Built to Work: Episode 7: Nicole Eshnaur | MarksNelson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZqU4ujsNwY

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Welcome to Built To Work the podcast that gets its hands dirty dives into the grid and uncovers the heart of what makes the blue-collar world tick I'm Colin your host and I'm sitting down with the people who keep our world running from those tackling the tough jobs no one else dares to do to the HR professionals working overtime to find the labor force we desperately need Whether you're in the trenches or behind the scenes this podcast is for anyone who values hard work determination and stories that build the backbone of our workforce So grab your gloves your coffee or your clipboard It's time to get to work Good morning Today I am here with Nicole Eshenaur of Marks Nelson Nicole thank you so much for sitting down with me to chat Thank you for having me So Nicole is with Marks Nelson They're an accounting firm They're actually who we utilize for all of our accounting services 

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and our back office stuff so I thought it'd be really great to have a conversation with you to talk about your product your offerings the successes that you've seen and all that So you're a partner here at Marks Nelson So could I just get a quick rundown of of what you do here in in your role Sure sure So I lead our client accounting and advisory services department and what that means is that we help our clients with a range of accounting 

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areas So that may be helping with their AP that may be helping with their invoicing on a monthly basis reconciling and then the delivery of the financial statements And then we also help with some of the compliance as well from sales and use tax payroll tax business licenses and the like 

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All that stuff that nobody really wants to deal with It's kind of nasty Yes Yes those notices that arrive in the mail that you were not expecting 

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those are what we help with Yeah And you're like "What in the world do I do with this?" Yes So so Marks Nelson 

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funny enough my mother-in-law used to be a partner here too and it was kind of We just came back around to Marks Nelson and it wasn't really like this intentional thing So it's it's funny that we're back here working with you guys after after that experience She's retired now 

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so you guys provide this this service You obviously provide a range of other services other than what you do for us 

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so what you do for us used to be called entrepreneurial services And now you call it business services kind of back office services right Okay So that is essentially outsourced accounting correct Correct Okay gotcha So if I come to you and I say "Hey I want to do some outsourced accounting," what are you going to tell us that that'll include or tell us about the benefits of why you would utilize that service Sure So some of our first questions is to find out who you have on premise or in office to do maybe some of the day-to-day work that comes in 

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and so that helps to just define where do we fill in the gaps Okay And sometimes you have a really good accounts payable clerk who is handling all of the bill pay and then we can come in kind of layer on top and maybe supervise answer questions provide a resource and then do what we call close out the month and 

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and make that information those those financial statements in a deliverable format that you can make decisions of 

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so tho- tho- that's kind of our first question is- Yeah "Who do you have?" And sometimes we get the ques- the the response of "We don't have anybody." 

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And that's where we get really excited because we can offer those different levels- 

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those different areas and provide all of that assistance in that back office for you Okay Gotcha So you for us you guys handle all of our back office When we acquired our current company we said "Hey they they've outsourced their accounting before." They had a different CPA and they were kind of hodgepodging some of it like 

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in house as well But we said "Hey we really want to go with some professionals We want our books to be right." in our previous company we had learned that there if we didn't outsource accounting it was going to hurt us And it's funny I actually had a conversation with the CEO of that company the other day 

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a- along with this podcast as well because they were so instrumental in that last company And I think one of the things that we took was how beneficial outsourcing our non-core competencies could be to our business growth 

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and I and I know it's been great having your team on board so thank you so much for for that 

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when you're onboarding clients you see okay what what they need what they don't need 

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do you ever get to the point where it's people are coming to you and they're saying "Hey we're thinking about just getting rid of our whole department and going to you guys." Is that Have you ever had that situation arise We have Sometimes it's 

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by choice- Okay and sometimes it's not by choice Okay Sometimes it's that resignation letter shows up on somebody's desk- 

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and the owner calls and says "I really need you-" 

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" now 

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I have a void," and we fill that void and they find out that we are able to do it very seamlessly Yes And then they don't have to worry about the turnover They don't have to worry about the resignation letter on their desk just out of the blue with no warning We take care of all of that cross-training We take care of vacations We take care- 

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of 

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you know the sick time So 

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that's where I think the owners that we work with really find the benefit- Yeah in working with the outsource accounting Yeah absolutely And so you guys bill kind of based upon volume of transactions and and everything like that So I I can wrap my mind around that It's basically how much of your time or your team's time that we're going to use 

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one thing that I love about this model is the scalability right So I can come to you now and you guys can handle all of our capacity If our company got cut in half we you could still handle that But if we doubled or tripled you could still handle that as well Correct That's correct So when a company scales like that let's say our transaction let's say our revenue doubles or triples How do you guys address that internally so that the customer has a seamless experience The s- We are in the constant evaluation of automation so if there are Which I think sometimes is what's missed internally i- that you can get staff and you can get team members that just are it's very routine It's what they always do- 

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and they just keep doing it We're constantly looking for the way of is there a technology that can help make this better Can they take on some of it so that we don't have to add another person But again we're always still evaluating that capacity issue as well 

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So if if it is then it's just it it needs physical labor hours then we're gonna keep hiring and and building up 

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capacity and the resources internally too Yeah absolutely One thing that I've I've noticed and experienced with you guys and it's been it's been pretty cool is you know there was a turnover in somebody right And that's inevitable And we sent an email and it was like "Nope he's not here This is your new person." And it was the s- there wasn't a beat missed right It just it just everything kept going I was like "This is this is great." Yep "This is exactly what we want." 

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just being able to back fill and have that scale or even if there's a big seasonal push you can always bring in more team members correct 

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Yes Yeah And and that's what is really nice and that's why I say we really pride ourselves on cross-training because again I don't want any of our team members to feel like they can't take vacation- 

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or that you're gonna have delayed financial statements because someone wants to take 2 weeks off you know- Yeah to to go do something So it's really important that we always have our bases covered That comes from solid policies and procedures that we have documented so that the next person can just step right in cover that take care of it and that's the goal is that then you just don't- Yeah You don't see a break in any kind of service You don't notice Don't notice at all yeah 

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previously when we had one person handling it at my last company if she wanted to go on vacation then it was very much a scramble of how do we backfill that 

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And since you guys handle that there's there's I don't If our main point of contact went on vacation she would just say "Well talk to this person in the meantime," and things would keep rolling 

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And I think that's one of the beautiful things about outsourcing these these things that aren't within your your skill of expertise your area of expertise is you outsource that and they've got the team It's what they do well- 

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so so you don't don't miss a beat when those sort of things arise and you're not beholden to "Oh no my HR person is on vacation," or "I'm sitting there with that 2week notice that resignation letter-" " on my desk," or whatever it is Retirement and you're just like "I could be stuck," I guess Yes I think I'd be terrified if I had an accountant at my company for 20 years and they were my internal person and then they retired I'd be like 

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what do we do now?" And they've created all these custom processes and it's- 

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We come to you guys everything is done the way it should be Everything is up to compliance don't have to worry Yep It's just a headache off of ours so And then as you you bring up a very good point because if especially if we're doing the invoicing and we're doing we're seeing more of that detail- 

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and we can start to bring the questions to the surface of 

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this looks like this might be a taxable service that you're offering Can we talk through that in more detail?" 

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So again you don't get hit with that audit a year or 2 down the road and say "I had no idea that I was doing this wrong." We very much try to be proactive and advisory in that 

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to keep you you know out of that auditor's seat Yes absolutely 

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I've seen it within my own organization previously and then within other organizations that I've been a part of where the person that gets pushed up to the role of managing the books maybe isn't trained- to do that right They're doing it because they were they learned how They kind of figured it out But there's maybe some stuff that's being missed and you get those exposures I'm sure you've seen that You've come in and there's years of unfiled taxes or some little niche thing that nobody knows about right Yes And that So Yeah and we can really capitalize on the strengths of our team members as well So we're gonna have different levels that are gonna help- 

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on that whole outsource team So maybe there's you know there's someone on our team who is really experienced in budgeting So when you're ready for that budgeting process that person can sit down with you They can work through that budget and you're you know you're gonna have something very good to set up for the next year You're gonna have the person who's really versed in AP and they're gonna run through all of that and have that all covered for you So instead of having to have 4 or 5 people hired on your team with all of these different expertises you can just have one of a you know the team that's just bundled together for you Yeah absolutely From a business owner standpoint one thing that I've really appreciated about it is that you guys also have the internal tax team 

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So I don't have to go to somebody else for my taxes It's just it's internal and it's like "Okay corporate financials are done Here's all your tax documents that you need." You know collect whatever donation receipts or whatever you have send it over to the internal tax team and then they'll talk Yes And then "Hey here's your taxes Here's how much you owe Refunds." Whatever that is That's been really nice and seamless for me so Good I'm glad to hear that Yeah And and we also strive throughout the year to kind of watch if there's significant fluctuations in your income good and bad to communicate that over to the tax team So again you're not hitting with these big tax surprises in April You're warned about it You can maybe mitigate or you can do some planning that will will help you 

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Yes We've had those bad tax surprises 

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recently once we 

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redid our our 2122 or whichever one's for the employer to action tax credit- 

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we had some adjustments there and so we had some big tax bills due I was like did not see that one coming." ......... But it but it also Again if we're helping and we're in that capacity where they outsource your account your internal accounting team may not always be abreast of changes in the law So for example when the employee retention credit came about a lot of internal teams had Didn't know what it was We're all over that We're doing the research and then we're able to reach out and say "Hey this is a credit that you apply for here's how it works and here's the consequences should you choose to take it or not take it." Yeah And that I think is really beneficial too Yeah We were very appreciative when all the funds came in ......... But then once the tax consequence came we're like still appreciative just was not expecting that ......... 

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so I would love to hear if you could share you don't have to use names or anything but I would love to hear about some of your success stories that you've had where you've been able to come in and your specialized outsource partner and how you've been able to help some of your customers If you could share one Yeah sure So I have a a really fun story that a client that I was introduced to it was probably 2019 and we get in a new A financial statement tells very good story of a business surprisingly And at just first glance you can look at it and you can see debits that are credits and you can see asset accounts that are over on the P&L and you see a P&L that's 8 pages long and you just you know right out of the gate that they have not received solid accounting advice And so you sit down and you you talk through and you really just listen And that's what we did And we came in and we really explained out of the gate here are ways that we can help you We can close your books in 20 days We can give you a financial statement that you barely have to turn the page for 

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we can help get you out of the red and into the black And they went through a few different changes internally even still 

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you know they kind of different people did 

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you know good things They were able to let some people go That's not the goal I will tell you that's not the reason for outsourcing or your accounting We always try to repurpose We always try to find again where the strength of those individuals were But because they moved so much to us and they streamlined what they were doing internally you didn't need the accounting staff that you had before So I think when we started they might have had 5 or 6 internal people They now have 3 Okay And they were not compliant on their sales tax returns They 

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were not compliant on some of their property tax returns And each step of the way we talked them through each one of those things We helped them get PPP and then subsequently follow file for the forgiveness of the PPP 

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same thing with the retention credits We helped them with that And we got to where we have monthly financials We provide comments on those financials every month The 

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owner was actually using an outsourced CFO and she came to me and said "You are providing me everything that that CFO is telling me." And so she let she kind of disengaged from her CFO- Oh wow assistance and now brought us us in to do the budgeting for 2025 

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as well as do the the financials and now is looking at potential succession of which we're gonna come in and help advise her and figure out a succession plan for her as well So that has been a fantastic relationship It's been so fun to watch the evolution She came into the the black in 2024 So now she's dealing with "Oh I have to pay taxes at April 15th?" Which you know is a whole different kind of a feeling But 

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it's been really fun to watch that journey with her That's great It's always great when you can share a success story when somebody's able to come in and utilize your services and it just absolutely changes the game for them Yes That's great Yes 

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so what are some of the most complex challenges that you guys face with your service that you offer Like when people come to you they've got problems obviously What are some of the more complex ones that you guys face 

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some of the more complex ones are are gonna be when you evaluate that accounting system that they're using and you you know it's not right Whether it's because it's just really far gone- 

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and they are gonna have to make a significant change or the fact that they've outgrown the system that they're using and now you're advising on that that next level That's a big lift It's a big lift 

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for anybody that they have on their own team It's a big lift for us You know that it's gonna be a timely project And so those are those are a little more 

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challenging to then try to convince the owner or even a an accounting team that they currently have the reasons and the benefits for why- 

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they need to do that 

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and then walk them through that whole that whole process start to finish Yeah I could imagine having to handle all that I mean all the just the transfer and everything We've we've done that before with property management software 

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Yes So we had to switch from one to the other and one was antiquated and 

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I It's it's not fun So yeah I can understand how that's a huge complexity It's great when they get on the other side of it Yes It's getting there that can be kind of painful Yeah Absolutely I know that you guysAnd our CFO like well he was new when we got on as fractional CFO outsourced as well 

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that when you guys sat down And he actually introduced us to you guys 

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When we all sat down and we looked at the books once we acquired this Premier it was kind of like okay the books are good but there's a lot of things that we can clean up And then your team went in and We acquired the company just at the tail end of 23 but you guys pretty much redid all 23's books- so that it made more sense For 2023 we had to file taxes and everything like that and then we were able to roll into 24 with what we'll call clean books Yes And then 24 now into 25 has been seamless for us which has been really nice to see Yeah And we haven't had to worry about categories I think some of the weirdest things if you get into like the real accounting and into the QuickBooks you have all the different categories and I think they put each different category as like a different customer possibly So there was like hundreds of of categories and it was just It didn't make any sense And now it's like service line categories and then corporate and it's like this makes much more sense It's much easier to track Yes So 

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And that and that's always the goal And we That's another thing that we always try to sit down and talk to with each client because yes they're A balance sheet and a and a P&L are going to be your standard financials- 

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but that doesn't always tell an owner what they need or want to know Sometimes it's "I want to see trailing 12 months because that's more important to me," or "I want to see a cashflow statement." 

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And so really sitting down and understanding the report that they want to see and the information 

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and then sometimes it's just an education because 

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maybe that owner is just just new to to business ownership And really saying "Here's what this is telling you," and 

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that that's kind of fun too I have a small little part of me that always wanted to be a teacher so I get that little bit- Yes when I get to sit down and educate 

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a client on what they What the numbers are telling Yeah No I'm sure that that's that's fun yeah I enjoy I enjoy getting to teach as well so 

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all right So you know hopefully we're getting to talk to some business owners here some people in business You got one small piece of business advice from what you see on the tax side right Your area of expertise What are you going to tell somebody I guess it doesn't have to be tax could be accounting What what one nugget of advice would you give besides "Hire Marks Nelson" Yes Oh I always think Marks Nelson first 

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my my motto is that there's always a better way 

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And so I My advice is to to continually evaluate the processes that you are currently using because 9 times out of 10 there's a better way to do them Yes And it's important to talk to your peers talk to your colleagues talk to your accountant and find what that is because there's gonna be dollar savings behind Yeah And and as business owners I think we always love it when there's dollars savings involved So yeah Looking for a better way never stop improving that that is how everybody should be looking at business And it's it's it's frustrating to me when when you know we'll have teammates and they don't want to do anything to change Like "This is just the way we've always done it." And it's like "Now I understand but just because it's the way we've always does it doesn't mean that it's the right or the best way to do it." Yep And when you come in and and rock the boat people people don't like that And it does sometimes it shakes people loose and people just can't handle that change So I love that you guys are thinking that same way Yes So it's gonna help us all get 

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get better and grow as we 

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as time progresses so Well and let you grow without always having to add headcount Yes And that that's really important too Yeah absolutely Well I know everybody's gonna Everybody's working on leaning into AI and how that can help reduce headcount and automate some stuff And we're in a very manual field so our our back office is very small 

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I'm sure that you guys might be able to get some benefits from AI Have you guys looked down the road at what that looks like for you guys Yeah we have kind of a continuous eye on it 

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obviously our our technology team is 

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you know always on us to be careful be careful We kind of always get that that extra 

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it it can do some very powerful things 

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and I think you know the other piece to always keep in mind is that it's not always 100% right and that it's walking that line to make sure that your client that maybe is out there plugging in all of their stuff and saying "Okay tell me what this what I should do now," that AI might not give you the right answer 

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So it's still important to have those conversations- Yes and to talk through it It can answer some of the the easy questions We really are focusing on it for transactional work so you talk about the scalability 

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having that AI plug the transactions in just to get them into the general ledger Okay But you need the you need the human interaction to evaluate what that is telling you and then to have the conversation with the business owner to really say "Okay because of what this is telling me now what?" Yes "How do I plan out of this?" Yeah the critical thinking aspect But the bulk data entry and transaction categorization that can be done Yep Or is getting better at getting done by AI Yes It's never gonna be 100% It's still gonna have some misses right Yeah I I think that Is QuickBooks starting to roll out some of their own internal into their system They do have some of that to where you know it's trying to read the transactions that are that are- 

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fed into it from the bank feed and it's gonna make suggestions And sometimes those are those are great and they they work really well and yes it can speed up what you're doing And sometimes they are just way out of left field- that you're thinking "I don't know where you got this." Yeah But 

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but it it is helpful and it does 

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allow you to just move that kind of work that isn't always 

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It's not the most valuable work- Yes that that you're getting from your accountant and so that's why let's let the technology take care of that piece 

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Absolutely 

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I guess one last question for you is you know you're you're a big proponent of of your services which are great and and outsourcing 

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what advice or words of wisdom would you give for somebody that's looking to outsource any any portion of their business It's just It's really important to evaluate the the firm or the individuals that you're talking to to understand what their skill set what their resources what their capabilities are 

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Because I think sometimes as with anything you can get sold a bill of goods that isn't going to deliver on what you really think- Absolutely that you're getting I think it's also very important to talk to any internal team members that you have and explain to them why you're looking at this option because that's where you can get a lot of that resistance is internally because they are afraid of being let go- 

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and knowing that they they can do something that's maybe more enjoyable to them- Yeah or is more passionate 

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and and that's what's really important is to say that "This is not a move because we want to replace you This is a this is a move because we want to enhance what you're currently getting to do," and that's an that's an important message Mm I love it I love it It's an enhancement to what you're getting ready to do 

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I guess one more follow-up on that When you've been brought in have you been able to run any sort of cost-benefit analysis for your customers Like "Hey we cost this much but you were able to save some headcount and we saved you taxes," or something like that Have you guys ever gone through that process to say "Hey I know at at first there might have been like a sticker shock but look at how much it saved on the back end" Have you guys ever gone through that process We I will tell you we have not 

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honestly put pen to paper- Okay to to do that 

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the conversations really have stemmed 

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from the what I had mentioned earlier about okay the the the services that we're providing right now is really saving you an AP clerk it's saving you a controller- 

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and it's saving you a CFO and we're packaging that And that yes you're paying you know $5,000 a month whatever the number is but you're not paying that salary times 3 Yes and you're not paying benefits on top of it and you're not You know And so that's where 

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it's I But as Specifically for one particular client I've not put pen to paper No Okay yeah We haven't been able to get that 

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that from our customers as well so I was curious- 

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if you had But 

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I would say it's more anecdotally like "Hey we couldn't have done this without you," or "Hey it might be more up front but we're getting so much more productivity out of-" 

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" you know your employees or your team that that our productivity has gone up and we're money," which at the end of the day is the goal for all the businesses Well and it is kind of interesting in some of the We do step in and we will do staff augmentation- Okay situations as well So we have one of those right now where last year at this time we were on a client site we were helping them because they had lost an individual We caught them- They had months behind in financials of which- 

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the owner didn't know until that person left Cleaned it all up got them all current even helped them hire somebody into the position And we just got the call this week to say that that person has submitted resignation- and now they want us to come back out So sometimes they do kind of- Uh-huh they they reciprocate back through 

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but you know you look at that and sometimes you can step into those 

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situations and you try to figure out the person who left what they were doing for 40 hours in a week- 

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because we're able to come in in one day and accomplish the majority of what that individual was doing So to your point of productivity sometimes you you will find that in some of these situations absolutely We find that too when when we come in when people have been would have been gone right Or 

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they call us and they're like "Hey our guys just weren't getting it And then they bring our guys in and it's like you know your guys are doing the the work of 2 or 3 of what what our previous guys were And a lot of times it's at the In the type of positions that our guys get brought in and it's it's the heavy labor It's industrial labor It's kind of It's dirty it's hot it's cold Nobody really wants to do it 

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so it's a high turnover position some 

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most of the time We tend to find the right people for the job on our team that then we don't have those turnover problems 

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And 

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yeah it's like well if we're getting so much productivity out of them why would we go try to hire somebody else Which is the goal Yeah and when you reward those employees and you- Yeah incentivize them then they keep working hard And that's 

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it's a win-win on both sides Yeah absolutely Well Nicole thank you so much for your time I appreciate it You guys have a lovely office here and you offer great service so if anybody has any questions about how awesome Marks Nelson is reach out to me and I'll put you in touch Thank you so much Thank you