Scaling Startups and Surviving Remote Work: Tips from AbstractOps CEO Kristin Bass - ep. 093

Welcome again to Remotely One’s Not Safe For Remote Work, where employees at all levels share their most outrageous moments while working remotely!

In this episode, we chat with Kristin Bass, CEO of AbstractOps, a company that eliminates the stress, uncertainty, and financial risk of state compliance. From Kernersville, North Carolina, now living in Auburn, Alabama, Kristin shares her wild journey from fintech to startups and her rapid rise to CEO. Hear about her adventures managing payroll tax compliance and scaling back-office operations.

Tune in for hilarious stories involving her loyal Labs, Duke and Dixie, a shotgun scare that'll leave you laughing out loud, and a memorable sales call interrupted by some unexpected behavior. Don’t miss this fun and unforgettable episode with the charming and resilient Kristin Bass!

Learn more about Kristin:

• Kristin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinlbass/
• AbstractOps webpage: https://abstractops.com/

Transcript

Rick: 0:32

Welcome to remotely ones NSFRW, which is an acronym for not safe for remote work, where we invite employees at all levels to share their most outrageous moments while working remotely. Do you have a story to tell? We want to hear it. You can submit your story at remotelyone. com forward slash podcast. Today's guest is originally from Kernersville, North Carolina, and now resides in Auburn, Alabama. She's worked with companies ranging. From fintech to startups and is now the CEO of Abstract Ops, which is a payroll tax compliance company. Kristen Bass, come on down! Woo hoo hoo!

Kaleem: 1:27

Oh, settle down. That's

Rick: 1:28

I swear by Duke and Dixie, if y'all don't shut up, we can't start the show! Come on, y'all!

Kaleem: 1:36

that's great. That's great.

Rick: 1:38

Well, Kristen, thank you so much for joining us and agreeing to come on the show. We are super excited to hear your story.

Kristin: 1:44

Howdy howdy, I am excited to be here. I am super excited to tell my story. Um for context I am currently the ceo at abstract dots. We are a payroll tax compliance company So we help companies Set up their payroll tax accounts, their secretary of state accounts, make sure they are fully compliant and can run payroll with no headaches, and then keep their company up and running with no headaches from the states coming down the pipe if they forgot to do something or have a fine. We help them out with all of that. Um, we've been doing this for pretty much our whole setup. However, we've pivoted into this back, January of 2023 full time. Prior to that, we were a back office operations company, so helping folks scale their back office, which is how I got my start with Abstract Ops. I was an operations partner, working with other companies, helping them with their back office and making sure that they were doing what they needed to do. That ranges from helping them with equity, payroll, HR compliance, just, you name it, we probably did it.

Rick: 2:55

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, your accolades are really impressive and you know, as I understand it, you went from being a manager to a CEO within two years. I mean, as, as one, as one would expect, definitely some learning experiences and you know, highs and lows, however you want to put it, share with us one that really sticks out in your memory.

Kaleem: 3:16

Or two. You can share two. I think we might

Kristin: 3:18

you know what? I will do y'all a justice and I will tell you one from when I first started and was an operations partner. And then I've got 1 from when I was in my cOO slash coming into my CEO role here.

Kaleem: 3:33

Okay. Here we go. Here we go. Listen

Kristin: 3:36

you know, as one would imagine with the backgrounds here, I'm a little, a little Southern, just tiny bit. And, and some might even stretch the word to redneck depending on the situation. So when we moved our house that we bought here in Alabama has a lovely, lovely security system that likes to go off when a door opens, closes. have two dogs. At the, at the time I had one and he It is my pride and joy. I love, love my two dogs. They're both labs. But my male he was my first dog and has known nothing other than me working remotely. So, of course, you can imagine he's used to calls. He's always in the background. Um, I'm hanging out on a work call with my team, talking customer work, talking all that good stuff, seeing where people are

Kaleem: 4:27

Is anyone, is anyone

Kristin: 4:28

No one's home. No one's home. I'm sitting in my office here, which is in the back of the house. My dog's laying under me. All of a sudden, mid call, I just hear, back, door. And I'm like, what the?

Kaleem: 4:42

Oh shit.

Kristin: 4:43

house. So, I'm like, okay, I don't have time to pull up the cameras. I don't have time to do anything. Duke, my dog, is sitting there barking, standing at the door of the bedroom, which is the office, refusing to go out. And I'm like, I tried to cut off my camera, and I'm like, Duke, who's here? Go. Like, defend me.

Kaleem: 5:04

defend me, dude.

Kristin: 5:05

he gets

Rick: 5:06

bite some shit,

Kristin: 5:06

under me. He's like, he's like, Under me at the time, and I'm like, what? Dude, you're supposed to be my guy, my protector. So, I naturally, being myself, reach behind my office door and pull out my home defense shotgun and just rack it. I'm like, who the hell is in my house? And I'm just like, all right,

Rick: 5:31

you have this on camera?

Kristin: 5:32

so my camera's facing this way and I'm going this way so you can

Rick: 5:35

Oh, ho

Kristin: 5:36

can hear the shotgun. You can hear me talking to Duke and I'm like, I don't even care what's going on on camera at this point. I have don't care. So. You know, I'm sitting there and I can hear people laughing because at this point it's like, what the hell is going

Kaleem: 5:51

Cause you got your AirPods in too, right? You have your AirPods

Kristin: 5:54

Yeah, it's like, what the hell? what is going

Rick: 5:57

Click, click, boom! Tell me you blasted at least one more wall of sheetrock away.

Kaleem: 6:02

happened? So

Kristin: 6:03

Oh no, luckily, luckily no shots went off. Duke finally decides to kind of meander through the house and I go and There's no climax to the story. The door just blew open from the wind, scared the absolute hell out of me. And I'm walking through my house with a shotgun, like, am I about to hit somebody with this?

Kaleem: 6:22

So did you, like, when you walk down, were you scared? Did you say, I'm armed?

Kristin: 6:27

Oh my God, I was, I was legitimately like heart racing, scared to death that someone had come in my house. I was like, you've got to be kidding me.

Kaleem: 6:36

Is that Duke behind you doing

Kristin: 6:38

That, that is Dixie. That's our newest member. Uh, she's only a year old. Yeah.

Rick: 6:45

I seen that door open and I blasted it to bits. I blasted the wind, didn't

Kristin: 6:49

you, if someone had been in this house, I, Fear to goodness. What the heck would have

Kaleem: 6:55

Oh my gosh. Good for you that you're protected. So you sit back down. I'm curious. You sit back down, your heart's beaten. You turn the camera back on. What are your colleagues

Kristin: 7:05

God. People were just like, what are, are you good? Are you not good? I'm like, like,

Rick: 7:13

We see that you're protected.

Kristin: 7:15

I'm good. We're good.

Kaleem: 7:17

Holy

Kristin: 7:19

And then later that day I call my husband and I'm just like, you don't understand what I just did. I was like, do you know? How embarrassed I am, because I'm one, a big scaredy cat, and two, sitting here probably looking like the biggest frickin redneck with deer heads on the wall and a shotgun in

Kaleem: 7:37

Good for you. You're well protected. So that's a pretty good story. So kristin, let me just understand this So at this moment, you're just on the team as like a manager or coo and they're like damn Kristen's got a shotgun. She's trying to you know, shoot some people if they come into

Kristin: 7:55

Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah.

Kaleem: 7:57

forward. What? You Six months now, like fast forward how much time and you're now the CEO.

Kristin: 8:02

Yeah. So from that situation to my next story, fast forward about a year, actually a year and a half. So the shotgun incident happens pretty early on in my career here. So love to set the stage of my personality.

Kaleem: 8:17

So you're shotgun bass. You're shotgun bass. That's your nickname. I get that.

Kristin: 8:21

you got it, you got it. So the other story is actually quite embarrassing, probably more so than that one. So I stepped into my COO role in October, stepped into my CEO role in December. So literally halfway through in November, my husband decides to go on a hunting trip for ten days, cause, cause you know, why not? Well, one day into his trip, my female, Dixie, goes into heat.

Kaleem: 8:49

Well, what's that? I don't understand. Like it's hot out obviously.

Kristin: 8:53

Yeah, no, so both of my dogs are unfixed. She went into her female cycle, where she can then, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and my male is not fixed. Well, that means my male is not happy. Ah. So I'm not sleeping one because my male is constantly wanting his girlfriend's here. She's in a diaper because that's how we treat our dogs around here. We put them in a diaper when they go into heat, cause she's a house dog. So I get a high stake sales call for a company that I really want to land. And I have done customer calls, but I had just stepped into doing sales calls. Cause we were in between sales people.

Kaleem: 9:41

Okay. Okay.

Kristin: 9:43

I'm sitting here, chit chatting, having a good ol time. You see Dixie back here in a diaper. Because that's normal to see on a call. That, that didn't bother me quite as much. Until, I'm sitting and my screen's wide and behind me I see Duke. Try to ride her. Just start, like, hardcore jumped on her, and I'm sittin here, like, you, there's not, no, nothin's goin on in the back, like,

Kaleem: 10:12

But so like When you say, so the dog jumps up on top and one dog has a diaper on.

Kristin: 10:19

Huh? And the male is, And and, and, the male dog's trying to scrape her up and mount her. And, and like, I'm like, you, you can't see. There's nothing here. Nothing to see. And I'm just

Kaleem: 10:34

say scraper up and mount?

Kristin: 10:40

you cannot do this. I

Rick: 10:42

Oh, yeah.

Kristin: 10:44

just hiding it, like? and thinking on the floor. And

Kaleem: 10:50

Oh no, and what about the noises? What about the noises? Are there lots of noises

Kristin: 10:54

are. Duke is just like, he was just going, and I'm like, stop. And Dixie's just looking at me like, please God help me.

Kaleem: 11:08

Oh,

Kristin: 11:09

And I'm like, mid sales call, trying not to talk to my dog, trying not to bring attention to it. And one of the guys on the sales call, I shit you not goes, Well, dang, I didn't realize we were getting a show the day too.

Rick: 11:26

Oh, you get more than you bargained

Kristin: 11:28

like,

Kaleem: 11:30

I shit you not, bub. I shit you not.

Kristin: 11:33

is, this is like, this is not what people expect to see on a sales call,

Kaleem: 11:39

Wow.

Kristin: 11:41

COO.

Kaleem: 11:41

I mean, I think if one dog did not have the diaper on to me, that's the part that makes this story the best because

Kristin: 11:50

hilarious. It was hilarious. I mean, Dixie's sitting there in a bright pink diaper just like, like, and she's a chocolate lab. So the bright pink really popped

Kaleem: 12:02

Yep. Yep.

Kristin: 12:02

like really called attention to it. I was just like, what? So I learned from that. I now drug my dog when the other one is in heat. So Duke takes a Gabapentin and a Trazodone. Daily when she's in heat and ironically she's like three days from going into heat I was thinking y'all were gonna get a show too because it's like this

Rick: 12:28

That would have been something.

Kaleem: 12:30

that would have been perfect. So Kristen, out of curiosity, did you land the deal?

Kristin: 12:34

I did, andd they are fantastic customers. I love them Um, so landed the deal, but it was just I mean my face was redder than a freaking tomato It was I was like how? And I think later that night I called my husband. I said hey Like, I've cried, I haven't slept, I don't know if I'm gonna land this deal,

Kaleem: 12:55

right.

Kristin: 12:55

I,

Kaleem: 12:56

I'm going to be announced CEO in like two weeks. I just did a sales call with the dog. It's just the best. Oh my gosh.

Kristin: 13:05

like, seriously, if my dogs, now, every column on my dogs are in the background, and those people are just like, so how's it going?

Kaleem: 13:14

That is

Rick: 13:14

they're like, they're like looking, they're like, what's, what's

Kristin: 13:17

Yeah, it's like,

Rick: 13:18

know, How you been?

Kristin: 13:19

going on? Now, now I'll say, the, the reason they're not fixed is we do plan to breed our dogs and have puppies, so there's an actual reason I don't have my

Kaleem: 13:29

yeah. I mean, you don't have to explain. Some people just don't want, put them, put the dog through that. So we get it. So Kristen, what a great story. It definitely was not safe for remote work. It's the, one of our best stories. We appreciate it so much. Kristen, where can our listeners and viewers find you on the interwebs and abstract mops, of course?

Kristin: 13:53

yeah. So they can find me on LinkedIn. They can find Abstract Ops on LinkedIn. And then if you just want to chit chat with me, Shoot me a DM. I love, love meeting people, love talking to people, but

Rick: 14:07

That was such a Southern Belle thing to say.

Kaleem: 14:09

Yeah.

Rick: 14:10

If y'all just wanna chit chat with

Kaleem: 14:12

I mean, it was great. It's great. I'd say the Southern accent is killing it Keep it going. Keep it going.

Kristin: 14:18

I love people. I love my job. I love helping people. It's fulfilling. It's rewarding. It lets people focus on their jobs versus having to deal with The backward DAS laws that the states have when it comes to setting up a new company or scaling your company. So it's a lot of fun. I would not trade it for the world and I wouldn't trade my dogs for the world, even though they love to embarrass me.

Rick: 14:45

That's a great answer.

Kaleem: 14:46

a great answer. Well, Kristen, thank you so much for coming by the show. We appreciate it. It was an awesome story. More people need to hear stories like this because remote work. And hey, it's comical too. So thank you so much. Come back and see us anytime.

Kristin: 15:03

Absolutely. It was great to meet y'all. Thank you so, so much.

Kaleem: 15:07

Peace.