Accounting High

This is Poetry 101 brought to you by Accounting High (aka Sons of CPAs)

Sponsored by LiveFlow, be sure to give this episode a go, they can help you grow, check them out at liveflow.io

get 20% off for 3 months with promo code SONS at checkout, go to liveflow.io/sons

Your Hosts, Emcees, Poets

Nikole Mackenzie, CPA aka Niks

Scott Scarano aka Lil Toddler aka Slim Scotty aka Esquired (S²) aka OKR (OK Rapper)

Let’s give it up for this presentation

Your hosts share their poetic creations

Sick verses brought out by their imagination

What they do is entertain and impart education

Purpose? Connect the individuals in this profession

4 Nikole shares her personal use cases for LiveFlow. Automation with an exclamation (point)!

Go to liveflow.io/sons

6 cooler than a polar bear's toenails

Shoutout to OutKast, Andre 3000, Big Boi, Lil Wayne

8 an accounting firm owner, podcaster, and rapper spits them bars!

12 A tribute to OutKast, Scott’s writing this rap, but not so fast

Shoutout to Andre Nickatina, Simon Sinek, Ron Baker

15 I ain’t no fool thinking about how a podcast about accounting can be cool

Shoutout to John Garret, Ignition

18 ready to explore and get paid

Shoutout to Jason Ackerman, CPA, CFP, CGMA, Kenji Kuramoto

21 give it up for Niks as she throws down her sick licks

Shoutout to Chewy, Greg Kyte, Earmark, Cloud Accounting Podcast, Reach Reporting

24 #CPAliens we’re doing things that are foreign to the industry as a whole

Shoutout to Handwrytten, Ian Vacin, Karbon

29 This was written before I wrote it

Shoutout to Blake Oliver, CPA, Lorilyn Wilson

31 The evolution of getting CPEs in the present

Shoutout to Fathom, Jimmie Allen

35 People are the purpose and I purposefully work hard to stay ethically connected to the individuals in this profession

Shoutout to Dave Matthews Band

38 Educate and entertain authentically… That’s what we’re trying to do

Shoutout to Chase Birky, CPA, Justin Kürn, Dark Horse CPAs, Katy Perry

45 Does Scott need to change his profile photo in LinkedIn? Let us know!

Shoutout to Liz Mason, Digits

Episode 60 | Recorded February 22, 2022

Guest: Chris Williams, CEO of System Six

Hosts: Nikole Mackenzie, CPA & Scott Scarano, EA

Sponsor: Karbon - visit karbonhq.com to learn more

Today, Scott and Niks are joined by Chris Williams, Owner/CEO of System Six, a 100%-remote outsourced accounting services firm. Before System Six, Chris served as an advisor to and investor in medium-large sized businesses. He’s worked for several fast growing companies, and holds a business degree from Stanford.

2 - Chris = Cool (surprise engagements, running the media circuit, hitting the links ...)

Shout out to DWYT, Kenji Kuramoto

7 - How Chris’s finance background led to acquiring System Six

Shoutout to Jeremy Allen

11 - Numbers talk – revenue, and cashflow, and EBITDA, oh my!

15 - Why cloud accounting is so hot right now

17 - The System Six biz model

18 - Opportunity in operations issues

22 - Why it’s okay to lose clients

24 - Chris is living his best life and he's wearing 10 different hats!

26 - Learning curves inside System Six

29 - Talking profit share, work/life balance, and staff shuffling

32 - Cash v. Accrual v. Tax – the pain-point discussion

Shoutout to Tallyfor, Peter Wen and Michael Ly

37 - Should you switch to Karbon?

Shoutout to Karbon

41 - All about cybersecurity – email, system backups, passwords, insurance, etc.

Shout out to AWS, QBO, Azure

47 - Client conversions – should you, or shouldn’t you?

Shoutout to Xero, Gusto, and Google

49 - Tech Tool Talk

51 - Grading clients – the red flags

53 - Chris’s parting words of wisdom

Don’t forget to subscribe and leave us a review!

Connect with Chris:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-williams-68057029/

System Six: https://systemsix.com/

Episode 59 | Recorded May 31, 2022

In this episode, your hosts Scott and Niks discuss repricing hows, whats, whens, and whys. Curious how other firms do it? Is your repricing strategy working? What value-added services do you think your clients would love? Come join us as we find out more about how we can reprice our services and make the whole process easier for your firm and your clients

Thank you to our wonderful sponsor, LiveFlow... get 20% off for 3 months with promo code SONS at checkout, go to liveflow.io/sons

2 - Once you price, your job has just started

Shoutout to OnPay, Katelyn Hockmeyer

3 - Pricing: the switch from hourly to fixed-fee billing

4 - (re)Pricing our fees to our clients as their business grows (and our firms too)

Shoutout to Brandon Hall, Jason Staats, CPA, MBA

6  - Niks shares how her firm handles repricing

Shoutout to Ashley Carroll

11 - How can we identify our clients and customize our service to their needs

Shoutout to James Ashford

15 - Keeping things slow, steady, and natural

Shoutout to Christopher Leon

17 - Repricing woes with our clients

18 - Even if you’re not charging more, you should still be adding more value over time

Shoutout to Karbon, Ron Baker, Blake Oliver, CPA

22 - Will time tracking be a thing of the past due to Subscription-based billing?

26 - So either they're worried that they made too much or that they didn't make enough and they're shy. It's never just “here's my fucking numbers”

28 - It’s easier to sell to your existing clients than it is to get new clients

31 - If they could manage the relationship and they can manage the no's and yes's, and they understand the value that they’re bringing, that’s not chaotic at all

Shoutout to Jeff Phillips, Shane Mason, and AJ

36 - Scott and Niks discuss pricing your clients based on a percentage of their revenue. Scaling with your clients as they grow

Shoutout to Ferrari, TheraNest, TherapyNotes, Xero, QuickBooks

38 - The influence of influencers

Shoutout to Jody Grunden

43 - How do you pick your niche?

Shoutout to Growbots, Madeline Reeves, Fearless Foundry

46 - You always know you’re going to get taken care of whenever you use a client’s services

49 - Niks and Scott share their firm's MRR... and their one-off compliance work is just icing on the cake

Shoutout to Anisha Harjani, Kenji Kuramoto

54 - Stay tuned for more AccountingHigh content. Peace out!

Episode 58 | Recorded February 21, 2022

Guest: Randall J. Crabtree, CPA (as per his CPA Certificate, but we're still not sure if "Jack" is spelled out, or if they just have the J)

Hosts: Scott Scarano and Jason Ackerman, CPA, CFP, CGMA

With us today is the Co-Founder and Partner of Tri-Merit, Randy Crabtree, who specializes in R&D Tax Credits, Cost Segregation, 179D, and 45LR. Also, host at The Unique CPA, a show where they go beyond compliance into forging new pathways of delivering value to clients, diversifying your revenue streams, and leading-edge management techniques and styles

Today we get to hear about how going into niches and specialties make your firm better, or does it? Find out more as you listen and you’ll surely pick up a thing or two on how to best play on your strengths whether it’s on your personality or your skills.

2 Riches in R&D Niches: Randy shares how they started going deep into the niches they specialize in

Shoutout to Andrew Lane

5 Don’t try to make yourself something you’re not

6 Ti-Merit’s transition from percentage-fees to fixed-fees but value-based

8 Holy cow! There's a big opportunity for taxpayers to save money with this, or put money back into businesses

10 Did you tweet your Waze drives? Cause Scott did, unintentionally... yikes!

Shoutout to Waze, Twitter

11 #TaxTwitter

13 Having too much fun to realize if you’re working too much or too little

16 I wouldn't be surprised when $17MM is $35MM in just a couple of years

Shoutout to Nicholas Pantaleo, CPA

19 Back at it again to the numbers game with Randy

20 Does your wife call you Randall? Do your parents call you Randall?

22 Randy on selling R&D study and Cost Seg: I never sell anything so I don't have a pitch. What I do is educate

23 Going deep into the R&D tax credit

30 Randy’s path into living the best life

Shoutout to John Garret, Earmark

36 The Unique CPA podcast: How it started

39 Oh how the tables have turned: Jason on the numbers game this time!

40 Jumping from the generalist to the specialist

44 Randy’s best piece of advice? Don’t force a square peg into a round hole

Shoutout to Joshua Lance, CPA, CGMA

46 Token Tax *wink wink*

49 Reaching for the stars

Shoutout to Ron Baker

50 Aaaaaaaand that’s a wrap! Make sure you’re subscribed to this garde art piece of a podcast, Sons of CPAs/Accounting High

Episode 57

#FreshBookReports @ Accounting High (the miniseries) - Part 1 | Recorded March 4, 2022

Sponsored by Freshbooks

Please welcome our newest faculty member at Accounting High, Twyla Verhelst, CPA 

Twyla is the distinguished director of the Accountant Channel and leader of the FreshBooks Accounting Partner Program. She supports and empowers other accounting professionals as they help small businesses flourish.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear. Whether you’ve read the book or you haven’t, this series of episodes will definitely open you up as to why it has been a favorite among our peers. Hosted by Scott Scarano, we get to hear from him and Twyla about how it impacted them in their practice and life, in general.

Atomic Habits for Accountants Part 1 of 3

2 This is a fresh take on a fresh book

Shoutout Freshbooks

3 The accounting profession is full of people who are constantly looking for opportunities to improve and we’re no different

Shoutout James Clear

6 I believe that you get what you need from a book at the time you read it, and some books are worthy of reading multiple times, for those books you are often rewarded in different ways each time you’re readying them.

8 Scott's dilemma, he's either all in on something or I'm all out of it, never in the middle

12 Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become

13 Systems and goals: If you’re focusing on the systems and processes then you’re more likely to achieve your goals.

16 You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems

21 When habits become automatic you may start to see some BIG shifts in your life, but it’s a buildup of A LOT of the LITTLE things

Shoutout Eminem & Michael Jordan

23 Automatic and Automation: How they impact your profitability

26 Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity by making the fundamentals of life easier, you can create the mental space needed for free thinking and creativity

29 If you don't have to make a choice, you have a much better time with all of the other things, especially the big things

31 Self-talk: How it can help you become the person you want to be

34 When everybody becomes your friend, then you learn so much more

37 Becoming the person that you want to be, starts with changing the person that you are

38 Let’s hear how the Feedback Loop worked for Scott and his firm

40 Twyla talks about her Video Per Day Experiment #vpdexperiment

42 Scott and Twyla wrap up the first part of this miniseries, stay tuned for the next episode!

NiksTips on Promotions, as in when do you promote your employees? and the systems around that...

Thank you to our wonderful sponsor, LiveFlow... get 20% off for 3 months with promo code SONS at checkout, go to liveflow.io/sons

Co-Host; Nikole Mackenzie, CPA. 

Niks helps agency owners save money, increase revenue, stay compliant, save time, eliminate stress, and ultimately give them the freedom to scale their recurring revenue businesses to a multimillion $ exit.

What makes a good manager? What can and should you do if you want to be promoted? What are business owners factoring in when considering a promotion? Today, Scott and Niks give us a peek at how, as firm owners, they go through the process of promoting staff.

6 Let’s hear from Niks the use cases of LiveFlow at her firm and how it has helped them automate their work processes

Big shoutout to LiveFlow

9 Sons of CPAs are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get

Shoutout to numbers grrrrrl

10 Start small but start big at the same time. Niks explains what this is about and how she goes about applying this in her firm

Shoutout to 15Five

12 It’s really important for team members to know where they stand and to know where they need to go

15 Scott and Niks share their views on sharing your (financial) numbers (as a business) with your team

Shoutout to Ashley Carroll

17 Scott and Niks question if salary should be based on employee location and how this is changing/adapting as more companies embrace remote work

19 Promotions based on tenure?

24 We discuss how business owners view promotions. What should we consider when promoting our staff?

27 Bring in people that are better than you

29 Promotions: Is it about the money or the title?

32 Scott shares insights on how staff accountability is handled at his firm

Shoutout to Chris Leon, Matthew Meyer, Karbon

37 Net profit sharing vs Gross profit sharing

Shoutout to Nick Sinclair, TOA Global

39 Salary being state-normalized to world-normalized

Shoutout to Chad Davis

44 Communication, transparency, and metrics. What’s being factored in a promotion?

47 The nice part about having these salary ranges or just one salary for this position is you don't have to make those emotional decisions

50 The grass is always going to be greener on the other side

51 Did you know you can earn CPEs by listening to this podcast? check out Earmark

Shoutout to Earmark

Episode 56 | Recorded February 18, 2022

Today, we’ve got Eminem x 2 ... no, wait, M&Ms...and we’re going to let Matthew translate all things crypto, the Kenji plague, and his journey from employee to Tech CPA.

Matthew May, CPA joined Acuity to translate accounting for entrepreneurs.  He does this by helping navigate tax and accounting rules and speaking entrepreneur, not an accountant; now, most people want to chat him up about cryptocurrency and blockchain. Matthew also likes to volunteer in the Georgia technology community and serves on the board of the Atlanta Technology Angels. He’s also got a seat on the Venture Atlanta Advisory Board.

Marcus Mire, our honorable repeat co-host, is an entrepreneurial CPA helping clients become more efficient using cloud accounting and proactive tax planning at his firm, MireGroup CPAs.

1 Eminem envy?

3 Matthew’s Before

Shoutout Arthur Andersen, EY, Austin, Atlanta, and Kenji Kuramoto

5 Kenji and Matthew take over the world

Shoutout Acuity, stupid multiples, and the Baylor Bears

7 Old v. New – which way works better in accounting?

9 On being the Fall Guy

Shoutout KPMG, Deloitte, and EisnerAmper

11 Building the product that serves the underserved

13 Best part of escaping the Big Four

15 Building the change-management muscle

Shoutout Tupac, Black Sabbath, Bowie, and anyone else who sings about change

17 Talking equity, profit sharing, and employee ownership models

Shoutout Catching Clouds, Patti and Scott Scharf, and Lisa Gilreath, Acuity’s COO

21 80 years of marriage, the rules of drinking, and abstinence?

24 A tropical token story ...

Shoutout BBI, St. Thomas, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Ivy Rose, and Blue Ivy

27 From the sidelines – Matthew’s crypto expertise, and why he doesn’t play

Shoutout AICPA Engage, Xerocon San Diego, and Consensus

33 NFTs – what are they, really?

Shoutout Budweiser, Drink While You Think, and Andy Warhol

38 Matthew’s killer stablecoin idea

Shoutout U.S. Treasury, Tether

40 Name your price – what would entice Matthew to sell Acuity?

Shoutout VerifyIQ, Super Bowl ads, and angel investing

43 Tech + CPA + Entrepreneur

Shoutout Cherry Bekaert, Entrepreneurs' Organization

46 AAAlliteration

Shoutout all the A-words, Ackerman (the Jason variety), and acronyms

48 Eggs, kegs, dope-ass tailgating, and bonding

Shoutout Coley and JW

52 One is the loneliest number in entrepreneurism

Shoutout EMINƎM, Proof, Matthew Meyer, AccountingWEB San Diego, XPAC (the Xero Partners Advisory Council), Scott’s imaginary publicist, the very real Gaynor Hardy, and Drip Blue Dream

Matthew May, Founder, VP Sales and Marketing, Acuity

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thetechcpa/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/thetechcpa

Website: https://acuity.co/

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/drink-while-you-think/id1593236213

Marcus Mire, CPA

Website: https://mire.group/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MireCpa

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/make-it-count-with-marcus-mire-cpa/id1561004984

here's a BONUS chat with Chad Davis... and a preview of what to expect from Accounting High (School)

Welcome to Accounting High! In this episode, we get to know more about the whats and whys of Podcasting from Scott and Chad. They share and scrutinize the ideas of how their episodes of AutomationTown and Sons of CPAs (Accounting High) come to life. Hear how authenticity reflects on the product and why talking to people that are smarter than you is the smart thing to do

1 We all have to graduate middle school sometime, and the Sons are evolving.  Evolution is what Accounting High is all about, the evolution of the accounting profession and making room for the next generation.  Accounting High is the new school High School, but our listeners know that it's also a nod to getting high. I think in four years we'll be a bit more grown-up/mature and graduate... then we’ll change the name to "Accounting U"

Shoutout to Yeti, Shure, Jason Staats

2 Let’s hear from Chad what was the driving force behind starting their podcast (AutomationTown)

Shoutout to Paul O’Mara

4 You gotta be comfortable with doing some shitty stuff at first

Shoutout to Zapier, Make (formerly Integromat)

6 Authenticity is hard to come by but it shows on what you’re producing

Shoutout to Blake Oliver

9 This is for fun and something you can throw on while you’re at a barbeque

Shoutout to Ignition

13 Chad hopes to reach people in positions that kind of hate the monotomous part of their jobs and they can take some inspiration from the actions that occur

17 People don’t agree with the way Chad sells accounting services, but he has a great relationship with the clients that come on board

Shoutout to Xero

22 Podcasts: How can we market them to mainstream operations people?

Shoutout to Expensify

24 Let’s find out what goes through Scott’s mind as he thinks about the future of Podcasting

Shoutout to Nikole Mackenzie, Michael Ly, Jason Ackerman, Ron Baker, Peloton

29 What will differentiate Accounting High from Sons of CPAs

Shoutout to Relay

Episode 55 | Recorded February 7, 2022

Guest: Chad Davis, CPA the Co-Founder of LiveCA and Co-Host of AutomationTown 

Hosts: Zachary Call and Scott Scarano

Sponsor: Dark Horse CPAs - abetterway.cpa

Listen in as we pick Chad’s brain, as there's no shortage of great information up there. How to be intentional and naturally solve problems. Manage a team of over 100ppl.  Chad lives in an RV w/ his wife and two kids, down by the river.  + what the hell is NO-CODE!?

3 Chad shares how he co-founded LiveCA with Josh Zweig back in 2013.

***Shoutout Josh Zweig, Xero, Will Lopez, and Freshbooks***

5 Tech & Tax: Chad is the Tech as Josh is the Tax

***Shoutout Johnny McEvoy, Bill Kimball, Herschel Co., Peter Wen, Ryan Lazanis, and Jason Staats***

9 How Xero has been a bridge that connected all of us in this community.

***Shoutout Maria Phillips, Slack, Dave MacPherson, Donut app***

13 Chad opens up about how the firm evolves as they add more team members 

***Shoutout Baalkis Hassan, Tyler Bradley***

19 How a 6-week trip turned into 4-years(and counting) on the road

***Shoutout Scout’s Barbershop, Kenji Kuramoto***

23 Try traveling with your toilet, it’s insane! It’s so good!

***Shoutout outschool.com***

29 Hiring process: Giving people a chance to test us out is more important than us testing them out

***Shoutout Teach:able, Videoask by Typeform, Trakstar, CloudAccountingJobs.com, Belay***

38 Zachary asks Chad if they give potential clients the “try before you buy” experience

***Shoutout Bubble, Emily Spanik***

44 NO-CODE and how Chad and Co were able to create their own tools 

***Shoutout Twilio, Make (formerly Integromat), Stripe, Realize, Alex Oxford and TaxValet***

52 Changing the way we think about employee compensation

53 Being in the New Mexico Desert in an RV... we're getting a Breaking Bad vibe

***Shoutout Ignition, Relay, Fiverr***

PTO stands for Paid Time Off

this is #NiksTips Bonus, Scott Scarano & Nikole Mackenzie take on choice topics (that start with the letter P) as it relates to running their professional accounting firms.  Today's topic is PTO, where we discuss PTO and policies at our accounting firm.

I don't know if it's cheating that we're doing an acronym for today's topic, just using the letter P as the P-word, but I guess now we're opening up the door to P-acronyms...

We both have Unlimited PTO at our accounting firms.  What's your PTO policy?

But, for now, let's scope back out, Why this topic? Why PTO?

Niks selected this topic today because recently she's been getting back into doing client work and she hasn't done client work in a long time. And so she's starting to feel the burn of what the team feels when they take any time off.  Niks went on vacation for just one day and started to get text messages from clients and realized, "oh gosh, we don't have a system for when someone takes time off, I'm sure that when our team goes on vacation, they're getting text messages from clients, we're always so embedded in our client's business, and there's always payroll that needs to be run and invoicing and cashflow issues, how hard it must be for everyone to go on vacation or checkout. It's really challenging." 

So how do we structure a healthy PTO policy for our teams that doesn't disrupt the day-to-day needs and challenges of the business? What technology do we use? What are our processes so that we can actually allow our team to go on vacation, so we have this unlimited PTO policy, and we're trying to encourage people to go on vacation, but they're not going on vacation... how do we solve this?