, I worked in m and a a lot because a lot of my clients were like I said, VC backed startups and they all have investors and their whole idea is to sell or be acquired. So I sat through so many acquisitions. In that world. And so I knew everything up to the point of the sell, and I was on it, right. I was on it perfect. we would just sell through due diligence. It would take like no time. But I never knew what happened after the fact, which kind of gets me to where I am today. I didn't know. I honestly was just getting ready to write something up to where I will the company to my employees and my husband still get some sort of salary in case I passed away. And then I got three offers for my company in one year and I was like, wait a second, this is a thing people wanna buy what I've created, which was just crazy to me.

Dan DeLong

yeah. And there, and there's a good chapter, Sorry. there's a good chapter About this whole period of, the first acquisition that you went through for your firm mm-hmm. Of SOS mm-hmm. the learnings that you had with that. and ultimately you have this really great, section where you talk about the failures that you had.

Sharrin Fuller

Oh, I list seven big ones, I list seven big failures, like big ones. Like what was one of'em? Like 30 some thousand dollars. And then we got the guy, he had to go bankrupt'cause we had to turn him to the IRS. It was crazy.

Dan DeLong

But, I love this quote from Mark Twain, which I assume is from Mark Twain, but that's what AI said. is that good decision?

Sharrin Fuller

Michael Mark, mark Twain, dash, Michael Scott.

Dan DeLong

the good decisions come from, Experience, but experience comes from making bad decisions.

Sharrin Fuller

Absolutely.

Dan DeLong

I remember, someone, I was working with them for adding Intuit. They sent me a care package, because of the help that I gave them. they appreciated it. And I said, as long as it's not picking, I don't care what you send me. but it was kind of like a Spencer's gift and I opened it up and the first thing was a refrigerator magnet that said, always make new mistakes. And it really resonated with me because, mistakes are okay and failures are okay. As long as you're making new ones, then you're not just repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again.

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah. Well that's insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Don't do that.

Dan DeLong

so the, some of the takeaways that I saw from your book is, learning from your failures. you have this innate gut instinct that, you follow and that has served you so well. did that come from somewhere where you are able, what kind of guided your. mindset as far as like trusting in your gut and learning from your failures?

Sharrin Fuller

So I'm the oldest of five. And from a divorced home where when my dad married my stepmom, my stepmom sucks. so we were kind of led, I was led to take care of everybody. So I kind of had to be an adult from a young age. And what I learned is I was protective of my brothers and sisters. So instead of them going do something, I'd go and do it. Right. And I would know, okay, don't do that again. Don't you just saw me do that? Don't do that. That was a bad idea. And it kind of made me think about, do you remember those? They used to show like those lifetime shows that were like teaching kids what not to do. And I remember there was this one about touching the stove and they're like, don't touch this stove. Maybe it was a commercial item. Know I was young. It wasn't the one with the pan that was a cartoon. And anyhow, it something, something triggers my mind about touching a stove. And they said, don't touch stove, don't touch stove. And the kid touched stove, burned their hand. They're like, I told you not to touch the stove. And I was like, yeah, but the kid was curious. And I've always been genuinely curious. I've been a anybody that knows me, I, devil's advocate, right? You give me a situation and I immediately play the opposite side regardless. just'cause I wanna know what the full and then I can form an opinion. So it's kind of where it came from. But if you fail, failure's normal. It's life. It's how you learn. It's how we grow, right? It's if you keep going, if you get back up, just get back up and don't do it again. You just learned that didn't work or maybe it sort of worked and you did something. Just keep getting back up. And I've always been a very motivated person, self-motivated. I don't, not that it's anything bad, but I've never needed Tony Robbins or anything like this. I've just always been, let's go, let's do this. So failure honestly motivated me. Now I'm like, I say a lot of times people hear me say, I don't fail. And that doesn't mean that I haven't done something wrong and learned. It means I don't see my failures as fails. I see them as growing experiences. So I don't fail. If I have a goal, I will get to that goal one way or another. I will trip and fall, bust my knees 20 times, getting there, but I'm in a bandage. Get back up and keep going. I'm getting to that goal. And I think that's where it's scary as entrepreneurs, business owners, it's scary.'cause when you fail, everything's on you and everything drops and there's no one there to help you get back up. But you just gotta do it.

Dan DeLong

yeah, like I, I remember from my, going door to door experience, we categorized everything. they weren't home. they said no, we called them rtls. They refused to listen. but it was, the whole idea was, you gotta get to the no through the nos in order to get to the S's. because if everybody said yes, then everybody would be doing it and it wouldn't be as difficult So you gotta get through those stumbling blocks in order to move forward. Right. Yeah. so let's talk about burnout, because you had some, stories dealing with burnout and being overwhelmed because all this pressure of being, you know, the buck stops with Sharrin. Yeah. talk about some of those, experiences.

Sharrin Fuller

Well, first and foremost, on Thursday I'm actually doing a rippling HR round table about burnout, and it's free. So if anybody wants to join that, go look it up. It's all over my social media. It'll be a good one. burnout comes from being scared. That's all I can attribute it to. You're too scared to let go and you burn out'cause you've got too much on your plate. You can't get it done. You're overwhelmed. And the way to fix that is to get rid of that overwhelm right. To hand it off. But why don't you hand it off because you don't have anybody hand it off to, you don't know who to hand it off to. If I hand it off, I'm gonna lose control. So burnout is completely aligned with being scared. And that's where, you have to, when it comes to burnout, you have to see what's on your plate and decide what you wanna do. That's what I like to do. Like I sometimes the easiest way for us is make a list and then a green. I green light everything that I wanna do. I don't wanna give this up. I love it. Anything I would do if I have to, but I'd rather not yellow anything. I hate red. the yellow and red are the things I get off my plate. why do I wanna do'em? Let's figure out a way to not do'em anymore. Because even if you have a lot on your plate, but you're doing only the pieces that you love, you burn out less'cause the stress is not there. You're excited about what you're doing and you feel good about it. You're not, and then you don't have the stress of not getting things done. So that's how I kind of started doing that. And that's how I prioritize what I am getting rid of, what I'm getting off my plate, what I'm handing off. Of course, Dan, in my clone and conquer hub community, I tell you exactly how to do this simply, which I will make sure we can that link to today. But it's not hard. it's mental. You have to get outta your own head and you have to let go, but you have to have a way that you can still oversee it.

Dan DeLong

I think that's the biggest challenge for a lot of people. because I was burned out the last three or four years working at Intuit because I was met with over and over again, you know, people that I would escalate things to or pass things off to, and it wouldn't happen. And then inevitably they would come back to me and then I would have to kind of try to answer for somebody else's shortcomings or failures, right? so then, you know, the answer to me was, Hey, well, I'll just make sure that I do that too, you know, and then you end up having all of this burden and then at some point you just get, it's too much, too exhausted about that.

Sharrin Fuller

And then you hate what you do. You hate what you do and if you wake up, so I forgot what I was saying. Burnout. What was I talking?

Dan DeLong

Burden not, not trusting others.

Sharrin Fuller

Oh,

Dan DeLong

it may come back.

Sharrin Fuller

I, I'm a DH ADHD For anybody who does not get it, you only have to talk to me or sit here and watch me for 10 minutes. I have the wiggles. I can't sit still. My brain is going a million miles a minute. I'm not on caffeine, guys. I don't drink coffee. This is just me. I'm not on stimulants. I'm just very high functioning and my brain's going a million miles a minute. I'm also a captain, save a person in need, and so I like to do everything. So I. I was running three companies. I'm doing the A FWA, I'm chairing the Women Who Count Conference. So by the time November comes and it's a holidays, I'm Burt, but I'm Burt. Like I just don't wanna work anymore. I wanna sit on my couch. So I only work three days a week and in those three days I am so productive'cause I have four days off to do whatever. And I also take off from, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving till January 10th ish, every year I try to unplug and the goal is there is to unplug, remove myself from the situation, not worry about it if I didn't right, it should be able to run without me, which it has for three, four. I've been doing this for about five years. In fact, my team's like, get the hell out of here over the holidays. We don't want you here.'cause for some reason I just wanna sit at home and bake and decorate. And it's weird'cause I'm not really, I am that person, but I don't like people to know. Anyhow, so how I decide. If I love what I'm doing or if I'm really burnt out, or if I just needed a break, is the last week or so coming back from vacation or that it's a sabbatical, I check how I feel. Am I dying to get in and start organizing or am I dreading every minute of it? There's only been once that I was dreading and I did not wanna go. I cried. I didn't wanna come back, and that's when I changed everything and how I was working. And I made a list. Why do I not wanna go back every other year? I miss my team. I miss everything. I'm so excited. I've got all these great ideas that allows me to my sabbaticals. Less about burnout and more about personal health. Like mental health. I like over the holidays just sitting on my couch and eating too much. Mint chocolate, dark chocolate, peppermint bark, and, and watching crappy hallmark movies. I love it. It's like my favorite thing to do. And just staring at the Christmas lights. And I decided that that's important to me, that I would rather have two months off over the holidays than longer vacations during the year. And then, of course, well, I have four day work, four day weekends every week. So that also helps out. But that is what I needed, right? That is what I needed in my life to be high functioning. Go, go, go for three days and then unplug. it works. It wasn't overnight. It took time. It took failure, right? It took a good team, it took efficiency and process. But now it's what I do. Like, like I said, today's my Monday, tomorrow's my Wednesday, and then Thursday's my Friday.

Dan DeLong

Not a bad idea. All right, so let's launch that second poll question. I'll do that since I had it up in front of you. Do you ever feel overwhelmed with burnout? While you guys are answering that, let's talk about some of the ways that you helped, in your practices build sustainable systems because you understood absolutely, early on, from the paper route to the Costco to, Kirby, the framework of building those sustainable systems. So what were some of your key learnings,

Sharrin Fuller

through

Dan DeLong

that?

Sharrin Fuller

So, I'm a very organized, structured person. I call myself Martha Stewart. If you open my cupboards, they're those weird ass like you see on Pinterest, right? I'm just very organized in everything I do. Dan, you've really only been working with me. for QuickBooks Power, since January. And he will probably tell you that I'm like, automate, automate, automate, automate. So. Everything for me is a list, a to-do list, and then from a to-do list, it's a priority. And then from the priority it's a like, why am I doing this? Basically, if it's not human contact, I try to automate it. and that, that's where I go. So I am now on my, I just sold my second, my second firm. I've built three accounting firms. I, sold the first one in 2021. stayed on bad idea, left, started two more mer, bought out my two partners, merged the two together, and then just sold that firm again. So now I'm done. I'm not gonna have an accounting firm anymore. I'm just gonna help accounting firm owners a hundred percent. So everything I'm doing in there is solving. So now I'm, I'm these people that come to me most nine times outta 10 have that. I'm stuck. I'm stuck. I'm stuck. I don't know how to get out of this whole, I can't figure things out. And that's what we solve for. What is it? Is it a people? You don't know what to hand off. You've got too much on your plate. And that's where we kind of go through my clone and conquer process is, is what I have. So it's always gonna be, are you documented? Are you templated? Is it measurable? Can it be automated? Does this need a person? Because a lot of time, what happens is when you're burnt out and you don't have processes, you throw people at it. You hire people to do things to, they're not you. Yes. They're never gonna run your business the way you do. Or they'd be running their own business nine times outta 10. You have to, you're setting people up to fail and you're losing money'cause you're bringing people on. They're failing. They don't know what they're doing, so they're upset, they're not getting the job done, and then you're upset with them because you're paying them and now you have to micromanage them and then do the job anyways. And this is the rollercoaster or the reoccurring issue that we have, and we solve for it. That's the thing. I want everybody to work three days a week and automate everything and have, don't measure the success of your company by how many employees you have. If you are measuring the success of your company by the amount of employees you have, you're doing it wrong. It needs to be by your net profit and the least amount of employees because there's so much technology available. That's my opinion. Right?

Dan DeLong

Yeah. People are not processes, and that's what a lot of people do or a lot of companies will do, is they'll throw a person at a process because they need, they don't want to do it. but your process is to find those things that are being done by people and what can be done, through technology. and you were talking about that in the book where, you were at conferences and people were, so impressed. Yeah. When you would say the number of people on your team, like that's a litmus test of how big you are. But if you've got 12 people doing things that could be done by Zapier, then that's really not an effective use of those people.

Sharrin Fuller

No. And like I said, they're gonna be replaced and you're profit. So when it comes to people, I think the hardest thing I found is I grew a team to like 15 and I thought, I'm so successful. So look at the Brady Bunch on my Zoom. But then what I found is most of those people were causing more work for other people or just doing the work of making sure other people got things done. When I looked at it like that, it's hard. You get into this emotional place of these are people and I don't just wanna fire'em. And I get that. but I also have to think about the company and the clients who need you. And of course the few employees that are detrimental to the business. I gotta make sure that they're okay. So by removing the ones that are holding up these people that are actually the heart and soul of the company, I am supporting them more. That was what was important. So kind of a devil's advocate way of looking at trimming down the team, which is not always easy.

Dan DeLong

and just because it can be automated doesn't mean it should be automated, right. Because

Sharrin Fuller

that is true.

Dan DeLong

There is a'cause,

Sharrin Fuller

there's

Dan DeLong

a timeline.'cause one of the things that I picked up on the Zappos, book, I can't remember the subtitle of like, you know, creating Happiness or something. That one of the core things they talked about was, you know, don't outsource your core. Something that is your core competency. Right? Yeah, no, like if you sell shoes, don't outsource the shipping of your shoes or don't outsource the, you know, because they are not going to, they're not as vested as

Sharrin Fuller

It's definitely quality. And, and when we, so last year, was it last year, year before I had 11 people, 12 people on my team again.'cause I was throwing people at it'cause I didn't wanna do it anymore. You guys, I lost my passion for running an accounting firm. Probably when I started the second and third accounting firm. So I was only working like five hours a week on my business, not in it. so I was hiring people to do things that honestly I just had to take. A step back and immerse myself in it for three months and I fixed it all. But I let go of everybody but two, two people. And before I let everybody go, those two people, they've been with me eight years across many companies. they were working 50 plus hours a week. I let everybody go. Same amount of clients, more revenue now. They were only working 30 because we were able to condense it down so much and then we were able to make it to where this business was just extremely profitable. And I was able to sell it and get out.'cause like I said, my passion is just not in running the accounting firm anymore. It's helping people run that accounting firm. Because if you run an accounting firm right, it's a cash cow. It really is. You can set it and forget it for a lot of it.'cause like I said, we had about a hundred clients and I only worked five hours a week, and there were three of us. The rest was automation, tech process templates. it's completely possible. And I can tell you that it is because when you read my book, you'll see that I was. Not practicing what I was teaching. I remember I was sitting in an intuit session and I was teaching, and a girl said, Hey, you know, she'd been in all my sessions and she's like, I put this and this into place and it works. And I was sitting there, I was like, I have all these employees. I'm not practicing what I preach. What the heck is wrong with me? So I went home and I'm like, Sharrin, be your own client. And I started doing everything in my checklist, everything that I said. I'm like, oh, look at Lisa. I know I'm not full of crap. So it worked.

Dan DeLong

and one of the parts, this is cute, You have five questions that you ask when you are evaluating new technology. So let's kinda talk through this. This is great advice for somebody who's going to accounting conferences or walking the exhibition hall where You know, they have the, Hey, come play with the puppies, or, go into the rage cage

Sharrin Fuller

So the problem is as people go in this, it gets overwhelmed. you get overwhelmed. So my suggestion when you're going, especially for new technology, solve for one thing, you may have 10 things that are, you wanna solve for, and you will, but when you go into this situation, maybe take notes, but try to only solve one. Otherwise you're gonna feel, again, burnt out and underwater. I'm solving for 10 things. You can't, you can't do it all at once. Bringing on technology is such a, it's, it's a, it, it takes a lot of work. It takes, you have to you and you can't just set it and forget it. You have to stay on top of it.'cause as the technology gets smarter. Loopholes that you made to make the technology work change, right? That happens quite often. but I always say find the one thing. What are you solving for when you go to a conference? Or what is the one thing you're solving for You should have somewhat of a framework, solve for that one thing. And then after you solve for the one thing, solve the next, I say that. Lightly because depending on what you're solving for, it may matter what other things that you're solving for because of how they work together. But for the most part, get that one thing off your plate and then yes, you can add an ROI to it let me give one example. We had a bookkeeper, we were hiring interns to do all of our Stripe Journal entries at the end of the month for our clients. it is just how it was for a long time, And some of the software out there was really expensive. Well, then I found a codi and most of our clients, we have like 50 clients on there. and I think our bill every month is like a hundred dollars because they're free up to a certain amount. And now that the journal entries get put in daily, right, we don't have to have, whereas I was paying that bookkeeper$800 a month to enter in all these journal entries.'cause it was very time consuming. Well now I pay a hundred dollars less but we, you know, it just saying it was ROI and now we add on more and more and more clients to it and we don't have to, it doesn't take any more work. Takes 10 seconds on the onboarding.

Dan DeLong

Yeah. So that scalability factor of, well, what did we useful if it doubles Right. We, you cannot say that to a person. Right. Because a person doing these things is the same amount of time is gonna take Yes. For, you know, x amount for, you know, however many people, they have to do it for. Right. So technology is a great leverage of scalability. so you mentioned all the time that you have this three day work week, right? Yeah. And, you know, what is typical reaction to, to folks when, when you say, I, I do. Only work three days a week. Is it, is it a real, you know, what about Monday?

Sharrin Fuller

a lot of eye rolls, a lot of judgment and eye rolls.'cause they think I'm doing it to be like, I only work and I'm not doing it that way. I'm not that person. I'm very funny. I'm very snarky and sarcastic, but I'm not doing it to make anybody feel bad. I want it to be motivating. I wanna say, here's my stories of all the ridiculous I've done I found a way to fix it if I did it. You can do it. Like read my book if my whole book is, if I did it, you can do it. And that sounds very motivating, but it is kind of the idea, right? it's not hard. It really wasn't hard. I first went down to four days a week. I'm like, I'm not working Fridays anymore. And I got to a point, I'm like, Ugh, just don't wanna work. I hate waking up Mondays. I just don't like it. I don't like Mondays and going to work. Mondays, I just, I'm done. So then I'm like, I'm gonna try to not work Mondays. And it took a little bit for first while I work half day on Mondays, and then sometimes I'd have to jump back in, but nine times outta 10, I, if I do work on either of those days, I'm doing stuff for like the A FWA or women who count. It's volunteer stuff. So it's not really work, but, I try not to,'cause my brain's just not in it anymore. My brain's like, I tried to do a call over the weekend and I was like, I just can't,'cause I just don't want to. I'll talk to you on Tuesday, like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Those are my work days. I'll work long hours if I have to. I prefer not to. I like to do eight, but if I have to work longer on those days, I don't care. My brain's in it. The other four, it's not So,

Dan DeLong

so all of your learnings has turned into, The clone and conquer method. So, so let's talk about Yep. talk about this, how you teach others.

Sharrin Fuller

Yep.

Dan DeLong

to, be like Sharrin.

Sharrin Fuller

It's just, honestly, it's documentation templating, and repeating it like you have to, there's certain steps you have to have. It's not hard. I teach you a way to do it once. Document it correctly, template it to where you can then hand it off to anybody that comes on. That's a very simple step. But a lot of the things we're doing in the hub is I'm just solving. And right now, since it's newer, there's about 50 members in there right now. I have a lot of content that we're uploading, but I'm solving for anything anyone asks. So someone's like, Hey, Sharrin, how do I do this? I solve it. I just solve it for you. because that's, that's just all I'm doing now. But I wanted to offer everybody who's here is, my, my, community, my hub is free through the end of March and anybody who joins today will send you my book as well. So if you wanted my book, go ahead. Oh, there you go. You just put it in,

Dan DeLong

put the link in there. I'll,

Sharrin Fuller

I it's on the slide. I'll personally send you the book from my house and I'll even sign it. but anyhow, I will, I'll, I will send that over. And I wanna help people. I want everybody to work three days a week. I, when everybody goes to conferences, I don't want to see anybody not be able to go to a vendor event or the after party.'cause they have to go back to the room and work on account that you just, there's just, there's a way out of it. There's a way. If I can do it, you can do it.

Dan DeLong

Alright, we'll launch our last poll question. Was it useful?

Sharrin Fuller

Please don't hurt my feelings. Guys, I'm reading this. Was this useful? I'm watching.

Dan DeLong

I thought it was, I thought it was a good idea, to, you know, to really get an understanding of, of, of you as a person. I mean, if anyone reads your book, I mean, you really get a, a, a good understanding as to

Sharrin Fuller

behind the hard chocolate shell. I try to keep over my, my

Dan DeLong

right, your

Sharrin Fuller

standing coating, emotional, my empathetic insights that just wants to help everybody. I know. It's, it's a thing. Oh, three of you suck. I'm just saying it. Three of you. I hope that was a joke

Dan DeLong

we appreciate you, sticking through, our challenges that we had this morning, launching the webinar running a little bit late. those are the challenges of having a live webinar. but next time we'll be, one of the things that Sharrin is helping me do is we're creating categories of things at the QB power hour. So we are going to, be doing, a series and we have been doing a series of quarterly, Intuit updates and those types of things. But now we're kind of putting a name to it and we're gonna be calling it the open tab. this is the quarterly open tab of the hodgepodge of Intuit news and, common questions that we see in the Facebook group. so we'll be talking about that next time on the QB Power Hours. We appreciate you, joining us, today. Yep. Sharrin, lovely, to see you and lovely to, get to. Thanks for having

Sharrin Fuller

me, Dan.

Dan DeLong

Right.

Sharrin Fuller

Hey, and everybody, if there's something you would like us to hear or you wanna hear about,'cause we are segmenting, we're gonna start doing The grass is greener and talking to other programs outside of QuickBooks. But if there's something you really wanna hear, throw it in the, in the Facebook group, or message down our eye personally. And we will, we'll make it happen. We're working on this year's content right now, and we wanna make sure that it's valuable to you. yeah, so let us know.

Dan DeLong

Well, hopefully everybody has a great, fat Tuesday. if you're eating fos knocks or, whatever you do to celebrate, fat Tuesday, and we will see you in a couple weeks on the QB Power Hour. Hope everybody has a great day.