Episode 130: Leading With Significance: Be Intentional To Help Others With Joey Havens
What will elevate your team’s performance that goes unparalleled against others? Today, Joey Havens, a Managing Partner of Strategic Growth at HORNE, shares the importance of the lessons he learned from his parents of work ethic and faith that have been the backbone of his success as a leader. He shares his insights, failures, and growth from his experience leading HORNE LLP’s transformation in their performance. Joey also shares key tips in leadership that he has found that help people to see their full potential and what is possible. Would you want to chase money and power or impact people’s lives by Leading with Significance? Tune in now and chase which greater value will bring into your business and life.
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Leading With Significance: Be Intentional To Help Others With Joey Havens
Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs, where I interviewed Joey Havens who is a CPA and serving HORNE as Managing Partner of Strategic Growth. Prior to that, he served as executive partner from 2012 to 2021, leading more than 1,800 team members. He has also co-authored four books during his career at HORNE. He is an active member of CPA Practice Advisor's top 30 thought leaders. He currently serves on the board of the Mustard Seed, a Christian community for adults with developmental disabilities, and Empower Mississippi.
During my interview with Joey, we talk about the importance of the lessons he learned from his parents on work ethic and faith that have been the backbone of his success as a leader. Joey shares key tips in leadership that he has found that help people to see their full potential and what is possible. You can also get Joey's new book, Leading With Significance to learn more about his tips after this interview. I hope that you will share this interview with people who it will help, that are in leadership. For anyone that wants to help people be able to grow and be seen, Joey has some great tips during this interview.
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Welcome to Breaking Beliefs. I am here with Joey Havens, who doesn't need an introduction, but I'm going to allow him to introduce himself. I'm very excited about this conversation. Joey, do you want to give our audience a little background on yourself?
Thank you, Amy. I'm excited to be here. I'm Joey Havens with HORNE, LLP. We're a national accounting firm, top 25. I'm in my last year with the firm. I'm the author of Leading With Significance. I think that'll be the next thing I do in my season of life. I'm married. I got eight grandkids. I'm loving life every day.
We're going to start off with the beginning of you, your childhood, where you grew up, what your parents did, and what your background was.
These types of interviews are tough on introverts.
I push introverts to their uncomfortable level.
We're already at the uncomfortable level. I grew up in North Mississippi to fine Christian parents and a Christian home. I’m very blessed to be raised in that environment. I had a younger brother and a younger sister. I was the oldest and we had a great home life there in Batesville, Mississippi. I got out of high school. I knew I wanted to continue my education at Ole Miss. I'm an Ole Miss rebel. Die hard. I love college sports, so I'm big into following the college sports scene.
What did your father do?
My father did a couple of different things. He didn't attend college. When we moved to our hometown, Batesville, he was the produce manager for the Piggly Wiggly store. He managed all the produce. He kept going to night school and got an associate's degree, and got on with a production company, Venus Industries, that made women's undergarments. He was a production manager for that. I learned more about women's bras at a young age than I probably should know. He then went to work for a magazine publishing company and finished his career there and retired at the age of 65. Mom and daddy are still very blessed and doing well. They're 85 and 84, living independently. They go out every Friday night to fish with friends. We're thankful.
Was your mom a stay-at-home mom or did she work?
She did a little bit of associate teaching. She was a teacher's aide for many years. She did a few part-time jobs, and then she was an at-home mom too.
How did your parents meet?
They met in high school. They got married early on. I think they were nineteen when they got married.
Having your father watching him go to night school and so forth, what kind of impact do you think that was? You were watching him have to work during the day, go to night school, and try to take the value of education that way. That's a lot of hard work, having a family, and doing all of that.
Definitely, watching him, I learned the drive to be better. He was always trying to better himself and provide more for his family. We were definitely a middle-income family. We were not the members of the country club or anything. I was out mowing the yard and doing things. He taught us a work ethic that has served me very well.
As far as your hobbies, when you were a child, what were your favorite things to do?
I loved all the fishing and hunting things. Even though my dad did not hunt, he did fish some, but playing sports, we were so competitive and baseball was the thing that I centered around.
Why was that? What did you love about baseball?
The competition. It was something in that small town. Baseball was a big deal. It gave us a lot of opportunities to compete. I then continued to compete in junior high and high school. It was that competitive spirit I had.
You also said what was important was your Christian background with your parents. Why do you say that? How did that affect you growing up?
They are salt of the earth people and very devoted to the Christian faith. They lived it every day. It was hard to be raised in that home and not see the importance of that. It made a lasting impression on me. Although I certainly took many side streets and made many mistakes along the way, I always came back to that truth.
When you say they lived it, how do you define living that?
I define it as I saw it every day, how they loved and cared for us as a family, how they gave to the church, and how they gave to their neighbors. We were the family, if somebody was sick, mom was cooking extra and took it to their house. If the church doors were open, we were there. They truly lived at it every day.
I know we're going to get into your story, but it seems like just knowing you, that generosity is something that led through your leadership traits as well.
Until we started talking about it just then, people have always told me that. I don't know that I'm generous, but people have always said that. I always did see that in my parents and never connected the dot. They didn't have much to give, but they gave her their time. Even now, mom is 84, and I know she has cooked some meals, cakes, or a pie for people in need, or lost a loved one or something.
That's such a nice memory to have. I'm sure it makes you so proud. Where did accounting fit into all this? I'm not seeing it in your background. I'm not seeing it in the hobbies that you talked about that you were interested in. How did this happen?
I don't know. It's just one of those coincidences in my life. I didn't know what I wanted to do when I went to Ole Miss. I took an accounting course. I took a lot of math. I started in engineering school. I liked the accounting. I was always good with that. The math came easy to me too, so I took some of those tests that tell you what you might want to do. Actuary, accounting, and a couple of others were always high. I ruled that one out earlier.
My first client at KPMG was interviewing actuaries and that was hard.
I met one and I said, "I'm not going to be this."
What they go through with schooling is amazing as far as their math goes. You took an accounting class and you're like, "I like this better than engineering." What didn't you like about engineering?
I don't specifically remember what drove me one way or the other. I'll be honest with you, I think there was a professor or two at the accounting school that took a little more interest in me. Dr. Taylor was always taking an interest in me. It got me more interested. I took the next level. I knew nothing about the accounting industry. I didn't know what The Big 8 was or The Big 4. I was naive about the whole thing.
That's so important because especially we're constantly talking about the pipeline issue and so forth. The importance of taking an interest in young people and trying to guide them because you had no background in this and you had no vision of what accounting is. When we don't spend the time to give people a vision of what this career can be and how many facets there are, sometimes there's an impression of that's not the case.
One of the things I'm harping on now is we have to not only tell a better story but we have to also create a better story. We've created some of the perception problems ourselves but we've done a terrible job of relating how rewarding a career in public accounting is, how many lives you impact, and the kind of significance you can have. I think it's a matter of us writing a better story, but certainly, we need to be telling a better story.
Leading With Significance: We've got to tell a better story. We’ve got to create a better story.
You decided to finish out in accounting, and then what? How did you know where to go in your career? What was next?
I was working part-time for a CPA firm in my hometown. I traveled back and forth about 25 miles to Ole Miss. I had started out cutting their grass, and then I told them I was taking accounting and I wanted to work some, so they let me do some bookkeeping. I started doing some bookkeeping at WH Polk and Company. I did that for 2 or 3 years. They made an offer to me when I graduated, but I also talked to some of my friends at school. They said, "We're interviewing with these Big 8 and we're interviewing with these companies." I set up some interviews there on campus and hit it off with Arthur Andersen. I flew out to Houston, Texas. I had to buy a suit. I didn't own a suit. I flew out to Houston, Texas, interviewed out there, and got an offer out there. I moved to Houston, Texas, and went to work.
What did you start in, tax or audit?
I started in the audit.
What was your career like there?
It lasted about three years. I decided I wanted to move home. I was married. We wanted to raise a family. We liked Houston. Houston was exciting and fun. It was growing leaps and bounds at the time. This was before it slowed down in '84. A friend of mine had decided to move out. He left Polk and Company that I had worked for when I was in school, and he was starting a CPA firm.
I moved back home even though I'd had a good career with Arthur Andersen. I'd made what they called back then semi-senior in two years. I had worked on some neat accounts, Texas Airlines, and some neat things. When Continental was buying them, I decided to move back to Mississippi and went to work with Garry Carnegie to start a firm. I went from the largest most renowned firm to a little rural Mississippi and started a CPA firm.
What didn't you know when you started?
I don't know. It was fun. I did miss some of the bigger transactions and that kind of thing. I went back to small business bookkeeping, but the satisfaction I get from helping people in their lives was very rewarding. I had to buy our first computer and set it up. I can still remember those floppy drives, sticking them in there, and fooling them with all of that. It's bad. You're in trouble if I'm your computer guru.
Leading With Significance: The satisfaction you get from helping people in their lives is very rewarding.
How did you grow the firm? What was the process of doing that?
Being out in the community back then. It was all about being in the community and being known. It's interesting, we got an opportunity with a company in Grenada, Mississippi, which is about 35 miles away and I served as their CFO for a while. HORNE CPA Group at the time, was their main firm. That's how I met HORNE. I met Jim Martin at the time. He was running their Grenada office. As we come to the conclusion of that, HORNE reached out to me and offered me a job. He had so much more upside. I had Garry off and running in good shape. I thought it was a nice stepping stone. It actually put me in a bigger firm, but not in an Arthur Andersen-type environment.
What did you start out as when you came to HORNE?
I started out as a manager.
In audit or small business?
At HORNE, I did audit and tax. I worked in both areas. As I did with Garry's firm, I worked in audit and tax. I learned tax on the go.
People assume tax when you say you're a CPA. Where did the transition happen from subject matter expert, knowing the technical stuff, to being a manager of people? When do you think you started learning there was a difference?
The big change in my career happened at HORNE. Healthcare was the thing that was their one niche early on. You get a lot of hospital clients. When you do hospitals, you get a lot of doctor clients. The managing partner at the time, Roy Ward, came to me and said, "Joey, I believe if somebody would specialize or focus on doctor practices and medical practices, we could grow a big business.” I had a couple of medical clients already and I said, "I'll be glad to do that." I jumped in and started focusing on medical practices and grew a niche in that. That led to me leading that whole area for the firm. That's when I became more responsible for more people. When I understand it, I started to understand how deficient I was as a leader.
There were two things in there. Who taught you how to sell? If he's saying for you to start up a practice, how did you know how to go out and develop a business?
To be honest with you, it was a little natural for me. Even though I'm not an extrovert, I would not go to a meeting and network with 30 people and follow up with 22 phone calls. I might have a good conversation with a couple of people. It was easy to see how to help people. Once I learned the medical practices, even how they bill, I studied the CPT codes. I knew what drove revenues. I knew when doctors were not billing properly or missing opportunities, not managing their AR. That confidence went in a matter of three years from "We're going to do this" to I was teaching national seminars with Mayer Hoffman McCann out of Kansas City on how to do consulting work with medical practices.
Was there anyone that you modeled after, learned from, or watched?
Reed Tinsley who still that is what he does. He lives in Houston, Texas. Reed has his own firm. He is always focused on medical practices and healthcare. We even co-authored a couple of books together. I met him through the Mayer Hoffman McCann thing. We started working together. I learned a lot about how to promote that through Reed.
I think in CPA firms, people are not developed or get surprised that they end up in sales. Sales can have this bad connotation but actually, you're trying to help people. If you feel confident in what you're trying to go out there with, you're actually helping people. It's not like a car sale and so forth. Where did you see that you started grooming people to learn to sell?
I started teaching a lot of leadership classes in HORNE. I developed them. The one that stuck a lot, I continue to teach from time to time. I've turned it into an eBook recently. It's The ABCs to Outstanding. It's helping young people get off to a faster start and understand the power of A, B, and C.
Leading With Significance: Get off to a faster start and understand the power of A, B, and C.
Do you want to define that for people?
A is Attitude. Attitude determines your success even more than your IQ. That's scientific. Martin Seligman is a psychologist who's done a lot of study on that. Stop giving up control of your attitude, and how important attitude is. B is for Better focus. It's amazing how much you can get done if you'll create some focused time, understand when your high energy is, and put your most important things during your high energy times. The C is for Constant learning. Thirty years ago when I put this together, I had no idea how big the C would be today. Constant learning and being a lifelong learner, if you're truly a leader, you're always growing and learning. Constant learning is something that separates you from being average.
How did you start seeing like this was a skill of yours in leadership? You knew you were a good accountant. You were able to develop this business, but you started putting these training materials together very early. Why did you see that need, and where did you see that you were excelling in this versus others?
Maybe excelling some and failing more. I was so competitive and so driven for success. I made a lot of mistakes and eventually realized I needed a coach. I hired my first external coach, Dr. Joe Paul. He helped me understand everything from fuzzy agreements to how I could be more influential. I matured more in my Christian faith. I began to realize why God put me on Earth. It was to help people see and realize their full potential. That's the thing that gives me joy. It's helping other people understand what's possible.
We don't have enough confidence in ourselves. For some people, it's hard for them to see what's possible. I have an innate gift or talent to be able to talk about what's possible, and then help people see how to take the steps to do that. I started realizing that. Once I got focused on that, it made it easy to grow tremendous teams and do a lot of what I did in my leadership at HORNE.
The first thing that comes from your background when you talked about it earlier was being in baseball and how competitive you were. It was an interesting observation. I was at a speaker training. At that training, there were Olympic athletes that speak. There would be master classes where they were getting feedback. There was one Olympian that was doing her thing and she was getting fatigued. The coach or facilitator stopped everything to turn to the audience and said how good she is at taking coaching because she's an athlete.
A lot of professionals are not as good at taking coaching because of that competitiveness of feeling like, "That's going to take me down if I'm going to get that feedback or someone is going to brand me badly." Athletes look at coaching completely differently when it's like, "If I do that one thing, that might save me half a second, or it will get me half a second faster." They have a completely different perspective. Do you think that helped you being in sports to be able to take that feedback?
I do see that connection and I do think elite athletes, like what you're talking about, understand the power of coaching because they've applied it. I didn't relate to it. I saw it later on. I've seen it even before you mentioned it. In sports, when the coach told me to try this and put my left foot forward first, I was able to hit the ball further, so I understood that. When you grow up in business, there comes a disconnect or at least it did for me. I thought it was about how to get the next star or how I could climb the ladder. I wasn't thinking about the waves that I was causing around me.
It's almost like what you talk about a lot. Until you know yourself better, know why you're here, what your backstory is, and how it affects you, I don't think you stopped to realize that. Now organizations have a big opportunity to teach that. That's why I started doing The ABCs to Outstanding because that's exactly what it teaches you. With some coaching, you can excel in a lot of different areas. When you elevate those around you, it always pays off over and over again.
When I go into CPA firms, definitely a pet peeve of mine is to review notes. People are not even trained on that kind of feedback and how you word things to be encouraging rather than, "I don't have time for this!" or "I'm going to do it myself because I don't have time to coach you." What suggestions or help do you give to people and firms that are trying to lead? How do you give feedback in a way that's encouraging and helpful, and give up your time, which is such a big thing that you talk about?
The hard part is for leaders to be vulnerable enough to trust in people. When you trust in people, and then you demonstrate that you care about them. In other words, "I understand who Amy is, what Amy's backstory is, what your aspirations are, and what you are trying to achieve." When I understand that, and you know that I've spent the time to understand that, and you know I care about your career, you succeeding and you hitting your goals, you're going to allow me to coach you then. Even if I'm not great at giving feedback, you're going to listen to that voice because you know it's coming from somebody who truly cares about you succeeding and wants you to grow in leadership.
A real disconnect is we are busy and we're not making it real as leaders. I write in everybody's book, "Be intentional." That's what it's about. Being intentional to connect so that you can coach people. When they have that strong sense of belonging, they want to achieve great things. They want the organization. They want to understand how they're building something bigger than themselves. That starts with that leader and that direct leader relationship.
Leading With Significance: Be intentional in connecting so you can coach people. They want to achieve great things when they have a strong sense of belonging.
As you moved through HORNE in this organization, how did you multiply this beyond yourself to make this more of a culture?
I started having success in healthcare where I was, and then they asked me to run our government services area, started running that, and grew it into a big team. I then had the opportunity to be elected as the managing partner of the firm in 2011. As part of that process, I was asked to give a vision for, "Why should you be the managing partner and what's your vision for the firm?" That's where I shared the vision of the wise firm which is based on the biblical parable of the wise man and the foolish man. A wise man built his house on the rock. The foolish man built his house on the sand. The storms came, the wind blew, the rain pelted down, the water flowed, and it washed the foolish man's house away.
We wanted to build a firm based on the solid rock of we and service. I compared that to the foolish firm where it was me and self-interest. It was about politics, not empowering people, and negative energy versus positive energy. I built several building blocks to show the difference. When the partner group saw that, they embraced that vision and said, "That's who we want to be."
How did you make sure the partner group was demonstrating that as a managing partner?
That is a long journey. I wrote a book about that. The thing that I tell everybody when it comes to culture or your partner group, it is a conversation at a time. You'll overestimate what you can do in the short term, but you'll underestimate what you do in the long term.
You have to take that slow process to get there. One person at a time. It goes back to even the staff people showing you care and learning problems.
You have to have that strong sense of belonging. Once they have that, they're going to help others. It grows. That's where their magnetic energy comes from. You help 2 or 3 people have a strong sense of belonging. They're going to do the very same thing for 2 or 3 more. All of a sudden, you got 10, and then you got 20, and then you got 30. All of a sudden, people realize, "We're doing something special here." That's where a discretionary effort comes from. That's where people begin to see it as a career and a calling, not a job.
From an ROI perspective or from a business perspective, people are going to want to know. Where did you see the benefits of doing this in your firm?
That's always a hard case too because you have to move on faith because there's not a direct line. There are plenty of lines. One of the things I like to do is help people do a reflection opportunity where you study where you're at. What is your turnover? What is it costing you? What is your client churn? Do you have client cheerleaders?
We all say, "Our clients are cheerleaders." I'll tell you, if 50% of your clients are cheerleaders, you will do double-digit organic growth every year. If you're not doing double-digit organic growth every year, you don't have 50% cheerleaders. You're not delivering the kind of client service that you say you're doing and you intend to do. It's the same thing in culture. We have great intentions. The partners and the CEO, especially usually have great intentions, but what happens on a day-to-day basis is another story because people are not intentional.
What drove you to write your book and go on to this next phase of your journey?
First and foremost, I thought maybe after I had put all of that together and we have had so much success continuing to have incredible success. It starts with the magic and the people. I thought I might do something after I retired. In January of '24, I'll retire from HORNE and God wouldn't let me sleep. He kept saying, "You need to get started. That's your next mission." I kept putting it off. A friend sent me a wooden handcrafted pen with a note in there. It said, "I don't know why I'm sending you this, but in my prayer life, God told me to send this to you." I knew, so I got to writing. It took me about a year to write it and get it through all the edits and get it published. One week from the day, it comes out.
That's amazing that you got it done in a year.
Two years. A year putting it together and a year getting it through everything.
It is a challenge. What have you learned from the process?
Many things. First and foremost, I call it coincidences throughout the book, and then the final thoughts, I share a little more around that, but I realized how much God had his hand on me and the firm that all these coincidences kept happening. When I stopped, reflected, and put the story together, I realized how much more there was to share especially from mistakes. Everybody's journey will be unique, but you have to get started and you have to be intentional. You never win, but you get the opportunity to get up the next day ahead. You have to be intentional with culture every day.
Why is this so important to you to get this message out?
It's part of my helping people see and realize their full potential. It is inspiring leaders to be vulnerable enough to trust in people and to intentionally care and serve in ways that lead to high performance. High performance and winning is fun. The level of success that we have as a firm is incredible. We were basically a $50 million firm and maybe 60th in the country. We're a top 25 firm today and 8 times that. We're nearly $400 million.
That's amazing.
Organically. It's not buying practices. Not that there's anything wrong with buying practices.
I do think it's important. This is a discussion I have with firms. If you want to stay independent, if you want to grow, if you don't want to have any choice in merging or getting acquired, there's still an investment like you're talking about that you have to make in the organization. It's one choice or the other. If you decide to stay as you are, there is an investment in money, time, resources, and people that have to change to make that growth in your own firm and sustainability.
Well stated. The business model has to change. You can change it with outside money. You can change it by moving up into another organization or you can do it yourself. You're not going to be successful running a firm the way we've run it for the last 100 years.
No. Even if you want to.
You can want to. It's like this. You can be running down the Interstate 70 miles an hour and when you run out of gas, it is not any fun when you're on the side of the road. That's where you're going to end up. There's not going to be as many people in the car with you either.
No one wants to be on the side of the road. I like to end these interviews with some rapid-fire questions.
I think that's what we've been doing so far.
I know. There's more. Family and friends, money, spiritual, or health?
I'll take spiritual.
Things or actions that I don't have that I do want.
I want a closer walk with my savior, Jesus Christ.
Things or actions I do have that I want to keep.
Peace and joy that comes from knowing my purpose in life.
Things or actions I don't have that I don't want.
Doubt in God's control.
Things or actions that I do have that I don't want, as far as my spirituality.
The habit of getting too busy.
You even have to think of that in retirement because it can be just as busy.
I think it's more busy. It's crazy, but I want to be. I want to see the ability to elevate and help other people do great things.
You can see that purpose and all of that driven through you from your family through now. That's awesome. Anything that we haven't talked about or you want to make sure we close out with before we end this interview?
We have two choices in life. We can chase success, which is more power, more money, and more titles. We can choose to lead with significance, which is all about having an impact on other people's lives. In my opinion, that's how we honor God by caring for and serving others. Success will always follow us if we start with significance, but significance does not follow success.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. There are so many great nuggets for people. Watch for Joey's book, Leading With Significance. Lots of people have posted their testimonials already. I loved the book. I got an early copy of it. Joey, I appreciate you sharing that with me, being on here, and sharing your story.
Thank you so much. It has been a pleasure. I appreciate what you do for our profession.
Thank you.
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I interviewed Joey Havens who is a CPA and currently serving HORNE as Managing Partner of Strategic Growth. Prior to that, he served as an executive partner from 2012 to 2021 leading more than 1,800 team members. He has also co-authored four books during his career at HORNE. He is an active member of CPA Practice Advisor's top 30 thought leaders. He currently serves on the board of the Mustard Seed, a Christian community for adults with developmental disabilities, and Empower Mississippi.
During my interview with Joey, we talk about the importance of the lessons he learned from his parents on work ethic and faith that have been the backbone of his success as a leader. Joey shares key tips in leadership that he has found that help people to see their full potential and what is possible. You can also get Joey's new book, Leading With Significance, to learn more about his tips after hearing this interview. I hope that you will share this interview with people who it will help, that are in leadership. For anyone that wants to help people be able to grow and be seen, Joey has some great tips during this interview.
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About Joey Havens
JOEY HAVENS, CPA, is currently serving HORNE as managing partner of strategic growth. He joined HORNE in 1984 and previously served as executive partner from 2012 to 2021, leading more than 1,800 team members to build the Wise Firm while passionately living out his life’s calling to help others see and reach their full potential. Prior to being named executive partner in 2012, Joey served as HORNE’s managing partner of health care services and the managing partner of government services, respectively.
Joey actively challenges the mainstays of business culture and strategic plan ning. He advocates growing leaders faster using holistic approaches and intentional sponsorship. In addition to his weekly beBetter blog, he is the author of numerous white papers and articles, including “Becoming the Firm of the Future,” published by AICPA. He has coauthored four books during his career at HORNE.
Joey is an active member of CPA Practice Advisor’s Top 30 Thought Leaders, where he works with other accounting professionals to help lead and shape the industry. Joey is a frequent presenter/teacher/facilitator on creating a culture of belonging, strategic planning, and leadership development and loves to teach young professionals the “ABCs to Outstanding.”
He currently serves on the board of The Mustard Seed, a Christian community for adults with developmental disabilities, and Empower Mississippi. He is a past board member of HORNE LLP, Friends of Children’s Hospital, JDRF, Make A-Wish Foundation, and AICPA Women’s Initiative Executive Committee. Joey earned a bachelor of business administration from the University of Mississippi. He attends St. Francis Catholic Church with his wife, Cathy.