Unfollow the Rules

Question Everything with Sharrin Fuller
Sharrin Fuller has built and sold two accounting firms, and the second time around, she knew exactly what mistakes to avoid, except for one she didn’t see coming. On Episode 252 of The Unique CPA, she tells Randy that the business side of an exit is straightforward, but the emotional aftermath? That sent her into two levels of counseling and off her life insurance policy due to skyrocketing blood pressure. Now, as founder of Glass Wallet Ventures, she helps firm owners prepare for exits they may not even be planning yet, because by the time someone puts a letter of intent in front of you, it’s already too late to maximize value. Sharrin challenges the “we’ve always done it that way” mentality that keeps accountants stuck in dependency traps, and her approach is simple: fix one thing at a time, give firm owners back 30 minutes of their day, and only then move onto the next problem. Sharrin is proof that working three days a week isn’t a fantasy when you build systems that actually stick.
Today’s guest is Sharrin Fuller. Sharrin is a serial entrepreneur, she’s the CEO of Glass Wallet Ventures, and the author of the recently released book Unfollow the Rules. She has built and sold two accounting firms, which we’ll discuss today. She now works with accounting firm owners and financial leaders who are ready to rethink the traditional model. Sharrin believes in scaling smarter, leaner, and with intention. She challenges traditional thinking in our profession and encourages leaders to question rules we have simply accepted for decades. Actually, sounds like a really good guest for The Unique CPA! Sharrin, welcome to The Unique CPA.
Thank you for having me, Randy.
Yeah. Excited to have you here. It’s been, we’ve known each other for about three or four years now or something?
Yeah, I hadn’t been around what I call the accounting circuit, I started at Accounting Today in San Diego, I think in 2022, May. So that’s when you guys started seeing me pop up.
Yep. And then I remember Scaling New Heights, which was probably that same year I think is where we spent more time talking. You were hanging out with Nick Boscia in St. Louis. I think that was it. Well it’s great. And then you and I hung out at a lot of conferences together in the last since you started hitting the circuit in 2022.
We run the same circuit, Randy.
We do, we do, and it’s always fun. Conferences are amazing to me. It’s just the fact, getting to hang out with people and hear their story, what they’re doing.
It’s our community! We work from home. It’s our community and I love it. I get excited. I love going to conferences. Don’t tell my husband. I tell him, oh no, another conference. Oh, I don’t want to go. I’m like, what’s the theme of the party?” So we just don’t tell him that.
It was, not to get on a tangent, but I’m going to real quick. I was just on another call before we started. You and I could probably get on a lot of tangents, so I’ll try to control this a little bit. But I was just on another call with our team, our marketing team, and I said, “Yeah, I have June 9th in Vegas, June 11th in the UK and then June 15th in Orlando.” It’s going to be a pretty crazy week for me. So, but that’s the way it goes.
Got April through July thanks to Bridging the Gap. And then I think I’ve got two, and then I have off August and September real quiet. And then October is, oh, that’s crazy. I told my husband won’t see you for four months of this year, so love you!
Yep. There you go. All right, well let’s jump into your story a little bit. You know, we said in the intro there, and we’ll get into Glass Wallet Ventures in a second. But we talked about the fact in the intro that you’ve built and sold two firms. Give me a little background on that.
Oh, man, I tell you what. So the first one I started because I realized I couldn’t work for other people. It just was not my forte. Corporations, I always would get in trouble with HR because “you can’t say that, Sharrin.” And then I always couldn’t stand it because if people got promoted based on their tenure, they were there longer than me. So they would get promoted, they’d be terrible at their job. I would teach them how to do it, but they’d get the promotion. I was like, I just can’t do this. So I started my own company because I bought a salon because I had my manicurist license in three different states. Anyhow, started my own company, eventually outgrew all that doing accounting or mobile office management, bookkeeping, grew it. I didn’t realize I even had anything to sell. And then in 2021, three different people came up to me and said, Hey, so we really want to buy your firm and we want to acquire you as a flagship and then bring you guys over and grow it underneath. And I ended up saying yes to one of them and immediately remembered, “Hey Sharrin, you don’t work well under the instruction of a board. Did you forget that?” So I ended up exiting after about six, seven months, and I was lucky enough to get out of all my handcuffs, so I was able to start another firm.
And as soon as I did, next thing I know everybody, my team came back, everybody came back and I ended up with another firm. And it wasn’t intentional. It was more of people coming up and going, hey Sharrin, we really want to start a firm. I had two different partners. I started two new firms. And I didn’t want to start any, but I ended up with two and I thought, oh, I’ll only do half the work. You’ll be fine. Never how it happens. Ended up buying my two partners out, merging those two firms together, and then had my accounting firm and just asking myself every day, why did I start another accounting firm? I didn’t want to. When I sold the last one, I’m like, I’m not doing this anymore. But I did. Then I sold it again. So that’s the long story short. You can read about the whole story if you read my book. I can’t even, I don’t know where I’m pointing. There we go.
I see. I can point, but I can’t really help out. I hate when it’s not mirrored because it’s so confusing.
Me too. Me too.
So, in fact, I almost turn the video off when that happens. So, but we’re going to stick with it today. Alright, so you just brought up the book. Let’s talk about that. Because I love the title, Unfollow the Rules. And so what prompted you to write this book?
So originally it was going to be more of a how-to, based on my startup to seven figures course that I have. And as I started writing it, I started adding in stories and then I ended up redoing the whole thing. And it ended up being less of a how-to and more of my journey and how I got here because I just, I didn’t mean to write something motivational or cheerleader, go get it. I’m not stepping on Dawn’s (Dawn Brolin’s) toes there, that’s our “Designated Motivator.” But it just, somehow as I was writing, I thought people need to know there isn’t one way to do things. They need to know that I didn’t go to college, my brain works differently than others. I just failed so many times, and the only difference between me failing and maybe some other people failing is I just kept getting back up, throwing some Neosporin on those scraped knees and just remembering, don’t do that again, try something different. And I just wanted to let people know I wasn’t afraid to fail and I’m not afraid to talk about failing, because owning a business, running a business is lonely and everybody just thinks, oh, you’re the business owner, you’ve got it all together. And I’m like, no no, or maybe I do sort of now, but only because I didn’t always, and I just kind of wanted everybody to know that in the background. There’s more than one way to do it. Unless you want to be a CPA, you have to go to school if you want to be a CPA. But that was never my goal.
That is a rule you do have to follow. And you’re right. So that is one rule, although those rules are changing as we speak right now in a lot of places. Just the 150 hours and different paths to becoming a CPA, school is still required. But there’s some other things that, although there is a state out there that is considering just eliminating the licensure completely, which is crazy.
Well, and did you know, if you’ve been an accountant for a long time, you can almost test out on a large portion of it. Because I was looking into, I’m like, maybe I’ll just go grab my degree real quick because you know, I’ve got nothing else to do over here. And then I was like, why? I don’t want to, so I stopped.
No need. I think at this point you’ve established yourself. I think you’re good.
I think I’m alright.
Okay. So when we talk about the rules then, because I’m a big proponent of the same thing I think you are, challenging these rules, challenging status quo, challenging mindset, embracing change I think is so important. When we look at accounting, accounting is a rules-based profession. There are things in place and I think sometimes we have that mindset and take it too far. So from your opinion, what are some of the biggest rules that you believe accountants need to challenge, to rethink, question?
So just because it’s always been done that way doesn’t mean you always need to do it that way. And I think that’s where a lot of accountants get stuck. We have, as you just mentioned, we live in a very black and white world, right? It’s one plus one is two. There’s no gray. And we tend to not like change, stick to what we know because we know it’s in line, or we’re not going to drop balls. And my thing is always, no, how long have we been doing this for? Let’s look into that. There’s no way we can’t be doing what our ancestors did forever, they did it because they had an abacus and they drew in the sand with sticks. We don’t have that now. We can upgrade and update.
So really, I question everything. It’s probably something my dad didn’t mean to instill in me when I was little. He said, you know, you don’t always have to take no for an answer, you can ask why. He meant it in a different context, but he should have explained a little bit more because since then I’d ask, I’d get in trouble at school all the time because the teacher would say, do this, and I’m like, why? That doesn’t make any sense. Timeout, Sharrin. But I’ve always just had that nature and when it comes to this and I go to conferences and I see everybody doing the same thing over and over, and I’m like, but why are you doing that? Well, it’s just what we do. But why? That sounds terrible. And I don’t like the status quo. You know me, Randy, I don’t like if everybody’s going left, I’m like, what’s wrong with the path on the right? I’m going to go check that out real quick and I’ll let you guys know. So really it’s just, I question everything. It’s the anarchist in me. I question literally everything. A lot of people don’t love it, but it’s just my nature. It just helps me learn and solve and understand people better in the process better. It worked for this.
I agree with everything you’re saying. I mean, I think if I listed a couple, I mean, why are we billing by the hour? That’s just, like you said, our ancestors, cave people did that, so we have to do it. It’s been this way forever.
My clients won’t like it. I’m like, you’ll be surprised. When you come to your clients as a professional that hired you and you say, by the way, we are doing this, I think clients prefer set pricing over hourly because they know what they’re getting. And then you can average it out. If you have a slow month, it’s okay. That’s a whole other topic that I’m sure you’ve covered.
Oh yeah, believe me. But that’s a key one. Another one is I think our mindset is that we’re there to help everybody, so we’ve got to help everybody rather than let’s pick the clients that make sense for us to work with. So we could, I could take us on a tangent on that too, but I love the idea of Unfollow the Rules. In fact, I’ve got a book sitting behind me that is titled Break the Rules, Alan Whitman wrote, he was a guest recently. We talked about his book on breaking the rules. So maybe you and Alan need to get together and discuss that.
Maybe! I was told Unfollow the Rules would be a little bit more easy for the more conservative accounting industry to swallow. And it was really fun to make everybody tattoo it on themselves at my book launch, that was the best.
I know you did that. I actually tried to go to the book launch but wasn’t able to, but I was in that area. I know it was in between two conferences, right?
Yes, it was the Sunday Intuit started, but it was down on Fremont Street and we bussed people over, and we had an amazing turnout and the Ignition party was at the Aria and I’m like, oh people, some people are not going to make it because that was an open bar. I had an open bar, but we had a great turnout. I’m not upset about it at all.
Nice. Nice. Well, okay, well let’s transition now, but I love the book and we’ll put it in the show notes where people can find the book and everything, so thank you for that. But let’s talk about what you’re doing now with Glass Wallet Ventures and, you know, we said in the beginning too, how you’re helping companies, firms, leaders scale smarter, leaner, really lean into what they should be doing. What is it that you are doing with Glass Wallet Ventures? I mean, how do you define it? Is it you’re a coach, you’re an advisor?
Advisor. I am a strategic business advisor specializing in process and efficiency and automation—put that on a business card. So I am advising one-on-one, and oddly, the people that I’m advising right now, I have a couple of accounting firm owners, but they’re not even in accounting like an insurance company. Anyhow, and then so I have a lot of advisory that I’m doing one-on-one, but my main thing is my community. So all my content’s community, and all the owners that are coming in there, they’re stuck. They’re stuck in different ways. Most of it is they are a dependency trap, and I’m coining that new phrase. So if you heard it again, instead of bottleneck, “dependency trap” in their company, because everything goes to them and depends on them and it gets stuck with them and they don’t know how to get rid of it. They don’t know how to move. They don’t know, do I hire, do I automate? What do I automate? So every one of them comes in with some sort of help me issue. And the whole idea is that right now it’s great because since it’s newer, when somebody asks me a question, I’m like, hold on, let me go fix that for you. I’ll go do a video, let me go make you a template, a spreadsheet because I love spreadsheets, so I’m making specific content for people right now and it’s kind of fun. But really the idea is just to help people get out of that. Is it a hiring issue? Is it an automation issue? How do you get things off your plate? How do you grow? Is it a capacity issue? And we’re really just solving for that.
But the whole thing, the whole goal is having your exit strategy in mind because what people don’t understand is you don’t know when or if you’ll want to sell your firm or even if you’ll need to, until it actually happens. And by that time, you’re already too late. Because once somebody puts the letter of intent in front of you, that’s got an amount on it, you’ve spent that money and you don’t go back and go, hold on, let me go fix things, you just want that money. So the idea is, let’s set it up from the beginning with the end of the journey in mind, because you don’t have to get there tomorrow, but you have it. So that way if it does happen, you’re like, oh, hey, I just sold my company for 2X instead of 1X or 1½. So that’s really the thing. And it’s a lot of emotional, a lot of the blocks people have are emotional. It’s not really process. It’s in their head. And accountants don’t like change. They’re uncomfortable with it. They need control. And you kind of have to baby step one piece at a time. Solve for, because we get overwhelmed, right? And you kind of have to solve for one thing. What’s the one thing we could take? Okay, now we got that one thing. Okay, what’s the next one thing? Okay, now we just gave you back 30 minutes a day of your life, what’s the next thing? And slowly by slowly, until they’re comfortable.
So it really is that I should go get a certification in counseling or something because I really feel like it’s a lot of, now let’s talk about this. But I enjoy that too. So this has been, this is my passion. I love it. I love spreadsheets, but I don’t want to do books anymore for anybody. I do my own. But I love creating these. I created like four or five different worksheets yesterday and spreadsheets, and they’re so pretty and fun and I can’t wait. We’re going to launch them in a day or two. And I’m like, I hope everybody loves them because I love it. So I’m having a lot of fun with what I’m doing now.
Nice. Well, the one thing, not only, obviously everything you said was pretty awesome in there, but that whole almost baby step process of not overwhelming people because you give them too much to do at once and I can’t, you said it.
They’re already underwater!
They don’t like change, yes.
They don’t like change and they’re already underwater struggling for air, not even have time to go to their kid’s kindergarten graduation. You throw them a whole brand new software that’s going to take them a month and a half to set up, or thousands of dollars to set up, and they’re like, nope, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing. So you’ve got to fix just one little thing at a time. One win. We call it a win. Let us give you one win. One win a month is the goal in there, and I think if we can do that, it’s worth the value of what we have. And so that’s what we’re really trying to solve for.
Yep. And in there you said, you mentioned one-on-one coaching, but you did offhandedly mention community too, and you have built a community. Give us an idea of what’s going on there.
That’s where I was at with that. That was the community. My one-on-one is very strategic, so if you come to me and say, hey Sharrin, we are, for example, the one company I’m working with, they’re buying a bunch of different companies that have nothing to do with each other, and they are all on different systems. So I’m coming in to help them unite and create one process and systems so they can get everything together. And so that’s one of the, a lot of strategic processes like that, strategic advisory. And of course some accounting firm owners are like, I just want to hop on a call with you once a month, let’s go through everything and let’s kind of work through things. So it really depends on what they need. But again, I love that too because I really just want to solve all the problems.
What is the name of the community?
It’s the Clone and Conquer Hub.
Clone and Conquer Hub. Got it.
The Hub.
Alright, the Hub, that’s nice. Alright, so you got the coaching, you got the community, you’re helping people run smarter, make change manageable, not overwhelming. And let’s pivot then from that. Man, you got lots of stuff going on.
I know it’s ADHD, Randy. I’m high functioning. ADHD, OCD, control freak. Of course I have a lot going on.
Well, speaking of ADHD, you were in a session on ADHD. Wasn’t this at the session at Bridging the Gap last year? Wasn’t it an ADHD session?
Yeah, that was at your conference there, sir, yes.
And I heard good things about that. I popped my head in and saw a little bit of it, but not much. So I thank you again for being part of that.
Of course!
And so since we just segued into conferences, you are actively involved in the conference as well. And I’m going to butcher the name right now because it’s not popping into my head. What’s the name of that? There’s an association and a conference.
Women Who Count. So the AFWA, and it’s Women Who Count. So that kind of became a passion project when I went to it in 2021. But I’ll let you ask your question before I just, Randy, if you just want to be quiet, I can just keep talking.
I have no problem letting you keep talking. But I was going to ask how you did get involved, but two things, how you got involved, but then give us that first, but then give us what is the conference and, you know, obviously the Women Who Count gives us a little idea, but there’s more behind it than that, I’m sure.
Absolutely. So when I decided I wanted to start educating in the conference circuit, I was looking for places to speak and somehow that one popped up and nobody had really heard of it, I guess. Anyhow, so I applied, Dawn applied, Sean applied. We all went there, we all spoke, and I was like, this is an amazing conference, it’s got a great vibe, but I felt like it just needed just a little bit more oomph. So I somehow, after that conference, ended up getting highly involved in the AFWA. They really brought me in. And then after a couple years, I think at the Reno conference, which was ’23, they said, Hey, will you please co-chair 24? And I’m like, sure. So I kind of co-chaired in 2024, but it wasn’t really doing a lot. It was just kind of, we had a management company, so it was more of a name than doing anything. And then 2025, we let our management company go in June and they’re like, Sharrin, someone’s got to take over this conference. And so we didn’t get anything, we had nothing until July. And keep in mind, the conference is October 20th. July, we put together a whole team and just a bunch of amazing women that are from the circuit or from AFWA, and we all got together and just put on the 2025 conference of which you came and spoke at as well. We were so happy you were there. And that conference, last year’s conference, has been our most profitable for the organization. All the money comes into the organization. We do scholarships and all those things. And the most highly attended, and this year we’re doing it again, it’s same week, it’s the third week of October, and this year it’s in Hilton Head, South Carolina. And we’re so, this one’s going to be even better. We’re really, really excited about it.
But it’s just, it’s got a different vibe. I like the smaller ones like yours. Yours has a very, yours is about mental health in the accounting industry, and I love that. It’s one of my favorite topics, and Women Who Count is more of how are women leading the industry? It doesn’t mean it’s only women. Men are totally encouraged and speak there as well. It’s just about really supporting women and what their roles are and how it’s changed and it’s just, it’s a really good vibe. And my thing when I came in, I said, okay, there’s no side parties. There’s no side events. It’s everybody. Everybody’s invited to everything. All the vendors get to come to breakfast with us. The sponsors, they get to come to the parties, they get to come to everything. Everybody goes to everything. Because I didn’t want, my biggest thing, and you’ll probably like this point of view, is I go to all the conferences. I’m a very bold, outgoing personality, so I get invited to all the things, Randy. I know you’re the same way. We’re on that pre-invite list. Hey guys, go RSVP before it goes live. But what about the people in our community that are just as brilliant, just as smart, but maybe they’re a little bit more introverted, they don’t know anybody yet. They don’t get those invites. They don’t know who the vendors are, they don’t know anything. So they’re stuck to sit in a corner or go back into their room, and I don’t want that. So Women Who Count, I want it to be super inclusive for everybody, and that’s kind of the goal there. And it was, I think it went well. I mean, I’m biased, but—
No, it went very well.
It was the first time last year that we tried it.
No, I thought it went very well. I was impressed with it.
The gala was fun. That was the first time that gala’s ever been fun. I’m telling you, I fell asleep at that thing the three years prior. This last year was actually fun.
Yeah, it was a good time. I ended up bidding on a thing there. I won my bid for a Royal Wise.
It was Alicia’s Royal Wise.
It was a Royal Wise membership. Yep. I gave that to my son who had recently started his own business. So that was good. And I completely agree with you. That’s the, with the whole keeping people together all the time, and that’s what we do at Bridging the Gap as well. I don’t want people going off on, hey, if they want to, I’m not going to stop them, but we intentionally have things where people stay together because community aspect of these conferences, the weird thing is the bigger the conference, the less you meet people. The smaller the conference, the more you meet people. And it seems counterintuitive.
Because you click off, right?
Yes.
There’s so many people that you’re like, here’s my people. Like you said, I’m always with Nick Boscia and Emily and Don, and you know, I’ve got my little group that I love. But I’ve really been forcing myself to go to things where my group isn’t going, so I have to meet new people because, and it’s been so much better that way. I mean, now that I’ve ventured out, but again, not everybody, I love a good underdog, Randy. If I see somebody sitting alone or look lost, I’m like, come sit with us, sit at our table. You can always sit at our table. And it is just, you know, I just like to bring that to the community, give other people a chance. The ones that wouldn’t get a chance otherwise. So that’s what Women Who Count to me, in my opinion, is about. It’s just being a community for each other. And then the AFWA is the Accounting, Finance, and Women’s Alliance and they run, or that is who owns Women Who Count or puts on Women Who Count. I’m currently on the executive board. I’m a treasurer, and then next year I’m president-elect, so I’ll be president the year after. I’m going to try to push that out an extra year. But yeah, so like I said, I got heavily involved somehow just head underwater. Just dove right in.
So you’re not busy at all. You’re just sitting at home just taking it easy.
I only work three days a week, Randy.
I did see that on your bio for sure. So that’s good.
I’m high functioning, I told you. I don’t know what it, it’s my superpower. I wish I could replicate it and give it to people in doses if they wanted it.
Well, you should probably work on that because that’s probably a good thing to be teaching people.
No! I’ll be a science experiment. They’ll take chemicals out of my brain.
Alright. I want to go back to something we said earlier because one of the things you said, you talked about, and I should have asked this back then maybe, but this is, I think a good way to kind of bring it full circle. When you’re working with these clients, you’re helping them prep for an exit, even if there is no exit in mind. And I think that’s a great opportunity. I think that’s a great thing to do. One, at least you’re running a more efficient organization if you’re doing something like that. But you know, if you’re working with accountants, there is a lot of that going on right now. Is that something that these people that you’re working with are asking about, “Hey, you know, there’s all this M&A, this private equity or VC.” Are you running into that or hearing that?
Some of them are, but it’s crazy, the ones who are wanting to either buy or sell come to me at that point, but it’s normally, I’m just done, I just want to sell right now, and they don’t plan for it. And I’m like, okay, you’re going to lose a lot of money unless you do this. And then I’m also, one thing, so originally when I first started a few years ago with Glass Wallet, I wanted to really focus in the M&A, the exit advisory, advise people on it with Naomi. So it’s another, she is doing M&A and she just wants to do the buy-sell part. She wants me to get everybody ready and then hand them to her and then she’ll get them through it. She has like a fund and everything for people that are looking to buy or whatnot. So now we’re working on this whole process where I will certify them, hand them to her and then she will know that they’re good to go. But she doesn’t want to do any of the prep, she wants to say, you need to come to me at this, and if you don’t have this, then we’re not having it. Because she has, I think, a really large fund. So we’re working on that.
And yeah, I mean, I love exit. My first company that I had, we started as a bookkeeper office manager, but when we finally sold, it was a fractional CFO and controller firm, and our specialty was VC-backed startups in the software and service industry. So my big thing was working on due diligence, going through rounds of funding. It was crazy. And we were so good at the due diligence. I was on it until that ink dried on the paperwork, the lawyers loved me. But I never dealt with it after that ink drying. And so once I sold my company and that ink dried and I saw the other side, I went, I knew nothing. And that is also what I want people to be prepared for. Like I said, it’s the emotional part. The business part’s fine. The business is real black and white. But I was not emotionally prepared. I was in two levels of counseling after I sold my company. I had to get personal counseling and business counseling because it was a lot. And now that I’ve been through that and I’m a pretty strong person and if it breaks me, it’s going to break other people. I got kicked off my life insurance policy, Randy, because my blood pressure, like you’re going to have a heart attack. And unfortunately, it was right at the renewal where they send the nurse to their house like, until you fix this, I’m like, oh, lovely. And I was having ocular migraines. It was terrible.
So I just want to prepare people for that. And there were five or six things I could have done in setting up my firm to not experience what I experienced. But like I said, the minute they put that LOI in front of you, you’re spending those dollars. So you’ve got to have it lined up before then, otherwise it’s done. So anyhow. So I’m very passionate about that and that’s my passion behind helping people set it up and also make money. I want people to work three days a week. I want people to take off, go on sabbatical for the holidays. I mean, I’m off for two months in the holidays. I want people to go to conferences and be able to go to all the vendor events and be present, because they don’t have to go back to the room and do actual work. I want them to be able to do that, and it’s not hard, it’s just a mindset change. And it’s the support. Someone saying, you can do this. I did it. Look at me, my first job was a paper route. I didn’t go to school. If I can do it, you can do it. Anybody can do it. You just, you have to change your mind and then do the work.
Yeah. Well, I think that brings us full circle from scaling with intention and leaner and smarter and all that. So before we wrap up then, there’s a couple last questions I want to ask you. And thank you for all that information. That was great advice on being prepared and knowing all the things that it isn’t just the, hey, you know, someone wants to buy me. I’m ready to sell. It’s the whole, not even that transaction, there’s the emotional part of it as well. But two last questions: First is, this was great information, this was a lot of fun, and when you’re not being a strategic advisor, did I get that right?
Yeah. Strategic business advisor, but we’ll take it.
Strategic business advisor. When you’re not doing that, what do you do for fun? Now that you’re working three days a week, what does the outside of work passions look like?
Randy, you know, hockey’s my life. Hockey’s my life. I’m even, in fact, as soon as we’re off here, the prequalifications for the gold medal hockey is why I’m wearing my USA, my Olympic sweater. I love sports. Hockey, very social, live in Vegas. My husband and I work on projects. We love, I love organizing things. I know that’s so weird, but I’ll be like, I’m bored this weekend. I’m going to reorganize this closet. And I’m always doing something, I feel like. We’ve been binging a lot of Netflix lately. I don’t know if I should admit that, but it’s been a nice decompression to be honest.
Yeah, we’ve been doing quite a bit of that. Yep. Hockey for sure, nice.
Hockey’s nine months a year, Randy. Nine months a year. So, you know, I only get three months off in the summer, which is great because that’s when all of our conferences are. But yeah, so a lot of hockey for me, which is a daily thing.
Nice, nice. Okay, well hockey. And then lastly, if people want to hear more about what you’re doing, Glass Wallet, Women Who Count, where are places they should look?
My social media, you go to GlassWalletVentures.com, Facebook, LinkedIn. Also I wanted to offer anybody who’s listening to this right now, if you join my community, it is free through the end of March and I will send you a book. If you mention, I’ll even sign it if you want. I don’t hold zero value, probably worth more without it, because you could return it to Amazon for money. But I will still send it to you if you mention that you listened to this podcast and that’s why you’re here.
Nice. Well, thank you for that. And we’ll put all that in the show notes. So Sharrin, any last words before we wrap up? You want to share anything otherwise? I’m at the end.
No, it’s, you know, just get back up. And it’s one thing. Just look for what the one thing is. That’s all you ever got to have is just one thing. One thing. Don’t try to fix everything at once. You can’t, you’ll fail. You’ve got to just do one thing at a time and let that motivate you.
Great advice. Well, Sharrin, thank you so much for being on The Unique CPA.
Thank you!
Important Links
About the Guest
Sharrin Fuller is a serial entrepreneur, strategic business advisor, and founder of Glass Wallet Ventures. She has built and sold two accounting firms and now helps accounting firm owners scale smarter without the burnout. Recognized as a Top 100 ProAdvisor for three consecutive years, Sharrin specializes in process optimization, automation, and exit strategy planning. She is the author of Unfollow the Rules, a book challenging traditional thinking in the accounting profession, and serves as Treasurer on the executive board of the Accounting, Finance, and Women’s Alliance (AFWA), where she co-chairs the Women Who Count conference.
Meet the Host
Randy Crabtree, co-founder and partner of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Professionals, is a widely followed author, lecturer and podcast host for the accounting profession.
Since 2019, he has hosted the “The Unique CPA,” podcast, which ranks among the world’s 5% most popular programs (Source: Listen Score). You can find articles from Randy in Accounting Today’s Voices column, the AICPA Tax Adviser (Tax-saving opportunities for the housing and construction industries) and he is a regular presenter at conferences and virtual training events hosted by CPAmerica, Prime Global, Leading Edge Alliance (LEA), Allinial Global and several state CPA societies. Crabtree also provides continuing professional education to top 100 CPA firms across the country.
Schaumburg, Illinois-based Tri-Merit is a niche professional services firm that specializes in helping CPAs and their clients benefit from R&D tax credits, cost segregation, the energy efficient commercial buildings deduction (179D), the energy efficient home credit (45L) and the employee retention credit (ERC).
Prior to joining Tri-Merit, Crabtree was managing partner of a CPA firm in the greater Chicago area. He has more than 30 years of public accounting and tax consulting experience in a wide variety of industries, and has worked closely with top executives to help them optimize their tax planning strategies.




