Accounting High

Episode 35

The Intersection of a Tax Tech Transformation (feat. Peter Wen, CEO)

Peter Wen, CEO | Tallyfor

Shout out to our sponsors this week:

Relay Financial and TaxBandits

in some ways #accounting is a past-oriented field, and #finance is the cousin looking towards the future...

"I look to the past to learn and I look to the future to earn"

What does it mean to be a change agent?

When are we going to get a really good cloud tax product?

What do you think was the biggest mistake that Xero made in the time you were there?

What was the impetus to leave Xero and start Tallyfor?

What are some of the biggest hesitation to going to a Tallyfor product?

mention of #hackathons and #KiwiIncubators

more shout outs to

Xero, Gusto, Eileen Adao, Ian Vacin, Michael Masilunas

NiksTips on Planning…

Sons of CPAs Bonus episodes where Nikole “Niks” Mackenzie and Scott Scarano share a small but useful piece of practical advice as it relates to running their professional accounting firms. 

This episode is brought to you by the letter P

planning, properly, piece, practical, professional, put, power, problem, per, part, projected, pipeline, projection, processes, particular, project, portfolio, payroll, probably, personality, pleasant, paperwork, planner, process, putting, psychiatrist, plastic, psychiatry, practice, poster, picking, perfect, poking, passion, proceeded, piece, procedure, people, practical, paper, progress, perfectly, picked, poor, phrase, partner, pretty, person, plus

Episode 34

The Savior is Synonymous with Finance and Operations (feat. Fady Hawatmeh, CEO)

Clockwork.ai

Shout out to our sponsors this week:

TaxBandits and Reach Reporting

5 having that entrepreneurial spirit at the ripe age of 12

6 what did you learn working for Boeing that you can take to the smaller business market? what KPIs was Boeing interested in?

8 how did you decide you wanted to start an outsourced CFO firm?

9 the rewards and results of being the only finance person in a room full of entrepreneurs

17 id you create a financial plan for yourself at your 8 person firm?

18 don’t be the bottleneck at your firm

21 how did you exit the firm that you built to start an app?

22 you can never focus on and grow two companies at once

24 our business is like a watch, all the gears have to be in sync and properly functioning.

24 one of the most important parts of any business survival is cashflow projections

25 we all have ideas to create a mobile app, and you actually did it...how did you go about making Clockwork?

26 on working with Intuit and ensuring Clockwork was baked 100% through before launching the company

27 what's the best advice someone gave you over the past three years?

32 what do you tell firms that want to start providing advisory services?

***shout out to Edward Mendlowitz and Withum***

35 on employee buy-in and understanding the difference between finance and accounting and a FP&A products vs other Forecasting and Reporting tools

37 what's the size of the client that is an ideal fit for FP&A services?

40 what's the next step for Clockwork?

***shout out to HubSpot***

42 SHOTS FIRED!!!

***shout out to Jirav***

47 it's not as hard as you think it is to sell advisory and scale your practice - from Fady's Wisdom Corner

Sons of CPAs Bonus episodes where Nikole “Niks” Mackenzie and Scott Scarano share a small but useful piece of practical advice as it relates to running their professional accounting firms. Using words that start with the letter P. I don’t know why the letter P, but that’s what today’s episode is brought to you by…

Episode 33

Verticals 2.0... is it Neesh or Nitch? (feat. Marissa Jones founder of Logistis and Logistis for Designers aka the Queen of Vertical Domination)

link in the comments | Recorded October 11, 2021

Shout out to our sponsors this week:

TaxBandits and Relay Financial

in this episode, Marissa Jones and Scott Scarano 🥶 talk about...

running modern accounting firms

industry verticals

#influencers for #accountants

prioritizing #sleeping, #eating, and #exercising... over #work

mental health breaks and finding time for self-healing

being #unplugged and social media

Scott Scarano 🥶 complaining about email

“in a service-based firm you balance your desires with the needs of clients and the team”

niches or verticals for interior designers

fetty

“verticals should be something you’re interested in too”

an appreciation for the arts

the crypto rabbit hole… and the second vertical

what about logistis for creatives?

periodic seat swaps

communities for accountants shout out to #TaxTwitter and Karbon Community

doing drugs and Big Sur, shout out to the #RedHotChiliPeppers

#NiksTips on Profitability

S02E01 Bonus

#NiksTips defined: Sons of CPAs bonus episode, where Nikole "Niks" Mackenzie and Scott Scarano share a small but useful piece of practical advice as it relates to running their professional accounting firms 

on topics that start with the letter P 

today's session includes a discussion on the following...

physical office v remote

outsourcing

pricing

automation

shout out to Pilot.com

engineers

data analysts

shout out to Reach Reporting

APIs

tracking time

office hours

kids v cats

investing in your business

EOS, shout out to Gino Wickman

owner’s freedom

@scott’s actual profit %

core problems

money's most intrinsic value is that it gives us the ability to have control over our time - Morgan Housel The Psychology of Money

Episode #32 | Recorded October 6, 2021

Shout out to our sponsors this week: TaxBandits and Reach Reporting

it was announced on August, 4th 2021 that Catching Clouds would be merging with Acuity ...shout out to Kenji Kuramoto, Matthew May, and Lisa Gilreath

5 the journey of Catching Clouds and Patti Scharf's BlackBerry

***shout out to Douglas Sleeter***

6 Catching Clouds first client was an Amazon Seller, shout out to A2X

7 Scott Scharf's Steps to Success

• pick your niche

• pick your tech stack & focus your marketing

• get your systems in place

• determine the value props and value discussion

• determine your pricing models

• find your integrator (or visionary, depending on what you are)

• focusing and going where your clients are

10 The fundamental lesson learned is being able to say no

11 Scaling up and growing, year 1: only two hires, year 2: hiring 9 people!

***shout out to Jeff Phillips and Accountingfly***

19 take an extended vacation to find out where your business isn’t resilient, how will it run without you?

21 The structure of Catching Clouds

24 Letting smart humans to smart human things and giving them room to do that

30 At what point did you decide to start only taking on clients that were more than $1M in revenues?

37 Business owners need people with an accountant mindset to provide some structure, standardization, and systems

46 On RPAs… and what’s going to be automated at Acuity in the future

49 Do you have a favorite book?

52 Zachary Call, CPA key takeaways from this episode

• walls will always be hit, but there are always options

• there’s riches in the niches

• say no so that you can say yes

• be a place where talent wants to works

• fire quicker to make your business healthier

• take time off to see what’s wrong with your business

• getting processes right will lead to long-term success

• the humans are here to validate, ensure accuracy and translate the figures

• accounting is a dirty job, recession-proof, and it’s not sexy

#NiksTips on Pricing

Bonus to Episode #33

The who, what, where, when, and how of Pricing

Scott: In the sales process who are you selling to?

Niks: we need to be clear on who is your audience when pricing…

Scott: Are we pricing the services or are we pricing the customer?

Niks: we need to know what services we’re providing, we need to have a scope/baseline of the services provided and prices associated with services so we’re not negotiating price with the client but negotiating service offerings

Scott: if you’re pricing products to be profitable then you’re not pricing the client, be firm on your price and make sure your prices are profitable.

Niks: value pricing can be very subjective…if we're really busy and our pipelines really hot, our prices go up…

Scott: should we do free trials or they should give them a free month so they can figure out the best way to price it?

Niks: clients don't usually balk at the onboarding fee because they know it's a one-time thing.

Scott: I think that you can agree that we are not pricing commodities…but, customers come to us thinking it's a product that they can get anywhere… do we have to change their mindset on the products we’re selling?

Niks: I think there are some firms that are commodity and they priced that way and that's their business model. They just want to acquire as many customers as possible at a low price, but they also don't do very much.

Scott: the best prospects that come to us are at that inflection point where they're in pain, when you work at a hospital and somebody is in pain, that's your patient right there…

Niks: the hardest part is when you get a new business owner that doesn't know what they don't know yet, and you're trying to describe the value of what we do.

Scott: how can you set yourself apart to make that price seem more palatable?

The Momentum Sales Process:

we spend an hour with the client just asking them all the questions. And then we asked for financial data, either access to their QuickBooks or Xero and then after that, we have another conversation with them, or we go through the scope, which is basically our diagnosis of what we think that they need. Based on everything we talked about. And then we can talk about things in the financials, which to your point about saving them money or pointing out things that they could do better.

Scott: I think that they made up their mind when they found your firm more or less.

Niks: I'm going to disagree with you on that…

Episode #031

Brannon Poe, CPA | Founder Poe Group Advisors

Charleston, SC

2 working with toxic fathers and sons

***shout out to our sponsor TaxBandits***

7 how did you get started selling CPA practices

***shout out to Howard Holmes***

10 Scott philosophizes on being his own boss and letting go…

11 starting a business vs scaling a business

12 do you really want to let go of the work? there’s no shame in doing highly specialized quality work… basically, before you go changing everything, ask yourself do you want to scale or not?

13 a firm owner’s systematic approach to scaling

14 abdicating vs delegating

15 setting up a process for hiring

16 email management and breaking down a process to delegate emails

18 the steps to making a great process at the firm

19 what are the potential buyers looking for when purchasing an Accounting Firm?

20 what does freedom mean to you?

21 from finding and pricing really good clients to finding and keeping really good teams

22 fighting perfection in your firm and not holding yourself back

25 being buoyant and prepared to make another mistake and fighting our perfectionistic tendencies

26 the market is HOT for cloud based firms… cloud up!

27 in an industry fraught with money and inertia

29 explain how a CPA firm is valued

31 if you wanna buy a CPA firm SBA has some great 10-year acquisition loans

32 if you’re going to sell your practice in 3 years, what are the things you should do to increase the value of your firm?

34 small firms get focused, look at your service lines and profit margins… let’s all stop chasing top line only

35 the importance of getting the pricing figured out in your practice

***shout out to our sponsor Relay Financial***

39 so why did you start Accounting Practice Academy?

***shout out to accountingpracticeacademy.com***

40 how I wrote this: Accountant’s Flight Plan https://www.amazon.com/Accountants-Flight-Plan-Practices-Todays/dp/061538935X

43 launching Accounting Practice Academy at the height of the pandemic

***shout out to Ian Brennan***

45 we should be teaching our teams the bigger picture on how to run an accounting practice

46 you’ve given us a lot of advice here, sum it all up into one thing…

47 the Poe Prophesy… a diamond shaped firm

48 teaching Ackerman how to value his work and price it appropriately

***shout out to EO***

50 I don’t think we realize how many of our clients are operating in the dark… we need to spend more time helping them understand their numbers, more conversations with clients, and more client interaction… and charging appropriately for this highly valued work!

51 Brannon has a free book called The Unplugged Vacation go to www/accountingpracticeacademy.com/resources

…and shout out to the accountant's flight plan podcast… I don’t know why we didn’t talk about this once, on our podcast… maybe next time we have Brannon on

#NiksTips | The Future of CPE (feat. Blake Oliver, CPA)

Bonus to Episode #32

5 it is a buyers market for traditional firms for sure… imagine owning a firm and doing 1,400 individual tax returns and only charging $300 each… the question for a future episodes is, how do you raise your prices?

6 let’s face it, it’s not as easy to delegate sales as it is to delegate the work…

7 half the sales process is just making sure there’s a good chemistry between you and the client…

11 What are all the reasons clients actually need good clean financials? file tax return, manage the business, investors, the bank, line of credit…and I want to sell my business

14 I think we all need to find Peace…financially… so it’s a lot easier to adjust your living expenses to fit your budget than to try and make more money

15 being an accountant is safe, don’t ya think?

16 it’s like time right… work expands to fill the time… if you have a lot of money, your expenses expand to fill that money

17 So Earmark app we can listen to podcasts and get CPE…

***shout out to Earmark and LumiQ***

20 This new world of CPE is exciting…

21 The Earmark Goal is the fix CPE, because CPE is broken

23 Blake’s Kids .org