049 The Art & Soul of Accounting (feat. Ron Baker, CPA)

Episode 50 | Recorded January 17, 2022

this episode is sponsored by Xero. beautiful business.

The Sons are honored and privileged to have THE Ron Baker on our podcast today. Scott can now drop his mic and slowly back away. Getting into the “spirit” of things, Ron talks about the real soul of enterprise, the spiritual v. physical, why timesheets are not useful, how Ron found his footing in the CPA world, and his grand unifying theory of everything.

* The four defenses of timesheets – except for “The Lord doesn’t want me to throw them out ...”

* CPAs are just historians with really shitty memories.

* Better measures – turnaround time, keeping promises, HSDs, the NPS and value gaps

* The three KPIs of every major airline in the world, except North Korea’s

* Why Ron thinks airlines have gone too far with their nickel-and-diming

* The awesomeness of being first in line

* How CPA firms can be better pricers

* How to replace timesheets

* Flipping the script – measure the customer

* Relationships aren’t efficient – they either grow or die

* To be innovative is the antithesis of efficiency

* The sin of running a firm at full capacity

* The birth of fixed pricing c. 1989

* Scientism (not related to Scientology ...)

* Why are futurists charlatans?

* Refining your client-selection criteria

* Riches are in the nitches, bitches!

* Satisficing – the art of doing “good enough”

* Next time – subscriptions!

Check out Ron’s latest tome: Implementing Value Pricing: A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms https://amzn.to/39Pfe8y

Listen to The Soul of Enterprise - https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/

Shoutouts – Thomas Sowell, George Gilder, and “The Spirit of Enterprise,” Joshua Bell, Benjamin Franklin, Toyota, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Coincident indicators, FedEx, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Reginald Heber Smith, Google stuff, all of it, Kabuki, McDonald’s uniforms, Hydras, Socrates, Columbo, Paul Kennedy, and O'Byrne and Kennedy, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Pisenti & Brinker, Sparky, Ed Kless, Harvard Business Review, all the non-Zuckerberg, non-Bezos, and non-Branson types, Jody Padar, and everyone else we forgot to mention!

Time Shits - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8RSBwSGlp8