FinPod

Meeyeon (00:13)
Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Careers in Finance. Today, I'm joined by a very exciting guest because he's one of my personal friends from way back in the day. I'm not going to say when.

because I'm not gonna date us, but Bob is all the way from high school and he's had an amazing career in finance. It's very unique in that he started in one position and it kind of like built up to his own venture. And so for budding entrepreneurs out there, I know that having one's own business has become more and more popular these days. think this is an amazing example of someone to learn from. And so I wanna welcome Bob to the show first of all, welcome.

Bob Wang (00:54)
Thank you. Good to be

here.

Meeyeon (00:56)
And so I'm just going to open this up very, very broad and say, you know, back when we were in high school and we were completing this thing called the IB program, did you have a nice idea of what you wanted to do in your career? Did you know that you wanted to go into a business program and like go get your accounting designation or like all of these types of things? Did you have that ready from the very beginning?

Bob Wang (01:26)
Yeah, back in high school, man, that was over 10 years ago. I just get, yes, it was a long time ago. thinking back, I think my career choice has definitely been very influenced by my mom and dad. they had an opportunity to leave communist China and they went to Germany, to study German and they had a friend in Czech Republic who

Meeyeon (01:30)
It was like a long time ago.

Bob Wang (01:55)
already had a business and they joined him and you know by us being in Eastern Europe, Berlin, Welfell, know capitalist opportunities, he was able to basically change our family's destiny. It brought us. Yeah. really? Yeah. I used to speak Czech. I used to be fluent in Czech because I went to like Czech public school. So yeah. Yeah.

Meeyeon (02:10)
Okay, so funny thing is I actually don't even know this story, so I'm super interested. Do you speak German?

That's amazing.

Bob Wang (02:25)
So yeah, you know, came to Canada 2001, but the reason why we were able to immigrate is because my dad was successful, my mom and dad were successful in their business. So then I saw like the risk that they took, how hard they work, and ultimately the reward and the impact that they had on their community, our family, you my cousins, my grandparents, you know, and then so on. So then I, yeah.

Meeyeon (02:49)
If you don't mind me asking, what was their business?

Bob Wang (02:52)
It was in clothing import export. So they exported stuff, clothing from China and then sold it in the Czech Republic. It didn't always start there. They imported like canned mushrooms and like broccoli and like, it wasn't successful. know, the first couple of containers, they lost money and like my dad begged for like more credit basically to release the first containers of pajamas.

And that took off and he was able to pay off, you know, the previous debts and so on and so forth. So like there were some sleepless nights for sure, you know, as he retells it.

Meeyeon (03:30)
When we were in high school, my dad ventured the idea of, because he was already semi-retired by then, he had the idea of importing, I want to say, maybe it was very early in high school, it such a long time before we had Korean alcohol in Vancouver, he wanted to bring soju, but it was just so many hoops that he needed to jump through. There were so many regulations, so many distribution networks, just because the way that Korean companies operate, you have to have like...

Bob Wang (03:46)
Saju?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Meeyeon (04:00)
almost like a filial connection. Like they don't dole out those contracts very easily. But yeah, that was like, that's super interesting. But I mean, like your parents persisted and my dad was like, whatever.

Bob Wang (04:02)
Mm-hmm.

They

had to, right? That's the spirit of the entrepreneur. If they didn't persevere, they'd have to go back to China. So it's a matter of survival for them. So yeah, like I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, have a business. So it was more like I wanted to study anything that allowed me to be a better version of that.

you that sort of drove my decision to study business. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go into accounting or finance, but you know, in high school I wanted to be in business. Well, yeah, yeah, yes and no. Like I've got, I've come to really appreciate the difference between a great accountant and a great finance person. They're, they're actually two different types of people, which we can touch on later in my perspective.

Meeyeon (04:44)
but they're like one in the same.

So did you take, I remember, I think her name was Miss Stacey, or, I'm sorry, did you take the business class at high school?

Bob Wang (05:07)
yes. Yes,

yes, yeah, she was awesome.

Meeyeon (05:12)
And then did you, you went to, I want to say UBC, right?

Bob Wang (05:16)
Yeah, I went to the

one TBC University of British Columbia and I think I got some advice that you know, counting is more more of a hard skill in that you know, got a destination, you could be a tax professional and and you sort of learn the language of business. And so that you know, one thing led to another. I wanted to pursue finance, but you know, I guess it did just there's not the right opportunity. You know, coming out of

university, there was a more set path to become a CPA. It was just more like defined. and then the finance careers is less defined and I just wasn't super comfortable at that moment to go that undefined route. So I chose something safer to start with, which is an accounting degree. It turned out, you know, even though I enjoyed the knowledge, the, the fundamentals, I was not a good accounting account.

I was not a accountant employee. I was bored out of my mind in my first couple of jobs. And I did audit, I did a bit of tax, I did small business audit. So I learned a ton. was a really good learning experience, but I did not enjoy it. I literally, left. So was thinking about starting my business basically six months before I finished all my hours. I had like six months to plan out my business and do research and all that kind of stuff. So like the...

Meeyeon (06:22)
Did you do audit? Ugh.

Bob Wang (06:45)
The week that I finished all my CPA hours, I resigned and then started my own business. So I didn't, yeah. was...

Meeyeon (06:51)
That's so funny, that's

like going from someone that was like, like, feel like this is kind of like risky going into finance, like there's not really a set path. And then all of sudden being like, okay, I'm done with this, like ready to move on.

Bob Wang (06:59)
I know. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to give it a try. Like I wanted to test out what a career in accounting would be like, but because you know, I had a little bit of FOMO. A lot of my friends were into accounting. was like, maybe there's something there. There it wasn't. Not for me anyway.

Meeyeon (07:03)
And it's not.

And then so like after you were at, you did auditing at PWC, right? Don't know Deloitte.

Bob Wang (07:23)
So yeah, it was a bit of a winding journey. I got my designation at KPMG and the minute I left, started my own accounting firm as an entrepreneur. And it was primarily what we call client accounting services, basically bookkeeping, payroll, sales tax. I didn't do any year-end taxes, but I built a...

pretty unique business at that time, leveraging cloud technology. was one of the first to adopt QuickBooks online or receipt bank and Expensify and so on and so forth. And I also changed the expense. Yeah. If I back then, yes. I changed up the business model of accounting before it was kind of a once a year, like come see me, here's a bill kind of thing.

Meeyeon (07:54)
my gosh, expenseify, I can't believe that's a real business. If I, if I, everything if I.

Bob Wang (08:11)
but I changed it into a recurring revenue model, built ARR and in three and a half years we grew from zero to 30 employees and I sold that business to Deloitte. That's how I ended up at Deloitte. Yeah.

Meeyeon (08:23)
Oh, wow.

And when you first start your business, guess, like just, um, this, this isn't necessarily a silly question, but I think it's probably interesting enough for people that are, uh, toying with the idea of starting a business of their own. Where do you even start? Is it just like, Oh, I'm going to start a business like back then it's like, let's make a website. And then after that, do you like incorporate and then do you have all these ideas and do you have investors or is it.

Bob Wang (08:34)
Good day.

Meeyeon (08:47)
I think I guess for accounting services, it's a little bit easier in the sense that it is a service and not a product. And the service is kind of what you put together in your mind. And you can produce that kind of digitally with a lot of, you basically it's like you have an internet connection and you could build it out with software. Whereas if you wanted to like manufacture some sort of like electric, electronic piece, like hardware, that'd be really challenging because you'd have to invest a lot of capital to, yeah.

Bob Wang (09:14)
That's exactly

it. With services business, it's lot easier to get started because of the low upfront cost, but it's also harder to scale because you're literally selling your services your time. But I think before you spend any money, whatever you learn in business class, create a business plan. Who are your customers? What's your pricing? What's your margins? Perform a five-year forecast, what that's going to look like.

talk to some potential customers, understand their pain points, what's your unique selling point? Like so, know, like I said, I had about six months to build out that business plan. That's what I did. You know, studying, thinking, talking to people, pricing it out, market research, all that kind of stuff. It really does help.

Meeyeon (09:57)
And then, how was, how did you end up working for Deloitte after you sold the company? So you sold the company to Deloitte and then was it that you like still kind of no longer owned, but you operated what you had sold to them?

Bob Wang (10:10)
That's right. exactly. They, Deloitte, they were looking for someone to run their client services, client accounting services division. So they, instead of starting something from scratch, they wanted to acquire a local leader. So that's what we were. We were running their, their BC division for client accounting, for bookkeeping. But you know, there's, there's, there's the best intentions, best of intentions, but reality is they are Deloitte. They're a big beast. They have

processes that we just could not follow. We were who we were because we were nimble, because we did things a certain way. And although they promised us that everything will see the same, they didn't. So it really felt like death by a thousand cuts. So after about a year, I left. I actually left a lot of money on the table as well because it wasn't good for my mental health to stay. And then I left to start the next role.

which was a head of finance at a tech startup locally called Traction Guest. They were a product that spun out of traction on demand. Very dynamic company, they raised Series A and I joined post Series A. They were about three million in revenues when I joined. And two and a half years later, they tripled and they sold to a private equity group for nine figures. So it was a really fun part of that journey.

Meeyeon (11:35)
So you have accomplished a lot in your life, both like professionally and personally from the side that I kind of know through being friends.

You were very ambitious in your family life and like I've only just started, but when did you, you have so much going on professionally, starting a business, selling a business, working for a Deloitte big powerhouse company. Did you also grow your family at that time as well?

Bob Wang (11:52)
Mm.

I did. Yeah, I got married, I think, fourth year of university before we graduated. So I graduated with a wife, which was kind of that as well. Do know what? I credit a lot of what I've have done and will do to my partner. And I grew up as, you know, I'm an Asian kid. So I grew up with the mentality of like, you got to your life together before you can get, you know, married and so on.

Meeyeon (12:14)
my god, that's wild.

Bob Wang (12:34)
But my wife, she's Canadian, she's half German, half British, and their culture actually has a different mentality. Their perspective is, no, no, no, we both have nothing right now. We know nothing right now. Let's come together now and build a life together. And so I was like, interesting, that makes sense too. So I talked to my parents and they, you know, we spent a lot of years in Czech Republic and Germany and like they were very open to these Western ideas. They said, yeah, you know, if you believe that's the right thing to do, you should do it. So then we got married at an early age.

And we grew up together, which is like fantastic. You know, there was five years, it was the two of us got to know each other, got to know sort of our habits. And then we started bringing a kid into, into that. And I think we, when I started Legacy to Manage, my first business, we were married. And then I think we, yeah, we had our kid about a year into running that business. I remember there was an unhappy client and

I was doing bookkeeping work while she was in the delivery room. And I think I drank like four Red Bulls in like 24 hours. It was a very difficult labor. like, and the next day I had a meeting with another client, like 8 a.m. and my wife was in the hospital. It was just like, you do what you gotta do. But yeah, that builds character. Yeah, and to be honest, like,

There's always someone better. There's always someone that's doing something different. You know, I have friends from, from solder school business, uh, UBC. They're, they're in private equity a lot longer. You know, they're living in New York, they have a great lifestyle. Uh, and they just started having kids and I'm like, Oh man, you know, if I had to late having kids, could I have, I've done something different or, or more, but I'm like, you know what? have a life. I have the life that I have right now and I love it. Uh, God has blessed us with just, you know,

what we need, not what we want. And that's, that's beautiful.

Meeyeon (14:37)
And you know, it's so funny you mentioned that because I have the same thing. So I think all of my friends probably graduate. I mean, like Kristen, Avini, bunch of people all graduated together with you in the same class. then like my other friends, I don't know if you know her, Andrea. She might hear this podcast one day. So Andrea, she, yeah, exactly. She and I had, so basically everyone has sons lately and mine was born, I want to say.

Bob Wang (14:45)
I love it.

Hmm... Yeah.

Yeah, Prabhu.

Meeyeon (15:06)
No, was Julian that much later? I want to say we had our sons like four months apart. And we always, I mean, I think the kind of opposite of you where it's like, I wish if I wonder if I had children earlier, would I then have a more, more like runway that's continuous and unbroken to have like a fruitful career without any, without any major interruptions earlier.

So it's interesting to see how we have different perspectives like that. But I think also the best part is, like you said, we have what we need, like not necessarily exactly what we want, but we have what we need. And with the whole like going into private equity, doing that for like years and years, like for me, I did investment banking for three years and I was like, I think that's like, I'm pretty sure like this is not it for me. I have like moments where I'm like, I wish I did that longer, okay? Like I wish I opened up that door that a little bit further.

But at the same time, it's like I wouldn't be here doing what I do and sitting with you if that weren't the case.

Bob Wang (16:08)
Yep, can't look back. You have to appreciate, you know, the past and move on.

Meeyeon (16:14)
And honestly,

like as an entrepreneur, you probably had so much more, like mental maturity at a young age by having a young family than someone that had worked several years at a private equity firm, I think really ever would. Because like private equity, mean, you know, it's a pretty tough grind. There's a lot of kind of...

know, like grunt work hours. It's a little bit different now with CHAP, GPT, and all these things that have developed, but it's just like a long, long time of putting in a lot of late nights, hard work and labor and kind of feels thankless. And then eventually you try and then you, you get the opportunity to work even harder, right? Like you work for the opportunity to work for the opportunity to work really hard. But I find that people, the most, the most, um,

Bob Wang (16:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Meeyeon (17:04)
poignant thing that I find is whenever I find people that have children and families earlier on, they develop this level-headedness that just, no matter how many years of tough working experience you have, that you will not gain. It's just that there's a different level of mental maturity for someone that has a family, especially at a young age.

Bob Wang (17:26)
I think it,

the mental maturity, think that's a part of it, but it's also like this perspective. You know, we can skip forward a bit, but just recently I started my business again. Now it's called TF Advisors and then my wife and I actually just bought a business. So we're actually operating two small businesses at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. The one I'm running right now is a fractional CFO business, providing, you know, CFO services, M&A.

Meeyeon (17:44)
you're doing another one? Okay, tell me about the other one too.

Bob Wang (17:55)
advisory to small business. And then my wife, uh, she's running a tutoring business and education business that has 80 employees and 700 students that we're serving in every single, every single month. And you know, like things come up and people complain and you know, payroll is wrong. Like, you know, had I been younger, I would have been like, I would have freaked out, now it's like, Oh sure. Like, okay.

Yeah, sorry, I missed underpaid you by $60 and I'll wire it to you. it's just like, okay, fewer things faze me now because maybe that, you know, my identity doesn't tie, you know, it's not tied to my job as much. And I freaked out enough to know what's freak out situation, what is just like, just doing it, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Meeyeon (18:31)
Yeah.

Barometer is so much higher now

How was the fractional CEO work versus owning and operating your own company? How did you get into the work of being a fractional CFO? Because I see that it's picking up more and more popularity, especially in North America.

Bob Wang (18:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I skipped a few steps. I think the key to fractional X, fractional whatever, is you've got to have an angle. You've got to have something unique. And your customers then choose fractional whatever based on their needs. So after I left Deloitte, after the company that I was working for got acquired by private equity, I got my MBA at UC Berkeley.

and I got an opportunity to work in private equity as a principal for a couple of years. I saw a lot of deals. was part of, you deal teams that, you know, buy a bot company, that diligence negotiations. learned a lot of skills in that role. And I think that the value that I want to bring through TF advisors is bringing that M&A perspective to small business. I've been an operator so I can relate to entrepreneurs on what's it like to run a business. But I also know what the...

cheat sheet, answer key is because I was on the private equity side. So I know what things drive value, what we look for versus, you know, this doesn't drive value or like, no, this is going to destroy value. So helping to bring that perspective to the lower market, I think is valuable. Also, so many entrepreneurs, they want to grow through acquisition, but M&A just seems so nebulous and difficult. And like you can make a big, big mistake just by just missing a few things.

And so I'm actually working with several entrepreneurs that want to quote unquote 10X their business in the next five to seven years. And the only way to achieve those numbers is M&A like M&A has to be part of their playbook. can't just all be like you have to have a corporate development function. And, know, they can't afford a full time role. So I come in as a fractional executive on their team, driving their M&A effort to achieve the numbers that they need to achieve.

Meeyeon (20:34)
Yeah

Mm-hmm.

And for when you did your MBA, did you do it? Because there's various reasons people do an MBA. For me, I kind of thought, OK, I did the investment banking thing for a bit. I left. It's like, did I really want to leave? Or do I want to go and live potentially in the UK, London, or New York? Well, it'd be certainly easier to go and take some time, build my network, spend a bunch of money, and then be able to infiltrate and get a student visa at a great MBA program.

But lots of people kind of save it for a card of like I want to switch careers or if there are some people that want to like further develop their career, but I see a very calm I think the most common thing I see is people using it as a card to I want to pivot my career path How did you use it? And did you find it was? Did you find what you got out of it what you wanted going into it?

Bob Wang (21:32)
it

Hit it.

Yeah, I found something better. think I, yeah, I found a lot of things. Going into the MBA, I thought I want to be like a traditional CFO. I wanted to advance my career because I was the head of finance already, basically function as a CFO role. I wanted to use that opportunity to network into a CFO position. And then in that process, I discovered the idea of search funds or entrepreneurship through acquisition. And I was like, you know what, that's it.

That's actually what I want. And so I wanted one thing going in, but I discovered something else that was a much better fit, much better fit to who I am. So much so that like I had an opportunity to be a CFO of a tech company. I was in the final stages. I was invited to a board meeting and like, I felt viscerally sick. Like, just didn't want to go to that interview. Like I don't want that job, even if it paid well.

I have to honor my call of running my own ship. And that's what I did. But the search fund, the ETA, the mentality is there is I didn't really have a business idea I want to pursue. But if you buy a business that's already running, that already has customers, already has a business plan, then you as an MBA, as a professional,

executive, you can go in there and professionalize things and, you know, take the right risks and grow a business that's already there, right? That's the intention. That's why we bought a business.

Meeyeon (23:27)
And so tell me about what you're doing today and tell me more about TF Advised and do you like golf?

Bob Wang (23:32)
Yeah, I do like golf. Not as much as I don't play as much as I like to. But the brand name T-Approvise is really a combination of combining the three letters of my kids' names. My kids' names are Elizabeth Eleanor and Theodore. was like E-E-T-E-E. Okay, well T-E-T is nice, but like, know, T what? you know, so I was like... Yeah, and then...

Meeyeon (23:53)
that's so cute.

what a wonderful way to kind of like immortalize that. That's amazing.

Bob Wang (24:02)
you know, tee up and so my tagline of our company is tee up the next generation. So we're here to tee up my clients next day valuation, whatever that may be. So that's the intention. And that's 50 % of what I do. And then the other half and helping my wife run the food business.

Meeyeon (24:24)
And does Anne also have a business degree?

Bob Wang (24:27)
She does not. And so I think it'd be fun to get her on podcast here as well. She can talk about how, you know, she feels like an imposter every day and like, you know, we're managing it together and she's doing such a fantastic job. Like she's the heart of the business and I'm the head. There are times where I'm like, hey, the data, like the data say we're not doing good enough. And she's like, Bob, chill out. Like we're doing fine. You know, like we're only been here for two months. Okay. Yeah, you're right.

Meeyeon (24:56)
And wait, you know, you've been in California longer than two months now, right?

Bob Wang (25:01)
Yeah, I've been in California since July of last year.

Meeyeon (25:06)
And for T up, now, what do you, where do you see the company going in the next year?

Bob Wang (25:15)
Yeah, that's a question. I don't want it to be a really, really big thing. I ran the big thing before. I grew a company from zero to 30 employees and I don't feel like I want to do that again. I want to keep it small. I want to keep it high margin. And I want to be involved with fewer clients, but at a deeper level. I think as I've grown older, I appreciate relationships a lot more.

So I want to be much more relational with my clients as going around. Whereas, you know, previous company, was very much a transactional, like, hey, you you pay me money, I do a bookkeeping kind of It feels much more honest this time, like honest to who I am.

Meeyeon (26:02)
And just for our listeners who aspire to be entrepreneurs one day, what do you think are kind of like the top skills that you found have been most instrumental to your success?

Because we have a lot of people, like, so for example, the end all and be all of working in finance is Excel. And so like, we know that like being able to be, to command the Excel language is like without question, something that you need. Having presentation skills is without question, something that you need. If you want to be an entrepreneur, have to, you have to be comfortable getting in front of people, talking to people you don't know, building meaningful relationships.

But apart from the things that are more obvious in your experience of growing companies, selling companies, being on the P.E. side, what do you think are kind of like the most important skills that you've developed in your professional career so far that you'd say like, this has kind of made me who I am and successful today?

Bob Wang (27:10)
Yeah, I there's so many, but I think the key one is leadership skills. Leading yourself, leading your team. You know, learning how to communicate. It's that because being an entrepreneur, you're eventually you're going to be leading a team and. They're relying on you to to lead and need them well.

And it's a skill. You don't have to be a natural leader to be a good leader. You can learn it by reading books, by practicing, by getting feedback. So that's probably an under-taught class at school, but one of the most important skills as an entrepreneur.

Meeyeon (27:59)
And I find that like, it's meaningful that you picked leadership as the one's key skill, because I find that's the most relatable to everyday life, right? It's like you develop as a leader, but as you develop as a leader, you're developing as a person. You're understanding generally the people that either work for me or that I work with. How am I demonstrating what I want this company to be founded on? And you get to build.

You get to experience all sorts of scenarios where there's tons of adversity and like unpredictable things, things where it kind of, you know, raises the bar for like the panic situations. And so it's one of those things I think is very like, like you said, under taught. It's like the more that you get experience in leadership roles and also just being like under different leaders, you get to learn more and more about yourself. And then it just becomes like a journey of self-improvement.

throughout your life.

Bob Wang (28:58)
Yeah, 100%.

Meeyeon (29:01)
And then, okay, so what I love to always like close out our podcast on is, especially for someone that has gone through so much like change in your career, where you start off on like a traditional path, where there's this exam, you go to the auditing firm, you do this, and then you all of sudden realize like, I want to do different things. And you clearly have

almost like a conviction, right? Remember when you went to like the Borgerman interview and you're like, yeah, I like don't want to do this. I definitely want to be the leader of my own ship. For someone that has such a strong site on what they want to do. If you could give a piece of like, know, anecdotal advice to anyone that's listening out there, regardless of what stage they are in their careers, what would it be?

Bob Wang (29:30)
Ha

Yeah.

I think the number one key to happiness and success is figure out who you are and stick with it. Sticking with it. I think there's a saying, people are really great decision makers, but they're not really good at decision keepers.

Like we change our minds too often. I've had friends who started with me. I keep BMG and they're now partners. Like, holy moly, you know, and they're, they're making bank there, you know, they're, they're leading their divisions and, and I'm here running a little company like, you know, and they, they stuck with it. They, they follow the principle of compound interest in their careers, but that's who they are. And they, they love being part of a big.

brand and big ship and they're thriving. And whereas I would have wilted in that same environment, right? So their career has been like, you know, just compounding up my career is like, grr, like, grr. And I love it. But that brings me joy. And, you know, if you ask them to start a business, like they probably would have a very difficult time. So I think for young,

future leaders, future finance, accounting, career folks, just like in your 20s, try as many roles as you can. Just try. Fail, know, take as many different jobs as you can and then see, figure out what you like and don't like and then stick with it.

Meeyeon (31:41)
feel like this has been one of the most like wisdom-filled podcasts and I know that we're gonna have lots of people commenting that they love this one so much. I've enjoyed being part of this so much and I am so excited for everyone to hear this and so everyone thank you for listening, thank you for joining in and I guess I think we'll have to close it out on that note because I can't think of anything better to close it out on.

Bob Wang (32:07)
Yeah, no worries. Yeah, happy to

come on back again and dive deeper if there's more interest. So good to always see you again, Meeyeon Good to reconnect.

Meeyeon (32:16)
And so everyone listening will see you in the next one.