EP276: Jean Latting - How to Build Better Bookkeeping Communities

Michael Palmer: Because I do know accountants and bookkeepers, and some, it can be a highly— if they're independent, it can be a highly lonely profession. You have to invent, how do I do this? You're listening to The Successful Bookkeeper with your host, Michael Palmer. Listen each week as inspiring guests share their secrets of success to help you increase your confidence confidence, work smarter, and build a business you love. This episode of The Successful Bookkeeper is brought to you by purebookkeeping.com, the proven system to grow your bookkeeping business. Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper Podcast. I am your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be a fantastic one. Our guest is the president of Leading Consciously, which helps individuals and organizations create resilient, sustainable, multicultural, and diverse settings. Jeanne Lading, welcome to the show. Well, thank you. I am totally delighted to be here. It's wonderful to have you. And I'm excited to hear from you. And I was inspired by your website and what you've been up to. And so, before we get into all of that, Jeanne, please tell us a little bit about your story, your career leading up to this point? OK.

Jean Latting: My story has been almost a straight trajectory, but I have veered off in weird places that I didn't know I was still on the same straight line. Bottom line, I'm a social worker. And I am— have been committed to helping people be the best that they can be. I started off my career as a community organizer, door knocking, welfare rights, tenants' rights, helping people feel that they could be powerful even though they were poor, even though they were living in rat-infested buildings, all of that. I moved from that as I got my master's in social work in community organization, I moved into program management. When I was a community organizer, I thought the oppressors, I had the world very neatly divided into the oppressors and the oppressed. And the oppressors were the bureaucrats and the folks who were oppressing the poor people. Well, as I got my master's and started talking to the people inside organizations, I realized how oppressed they were. They wanted to do more. They wanted more for their lives. And the rules and regulations and sometimes the leadership did not allow them to flourish. And so I started, as I call it, I moved from the outside to the inside. And from that, then I moved into looking at the nature of leadership, what creates a great