Community + Connection at a Remote Company
Our 2024 Annual Meeting
We just wrapped up our Breakaway Annual Meeting, and (as usual) it was one of the highlights of our year!
Our time in Portland, Oregon was filled with joy, inspiration, and community. We are proud to be a fully-remote company and believe deeply in the flexibility it gives us all to build lives where we work to live, not live to work. But we also deeply value community, and this annual event gives us the chance to develop meaningful connections with our colleagues, friends, and partners while pursuing our common goal of developing professionally.
From a community dinner hosted at the home of one of our founders, to hiking the stunning trails of the Pacific Northwest, indulging in Portland’s famous food trucks, and wine tasting in the picturesque Willamette Valley–the week certainly lived up to our mission to "bring joy to accounting!"
The central theme of this year's meeting was OWNERSHIP, Breakaway's word for 2025. Speakers and breakout sessions focused on empowering our advisors, as franchise owners, with the tools and knowledge they need to continue growing their businesses.
This concept of ownership is also key to our relationships with clients. At Breakaway, we are not just accountants—we are partners. We understand the challenges and opportunities that come with ownership, and that's why we can confidently say to our clients, "We can help because we get it. We've got you."
We kicked off the meeting with speaker Nicole Rose Yen, an advisor who has wholeheartedly embraced the spirit of ownership and now runs a thriving firm with seven employees. Nicole shared her insights on building a successful business, advising us to "adopt the best and innovate the rest." She broke down her approach into three key elements:
Adoption: Everything that isn’t currently your most important lever.
Efficiency: Spend your time where you make money or save time.
Innovation: Dedicate your mental energy where it sets you apart.
That's a pretty good lodestar for everything we do at Breakaway, and we spent much of the day diving into tools and innovations that can help advisors execute on these steps, ensuring we are always pushing forward with the resources needed to thrive. And, of course, we left the weekend energized to bring these innovations to our clients, offering them even more valuable guidance in their journey.
Thank you to everyone who joined us in Portland and made this meeting unforgettable, especially our Title Sponsor, Freshbooks!
As we look ahead to 2025, we're excited to continue building on our strengths as owners, partners, and innovators, and most importantly, continuing to bring joy to accounting.
Want to know more about what we mean by “bring joy," and what that looks like for our clients? Visit breakawayba.com.
