The Awe-inspiring Corner Office View With Bev Betteridge
The most delightful thing about our drink date was that I had known Bev Betteridge for the last two years, but this was the first time we saw each other IRL. Our multiple phone calls and zoom meetings were nothing compared to hugging her and listening to her voice without the barrier of a speaker. Giggling that we should have grabbed lunch together as we both barely had a chance to enjoy our lunch due to our busy schedules, we settled in for our chat with our coffee and tea in hand.
Bev’s fascinating journey into entrepreneurship creating The Corner Office CFO is a confidence builder for any woman looking to walk a similar path. I invite you to read about how Bev navigates by championing the accounting profession and how she balances being a mom of two poised young women.
Q: Why did you stop at two? What was that decision like, to say okay, two and done?
Bev Betteridge:
“Two and done? We have a very busy household, and I was just ready to be done. I didn’t have kids until I was in my 30s. My career meant a lot. At the time, my husband was far more ready to have kids than I was, but my clock was ticking, I grew up in a big family, and I didn’t want to replicate that. There was a lot of chaos at our house all the time. I grew up with four brothers, and there were always too many people at the table, it was noisy and loud. I wouldn’t have had five kids, so I was ready after two. I was good.”
Q: How did you start The Corner Office CFO?
Bev Betteridge
“I was working at a big four firm and never felt like I fit the mould there. I was a different kind of accountant than tax and audit. I felt I could achieve lots, but I didn’t fit their culture. I didn’t fit their career path. And with the kids also in the mix, I decided I needed to simplify a bit of my life.”
Q: What do you mean by you didn’t fit? They were too busy. It was too chaotic. How do you explain that?
Bev Betteridge
“I think they just had different expectations than I did. I knew I satisfied clients. I knew I was good at what I did, but the metrics for a national firm are the same in Ontario are they are in Saskatchewan, and the Saskatchewan market was different, and I knew I could do different things with clients. It just didn’t fit my career. I discussed this with a good friend of mine, I said I was going to leave that firm, but I didn’t know what I was going to go and do. I just knew I wasn’t happy doing what I was, and she said, “You’re being foolish. You know your clients love you. You know you thrive in this kind of work. You’re just not working with the right culture, fit, or people. You should consider how to take those strengths and use them somewhere else.” I just thought, well, I’ll take a break and figure that out. I’ll just consult on my own for a little while until I figure that out. And that’s what I did.”
Q: How long was the break?
Bev Betteridge:
“I took a three-month break of no work at all. I just took the summer off, hung out with my kids, saw my extended family, aunts, uncles, grandmas, all that kind of stuff, and just detoxed from work, I called it. And then I started. I had a big network of people in Regina. I’d been downtown my whole career, and I made two phone calls and had a consulting gig like that. So I started consulting and just thought, oh, I’ll just keep this small. It was small for about a year, and then after that, it just started to excel. I started with one employee, and then another contractor contracted with me, and it just snowballed from there. If you have a big network and you have a good reputation, you do good work and try hard for people, it turns out all of a sudden, you’ve got 15 staff and a multimillion-dollar business.”
Q: How old were your kids when you started?
Bev Betteridge
“I left the big firm in 2013, so ten years ago, they were 8 and 10 when I first became an entrepreneur. They were in a good place because they were pretty independent. They weren’t little, little children anymore. Both excelled at school, making it a lot easier for a parent to be an entrepreneur if your kids are independent and excel. If your children are challenged, it’s challenging for you. I didn’t have those issues. But when I told my husband that I would leave the big firm and start on my own, I expected him to say don’t do that. You have a big salary and all that. He just said okay. And I said no, you’re supposed to tell me no. My family always supported what I’ve been doing. I’m sometimes a little too busy, and I get reminded of that at home a bit, but for the most part, they know that I’m a happier mom when I have other things to go and achieve and do.”
Q: Now, your background growing up, did you have entrepreneurs in your family that influenced your decision?
Bev Betteridge:
“My dad was a farmer. We were a farm family, and we didn’t have a pile of money back in the 80s when there was a terrible drought in Saskatchewan. I remember those days, growing up with little money wasn’t very much fun at times. And I think that’s some of what drives me to achieve, that I didn’t want to live like that anymore. Not that I had a terrible upbringing by any means, I had a good upbringing, but there are things you want in life, and if you can produce them for yourself, then you should go do that. We didn’t go on fancy trips, and we didn’t have fancy anything, fancy clothes or anything like that. It’s nice to have those things, and if you have a will and a way, then you should go do it.”
Q: After your workday, how do you unwind at the end?
Bev Betteridge
“Sleep is hugely important to me. Without it I don’t function at my peak. I’m a big sleeper. I like eight or nine hours.”
Q: What time do you go to bed every day?
“Bev Betteridge
I don’t go to bed that early because typically I’m running after some kid’s activities. I’m like 10:30 or 11:00 I go to bed, but I don’t go to the office until 9:00. When I left the big firm, and I started on my own, I said from that day forward, I will always get my children off to school myself. I drew a line in the sand. Because in the old days, when I worked for someone else when you work with a lot of men, they scheduled you whenever they wanted to get to work, and they don’t think about childcare or babysitters. I was scheduled to be in meetings at 7:30 in the morning. Well, you can’t even drop your children off till 7:30 in the morning at some babysitters or daycares.
There would endlessly be someone crying in the morning because we were trying to get out the door in a hurry. I just said never again will I take my kids to a babysitter in the morning. I will get them off to school myself and give them breakfast and all those things. It was one significant change I made when I decided to work for myself was that.
Now when I get on my bed, it’s take my glasses off, poof, I’m done. I’ve always been that way. My husband laughs at it. I can have a 20-minute nap in 23 minutes because I just fall asleep. I like to read short articles, but I’m not a book reader. I don’t read a book at night because I’m just tired. I go to sleep. I do other things. I do more physical things. I garden and I get out because my body’s not tired, but my brain is.”
Q: What time do you get up in the morning?
Bev Betteridge
“6:30, 7 o’clock, in there. Get the kids off. Try to have a relaxing morning. Because lots of times after work you get home, you run to a ball game, you’re running to a band concert, you’re running to a volleyball, all that stuff. After work isn’t always very relaxing because it’s just we’re a busy family, so my morning is my sanctuary. I often will get up in the morning. I’ll get up at 7:00; my girls are older and self-sufficient. I’ll often just read articles on my phone or read in the morning, have a quiet coffee, and they’re getting ready. I get to see them. We have hugs and all that in the morning and chat, and they get out the door. They drive and everything; they’re independent. They’re young women, they’re not babies. Then I get myself up and get off to the office. I’m a sleeper, I need sleep. I like in the morning to not have just chaos. I like a calm morning, and then I get to the office by 9:00. Then I’ll commonly work till 6:00. All the staff are all gone for the day. They come in early typically, and I leave late. It works for us.”
Q: if you could go back in time and talk to yourself when you were in university, what do you think you would say to yourself about this process that you’re in right now, just being a mom and an entrepreneur?
Bev Betteridge
“I would tell myself never to stay in the same place as long as I did. I think loyalty was probably a problem for me. In all the places that I worked, I stayed too long. I would’ve started this entrepreneurial journey sooner. Probably two or three years sooner, I would’ve started.”
Q: Regarding confidence in yourself as a woman, how did you mentally process and say I want to work by myself?
Bev Betteridge
“I grew up with four brothers. I was the second oldest in the series, but I always was telling them I can be faster, smarter, and better. There was constant competition at my house, so I always had that confidence of, I can compete with you, especially if you’re a man, because I had it at home. I never felt that I couldn’t achieve things because I was a woman, never, ever. And even in the jobs that I had all along the way, in the first role, I had a lot of women around me, good mentors. And then the next roles I had after that in different companies was me and 10 men, me and eight men. It just got to be the norm. Sometimes you must have a certain temperament where you just aren’t going to put up with something and maybe get labelled with a name that isn’t kind, but you just stand up for yourself a bit and point out certain facts of life. Like when men would schedule a meeting first thing in the morning, I would say, well, I have childcare. I must drop off my kids. Who drops off your children? And I would point out some things. They didn’t necessarily love that, but they never booked me for those times again. I spoke up. Women always must remember to “Stand up for yourself.”
Q: Have you ever missed any of your child’s games, public activities, or events that you think about that you have regretted missing for work? Is there a major one that still comes to mind?
Bev Betteridge
“No, because I just don’t. I have always made time for those kinds of things. I have a friend who missed her daughter’s first day of kindergarten for work, and I said you are making a horrible mistake. Don’t do that. You will just be tied to that guilt that you feel. Make time for your children. Work is waiting there for you. I can work between 10:00 and midnight if I need to finish something for someone. Many times I refused to travel because I was going to miss something important. I’ll give you an example. In my former life, training was often in Toronto on November 1st. Well, it’s impossible to get to Toronto from Saskatchewan in the morning of November 1st without missing Halloween. I just would refuse to go. I know they wanted me to go. I know it reflected on me that I would not go on that day, but I consistently gave them the same feedback as to why I would not be there, that my kids were important. It seemed like a silly thing, it’s Halloween. You could miss Halloween, but I’m not going to.”
Q: I feel listening to you speak, I see that you set boundaries right from the start, even before you got into your own business, whereby you always put your kids and family first, and you will not compromise. And even as you moved on to be an entrepreneur, you even gave yourself a little bit more flexibility to do just that, and I’m not going to work when I got to be with your kids. What advice would you give to women that don’t have that chance?
Bev Betteridge
“I know. It’s hard for people who don’t have that opportunity. It’s hard for people to decide to have that very determined voice. On the other side of it, I think that if more of us laid boundaries, employers would recognize that those things are probably a little unfair to ask parents, not just women, but parents, to miss certain things. I’ve always been incredibly flexible about when I will meet with a client; I’ll meet with you on Saturday, it doesn’t bother me. I often put on my fuzzy slippers, go downstairs into my home office, and work from 7:00 in the morning on a Saturday till two in the afternoon because I have teenagers sleeping in. They don’t even miss me. There’s a way to get it done. I also appreciate that in certain industries, certain rules just don’t accommodate that. I’ve been lucky that I’ve been able to have a flexible enough role in my career and industry that I can do lots of things if I’m flexible as well.”
Q: What is your support system like? I know you mentioned your husband. Do you have family around that helped with your kids at any point in time or just guided you?
Bev Betteridge
“We had great childcare. We had consistent great childcare in our day home. When the kids were really little, we had grandmas and grandpas and that kind of thing. As they got older, you didn’t need that as much. Lots of structure around us at home and lots of activities, which is a way to create support, but it also adds to the business of your life as well. We used those supports, but we also tried not to overload grandma and grandpa. They have a fun role to play, too, they’re not the babysitter. They are very independent. At home, we have a lot of structure. Our kids have chores and roles to play at home. We have high expectations of them, and they know it. They’re not sitting in the basement gaming for a whole day. They have things they’re expected to do, so it’s a way for them to help us help them.”
Q: What would you say has been the key habit? And I know you’ve mentioned structure, which is having that at home but is there anything else you would like to add to that?
Bev Betteridge
“I think it’s about laying boundaries with other people and ensuring that your expectations are known. I have an expectation of you the way you have an expectation of me. I don’t take calls when I’m with my family. I don’t schedule a time when I’m with my family. When I know they don’t need me, I happily schedule clients, and they appreciate that I accommodate them when it’s good for them. You have to create boundaries with what you’re willing to do, and what you’re not, and if you’re open with that, people will accept that.”
Q: Mommy brain and mommy guilt, how did you ever deal with that?
Bev Betteridge
“It’s something you just need to cope with. It never goes away when they’re little. Now I don’t have it. I can say now that I don’t have any guilt. I go to all the things. I have great relations with my kids. But when they’re little, you want to be with them, and you want to be at work, and you want both things, but that doesn’t work. A good friend of mine, she’s a CFO in town, and she has three little girls, and she says when does the guilt stop? I said, oh no, no, it never stops. You just deal with it. You have to accept that it’s there and can’t be everything to everyone, but you can be a great mom. And sometimes, being away from them makes you a better mom. You can be with them, and being away from work sometimes makes you a better professional. So you just have to balance things. But the guilt is going to be there. I don’t think any mom with a career of any kind doesn’t have guilt. And the mommy’s brain. I think back to 20 years ago when I was pregnant for the first time.
You’re just so drained, I think, that you’re forgetful and all those things, I remember that. I don’t know what I did to get through it. I just go back to rest is important. If you stretch yourself so far, you will have even more of that. I think that if you don’t rest, then you’re tired, and then you are forgetful, and then you’re dropping the ball. So, for me, it’s always been rest. But I do remember my husband and I just crawled into bed one night, and I said, oh my God because at that time I was working 80%, I said, what if I worked full time? I don’t know how we would survive. We were both just so exhausted. But, rest is a big one for me to help cope with motherhood stress.”
Q: Would you want to share any empowering experiences you’ve had in your journey?
Bev Betteridge
“People need to be empathetic with one another. As I’ve gone through these stages of my kid’s life, I think you have new empathy for what people go through in every stage of life. So, when you’re in your 20s and just starting your career, you aren’t empathetic to that mom who has two kids. You’re just like, what’s wrong with her? Why is she so stressed out all the time? You don’t have empathy. Then when you get to that stage, you’re like, oh yes, now I understand. But you don’t understand the mom who’s got kids in hockey, and they’re running around to 30 events and trying to work at night so they can go see hockey games until you get there. People just need to be a little bit more empathetic with one another, like when you lose a parent.
All these things you go through in life create new empathy because you’ve walked in those shoes, so people just need to accept a few other people’s situations. I see that in my team. Everyone has some situation going on at home. And they don’t know one another’s situations. I typically know them. Not everyone’s going to understand everything that’s going on with them. You need to give them more slack and room to deal with their stuff. And people come back to you if you just give them some space and you give them enough room to excel in their way. I think that’s taken some years of watching and walking in new shoes to know that.”
With clear priorities, Bev’s entrepreneur process has been a refreshing take on how to set boundaries while staying confident and true to her vision of doing things a different way. Our conversation served as a lesson on how to balance the intentionality of parenting with the purpose and authenticity of changing the norm in the industry. If you would like to know more about Bev’s or join her team to enjoy the view from The Corner Office CFO providing solutions with bookkeeping and other accounting business needs, you can contact her via www.cornerofficecfo.com.
