Accounting High

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

Episode #30 Yoseph West | CEO and Co-Founder of Relay Financial Toronto, CA ***shout out to our sponsor TaxBandits*** 4 Some cool things about Toronto besides it’s a hub for accounting tech 5 how did you get into the accounting space? 7 learning how critical the back office function of a business truly is 9 what’s the biggest thing you learned when growing your first startup to 70,000 users and selling to Wave? 10 lessons on bonds and friendships and leaving Wave on the path to working for HubDoc 12 the cloud ghost town of 2014… and early HubDoc days ***shout out to Deborah*** 15 some light RPA talk… but not really 17 being at HubDoc right before their acquisition by Xero ***shout out to the Jamie Shulman and Jamie McDonald aka the Jamies*** 19 the Genesis of… Relay Financial, let’s be the bank ***shout out to Evernote and Notion*** 20 the challenges of small business banking and how the big banks really struggle with software 24 starting with the customer, and controlling the banking process from top to bottom 25 on the need for a FinTech banking charter ***shout out to Stripe, Square, and Evolve Bank and Trust*** 26 what problems does Relay solve?  28 Accountants love that Relay has partner portals, a direct reliable bank feed, and sending across rich transition data ***shout out to QBO, Xero, Plaid, Yodlee*** 29 that all sounds great, but how do I sell that to my clients? We need to focus the conversation on solving the clients pain points, not on switching banks 31 fun fact: most small businesses have 2.63 banking relationships ***shout out to Nikole Mackenzie aka Niks*** ***shout out to our sponsor Relay Financial*** 37 SMB lending relationships with banks 40 whose the Rick and whose the Morty on this podcast? 41 accounting firms aren’t spending enough time on security in their playbook… ***shout out to Rewind and Practice Protect*** 43 where do you see Relay going in the next 5 years? 44 in what space would a Relay acquisition make sense? ***shout out to Sasan Goodarzi*** 46 what are some of the team culture ideas that you’ve learned along the way that you want to implement at Relay? ***shout out to the Relay Team*** 47 some lessons to learn from the HubDoc days and values to share were empathy, integrity, transparency, and just having a fun culture 48 as a CEO what are you doing to make sure that culture is embodied by your team at Relay? 51 the future of work is a Hybrid model and flexibility 55 it’s the snacks and little things that people really love about an office 56 going from 3 employees at Relay to 50 to 100 by end of next year!

#PadgettChiefs | Capacity and Creating a Cadence for Communication (feat. Jeff & Amanda) Bonus to Episode #29  Recorded on November 17, 2021 at the Padgett Tax Conference … it’s Scott’s Birthday 🥳 2 one thing that I'm hearing consistently is we are too busy and we can't hire enough help. When the owner is the primary producer, the owner can't really run the business or work in the business. And so. How do we build capacity? 4 technology creates more capacity for us. 5 some people try to build their firms or build themselves up for somebody else or what they think they should be doing. At the core, it starts with, what do I want? 6 can a small, independent firm that does a lot of tax returns have capacity and a life? 8 setting priorities and letting the little stuff slide 9 to create more capacity you have to first delegate and create processes, set priorities, have patience, and proper planning 10 start with one thing, the lowest hanging fruit 13 find somebody that's done it already to help guide you through that process because anything that you're going to go through, somebody else's already gone through 14 how do you create more capacity for your team? You can’t just keep throwing more people at problems… 15 office hours, time blocking, and the hyperactive hive mind… we need to structure our internal processes and communications 20 Jeff’s secret sauce… outsourcing his email processing! the benefits of having a virtual executive assistant (aka a secretary) 25 removing the sense of urgency in your life requires deliberation and a cadence for communication 26 in hindsight, there are never any real surprises in a business… surface level problems appear to be surprising in the moment, but looking back we all saw them coming from a mile away 27 there are things we can delete from our lives that will create capacity for the things that really matter… remove the pacifiers for our minds, take a look at the things you do to escape