Kevin Akeroyd of Sovos On 5 Things You Need To Succeed In The Modern World Of Finance & Fintech

Learn to anticipate changing regulations and their likely impact on your business. We continue to see all across the globe how complex regulations are impacting governments and businesses alike. Don’t wait for changes to go into effect before having a strategy to deal with them.

As part of my series about the “How to Navigate and Succeed in the Modern World of Finance”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin Akeroyd, CEO of Sovos.

Kevin is the CEO at Sovos, a provider of tax reporting and compliance services. Prior to his time at Sovos, he was the CEO of Magnit, overseeing a multi-billion-dollar enterprise.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I was born and raised in a small town in the Midwest, before heading out to Seattle to study business. After graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in business administration, I went into marketing and sales — but my real interest was in management and optimization. I later went on to obtain my master’s degree in business from Stanford.

I eventually moved into more senior management and executive roles, and often at large companies such as Salesforce or Oracle. These leadership roles have helped me develop a clear vision of work’s evolution and how businesses can adjust to survive and thrive in difficult economic climates.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing that I have so many options to choose from, but when you are first starting out in leadership or in a leadership role in a new company, it’s best to prepare yourself for the reality that mistakes are going to happen. Your focus needs to be on a quick recovery, chalking it up to a learning experience and moving forward.

I’ll provide one example that I think is helpful for anyone in business. When I was just starting out in sales and trying to make my mark I was sent to meet with a prospect in rural Montana. To suggest I looked a bit out of place with my tailored look, shiny new briefcase and slicked back hair would be an understatement. The prospect basically took one look at me and laughed and didn’t have any interest in hearing my pitch.

Finally, I agreed to get him to let me take him to lunch where he ordered some dishes he was probably convinced a west coast guy like me would never touch. Well, after I dug in and more than held my own, we got to talking about how I was really a Midwest guy, born and bred and it turns out he and I actually had a lot in common. He finally agreed to hear me out and we ultimately closed a deal.

The lesson is to always know your audience and present yourself and communicate in a way where you are going to build a connection with them. Focusing on areas of commonality to build that bridge of trust is so critical in any business relationship.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I was just appointed the new CEO of Sovos in June and I couldn’t be more excited about the work I’m doing or the team I’m working with.

At Sovos, we help businesses not only comply with regulations, but to thrive in these complex environments. We have created a platform where companies conducting business across multiple borders can adopt and have true confidence that they are operating within the correct set of parameters and achieving compliance wherever they do business. This is critical for organizations to ensure operations continue uninterrupted and that they are avoiding lengthy and costly audits.

I’ve now seen firsthand the impact this work has on businesses, employees and the communities in which they exist. When you have a cohesive relationship between governments and businesses, commerce flows freely, benefiting businesses and their employees. At the same time, governments are collecting revenues they are legally owed, which funds critical services like schools, healthcare and infrastructure. This is important work, and I am proud to be part of it.

Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started what was its WHY, its purpose?

The initial idea for Sovos came about at a kitchen table in suburban Massachusetts way back in 1979. The purpose was to enable frictionless commerce by providing businesses with the tools and technology they needed to operate during a period of increasing complexity in the reporting of taxes. What started out as a singular entity has grown over the years as we’ve successfully brought together the leading pioneers of modern tax under one corporate umbrella.

Fast forward to today and the mission hasn’t really changed. With more than 25 acquisitions since our founding and global complexity continuing to rise, Sovos remains at the forefront of helping businesses all over the world meet their tax and regulatory requirements through faster, more accurate reporting and greater control of business processes.

Do you have a “number one principle” that guides you through the ups and downs of running a business?

In business there are going to be ebbs and flows, good times and bad. You have to remain focused on your core objectives and not become distracted by outside factors that threaten your mission.

When things are going well, it’s easy to be tempted to take your foot off the gas a bit and maybe not review things with such a critical eye as you were before. This is the fastest way I’m aware of to lose momentum and start heading in the wrong direction.

My advice to any business is to keep the longer-term objective at the forefront of any decisions.

Set a strategic direction for your company that you believe in and remain consistent in your approach, no matter which way the needle is pointing.

This will enable you to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves and weather the storms that are an inevitability of doing business.

If a fellow business leader would ask you for advice about whether to bootstrap or to look for VC capital, how would you help them weigh the pros and cons of that decision?

What measure do you use to determine the value of a company? What advice would you give to other leaders about how to get an optimal evaluation of their business?

As all CEOs are aware, we have financial metrics that we are held to every quarter and year by investors, analysts and industry overseers. These will vary based on your position as either a public or private company, equity based, etc. But these are the obvious metrics that everyone is paying attention to and that you need to deliver on.

However, I’ve always been a big proponent of vision and assessing the long-term viability of a company. What is the future? What will this business be five, 10, 20 years down the road? I know there are metrics for these too, but what often goes underappreciated is the value of vision and leadership. There are a lot of successful businesses out there today worth billions upon billions who were once told they were crazy.

My advice: be realistic, but also believe in what you are doing and don’t be afraid to swim against the tide when you know you are on the right path.

What would you advise to a founder who initially went through years of successive growth, but has now reached a standstill. From your experience do you have any general advice about how to boost growth and “restart their engines”?

This is a very common scenario in business. A company gets founded on a great idea on how to solve a problem and you experience meteoric growth for a period before leveling out. The reasons for this are plentiful. When you are successful, others take notice, which creates competition and you are now battling for market share. It could also mean that customer needs may have shifted and you need to adapt your solution and/or approach to match this change.

Make sure you are selling on value and not features. This is something I see all the time, especially with founders who take great pride in what they’ve built. It’s great that your solution can do all these things, but what customers want to hear about is how you are going to solve their problems and save them money and resources.

My advice: keep your ear to the ground, listen and learn about what is happening in the marketplace. What is the competitive landscape? What are the current trends? What other factors are influencing customer behavior? You need to understand this.

Finally, have tough conversations with customers and solicit honest feedback. While it can be uncomfortable to hear unflattering things about the business you have built and led, it’s the only way to ensure that you remain in lockstep with customer needs. And when you have gathered all of this information, have the courage to act boldly.

What are the most common finance mistakes you have seen other businesses make? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?

One that always comes to mind is their failure to be proactive in defending their strengths and financial position. Things may be going well today, but as CEO, your job is to understand the market and where it’s trending and make decisions proactively. You can’t sit back and wait for things to get bad because then it’s too late. Yet, I see businesses making this error time and time again.

Make moves when you are making them from a position of financial strength.

Ok, here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to succeed in the modern finance industry?

1. First, know every aspect of your market. What are the factors most likely to affect your business either positively or negatively? We’ve seen countless times how outside factors can impact your business. A well-run organization never leaves itself with single points of failure.
2. Educate yourself on the challenges of today’s modern C-Suite. What is keeping the CEO, CFO and CIO up at night? Aligning your business with customers’ biggest priorities is how you become their trusted partner.
3. Understand your company position in the market. Where have you earned the right to win? Knowing how you are viewed by the marketplace and understanding your perceived strengths and weaknesses is critical to positioning yourself for success.
4. Set a risk threshold for your business and don’t deviate from it, no matter how good it sounds at the moment. You set risk thresholds for a reason. When you start deviating from these poor decisions, that’s when long-term financial ramifications begin to happen.
5. Learn to anticipate changing regulations and their likely impact on your business. We continue to see all across the globe how complex regulations are impacting governments and businesses alike. Don’t wait for changes to go into effect before having a strategy to deal with them.

Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?

Establish a healthy balance in your life between creating exciting career challenges and opportunities and the things that matter most in your personal life. It is not sustainable long-term to only be driven by your work. For career-minded leaders, you are hurting yourself and your organization when you burn out.

It’s amazing what some time away from the job can do to recharge the batteries. Make it a priority to get away, clear your mind and come back with a fresh perspective. You’ll be amazed at what a difference this can make.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

If I weren’t the CEO at Sovos, my work would revolve around creating situations where everyone is prepared to excel in the workforce, no matter what their background.

I believe strongly in access to quality education for all. I once heard a commencement speaker say that intelligence and ability are distributed equally in society. However, unfortunately, opportunity is not. I couldn’t agree more with this sentiment and would like to work towards changing that. To me, there is no greater travesty than unrealized potential due to a lack of opportunity.

At Sovos, we have a culture that places emphasis on character, fit and ability rather than resume and credentials. We actively look for those who have passion and ability and are just looking for the right opportunity to unleash their potential. This is one of the things I love most about my job and my role here.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Readers can find me on LinkedIn and at Sovos.com.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

About The Interviewer: Jason Hartman is the Founder and CEO of Empowered Investor. Jason has been involved in several thousand real estate transactions and has owned income properties in 11 states and 17 cities. Empowered Investor helps people achieve The American Dream of financial freedom by purchasing income property in prudent markets nationwide. Jason’s Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ is a comprehensive system providing real estate investors with education, research, resources and technology to deal with all areas of their income property investment needs. Through Jason’s podcasts, educational events, referrals, mentoring and software to track your investments, investors can easily locate, finance and purchase properties in these exceptional markets with confidence and peace of mind.

Starting with very little, Jason, while still in college at the age of 19, embarked on a career in real estate. While brokering properties for clients, he was investing in his own portfolio along the way. Through creativity, persistence and hard work, he earned a number of prestigious industry awards and became a young multi-millionaire. Jason purchased a California real estate brokerage firm that was later acquired by Coldwell Banker. He combined his dedication and business talents to become a successful entrepreneur, public speaker, author, and media personality. Over the years he developed his Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ where his innovative firm educates and assists investors in acquiring prudent investments nationwide for their portfolio. Jason’s sought after educational events, speaking engagements, and his popular “Creating Wealth Podcast” inspire and empower hundreds of thousands of people in 189 countries worldwide.

While running his successful real estate and media businesses, Jason also believes that giving back to the community plays an important role in building strong personal relationships. He established The Jason Hartman Foundation in 2005 to provide financial literacy education to young adults providing the all-important real world skills not taught in school which are the key to the financial stability and success of future generations. We’re in a global monetary crisis caused by decades of misguided policies and the cycle of financial dependence has to be broken, literacy and self-reliance are a good start. Visit JasonHartman.com for free materials and resources.