Melanie Geist, partner with Ridout Barrett & Company, a CPA firm in San Antonio, joined us for this episode of Life In Accounting: The Where Accountants Go podcast.
Peace Corp!
While it’s not the main point of the interview, one of the interesting elements of Melanie’s background is that she took a short time off to travel with the Peace Corp right after college prior to returning to the states to start her professional career. The Peace Corp stationed her in Nicaragua, a destination she feels fortunate to have been given, and it was there that she formed some life-long relationships – one of which landed her in San Antonio and jump started her career!
Ground floor opportunity…
She returned to the US and decided on San Antonio partially because she was invited to join a start-up accounting firm ran by Steve Porter CPA, which eventually became Porter & Geist. It was a tremendous opportunity in that it took advantage of some basic skills Melanie had gained in a part-time job during college, but at the same time opened her up to much more opportunity due to the newness of the firm.
Buy-out & merger…
As her partner neared retirement, Melanie decided to move towards buying out his interest and they came to an agreement. As luck would have it, she also had attracted the attention of the larger firm of Ridout Barrett & Company and was approached shortly thereafter regarding possibly merging her practice into theirs – which was a good opportunity in that it gave her access to more tools and systems at a much faster pace than she would have experienced building them on her own.
But it doesn’t stop there…
I wouldn’t be doing this interview justice if I said it was all about business strategy. While there certainly are some very valuable lessons in the interview about growing a firm and overall business, Melanie gives so much detail about her personal history and the choices she’s made along the way that there really is something in this interview for everyone, regardless of what stage of life you are in.
I hope you enjoy this one. It was fun to record.
See you next week… there’s more to come…
Mark Goldman CPA
President – Where Accountants Go
www.WhereAccountantsGo.com
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