What is it like to work at Whirks?

Why would I work for Whirks?

We all know we spend a lot of time at our day jobs. No matter how many benefits are promised – work from home policies, no long hours in the office, amazing benefits, etc. ?at the end of the day, you’ve got to feel good about where you decide to work

because,

well,

you’ll spend a lot of time there. And it’s not always hunky-dory, happy-go-lucky dream job city, you feel?

It is vital to weigh the tangible and intangible consequences of choosing your workplace, and if you're on the hunt for a new position, and you found our open roles, allow me to share the honest reasons I decided to join the Patrick Accounting & Whirks team (and why I choose to stay!)

Leadership, Leadership, Leadership.

I can’t stress this enough; the people were the reason I ultimately picked this place. When I first met Matt Patrick, the owner and founder of our firm, I thought he was nuts. He talks a million miles a minute, is incredibly smart, and was 10 steps ahead of me in every strategy related item I mentioned to him during my first interviews.

Today, I know that he is a visionary with the heart of an entrepreneur, and has the guts needed to make hard decisions. He’s humble too, so if he makes a mistake – whether it’s a bad hire, or bad service provider, he’s willing to part ways, and move on. No ego involved.

Generally, though, his hunches are right, so if he makes a jump, even when I feel like it’s premature, he is often 100% right and I’m grateful he forced us to move quickly. He keeps us adapting our model, and perfecting it, and that's something I get really excited about. At first, that was really scary as a new employee because change is scary! but over time, I've come to love that about his style of leading. He’s optimistic and upbeat, and genuinely wants you to win. It makes working here a lot of fun because he celebrates the important stuff and is spontaneous with praise and fun events. He is a fun leader to serve and the business he built is on a solid foundation. So right out the gate, the leadership isn't perfect at all, but it's definitely good.

If Matt’s the Yin, our COO, Mike, is the yang. Opposites in a million ways, where Matt is a visionary and big picture dude, Mike keeps us grounded and implementing things in a systematic way. He’s systemic, and generally forces me to run everything through the lens of is this profitable? Is this something we can repeat? Can we consistently perform this service?

It’s a great lens to have because ultimately, we offer services our team can actually support and that keeps us profitable. We don’t try to be what we’re not, and if we can’t support it right, we’re not going to offer it. This is good news for staff and good news for our clients. Sometimes the key to knowing who you are is to understand exactly who you are not. We can't serve everyone, and that's okay.

We genuinely try to sell the right services and support them exactly the way we sell them. When expectations fall short or something goes wrong, Mike’s quick to ask questions and resolve how we need to do things differently. He’s got a teacher’s heart, and he genuinely cares about people around here being their best selves, even though at first glance he appears kind of intimidating.

Our core department leaders– they work their tails off for this place. Each of them started off here as core contributors and overtime, Matt took a chance on each of them and gave them crazy amounts of responsibilities. And they own both sides of their roles well.

In some ways it’s a big gamble to push a top performer to lead their team, but here we're willing to equip you if there’s a skill you lack to do your job.

One of the disadvantages to a company of our size is that we each tend to wear a lot of hats, just out of necessity. Some days I might be the one to start the dishwasher or make the coffee, and yea, that’s not technically my role, but it’s expected that you’ll pitch in sometimes. (I think I've started the dishwasher once in 3 years, but just to be candid, if you're that person that's irritated by having to do stuff that's ancillary to your job description, you may get frustrated here.)

?On the plus side of that, though, every contributor can impact our company in mega-big ways. One small idea from a core person on our team could ignite and explode into a whole new service offering, or a better way of doing things, more automated technology, etc. You don’t have to push through a bunch of multi-level layers of mid-managers who have to get their every decision approved. Each team member has the freedom to share ideas in their 1:1s and test them out, and that is extremely rewarding when you share one that works.

It’s a double-sided coin, but the rewards I’ve felt when an idea I had got implemented and helped my team, that’s the stuff that keeps me going on harder days.

One Step Better, every day.

Early on in my interview process, someone told me the story about Rocky Balboa climbing those famous stairs. They talked of Coach Mick, and how Mick sees all this potential in Rocky, and does everything he can to support and push Rocky to make sure Rocky gets to the top of the stairs with his arms raised in triumph celebrating his success. We’re Coach Mick, and we want all clients to have that Rocky moment at the top of the stairs, reveling in their ability to get to the top. I thought it sounded dumb back then, but man this place really cares about that. That’s led us to unofficially adopt the phrase "One Step Better" as our creed. One Step better just means that every single day, if you consistently do the right things, you’ll see the right results. If you consistently try to improve, by getting a little faster or a little better every day, those small successes over time will get you where you want to go. That’s why for us, deliverables matter – each client deserves timely financials every single month, timely payroll paid out on time every payday, and taxes filed correctly and on time every day.

As an employee, this matters too, because the leadership team genuinely wants me to meet every personal financial goal I have for myself, all my work goals, and have work be a core center of fulfillment in my life. Work isn’t where I derive my identity, but we understand around here that there’s enormous satisfaction when you’re the right person, in the right seat, doing the right things. We each have a Rocky story, and Whirks applies that customer-facing analogy to teammates too. We care about getting better every day. (even when getting better just means admitting that today wasn't your best day..!)

Why you wouldn't work at Whirks

I’ve shared a couple reasons on why I chose to come work here, and now I’ll share some of the reasons you might not enjoy working here. Like every company, we understand that we’re not a perfect fit for everyone. Just like dating, we all have a type, and we may not be your type. So, I’ll start with the obvious.

?We’re still building the infrastructure. We’re a Work-in-Progress.

We’re a fast-growing small business just teetering on the edges of being a medium sized company. This means though, we’re still building out our infrastructure, and that can be really annoying to some. Let me provide an example:

I had the recent pleasure of building a job description for a videographer. We believe our marketing needs to be digital-first, and we want to organize our marketing initiatives to include a video-strategy for new prospects and clients. For us, we concluded it’s a full-time videographer hire.

Have we ever hired a videographer before? Nope. Do I know what equipment they need to be successful? No clue. Do I have a solid idea about what they’ll need to be successful in their role? Mostly yes, but it’s still unchartered territory! So when we find a really talented videographer, they'll need a healthy dose of ‘Figure-it-out-itude” to make it work.

We’re a growing company, which means sometimes we're making hires we’ve never made before. Sure some of our core roles never change, but if you're in a newer position and If you value organized, streamlined, and hyper-specific individual growth plans ( entry level to senior to manager to director to VP) you may get tired of waiting for that promotion here. ?We don’t yet have a need for that deep of a bench, so the large corps with annual reviews, annual inflation raises, expected salary ranges per key role, and customary promotions every 18 months) is not something we can do here.

It does mean though, if you’re a really high performer where you are, and frustrated by the continual roadblocks of mid-level managers, you may really love it here. If you’ve never quite fit into a traditional accounting firm, or been disenfranchised with stress-inducing, quota going up 15% every year, territory changed every few months type sales organizations, we might be a good fit for you. If you like freedom, don’t mind being held to a super high-expectations and have high personal drive to accomplish your tasks even when the boss man isn’t looking, Whirks could be a great fit for you.

?Production matters.

It’s a sad fact of life, but the bottom line is, everything we do is about production. We produce financial statements, renew business licenses, file taxes, make sure employees get paid daily for our clients. We bring on new accounts weekly. We have realistic workloads, but the nature of our work requires each of us to work productively, to be smart with our time, and consistently produce our deliverables for each of our clients. ?It might sound silly, but this is what sets us apart from more traditional accounting & payroll firms. We respond. We say what we’re going to do. We meet our deadlines.

And that means if you can’t keep up, you’re going to get let go.

Since I’ve been here in sales, I think we’ve let 6 people go in sales. After a few months of non-production or sub-par performance we can’t keep you around. We’re not big enough to have a cushion if someone isn’t doing their job or can’t figure it out. We train and coach and have 1:1s to make sure we stay on top of it, but the buck stops and starts with you.

Firing someone is the worst possible experience ever, but bottom line is we all must carry our weight around here. That’s an unpleasant but necessary statement to make, and sometimes, really cool people we’ve liked personally have not been able to be here long-term.

Ultimately though, if it’s not working out with someone, leaders start looking around to see if there’s anyway we can help that terminated person find a new job. It makes saying good-bye easier knowing that person already has a good job lined up that they can go to if we have to part ways.

Interested in Whirks? ?

If a position at Patrick Accounting & Whirks has caught your eye, and you’re thinking about applying, I hope this has settled some fears in your mind or questions you have about the culture here at our workplace. We're not a perfect place, but I've been here for 3 years now, and honestly, my only regret to date, is that I didn't start looking for this place sooner.

If you’re a:

• high-driven, competitive sales-person who cares about your craft
• an accountant at a big public firm and you're way over-worked
• a bookkeeper in a small mom & pop and you're wanting a team
• a customer support person who loves intriguing technology
• or a marketing professional with a heart for digital story
• and this article intrigued you, reach out! We'd love to go to lunch and learn your story.

Who knows?

YOU might be the best hire we make this year.?