Meet Team Member Adriana Irvin Benskin - The Numbers Ninja
A1DesignBuild is a designer and builder of homes in Bellingham and Whatcom County, Washington. We specialize in everything from home remodels to complete high-performance home builds, and our over 70 years of providing excellent service to the community assures that your home project gets done right - each and every time.
The Beauty of Numbers and High Performance Homes
Adriana Irvin Benskin has been a valued member of the A1DesignBuild team since 2018, and today she leads the charge on all of A1DesignBuild’s accounting and financial endeavors. But don’t let the numbers fool you, she’s as much an artist as she is an accounting ninja.
A1DesignBuild (A1DB): What do you love about Bellingham and Whatcom County?
Adriana: I love Bellingham because it's very community oriented, and I feel like I'm among like-minded people. Bellingham & Whatcom County are also full of some of the coolest flora and fauna. My husband is a gardener/landscaper who specializes in Native plants - so we absolutely love tooling around the county, taking in all the wildflowers and wildlife. I'm also a total bird nerd, and our county is a great place for birding!
What do you love about A1DesignBuild?
Adriana: The things I love the most about A1DesignBuild are the people, first and foremost. My coworkers are incredible and the culture just feels so open and accepting of everyone, no matter what. And the projects that we do are really cool. I have actually never worked for a construction company before, so it’s really interesting to me. And the projects still blow me away.
Plus we have a great nonprofit, A1andALL. I'm part of the community outreach committee, which gives recommendations to the board about how we should focus our efforts for our donations to make the most impact. We’ve built a little bit of a platform, so creating a charity that we could use to help people just felt like a really, really great step in the right direction. That’s another thing I love.
A1andALLis a 501(c)(3) charity organization that the company created so we can help our community in any way possible. It’s really taken off this last year, and I can’t wait to see what we do next.
(To learn more about A1andALL, click here)
Click here to get a free coffee, courtesy of Adriana.
A1DB: How did you get into accounting?
Adriana: If you had asked me 20 years ago what you thought my career was, it would have nothing to do with numbers. I thought I would be in salon and spa management, something completely different. So I did salon and spa management for close to 10 years. I got into accounting completely by chance.
The economy changed, and people wanted massages and facials less and less. And since I was overhead, I lost my job. But I knew I was really good at management and administration work, so I found another job doing accounts payable for a property management company. I figured out that I'm actually really good at data entry and paying attention to details, which is what accounting is all about. So I started to learn more and more.
Accounting is super important for any business, of course. But it’s also super important for any person. I use budgeting and accounting in my daily life too. If you really know where you are financially, you can make much better decisions, both for you and your business. Our books are clean and detailed, so that we can make any decision, big or small, and be able to have confidence in how it will impact us financially, whether that's a week out, months out, years out. It's super important in order for us to continue doing the things that we want to do, both for the business and the community. For example, we make the decision to donate 10% of our net income to our charity, A1andALL, which means that the more money we make at A1DesignBuild, the more money we're going to have to help people. So managing the numbers and accounting becomes very important to help with this.
There’s an interesting parallel between accounting and building a high performance home. They're both extremely detailed and need to be very purposeful and precise.
A1DB: Tell us about why it’s important that A1DesignBuild is a co-op?
Adriana: I think that the co-op model is so beneficial to the organization as a whole because it allows you to own and run a business with your coworkers - who are all exceptional at what they do. It's kind of a no-brainer. We all are very different people and we all have very different lifestyles, but we come together and bring all of our experiences and our points of view into running a business and we make decisions together that ultimately help our company grow. And yes, we occasionally have our differences, but we come together and bring all of our experiences and our points of view to the table, and make decisions together that ultimately help our company grow. We take care of each other.
I really wanted to join right away. I wanted to jump in headfirst, but also I like the idea of having to work here for three years before you can become a member-owner, because you need to get good at your own job first and this gives you time to learn about the organization and how it works as a co-op. I think just the idea of owning a business with other people is so collaborative that it just feels fulfilling no matter what we're doing or what we're working on.
A1DB: Any favorite books, movies?
Adriana: David Sedaris is my favorite author, and I just finished Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, one of my favorites. I love that one. I don't go to the movies very often, but I did just recently see F1. The movie was in IMAX and that was super fun. I’m a big Formula One fan though, so that was my kind of jam.
A1DB: How about favorite quotes?
Adriana: I think it's a part of a quote by Maya Angelou: When You Know Better, Do Better. That is my absolute favorite because I feel like it just works for everything in life. When you know better, do better.
A1DB: Any last thoughts?
Adriana: I hope that we at A1DesignBuild can continue to build and remodel people's dream homes, build people’s dream homes, and that we can continue to help people age in place so they can stay in their homes as long as possible. And that we can continue to help our community in even more ways than we already are. That would be nice.
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