Name: Regina Silvano Alpez

Title: Accountant and Outsourced Fractional CFO- Founder and Owner of RA Growthegy Accounting Solutions

Organisation: RA Growthegy Accounting Solutions

Regina is a Freelance Accountant and an Outsourced Fractional CFO who has 19 years of Experience in Accounting and Finance and has been helping several businesses streamline their accounting and finance workflow and scale up their businesses. She is also a course creator and teaches Real Estate Accounting and Bookkeeping to aspiring bookkeepers and accountants who also want to serve international and local clients.

She is a solo parent who rears his only son to become a Freelancer in the future. They are now living a digital nomad life in the tourist destination Boracay Island In the Philippines

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Regina's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

As a leader, I believe one of the challenging parts is how to get to influence people. The title itself doesn't make you a leader. What makes you a leader is how you influence people in their way of life, in the values you bring to them, and how you impact their lives. With social media at times, it can be used in a good or bad way at some point, people trying their best to become relevant. But what I discovered as I go along with my life as a financial business partner, a coach and a course creator, a mentor to some colleagues, is when you are genuine and authentic, you attract the right people and the right clients.

It's how intentional and sincere you are in your words and your actions, and by the way, you talk to people, the way you advice, and the way you show up not only on social media but more of how you are as a person, they can sense and identified that. I always believe that you cannot fake your intentions and your Genuineness, it will show and surface. As a leader, genuine and authentic stories about how you started, your struggles, and how you made it, make inspirations to people.

My mantra is, If I can help and change one life at a time, I will be very happy about it because whatever I throw into the universe, I always believe it will come back to me in multitudes. I can attest it's happened in my life several times. Helping people start freelancing, and guiding them without asking for something in return is really what makes me believe in miracles because I know God will be the one to reward me for what I do.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I became a leader probably at some point when I started in the Freelancing Industry. Way back in 2019, I shifted to work from being a corporate accountant to a remote and Freelance Accountant. It was a struggle at first because I had a good year of experience in corporate 14 years to be exact, and I shifted to remote freelance accounting where I don't have much experience. Aside from this, I had to give up corporate life because I became a solo parent, and it's hard to juggle working in the corporate and at the same time I have a toddler. I don't want to always leave the house early and come home late because I can't stand to see my son without me. It's hard seeing him alone most of the time and growing up without me on his side. That's why it was the best decision to become a Freelance Accountant, where I could be with my son at home and at the same time get to do what I love which is to help businesses.

What I brought to the table is my corporate experience and some of my strong accounting fundamentals knowledge as my foundations. Then in June 2020, when the pandemic happened, I joined a community of Freelancers in the Philippines. One thing is to learn more about strategies on how to market my skills and my services and to have a sense of belongingness in a community where all of us are freelancers and stories of struggles and success are common and relatable.

That's the time that I started to hit several stories of winning clients by serving the clients on their bookkeeping and accounting needs. Then I was invited for several virtual interviews to share my stories on how I started as a Freelance Accountant. There are lots of people who were able to watch some of my interviews and I believe I get to inspire them with my stories because that time the pandemic was rampant, and many people wanted to try freelancing as they needed to work in a corporate set up. I believe the pandemic became an eye-opener for everyone and it became an opportunity to spread freelancing like wildfire.

Then in the Freelancing community, I started to volunteer in some of our programs where I became a Guardian for Aspiring Freelancers, particularly bookkeepers and accountants. I help and guide these people on how to start their way to freelancing, and how to connect with prospects and potential clients. I believe, I was able to help and influence those people and they were able to become successful in their Freelancing journey too. Then one of the Academies in the Philippines, approached me to tie up with them to eventually teach Real Estate Bookkeeping and Accounting with a co-partner coach and now we are on our Batch 4 teaching several students to niche down on their accounting expertise.

Aside from these, from time to time, I am personally doing mentorship with some colleagues, just pure genuine help in guiding them not only in freelancing but also in their way of life.

I believe, I am still a work-in-progress and I still get the chance to unlearn, re-learn, and explore other quests for learning and other possibilities.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I usually work in the morning working for my Australian clients. I work between 9 am and finish work at 3-4 pm. When I wake up, I usually do meditation and prayers for 15 minutes as it helps me clear my thoughts first and be grateful for the day of walking up. I sometimes prepare our meals, but since my son is 17 years old, I get to teach him how to prepare our meals if my work is quite hectic. When I get up early like 6 am, I usually go to the beach and have my morning swim, before I eat breakfast and start my day at work. I have to check all urgent messages, and work chats in Slack and emails, then I read my click-up and calendar to check on my to-do list and see if I have scheduled meetings, then I focus on what is urgent and important on my tasks and deliverables. My son also helps me as well in some data entry work and I review his work. He is doing some apprentice work with me. Then after work at 3 or 4 pm, I will go out to have a break and swim and catch the sunset. Then I need to be back home by 7 pm to have another work at night for some US clients from 8 pm till 12 am max time. Then I can review some of the day's work plot in my Todo list of what my next day would look like. Then I sleep within 6-7 hours to start with my next day's schedule.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

There's a lot. One of the things I have to be reminded of, not only in leadership is that we have to embrace Change, Innovation, Adaptability, and Flexibility. Like for example, when we had the pandemic, there were a lot of uncertainties happening in the world.

We don't know yet what will happen in the future. So one of the lessons that I learned is how you will be able to adapt to something uncertain. Change is inevitable. But accepting changes is one way to ease the burden. Acceptance, and learning to become flexible in these changes will help us live through the changes.

I also learned that with the continuous changes, innovations are very rampant. Like for example there's AI, cryptocurrencies, and web3.

With these innovations and new trends, we need to exert effort to learn the trends, become mindful, and do our research on how we can be adaptable to these innovations.

Some people are afraid that their jobs might become obsolete with AI coming to the surface.

For me, we should be able to know how we can align our current skills with the trend and how we can learn new skills through these trends and innovations, and in that way, we can adapt and immerse ourselves in these changes.

Always think, that robots and AI are created by Humans, and Humans are given the gift of discernment, rationalization, emotional intelligence, and analysis which a robot cannot interplay. So why are we scared if we can adapt and still innovate ourselves?

I also learned that through your life's experiences not only in your professional life but more of your personal life, Genuineness and Authenticity will outshine best. People will draw inspiration from your life experiences and stories.

That's why when I create my content on social media platforms, I always value authenticity. I love to do storytelling, the way my professional life as an accountant and my personal life jive together. For me, it's my unique story that catches and draws people to me. and I've gotten to receive messages about how they like the way I live my life.

We have our different ways of doing content creation, but what works best for me is to do storytelling on how people and clients relate to my story. It's good there's a lot of information drive in some platforms, but most people are already dwelling on those, there's already a lot of competitiveness in those areas.

I was reminded that YOUR OWN STORY is something unique. The way You live your life will never be duplicated and cloned by others. They can get inspiration from that but they cannot own it.

So it will be better to draw content based on our own experiences and who knows people will get inspired by it and they can use your story as leverage on how to become successful in their way.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

I recently read 'The Fire Within-connect Your Gifts with Your Calling by Marcia Malzahn. This book became an eye-opener for me as I can relate to Marcia's story on how God prepares her for every job she does, how her commitment to God resulted in all her blessings that she can't even imagine, and How her passion for sharing her story helps other people.

It's also helping me to define my purpose in life and how I can dig deeper into my God-given gift to cultivate it more and use it to fulfill my special purpose in life.

This book helps me to identify where I can help more people. There are several instances I received a lot of messages from people that they were inspired by my story and how they were able to adapt what they learned from me and use it in their own lives and were able to achieve their wins.

Having to hear and see people giving messages of gratitude, I can't help but be thankful to God because in some ways, he uses me as his instrument to help other people too, and through my platform, I can help others transform their lives too.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

If I could advise a young leader, It would be:

To be yourself, and explore all the possibilities life has to offer, If you encounter adversity, never stop or don't quit. You can pause and re-assess what happened, re-strategize, and continue your journey.

Sometimes setbacks, struggles, failures, and adversities teach us a good lesson of resiliency, patience, determination, bravery, and a steadfast heart.

In time, these stories of our struggles will be a good way to draw inspiration to others. Your unwavering faith and determination to rise from the challenges will give a mark that you were able to become successful in your way of living and this will be used to influence others that if you were able to do it, they can do it too.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

For me, That one meaningful story is when this unexpected turn to freelancing will result in not only a win for me but a win for other people.

Having to teach was not my expectation. I didn't even know I could mentor and teach other people. But because it had happened to me, I had to share my story with other people, so they could draw inspiration that freelancing is open for everyone as long as you are committed to your goal and you are ready to change your mindset.

One factor that helped me in my life transformation is a radical mindset shift. When it finally happened to me, I was able to develop and cultivate myself, that I have to be brave enough to handle rejections, gather more patience, and take more action.

By taking action, you are allowing yourself a lot of possibilities. People get to know your brand.

I remember when I had a previous discovery call with a prospect, he mentioned that he liked my branding and the way I presented myself on my social media and that in the conversation I had with him, he felt my genuineness and authenticity of how I help my clients. He sees the passion in me as I walk through him with the strategies I've done for my clients and previous clients.

Having those conversations, really validated the fact that I know what I'm doing is on the right track. That more than the opportunity to earn is the opportunity to genuinely help people.

The more you genuinely help, the more opportunities will come and rewards and money will happen eventually.