Last week I shared the big news that Meryl Johnston is now my co-founder at TeamUp!
I began telling the story of how we started a company that might, just might, change the offshoring industry.
When we left off, Meryl had just stepped down as CEO of her firm, Bean Ninjas, and planned the perfect sabbatical year.
But then there was a startling diagnosis that upended those plans.
If you missed that email, click here to get caught up.
Today I want to share what happened, and the twists that led her to send me a message that would change everything.
The name on the email sent me back in my chair.
For years, I'd followed her journey. Watching her success inspired me to start my own bookkeeping firm.
And now she was emailing me?
How did she even know I existed? What reason could she possibly have?
I had no idea where this would lead, only that it started here.
"Hey Isaac..."
What was supposed to be a year of rediscovery had left her more lost than ever.
Meryl had stepped down, planned it perfectly, cleared her plate.
But the clarity she expected never came.
One feeling haunted her:
She was meant for more.
And in the absence of knowing what that “more” was, a new question crept in:
Is this all?
She was healthy, fit, and young.
So, in March of 2022, the diagnosis came as a shock to Meryl and the entire Bean Ninjas team.
Tracey, Meryl's business partner, had breast cancer.
The team quickly reorganized so Tracey could focus on her health. She began treatment right away. Thankfully, it was successful and she made a full recovery.
The shock that someone like Tracey could have such a frightening diagnosis prompted Meryl to go in for a checkup, just to make sure.
Better to be safe.
Four months earlier, Meryl had stepped down as CEO of Bean Ninjas.
The accounting firm was strong, her second daughter had just been born, and she was ready to take a full year off.
It was all planned out:
Meryl had been grinding for years. It was purposeful, but hard, and all that work would pay off this year with a well-deserved break.
Eager anticipation pulled her through the challenges of the past year.
It was perfect.
Until the diagnosis.
Going into the checkup, Meryl felt great. She was healthy and active, regularly surfed the local breaks on Australia's Gold Coast.
At first, she thought it was a joke.
Wait a minute.
What?
Did they put you up to this?
Nobody would be that cruel.
In a daze, she received the diagnosis. DCIS.
The exact same diagnosis as Tracey.
How is it possible that business partners were both diagnosed with breast cancer, just two months apart?
Then the realization started to sink in.
But I'm young and healthy.
What will happen to my family?
My daughters are too little. They need me.
...
They won't remember me.
What followed were weeks of difficult conversations, stress, consultations, research, Facebook groups, speaking with survivors, trying to understand.
And then, mastectomy.
The surgery seemed to go well, but the test results weren't ready yet. They’d know soon.
Pain.
Difficulty walking. Needing help in the bathroom. No sleep. Visits from family.
Her loving partner Chantelle. Toddler Ava. Baby Imogen.
Because of the surgery, she could only cuddle Baby Immy if someone else was holding her.
But, of course, in the back of her mind:
Did they get it all?
Exhausted, lying in the hospital gown, with tubes running down her body, listening to the rhythmic beeps and whooshes of the ICU -
Meryl thought of her family. What great plans she and Chantelle had.
They were building a good life for their girls. They’d teach them to be strong, loving, to think for themselves, not to blindly follow what society tells them to do.
She thought of her career, her success with Bean Ninjas.
Proud, she couldn't shake the feeling she was destined for more.
Finally, the news came: all clear. Cancer free.
What a relief! She could go home.
Recovery, physically and emotionally, was agonizingly slow.
But Meryl is no ordinary person. So, it should be no surprise that she went on her annual adventure with her dad and brother, a hiking trip in Tasmania...
Less than two months after surgery!
Back home, as she focused on her health and family, the itch to get back to work gradually came.
She did have plans for this year, after all, plans to explore exciting new ideas.
But the sabbatical year she'd been anticipating was now completely shot.
She would try to make the best of it.
Finally, she was excited to start executing her plan.
This was supposed to be it—the next chapter where she'd make her mark as an investor.
Successful entrepreneur becomes investor.
That was the path everybody talked about. An entrepreneur starts a business, has an exit or steps back, and becomes an investor. And maybe, if you're really good, a thought leader.
That's what she was supposed to do, and it sounded fun.
At first it was fun. Hearing about new projects, talking to business owners and people taking on big problems. But the excitement quickly faded.
Due diligence was a slog. Advisory meetings were endless and only scratched the surface of the real issues.
Meryl was used to solving problems in depth. Founder mode. Now she couldn't dig in. She couldn't get her hands dirty, or really, make much impact at all.
This isn't it, a quiet voice whispered. This isn't what you're meant for.
But she pushed forward anyway. This was the path, after all. This was what successful entrepreneurs did.
It was ironic.
She'd promised herself to teach her daughters to think for themselves - not to follow the dictates society imposed on them.
As an entrepreneur, she'd rejected the typical path. Go to school, get a job, work until you retire.
Her parents had taught her to think differently.
That's why she went into accounting in the first place: to learn how business works so she could apply that in her own company.
She'd thought for herself, built something meaningful, made her own way.
So, why was she accepting this script now?
She'd spent seven years on a mission at Bean Ninjas building something that mattered.
Now she felt like she was blowing in the wind, stuck on the surface of other people's dreams. Now she was just... what? Writing checks and sitting in meetings?
Who am I, if I'm not a CEO? she wondered.
Cancer had stripped away so much.
When she found herself out of energy, thinking, spiraling - she was not a CEO. She was not an athlete. She was not even exercising.
Who was she?
She was a mother and a partner. But as for her career, if she wasn't a founder, where was she going?
The questions led her back to what she'd always loved: the accounting industry.
Over twenty years of building her network and reputation, she loved accountants. They were humble, skeptical, and honest. They put their clients' interests above their own.
She thought about her friends who ran firms. They put in long hours, charged less than they should, and constantly battled staffing issues. It was hard.
Reflecting on this, she thought back to her outsourcing nightmare. What she thought was the answer had ended up being a disaster.
Over time, she had solved that problem, but only for herself.
It struck her as the kind of problem she’d want to build a solution for.
But what solution?
The Bangkok conference was coming up in October — the biggest event of the year for members of the Dynamite Circle, the business community Meryl had been part of for years.
At this point in her recovery, she still wasn't traveling to events, but she longed to go.
Some of her Gold Coast accounting friends would be going, and sad to be missing it, she wished them a good trip.
While Meryl was at home, the conference was underway.
What she didn’t know was that someone in Bangkok was sharing the very answer she’d been searching for -
a solution to the problem that had haunted her for years.
He was presenting a different approach to offshoring to a room with people lining the walls in the back.
The energy was electric.
If she'd gone, she could have walked into that session and joined in the discussion.
Afterward, they could have talked for hours about the industry's biggest problem.
They could have realized they’d both been searching for the same thing.
They could have discovered a rare alignment of vision, of timing. Purpose.
If only she'd gone...
But time has its own logic.
Weeks later, when Meryl met up with her friends, they were full of stories from Bangkok - the energy, old friends, new ideas, and a guy they met doing some offshoring thing.
Wishing she could have gone, she logged onto the DC forum, browsing the topics.
She wasn't sure what she was looking for—just something to feel connected again.
One caught her eye: hiring accountants in the Philippines.
Interesting...
Clicking on it, she found somebody who had started a business helping firms hire in the Philippines.
But it wasn't the typical outsourcing thing. Strangely, he was articulating her exact frustrations.
She'd never heard anybody else talk like this.
And here he was, with a solution that was already up and running, driving results for firms. He said he'd be presenting in Bangkok.
Who was this guy?
For the first time in months, near the end of a year that wasn't supposed to be, she felt pulled toward something she was meant to do.
She had no idea that years earlier, she'd inspired this very person to start down this path.
Now he was building something that made her wonder:
Is this the answer?
--
On the other side of the world, I was standing at the edge of a decision I wasn’t brave enough to make.
Not yet.
--
But, then she clicked the “Send Message” button and typed an email that would change everything.
"Hey Isaac..."
That’s all for today.
Next week, I’ll share my side of the story -
That bookkeeping business my partner and I started? It wasn’t doing so well.
In fact, my wife started asking the dreaded question, "when will you give this up and go get a job?" - a tough thing to hear at 41 years old.
I'd have to scramble to make something work. Anything.
And then, I got that email.
I'll tell you all about it next week.
Thanks for coming along with me on this journey.
'Till next week.
Cheers!
Isaac
Co-founder (this will take some getting used to)
TeamUp
Hire top accountants in The Philippines with TeamUp DirectHire.
