IAM1191- Founder Helps Families Organize Themselves Digitally

Jaclyn Strauss, CPA is the founder of her own company called My Macro Memoir and has become a leading efficiency expert by putting her skills and knowledge to work by creating a secure place for families to digitally organize themselves with the thinking done for them. She has also recently launched a physical binder that allows for space for every original document that must be retained based on her professional guidance as a CPA all secured in a fireproof/waterproof envelope. Jaclyn leads with her heart in all that she does and has a passion for serving the greater good of her local community and beyond.

• CEO Hack: Actioning on feedback that's repeated at least three times
• CEO Nugget: Don't try and strive for perfection
• CEO Defined: Willingness to pivot, being open to change, and embracing feedback

Website: http://mymacromemoir.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/mymacromemoir/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mymacromemoir
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaclyn-strauss-mymacromemoir/
Shop on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/OrganizePapersNow

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Transcription

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00:13 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:40 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jacqueline Strauss of Second Vault, previously known as My Macro Memoir. Jacqueline, it's great to have you on the show.

00:50 – Jaclyn Strauss

Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored. I love listening to your podcast.

00:55 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. The honor is all ours. I'm super excited to hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Jacqueline so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Jacqueline is a CPA and is the founder of her own company called My Macro Memoir, which is now going to be called Second Vault. It has become a leading efficiency expert by putting her skills and knowledge to work by creating a secure place for families to digitally organize themselves with the thinking done for them.

She has also recently launched a physical binder that allows for space for every individual document that must be retained based on her professional guidance as a CPA and all secured in a fireproof and waterproof envelope. Jacqueline leads with her heart in all things that she does and has a passion for serving the greater good of her local community and beyond. Jacqueline, super excited to have you on. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:43 – Jaclyn Strauss

Thank you, absolutely. Let's do this.

01:46 – Gresham Harkless

Let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Here is a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:53 – Jaclyn Strauss

Absolutely. So it was actually born out of a need that I personally had. So my professional background, as you mentioned, I am a CPA by trade. So I like to think, you know, I've got a good foundation as far as understanding the language of business because that's what accounting is. I also have years of experience teaching at the college level and you're either kind of, it either clicks or doesn't click, But at the end of the day, I always recommend everyone take a college-level accounting class to really understand the language of business and the foundation.

Whether you love it or hate it at the end of the day, I promise it will come back to help you in your journey to CEO. So back to how I got here. I am a mom, and that is my first and most important role. My son actua week and my daughter is n I delivered my daughter, hemorrhage. So about 25% are attributed to post-de-now 6. After I delivered my daughter, I experienced a post-delivery hemorrhage. So about 25% of maternal deaths are attributed to post-delivery hemorrhages. So I did unfortunately experience that with the birth of my daughter. It became such a risk and grave situation that both my spouse and parents were told that I was not going to make it and leave the hospital.

Somehow, what do you know, here I am. So I made it and fought my way out. When I got home and started to reflect on the situation, I realized that I had to do something and I had to do something bigger and better than what I was already doing. I realized that as the household CFO, because I'm a CPA, I naturally fell into that role, the house manager, the dog mom, the activities director, whatever it may be, it was an organized mess for me, right? I knew and I knew where everything was.

However, my husband doesn't. I took that role on and it's not that he's not capable. I really think the dynamic of most relationships is one person's kind of that point person and takes more of that responsibility. The other person has the confidence that everything's there. But the truth is, they don't know where it is if you really start to think deeply about it. I'm also the daughter of aging parents. I have a brother. My brother will not be the point person when, it's not a matter of if, but when something happens to my parents.

So I actually got a lot of anxiety around, how am I gonna help? So when I sat down to organize everything, There was no easy way for me to do it. I was absolutely paralyzed. I did not know where to begin. Do I begin with where our bank account is or with a favorite recipe that I wanna make sure that my daughter has when I'm no longer here? Where was that starting point? So I started to look for resources and quite honestly, there was nothing simple and stupid for me to get this done because no matter what, it's not sexy, it's not fun. It's something though that has to be done for the greater good. Knowledge is power and we need to have that power individually and not be codependent.

So right so since there was nothing to meet my needs I was like I'm going to create it because if I'm having this problem, others are. I did a ton of market research and spoke with a ton of different people from all different demographics, ages, genders, you know, you name it, I spoke with a very diverse sample set and everyone's like, Oh my god, yes, I need that. So I went for it. I did the research, I'm not from a tech background, Had to really leverage my network and figure out who can I trust for a source of referral to kind of help me see this vision through. So that's what I did. I created all the content. In the end, I have a service that was born that's a simple series of yes or no questions only, no bells or whistles that provides a guided user experience. So nobody feels alone and that feeling of paralysis that you may have when you try and get your stuff together.

06:03 – Gresham Harkless

I know you touched on a little bit about how it works. Could you take us through a little bit more about that? What is the second fold, how does it work, and then what do you consider to be what I like to call its secret sauce or your personal secret sauce, but you feel sets it apart and makes it unique?

06:15 – Jaclyn Strauss

Yeah, absolutely. So thank you for asking. So there's a lot of digital vaults out there, a lot. I mean, there's Google Drive, there's Dropbox, right? You can store whatever you want in there and say, hey, just it's all there. But the challenge with those is there's no direction, there's no experience, there's no guidance. So that's what I believe our secret sauce is, is really providing the guidance to think about for you anything and everything that may be relevant. If it's not relevant to you, a simple click of a no, because everything is presented in a yes or no question, takes you to the next question.

So you're not wasting time trying to look through documents and click through different places to things that aren't relevant to you. You literally have a question pop up in front of your eyes, you read it, you click yes or no. If it's a no, you move on. If it's a yes, you put in what you want. Nothing is forced, okay? I believe that I'm a strong believer and I've seen professionally for 19 years that we as human beings like options. So I've really created that, this tool, knowing that people like options. We also all have different levels of comfort with storing things in the cloud, right?

So the younger generations, we're good with it, But my mom who's 70, she's not. She's got a sheet of paper that she's handwritten her passwords on. And that's fantastic as long as I know where that is as her daughter. And so there's an opportunity to free text in there. I have a sheet of paper with my passwords and you can find it in my nightstand drawer. Right there, there's that breadcrumb that I need. There's nothing deeper than that. It's meant to be a capture point at a very high level. So who cares what your bank balances are? It's where do you bank?

That's what matters. You've got the death certificate. If you have the power of attorney, your loved ones will be able to get what they need from the bank. But simply knowing where your bank accounts are is that high-level breadcrumb. Who cares about the value of your life insurance if you have it? It's just, who's that life insurance policy with? Who's the contact person that I would need to contact? So keeping it high level, I didn't wanna get overly intrusive. There are other services out there that ask for you to link your bank accounts and for all of your stuff to populate.

That to me opens up for potential security breach because we know all of this is extremely sensitive, No.1, and No. 2, are not what the point of this is. It's literally taking a self-inventory. What I've also seen it do for people is identify where they have duplicative services that they forgot to cancel. So we all subscribe to things, whether it's through iTunes, you know, on our phones, whatever, and we just, it's charged every single month and we don't remember. Well, when you actually sit down and have something prompting you to ask the questions to think about it, A lot of users have said, I found places that I was spending money that I was able to stop spending money.

Then I was able also to be reminded of the gaps that I had. I've been meaning to update my will since I had my second child who's now 10 years old. I've got to reach out to my attorney and do that. So it's a way to self-inventory and every single question that's answered, every yes or no populates it's an individual PDF. What does that allow? As situations arise in our lifetime, as we go when we are here, the hope is, is it'll help you become more efficient. If I'm out of town traveling and something happens to my dog, I have a question in there that says, do you have a pet?

I say, yes, I filled in who the vet is, where the pet insurance is, you know, what the policy is, and: who the groomer is. My husband said that Don's been coughing, he's got to go to the vet, you know, what's the info? Rather than me looking a million different places for it, went in with, you know, at my fingertips, pulled that PDF specifically for that situation and sent that over and I was done. So it really helps empower me and empower those closest to me without turning over everything in my vault at once.

I don't want to do that. I want the vault to be fully accessed when I'm no longer here. You as a user are able to designate one confidant. That confidant is able to access your information when you are confirmed not able to be reached through very strict security measures. There's a military-grade inscription on the entire platform. I use data chunking for those of you familiar with tech. So everything is split among multiple servers. So if one server is compromised, then it's going to be a sliver of an encrypted file. So when I created this, 2 things were my pillars. Security is number one, first and foremost, and then time is money. I realized that everyone's time is money and we don't wanna spend hours doing this. So to make it as simple as possible is where we went.

11:26 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely, I appreciate that. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:38 – Jaclyn Strauss

Absolutely. So there's so much noise out there, right? Everybody is a social media guru. I get a million LinkedIn messages of people, you know, wanting to, you know, me to engage with them for services, which I appreciate, but a lot of it is noise. So here is and has been my hack. The market is going to dictate what is needed and what they desire. So if I get the same piece of feedback 3 times, to me that's a trend that is actionable.

At that point, that's where I draw the line as far as keeping something on the parking lot. So thank you for the feedback. Feedback is a gift and I will take it any day, every day. But when I hear the exact same feedback or very similar, 3 times, that's when action is taken on my part and I pivot. So that's kind of where I defined it and how I was able to tune out all the noise around me. Because I found that there were so many resources and options that you have to be able to just, you know, draw the line and focus on what works for you.

12:44 – Gresham Harkless

So I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:54 – Jaclyn Strauss

Absolutely. So don't try and strive for perfection because Perfection is a way of actually, in my opinion, putting things off and not getting after something. I am a perfectionist in many ways, but I have to give that up because nothing and no one will ever be perfect.

13:20 – Gresham Harkless

Want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Jacqueline, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:28 – Jaclyn Strauss

So the definition to me of what it means to be a CEO is willing to pivot, be open to feedback, be open to change, right, and be open to accept things as a gift and not come back and be argumentative or try and challenge anything that you're given, but being willing to embrace it and embrace it in any way that's meaningful for you as a CEO. Be open, be real, and be authentic with your people.

14:00 – Gresham Harkless

Shackelin, truly appreciate that definition. Appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best they can get a hold of you about all the awesome things you're working on.

14:12 – Jaclyn Strauss

Absolutely. Thank you so much. So anybody that wants to reach out to me can go to my website and I assume you'll be posting the website on the show notes here. You can also reach me at support at mymacromemoir.com. So email me, I check the emails myself, and I'm happy to respond. You'll find me on LinkedIn as well, Jacqueline Strauss, CPA. Connect with me, reach out. I'd love to hear from you. But also know that I've got the rule of threes.

So I appreciate everybody wanting to sell me something or offer me their services, but we all have to make decisions there. But know that I welcome everything and I do evaluate everything. So thank you. Also I do wanna mention that as a CPA in my capacity, I was often asked, What do I have to keep physically? Because we do have to have original physical documents as well. The pie in the sky is to have everything backed up digitally. If there's a hurricane, a fire, or a natural disaster, you'll always have it.

But there are physical documents you have to retain. So I do also, and you'll find it on the website, have a product that is a binder, physical binder, where you can slip in the originals of all of the documents that you have to keep with my professional guidance provided as I created this, that comes in a waterproof, fireproof case as well. I just urge everybody, to stop being so reactive. Let's all work to be more proactive because the more that we can do that, the happier we're all going to be. The less deer in headlights feeling, we will all feel when things come our way that we can't plan for.

15:49 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Thank you so much. I definitely appreciate you as well, too. We will have the links and information in the show notes. I love those last kinds of nuggets as well, too, about how people can be armed with the option and opportunity to be successful and to be proactive. I think, as you said, you get rid of the headaches during the headlight looks, you get rid of that heartburn and all that frustration that happens when you are kind of more, more reactive than proactive. So I thank you so much for providing your expertise, but definitely for creating a better mousetrap as well. So Appreciate you again. I hope you have phenomenal.

16:18 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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