032 PPP2: Processes, Profitability, and People (feat. Scott Scharf, CTO)

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