Marishka Beaty

I attribute my success to the skills my parents taught me that absolutely nothing can be taught in any schools. They worked very hard and stayed together - my parents are still alive and have been married for 63 years. They helped me learn how, in difficult times, we don't have to go around the mountains, we can charge the mountain and stay, because tough people last. Otherwise, the circumstances will not last. Tough people will. The circumstances will eventually change if I will stay long enough, and that's happened in most of my organizations. I have stories after stories to tell how it did happen, because it's all worked together for our good overall. My parents served as examples because they were entrepreneurs - my mom had 3 restaurants and it was a tough business, my dad worked in construction and renovation business, and it was tough business, but they were very successful as business people. My brother is also an entrepreneur. That's how I ended up in accounting, and I love to be in a business environment. My goal, and what makes my heart leap, is when I work as a team with the CEO and owners of the company, and I can be a right-hand person, not only with finances, but present finances that can speak very loud on what's happening in the company, in the industry, in the world. I also can provide some ideas, potentially, because I have a worldwide vision and I work for international companies, so I can support my CEOs and the owners, especially when they're making their choices, or I do the due diligence for some mergers and acquisitions.

The biggest challenge for me, and what makes me sad at the same time, is that people come and people go in my team. I love to serve people, I love to build them up, they stay with me, we get to know each other, and for some reason they move on - they have babies, they have to move on, and they leave. It's kind of like we build a team as part of the family, you know. We stay in touch - I stay in touch with most of my people, especially during the holidays, and we visit each other. Many of my team members from New Life Holding that worked together have moved to different states, and when they come to Colorado, they visit me, or when I go to that state, we visit. That's kind of a challenge for me. And to find somebody, I was able to find easily to have that gift to pick people from a general pool and train them, because I was able to see talents in people who not necessarily have a spectrum of accounts payable - like an executive assistant can do accounts payable if they know a little bit of bookkeeping skills. What makes me excited nowadays is a lot of AI tools that come and help me to be more efficient. I love to work with different ERP systems - I worked with Sage Intacct, I've worked with Yardi, we're switching to Entrata now, and I like NetSuite also. Now I love softwares like Claude or even the basic ChatGPT that help me to analyze, because I do have good analytical skills, but nothing like when artificial intelligence helps me to analyze things and put them all together for me in perspective. I understand that that's maybe only 80% correct, but at least they can help with the prep work, and then I can do my own stuff.

Integrity is number one. The second one I would put is kindness, because life is tough as it is, and if people are not kind, even in a work environment, even though kindness may not be a professional term, it goes very long in a work environment. People will do everything because people bring to us, my team members bring to us, life units that are absolutely not replaceable. And if we're not kind to them in a work environment, and the same thing I would say for me from upper management, then it's very hard to work.