Managing a Local Accountancy Firm with Kathy Wileczek

Intro: Get your 2025 off to a great start and join us for our upcoming networking event. Come out to the American Helicopter Museum in Westchester on Wednesday, January 22nd for a fun engaging happy hour. Connect and catch up with others in our Start Local community over good food, local beer, delicious wines, and non-alcoholic drinks. As always, attendance is free but registration is required. You can register on our website at [startlocal.co]. That’s [startlocal.co]. See you there.

Liam Dempsey: Welcome to Start  Local, where we talk with business owners, leaders of nonprofits, and other members of our community focused on doing business in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania. Each episode will provide insight into the local business scene and tell you about opportunities to connect with and support businesses and nonprofits in your local area.

Joe Casabona: The Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce promotes trade, commerce, industry, and sustainable economic development while supporting a diverse and growing marketplace. The chamber is proud to partner with the Start Local podcast to raise the profile of businesses and nonprofits throughout Chester County. Learn more about the chamber at scccc.com. That’s scccc.com.

Erik Gudmundson: Hello. I’m Erik Gudmundson, and I’m here with Liam Dempsey. Liam, how are you today?

Liam Dempsey: Super fantastic, Erik. Thank you. How are you?

Erik Gudmundson: I’m doing well, and I’m also looking forward to something. We have, coming up very, very soon, Wednesday, January 22, 2025, from 5 PM to 7 PM.

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. We’re gonna have our networking event over at the American Helicopter Museum, and you need to register on our website. You can do so. Just head over to [startlocal.co] and click on the blue register button at the top. Attendance is absolutely free as we always offer, but you do need to register. So go on over to [startlocal.co] today.

Erik Gudmundson: Thank you for those very easy-to-follow directions, Liam. So I, we’ll see if we can make the rest of the show go that smoothly as well. Fingers crossed. Indeed. 

Well, today, we’re here to welcome Kathy Wileczek. She’s a shareholder at Umbreit, Wileczek & Associates, a Kennett Square headquartered accountancy firm. Welcome, Kathy.

Kathy Wileczek: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Liam Dempsey:  Hey, Kathy. Thanks for joining us today. Nice to see you.

Kathy Wileczek: You too.

Erik Gudmundson: Going back to your title, you’re officially a named shareholder in your own accountancy firm. What are the duties of a shareholder, and how do you balance managing the firm and team that you have there with client services and business development, doing everything else you need to do as a business owner?

Kathy Wileczek: Well, what you have to do as a shareholder, is pretty much defined by the size of the accounting firm. Very large firms will have a very narrowly defined scope of duties for each of their shareholders.

In a smaller firm with myself and Tim, we kind of take all of the duties of running a business on top of client responsibilities, on top of HR, and everything else that goes along with the small business, and cut it off by who’s good at it and who’s got time to do it.

Erik Gudmundson: How many people are in your organization these days?

Kathy Wileczek: Usually there’s between 1517 of us, generally more during tax season.

Liam Dempsey: We appreciate that accountancy firms can specialize in what are more areas of the finer points of accounting. Does your firm specialize in providing, or do you cover everything? How does your firm work?

Kathy Wileczek: We do not cover everything. We would be probably considered a very general local practitioner, kinda like your family doctor kind of thing. We service a wide variety of locally owned and managed businesses. Generally, our business owners are the people running their businesses. We also, service a fair number of C-suite executives. Just due to our proximity to Delaware, there’s an incredible number of people working in Delaware that reside in Pennsylvania. 

And then, finally, on the tax side, we offer specialized services to seniors. So, we’re again, we’re close to Kendall, Crosslands, Jenners Pond and, seniors who have different needs. They’re tax returns. While not as complex, they need various kinds of assistance as they age out. And we’ve kind of built into that a way to help them transition from a period where they’re perfectly able to do everything on their own to perhaps needing family assistance, direct intervention in obtaining some of the tax documents, assistance writing checks. So, that part’s good. 

But when it’s not tax season, what we do is audit local not-for-profits. And that takes us pretty much from May to December. We don’t do audits during tax season, but the rest of the year that keeps us pretty busy.

Erik Gudmundson: There were some very interesting specialties that I think a lot of people probably don’t even think about when they think about, accountants. And so if someone is just, you know, wanting an accountant and they come to you and they really need a specialty that you don’t offer, what do you do? Where do you send them? How do you figure out where to send them?

Kathy Wileczek: Well, so interestingly enough, people, people picture like professionals as being kind of competitive, just because of the way the county is right now, the complexity, how different things can be based on industry or what somebody might need, like foreign assistance or, different technical types of things. Some of the investments can be pretty complicated. They were collaborative. Like I have contacts at a lot of, and friends at a lot of accounting firms in Chester County. 

And if someone comes to me and we don’t do it, I, I know who does. And you know, like, like we don’t audit employee benefit plans. So if somebody calls and says, Hey, we need one. Like, I know 3 accountants who are doing it. Because it’s in a small firm. You can’t, you can’t take on a risk for an area where you don’t have specialization. It’s just a recipe for a bad outcome. It doesn’t even matter what they say is. And it and it extends not only to the sharing of clients but but even to sharing HR resources. Like if I’m interviewing and I pick up an interview with an accountant who I think would be a good fit in another firm, but not mine, I’ll be like, hey. You know, I just talked to this person. I think you might wanna talk to them.

Erik Gudmundson: Working in information technology, I can certainly appreciate your answer, and I think there’s a lot of power in knowing what you know and knowing what you don’t know.

Kathy Wileczek: It’s never worth it. Every time you think, oh, this person’s really nice, and then you end up spending 10x more than you thought you were gonna spend on it. And maybe the outcome’s not what you wanted. You’re a little bit like, did I do that right? You know, it’s if you know somebody who does it and you don’t, you’re better off referring it out.

Liam Dempsey:  Yeah. I’m with both of you on that., I also think the commercial value of knowing what you don’t know is not to be underestimated and customers appreciate, like, I just don’t know how to do that. You don’t wanna pay me to do that because I don’t know how to do that. That’s that’s really I’m with you on both of that. 

So you shared earlier that there are your 2 partners, yourself and or shareholders, excuse me, and, yourself and Tim. And depending on the year or the time of year, you have about 15 or so employees. And, Kathy, when you and I spoke in advance of this conversation, you said that it can be a bit of a challenge, recruiting accounting. It’s just a competitive market right now. We’ll get into that in a bit. 

But what I wanna do is just read something that I saw on your website about what you offer your employees. And this is quite a 9 well, I hope it’s a quote. I did copy it. Hopefully, I pasted it correctly. A 90% company-paid health plan, dental, vision, paid time off, remote work options, and IRA with a 3% company match, flexible schedules, life insurance, continuing professional education, and a company-paid Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs membership. 

So given that that it is a competitive market for recruiting, how do you go about recruiting the right people for your firm? And perhaps more importantly, once they’re there, how do you keep them there? How do you how do you retain the good people that join your firm?

Kathy Wileczek: Sometimes it’s a lot of luck. You know, we’re a small firm. We don’t, fortunately, we don’t need people often. We always kind of have our eyes open. So, the benefits in salary are really only, they’re an important component, but, a larger component of what people are looking for now in public accounting, cause it’s got such a bad connotation as seasonal health. Right? So, right.

So everybody’s like, oh, county, tax season. It’s terrible. So, we try to balance that with the people that we have so that one of the greatest things that we can offer is a pretty flexible schedule. So if we find the right person, but they don’t meet your traditional 9 to 5 need, we try to try to build a schedule around it. And the lovely part about being in a public county, most of the time people don’t expect you to be at your desk answering your phone all the time. They know that you work with a number of clients. So if somebody is working school hours or 2 days a week during the summer, you know, there as long as people are managing their workflow and getting things done, we really, we really work hard to keep that working for them and a big part working for us.

Erik Gudmundson: Oh, speaking of recruitment challenges, you previously shared that fewer young people today are going to college for accounting. Can you please tell us what’s happening, and do you have any insight as to why younger people aren’t going into accounting at the rates they used to?

Kathy Wileczek: Well, it’s not so, so they’re, you know, accounting less people are going into it, because the stems are getting pushed, but people who are going into accounting in business are shying away from public accounting. They’re getting, so if you look at what’s happened in financial compliance, Sysons and Ron. Right? So there is more and more pressure on these larger public companies to get their information together, get it out the door, and a lot more rules associated with it. So they’ve been popping up more and more of the employee pool. Right? So a company now needs more accountants to do what they are doing. 

And, you know, frankly, public accounting has a little bit of a black eye just because of the, the fear of tax season. You know, when, you know, not, not so long ago, I was doing 80 hours a week during tax season. Didn’t think anything of it. That’s not the way people wanna work today. It’s just not, you know, so, that that’s why we, you know, that’s why not just me, but, every, everybody in the industry has to relook about how they’re using their resources because they’re not gonna do it. Just not gonna happen. 

And, in addition to, to become a CPA, you have to have, basically 5 years of education. So there’s a whole extra year of college involved if you wanna get your CPA. So now you’re going to school, you got your accounting degree, and, Comcast comes along and says, hey, we’re gonna we’re we’re gonna pay you this, and you’re gonna be in our corporate family, or you can pay another year of school to get your graduate degree. And then you can go work for a public accounting firm where I hear everybody treats you really badly. And then you can study for your CPA exam and do absolutely nothing for at least a year of your life.

Well, which one’s looking good today? So it really, you know, I, you know, it really takes a huge commitment to decide that this is what you want to do. And the lead time to become good at it takes 2 to 3 years. It takes, takes 2 to 3 years before, you know, you really have somebody who’s comfortable with what they’re doing and in a position where they can do their job and expand the growth.

Liam Dempsey: One trend that we’ve seen is that accounting firms are consolidating and growing larger. And with that backdrop, why did you choose to run your own smaller firm? Why didn’t you join a larger firm? Just wondering what your thoughts were.

Kathy Wileczek: Oh, I came from a larger firm. So… 

Liam Dempsey: Okay. Great. Tell me to tell us more about that.

Kathy Wileczek: No. That’s fine. So it’s just different. You know? I’m kind of kinda not your ordinary person, I guess. I mean, I hadn’t really anticipated running my own accounting firm when I hopped off. I just knew that I wanted somebody who kinda worked my whole life and had kids and a husband working, like, I recognize how, how hard it was to get ahead and decided something could be better. So I had the opportunity to purchase, a practice from somebody who was retiring, terrified, absolutely terrified. But it worked because now I’m in a place where I’m doing the work that I want. I’m working with the people I want to. And I have an office that’s supportive of me and supportive of each other. And that gets harder when you get bigger. Right? Like, the more people they are, the harder it is to care about the people you’re working with.

Erik Gudmundson: And to that end, I read on your website now I’m gonna quote something from your website. It says…

Kathy Wileczek: Great. I haven’t read the website to yours.

Erik Gudmundson: I was gonna say, this one’s good. I think you’ll like this one. This one says that “Our size allows each of our team members the opportunity to flourish and expand their careers without limitations”. That’s a very powerful statement. And it certainly reinforces some of the answers you were just telling us. 

So could you tell us a little bit more about what you mean specifically by that statement? And how do you provide people with the opportunity to flourish and expand their careers without limitations? That’s a that’s a bold statement from an accountant. I’m used to just this black and white, you know, ones and zeros, and this is sounding pretty interesting. I can, I’ve certainly seen how you’re you’re doing more outreach to include more folks who wouldn’t traditionally consider accounting as a career.

Kathy Wileczek: Oh, it is. So you can make the accounting career what you want it to be. Yeah. You can come in and you can do tax returns, you need to bookkeeping, and you can get home at night and not worry about it, or you can build yourself a business. Right? And, neither one’s wrong. Right? But, the opportunity to be entrepreneurial in a CPA firm is, kinda like standard, like, like, Hey, I’m gonna go out. I’m gonna join the chamber. I’m gonna serve on this board. I’m gonna meet people. I’m gonna go out a couple nights a week. You know, it’s not like you go out, you, you never do referral game. You, go out one night, and you don’t end up with 10 clients. It’s a lifestyle commitment to being open to meeting people in the community. So it’s it’s up to to them. 

And the nice part about being in public accounting, particularly a small firm, is that each of my accountants, even though they’re working under me, they’re my clients, they’re given ample opportunity to learn how to develop relationships. So, you know, we just had a review last week and I sat with a younger accountant and I’m like, this is not your job to clock in and clock out. This is your career. This is your opportunity to learn what you’re doing, and how to do it. The people that you’re dealing with depend greatly on your answers. You know, it’s not just turning in a sheet at the end of the week or a tax return. What you do really does impact the people that you’re doing it for. 

And these people can choose to take that forward and create their own business within here, or, you know, maybe they go out on their own. That happens. But but that’s okay.

So, you know, if you just wanna come in and work, you can come in and work. If you wanna come in and and build yourself a nice accounting practice, we’re more than happy for that to happen too.

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. I like that a lot. The idea of inviting people to embrace their careers in ways that work best for them. That’s that’s pretty cool. I like that a lot. Perhaps because of their strong ethics or financial experience, deep knowledge of their client businesses, or maybe a combination of all three of those, accountants can often become critical trusted advisors to business owners. Kathy, you were touching on this earlier in this conversation. Why the heck this happens? What about the client-customer relationship between accountants and their clients, enables them to become such trusted advisers?

Kathy Wileczek: Because you know them. So you just do. You know, I have people that I had as clients for 30 years, maybe longer. And you know them. You watch their kids grow up. You watch them have ballets. You just do all of it. So when you look at somebody’s money and how they spend, how they save, how they give, how they earn, you learn a lot and you kind of get, to put it together. So that when people, have an issue, sometimes it’s not even a financial issue. You know, they’re just unsure how to approach something that impacts something big in their life. We get a phone call. And they’re, you know, they’re good phone calls.

Erik Gudmundson: I always say accountants and IT folks really know which closets have skeletons in them and where the bodies are buried.

Kathy Wileczek: Yeah. where the bodies are buried.

Erik Gudmundson: Mhmm. And, yeah, you just and you just keep it all inside and, you know, you help them through whatever their issue is, and it goes a long way. But it does create some lifelong relationships, no doubt.

Back to what we were talking about earlier, accountants definitely have a stereotype. And, you know, maybe it’s some people it’s muted colors. It’s, you know, always confined to a desk crunching numbers all day. And just like you were saying, one of the ways that you break that stereotype is your involvement in the local community. And I love that you encourage your crew there to do that.

Some of the volunteering you’ve done,you’ve served on boards. You’ve even rappelled down an 8-story building at Kennett Square to help raise funds for a local nonprofit Camp Dream Catcher. We’ve seen some pictures of that, and I think you’re even wearing a cape if I’m not mistaken. So tell us more about that experience and what keeps you volunteering in general.

Kathy Wileczek: So I guess that, well, the going down the building, that was kind of a personal dare to myself. I don’t even like to go up a ladder. But I assure you anybody who’s done one of those repelling things that, they could have gotten my 90-year-old father down the side of that building without harm. So, 

Erik Gudmundson: I don’t give away that secret. Let’s do this.

Kathy Wileczek: Do all the harnessing and everything scariest part was waiting to go. So, I was happy to do that. I have no desire to do it again. And a lot of the volunteering opportunities, they just come up from being in the community. As I said, the audits that we do are our local not-for-profits. And, we have, we have probably close to 100 not-for-profit clients. They, all do their thing to try to raise funds to make their organizations go. So we try to spread that around.

Obviously, we can’t serve on boards when where were they, the county? But, we do encourage everybody to just try their hand at participating at something at whatever level that they’re comfortable with. A

And it is it’s rewarding all by itself. I mean, you know yourself, Erik, from board service, how many friends have you made? How you know, forget referrals and all that other stuff. How many friends have you made that you just have and they’re because of your common interest in that organization?

Erik Gudmundson: Yeah. It’s a countless number and you really learn a lot more about the people around you and you learn a lot more about the community. You could find out about things, you know, before they’re happening or as they’re happening and more importantly, how to make a bigger impact, a bigger difference that’s positive for the people in the community because you find out what’s happening. So it’s it is invaluable.

Liam Dempsey: Kathy, you run an accountancy firm. You’ve got over a dozen employees. You have at least 100 nonprofit clients and how many individuals and businesses? That’s a lot of work. What do you do though when you’re not in the workplace or not in the office? How do you how do you unwind? What’s your hobby? You’ve made it very clear that it’s not repelling, so I’m gonna guess It’s not repelling. I guess skydiving and mountaineering are out as well. But what do you like to do?

Kathy Wileczek: I would probably say that I exercise probably a little bit more than most people. I have a commitment, with a trainer that’s hard scheduled even during tax season. And, you know, on the weekends, we’ll hike or we’ll do something. We, you know, we’re at the age if we don’t keep moving, we don’t move. So we’re kind of looking at that ahead of us. But we do enjoy hiking. Last year or the year before, I took a hiking trip to Italy with a girlfriend, and then we’re gonna hike the TMD again this summer, which is like a 114-mile hiking trip around the Alps. So we’ll be in Italy, France and Switzerland.

Liam Dempsey: That’s fantastic. Did you say 114 miles over how many days?

Kathy Wileczek: 10 days. It’s gonna be very interesting.

Liam Dempsey: You’re hoofing it. You are hoofing it.

Kathy Wileczek: We are hoofing it. Now all alls we have to take is the stuff with us that we need for the day. The, so, you know, they plan everything else. Like like, we get up in the morning and the luggage leaves the hotel, not the tent, and there’ll be a nice dinner at a restaurant each evening. But, during the day, we’re pretty much on our own with whatever we can carry.

Erik Gudmundson: Wow. And now I’m gonna have to try to keep up with you, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to next time I see you out at a networking event. And, that you’ve set the bar very high there. 

Kathy, we know each other from serving on a couple of nonprofit boards and serving in the chambers of commerce. What chambers do you belong to now? Where are you a member and and why?

Kathy Wileczek: We’re a member of the Southern Chester County Chamber, and we’re a member of the Chester Chamber. Southern Chester County is a no-business, Kennett Square is in Southern Chester County. And it’s actually a fairly large chamber and a pretty active chamber. 

We’re also involved in the Westchester Chamber because that’s my home-stopping ground. That’s where when I started my practice of accounting. I’ve made a ton of great friends at the Westchester Chamber, again, there are chambers that are super active and doing a lot of nice things in the community for business owners.

Liam Dempsey: Changes in the administration at the federal government in Washington and as we record this, we are preparing for a new presidential administration. We’re likely to see changes to tax laws, filing guidelines, and all sorts of accounting regulations and the like. I expect that a lot of your clients are gonna be turning to you to keep them informed about these changes and how they might prepare. So the questions for you really are twofold. There’s 1, how are you keeping yourself informed? How do your how does your team stay up to date, especially when it’s not entirely sure what’s gonna happen next? And then how do you go about communicating this to your clients, particularly in an age of information overload? How do you make sure that they get the information they need in ways that they will actually digest?

Kathy Wileczek: Well, there’s a lot of information all over the place and it’s anybody’s debate any given day. What’s going to happen to tax law? if you look at the last 4 years and how the money got spent and taxes weren’t raised, you know, every year I’d say somebody’s got to charge more money for what’s going on. There’s gotta be a change. There’s gotta be a change, you know? But it wasn’t like nobody could decide on anything. 

So while you’re trying to make decisions in a forward way, the tax law makes it very hard, you know, even, when they’re doing something good, a lot of times they don’t do it till the end of the year. Like, you know, like, like writing off the purchase, of expensive business equipment. Right. So it used to be this low level, low level, and then they get to like the end of the year and they make it retroactive. Well, why did you do that? That didn’t incentivize anybody to buy anything before the end of the year when you didn’t make the law local after the end of year. 

So, you know, for the most part, it’s a crapshoot. Certainly, we sit here at the end of the year, and my desk is full of tax planning stuff. But, but when we’re talking about decisions to be made for businesses, you know, the conversation is always like, you have to make the best business decision. You need to decide what you need to do, understand the tax impacts, and understand if there’s a reason to do it differently because of the tax impacts. 

But, you know, right out of the gate, you gotta make sure that it’s a solid business decision because at the end of the day where tax rates are, let’s say 35%. Right? So, oh, you know, my big one is just should I go out and buy a truck before the end of the year? I don’t know.Do you need a truck? Well, I get to write the truck off all in 1 year. Well, did you need a truck? Right. And, if the answer’s no, I didn’t really need a truck. I want the tax deduction. I’ll be like, okay, that’s really, that’s really great. You, give me your dollar and I’ll give you 35¢. Right. Cause that’s all a tax deduction is a subsidy to a legitimate business expense. But if you didn’t need the business expense, you’re better off just paying the tax.

Erik Gudmundson: That makes, that makes perfect sense. And I’m wondering particularly with your experience with nonprofit auditing or not-for-profit auditing, do you have any general advice that you would give the nonprofit community, about how to stay clean as laws may or may not change?

Kathy Wileczek: Well, so for they’re not for profits. It’s an entirely different theory. You know? The county is upside down and inside out, and it’s really hard for a lot of people who are on boards to understand what’s different about it. There’s different goals. There are different metrics. There’s different revenue recognition. There are different ways to recognize how the money comes to you. It’s a lot more complicated. A business owner at the end of the day, they’re always gonna wanna make more money.

The not-for-profit is not like that, but sure. They’re looking for growth, but they also need to create an environment of stability that’ll let them continue. You know, you can have a good year. You can take in all this fundraising, but if you spend it all and commit it, you may not have it for for the next year when maybe fundraising doesn’t go so well.

Erik Gudmundson: Makes sense. You graduated from St. Joe’s. You live in Westchester. Your office is in Kennett Square. Why Kennett, and why Chester County in general?

Kathy Wileczek: Well, Chester County is easy because I grew up in Delaware County, and everybody who grows up in Delaware County gets out and lives in Chester County. They basically, my whole family’s out here. My dad and I have 5 brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews. So, this is town. This is where we raised our kids. Kennett Square, because that’s where the opportunity arose to purchase the accounting practice. If I had to a choice early on, I probably would’ve easily selected Westchester, but ultimately, Kennett Square was a much better place today. The opportunity here, the growth, the less competition for accounting work, Kenneth Kenneth Square was a very fortunate luck.

Liam Dempsey: Kathy, we’ve talked a lot about how you as an individual and your colleagues are in the county. You’re engaging professionally with not only local nonprofits, you’re supporting them by jumping off buildings while strapped to some kind of cabling to make sure you don’t get hurt, you’re volunteering here and there. You’re doing a lot of good in the community. How can a local community support your firm?

Kathy Wileczek: I don’t really know if you know a good accountant who wants a job, we’ll take them. We’re pleased with where the business is. We feel like we have a good handle on our clients. I would say based basically, we’re happy and healthy.

Erik Gudmundson: That’s great news. And you, may have alluded to it just now, but are you hiring?

Kathy Wileczek: We’re not actively hiring right now, but if I had, if I came across somebody, I would make room because there’s room to take on the work. And again, that’s always a juggle in itself. If you don’t want to overwork people, you have to over-hire. And then, because, because we try to be flexible with the way that people work, there’s always that give and take and we’ve benefited from it greatly. Because it, because with people working this kind of flex thing, when something, something goes not quite the way you would expect, like unanticipated absences or something, there’s enough people willing to just kind of step in a little bit more so that we don’t get crushed, but it’s always better to be overstaffed and scary because you gotta make the payroll and you haven’t got the work.

Liam Dempsey: I’m gonna ask what is becoming one of our more challenging questions. Can you name a local business or nonprofit that more folks should know more about?

Kathy Wileczek: Alright. So I’m gonna go backward on your question because I really like the question.

Liam Dempsey: Please do.

Kathy Wileczek: Alright. So, I think, in that we audit these 90 some not for profit clients, I would be a terrible person to pick just one. But what I will tell you is that people who are, are getting a lot of people can be reluctant to give, we’ve had conversations with people like, oh, I don’t wanna give to the heart association or the diabetes association or these national organization, because they feel like their dollars are lost. And they are. Right. So not only do I work with all these not-for-profits, but I get to know are from being on the grants committee at the Community Foundation. 

So, I see a lot of financial statements, and I know how these local organizations are spending their money. I know who’s got significant volunteers, who’s who’s strapped for cash. Who’s and, and people should not overlook local charities. They’re in your neighborhood. They’re in your community. Your neighbors are volunteering for them. Your neighbors are benefiting from them, whether you know it or not. You know, not, not everything is peachy keen in every house in the neighborhood, even if the neighborhood’s looking spiffy. So, what I would say is when you look to do your giving, find an area where you’re interested in benefiting somebody, whether that be animals, conservation, housing, food insecurity, you know, there’s less and less, but, but there’s an organization that you can give at a local level and that is going to be meaningful to them. Absolutely meaningful.

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. I liked that answer.

Kathy Wileczek: I cheated on your answer. 

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. I thought you were gonna, I thought you were gonna leave us with a very noncommittal, but, but I like where you ended up the idea that the local dollar goes a little bit farther and it’s absolutely gonna be spent in your neighborhood, in ways that might surprise us all. Yeah. Absolutely. Alright. Thank you. That is a good answer. 

Kathy Wileczek, a shareholder with Umbreit, Wilacek and Associates. Where can listeners connect with you and learn more about your firm?

Kathy Wileczek: I guess the easiest way is our website, [uwacpa.com]. I’ll warn everybody hasn’t been updated a little bit, but it’s current. It gets the job done.

Erik Gudmundson: Kathy, thank you so much for, interviewing with us today. We really appreciate it, and I enjoyed learning a little bit more about you and your firm. So, thank you.

Kathy Wileczek: Alright. Thank you, Beth. I just want this to be nice. Thank you.

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. I had a great time. 

Thanks for listening, folks. We really appreciate you being here with us today. 

As a reminder, we publish every fortnight on Fridays, and you can be apprised of when we publish by heading over to our website, [startlocal.co], and signing up to get our news and updates. And you can also register for our upcoming networking event in January. 

Until then, bye for now.