Meet Ted Callahan - Leader, Accountant Segment at Intuit (Part 1)

Joining us today is Ted Callahan, the Accountant Segment Leader at Intuit. He’ll be talking about how Intuit and QuickBooks empower accountants, bookkeepers and other small business advisors and what changes are developing in the process.

The following is a conversation between Joe Woodard and Ted Callahan. This conversation will be featured in audio in an upcoming Scaling New Heights Podcast episode.

Joe Woodard: And I'm very excited about working with you and about what you're going to be doing working with accountants and bookkeepers in the coming years.

Let's get to know Ted as a person. I think it's a great way to start. We're going to have a relationship as accountants and bookkeepers with you. So tell me a little bit about yourself and your background. What did you do prior to joining Intuit? What did you do in your previous roles with Intuit?

Ted Callahan: Great questions. I’d like to highlight a couple of points. I had a highly entrepreneurial background before I went to business school. It comprises both startups and working in more mission-driven nonprofits. Then I spent six years in consulting. I have a healthy respect and a ton of passion for professional services and the craft required for delivering excellence as an advisor to a client.

When I left the consulting world I started my own small business. And then my wife also followed suit. So I think both of us have an appreciation for the power that accountants and the accounting professionals wield.

One of the first things I did when I started my firm was to hire a bookkeeper, because I saw how wrapped in it you can get if you try to do it on your own and you don't have the requisite knowledge. My wife jokingly says to me, “Every month I'm writing the happiest check of the month,” which is to her bookkeeper because she's so excited about the service that she gets from that firm and their joke is that they’re just so helpful, it keeps them out of jail.

Joe Woodard: Compliance will definitely keep you out of jail. Other than keeping you out of jail, Ted, what would you say is the chief value that you gleaned from your bookkeeper? What was the most important role that they played for you?

Ted Callahan: The bookkeeper kept us on the ball. We were getting things done. And we were really focused on helping the phone business that we were investing in. It was a venture fund. And we would get so focused on that. They told us “Now’s the time to submit your expense reports; now's the time to pay these bills,” and other tactical day in, day out stuff that you want to forget.

That would be the first level, and then I think above that it was, “Here are the opportunities to reduce your expenses. Here's some opportunities for you to think about growing.” It was a both-end kind of partnership.

Joe Woodard: They kept the machine running right for you to do what you loved. I like to say that the bookkeepers protect their client’s journey, or in your case, their employer’s journey. And it sounds like sounds like that's what the bookkeeper did for you. Now, what was the next step in your journey? Did you go straight from there to Intuit?

Ted Callahan: In my journey I discovered that, oh my gosh, I love working with these startups and small businesses. But I found myself wanting to be less of an investor and more actually in a leadership role in the trenches with the teams that I was working with.

When I came across Intuit, I was blown away by how value-oriented and mission-driven Intuit is as a for-profit business. I began in the self-employed group, which Alex Chriss started several years back. It felt like one of my startups, Joe. The culture was about helping the self-employed in the smallest of small businesses. There was a ton of passion in these small businesses, but typically, not a lot of operational excellence. The idea of the self-employed team was really to provide the software to help self-employed businesspeople be more successful in their endeavors. It’s the role you were talking about that bookkeepers play for small businesses.

Joe Woodard: That's great. You are contributing to small business success. How does that translate into the role that you're playing now? Right now, you're managing this partnership with accountants and bookkeepers. How are you going to bring that passion to this role?

Ted Callahan: The first thing that I've done in this role of the accountant leader is to get out there and talk to a variety of both bookkeeping and accounting professionals. I listen and learn from them. Already I have been blown away and energized by the passion that I see in this community to power prosperity. We have a shared mission.

Number two, resilience and grit. If we think about how uncertain and how crazy events have been in America over the last weeks and months. Everything from COVID-19, the macroeconomic uncertainty, to the political uncertainty and instability, even in the early weeks of January. I see accountants and bookkeepers stepping into the breach and being those coaches and proactive transformational advisors, as you like to say. It is unbelievable. It gives me more faith in America because of the grit and resilience I see.

Joe Woodard: I agree with you completely. Grit and resilience is how you would describe this community. They are a tenacious bunch because their stories are unstoppable. That was proved out as they weather this and then continue to weather the storm.

And as you know, Ted, this is a storm. They’re weathering socially, politically and economically like everybody else, while they're also weathering a compliance storm right now. When you saw that movie The Perfect Storm, there were three weather fronts at one time. They've got 1099 and payroll compliance year in closures and this new round of PPP filing. It's hitting them all at once. That's a very acute problem. I think you've now switched from a bookkeeper protecting you to you being the protector a bit. But to help Pro Advisors and, in general, get through COVID-19 and beyond, what are your plans to protect their journey?

Ted Callahan: COVID-19 has accelerated certain trends in terms of working from home, having to be virtual, needing that always-on access to books that being in the cloud provides. But I also see that there's an increasing amount of technology that small businesses need to succeed.

I used to talk to my startups and they would have over 30 different apps that they were running just to operate themselves. Accountants are expected to be highly fluent in all those different technologies, how they power workflows, and how they enable automation to make their job easier, but also to make their small business prosper. I see accountants really are that triple threat. They are armed with financial expertise to understand small businesses. They have the technological wherewithal to advise on what those key apps are. And then they have that other role of coach and therapist, where you really gain the space to step into moments of uncertainty and provide confidence and conviction when the entrepreneur lacks it.

Joe Woodard: The advisor steps into moments of uncertainty. I have never heard it phrased that way. Patrick Lindsey only calls it “entering the danger,” but you're much more on the nose. What they're doing in boldly going there alongside that business owner’s journey is stepping into that and saying, “I'm going to share this uncertainty with you and help you navigate this uncertainty.”

And I like the fact that you used action and power words like “coach” and “stem” because I like the term trusted advisors, one of the pillars of the firm of the future concept. But unfortunately, it's loaded with implications and, more importantly, inferences. I'm trustworthy, therefore I'm trusted. I'm a trusted advisor. What you described is not passive. What you described is extremely intentional and relational. An active trust advisor is what you just described.

Click to continue to Part 2