It’s funny because to me I’m just a regular person. I have 3 little kids at home. I have my husband. I’m still running around doing all the errands and dropping kids off and doing homework, so I don’t feel that way. I actually have to step outside of myself to look at what I’ve accomplished and to understand how other people might see me.

If you just see me on the street, I’m just going to want to make friends. Get to know you and hang out. So it’s just funny for me to think that people may think of me as a role model.  And for me, the biggest thing was somebody else believed in me when I had this idea.

Sometimes, when I talk to a lot of young people, they love to tell me their ideas or where they’re struggling. And the biggest thing that I do is try to give them confidence. You can do it.  And that’s actually what I love about my position and being that role model is people come to me to get my thoughts or to get my advice, and I just return. I try and instill confidence in them. It’s my favorite thing to do.

I would say read a lot of books. There is so much information out there that you aren’t going to capture in your day-to-day because you’re going to have blinders on and you’re going to be connected to just the people around you. And there’s a whole world out there of ideas and different ways to look at things.

I usually have three books at a time. I have a book on my Kindle. I have a book that I’m listening to and I have a hard book that I’m reading and so no matter where I am, I’m constantly in a book. And while I don’t take everything from these books, it just really helps you reflect and think of things in a different way and give you inspiration and confidence that is very hard to get in the real world sometimes.

One of my favorite books of all time is called Selling Happiness. It’s a story of how Zappos was founded.

I think I am most proud of the relationships that I’ve built with customers and others in the CPA community.
I absolutely love this industry. I love the people in it. I feel like I belong. And everybody wants to feel like they belong. I’ve never felt like I belonged in this community more than I do now – as CEO of AuditMiner. I absolutely love it, and that probably is my biggest achievement — the connections and relationships that I’ve made in the community.