From Compliance to CFO: What an Iris Bed Taught Me About Growth, Space, and More Impactful Client Work
My iris bed at RedSunflower Farm
If you’ve been following along here, you know that RedSunflower Farm is both where I live and how I think. My husband Barry tends the vegetables and the fruit. I tend the flowers. And this spring, one corner of my garden is teaching me something I want to share with you.
A Lesson in Growth From an Iris Bed
A few years back, I started a new perennial bed, a little section near one of our picnic tables where I wanted something cheerful to sit beside. Year one, I covered the grass with black plastic and let it rest. Year two, I planted taller perennials in the back, shorter ones in the front. Last year ended with some open spots, some overcrowding, but it was alive. Progress, not perfection.
This spring is year three. I’ve rearranged, given some plants to friends, filled in the edges. And as late spring arrived, the whole bed came into bloom in a way I hadn’t quite expected.
The irises especially.
I had transplanted them from another bed in my yard, one that had produced almost no blooms for the past several years. When I dug them up, I honestly wasn’t sure they’d do much better in the new location. They weren’t flourishing where they were. Why would moving them change that?
And yet, this spring, virtually every single iris bloomed.
I went back to look at the original bed. Two, maybe three flowers.
The difference between the two beds was stark. The new irises had room. The old ones had grown so successfully over the years that they were now densely packed together, roots tangled, all competing for the same nutrients, the same light, the same ground. They weren’t failing because of any flaws in the plant. They were failing because they had no space.
I sat with that for a while.
The Space We Give Ourselves
I am not so different from those irises.
When I fill my days with to-do after to-do, every hour spoken for, every minute productive, no margin anywhere, I go to bed exhausted but not satisfied. I rarely sleep well. I wake up unrefreshed. And despite all that motion, the best work doesn’t come.
But when I give myself space, when I start my morning with a few quiet minutes before I open my computer, take a walk after lunch just to breathe, step outside in the afternoon for no particular reason, those are the days my thinking is clearest. Those are the days when what I do actually matters. Those are the days I sleep well.
Space isn’t empty. Space is what makes growth possible.
I know I’m not alone in this. We live in a culture that equates busyness with worth, pace with progress. And for CPAs, boutique CPA firm owners, CFOs, and other financial professionals especially (high achievers by nature, trained to execute and deliver and solve) the idea of doing less to gain more feels deeply counterintuitive. And yet the irises don’t lie.
Moving From Compliance Work to a More Meaningful CFO Role
Now here is where this gets interesting for those of us in the advisory space.
For years, I believed my job was to have the answer. A client came to me with a problem, and I solved it. That’s what I was trained to do. That’s what I was paid to do. That’s what I thought “helping” looked like.
But I kept running into the same wall. I’d walk into a client meeting with real insight, a clear path to profitability, a restructured compensation model, a pricing strategy that actually worked, and the client would nod. Or push back. Or say the words I came to dread:
“That won’t work for me.”
And months later, I’d find out: nothing changed.
It took me a long time, and a lot of humility, to understand what was actually happening. I was presenting answers to people whose brains weren’t yet in a place to receive them. I was walking up to a tightly packed iris bed and wondering why the flowers weren’t blooming.
What I wasn’t doing was creating space.
Why the Future of Advisory Work Is Human
Viktor Frankl wrote: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
That space, that pause between what is and what could be, is exactly where transformation lives. And the most important thing a CPA, CFO, or financial advisor can do is not fill that space. Instead to love your client enough, to create space for a new choice.
We are living and working in what some economists call the transformation economy.
In this economy, the highest value add isn’t information or even expertise, it’s helping people achieve their greatest aspirations. To transform in order to achieve what they’re reaching for.
AI can run a financial analysis faster than I can open a spreadsheet. It can model scenarios, project outcomes, identify risk. What AI cannot do is notice that someone’s arms are crossed. It cannot feel the temperature change in the room. It cannot ask the question that isn’t on the agenda, which is often the only question that truly matters.
It cannot create the space.
That is a human skill. A deeply, irreducibly human skill.
The Opportunity for CPAs, CFOs, and Boutique CPA Firms
For CPAs who are willing to make this shift, from answer-giver to space-creator, from compliance to coaching, from authority to partnership, the opportunity is extraordinary. There is no professional better positioned to help business owners genuinely improve their prosperity. We understand the language of money. We’ve sat across the table from people in their most vulnerable financial moments. We have the trust.
What we’re learning to add is the pause. The curiosity. The willingness to ask and then wait. To let the silence work.
Give It Room
From the picture that accompanies this post, you can see how my irises flourished, once given space.
The irises had no idea what they were capable of. Neither did I, until I gave them room.
I’m going to ask you two questions. Sit with them. Don’t rush to the answer.
Where in your own life are you so densely packed, so relentlessly scheduled and perpetually “on”, that you have no room to actually flourish?
And in your work with clients: are you filling the space, or are you creating it?
I’d love to hear what comes up for you. Hit reply. I read every one.
With love from RedSunflower Farm,
Mackey
Hi, I’m Mackey McNeill, CPA, PFS, and founder of The CFO Collaborative. I help CPAs move from compliance to coaching and build practices and lives they love. If you’re ready to step into more strategic, meaningful work with your clients, I’d love to connect.
Schedule a call here to learn more. Our next cohort begins May 18th.
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