We were lucky to catch up with Sean Sheppheard recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sean, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you share a customer success story with us?

My greatest success story comes from a single mother who was also a business owner. This client came to me for a simple task; she wanted to understand how much her business needed to sell in order to breakeven. We did some calculations based on her average order and expected expenses. The analysis was straight forward, but the results were remarkable. She told me that after consulting with my business she felt a huge relief.

Analyzing her business’ numbers always brought her anxiety because she came from a family that did not have much money and she was under extreme pressure from her investors. I was not aware of her whole situation before I took the on the job. After successfully delivering her reports, I could tell the impact of my work went beyond the numbers. The impact of this work lies in the peace that clients feel when they know they are on the right path toward accomplishing their goals.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am blessed to have experience working for organizations of all sizes from Startups to Billion dollar corporations and everything in between. Every level of work has taught me something valuable about business and how to grow as a young professional.

The idea for Sheppheard Financial LLC came out of a need I saw within my community. I was fortunate to get to know many talented Black Entrepreneurs, Creatives, and young professionals. These people clearly demonstrated value in their respective areas but were having trouble managing their accounting and finance tasks. Some people may think accounting is just about taxes, but I quickly learned that there is so much more to personal and small business accounting. Essentially we help our clients understand their financial position by automating accounting tasks and providing timely communications and financial reports. This includes essential bookkeeping, budgeting, tax strategy, financial statement forecasting, and more. Our clients have came from many industries including retail, hospitality, e-commerce, non-profit, healthcare, and financial services.

We aim to take make accounting easy for individuals and small business owners and allow them to take control of their financial future!

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Managing a high performing team is one of my top priorities. Even in our decentralized and diverse world I think it is still possible to build strong teams with high morale. For my teams, communication and humanity are the two most important factors we prioritize. Firstly, communication is essential. Especially since our company is dispersed around the world in different time zones, its critical that we have strong lines of communication. We communicate not only when there is work to be done, but also to ensure that the team knows they are supported.

This brings me to the next most important factor, which is humanity. We always treat others as human beings first, which means we communicate with respect and ensure that our team members know that they are important. There will always be times where teams aren’t performing up to expectations, but this is okay because there will be other times where the team greatly exceeds expectations. No matter what, we maintain strong work ethic while ensuring that our team feels supported in everything they do.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Client referrals is hands down the best source of new business. We promote and manage our client referrals by following up with all clients during and after engagements. Most clients provide testimonials and we take all feedback and improve our services. We also publish the testimonials on our social media sites to show the impact of our work.

My personal network has also been a strong source of business. I am grateful to know many young, black business owners, and I can empathize with their pain points being a small business owner myself. Most of my clients are based here in Atlanta, Georgia. This city is one of the best places to build a strong foundation of entrepreneurship. There are powerful networks and professional organizations to work with, which provide a good source of potential clients.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sheppheardfinancial.com/