Episode 18

February 12, 2024

Why Fear the IRS? Clearing Money Misconceptions with Keila Hill-Trawick

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In this episode, Amber Cabral sits down with Keila-Hill Trawick, CEO of Little Fish Accounting as they take a deep dive into something

In this episode of Guilty Privilege, host Amber Cabral speaks with Keilah Hill-Trawick, founder of Little Fish Accounting. They discuss the privilege of making the jump from corporate to entrepreneurship and the importance of using privilege to make a positive impact. Keilah shares her expertise in accounting, emphasizing the need for small businesses to understand their numbers and make strategic decisions. She also addresses common fears and misconceptions about taxes and the IRS, providing practical tips for staying organized and prepared. The conversation delves into the challenges and lessons of entrepreneurship, highlighting the value of building a supportive network. Keilah encourages listeners to embrace their privileges and use them to uplift others. Overall, this episode offers valuable insights into accounting, entrepreneurship, and leveraging privilege for success and impacting an exciting journey from the corporate world to the world of entrepreneurship.

But hold on, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill accounting chat. It’s a fresh and candid exploration that not only dispels common accounting myths but also emphasizes the profound importance of truly understanding your business’s financial data. And let’s not forget the best part – they kick that fear of the IRS right out the door. Keila’s passion for helping small businesses get their financial ducks in a row shines through, and her unique accounting approach promises not just financial stability but also the priceless freedom to live life on your own terms.

Amber and Keila also open up about their journeys and the privileges they’ve encountered along the way. They both agree that there’s no need to feel guilty about certain advantages, especially when it comes to the unique way their minds work and the incredible opportunities they’ve had. Together, they stress the importance of seeking support, nurturing collaboration, and learning from others as vital tools for navigating the exciting yet challenging path of entrepreneurship. Get ready for an episode that is packed with insights that will shed light on the profound value of recognizing and embracing your privileges as a springboard for achieving remarkable success.

Key Points

  • Starting your business offers freedom, but it’s a journey with rewards and challenges

  • It’s all about finding and keeping the right team to keep your business on track

  • Accounting empowers your financial goals and business growth

  • Plan ahead, stay organized, and file taxes stress-free

  • In entrepreneurship, choosing your team is a special privilege

  • Value your unique skills and trust others for areas you need help

  • Embrace your privileges without guilt and use them to help others

Quotables

“What I really want is for us to help you live the life that you want to live.” – Keila-Hill Trawick

“So the first thing is we care, and that seems really small is huge.” – Keila-Hill Trawick

“When you work for yourself, know your absolute best and you miss stuff, because there is nobody looking at your work.” – Keila-Hill Trawick

“There is more support than you realize.” – Keila-Hill Trawick

“Recognize that you have more to give than you give yourself credit for.” – Keila-Hill Trawick

“Hiring is definitely the hardest thing for a growing business to navigate for sure. – Amber Cabral

About the Guest

Keila Hill-Trawick

Keila Hill-Trawick is a seasoned entrepreneur with firsthand experience in navigating the challenges and triumphs of building and scaling a business. With a deep understanding of the intricate dynamics of running a firm with a small team, Keila specializes in strategic advisory, live training, and AI integrations, empowering small teams to achieve their “Enough” — the ideal balance between business success and personal fulfillment.

Passionate about transforming the landscape of small businesses, Keila promotes sustainable growth that prioritizes work-life balance and personal satisfaction over unchecked expansion. Drawing from extensive experience in running her own firm, Keila helps other entrepreneurs streamline operations, enhance client experiences, and leverage technology to ensure their businesses thrive without sacrificing personal well-being.

As a champion of the “Build to Enough” philosophy, Keila encourages entrepreneurs to redefine success by focusing on sustainable growth and achieving a harmonious balance between professional achievement and personal fulfillment. Through a combination of thought leadership, including a blog, podcast, speaking engagements, and engaging content, Keila inspires firm owners to prioritize purpose-driven success, meaningful growth, and a fulfilling work-life balance.

The Guilty Privilege Podcast is produced by EPYC Media Network

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, accounting, conversations, privilege, work, accountant, irs, good, business, entrepreneurship, hiring, year, taxes, fish, money, feel, guilty, numbers, small businesses, job

 

SPEAKERS

Keila Hill Trawick, Amber Cabral

 

Amber Cabral 00:00

Three. Privilege is all around you. It shows up in your clothes, where you live, the places you frequent, your network capital, and even how you spend your money. It’s useless until you recognize it. So it’s time to stop feeling guilty and figure out how to use your privilege to make an impact. Welcome to guilty privilege. Hey y’all. Welcome back to another episode of guilty privilege. My name is Amber Cabral, and I’ve had the privilege today to talk to Keela Hill Trawick, who is my personal accountant and also the founder of little fish accounting. In today’s conversation, you are going to learn about the privilege of making the jump from corporate to entrepreneurship and why some of you may not want to make that jump, as well as some of the reasons why you shouldn’t fear the IRS and you probably need an accountant looking forward to seeing you on the other side. Hey, Kayla, I’m so glad you’re here.

 

Keila Hill Trawick 01:01

I’m excited to be here.

 

Amber Cabral 01:01

Yes, I’m excited for this conversation. Now we do have to watch the time, oh, because you know how we do

 

Keila Hill Trawick 01:06

this ain’t just for us.

 

Amber Cabral 01:07

No, okay, and we’re gonna talk about a little serious stuff, okay, just a small amount, so that this is useful for other people, for other people, yes, okay, okay, don’t be selfish. Don’t be selfish. Not today. So I’m gonna start with accounting. That’s what you do,

 

Keila Hill Trawick 01:22

that’s what I do,

 

Amber Cabral 01:22

that’s what you do. And I think accounting is one of those things that most people are intimidated by, or find really boring, or just aren’t really good at, because we’re talking about the numbers, yes, and you know, numbers for most of us, lots of us, I won’t say most of us, I will speak for myself, actually, can be very, very intimidating. So why is it really important for us to recognize that accounting isn’t just about the numbers, and we do really need it,

 

Keila Hill Trawick 01:47

because I think that people think that accounting is about math, and so a lot of people will say, I’m not good at finance. I’m not good at accounting because I’m not good at math, and I’m like Excel, and the systems will do the math for you, but you can’t make strategic decisions about your business if you don’t know the numbers. And so for those of us, me included, who like to make decisions, all vibes and just like I need this, so I’m gonna pay for it, not really understanding the impact, what that does, how your income is affected, whether it’s worth your piece, because some things are definitely worth your piece financially, and some things are like that would make my job easier, but they’re gonna take all the money we have, so we need to do something different, yes, but it’s really the Language of Business. It answers all of the questions about what you want to do, what you want to be, how you want to achieve things. It starts with having good input of your accounting number,

 

Amber Cabral 02:41

yeah, so I actually, funny enough, didn’t know I needed accounting for real until I was already on the journey. And you know this story, because you are a part of it, because I called you after I started to realize I could not do my job and do the invoices and chase the people who needed to pay the invoices and do the reconciling and make sure my bookkeeping, whatever that word means right, is done correctly. And so I, you know, we had mutual friend group. And so I reached out and said, Hey, um, accounting, can we suck? Can we talk about this? And so, um, you now have a business little fish that you support little fish, right? So small businesses that are not tiny in terms of revenue, and that you support them with their accounting needs. Can you talk about what got you to the place? And I’m trying to be strategic with my questioning here, because I know the story, yes, but you’re in

 

Keila Hill Trawick 03:39

this time stories,

 

Amber Cabral 03:41

but what? What got you to the place where you decided this was the niche that you wanted to serve?

 

Keila Hill Trawick 03:48

So it’s funny, because I think a lot about the fact that my expertise just happens to be in accounting. I think anything that I would have done a business in I would have approached the same way. It just happened to be that accounting was what I went to school for. I’m certified in it. I have an MBA that supports my accounting journey. That just happened to be the vehicle Gotcha. What was important to me was that very small businesses, who are often otherwise overlooked, got the information that they needed to make their businesses successful. I often say I’m on the side of paperwork, right? And so you don’t need to lose your business or be terrified about because of a tax return like we could do that we can do your bookkeeping. I don’t want that to be the reason that you feel like you can’t achieve the things that you want to like. If we can take care of this back end, then I want to have the conversations about like. So your numbers are right based on this what you’re trying to do? What? Who do you want to hire? How big do you want your business to get? How much support do you need in achieving those goals? And it starts with really strong foundations, but like, that’s kind of not the point. I tell people all the time, your financial statements are backwards. By the time you get your financial that month is gone, and I don’t want. I have a whole conversation about you being over $100 on office supplies. I want to talk about, are you meeting your revenue goals? Are you meeting it in the way that you wanted to? It can be great to make money. And then you start looking back and start thinking, all this money I made I had to be on 20 hours a day. Yeah. Well, that sucks. Can we figure out how you make that money a different way? Can we figure out who can help you in achieving those goals. And so I think often about the fact that accounting just happens to be my way of doing that work, because I knew I wanted to use my skill and service I was good at a thing that a lot of small businesses aren’t good at. And truth be told, I’m good at it. For other people, we have an accountant who does my book. It does, because if I have to be responsible for that, it takes away from the things that I am super good at, at little fish that I don’t have time to do, because I’m trying to make sure my invoicing and payments match up. And so for our firm to be able to do that for other small businesses really is a joy. Yeah,

 

Amber Cabral 05:57

so let me ask you this, what do you feel like the client gains from working with you. And I want to caveat this a little bit, because you do work with smaller businesses, and that’s an intentional choice, yeah, and it’s one that, to a degree, makes your services have to be a little unique, right? And so what? What is it that makes you the right choice for this group of folks,

 

Keila Hill Trawick 06:22

yeah? So the first thing is, we care, and that seems really small. That

 

Amber Cabral 06:28

is huge. Yeah, it is huge when you’re somebody looking at your money, and it is huge when you think

 

Keila Hill Trawick 06:32

about accountants, because accountants tend to be transactional, right? And so it’s like, I did the thing, I gave you the report. Let me know if you have any questions correct. And I’m like, you don’t know what questions you have at all. So one, we care. We take a very small number of clients. So I know everybody. I know the business. I know the last time we talked you were sick, or you just had a baby, or your husband was doing this new thing. And so I get to have conversations that are more than just about the business. The other thing is, little fish is our own target client, right? Like we are very small professional service provider, owned by one person with a really small team, making good money. And so I get to have CEO talks that are like, more than just this money, the things that you’re going through, right? I have to go through too right to hire, right? I have to figure out whether or not we have a space? Do we hire remotely? Do we all of those things I end up dealing with too, and then I think the last thing is, I know that the accounting is not about the numbers, and what I really want is for us to help you live the life that you want to live. And so the business is just your means. I always say, like making money is just to get funds for you to do the stuff you actually do. Like they not gonna pay me to get tattoos and eat, right? So let me do stuff that I really like doing. So you so that I can spend my money how I want to. So my goal is like, yes, do the work, but how do we make more space for you? How do we make it so that when you get off work you can go do the thing you actually want to do. And that comes down to the

 

Amber Cabral 08:02

finance Yeah, and that’s not the thing that most accounting firms are leading with.

 

Keila Hill Trawick 08:05

No. Most accounting firms are like, I will do these five tasks for you. It costs this much. That’s right. Oh, you want that too. Someone else will have to do that exactly yes. And we try everything that we do is a holistic plan. If we don’t do your taxes, we’re gonna do all the taxes, yes, not just gonna do the return and then hope that you figure out the rest of the year how to do it. I’m gonna do all the stuff that leads up to that. And I think one of the things that makes us really special and different is that everybody on the team that had that same energy, it’s not just me. You don’t just come to work with me, right? It’s like everybody that you interact with, you’re gonna get that same spa like experience. We’re gonna make sure you’re covered. We’re gonna answer those questions. And in general, accountants don’t do that

 

Amber Cabral 08:46

exactly. So a couple things have come to mind for me. One, I definitely want to talk about, like, the experience of entrepreneurship and, like, just exactly what you said, like getting people on the same page, and like helping folks understand, like, this is what our business does, like, that mission, vision, value stuff, yeah, but I’m gonna come back to that. But before that, the thing I wanna talk about, because this was one of the things that made me tap you, yeah, yeah. Should we really be afraid of the IRS? Okay,

 

Keila Hill Trawick 09:12

so, yeah, taxes are really about organization more than anything. The IRS is in our tax bracket and really trying to come for us, for over, under spending on these things. Now keep your receipts. CPA in me. Want to make sure that you have all your stuff in line. Because should they come calling? We want to make sure you have all your stuff right. But the IRS isn’t out to get you right. Like, if your stuff is in order, I tell people, even when they get a letter, everybody’s like, I’m going to jail. Exactly. I’m scared to open the IRS does not send you to jail more often than not. We have to remember that the IRS is antiquated. They don’t have the systems to check for all your stuff and say, Was this in order? We’ll get some sometimes that are like, we need your w2 I’m like, I. Thought you got my w2 right, somebody had to submit it to you. So I know you have right. And so a lot of it is just like the process of them being old. Some of it too is like you are much better prepared when all your stuff is in order. Throughout the year, most people are scared of tax season, because all of a sudden I gotta get all my stuff together.

 

Amber Cabral 10:18

All the years stuff together, and I have no idea where it is.

 

Keila Hill Trawick 10:21

No It should all be in one place, right? And it should be in a place where you would expect to look for it. You need to have support about like, what are the documents? I tell people too, you know, it’ll be on your kitchen table for three months. Just please take a picture of it and put it somewhere online storage. So it’s less about people being scared and more about people being prepared in advance. One of the things that I think gets missed is that your tax return is through the end of the year before, yes, and so people get all worked up. I’m like, the year gone. It’s over, yeah? Like, gather already Exactly, exactly. Gather all your things. Get them what they need. But, like, it doesn’t start today. That’s last year. Yeah, stuff in order.

 

Amber Cabral 11:03

So what this is, um, you know, I’m just riffing at this point because I love this conversation. So like, what? What’s the thing that you would tell people? Like, not just people who are business owners, but just as an accountant, I think that there’s some value in your perspective around how people should be prepared. Like, what’s the one thing you wish you could wave a magic wand and say, I wish everybody who files taxes in the US of A would do or knew this thing. Hey there, if you’re listening and finding value in today’s episode and want to add a couple tools to your toolbox, I’ve written a couple books that you might find useful. My first book, allies and advocates is to help you be able to show up as an ally or an advocate and to help create a more inclusive and equitable culture, whether that’s in your own life or in the workplace. My second book is a little different. It’s called say more about that. What say more about that does is help you to push back advocate and actually challenge. It gives you tips, tools and language to help you navigate difficult discussions, whether that’s in your personal space or your workspaces. So if either of these tools sound like they might be useful for you, you can scroll down into the show notes and click the link and get your own copy of either allies and advocates or say more about that. Back to today’s episode.

 

Keila Hill Trawick 12:18

Two things, get your bookkeeping in order. People always ask, do personal people need bookkeeping? They need to be accounting for income. Okay, so we’ll talk about them kind of separately, but the idea is that the IRS is taxing you on profit or wages. You need to know how much that is, right? And so people will ask me constantly, how can I save on taxes? I’m like, Do you know where your money is going? Because most people don’t save on taxes because I went on a trip and I spent this money on my personal account, and I forgot to tell my business account about it. So now there’s $1,500 that you’re not even gonna get as a deduction that you actually spent the way you supposed to. So get your bookkeeping in order for individuals. Check in mid year, go do the little calculator and be like, are they taking enough out of my check? Like, I don’t want to be surprised, like the

 

Amber Cabral 13:06

refunds, not the whole

 

Keila Hill Trawick 13:09

and you want to be prepared for that. In July you see that they need to take a little bit more out. Go ahead and let them take $100 more per check that you may or may not notice, but at least it’s not a surprise to you at the end, right? And then I think the other thing to know is that taxes are taxes. I think people think that there are these, all these loopholes that they can jump through. And again, in our relative tax bracket, there are very few loopholes that we are just jumping through. And so I want people to understand that at the end of the day, you’re gonna make a certain amount of money, the IRS is gonna tax it, and whether you get a refund or you owe is dependent on whether you over or underpaid that amount that they’re gonna send you. And so when people are thinking about, how do I save on taxes? How can I do this differently? I’m like, first, make sure your numbers are right, then understand that your tax return is basically just settling up exactly

 

Amber Cabral 14:02

something exactly.

 

Keila Hill Trawick 14:03

And it is, Did you pay more than you’re supposed to last year or less? Right? But that number is gonna be the number

 

Amber Cabral 14:08

Exactly. Yeah. So I wanted to, I want to, kind of tip into entrepreneurship. You and I have a lot of entrepreneurial conversations. Um, partially because I’m, this is on many podcasts, so we won’t go into the details, but the long and short of it is, if I had not called Keela and asked her for accounting help, luda fish will not exist, correct? And so there are times she’s very happy about that, and there are other times where she calls me to tell me that I have ruined her life, correct? You know, it’s okay. Both are true, still very good friends through the process. But as a part of that, also, my business is about a year ahead of you in terms of, like, growth, and so we tend to have really good conversations about where we are. And you know, me telling you, hey, this is what I encountered and what to look forward to. And sometimes I’ve solved the thing, and you’ll come behind me and say, I did look at that, but I solved it this way. And then we’ll go and adjust. And so there’s. A lot of opportunity for us to partner and collaborate in terms of our entrepreneurial journeys. The thing I want to kind of ask you about is having lived in a corporate space and also an entrepreneurial space. What is the thing that you find like to be valuable about each

 

Keila Hill Trawick 15:16

one of the things that was hardest for me when I started little fish was that there was nobody to review my work, that when you work in corporate as much bureaucracy that gets on your neck, nothing is gonna go out without four sets of eyes having seen what you did. So you do a thing, you messed it up a little bit. Somebody will send it back, and then you send it up again. But like you know that your perfect project went out at the end. Oh, yeah, when you work for yourself your absolute best and miss stuff, that’s true, because there’s nobody looking at there’s nobody looking at it. And that was, as an accountant, very difficult, right? I have undiagnosed ADHD, and so I would constantly like review things 17 times, yeah? And when I send it out into the world, and it’s wrong. It looks like I didn’t care, right? And it’s not that I didn’t care, it’s that nobody else saw it. So that, I think is one of the valuable parts of working for somebody else, one of the most valuable things. And I’m learning this and a lot of different ways now with entrepreneurship is I get to pick who I work with in all of the ways, yes, and that is everything from the team that I choose to, you know, we have a hit list at little fish. You treat my team badly, or something comes up, you get an email, right? And this is not gonna work out. You don’t have that opportunity, because you are at the beck and need of what the company says and their bottom line means that there is a client that treats you like trash, but they pay the most money, then you just have to suck it up. And being in a place, a privileged place, to be able to say, Well, I have to work with you. Yeah, you I saw your email, yeah, I don’t like that. So you get rolled off, is a really special thing, especially because we work with almost all women. Our team is all women. I would say probably 98% of our clients are women, majority women of color, to be able to be in a place where I’m like, I’m gonna keep everybody safe, yeah? And at the detriment to whatever that looks like for me, we’re all gonna be good. Yeah? Is a special thing that I don’t think you can have the same way when you work for somebody else. Yeah.

 

Amber Cabral 17:18

I love the thoughtfulness that you’ve put into curating the experience of both your staff and your clients, like you’ve been really intentional about okay, if I’m gonna do this entrepreneur thing, how do I want it to feel? And on that note, let’s talk about some of the challenges you’ve had with entrepreneurship. Please don’t throw a pillow or nothing. All these cameras are rolling. They will see all of

 

Keila Hill Trawick 17:37

these challenges are because of you. I love you the most. And also I’m glad I am not allowed to pick up pillows this time. One of the challenges I underestimated the need for, like, real HR, yes, yes. It’s not that I didn’t think we needed it. Yes, it’s that I didn’t know we were gonna need it at the beginning, yes, and I didn’t realize all the jobs the HR does even like now we’re going through a hiring process, and I realized how much longer it takes. Because I’m the reviewer, I’m the recruiter, I’m the interviewer, I’m the onboarder, I’m the human learning management system to make sure that you get trained. And so things that I need today, I’m like, maybe we can hire for that in like three months, when I have time, and I thought that the problem was gonna be like, people’s attitudes and their feeling. That’s not our issue that I got down. If you’re in and you’re good, we are good, yeah, but finding the people to be in it, because is terrifying,

 

Amber Cabral 18:47

and finding the So, yes, I totally agree with that, finding the way to assess. By the way, I have something I’m gonna share with you offline around that, but like, that’s the thing. It’s like, how do I evaluate for this skill? Hey, I hope you’re enjoying today’s episode of guilty privilege. My name is Amber Cabral and I wanted to share with you that I actually do this for a living. So if you’re interested in coaching or training or workshops or even a conversation like this one, you can reach out to me and my team by going to cabralco.com that website link is in the show notes, and we can work with you to create an experience, to bring conversations that are sometimes difficult to have to your workplace or to your team. Now back to the show

 

Keila Hill Trawick 19:31

because it turns out, the thing I evaluated you for, you’re

 

Amber Cabral 19:33

not the thing that I actually exactly. It’s like you

 

Keila Hill Trawick 19:37

are great at accounting. You don’t know how to write an email. You do not. And I didn’t know that that was a thing that and you know what else I realized, and I didn’t realize this until later, is when you first start hiring. You are hiring for help. That’s it. You’re like, I have 15 things. If you could just take five. Yes, I would appreciate it, right? I actually need you to take this whole job exactly I do. And so when I was hiring you, I didn’t need you to know how to write an email, because when I hired you, I was like, You got the accounting fine. I’m good at emails. I will sign those. But then I realized, no, oh, but then I still have half of the job that I want you to do, and you’re not good at this half. And that’s not necessarily your fault exactly, but it turns out I need a whole other person exactly, and I did not know, yeah,

 

Amber Cabral 20:21

that is a real thing. Is that hiring is definitely the hardest thing, I think, for a growing business to navigate, for sure. So when you think about the transition from corporate to entrepreneurship, yeah, what is one lesson you would share about that? I mean, that’s a privilege, because, you know, we tell people all the time, if you like your job, stay in your job. Yes, entrepreneurship is not for everyone. It is not, but you’ve had the privilege of actually journeying out of your job. I remember you calling me to say, I am quitting my job. Now, I told you that I wasn’t, yeah, because I already had a job, because, by the way, you were not going to do this job. Or, like, No, this is a side hustle. I don’t know what you’re talking legit.

 

Keila Hill Trawick 20:53

For those of y’all who haven’t heard all the podcasts, I was like, Do you know how much I make at my job? I work for the government. I make good money. They give me raises every year and don’t make me work hard. You want me to quit? Right? A year later, I was like, so I’m putting in my two weeks.

 

Amber Cabral 21:05

Let me just say I never told her that she had to quit. I just want to say that she just said, I did tell you you could. I did tell you You were good. And I also want to say, by the way, I do not tell everyone yes, that they could. Yes. Some people could not quit their data. You should keep your job, yeah, but you’ve had the privilege of being on both sides. So what is one piece of advice you would give for someone that’s going through the transition? There

 

Keila Hill Trawick 21:30

is more support than you realize, like there is so much that I thought I was gonna have to do by myself, and whether that’s conversations with you, whether that’s conversations with peers, of just being like, I need help. I don’t know what system to use for this. I don’t even know if is this the role I should even be hiring for. There is a way in which, the way we talk about entrepreneurship is like, you leave your job, you step off a cliff into the unknown, and you hope that people are there to gather you, and you don’t have to do that, right? Like, the number of especially women, yes, who have been like, what you need? Yep, I got you. Call me. Call me. You need a thing. You need access to a thing, shared resources. And I mean real support. I don’t mean like, the if you get your mind together about how you should be thinking about, like, if your mindset was right, I’m talking about what spreadsheet did you use? Yes, like,

 

Amber Cabral 22:27

what did you price this? How

 

Keila Hill Trawick 22:29

did you price this? When you we had conversations where I was like, somebody’s asking me to speak, and I don’t know how much it should cost, yes, and I need you to tell me how much you charge. Not. Well, when you’re at about this place. I need you to be like, Yo, your price should be this, right? You need a rider. You need you need any control I can show it to you. I need all of the things. And I thought that help was gonna come in the ways of like, here’s a teaspoon of what I did. You take that and run with it. And I have been overwhelmed by the people who have gotten on calls with me. The people who have texted me to be like, Yo, you good, because I saw that post, and I just need to make sure you’re okay. The people who have given me the templates, the contracts, the spreadsheets, the hey, this don’t look exactly like yours, but I think that what you’re trying to get to this would be a baseline for it. I thought I was gonna have to do that by myself. And for years, I did do it by myself, because I didn’t know who to ask, except for you. And like the people that were close to me, the accountants on Twitter who have been like, oh, you need that we can jump on to send you that I can introduce

 

Amber Cabral 23:32

you to this person, connect you with somebody. Yes,

 

Keila Hill Trawick 23:35

the connections and the connections for no reason. Yep, that’s been the biggest lesson of, like, use your resources because they want to help you, and recognize that you have more to give than you give yourself credit for. When we first start, we’re like, oh, I’m the baby in the room, so I will just learn from you, and then eventually I’ll get to a say something, say out loud, I’m not great at the thing that you do. You’ve been doing this for 10 years. I’ve been doing it for one, but the thing I’m good at I’m real good at, right? And I can talk to you about that thing, and my voice has value, and having people who constantly, like, reaffirm that for me helped me to get leaps and bounds in our five years in little fish that we wouldn’t have gotten to as fast. I still would have been like, I don’t know, yeah, I’m kind of learning, yeah. And now I step into rooms and I’m like, yo, this thing, though I know that part. I know that part. I love that because I can remember us having conversations where you were like, Okay, but how do I talk about this? And I’m like, you’ve explained it to me. Yeah, I don’t know the numbers thing. I you know this, like most of our accounting calls, I don’t even join I play the video. I’m like, understood we’re not going under grace. I continue on with my life, but I have someone else on my team who’s really great at numbers, and so I you know, and I trust him, and so that’s what happens. But it is definitely something to be said about the idea that you have to do everything on your own, like entrepreneurship. Solopreneurship is not doesn’t have to be an isolating experience at all. It can be one that’s done collaborative. And in partnership. And what you’ll find is that people are eager to keep you from stumbling. They want to tell you, I mean, the conversations that we have where I’m just like, I’m about to shut this hole, we

 

Amber Cabral 25:12

do this like, every three months or so, yes,

 

Keila Hill Trawick 25:15

but then having somebody that’s like, I know, but like, what is the thing? Yes, because whatever the thing is, we can probably talk about that and figure out how to make it better. You probably don’t want to shut the whole thing down. You just want hiring help, right? Or you want a project management system that works better. And having those conversations absolutely has been paramount to our success, to my ability to keep doing for my ability to impart that on other people. So if you tell me a year before, I could tell somebody three months in, okay, I already know what you about to do. Don’t do that that way. I had done that. I learned it took me too long. We can do it this way.

 

Amber Cabral 25:51

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Okay, so I have a question. It’s my final question. What I try to do with this podcast is called guilty privilege. Yeah? And the reason I called it guilty privilege is because I think that as a general matter, we tend to feel guilty about the privileges that we have, or we have no awareness of our privilege. And so we just out here privilege and all over everybody, when, in reality, if you have privilege, it gives you an opportunity to help others, to extend resource very much like we were just talking about, right? And so what I would like to ask you is, what is the one privilege that you know you have that you are committed to not feeling guilty about?

 

Keila Hill Trawick 26:31

So you know me well enough.

 

Amber Cabral 26:33

I know you very well. I know you. If you make something up right now,

 

Keila Hill Trawick 26:38

I feel guilty about all of my privileges all of the time. This is very true. I think there is something special about me, about the life that I’ve had, about the way that I was raised, about the opportunities that I had access to, and I feel guilty the more and more that I learned that that is not normal. You know, in a lot of ways, especially in entrepreneurship, you cultivate your own circle. And so there’s a lot of people that may not be exactly like me, but they run in the same way, and then you step outside that bubble and you like, Oh, everybody doesn’t have this correct I will say, one of the privileges that I refuse to feel guilty about anymore is the way that my brain works, yes, and there are ways in which it makes me feel like I’m crashing sometimes because it isn’t in order and it doesn’t go the way, and it shoots me far ahead of a lot of people that would do the thing that I did. We’ve had conversations where at the very beginning or early on, Amber told me, you don’t think that is special, because you think anybody could do it, that’s right. And I was like, but anybody could, like, if they just took these steps that I did absolutely wrong. And that is a privilege that I refuse to feel guilty about, that I am in a place that not on my own, like this is just the way that I was built. I’ve been able to make something from scratch that is beautiful and is caring and is successful. And I would say, probably up until recently, that very much felt like a I mean, but I just happen to be smart, or I just happen to be driven, and really it’s a built in privilege that I’m really proud of, right, and that I don’t have to feel bad about being there for

 

Amber Cabral 28:23

me. We need you to shine with it. Yeah, so I’m glad you allowed. Yeah, absolutely. This has been great friend.

 

Keila Hill Trawick 28:29

Thank you so much.

 

Amber Cabral 28:29

Thank you for joining me,

 

Keila Hill Trawick 28:30

of course.

 

Amber Cabral 28:32

All right. You

 

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