Welcome to Episode 206 of What’s Your “And”? follow-up Friday edition. This is John Garrett. Each Friday I’m following up with guests who’d been on the show like Jody from 2016 to a year. What’s new with their passions outside of work and also hear how this message might have impacted them since we last talked.

I’m also so excited to let everyone know that my book is coming out very soon. It will be available on Amazon, a few other websites. So check out whatsyourand.com for all the details, and just sign up for my exclusive list. Be the first to know, and you’ll get a few tracks from my comedy album for free just for doing so. I really appreciate the help.

Don’t forget to hit Subscribe so you don’t miss any of the future episodes because I love sharing such interesting stories each and every Wednesday and now with follow-up Fridays. This is no different with Jody Padar. She’s known as The Radical CPA. She’s the CEO of New Vision CPA Group and a friend of mine. Now she’s with me here today.

Jody, thanks so much for taking time to be with me on What’s Your “And”?

Jody: It’s so cool to be back.

John: Yeah, you’re back from like three years ago, three and a half years ago. That’s crazy that I’m still doing this. I’m just so excited to have you back on. I mix things up a little bit, so now we’re going to do rapid-fire questions up front for people to get to know Jody on a new level.

Jody: Awesome.

John: So here we go. First one, if you had to choose, Harry Potter or Game of Thrones?

Jody: Neither. I’ve never seen either one of them.

John: Because they’re not reality TV, that’s why. Here you go, ice cream or brownie?

Jody: Ice cream.

John: All right. How about cats or dogs?

Jody: Dogs.

John: Okay. And I know you travel a lot, aisle or window seat?

Jody: It depends. Just not the center. I don’t really care, just not the center.

John: Fair enough. Do you have a favorite sports team?

Jody: I guess the Bears just because Chicago.

John: Right. Yeah, absolutely. Two more, oceans or mountains?

Jody: Oceans.

John: Okay and the last one, this one is pretty important. Toilet paper, roll over or under?

Jody: Over.

John: Over. I agree. But every once in a while I get it under and I’m like, I don’t know. Yeah, but it’s so fun having you back. Last time we talked about swimming and then the Kardashians, not at the same time, of course. So what’s up with those? Are you still doing that?

Jody: No. So actually, I’m getting old, John. So what happened was I ended up waking up one morning with the weirdest thing. I got this thing called the frozen shoulder where I kid you not, my shoulder just froze. It’s like after you get to the age of 40 or whatever, you just start getting old. So my arm didn’t work. I had to go through like almost a year of PT and craziness, and I lost my range of motion. So it’s really hard actually for me to swim now because I’d be like the one-armed swimmer.

John: The radical swimmer. That’s what you’d be.

Jody: So I’ve worked into walking. So now, I’m just a walker, just a plain old walker. And then the other side of it is, as you know, I was all into the Kardashians, but I got new reality TV. I watch Live PD on Friday and Saturday nights. How lame am I? And 90 Day Fiancé on Sunday nights. So my TV shows have moved on.

John: That’s so funny. I haven’t seen Live PD. What’s that about?

Jody: Oh, my God, it’s better than Cops. It is basically, they follow, I don’t know, maybe 10 police stations or police departments across the country. It’s really just live streaming, the police stops and you get to watch all the drunks and all the crazy stuff that criminals do. And most of it is like so ridiculous. You just can’t even believe that the police are doing this stuff. A lot of it’s — I don’t want to say boring but kind of routine kind of stuff, but then every now and then you get like a chase or something cool. So I don’t know. I enjoy it.

John: Yeah, you’re living vicariously through them?

Jody: Yeah.

John: I think there should be live New Vision Group. That’s what I think should be the next reality TV show. Live CPA, just them following you around in your office.

Jody: I’d totally be up for it. You know me, I’m like everywhere anyway.

John: That’s very true. That’s so cool. And then 90 Day Fiancé I have actually seen a little bit of because my wife showed it to me. And holy moly! That is crazy, like that is so crazy. It makes me laugh so hard. The whole time, you’re like, yeah, what are you thinking?

Jody: And you wonder how these people find each other, like the crazy people find the crazy people.

John: That’s very true actually, like they deserve each other. It’s like magic. It’s unbelievable, some of the stories. I guess they work out sometimes. But for those people that don’t know, I guess, if you’re going to marry someone that lives in another country that needs a visa, then you have to wait 90 days. So that’s the 90 Day Fiancé part. So they have to live in the US for 90 days before you can actually get married. So it follows them in coming here, but then also those 90 days, right, pretty much?

Jody: Right. It is crazy. It just amazes me how these people find these foreign-born spouses on the internet, and then they just bring them back and then they wonder why they only got married to come to America or whatever. It’s just so weird.

John: Right, because there was some of that for sure on some of them. Plus, the story that the American person told the other person of what it’s like here and how they live, and then all of a sudden they show up and they’re like, “This isn’t what you said you lived in,” like a two-bedroom apartment instead of a house and all this and it’s like, whoa, it’s crazy. So you must laugh and yell at the TV a fair amount all weekend.

Jody: Oh, yeah. Just tells you how exciting my life is these days that my whole life revolves around reality TVs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, right? Like that’s how much I’m going out, right?

John: Well, ever since you met Prince Harry, everything’s been downhill. So when you met Prince Harry —

Jody: Oh, that was awesome.

John: Are you talking about this at work? Because I remember the Kardashians was something you guys even watched in the office some, right?

Jody: Absolutely. So we talk about TV at work. I don’t want to say it’s kind of lame, but we do.

John: No, it’s not lame at all. It’s better than talking about accounting all the time, right?

Jody: Our team actually eats lunch together every day because we’re really small. So we all have lunch together. We actually like each other and just kind of hang out. We talk about people too. What women don’t, right? But a lot of times, we do talk about TV.

John: So do you find that that eating together, is that something that you did throughout your career, or is it something that’s been newer?

Jody: We do it at our office because our office is small now. I don’t know if you know this, but we’re using artificial intelligence and bots in our firm now. So we’re down to two and a half full-time equivalents. Small but mighty. We’re together all the time, and so we just hang out together. It’s different when your firm is that small and when I used to eat with coworkers, yeah, you would eat with like one or two or a couple of them. But when your firm is small, I mean, it’s like we’re family. You know what I mean?

John: Yeah, absolutely. But I think that’s such a great idea that even people that work for large firms that could still do because I would imagine that the people that you worked with when you were at the larger firms early on in your career that the relationship with those people was a little bit different than it was with anybody else in the firm.

Jody: Oh, absolutely because you have your friends and who you hang out with and the people that you hang out with and eat lunch with. I don’t know. Do most of CPAs not eat lunch with their coworkers?

John: I mean, there’s a billable hour. Why are you taking time to go eat and nourish your body and have a mental break when there’s work to do, Jody? I mean, come on. A lot of people think that way. They want to just get the work done, then they don’t actually have relationships with other people around them.

Jody: Yeah, that was never me because I’m like a chatter person, and I’m a relationship person. I always find a friend. It doesn’t matter where I go. I make a friend. That’s just me.

John: You’re dead on on that, yeah. We are going out to lunch and if we went out to lunch and you were at the table, you’re not talking about work. We’re talking about something else because we need a break, and we need to diffuse and just have a little bit of a change in scenery, if you will, to get back and be fresh when we get back to the office. So you guys are doing it on accident, which I think is great. So is this sharing, have you seen other people doing it, or has it been something that you’re more open with after being on the show?

Jody: You know, I’m not your typical CPA, right? I don’t think it’s really changed me, but I think I’ve definitely made an impact, a lot of people know me online and the reason that I’m so popular online is because I’m very authentic, and so people connect to me. So I think that’s probably where it’s made a difference in my career. So a lot of people who use social media don’t get that you have to be yourself in both places. So if you meet me online or you meet me in person, I’m totally the same person which is not traditional. So that’s why people connect to me. I just have to get myself a plug, but I now have almost 700,000 followers on LinkedIn.

John: Congratulation. Yeah. So if one/1000th of them would listen to the podcast. No, I’m just kidding.

Jody: Totally.

John: No, but that’s really cool. It’s just being genuine and being yourself. You can still deliver the information.

Jody: Yeah. And I think what you’ll find out is a lot more people watch Live PD than you think.

John: I love that. I want everyone listening to tweet at What’s Your “And”? Let me know who’s watching Live PD and hit up Jody Padar because you guys can all chat it up. That would be awesome. Now, this has been so great to just hear what you’ve been up to and such great words of encouragement there with the social media. So it’s only fair, since I started out rapid firing questioning you that I let you fire back at me. So if you have anything that you’d like to ask, I’m all yours.

Jody: So I have to give just a little bit of background to the listeners is that John and I went to the same college community. We went to Notre Dame Saint Mary’s Community in South Bend, Indiana. I want to know, Saint Mary’s girls or Notre Dame girls?

John: Oh, my God! You’re going to get me in all the trouble. All of them. They’re all so great. I can’t answer that. But I was there. The Saint Mary’s students were a little bit friendlier. Oh, man, that’s brutal. So there you go.

Jody: So absolutely. So that was my first question, and another Rapid Fire question is radical CPAs or old-school CPAs.

John: Oh, radical CPAs, hands down, for sure, like legit radical CPAs, not the ones that just say it, like people like you that live and breathe it.

John: Married or single?

Jody: Oh, wow, you came firing. I have questions ready and then boom, boom, boom. Married, for sure. It enhances everything good, and you have someone in your corner when things aren’t as good.

Jody: That’s awesome. Yeah. Twenty-three years I’ve been married. It’s like crazy.

John: That’s awesome. Congratulations. And consecutive, that’s amazing.

Jody: I can’t believe it.

John: So thanks so much, Jody, for taking time to be with me on What’s Your “And”? This was really fun.

Jody: Awesome. Thank you for having me.

John: Everyone listening, if you’d like to see some pictures of Jody outside of work or maybe connect with her on social media, you could be 700,001 on LinkedIn, be sure to go to whatsyourand.com. All the links are there. While you’re on the page, please click that big button, do the anonymous research survey about corporate culture. It will really help for the book that I’m releasing later this year.

Thanks again for subscribing on iTunes or whatever app you use and for sharing this with your friends, so they get the message that we’re all trying to spread that who you are is so much more than what you do.