When Kelley Michalski decided to leave her long-time corporate career to open barre3 Fort Mill, a boutique fitness studio, she expected to flex different muscles as a small business owner. But what she didn’t expect was a complete change in mindset. 

Her mindset changed in waves. 

The first change was accepting that she was creating a business from the ground up without the safety nets of a corporate setting. This led to the next realization: Instead of siloing and shelving her corporate experience, she needed to harness and utilize it as a small business owner. 

The last change in mindset was the most significant. Michalski decided to join the financial management company Lavoie CPA while continuing to run Barre3 Fort Mill. 

“At Lavoie, I enjoyed helping small businesses. Being a small business owner myself, I wanted to provide value to small businesses. I no longer wanted to be in the C suite of a large corporate organization,” says Michalski. 

“It’s just interesting how your whole career changes and your mindset changes as well. I’ve always been a career-driven person. And then when you step back, you realize what’s truly important and valuable to you.” 

We sat down with Michalski and asked her more about her experience. 

You are the Vice President of Operations at Lavoie, but you’re also the owner of a fitness studio, correct?  

Yes. The last position that I had when I was in corporate was CFO for a division of a Fortune 15 company, and I left about four years ago to exercise my entrepreneurial spirit. I opened up my own business, which is a boutique fitness studio. I went from corporate CFO to a fitness studio owner. So it was a complete 180. 

But I always wanted to own my own business. I’ve always wanted to exercise that entrepreneurial spirit and drive something for community, a place where people have a sense of belonging and feel welcomed. That’s what I have worked to create within my fitness studio. 

So then fast forward. As strange as it probably sounds, I really missed exercising the strategic accounting and finance side of my brain. Sharai, [ CEO of Lavoie CPA], and I have known each other for a few years and I started reaching out to her to say “Hey if you ever have an overflow need, let me know and I can jump in and help with some projects.” And that has now led to having a bigger role within the [Lavoie] organization. And this January, I became a partner of the organization and I am now responsible for our client operations group.

What was it like to start your small business?  

The reality was that it was, I will say, a hard transition. I mean, you leave a corporate environment where you have structure, you have your paycheck — let’s just put it that way — you have a team, and you have all of these support mechanisms around you. And then you move into creating something on your own and you’re building it. 

Some people can jump right into that. For me, it was a bit of a hard transition in the sense that I had to switch the way I was thinking. I had to remember that I’m building and starting and that [all of those support mechanisms] were not coming with [me]. 

After opening your studio, was getting your foot back into the corporate world a way to make things less scary and provide a little more stability? 

Possibly. And I’m sure that’s one reason why. It was a comfort zone. It was “This is something that I feel confident about, I’m good at it. So let me bring that back in and kind of reduce the scary that comes with starting your own business.” 

But I don’t want that to sound like I couldn’t handle starting my own business. I have enjoyed every bit of the journey and continue to look forward to growing my business.

If I had to do it over again, the advice I would give is you really have to change your mindset. Changing your mindset to “How can you pour that [large corporate] experience into your own business and your own structure to build [your business] from the ground up?”

Often, I thought that [my corporate experience] didn’t translate. [I] built balanced scorecards, [I] built lean strategic objectives for large organizations, and then I was like, “I’m not even using this skill set.” 

Later, I had a tough conversation with myself asking “Why are you not translating [your skills]?” Even though it’s a small business you can still create a balanced scorecard, you can still create strategic objectives, you can bring that skill set with you.

Where does your entrepreneurial spirit come from? 

In my first class [at business school], we had to create our own company and the financials for our company. I still to this day — and I’ve been out of college for many years — I still remember that project. And I think that set the seed a little bit for [me] having my own company. 

I think the other part of it is I’ve been a very career-oriented individual. So I’ve been very passionate. I’ve been very hard working. That’s how I grew up. 

My generation grew up with the sense that you work hard and you get a payoff for it. It was never like, “Well I’m just going to wait for a promotion to be given to me.” No. I’m going to work for it and earn it. And [starting my own business], I think it’s just almost a natural next step in this. I’m going to create something and I’m going to work for it.

Are there any mentors or role models that helped shape your work ethic? 

There was one individual. He said to me once “You’ve got potential. I want to mentor you.” And the biggest thing that I learned from him is you have to seek out the mentoring. 

I always say this when people ask me if I will mentor them — and they would literally wait for me to schedule the meeting. Or, let’s say we would schedule a meeting, they would think I would bring this amazing advice. No. You have to seek out the mentor. You need to think about, “Here are the areas I want to focus on, here’s where my opportunities are. I’m going to schedule the meeting with my mentor.” 

And that kind of relates to something else that I learned throughout my career is, you cannot wait for the opportunities to come to you. You have to create your path of where you want to go. 

There was a point in my career where I felt stuck and I was like “Everyone else is getting these opportunities. Why am I not getting these opportunities? Everyone else is getting picked to be part of the project, why am I getting to be part of the project?” 

And one day it just flipped and I realized, “They may not know that I want to be part of that project.” I had to say “I want to grow here. The next time you have a project that comes up related to this, can I be part of it?” 

Once that flipped, my career actually went boom. 

How do you continue to practice asking for what you want? 

That’s where you create a network to run ideas by people. I don’t have to ask anymore to be in the next position, I can just go for it. But it’s having the resources of a network to be able to say “What do you think about this? Is this a crazy idea?” 

What do you think is next in your future? 

Retire early. Ha. Ideally, I would love to have different business offerings, operate more businesses that I’ve created and be that strategic visionary component. That is what I have my eye on right now. As an entrepreneur, you don’t really focus on one thing. You focus on multiple avenues and I’m trying to decide what my next avenue is going to be while keeping my current avenue. Those are not going anywhere!

Although Sharai Lavoie doesn’t like talking about herself, there certainly is a lot to keep the conversation going. 

Lavoie is the founder and CEO of Lavoie CPA, a professional services and technology firm that provides strategic advice to its roster of clients. Since starting her own company in 2009, Lavoie was awarded the Woman in Business award in 2017 by the Charlotte Business Journal. 

“I never wanted [my business] to be a typical partner structure,” Lavoie says. “The passion in what we do is around knowing that you’re making a difference in the company that you’re working with.”

We sat down with Lavoie, who graciously answered a few questions about her experience in business and finance. 

What were you able to do as the founder of your own company that you couldn’t working for someone else? 

When you’re working for someone else, you can see that something needs to be done but you don’t necessarily have the power to act upon it, making it happen. In having your own business, if I see that, okay, I think we’re going down the right path or we need to go in a different direction, I don’t have anybody to argue with about it other than myself. And what does that mean for the employees and planning for that side of things, versus, you know, having to convince somebody that we really need to be going in this direction or we really need to pay more attention to this part of what’s going on in the world. I don’t have to convince somebody of that.

Because you don’t have to convince anyone, are you able to do your job better? Are you able to maximize your skills in the ways they’re meant to be maximized?

Some days. Some days I am; some days I’m not. It’s just because we are a smaller company, so I do have to wear a lot of hats. But as we grow, I do get to say “This is where I’m best suited, so I’m going to focus my time here and I’m going to backfill for anything that I may be doing that I’m not suited for.” And so from that perspective, yes. 

Tell us about the process of opening your own business. 

[Opening my own business] is just something I’ve always wanted to do. I was working on it at the place that I’d left to start my own business. I was kind of doing what I’m doing now on a much smaller scale and the owner, he gave me the confidence to do it if I wanted to do it. He saw in me what I knew I had in myself. He saw it and he acknowledged it. I wasn’t like “Oh, in two years, I’m going to [start a firm] and that’s what’s gonna happen.” It was just kind of one of those things. I know I can do it, I just need to figure out how to make it happen and do it. And he was like “Yeah, go for it,” and that’s what I did.

You sound so cool, calm and collected when talking about the experience. 

It’s the scariest thing you’ll ever do. Yeah. It’s the scariest thing you’ll ever do. And I think having your first couple of employees is really scary because then you realize that you’re responsible for someone’s livelihood. 

In those scary moments, what did you do to keep moving forward? 

Honestly, I would just pray and say “Look, you’ve gotten this far. You can just keep going.” 

You can believe in yourself, but you doubt yourself every step of the way. There was no book that I read [on how to start a firm] or any of that. It was just “I’m gonna do this. If this messes up, there are other things that I know I can do because I’ve gotten this experience to do this.” I just would pray about it and say “Okay. Get over yourself and get going.”

Why is advancing women in business important to you? 

From the woman’s perspective, you know, you spend so much time with people, so to speak, putting you in your place: “This is your place; those are your boundaries.” And I love to see women take up roles in a man’s space because it says “Screw you; you missed out.” That’s the part about women in business that I love. 

When you spend time hearing people tell you can’t do things because that’s not what women are supposed to do, or this is as far as you’ll probably get, or you’ll probably drop out of the workforce and have kids — and if you do that, that’s great, that’s your decision. I mean, a year into starting the business I found out that I was pregnant. I could have easily said, “Well, no one’s gonna want to work for me. After they see I’m pregnant, they’re gonna be like, ‘Well is she really going to be around or serious about this?’” But luckily, we had great clients and they got it. 

So for me, I guess it’s more of, [as a woman] you’ve kind of been looked over for so long. And there are so many women doing so many things that they fly under the radar, why not celebrate them?

What barriers existed at the start of your career that have since changed? 

One thing I experienced, not directly from my bosses but inadvertently—and over time I have seen it change—is being viewed as more of a helper versus someone that could lead. You’re viewed as more of an assistant, like, “You can help me with some of these projects but don’t think you’re going to present anything.” So it’s more of that. But I think over time it’s been more of, “Oh, she can take that and run with it and lead with it.” 

What do you hope the future of finance looks like? 

I hope that the future is more diverse. And I think that the future of accounting and finance is going to be a different landscape where the people that are in it are there more for the strategic side of things. Because I think a lot of things will end up being automated. And so I’m hoping that it will be more diverse in the sense that people aren’t just looking at you as these are the few things that you do, they realize that it’s a much broader scope.

You may have been in positions where you were the only woman, so there were no senior women to mentor you. Now that you’re in this executive position, how do you feel about mentoring others? 

I actually mentor with Innovate Charlotte. I’ll do it in a heartbeat. If you have something that you can tell someone or a resource you can provide to them, you should. It shouldn’t feel like a space where you feel like “Oh I can’t tell this person this because of XYZ.” 

If you don’t ask, you don’t get, and if you don’t speak about it you don’t learn. Nobody can read your mind. You have to be willing to pay it forward. And I guess for me, with mentoring and trying to mentor, it’s more about paying forward. Helping someone else so that maybe they don’t have to have as hard of a road as I have had. 

What are you most proud of? 

I think I’m probably most proud of the fact that I made it this far as a mom and my son still thinks I’m cool. It just gives me the courage to do this.

Really, how so?

Because [my son] gets to see that a woman in this position is how it’s supposed to be. He thinks I can do anything.