 Hello everyone, today I'm interviewing Mia Reeves. Mia is a CPA and a managing partner at Reeves Accounting Services. Above all, she's a successful entrepreneur. She traces her success to when she was 12 years old, when her mother asked her to read two books, Think and Grow, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Maybe a lot of you heard of those books. At age 15, she started her bakery business and employ 10 staffs, mostly her friends. She joined college and she started two clubs of which one of them earned the Chancellor Legacy Award and she started her career at the Big Four. Mia believes there are only 24 hours a day, the same amount of time that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have. It's all about how you use those 24 hours a day to be a successful person. And we're gonna use every single minute of this interview to take advantage of Mia's presence. Once again, Mia, thank you so much for accepting to talk to me, farhatlectures.com. Now, my viewers are mostly accounting students, CPA candidate or people who are starting their career. So please keep that in mind. My first question to you is, why did you choose to study accounting? Yeah, so I knew that I wanted to have a business. I knew I wanted to go to business school. So there's a no-brainer for me. And then when I came, when I joined business school and at TCU, I went to Texas Christian University, it's a Christian school and then Texas. So after my second year, I could choose a major in the business school, right? So there's just so many majors like entrepreneurship, marketing, accounting, finance, real estate. And I just picked accounting because first I think it was the easiest for me. I think I got very good grades and I just got it. So second reason I think accounting, I was gonna choose entrepreneurship, but I thought, well, accounting is really the foundation to a good business. I can have a business that can employ people, but if I don't understand the numbers, I can't run a business. So I just picked accounting because it helps, really helps me understand how everything works in the business. Excellent, excellent. So that's good. So you studied accounting because you already have an entrepreneurial mindset. And that makes sense. If you have an entrepreneurial mindset, you want to understand the numbers, the income statement, the balance sheet, how all fits together, makes perfect sense. Now, why did you go specifically for your CPA certification? I got a job offer at Deloitte and I knew that it was a requirement to be a CPA. Well, it was not actually a requirement, but if I became a CPA, then I would have higher raise and just- More advancement? My reputation, yeah, more advancement anyways. So when I was at Deloitte, I was, you know, I still wanted to have a business, but I was like, well, I'm just going to work for a few years and see how it goes, right? But Deloitte offered me, you know, free CPA, you know, I think it's a few thousand dollars to study. Yes, I believe the Big Four uses Becker. Was it Becker? Becker, yeah. Back to CPA review. Absolutely, basically all the Big Four. So how did you study? Because again, a lot of people who are listening now, they're most likely studying for the exam. So could you give them some tips? How to study for the exam? Especially, I'm assuming that you were working at the same time. I was actually not working in school. So I was doing- Oh, that's even better. Go ahead. Yeah, master of accounting. So I kind of took a gap here, you know, because I got a job offer before I, they got offered me a job a year before I had to start working. So I came to school for a master degree. I came right into your channel and kind of used your methods as well. I used Becker, too, because it was free for me. And I think when, how long did they spend? I think I spent six months studying. We're in the past four parts of the CPA exam in six months. So from January until until June. Excellent, excellent. So as Mia stated, it's very important. If you are giving that opportunity, if you are hired six months ahead and you're giving that chance, make sure, right, Mia? Because once you start working, you're gonna have a lot of pressure. So make sure you pass those four parts. Take advantage. That's gonna be not your full-time job. You're supposed to be studying more than eight hours a day. So you're supposed to be studying 10 hours a day if you wanna finish. So they're giving you that advantage. Make sure you take advantage of it, just like Mia did. And also, Mia, when you start your career in public accounting, it's very challenging. What would you share with early career aspirant? What advice would you give them? What advice you would want to hear knowing what you know now you wish you got when you started your career in accounting, in fact, accounting specifically? I totally agree with you 100%. Studying for the CPA exam and passed it before you could actually start because a big four, like there's no way you work less than 60 hours a week, right? So, yeah, so I spent eight to 10 hours a day studying for a CPA exam. And even two months before I started, I passed four parts. So I could celebrate and just spend two months somewhere just enjoying myself. So that's the first advice. Trying to study beforehand. A big four, I think career advice, just be open-minded because, you know, everybody know, everybody thinks, well, you're gonna work so hard, you're into have to deal with politics and, you know, like different teams have different work environments, right? So be open-minded and have a positive attitude. That's very important. Especially if you work with a team and you see the same people 10 hours, 12 hours a day and how we work, it's gonna get boring and stressful. So having a positive attitude and thinking, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get the job done and to create a positive working environment that's very helpful. Absolutely, absolutely. And as an entrepreneur, I always tell my students that when you go into public accounting, it's not a job, it's not even a career. You have to think like an entrepreneur. What could you say about this? Is this a true statement? Yeah, it's true because of the very high chance that, you know, your first day in the job, well, not really your first day, your first month in the job, your senior would tell you to go talk to the controller and get this information and that information. And by then you were like, okay, I don't know what I'm doing yet. It's like, how are you expecting me to talk to the controller and pretend that I know what I'm doing, right? So I didn't really pretend that I knew what I was doing but definitely think that you have to think and you have to be able to deal with different situations, different people. It's very much like an entrepreneurship, an entrepreneur. What would you say the most important skills you would need? Would you advise students to nurture as they are starting their career or they're selling college to be successful in public accounting? Being able to find the answer fast. So you might not have the answer to the question right away, but you have to be able to look into, I think they have before have something or Deloitte has something called Deloitte library, like you have to be able to research the information. If you can't find the answer, if you can't look for the information, then try to Google or try your best to find the answer. If you can't, then ask for help fast because you can't spend an hour looking for an answer, right? Maybe 15, 20 minutes. So yeah, research skill, being able to find a solution to the answer even though you're not sure, very important. And very important to understand that sometimes there's no straight answer. It's not like your college. It's always a great area where you have to interpret the information and apply it. Absolutely. Exactly, you find the answer and then explain, interpret the information to the client who probably has 10 years of accounting experience, 10 more years than you do. I see, I see, absolutely. So basically it's not like college where you can go ask the professor and there's an answer. So that's the mindset. You have to look for the answer. You have to learn how to look for the answers, absolutely. And that's the skill that you will need. I agree with you 100%. So people who are listening, it's not like your college textbook. There's a solution for the problem. You're gonna have to find the solution for the problem and it may not be the only solution that you have to choose the best solution. And obviously communicate the solution to the interested parties, absolutely, absolutely. I agree 100%. And how did you move from the big four to being on your own? Could you tell us about the mind thought, the fears, the challenges? Because many students at the end of the day, they want to be their own boss. Actually, as I said, in a CPA firm, you should be thinking like your own boss. But when you move out, it's a scary. So could you tell us about that process, please? Yeah, so I looked at big four for a few years and it was just one busy season after the other and I got tired. And then to the point where I used to be very excited going to work, but I got to the point I was kind of born out a little bit and I was just looking forward to the weekend, meaning Sunday. And then the next day, Monday, we had worked long hours again and I was like really sad. I was not too excited anymore. And I know that I've always wanted to have my own business. So I've been, for the last, maybe of six or seven months before I actually quit Deloitte, I was just really thinking about what I really, what do I really want it to do? Where's my childhood dream and it's definitely not staying for 10 more years becoming the partner. Because I can't work like this anymore, right? It may, it can, but I need to control my time and I have no control there. So I looked for ideas and then I read into a few coaching programs that taught people how to start their own accounting businesses. So I just like bought a few programs and quit my job and started. Now after the timeline of when I quit in my job until I completely like started my business, I mean, it took me a few months so I had to do contracting work and took clients that paid me really low just to learn how to do things. So I would say it took me a few months but I officially started my business 100% in February, 2018. So congratulations. Congratulations. I mean, you have a very successful practice. I mean, as a business owner, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, again, you will need different skill sets. For example, marketing your business, search engine optimization, advertising. Could you tell us how do you do that? I know it's difficult for students to understand this but they need to understand as an entrepreneur it's not only about accounting, it's about other skills. Could you please talk to that? Yeah, so that's why my coaching programs were very helpful. I'm also a big fan of Tony Robbins, you know, more than those people, Rachel Hollis, those people that, like marketing entrepreneur gurus, right? So I took their courses too and I kind of learned from their experience. So yeah, and then also Andrew argue, I don't know if you've heard about him, I bought his program. So much a bunch of different programs. I Google, but YouTube, research, read book. The combination of different things also made friends with other accountants that started their business a few years before I did and now they have, you know, have a million, million dollar business. Back then they were my mentors too. Absolutely. So yeah, just, it's a huge learning curve but I was very appreciated with what Deloitte taught me back then. Yes. You know, the ability to find the answer, to interpret the information, to improvise, you know, to implement what I learned into practice. Those skills that I couldn't have without, without joining Deloitte from the first place. Absolutely. So it's part, Deloitte, part of it, you took some coaching classes, your own research and the most important thing you mentioned is networking, getting in touch with other accounting. Yes, networking is extremely important, obviously. Now, what could you tell us about your practice today? What do you do? Is there a specific business you focus on or do you do everything? What could you tell us about that? So I grow my business from just having a few clients to currently we have a 450 clients. You said 450. Oh, 150. Hopefully 450, which is on 50 for now. I have no doubt you will get there. We have a team of five. So we have three full-time and two-part time. We're kind of looking for two more full-time accounting. Two more full-time. Is it staff accounting? Is it the, is it the clerk? We're looking for a full-time staff accountant and a full-time tax senior. So if you want to talk to me. Specifically tax, yes, absolutely. I'm going to make sure I mentioned this up front. So is it in Texas? In Texas, but the positions are fully remote for now. So I don't even know if I'm going to get back to my office again and kind of learn how to work remote and my employees are remote for now. So we'll see, but currently they're remote positions. But yeah, so we primarily help clients with tax planning and accounting, you know, CFO services for their business. Now we do tax prep and bookkeeping as well, but I feel like tax planning and CFO services are our core offerings because they can really help people grow their businesses and save more taxes. We save people anywhere from 15, 25 to 400,000 a year in taxes. I see interesting. Tax planning is really a service that could provide value. Now we save more in taxes. We can keep being accounting CFOs to kind of double triple their revenue and their profits. Excellent, excellent. Yes, I mean, when it comes to taxes, do you value someone with an EA or do they have to be a CPA? And if people who are listening, where should they go? I'm going to put your company's list in the description, but is there a place where they would go to look at, you know, the job requirements? Is there a specific place? They can go to my website. There's a tab called career, and they can just apply directly there. I do value the EA in the CPA certifications either once. If the staff account position, I don't require the candidate to have any certification yet. And they can study and they can get certified when they're working with me. I would prefer them to pass the exam even before they start working, right? So. Yes, of course. They run into the situation where they have to work and then block out five or six hours at night. Studying, it's draining that. Yeah, it's stressful for everyone. Very stressful. And it can take years to pass the CPA exam, not a few months. But anyways, yeah. So you're going to apply it to the website directly. Absolutely. Is there anything else you would like to add to our viewers? Anything you would like to share? I would say definitely try to pass the CPA exam or, you know, have the CPA with the EA certification because if you just have that license certification to show your boss or start a business, show the prospective clients. And it shows that you have the strength, the determination to pass the exam. Because the exams are very hard to study for and to pass. But you know, the CPA exam took me eight or 10 hours a day, pretty much every day during the week, six months to pass the exam. And I'm not a very fast learner maybe, but it's very hard to pass the exam. So try your best to get certified means a lot. You mentioned something, you're not a fast learner and people who are listening, yes. You don't have to be, even if you're not a fast learner, it doesn't mean you're not successful. That doesn't determine your success as, you know, I'm not a fast learner myself as well. It's about persistence and just keep going, persistence. And you will get there. Absolutely. I agree 100% with that because a lot of people, they said, I'm not a fast learner. You know, I'm not a CPA material. It has nothing to do as long as you have the attitude to succeed, to get your feet wet, to get your hands dirty, you will succeed in life. Oh yeah, exactly. Because when I look for someone, even for my company, I'm not looking for someone that is a straight A student. I'm looking for someone, you may be more than 3.5 GPA, right? But you need to be able to think and find the solution and ask for help and, you know, have great customer service skills. So it's a combination of different things. It's not just the GPA. Absolutely. Thank you for that. And again, it's to find the solution and fast. Ask questions last, right? You should not ask questions every time. You should ask questions. How do you do that? You go straight. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Mia, thank you so much for joining us for 4HAT Lectures. We appreciate your time. And people who are listening, check out Mia's website. Check out her career link. And I wish you all the success, Mia. And hopefully next time we interview, you will have not 450 above 1,000 clients. We'll see you soon. Thank you. We'll see you soon.