Accounting High

Episode 39 | Recorded November 15, 2021 A Balanced Futurist (feat. Donnamaree Ryder, CEO) tania.ai "everyone can look back, but the actual Magic is when you're able to look forward and start to forecast what things might look like in your business" Donnamaree Ryder And a very special thank you to our Sponsors this week: Gusto & Xero

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 this one's a 2 parter... on Podcasts 3 shout out to AICPA Engage, best conference of the year 2021 5 Marcus Mire, Make it Count Podcast 9 Ryan Lazanis, Future Firm Podcast 11 Xero’s What Led You Here w/ Steve Vamos Podcast 12 how has the podcast enabled you to move the industry forward? 13 David Barrett, Expensify big ass Table Podcast 15 Gusto’s Caleb Newquist and Greg Kyte’s Oh My Fraud! Podcast 18 the Process to Producing this Podcast 19 Cloud Accounting Podcast, David Leary & Blake Oliver 20 The Scallion Pancake, Jason Ackerman’s food Podcast 22 Cover Art explained, shout out to Scarano, Ackerman, Niks, LySki and Zachary

Episode 38 Author of What’s Your And | whatsyourand.com | Recorded November 8, 2021 Shout out to our sponsors this week: Xero and Gusto Zachary’s Takeaways Water cooler talk is not enough. You must go deeper with your team. Your people are far more important than your clients. Harness the energy within everyone and bring it into the organization and allow it to cultivate. People, clients, and staff love honesty. 85% of what makes up a person's life, we pretend is not there. We remember people by their “And” We do all of these things. We talk about our Ands to build connections and help us feel good about life and experience satisfaction and joy. Don't be a micromanager. We are all grown adults. Breathe in happy. Scott’s Takeaways 8% of people don’t have hobbies apparently your "And" and your "Why" can’t intersect Ben’s “And” is Jerry or ice cream? there are a lot of accountants that are really good at accounting but not great at running a business the No. 1 indicator of your success is your people you gotta be honest with yourself before you can bring out honesty in others all we really want in life is human connections the only people who care what phone you have are  people shout outs: Simon Sinek “search your soul and find your why” Jay Leno “makes you feel like you’re part of the group” Mark Winburn “breath in happy” Rebecca Berneck “breaking motorcycle land speed records” Matthew Heggem “the dance of business” Tony Nitti “mountain backing and extreme skiing and surfing” Rumba Bwerinofa-Petrozello “karaoke in Berlin” Dawn Brolin “NCAA champion in softball” Lorilyn Wilson “NCAA champion in softball” Ben Westbrook “a degree in opera” Steven Pressfield “The War of Art”

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 we do not rise to the level of our goals.   we fall to the level of our systems and processes. #NiksTips on Processes

Episode 37 The Evolution of Finance…as a Service (feat. Dan Gertrudes, CEO) | Co-Founder of GrowthLab FaaS | growthlabfinancial.com | Recorded November 8, 2021 Shout out to our sponsors this week: Gusto's People Advisory and Karbon “I didn’t fail out of the school of hard knocks, I’m still getting schooled in that school, it’s a hard knock life that we live…that’s the moral of this story” 0-10min Figuring shit out at the ripe age of 38 Attributing equal parts luck and intention to our situations What’s your tolerance to risk when investing in yourself We as Americans have to keep up with ourselves and everyone around us as we fill the holes in our souls with more stuff…in the Economy built on Credit Dan’s higher education journey of 3 schools to obtain 1 diploma 10-20min Finance as a Function. “[Dan] If I were you, I would probably never take on another bookkeeping business [at GrowthLab] unless they were an FP&A customer” - Ian @ Karbon The hardest thing to sell to small businesses is Planning… it’s intangible, it’s hard to put a bookend on it This notion of billable hours is nonsense, my challenge is how do we productize FP&A? We need to stop having this ‘backward v forwards’ thinking conversation… planning is so back in vogue right now “If accountants, CPAs, accounting firms can figure out this FP and a function, just like we all did 20 years ago with the cloud accounting. We're just going to become more of that trusted advisor. Like everybody talks about being the trusted advisor, but you're not a trusted advisor. If you're not on a cadence like if you're only talking to your customer once or twice a year, that's not a trusted advisor.” DG “… and then I came across guys like Michael Ly, also not a CPA… and one of the first people I met that looked and felt a little bit more like us” DG 20-30min “there are only two ways to make money, you leverage capital or you leverage people…we’re in the business of leveraging people” DG Step 1 Technology and Leveraging our FP&A Function… shout out to Jirav Step 2 Cadence and Implementing our FP&A Function… shout out to Karbon Step 3 People and Executing our FP&A Function… shout out to our people at GrowthLab “one thing that has kept me real is knowing that [people] leave Friday afternoon and you just don’t know if they’re coming back on Monday” DG 30-40min “There needs to be continuity between each of the value streams…you need to replicate bookkeeping, accounting and FP&A…there needs to be a flow of information from left to right” “my number one job as a people manager is to de-risk the people factor in what we do, which sounds totally counter-intuitive to everything we probably just talked to prior to this” DG “I think you could argue that what you've done is you've created the processes first, before the pillar of people.” S² The 3 Pillars of GrowthLab: Cadence, Rigor, and Team 40-50min “if your margins aren’t great it’s either a pricing problem or a cost problem… or you’re just paying your people too much” DG “The hourly billable model puts the onus on managing your gross margins on the customer. Fixed price, the onus is back on you as the vendor. And that's the challenge and it's very uncomfortable. It's an uncomfortable place for business owners or managers of accounting firms” DG “We have to get uncomfortable sometimes to grow, right? A lot of growth comes from being uncomfortable and, for us to grow as an industry …we're all the change agents [in an industry fraught with money and inertia]” S²

Sons of CPAs bonus episode where Niks and Scott share a small, but useful piece of practical advice as it relates to running their professional accounting firms.  Today we're talking about Payroll with, Ms. Nikole Mackenzie of Momentum Accounting.  let's talk about payroll...  

Episode 36 Shameless Edutainment (feat. Michael Kravshik, CPA and CA) | Co-Founder of LumiQ | lumiqlearn.com | Recorded November 1, 2021 Shout out to our sponsors this week: Botkeeper and Reach Reporting Some Notes: the amalgamation of CA CMA and CGA in Canada (sup Brian Clare) impressive vs. weird vs. unique CPAs, Jews, doctors, lawyers, and auditors financial auditors and tax auditors “you need financial statements to be free of material misstatement” MK a cow and a bag of onions as a recurring expense for a uranium mine the word versatile was tattooed on Scott’s arm (was) a Master’s Degree in counter-terrorism, not Japanese History (sup Peter Wen) Japan vs NYC cultures - equally great with food, not so much with manners “history is the only thing that actually happened” MK “only fools learn from their own mistakes, the wise learn from the mistakes of others” OVB electromyography as it relates to the ŌURA Ring and its “BS technology” per Dr MK the impetus to LumiQ (sup Adam Bercovici) is Luminary a worthy word to get tattooed on your arm? “people don’t actively look for work until they’re extremely miserable in their job” MK lessons learned through all of the early iterations of LumiQ that eventually led to CPE and CPD for accountants through podcasting and an easy to use mobile platform do you remember when HQ Trivia game was all the rage 3 years ago? the importance of pivoting and emotionally letting go of sunk costs after dedicating a lot of time and money towards an idea that ultimately doesn’t pan out having a vision and seeing a path towards something much more meaningful in the midst of chaos “i hope that we have created a slightly better world for accountants” MK “a lot of times school can ruin learning and i felt like we can make learning fun and interesting…when we launched our tagline was enjoy CPE” MK two key components to LumiQ Ease of Use: an entire app ecosystem (Android, iOS, Web) with builtin quizzing, docs, and content Edutainment: content that is actually entertaining and educational “what’s in-between the ears of very successful professionals is a lot more valuable than what’s in-between the covers of textbooks” MK shout out to some guests that have been featured on LumiQ Allen Shim, CFA | CFO of Slack Russ Jones | former CFO of Shopify Ken Goldman | former CFO Yahoo! Rob Krolik | former CFO Yelp William Tunstall-Pedoe | the creator of Amazon Alexa Jim Balsille | co-founder of RIM, Blackberry "the creative constraints that Ethics courses pose...a lot of times the way ethics is taught is very black and white, but what’s really interesting about Ethics are the gray areas, that’s what makes it a compelling and difficult and challenging topic" MK if you listen to a one-hour course at 2x speed, do you get half an hour of CPE or an hour? is Blake Oliver of EarmarkCPE your Arch-Rival? is there anyone else that does what you guys do? Edutainment: media designed to educate through entertainment. if you could tattoo one word on your arm, what would it be? “Shamelessness is the key to running a startup, you just gotta forget what other people are telling you... and make waves. how do you get guests on a podcast? how do you make an impression on people? it’s by doing things that other people won’t do” MK “Welcome to Winnipeg, we were born here, what’s your excuse?” The Simpsons

#NiksTips on Priorities… 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 Maslow’s Hierarchy of an Accounting Firm ***shout out to Mike Michalowicz and his book Fix This Next*** Physiological Needs = Sales & Cashflow Safety & Security = Delivery Products/Services & People Love & Belonging = Systems & Processes Self-Esteem = Client Impact & Focus Self-Actualization = Brand & Legacy to get really existential the number one priority is us as owners put your mask on first then tend to others so it’s the owner, the team, then the clients the importance of peers and colleagues and communities putting a priority on positive socialization we see technology companies lose their perspective and forget about their core product by prioritizing new features over strengthening their core product work on your core! eat right, sleep right, and work on your core the number one priority is taking care of yourself eat. move. sleep. the fundamentals. that’s what matters most in a business. because when all else fails, at least you can fall back on that… and you won’t actually fall if you’ve tied your shoelaces

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