Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Caitlin Wedgewood, Partner with Knoll & Company P.C Discussing Transition at the firm

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

With over a decade of hands-on experience in bookkeeping and eight years specializing in tax preparation, Caitlin brings a strong foundation of financial expertise and reliability to our team. Holding an accounting degree and currently working toward CPA licensure, Caitlin is dedicated to providing accurate, timely, and client-focused support to small businesses and individuals.Learn more: https://www.knollcpa.com/The information provided in this content is for general informational purposes only and should not be construed as personalized financial, tax, or legal advice. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, laws and regulations frequently change and may vary depending on individual circumstances. Please consult a qualified financial, tax, or legal professional for advice specific to your needs before making any decisions. Knoll & Company P.C. and its representatives do not provide legal advice. All services are provided in accordance with applicable professional standards and ethical requirements.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-caitlin-wedgewood-partner-with-knoll-company-p-c-discussing-transition-at-the-firm

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us Caitlin Wedgwood, who's a partner with Nolan Company PC, and we'll be talking about transition at the firm. Caitlin, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. Hey, so I want to dive into transition at the firm and what that looks like means and great things moving forward.

But let's just dive in first to your story and background. What has got you into financial services? What brought you to the firm? And then let's dive into some of the things that you guys are doing currently. Yeah, so my background, it's actually quite funny. My mom was a CPA for, gosh, like about 32 years, and I tried to fight it to the nail to not go into this industry. However, I discovered I do not have a science brain or artistic brain. So when I was at college at Metro State, I took a couple accounting courses, discovered I am really good at it and I thoroughly enjoy it.

and the rest of history. I've been doing accounting full time since 20, let's see, about 2012. So, been doing it a long time. And I love it. I absolutely love it. Well, someone has to love it because I'm a marketing guy and me and numbers don't get along. So probably all the numbers people out there are like, well, someone's got to do marketing because me and marketing don't get along. So that's all of that is good.

You got to do what makes you happy and passionate and enthusiastic, and I think that's great that you found it because I'm sure you realize that there's some people in their 40s and 50s that are like, hate my job, don't know what I could do to make me happy anyway. I mean, it's just really neat that you have some things that you really enjoy. So that's cool. That's exactly right. I am definitely one of the lucky ones because I get to come do what I love every single day. 100%.

Cool. So let's look at some of the things that you guys are doing now. We mentioned transition at the firm. Give it a little bit of like history background of Nolan Company PC. You know, how long has that been around to have a transition? Because I think that whenever you hear the word transition, that means we're changing from one thing to the other. But give us a little bit of a baseline backstory. Yeah. So Nolan Company is going to be celebrating 47 years in business this show. year. I think it might be 48 years. Either way, the firm was started by Lee Knoll Sr. And Lee Null Jr. joined the firm about 26 years ago, I believe. And Lee is getting to the point ready for retirement. He's not there yet. So I don't want to scare people on that front. You still have a while left. But the biggest transition that has occurred in this past year is Lee Noel Jr. moving to Missouri. That is going to be their retirement destination. But again, he's not yet retiring.

I won't let him yet. And with that, we are in the process of transitioning him out of being the managing partner. We're trying to lessen his responsibilities and put myself in that. role. And in doing that, we brought on Laura Kelly as a partner as of January 1st, 2026. So with that, that shift in responsibilities, Laura is now in charge or the head of bookkeeping. So any clients that we bring on that need the back office support, counting services, payroll, that's who their main contact is. And then I'll be focusing on tax and tax planning, tax strategy.

And again, up until Lee's retirement, he is just the overall support for all of us because he, that man knows everything. Yep, that's awesome. And, you know, it's really neat to see that when you're thinking of what you just described, that means that there has been forethought into making things better, not staying stuck in the past and we're a 40, 50 year old company doing the same old thing. So you're looking at keeping things fresh and bringing new people on and giving them power. And that's a really,

really big aha. So what do you guys do internally to make sure that what you're doing is always staying cutting edge? Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up because one thing, that before I started working with Laneole in 2019 and I partnered in 2021 and one of the biggest reasons why I decided to come on on the firm was because of our focus on technology and the future. We are a firm. We've been a paperless firm since before 2020, before COVID hit and

shut everything down. There was no hitch in our step that year, which a lot of accounting firms could not say the same. So Lee has always had a focus on utilization of technology while also still maintaining that human connection, that human, that the importance of maintaining relationships with our clients. And that's just something that I'm very passionate about. I mean, technology is a tool for us to utilize. And it, it's not going anywhere. So we might as well use it to its full advantage. And we never stop looking for the newest software in our industry that might be servicing our clients better than what we are currently using.

So with that focus, we're able to always improve our processes, our communication with our clients, and even our internal communication. we're able to keep that really strong and flowing very seamlessly. Yeah. Well, and talk a little bit about how you guys are planning to either maintain or even improve service during this transition because I think that sometimes communication tends in other organizations to lack. But if there's change, it's like you want to get out in front of it and go, hey, everything's good. we're doing this for you. We're doing this to make this a better place. Talk a little bit about maintaining service quality, improving service quality, and keeping communications high.

Yeah, with this transition, it is going to do nothing but improve our communication with our clients, just for the sole fact that we have defined roles. Before the transition of bringing Laura on as a partner. I was doing, you know, a bit of bookkeeping here, a bit of payroll here, a bit of tax. And so it was kind of, it got a bit confusing for some of my clients of like, well, Keatlin, do I talk to you? Do I talk to Laura? Do I talk to Vicki? Do I talk to Verman? It was confusing. So now with the defined roles, we know, and we let our clients know when we onboard them, that this is your main point of contact. And, you know, know, when you talk to them, if there's something they cannot help you with for whatever reason, then they'll reach out internally to who can and get the ball rolling. So there's

not the confusion of who do I talk to. Where, you know, where is my information at, things along those lines. It's very well defined. And, you know, there's always flaws. in communication that could be improved on. And we are working extremely hard to address those as they come up and solve any issues that we do see. And you can never stop growing and fixing. So that's what we will. You know, it's really interesting. You said that because it reminds me of something I talk about all the time.

Tony Robbins teaches a concept called Kani. C-A-N-I, constant and never-ending improvement in business, in personal, in fitness, in whatever area of your life, if you're constantly looking for ways to improve, like if there was a bottleneck, like, oh, we fixed that, okay, that was good, but what caused it? How can we prevent it from coming up again? Or, ooh, this would be a great thing to improve in our business, even though there's not a problem. So I think that's a really great mindset to keep in mind.

Is that something that you guys have found that you do over the years? Absolutely. Yeah, a big thing that we introduced this year is utilizing a program called Scribe, and that's for internal so we can capture our processes and procedures internally and share it with the team. And, you know, that has helped significantly in cutting down training time for us. And, you know, we're, we'd never stop looking for better ways to do things. Yes. So in this transition and improvement and things, are there any types of improvements or new types of clients that you're looking at focusing on or new services you're delivering or is it more of just restructuring and solidifying? Thank you. I should have specified that a bit better with this transition and, you know, the odd amount of free time. that I have found by not doing monthly bookkeeping, I want to start focusing on and offering more tax planning and tax strategy. So it is something we do already offer, but it wasn't something that we really advertised or really pushed for with our clients. And that is something that I really am going to be focusing on in the upcoming years because, you know, as we've seen,

the tax laws are changing constantly lately. And there's a lot of benefits out there that people are missing out on. And I want to make sure that that does not happen for our clients. So that's going to be my biggest focus in the next couple of years is to get that side of the business really really hammered out and really utilized. Yeah, that's a good point. What about strategic alliances? I always think about growth and, you know,

there's a lot of ways to grow, but I love strategic partnerships. Are there new partnerships or sectors that you're looking to connect with moving forward to? Not particularly. We, we don't really have a specific industry that we align ourselves with. I would, well, I would say, if anything, we specialize in small businesses.

We really understand the mom and pop or the contractor that's out there doing the manual labor, don't have time for the books. but as far as a specific industry, we have a team that has understandings in a variety of industries. So we're open to anybody and everybody. Good, good, good. Well, that's great to hear. Well, it's really good to hear that you guys are improving, polishing up, solidifying, keeping people updated and communicating all of the transitions that at the end of the day are making a better service deliverable for your client.

It's been really great learning about that and seeing how you guys are handling that. And if anyone has any questions on the firm or the transition, what's the best way that they can reach out and connect with you guys? Best way is to go to our website, nullcpa.com. And that is Noel with a K. It is silent. And then when you go to the website in the upper right hand corner, there's an option to get in touch. If you fill that form out, it goes directly to Verna at the first. front desk and she gets it to who needs to meet with them. Perfect. Well, Caitlin, thank you so much for

coming on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. www.Influentialentrepreneurs Radio.com