What is the single biggest challenge facing your firm now?
The biggest challenge we face as a firm is upskilling our leadership team (myself included) as we scale. We grow 40-50% per year through organic marketing channels. What the firm needed from me and other leaders at $6 million in revenue is very different than what the firm needs from us at $12 million in revenue. Surrounding ourselves with outside advisors and coaches has been a game changer.
Where do you expect to be focusing most of your attention in the next two to three years?
Identifying new services to offer clients, new niches to enter and potential acquisition targets. We serve real estate investors with tax and accounting services. We would like to expand our service offerings and our client base through organic growth and M&A.
What is the biggest and sometimes often-missed opportunity for the profession?
I believe we, as an industry, try to squeeze too much margin out of tax compliance. No one likes tax season – clients hate it, employees hate it, leaders hate it. Tax prep is a huge source of frustration for clients and it’s where clients (and employees) decide to turn over. We took a different approach to client service by staffing up our compliance team to smooth tax season out and get a better handle on capacity. This results in a lower margin, but our belief is we can make that up with our flywheel of services. Our tax team turnover is very low and our client Net Promoter Score is 83.7 for the tax preparation service. I didn’t believe clients, employees and leaders could enjoy tax season, but that’s the feedback we’ve been getting over the past 18 months at our firm.
What was the best advice you received as a young up-and-comer in the profession?
Best advice I received was to focus on building high-leverage skills: sales, marketing and leadership skills. You can build huge organizations around people who can find and bring in the work.
What advice would you offer to someone entering the accounting profession today?
Understand what type of work gains you leverage. A common mistake I see is a manager who wants to get promoted to the next level. They take on more and more client work thinking more of the same will show increased value. But, at our firm, people who are promoted above manager spend most of their time investing in upskilling and leading their team to drive higher output than they could have achieved themselves. Someone who is great at influencing and motivating people can lead large teams and is someone that will certainly be promoted.
I should note that you must have technical skills but understand that technical skills are table stakes for the next level. Being the smartest person in the room isn’t going to get you promoted most of the time. The exception is if you are leveraging your expertise to build a national tax practice at your firm. But even then, you’ve figured out the leverage game – you are leveraging your expertise to service tons of clients (indirectly).
What motivates you most as a leader?
Two things. No. 1: My kids and wife have supported me in every way and I owe a lot of what I have built to them. I want to be the best person and business leader I can be to set a positive example for my kids. No 2: My goal is to change the accounting industry, even if slightly. We are doing that by running a unique business model – we are 100% remote and don’t track time. I hope more firms learn how to adopt our model because I think it takes the edge off professional service work.
Where do you see the accounting profession in five years? How do you see it changing/developing and/or how would you like it to change?
I see more automation, machine learning and AI coming into play to perform the data-entry work. Frankly, I’m not sure how this will impact the accounting staffing pipeline because firms will not have a need for the basic work that new grads typically perform. It will be interesting to see how staffing models develop and I’m excited to see that.
I hope we see new tax preparation software hit the market. The incumbents have too big of a moat, which leads them to be less customer-centric than if they had more competition. I’m excited to see the software market shake up.
What is a business book you’d recommend to other leaders?
Two books: Scale by Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel, and The Manager’s Handbook by David Dodson. Both have no fluff and tons of tactical and practical advice. Many business books today repeat other books, so it was refreshing when I read these two.
What is your proudest professional achievement?
To be honest, being the CEO of a fast-growing, 100% remote firm is a great achievement. Back in 2015 I wrote that my 10-year goal was to grow a CPA firm to $1 million in revenue. We have crushed that goal. I never thought I’d be here but I’m having fun every day running this firm, serving clients and providing opportunities to our employees.
