Today, our guest is Roman Villard. Roman is the founder of Full Send Finance, which before we recorded here, he explained what Full Send means, which I did not know, but, we’ll get into that a little bit. Roman, welcome to The Unique CPA.

Yeah, stoked. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. 

No, I’m thrilled to have you. I’ve watched you do some of your own podcasting, I’ve looked at your LinkedIn posts. I’m not sure if you’re posting elsewhere. LinkedIn’s where I spend most of my time and I’m always impressed with the things you’re posting and talking about. So I was really excited to get you on the show. But before we get into all that, I teased it. Why don’t you give us a little background on Full Send and where the name came from as well. 

 

Yeah, sure thing. So Full Send, we’re a full cycle accounting firm, meaning we do accounting work, we do financial advisory, financial strategy, no audit, no tax, for seed through Series B stage startups, primarily in the tech space. When I was thinking about the idea of the firm, I wanted something that I connected with and something that I thought was just different, unique in the space. And I was thinking about all of my, interests, whether it’s skiing or mountain biking, fishing, whatever. When I was skiing one day, there was an individual, we were at the top of the mountain, said, “Hey, just send it.” and that stuck with me. And so that term, that phrase comes from adventure sports where, if you’re surfing, if you’re skiing, you’re about to conquer something really big, you send it. Once you send it, you’re committed, you’re all in. And that just really resonated with me and the types of clients that we work with. So I think it’s fun. 

That’s cool. I like it. I like the fact that it’s a unique name, but it means something very special to you. And I love that. I’m a huge fan of niche. We’re jumping right into it now. I’m a huge fan of niche, and obviously you have a niche, you explained it already. Again, tell us what that is, the firms you deal with, but how did you decide that’s who you’re going to deal with? Is this some history you had with working in those firms or just a passion you have or a combination of both?

Yeah, so in working with primarily venture backed seed through Series B stage startups, we’ve carved out our path there, right? I think the story goes all the way back to my childhood as my dad was an entrepreneur of 30 years. And so I got to see, live, and breathe the challenges of running an early stage company and ultimately a mature company, but then to further my career, I was given an opportunity to work for EY Tulsa and I turned that down in favor of a regional firm because I didn’t want to work on oil and gas exclusively and I wanted to work with smaller companies. And so, from the onset of my career in public accounting through starting this firm, I’ve always worked with small capital backed companies at various stages of their growth, and it was just something that I connected with really well and am passionate about helping others build businesses. 

Yeah, so when you go look for new clients, or they probably look for you, I assume, because you’re out marketing, and in fact, let’s go there. So how do you get new clients? Is it from social media marketing? It’s from you being at events? Or are you still going and looking for them? How does this work with you? 

Yeah, so we started about a year and a half ago. So very new. And a lot of it is very relationship driven. So relationships with venture capitalists, with startup attorneys, with HR folks. Now the flip side of that is we have placed more of an emphasis on social media, content creation, putting ourselves out there. And so I’ve gotten really comfortable with putting myself out there in one form or fashion, whether it’s physically and in person at an event or digitally today. And so we primarily see clients coming in from relationships, but we’re starting to see more and more from digital means. 

And so from relationships, both the, whatever the lawyers, the VC leaders and all that you see, but is it relationships then from existing clients as well? And are they referring you on to other startups? 

Yeah, we’ve started to get a number of client referrals, which is great. We have knock on wood, zero churn to date, which I’m excited about, but the nature of the industry that we work in, these clients will graduate out of our services by design. And that’s a good thing. So we want them to grow and get out of our specific focus, but yes, relationship based. 

Alright, you did mention then, while you were talking about how you get them in the social media has become more prevalent. Your social media marketing or footprint, has that just happened in the last year and a half since you started Full Send, or have you always been out there in social media? 

So it’s funny, when I started my career, I was on LinkedIn, and didn’t get much value out of it from the standpoint that I didn’t spend any time on it. But I always had a predisposition for adding my contacts, adding my clients, adding people I met at events. And so I became more intentional with building community or whatever you want to call it online, when I hit a sales role about five years ago. And It wasn’t really until I started Full Send that I really thought that I could lean into that and start to actually create some degree of a presence online. And the beginning of this year, I don’t like New Year’s resolutions, but I said, I’m going to post every day and see what happens. 

Wow!

Now I’m posting multiple times a day on more platforms than I’d like to be a part of, but it’s part of the growth of the industry and having to recruit the next generation. It’s a very important part of our go forward strategy. 

Yeah, that’s nice. So I did say at the beginning, I’m impressed with the things you’re putting out there because the things you talk about are things that are very passionate to me, but one of the posts that I saw you do a couple of weeks ago, I copied it down here is you said there, and I didn’t expand on the whole thing here, but this is the highlight of it: “There are three things I aim to do via posting on LinkedIn, one, inspire, two, encourage, and three, educate.” And I just love that because, for one, in no way did you say sell or, all that, but you just want to be out there sharing knowledge that is going to better people from inspiration, encouragement, and education. I kind of feel that’s my philosophy as well, and I don’t post nearly as much as you, but is that what you were just explaining now that this is how you see it come about? 

Yeah, ultimately, there are many ulterior motives for posting, right? Whether it’s sales or, personal brand, what have you. But ultimately, if I can say at the end of each post that I schedule out: Did this inspire somebody? Did this educate somebody? Did it encourage somebody? Then I feel like I’ve started to create some degree of impact on somebody else’s life. And more often than not, I have no idea what that is, who sees it, what that impact actually is. But those are the three pillars, I suppose, of things that keep me engaged and motivated, wanting to help further myself as much as anybody else. 

And did that, was that the goal from day one, or has this evolved as you’ve been posting? 

No, it evolved, originally it was, I’m going to post something personally, something professionally and then maybe an opinion piece and just cycle through those. And then I started to more analyze, what am I actually doing this for and why? Because I’ve got two different communities that I speak to one on the client startup side and then also I’ve become more and more passionate about trying to inspire and educate other accountants. And so trying to get a little bit more specific with how I’m trying to get messages across and what the impact of those could be.

Yeah. And you and I were at a conference together about inspiring, making change, whatever, figuring out ways that we can be better as a profession. But a big theme for me that came out of there was collaboration and community. And I know that’s something important for you as well. And so would you look at that from both the profession and the client? Relationships, you said it already, but collaboration and community, I think are gigantic. 

Oh, it’s massive. And something that I say a lot and somebody told me I should trademark, but it’s just the phrase build together, go farther. And I’ve experienced that tremendously in my own professional career and personal life. And so when I think about our clients, I think about, alright, we’re providing them a service, we’re doing accounting work for them, but what are ways that I can connect them to sources of capital or to other needs that they may have that can help them serve a purpose in their life? But then also in the accounting community, I’m indebted to so many people that I’ve learned from and have graciously extended their time to me to help me learn and grow. And it’s something that maybe right now, today, I’m taking more than I’m giving, but, I hope to flip that script at some point in the future. 

Well, I think you’re giving quite a bit and I’ll definitely talk to you about being on the speaking stage at our conference next year, because I think you have a lot to contribute if you’d be interested. We’ll come up with a plan there. 

Of course.

Alright. So let’s get down to a few things. So this is the background. This is Full Send. This is you personally. And I love all of that. I think you, if you go forward with just those ideas that you’re doing and that, one thing I want to do is I want to keep an eye on where you’re going and what the plans are. Give me a little, a stage of where you are currently with the firm. I know you and a partner, but I think I heard on one of your podcasts recently, you recently hired a new individual. Is that right? 

Yep, so I brought Stacey, a wonderful partner on board in March. We hired a senior analyst in May and we have a Director of Accounting coming on board in October. And none of this was part of my original script, right? it evolved quickly, but we’re four of us, there will be four of us here shortly, and we have plans to continue growing, we have a really big roadmap, I’ve got more Full Send domains than I can count, and have plans to really expand this brand, this culture, this ethos across a variety of services, and, these are pipe dreams, right? We need to focus everything on providing excellent client service to our accounting clients today, but we have a Very big goals and ambitions and happy to go into detail on that. 

Yeah, I want to hear it. I do want to hear it! 

Yeah. So let’s say from a revenue perspective. So from a revenue perspective, we’re hoping to be at a million next year, be at 2.5 the following, and then be at 5 million in the next five years. Now that’s great and good. Revenue is a vanity metric. And so, it’s one of those things where we set that target to incentivize ourselves just from an operational perspective: How do we put the pieces in place in order to build, that would sustain at that level? Personally, and myself and Stacey at Full Send here, there, there’s the client aspect, there’s the employee aspect, and there’s the community aspect. And those are the three areas that we really want to focus on. 

And so, in the next, actually this Thursday, we have our first community event. And so we’re going to bring over a hundred people together for our full send fall bash. And we’re partnering with a local nonprofit to have all proceeds of this really cool event going directly to them. And so we think about, we don’t have it really dialed down yet. We need to refine plans. But how do we create what we’re going to be doing here this week and expand it out in a way that does create more impact? And I had a conversation with Scott Scarano and Kenji about impact, and I think to have creating impact as your primary goal is very nebulous. It’s hard to say, hey, I just want to create more impact. But ultimately, like, we’re trying to create the best environment for accountants to work at Full Send, as a profession. And then we’re still trying to dial in, how do we quantify maybe that impact on community? 

And so how is this? I’m curious about this. And I’m sorry, what did you call it? 

The Full Send Fall Bash. 

Full Send Fall Bash. Full Send Fall Bash. Got it. And then so where is the fundraising portion of that coming from?

Yeah, so we have several donors who have donated these raffle prizes, raffle gifts. And so there’s a suggested entry donation. We’ll have food and bev covered for everybody. So here’s a suggested donation to come in. Then also we’re going to raffle off several thousand dollars worth of gifts to people, who buy raffle tickets. So our initial goal is to raise $2,500 for the cause and the group that we’re partnering with is called First Descents and they support youths and young adults with disabling diseases and bring them out to outdoor adventures, kayaking, mountain biking, climbing, and so, from an ethos perspective, it jives really well with who we are, what we’re about. And so that amount will cover one student for a full week program in First Descents.

Oh, that’s really cool. And then on top of that, that’s cool alone, but as they get together, you’re bringing a hundred people together for community building, collaboration, which is things we already talked about. And is this like at a local bar or something, or where’s this going to be at? 

So it’s actually at the co working space that we’re in. It’s a very unique, wide open space. We’re bringing in a big bluegrass band. We’re bringing in a food truck. It’s going to be awesome. 

In Boulder. 

Okay. So I have, somebody that I work with who’s in Buena Vista. Is that how you say it? Yeah. And she’s a fiddle player and she plays with the bands all over. I should have introduced you to her. She might’ve been able to come out and jam in the band out there.

Yeah. I would love that. 

Yeah. Yeah. She’s doing that a lot of places. Sorry. I’m going on tangents just because you’re exciting me. but one of the things you talked about when bringing out new people. it was, making this experience good for them. And this is a huge passion of mine. I know it is of you, is just, creating a culture, that is, a place that people want to be.

 

First question, I have a really hard time doing this, but can you define a good corporate culture? Can you write it down? Can you put it into words? Cause I’ve been trying to do this for a year and I’m like, well, I can tell you when I see one, I can give you a little bit of a breakdown of what I think one is, but do you have a way to put it in words? I just want to know. I need it. 

The short answer is no. 

Right. 

Because ultimately culture is represented differently for everybody. There are some individuals that thrive in a workplace where they have a very stringent nine to five. They know what their expectations are from that perspective. And then there are others that love more of that flexible, adaptable work environment, that’s really what gets them going. And so I think it means a little bit differently for everybody. Different things for everybody. And the way that we talk about that internally is that, Full Send is an ethos. Everybody has their own version of Full Send. So for me, I love golfing and that’s what Full Send is for me. For Stacey, my partner, it’s mountain biking. She goes Full Send mountain biking. That’s her thing. 

And so we have, we’ve developed a fund, a full send fund where a percentage of our revenue gets dropped into a bucket. It’s allocated to employees that they have access to money to do whatever it is, that’s full send for them. 

Wow! I love it! 

Yeah! So if somebody says, Hey, I am an avid book enthusiast and I want to go to a book fair in San Diego. Great. You go use the funds for that because that’s what brings you joy. 

Right. And so I’m sure you, well, you saw him at our conference, but a good friend of mine, John Garrett, is similar from his what’s your and standpoint. and that’s how we look at it, but I love that. I was doing a presentation last week in, where was I? San Diego, on corporate culture. And, I always ask the audience for their ideas and all that and what they do and what they see. And somebody had a very similar thing is that they, I think they put this aside. How did this work? I think every employee gets $3,000 to spend each year on doing something that they love. And I thought, wow, that is really cool. And in reality, and somebody will look at that and say, well, that’s a big cost. if you have, if you have 20 people, that’s 60 grand. I’m like, yeah. But if you replace one, if you had to replace one of those people, it costs well more than 60 grand. And by doing something like that, if you’re creating a culture that people love to be part of, it’s invaluable. And so I was like, and I know half the audience was thinking, oh, that’s just too much money to spend. And then half the audience was like, yeah, that’s something we should do, which was so cool. 

But I think that’s part of flipping the script too, right? We’re not trying to improve margins at all costs. We’re not trying to, you know, I characterized our goals from revenue standpoint, but it’s a lot more than that. and I think the focus on employees and their life satisfaction is far more important to us than any metric that we could have on the financial side. I’m more than willing to take points on margin in order to do stuff like that, because ultimately that is far more life giving.

Yep. No, I agree. Same thing. We don’t lose anybody and we don’t, we’re pretty much a remote organization. Yeah, we have offices here and there, but nobody goes to them. Nobody has to go to them. I think we create a culture even in a remote environment that I think’s great. But the one thing we do, because we do like to get together twice a year, we all get together in one location. In two months, we’ll be in Orlando, which is not my favorite spot to go, but it’s easy for everybody to get to, and there’s 75 of us and that’s going to cost, I don’t even know, a couple hundred grand minimum, probably. But we don’t have to replace people. if you look at it that way, creating a culture like that and through that and expanding that is so important. Anything else that you’re doing from a culture standpoint that you can define or with four people now, I know this is going to evolve, but do you have plans for culture events? 

We do. So we’re going to have an annual celebration of Fall Bash, to support a nonprofit partner. This summer, we have a small team, so it’s only a few of us, but we had a hackathon. And so we said, hey, we’re going to dedicate an entire day to just breaking apart our processes and say, what do we need to fix? Let’s prioritize them. Then let’s set some goals around them over the next number of months, to fix those things that we each identify as pain points. A core thesis behind that is simply, we want everybody to have a voice at the table, whether you’re a staff accountant or accounting director, we want everybody to be able to come to the table and say, here’s some things that I’ve identified that I think could make my life a little bit easier, and then just have dialogue around that to try to workshop and work together to improve those outcomes in the future. 

Yeah. I heard you and Stacey talking on, it may have been that same podcast, but creating culture based goals. Is that in that brainstorming session where you come up with that then? 

 

Yeah. So in a brainstorm session like that, whenever we’re talking about our quarterly metrics, quarterly objectives, culture is one of the top areas that we’re going to be talking about rather than, hey, what’s our sales quota? What’s our sales target? Because ultimately culture, the impact that it has both on employees and your clients is palpable. 

No, I agree completely. So let’s go back: a million this year, next year, two and a half. The year after, that’s significant. That’s a big growth there. 

There are some things that could be transpiring that could help us get there, whether it’s acquisition based or some organic growth, but, we’ve been having, we send proposals out to about 25 percent of the prospects that we talk to. And it’s just intentionally aligning our client base with the types of companies that we know we can serve really well. And those that we can’t, we’re very happy to pass those along to partners. And so I think with expanded capacity internally, expanded skillsets, we’ll be able to do that. Then there’s some other service lines that we could look at standing up as well that would also improve that outcome.

Potential, is that why all the other URLs for other service lines? 

That may be a part of the plan. When I started, there was a venture capital or private, small private equity group that was interested in investing in my idea. I had about 14 different entities on an org chart that I, displayed to them when we got into a little bit of due diligence and ultimately didn’t take the money, but I’ve got a big, plan, big vision, big plan.

Alright. I’m going to, I’m going to have to talk to you offline about this. See where you’re going. 

Oh, it’s fun. 

I want to get on that advisory board. Oh, sorry. Did I just try to weasel my way in? 

Never. 

You don’t have to say anything. Sorry. We can cut that part. 

That’s one of those things that I have on the list, is a Full Send advisory board, Full Send ambassador program. Like, I’m the visionary, Stacey is the integrator, and Stacey is a godsend from the perspective of telling me no, which is important. 

So, does this mean, those words, and I haven’t been involved, but those words sound like EOS to me. Is that something you’re doing? 

EOS is largely ineffective for an organization of our size today. We use elements of it in terms of ROCs and L10s and things like that, but, we don’t have a full structure of EOS in place. But I do like a lot of what EOS presents for structure. 

Do you like it or Stacey likes it? ’Cause she would be the integrator of it. You just have to come up with the ideas, right?

I like it. We haven’t formally introduced anything. She likes structure far more than I do. 

Yeah, I have a hard time with structure. But I know, so we are going through yes right now. They don’t even ask me to come in those meetings because they know that I can’t think that way. 

Yeah, I’ve been in those rooms before.

Alright. So, so we probably need to start wrapping up. I just wanted to hear the story of where you, what you’ve got going, the story of where you want to go. Before we wrap up though, any other goals you want to highlight? Let’s assume we’re going to talk in a year again. Is there something that we want to talk about and see if you hit or didn’t hit that goal?

Ooh, a year from now. So, I’d like to be at a million run rate a year from today. 

Okay. 

But I, when I think about goals, I think more about Like we’re talking about the impact. And so one of the initiatives that I have personally over the next 12 months is getting more engaged in the accounting community from an education, inspiration perspective and participating in broader industry conversations, whether that’s through large software partners that we work with, ambassador programs, advisory councils, things of that nature.

And I have a few things cooking on that right now, but I would like to look back maybe a year from today and say, okay, I’m starting to see material impact on people who are participating in these programs. And that does go down to education to the new up and coming generation as well, participating in university education and conversations like that.

Yeah, well, at the conference, you remember, we had a, called her a 12 year old. We had an 11 year old there who  was about to be 12 and that was just so cool to see somebody that was interested in our profession that wanted to come to a conference. She came with her dad, but wanted to come to the conference and just learn more about accounting. And I think we made it look pretty fun to her. 

I think so. And I would love to see these big conferences that you and I attend. I would love to see them extend scholarships to college students and to say, hey, we will sponsor three students from your accounting department to come out and explore and get engaged in this conference. I think that would be a huge thing for conferences to start doing. 

That’s one thing that, we originally, the original plan was for our conference and then it just didn’t happen this year. But going forward, that’s the plan that we have. the, only concern is, that they’re over 21. Cause there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of alcohol at these things.

I don’t know if you’ve been to a college campus lately. 

Actually, it’s been a while!

Yeah, I don’t know that they’re too concerned about that, but I agree, from a liability perspective, it would be smart. 

Yes, exactly. We have about six attorneys on staff, so I’ve got to be careful with that kind of stuff.

Yes!

Alright, so let’s plan on that. You and I had talked a couple weeks ago about that, but I’d love to do this again. Just, I love seeing these passionate startup firms and they have goals and where you want to go. and there’s a few people I’ve interviewed recently that, that have that. So I want to keep the flow going and watch this and educate others. next year, we’re going to be able to educate. Here’s a pitfall. We see it. We didn’t expect here’s some way we pivoted. Here’s what we did here. And I think that’ll be just so fun to do. 

Yeah, there’ve been a lot of peaks thus far in the journey of Full Send and there will always be valleys. And so I’m excited to ride that ride. When you’re 100 percent committed and all in on something and you go Full Send—

Full Send! Yes!

You have to expect there to be bumps along the way. And so we’re excited about the journey and certainly thankful to be able to have this conversation today. 

And then before we close, what we have to talk about is, what you do to go Full Send. What’s your passion outside of work? What do you do when you’re not helping your clients? 

When I’m not actively working with my clients or team, I’m going to be on the golf course. I’m an avid golfer. It has consumed my hobbies to the point where I sold my motorcycle. I’ve abandoned everything but golf.

Really! Wow. I thought you were gonna say, hiking or mountain bo, or what’s it called? The ski boarding. What’s it? 

Snowboarding.

Snowboarding, or something like that, being out in Colorado. But it’s the golf, huh? 

It’s the golf. And I can attribute that to my father who played professionally back in the day. But I just have the bug. I have the bug, and I know it’s not the most Full Send thing that I could do from a venture sports perspective, but that’s what Full Send is for me. 

That’s right. That’s awesome. And are you good? 

I dabble. 

Yeah, you’re pretty good. I can tell. So alright, and if anybody wants to find out more about you, about Full Send, where would they be looking?

Yeah, you can go to FullSendFinance.com or you can find me on LinkedIn at Roman Villard, CPA. 

Alright, well, Roman, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you being on here and looking forward to another discussion in 2024. 

Likewise, thanks so much.