➡️ One Step Better now has its own YouTube channel! Subscribe here so you never miss an episode: ‪@OneStepBetterPod‬ Every accounting firm is quietly asking the same question right now: if AI can categorize transactions, reconcile accounts, and tie down a balance sheet, do we still need to hire entry-level staff accountants? And if we do, what on earth are we training them to become?Mike and Matt don't pretend to have this one solved. This is a real, unresolved conversation about the rub every firm owner is feeling: you're building an assembly line that's more automated by the month, but you still need people who understand the fundamentals well enough to catch when the robots get it wrong. So you keep some work manual, not because it's efficient, but because it's how a junior accountant learns to see how money actually moves through a business.The catch? The client paying a thousand a month for that manually-done work isn't getting a better, faster experience out of your training program. Which means the whole model, who you hire, how you price, what you deliver, and when, is shifting under your feet while the work still has to get done at scale.In this episode:* Why the entry-level staff accountant role might be disappearing, and why that's a developmental problem, not just a hiring one* The "human in the loop" dilemma: can someone own a client relationship without understanding how the information got made?* Why schools still teach debit-credit fundamentals while the industry races to embed that knowledge into the tech* The real reason to keep some work manual (hint: it's about how people learn, not about getting the work done)* Whether an "AI-first" firm is a different business model entirely, or just the same mission delivered a new way* Why your mission can't be tied to how you do the work, and how that distinction keeps you sane when everything changes* What Matt would tell a college student majoring in accounting today (spoiler: don't just study accounting)The throughline: the fundamental business hasn't changed. Firms exist to simplify financial complexity so business owners can thrive. How that gets delivered, human-first or AI-first, is the layer that's in constant flux. Get the mission right, and the chaos underneath gets a lot easier to navigate.💬 Wrestling with the same questions in your own firm? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this with someone who's trying to figure out what their next hire should even look like.🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Reach out and let's talk.Connect with us:Matt Patrick on LinkedIn → https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn → https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0patrickaccounting.comTired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Check out Cloud Accountant Staffing's candidate portal. Full of pre-vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow → https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com/register?p=MatthewPatrick

Patrick Accounting has a stack of "best place to work" accolades, yet Mike still rates themselves a C on the one thing that would change everything.

Listen to Matt and Mike get honest about LMA (leadership, management, and accountability) and why holding people accountable is genuinely one of the hardest things about leading a firm.

In this episode:

• The LMA framework and exactly where most accounting firms break down inside it

• Why the small things that go unchecked become the big problems you didn't see coming

• How to tell the difference between managing and micromanaging when your team can't

• Why it's harder to hold your friends accountable than anyone you've ever managed before

• The generational gap between leading by authority and leading by influence

• What it looks like when accountability stops cascading down through your leadership layers

💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it.

🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Reach out and let's talk.

Connect with us: 

Matt Patrick on LinkedIn → https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0

Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn → https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0

patrickaccounting.com

Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Check out Cloud Accountant Staffing's candidate portal. Full of pre-vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow → https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com/register?p=MatthewPatrick

Every accounting firm has a client they should have said no to. Most of them took it anyway because the money looked good, the sales conversation went well, or somebody convinced themselves they could make it work.

Mike and Matt have been there. Listen to them get honest about what actually makes a good client, where the lines are, and why even the best criteria in the world doesn't stop you from talking yourself into the wrong ones.

In this episode:

• ICP vs. acceptable client and why blurring that line when you're growing fast will cost you

• What "healthy fear of the IRS" actually looks like in a real prospect meeting

• The criteria that matters more than industry or revenue size

• The sales team loves them, the service team can't stand them problem

• Why saying yes to a startup client might be the worst thing you can do for them

• What it actually feels like when half your revenue disappears in 24 hours

💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it.

🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Reach out and let's talk.

Connect with us:

Matt Patrick on LinkedIn → https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0

Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn → https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0 patrickaccounting.com

Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Check out Cloud Accountant Staffing's candidate portal. Full of pre-vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow → https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com/register?p=MatthewPatrick

Matt connected AI to every major tool in the firm. Then things got interesting.

What followed was a mix of things going sideways, things working better than expected, and one moment that made Matt realize he wasn't thinking nearly big enough.

All of which sparked a real conversation about what AI can actually do inside an accounting firm today, where the guardrails need to be, and how far off the fully automated accounting process really is. 

In this episode:

• How to think about AI as an efficiency tool today vs. an autonomous system tomorrow

• The HubSpot incident that became a lesson in AI permissions and guardrails

• The monthly accounting process use case that came back 100% accurate and changed how Matt thinks about what's possible

• What it would actually look like to automate bank statement pulls, transaction coding, and client outreach end to end

• How Patrick Accounting is running biweekly AI happy hours to get their whole team experimenting

• The three lanes every AI investment should fall into: more revenue, better margins, or better client experience

• Why Matt's headcount is going up (not down) and what kind of people he's going to need

💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it.

🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Reach out and let's talk.

Connect with us:

Matt Patrick on LinkedIn → https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0

Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn → https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0

patrickaccounting.com

Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Check out Cloud Accountant Staffing's candidate portal. Full of pre-vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow → ⁠⁠⁠https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com/register?p=MatthewPatrick⁠⁠

At some point, every growing accounting firm takes their best person, puts them in a leadership role, and hopes for the best. And for a while it kind of works. Until it doesn't...

Mike and Matt are in the middle of this right now. 60 people, multiple team leads, a director of accounting, and an honest conversation about the fact that being great at the work and being great at leading people are two completely different skill sets. And they haven't always treated them that way.

In this episode:

• Why promoting your best accountant into a leadership role is the most common mistake growing firms make
• What actually happens when you hand someone a team and say "figure it out"
• The accountability gap that shows up when leaders don't know what they're actually allowed to hold people to
• How to think about training when you already can't fit everything into the calendar you have
• Why developing leaders inside your accounting firm is the highest ROI thing you're probably not doing intentionally

💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it.

🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Reach out and let's talk.

Connect with us:

Matt Patrick on LinkedIn → https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0

Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn → https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0

patrickaccounting.com

Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Check out Cloud Accountant Staffing's candidate portal. Full of pre-vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow → ⁠⁠⁠https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com/register?p=MatthewPatrick⁠⁠

The best firms don't wait for things to fall apart. They break them first. 

Hiring, training, sales, team structure. If you're not proactively challenging what's working, growth will do it for you, and it won't be on your terms.

In this episode, Mike and Matt get real about the specific things that broke (and keep breaking) as Patrick Accounting has grown over the past 23 years.

• The hiring mistake almost every growing firm makes (and keeps making)

• What it actually costs you to onboard someone without a real plan

• Why losing your best salesperson can expose a problem you didn't know you had

• The labor rate percentage that should be keeping you up at night

• How to manage quality and performance when you can't be in every conversation anymore

• The question Mike and Matt are asking right now that could change who they hire for the next decade: what happens to your team when AI eats the transactional work?

"Right people with the right process are going to change the world. Right people with bad process will still figure something out. Wrong people with a great process? You're not going anywhere."

💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it.

🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Reach out and let's talk.

Connect with us:

Matt Patrick on LinkedIn →⁠ https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0⁠

Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn →⁠ https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0⁠ 

Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Check out Cloud Accountant Staffing's candidate portal. Full of pre-vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow → ⁠⁠⁠https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com/register?p=MatthewPatrick⁠⁠

If you're building a leadership team around you as an accounting firm owner, you already know: letting go of control is hard. And when it goes sideways, even over something small, it can feel like a lot more than it is.In this episode:

• The exact moment the leadership meeting went sideways and what was really behind it
• Why letting go of control is the hardest part of scaling an accounting firm
• Why Mike tells every new second chair leader to find something to disagree about on purpose
• The line between influence and manipulation and how to know which side you're on
• What servant leadership actually feels like from the inside (it's lonelier than it looks)
• Why surrounding yourself with yes people makes scaling your firm almost impossible

💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it.

🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Reach out and let's talk.

Connect with us:

Matt Patrick on LinkedIn →⁠ https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0⁠

Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn →⁠ https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0⁠ 

Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Check out Cloud Accountant Staffing's candidate portal. Full of pre-vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow → ⁠⁠⁠https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com/register?p=MatthewPatrick⁠⁠

Most firm owners ask the wrong question when they want to grow. They ask how before they ask am I willing to do what it takes.

Or as Matt puts it: "How much brain damage do you want along the way?"

Because growing a firm isn't about strategy decks or revenue targets. It's about whether you, the owner, are willing to do the messy, expensive, slow work of building something that scales past you.

Matt's first big bet was hiring a salesperson he couldn't actually afford. Twenty years later, that bet is one of the reasons the firm exists at the size it does today. But the road wasn't a straight line.

In this episode:

• Why "how do I grow" is almost always the wrong first question

• The 18-month manager gap that keeps most firms stuck for years

• Why Matt's first salesperson hire cost less and returned more than a CPA

• The $750K wall and what Matt did to break through it

• Why we never throttle sales (and the better levers to pull when capacity gets tight)

• The "give it up anyway" challenge for owners who don't trust their team yet

💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it.

🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Reach out and let's talk.

Connect with us:

• Patrick Accounting → patrickaccounting.com
• Matt Patrick on LinkedIn →⁠ https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0⁠
• Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn →⁠ https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0⁠

Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Check out Cloud Accountant Staffing's candidate portal. Full of pre-vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow → ⁠⁠https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com/register?p=MatthewPatrick⁠⁠

If you own an accounting firm, you probably feel a gap between where you are and where you want to be.

This podcast is about closing that gap by building a firm One Step Better at a time.

Hosted by Matt Patrick (owner and founder of Patrick Accounting) and Mike Shaeffer (COO), you'll hear the unfiltered conversations that happen when you own an accounting firm. The ones you probably have with yourself at midnight, but nobody else seems to be having out loud.

This is the show going forward. Honest, unfiltered, firm-owner-to-firm-owner.

If you've been listening for a while, the focus is sharpening. If this is your first time here, welcome.

💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it.

🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop.

Connect with us:⁠

patrickaccounting.com⁠

Matt Patrick on LinkedIn → ⁠https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0

Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn → ⁠https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0⁠

Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Cloud Accountant Staffing matches you with vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow.👉 Check out the portal to get started: https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com/register?p=MatthewPatrick

"You have to be willing to light some money on absolute fire for the goal of what may be."

Ever feel like you're growing your business but somehow everything is getting harder, more expensive, and more chaotic?

Not sure if you're actually ready to scale or just tired of being stuck where you are?

This is one of the most common crossroads for small business owners. Especially if you're thinking about a second location, adding staff, or investing in new systems, but you're not sure the foundation is ready for it.

In this episode, Matt and Mike talk about what growth has actually looked like inside their own firm over the last decade:

• offices that didn't work
• hires that backfired
• investments that looked great on paper
• the first question to ask yourself if you're thinking about expansion (and it's not finance-related)

#smallbusiness #businessgrowth #scaling #entrepreneurship #restaurantowners #homeservices #onestepbetterpodcast #secondlocation #smallbusinessowner