Episode 90: Q&A: Forensic Accounting as a Business with Tracy Coenen
In this season of the Data Sleuth Podcast, join Leah Wietholter as she discusses the business of forensic accounting with successful professionals who have done just that! As part of this series, Workman Forensics and podcast guests are providing free resources and tools to accompany each episode to help you with your practice whether you’re just starting out or wanting to take it to the next level. Make sure to listen to the end of the episode to find out how to download! Lastly, during the last episode of the season, we are going to answer all of your questions - so if you have any questions about the business of forensic accounting, send them to Leah via YouTube, LinkedIn, or by emailing us at podcast@workmanforensics.com.
In today’s episode with Tracy Coenen, Leah and Tracy answer your questions about forensic accounting as a business! The two professionals and business owners discuss:
Things they wish they’d known before starting their business
Insurance!
Who is the client in forensic accounting engagements
Data analysis tools for start-ups
GUEST BIO
Tracy has been investigating fraud for more than 25 years, but she didn’t always want to be a forensic accountant. With a dream of one day being a prison warden, Tracy went to Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI to get a criminology degree. A class on financial crime investigations reminded her how much she loved Encyclopedia Brown books as a kid. She continued her criminology degree, but added accounting and economics courses so she could become a CPA… and here Tracy is, finding money in cases of corporate fraud, high net worth divorce, and other financial shenanigans.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
To access the downloads discussed in this episode, visit: datasleuthpodcast.com
To learn more about the Investigation Game Education Edition, visit: workmanforensics.com/tig-educators
Order your copy of Leah’s book, Data Sleuth: Using Data in Forensic Accounting and Fraud Investigations today on Amazon!
CONNECT WITH WORKMAN FORENSICS
Youtube: @WorkmanForensics
Facebook: @wforensics
Twitter: @wforensics
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LinkedIn: @workmanforensics
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Transcript
Leah Wietholter:
Hi, I am Leah Wietholter, CEO and founder of Workman Forensics in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And this is the Data Sleuth Podcast.
In today's episode, I'm joined by Tracy Coenen, and Tracy and I are going to answer all of your questions that have been submitted about forensic accounting as a business. In this episode, we talk about things we wish we'd known before starting our businesses, insurance, identifying who the client is in forensic accounting engagements, and then also data analysis tools for startups, and also those looking to scale.
As a reminder, Workman Forensics and our podcast guests have provided free resources and tools to accompany each episode based on its topic to help you with your practice, whether you're just starting out or you're wanting to take you to the next level. So make sure to look for that link in the show notes.
Tracy Coenen has been investigating fraud for more than 25 years, but she didn't always want to be a forensic accountant. With a dream of one day being a prison warden, Tracy went to Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to earn her criminology degree. A class on financial crime investigations reminded her how much she loved Encyclopedia Brown books as a kid. She continued her criminology degree, but added accounting and economics courses so she could become a CPA. And here Tracy is, finding money in cases of corporate fraud, high net worth divorce, and other financial shenanigans.
Well, hi Tracy. Thanks so much for joining me on today's episode. Today you and I are answering questions from our podcast listeners.
Tracy Coenen:
I always love answering questions.
Leah Wietholter:
Well, good. Me too. It's kind of a skill we should have as experts. I think expert witnesses, right?
Tracy Coenen:
Well, yeah.
Leah Wietholter:
We like to answer questions.
Tracy Coenen:
We shouldn't just be able to answer questions in court. We should be able to answer them in everyday life too. And it's fun. We've been doing this for a long time and I know that there are a lot of people out there who are interested in forensic accounting who might be thinking about going off on their own or changing practices, and so why not share a little knowledge with them?
Leah Wietholter:
That's right. Let's do it. But before we jump into these questions, I just wanted to start with, and if nobody's heard you, you've been on the podcast several times, so we won't go back all the way to the beginning, but how long have you been in the forensic accounting space?
Tracy Coenen:
I have been doing forensic accounting for more than 25 years. I have been doing it for my own firm for 24 years. So I've been doing it for an awfully long time.
Leah Wietholter:
Yes, you have, very long time. That's great. And that's why I wanted you on the podcast today to answer some questions.
So lately I have been talking about this next question with a variety of people. So I'm going to ask you. What services do you consider forensic accounting?
Tracy Coenen:
I consider fraud investigations, economic damages, tracing money, business valuation to all generally fall under the umbrella of forensic accounting. And then from there are specific types of cases that you can work on. You can work on a lost profits case would fall under economic damages or in a big commercial insurance claim with lost business income might also fall under economic damages.
And on the fraud side, there are a number of different types of cases that could be considered fraud investigations. It might be the executive stealing money, it might be partners cheating each other out of money. It might be a family situation, maybe an estate situation where someone has hidden money or something like that.
Leah Wietholter:
Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. Which of these areas have you worked cases?
Tracy Coenen:
I work in all those areas except for business valuation. So business valuation is the one area that I don't work in. I have a personal belief that it is very specialized and that we can't be all things to all people. And I personally think that people should focus either on business valuations or on fraud investigations, but not try to do both. I think that there's a lot of complexity in each of them, and it just, in the cases that I've been involved in, I think it works better when a true specialist is doing a business valuation and a true specialist is doing a fraud investigation.
Leah Wietholter:
I completely agree. Absolutely agree. And I would actually add a third category, although I know you do this as well, but I think economic damages is another very specialized area. I think we can learn a whole host of things, but I think there's just so much to learn in economic damages that I've always treated those as even another separate. And sometimes we have to calculate fraud damages. I'm not talking about that, maybe as related to an investigation, but lost profits like you mentioned, or the business loss or wrongful death, things like that, medical malpractice, economic damages. I know that you're a pro in those areas, but I would rather just go find missing money for people and then of course I can apply an interest rate or something like that to the damages in those types of cases.
Tracy Coenen:
I totally agree with you that it is another subset that is a very specialized area. And yes, I do the fraud investigations and I do the economic damages. I like the fraud investigations much better. What's interesting, part of the reason why I think it's difficult to do economic damages is because there is a lot of gray area there. You are making estimates, you are trying to project what would've happened. You are trying to come up methodologies for calculating stuff, and you have, "Okay, what records do we have? What is our basis? What is our theory for what would've happened with the numbers?" And so there's all that gray area, whereas when we're tracing money in a fraud investigation, it's pretty black and white. Yes, occasionally I do have to make estimates. Maybe we're missing a month's worth of documents and we want to fill in that gap with an estimate, but for the most part, it's a lot more black and white.
Leah Wietholter:
I agree. And within each of these three categories that we've mentioned, there's case law, there's cases to consider. And those cases, it has always seemed like to me that there is a vast amount of information to be able to really be a confident expert witness to know what is normally handled in these types of situations and to try to cross over. Although I've done a little bit of all of it. Once I found my spot, that's where I landed. And I like to send work to other people that do the things that I don't. Just share the love.
Tracy Coenen:
We don't have to be all things to all people.
Leah Wietholter:
No, no. And there's plenty of work. It's so funny. When I started in forensic accounting, in public accounting, this was seen as a feast or famine field. Yeah, we'll send it over to you whenever we have it. There was somebody to do valuation. I did the fraud investigations. There was somebody else to do economic damages, and they were experts. I mean, that was just their thing. They were such experts in those spaces.
But what I've learned ever since then is it seemed like these forensic accounting areas, all three of them, were maybe something that you wouldn't want to base an entire practice on. But I have found, and you have found, that there is more than enough work to even narrow that niche even further into these different sub-forensic accounting areas.
Tracy Coenen:
Of course. And if you're good at what you do, there's always going to be work for you.
Leah Wietholter:
Yes, absolutely. So let's go back to the very beginning of your business. Do you remember any of those first decisions that you had to make that were maybe surprising or challenging to you that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise had you not started your own business?
Tracy Coenen:
One of the interesting things that I had to think about back when I started this business in 2000, I had to think about a website then. And you don't necessarily think about the fact that not every business had a website then, and the ones that had them, they didn't look very good. And so I was building a website myself and it looked terrible.
And at the time I was thinking about, "Well, what is this website for?" And I thought, "Well, it's kind of like a brochure that people can just go online and look at, because certainly no attorney is ever going to go do a search on the internet to try to find their expert because they're smarter than that. They're never going to be doing a Google search to find an expert." And how wrong I was because over time, I started getting a good portion of my business from attorneys finding me with Google searches. And so that whole thought process was something that I wasn't prepared for when I started.
Leah Wietholter:
Yeah, that's a really good one. And thinking about the website, I really didn't even know what to talk about because at the time, I knew what I was going to sell, forensic accounting services, but I didn't really even know how to talk about it because I hadn't worked with enough private clients to see what are the keywords they're using whenever they're talking to me. I feel like the way that I sell the services now is just so different or the way that I talk about the services now, so different just from having that experience.
One of the things that was really surprising to me, I've talked about several over this podcast season, but one of them was also thinking about how am I going to store client information? So when I started, that was 2010, and so I had worked at a public accounting firm that we were entirely paperless, but my very first case was a million and a half dollar embezzlement at an organization that was still on paper.
They were handwriting on green bar ledger paper, and then they had all of their paper bank statements going back 10 plus years, all this stuff. And I had never seen bankers boxes that large. I'd seen the ones that are pretty easy to carry, but these were massive. And I was working from my house and I thought, "How am I going to keep this information safe?" And even whenever we started digitizing the information to be able to do our investigation, I had to start thinking about, "How am I going to keep this digital information safe?" And the more that I talk to people who are maybe solopreneurs or just starting out, I think that this is an area that sometimes gets overlooked. We feel safe in our home, and so we don't necessarily think about how are we going to store this information.
So in the house I lived in, there was a very large closet with shelves, and so I was able to put a lock on that door and in that closet. And so that's where I stored all this information and then we would just have to lug it out. And then Chris, my husband, one of his best friends at the time was in IT, and so he started creating, we built a server and now we've really built that up. But just even thinking about cyber insurance, which we're going to get into that. But yeah, how to store client because you're just so excited to get your first case and then you're like, "Oh my gosh, what am I going to do with all this paper? Or what am I going to do with all these files?" Because that really is a very large risk. I mean, we're handling people's financial information.
Tracy Coenen:
Well, you mentioned insurance, and that was something that I think a lot of people are not really well-informed about before they start their business. If you are a licensed CPA or a licensed PI, there are some pretty well-defined ways that you can get your liability coverage. If you aren't one of those things and you're a more generalist, getting the right professional liability insurance or errors and omissions, whatever you want to call, it might not be as easy as you think it is. You have to make sure you have the right policy that's going to cover the activities that you're doing and it can really be a minefield.
Leah Wietholter:
Yeah, it's true. When I first started out, I was not licensed for a few months and I had to find some insurance for professional liability. And especially back in 2010, finding an insurance policy that would cover a forensic accountant who wasn't a CPA but also not a private investigator. It was definitely tricky. And private investigators typically have bonds, which I have a bond for being a PI, but I also added professional liability because we need that errors and omissions. We're not just fact finding. We're also giving opinions on different situations.
So actually this was one of the questions. So we've had some questions come in a lot of these are mainly from one listener, from Haley Ray, so thank you Haley for sending these in. So her first question was actually about business insurance, and she was wondering what types of business insurance somebody should have. So obviously the professional liability, but do you want to talk about some of the others that you have? And this is something that we have to factor in when we're looking at what we're going to charge, how we're going to charge. I mean, we need to know because these are going to be fixed costs to us for the rest of our careers.
Tracy Coenen:
Well, the basic ones that you're going to want to have in addition to the professional liability, are the general liability policy, that's going to cover you if people say slipped and fell when they came to your office or say that you were in the course of your business when you ran them over with your car, there could be some liability to the business there. Even though you have your personal auto insurance, you want to cover all the bases just in case there are some unusual claims.
You might also want to have a policy that covers your business equipment and property. You'll need workers' comp insurance if you're going to have employees. And I wanted to mention on the insurance topic that as the business owner, you also want to be thinking about insurance for yourself individually. Think about disability insurance if you can no longer work. Think about life insurance if something happens to you, not only to take care of your family, but also there may be costs in winding down your business and making sure that your clients are taking care of and that life insurance could come into play there. So those kinds of things can be important as well.
Leah Wietholter:
Absolutely. And then I would also just add on that I'm a real stickler for this right now because of some things we have going on, but I think that as people who handle financial information, and especially depending on how we're storing that information, everyone should have a cyber policy as well. It got kind of expensive there for a while, but I noticed my premium came down this year and our insurance brokers said it did for a lot of people it had gotten crazy, but I just think it's always good to have that in place.
And I've also noticed that for some of our larger data analytics projects, I've been asked to provide a certificate of that insurance as well for some of the larger companies or especially if they're publicly traded as part of their master services agreement. So I have been asked to provide that before. So no matter how many employees I have at the time, I always want to operate as if we were a large firm. So I like to be able to have those things handy whenever we're being asked to work large investigations. And actually I think for some bank investigations, we were also required to have that too.
So just another cost, I think this year it was $1,300 or $1,600. So it's just something to factor in whenever you're starting off. And I personally have used an insurance broker this whole time. We actually met because he provided the insurance for a bank that had a three and a half million dollar embezzlement. So that's how I met him very early on in my career. And so he's taken great care of me. I think he was actually on an early podcast episode too, but having somebody just really informed of those things is always helpful.
So the next question is can you elaborate more on who your client is and what that relationship is like? For instance, if an attorney comes to us with their client who may need help finding hidden assets or something in a divorce dispute, does the attorney become the client or is the individual your client and they're making the retainer deposit directly to you or your firm? How does that work? And I think there's several scenarios, but I'm going to let you go first.
Tracy Coenen:
I don't care who my client is. I do whatever the attorney and client want. So sometimes the attorney is my client and the money gets passed through them. Sometimes the client client is my client and they pay me directly. It really doesn't matter to me. The difference is in some cases, the attorneys want to make sure that the work that I do is protected as work product and is not discoverable until such time that I am actually named an expert in the case.
Prior to me being named an expert, they want me to be a consultant to the law firm because maybe they don't know what I'll find. Maybe they'll find that their client is guilty of a crime or the case isn't as good as they thought it was. And so they don't want there to be any opportunity for that to be discoverable.
In those cases, if the client was my client and we communicated back and forth, there is potential that that kind of stuff could be discovered. And so having the attorney hire me protects it a little bit more, but I always let that attorney make the call. And if they ask me for a recommendation on it, I don't make a recommendation on that. I say, "Here's the way I've dealt with it with other clients. Either you hire me because you have work product concerns and you want to protect my work, or some attorneys prefer the client to hire me directly because they don't want to be the middleman or involved in the financial transactions. This is completely up to you and your client. Let me know what you decide."
Leah Wietholter:
I think that's great. For the same, I completely agree with what you said about privilege and when being a consulting expert and then transitioning to that testifying expert. But on my engagement letters, they're all set up where the attorney is representing the firm that we're performing our work for the firm, and then the client is responsible for the bill. That's how all of ours are set up.
I've had some attorneys that said, "I'm not going to sign this." Because they're like, "I don't want to be held responsible for paying your bill, and I don't want our team to have to process this." And I'm like, "Okay, let me point you to the paragraph where it says, we're doing the work for you, but the client has to pay our bill." But we just set all of ours up that way, unless the attorney is like, "Absolutely not."
I'll say in Oklahoma, that seems to work best. The law firms that we work with in Oklahoma, they don't want to handle the admin of that money, getting our invoice and having the client pay. But in other states, I'm thinking of two right now, one in Texas and one in Michigan. Those attorneys... I'm sorry, the one in Texas, it was a very large firm and they wanted to handle all that. So I mean, I'll always change, but I just say, "This is how we set it up. Let me know if you want to change." But yeah, I agree with you. I don't think it actually matters who the client is.
One thing I ran into a long time ago being retained by the attorney only, that I started requiring that the end client is also on the engagement letter is that the attorney was asking me for services that the client didn't want to pay for. And so I started making sure that they are aware, because we have our whole case planning process, but both the attorney and the client are aware, "This is what we've been hired to do and this is what we're going to charge you for." So ever since we started doing that, it's a lot cleaner for sure.
All right. So we're going to take a short break and we'll be right back.
Speaker 3:
Breaking into the field of forensic accounting can be overwhelming, leaving you wondering where to begin. The best way to gain experience is by working cases, but how do you work cases to learn without the results impacting the outcome of a real case? Leah's book Data Sleuth: Using Data and Forensic Accounting in Fraud Investigations contains case studies and solutions for you to practice planning a case, from identifying the client's concerns and connecting them to the appropriate analyses and finding the most relevant data to perform the analysis. Build your confidence in addressing client needs through reliable analyses, using the Data Sleuth book and free practice downloads as a guide by ordering your copy today on Amazon.
Leah Wietholter:
Welcome back to my conversation with Tracy. So we're going to dive into another one of Haley's questions for us. In one of the earlier Data Sleuth Podcast episodes, we talked about types of software that are out there for data analysis. And her question was, are there any out there that are good for startups and are scalable as you grow your business?
Tracy Coenen:
Well, you know my answer to this is get Microsoft 365, use the Office Suite, exploit it for all it's worth because you can do probably 95% of what you need with that. You can figure out a way. I'm not a fan, when you're starting out, of spending a whole bunch of money on specialized software. There might be software packages that you have used before in investigations and you like to use. My advice is wait to purchase those until you actually have a case where you want to use them on, because you're often paying a one-year license fee. So why start that one year running before you actually need it on a case?
Leah Wietholter:
Totally agree, 100%. So we use IDEA, but we're currently in the process of looking at modifying our current Data Sleuth tools to not be reliant upon IDEA. I don't think I'll get rid of IDEA altogether because I think IDEA has a place in our work whenever we're hired to find a needle in a haystack. So I can just handle very large data sets. I'm thinking of this hospital we did some work for, I mean we're talking about these massive data sets that it just gets a little too sluggish in Excel.
But I would agree with you in most fraud investigations, Excel is really all that we need and Excel's capabilities keep expanding. And so we're looking into Power Automate, Power BI, Power Query. That's what I meant instead of Power Automate, although we like some Power Automate too, but looking at how can we have tools that just operate within Excel, that could really be a game changer.
The one thing I did, this was in year four of my business, I actually was still working cases with Workman Forensics, but then I worked for our Oklahoma State Auditor for about nine months. And I did that specifically because they had purchased ACL and I wanted to see do I like ACL or do I like IDEA? Those were the two options at the time and two very different price points as well. But I wanted to see do I like this?
And so I did work for them so that I could get access to ACL and what I discovered at the time, it could be very different now, but at the time this would've been like 2014, you really needed someone who could write code to write your scripts. I mean, it was closer to a Python kind of language. I'm probably using the wrong, but Java, something like that. But IDEA was closer to Excel and like VBA language. And so that's why I went with IDEA. But I think the really significant thing was before I spent money, I actually went and tried this out. At the time, ACL was the leader, they purchased the leader. "Oh, well I can go and I can work for them and help them get caught up on audits, but also I'll be able to see if I like this software."
Tracy Coenen:
Brilliant.
Leah Wietholter:
That's something I did. Oh, thanks. So I know I've actually talked about this quite a bit on the podcast, but specifically in this podcast season, I had mentioned that to investigate fraud in the state of Oklahoma, you have to be a licensed PI, CPA, or attorney. And so the question we were asked was, is somebody breaking the law by advertising that they do fraud investigations if all they have is a credential?
So I like to talk about what does this look like for CPAs, if you want to address that, and then I'll address the PI question and what I've seen in my experience. I think credentials just show that you have specialization, but I don't think it gives you a license to do these things that are more protected, like a fraud investigation. But I'll let you talk about what you've seen in the CPA world related to this.
Tracy Coenen:
It's interesting and people like to argue about this one. So I'm a CPA, I do expert witness testimony. I do the fraud investigations in the forensic accounting. In most cases, I really don't need to be a CPA to do that. However, as you mentioned in some states, being a CPA may qualify you to provide those services in those states. So it's super state-dependent. And so I always tell people, "You have to look at the state your case is in, look at the statutes, make sure you're not running afoul of whatever their statutes say."
And for most states, I think there is a way that your work can be presented that enables you to not run afoul of the rules. But by being a CPA, that gives me a lot more latitude. I know that I qualify in a lot more states. And what's great about being a CPA is there's reciprocity from state to state, where I'm not automatically licensed in another state just because I'm licensed in Wisconsin now. But if I did want to get licensed in that other state, it's really usually just a matter of paperwork and paying a fee because I'm in good standing in Wisconsin, so I can get licensed in another state. When I do go testify in another state, I'm able to say I'm licensed in Wisconsin and Illinois. That holds some weight in court. So that's my approach to it.
Leah Wietholter:
Yeah, I agree. And it's really interesting because actually you helped me find some documentation on forensic accounting in Texas, and it is not considered a public accounting service. So in the state of Texas for forensic accounting, you don't necessarily have to be a CPA. Now for a fraud investigation, I don't know the rules in Texas about this under a PI license, but they do have a lot more strict PI rules and regulations in Texas than they do in some other states.
But my thing, well, a couple of things I've run into as a PI, but especially before I got my CPA license, is that... I mean, depositions aren't very fun because the attorneys are saying, "Oh, well, you're just a licensed PI. You're not a licensed CPA. How do you even know this stuff?" Well, the CPA exam doesn't even cover fraud investigations or forensic accounting or testifying or anything litigation.
So to me, that's just an unnecessary discussion, but it still comes up and takes a good 30, 45 minutes to get through it, which doesn't happen anymore, which is nice. But I also think, just going back to looking at state by state, I testified for 11 years without my CPA license, and then around that same time that I passed the CPA exam, took the CPA exam, passed it, judges in Oklahoma were starting to disallow testimony from non-CPAs who were even experienced financial fraud and investigators who had worked in law enforcement, but they actually excluded testimony.
I even ran into some issues because a judge didn't believe that I had testified as much as I had without having my CPA license. And during a break went and Googled and fact-checked me to make sure that I had actually testified on some cases. And so I think knowing those types of nuances too is really important before just taking a case. But I do think it's easier if you have your CPA license because it's a uniform exam. The states have comparable requirements.
And then the other thing I've really... I mean, I'm kind of on a soapbox about this right now. I think you should be licensed in some capacity if you are doing this work because then there is a state board that is, there's requirements about insurance. There's also a state board if there is an issue that a customer can reach out to that state board and make a complaint. So maybe if you're looking to get into this, you're like, "Oh, maybe I don't want that."
But I just think that the licensing is not a bad idea in this. We're handling very sensitive information. Sometimes we're even entrusted, like in a receivership, we're entrusted with assets and we become a fiduciary of assets that don't belong to us. And I think that those individuals should be licensed before doing that work. So I mean, I could go on about that, but I better stop.
Tracy Coenen:
I know you could.
Leah Wietholter:
We have a lot of listeners, so I better just stop. In fact. Oh yeah, I'm reading my notes. I have a lot to say about this. So anyway, I'm with you though. There's so much of this work that we do not need to be CPAs to do this, but if you have any intentions of testifying, I think it's just going to become more of a requirement. And I don't know, I would say most of my cases I'm getting, and you can speak to this too, but I think a lot of the cases I'm getting, it's because I'm willing to testify. If you're not willing to testify or not able to testify, I think that's really going to limit the cases that you can take on your own.
Tracy Coenen:
I can't imagine an attorney wanting to hire someone who wouldn't be willing and capable to testify. That makes no sense. Then what's the point?
Leah Wietholter:
Well, and then whenever they go find an expert that will testify, there's a lot of duplication of work because if I can't tell how someone worked the case, and this has actually happened several times, but if I can't tell how someone's worked the case, I can't rely on that to then go testify. So then I'm going to have to redo it for the client. I think that if you're somebody that just does not want to testify, I think you should team up with somebody who does.
Tracy Coenen:
That's a fabulous idea.
Leah Wietholter:
Yeah, there's plenty of this work and having multiple people work on the same project so that you can have some detailed review and some quality control. I mean, that's just never going to a bad thing.
Our last question. What is the one piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you were first starting your business?
Tracy Coenen:
I wish that I had someone who could have sat me down and educated me on the costs involved in starting the business, the amount of money I was going to have to invest in different things because I was really unprepared for that. It was like, "Oh, I'm going to start this company as a solo practitioner. All I've got to do is buy a computer and it's all going to be great."
And I was just unprepared for the costs, but I was also unprepared for some of the long-term projects or long-term things that you have to invest in as a business owner. And I was really unprepared for how long it would take to start getting clients and start getting a consistent income. I got a couple of projects the second I opened my doors, and that was great, but then there were gaps, and I was waiting for projects to come in, and I just was completely unprepared for how much lead time I needed to start establishing a client base and then get that client base to be consistent for me.
Leah Wietholter:
Yes, I agree with all of those. All of those things would've been so nice to know up front. In fact, those are so good I need to make sure you didn't take mine. No, I'm just kidding. I think just in addition to all of those, I wish... So you probably experienced this too, starting in 2000, but in Oklahoma, no one did this full time. No, and still not that many people do this full time. There's a few more now.
And so people told me like, I mentioned it earlier, like, "Oh, this is a feast or famine field. I don't know why you're not going to have any recurring revenue." And I really let that get to me. I mean, I didn't know any different, and so I really let that get to me. And so if I felt slow, I might not even be slow. I might still be working cases, but if I felt like my workload was slow, I would freak out, I would panic and I would start trying to get more.
And that led to some really unhealthy life choices, just that level of stress and not sleeping and not prioritizing rest wreaked havoc on my body. And so over the last probably six years or so, I've been on this quest to try to regain some of that. And to experience that, I mentioned this in the episode with Dan too. If I'm slow to just calm down, I'm going to have ideas. There's plenty of work. And to take that time to learn something new or I mentioned in the episode with Dan, like go to a spa, or that's when I clean out a closet. Just accept that as some rest because when the cases hit... And for me, I wanted to be an FBI agent, so I don't think I ever was looking for an eight to five job, but this is not an eight to five job. So I'll gladly tell somebody that advice. If you're wanting to dabble in this space, it will be feast or famine if you want to dabble. If you want to be great, there's plenty of work in this space.
Tracy Coenen:
Well, you and I pretty much work at a hundred percent capacity at all times. So what I'm going to say is going to sound weird probably to the listeners, but there are times where I'm like, "When's the next project coming in?" I get a little bit of panic even after 24 years. "Am I going to have enough work next month?" I always have enough work next month. I always have more work than I can take.
I mean, clients are calling me and I'm saying, "I'd love to talk to you about taking your case, but I need you to know up front that I wouldn't be able to even start working on it for the next 60 to 90 days." But still in the back of my mind, I'm like, "Okay, now let me plan out, do I have enough to cover the next several months?" And I get that little panic and it's like, "Oh, I don't need to panic." But I think that's just the curse of being self-employed.
Leah Wietholter:
Yeah, there's just so much to being self-employed. When I first started out, I thought, "I'm just going to work some cases for my dining room table." I lived cheap. Like, "Oh, this will be fine." But I think another surprising thing is just how much self-reflection and self-awareness I have to have in being a business owner. And especially once you start adding employees or even contractors or anything like that, there's just so much self-reflection like, "Why do I keep running into this problem? Oh my gosh, is the problem me? Or why do I keep running into this in my cases? Or, oh, there's kind of a glitch here in my process. How do I change this?"
And so there's this constant self-reflection in addition to managing a team, making sure you collect all your money. I mean, there is a lot to this, and I would not trade my experience for anything, but if there had been a firm like mine back in 2010, I would've found a way to work with them.
It seems like, "Oh my gosh, you're going to get all this attention." And maybe I have had the comment before that people didn't want to join my team because they didn't want to live in my shadow, that kind of thing. But let me tell you, there is so much confidence that you can get from working with somebody else. I pieced together this mentor team. Well, and Tracy's on the call now. No, but I mean, I bought Tracy's, I bought all your books as they came out. I mean, I'm having to piece together, I'm listening to podcasts about business, but then reading books about lifestyle analysis and divorce at the same time. And so there's just some real benefits to joining a shop that has some economies of scale, all that insurance, we can all carry the same insurance or we could work together. So that's going to start me on a whole other rant, and we probably need to wrap up, but any last thoughts before I do that?
Tracy Coenen:
Oh, I just hope that those who are thinking about doing this, don't get scared off by anything that we've said. It's not easy, but it is, of course, so rewarding. And one of the best things about doing this myself 24 years ago was I got to make my own decisions about how I wanted to run things. And one of the biggest reasons why I left the firm that I was at and did my own thing was because I wanted to do fixed fees. I did not like the hourly billing model 24 years ago, and I didn't like the way that it functioned in cases. I didn't like the way I thought it made clients feel. So that was one of the most important things that I did when I started my firm was we're doing fixed fees only and 24 years later, we're still doing it. So being able to make those decisions has made a lot of the difficulties worthwhile.
Leah Wietholter:
That's awesome. Yeah. Well, Tracy, thank you again for being on the Data Sleuth Podcast. And if our listeners would like to connect with you, what's the best way to do so?
Tracy Coenen:
Find me on LinkedIn. Send me a message.
Leah Wietholter:
All right. Thank you so much, Tracy.
Tracy Coenen:
Thanks, Leah.
Leah Wietholter:
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Data Sleuth Podcast. The resources discussed in today's episode are available at datasleuthpodcast.com, also available in the show notes. If you have any questions you would like answered in the Q&A episode of this season, make sure to send them to podcast@workmanforensics.com or the Workman Forensics YouTube page or the Workman Forensics LinkedIn page. The Data Sleuth Podcast is a production of Workman Forensics. Thank you for listening.