Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 60. The People and Process Playbook for CPA Firms with Will Hill

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60. The People and Process Playbook for CPA Firms with Will Hill · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening, everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful. It's a show where I sit down
• 0:07
  with your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated
• 0:12
  or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple
• 0:17
  Consulting Firm and Pineapple Analyst AI, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun fact
• 0:22
  of the day: Cleveland, Tennessee. That's right, Cleveland, Tennessee, not Ohio. It was once dubbed
• 0:27
  the Halloween capital of the world. City known for Tall Betsy, which is the local
• 0:31
  Halloween goblin. in the folklore of Bradley County that it lives in. That's neither here
• 0:36
  nor there, though. Today I'm joined by my friend Will Hill. he's the founder of
• 0:41
  Will Hill Consults. It's a coaching and consulting firm helping CPAs thrive at the intersection
• 0:46
  of people and process. The dude knows what he's doing. He's been in the industry
• 0:51
  for 25 years, hands-on work in over 400 different accounting firms, which is so many
• 0:56
  accounting firms. He basically helps firm owners streamline operations, strengthen leadership. build accountability all without
• 1:00
  burning out their teams. So Will, thank you so much for joining. Pumped to have
• 1:05
  you on. We know that you're successful. The question we have for you today, do
• 1:10
  you think you fall more on the sophisticated side, more on the scrappy side?
• 1:15
  Well Jack, my wife just fell over in the next room because no one's ever
• 1:19
  accused me of being sophisticated. so I'm
• 1:22
  Ha ha ha
• 1:23
  definitely gonna go ahead and say scrappy on that one, Jack.
• 1:28
  Very nice. Okay, cool. we'll see if the data agrees with you. take us back
• 1:32
  to the beginning. Where did you grow up? Did you have any entrepreneurs in the
• 1:36
  family?
• 1:37
  Yeah, so I grew up in Flint, Michigan, and back then it wasn't the water
• 1:42
  that would kill ya. But that's
• 1:44
  Ha ha.
• 1:45
  that's perhaps a morbid joke, I don't know. But you know, no no entrepreneurs at
• 1:52
  all in the family. but I always just kinda had this this itch of how
• 2:00
  can I do this on my own? so
• 2:04
  Okay. Any any entrepreneurial isms as a kid? Do you have a lemonade stand selling
• 2:09
  candy at school? anything like that?
• 2:11
  So yeah, so we used to go and if if anyone's ever been in Michigan,
• 2:15
  you'll know what I mean when I say you would go up north in the
• 2:19
  summer. And my grandma had a cabin that was across from a golf course and
• 2:23
  so I would go out into all the weeds around the golf course in the
• 2:28
  woods, find all the golf balls, wash up, and sell golf balls out of the
• 2:32
  front yard
• 2:33
  Okay.
• 2:34
  to these guys. I didn't really save the money. I more went and like spent
• 2:39
  it on baseball cards jacking, but it was it was still fun for me. So
• 2:44
  That's awesome. That's I mean it's a pretty good gig as a kid. Like everybody
• 2:47
  wants golf balls. Nobody wants to go into like the poison ivy or the bushes
• 2:51
  or whatever it is and you clean up. It's a good as new ball, essentially.
• 2:55
  and it leads perfectly to the next question. Did you collect anything as a kid?
• 2:59
  It sounds like baseball cards.
• 3:01
  Yeah, just definitely did the baseball card thing for a while and yeah, it just
• 3:07
  not a whole lot of other stuff though. More more outside, shooting hoops in the
• 3:13
  driveway, throwing the football around, that kind of stuff.
• 3:17
  Okay. Were you athletic? Were you good at sports? Or was that just kind of
• 3:20
  a hobby?
• 3:21
  it was very athletic in my own mind. Yeah, yeah. When you're in tenth
• 3:27
  That's what we want to hear.
• 3:31
  grade, you're six foot two and you weigh a buck twenty. You're
• 3:34
  Yeah.
• 3:35
  a little more gangly than athletic, I think it's a better description.
• 3:39
  Fair. Okay. Okay. did you think collecting baseball cards would ever make you rich?
• 3:46
  No.
• 3:48
  Okay, strictly hobby, no no world domination plans. Okay.
• 3:50
  Strictly happy. Terrible luck pulling things anyway, so yeah.
• 3:56
  Okay. gimme give me thirty seconds on today, what you do today, and then we'll
• 4:02
  build a bridge from baseball collecting will to today will.
• 4:06
  Yeah, so today I just help accounting firm owners where they're stuck so they can
• 4:10
  run a better business. Like I said, I live at the intersection of people and
• 4:14
  process, and vast majority of accounting firm owners are tremendous technicians. They know what they're
• 4:19
  doing. A lot of them are pretty good salespeople, even though they don't want to
• 4:23
  use that word, but they're pretty good at it
• 4:26
  Yeah.
• 4:27
  because they understand the value they bring. but man. Leading through change, dealing with with
• 4:32
  people, trying to replicate yourself and your skills in others, but they have their own
• 4:38
  nuance, man, that's tough and challenging. And so that's where I end up getting in
• 4:43
  the mix quite a bit, Jack.
• 4:46
  Okay, okay, this makes sense. So we're gonna jump throughout the timeline. I'm gonna I'm
• 4:50
  gonna stay right where you're describing as in today though. Accounting firms, very detail oriented
• 4:55
  typically. I don't know how they feel about outside help. What's what's one of those
• 4:59
  prompting events or situations where they say, Man, I I really do need some culture
• 5:04
  and I need some outside opinion where they bring you in.
• 5:08
  Yeah. I think one of them is where they don't get the return on investment
• 5:13
  for a change they put through.
• 5:15
  Mm.
• 5:16
  Whether it be a new process, a new service line, a new software tool. I
• 5:19
  remember one of a client I had for a while, on on an earlier call,
• 5:24
  they were going through different programs they had been through, different consultative based programs. And
• 5:29
  they said, you know, we went through all this and they paused and you know
• 5:34
  how to finish the sentence. And I said, you just ended up with busier partners,
• 5:39
  didn't you? And they're like, yeah.
• 5:41
  Ha ha ha.
• 5:42
  Like this is supposed to do the opposite, right? So a lot of times users
• 5:46
  get brought in as just the change didn't have the impact. And yet if they
• 5:51
  look around, they feel like it's having impact on everyone else, but not themselves or
• 5:55
  for their firm. And so I think that's what makes what I do a little
• 6:00
  bit unique is I don't do any group based stuff. It's it's all one on
• 6:04
  one. And we're gonna get in, we're gonna talk about Cheryl. We're gonna talk about
• 6:09
  Bob and Timmy and and your clients by name. And we're gonna we're gonna get
• 6:13
  in, work plans, be specific and and try to drive at results that way, Jack.
• 6:18
  Now, this is interesting. So plenty of coaches out there, right? Different specialties, different things.
• 6:21
  All of them get to the point where they say, Hey, this one on one
• 6:25
  stuff's gotta go. I either gotta charge a million dollars an hour or I gotta
• 6:28
  do group sessions to maximize my time. What's the thought, like as you started, you
• 6:32
  but you're four coming up on five years and running your own shop now, right?
• 6:36
  Yeah. Mm-hmm.
• 6:38
  What was the thought process in the beginning of were you were you saying, All
• 6:41
  right, I'm definitely gonna stay one on one because that is the highest value, or
• 6:44
  take me through that business model.
• 6:46
  Yeah, so for me, Jack, part of that came from where I started is just
• 6:50
  I love to help people. And I had I had been at Thompson Reuters for
• 6:55
  twenty one years. Great place to have have worked. Got my obviously a found twenty
• 6:59
  one years maybe more than a foundation, I'm not sure. But yeah, you
• 7:04
  Let's hope so.
• 7:06
  know, a great foundation to be at you know, at the at the end with
• 7:10
  where my job was, my role was, I really kinda felt like I'm not I
• 7:15
  don't know how I'm helping people really on a daily basis. I always get my
• 7:19
  job done, I was doing it right, you know, all those kind of things. But
• 7:24
  it just felt disconnected for me. So when I started the place, it was a
• 7:28
  matter of I want to make sure I'm helping people. And so the way to
• 7:33
  maximize that to me was one on one. and then there's been a lot of
• 7:37
  tinkering and playing. I've tried some different group things here and there. some of it
• 7:42
  was successful, but I could feel it was really different and I was like, you
• 7:46
  know, I I feel like this is a niche I can I can sit in
• 7:51
  for a while. It may not be there forever, but it's it's effective right now
• 7:55
  and it's helping people and I know where I'm having an impact, which was mission
• 8:00
  number one. Maybe number two. Number one would probably feeding the children.
• 8:04
  Yeah.
• 8:06
  but mission number two is certainly helping people and it's it's achieving that and so
• 8:11
  I'm happy there.
• 8:12
  Very nice. Okay. All right. That makes a lot of sense, man. I like it.
• 8:15
  What's what is the very first job? So Thomson Reuters, twenty one years. Did you
• 8:19
  have a high school job where you were very people oriented or anything?
• 8:23
  so let's see. In high school I had a couple different jobs. I I've worked
• 8:28
  as a janitor at the church. My dad was a a pastor of a church,
• 8:33
  so I got a I got a little inside track to a janitor job there.
• 8:38
  that worked pretty well, I th I think. no one complained too much. And
• 8:43
  Okay.
• 8:45
  then coming out of high school, my old neighbor was a retired VP of a
• 8:50
  bank and he still had some connections in there. And so he got me an
• 8:55
  interview and I ended up being a floating teller that summer between senior of high
• 9:00
  school and freshman year of college, filling in for
• 9:03
  Pretty good.
• 9:04
  people on vacation at different bank branches. So I worked there for three summers. so
• 9:08
  and then had a manufacturing management internship and a a couple other little things here
• 9:13
  and there, but After that, it was one week after college graduation, I started in
• 9:18
  product support at then it was Creative Solutions. It wasn't known as Thompson Writers back
• 9:23
  then. So yeah.
• 9:25
  Wow. Okay. So you've got literally from janitor to CEO coaching. I mean this is
• 9:31
  Yeah.
• 9:32
  pretty good. Okay. and within Thomas Morey's you've got product side, you've got tech side,
• 9:38
  you've got some marketing side too, is that right?
• 9:42
  Yeah, I spent a little bit of time in the product marketing and product management
• 9:46
  organization as well, in there and did a lot of work with the marketing team
• 9:50
  and in in step and in parallel with them. So if it's if it's things
• 9:54
  that require aesthetics on marketing, I'm out, I'm not your guy. That goes
• 9:58
  Yeah.
• 9:59
  back to the whole sophistication comment, right? But from a a a strategy, an approach,
• 10:05
  a thought and a value communication perspective, definitely in line there.
• 10:10
  Is is the through line for everything just you're a people person who happens to
• 10:14
  understand the accounting world? Like is that the theme? And then you're trying out all
• 10:19
  the different adjacent pieces?
• 10:21
  Probably. I mean, I definitely a people person, Jack. And you know, I I did
• 10:26
  a small stint testing software at Thompson, and I thought I was gonna poke my
• 10:31
  eyes out because I was just sitting in front of a computer with no one
• 10:36
  to talk to all day. perhaps
• 10:39
  Ha ha.
• 10:40
  a bit stereotypical, but you know. so definitely
• 10:42
  Sure.
• 10:44
  people, and then you know, early on in product support. I just back then you
• 10:49
  were still loading license discs on floppies and and reinstalling software, right? That young kids
• 10:54
  today don't understand what software used to be like. But I would have time and
• 10:59
  so I would just I would chat them up on the phone. And it was
• 11:04
  the office administrator or the owner, hey, what's your biggest challenge right now? What are
• 11:09
  you guys what are you guys going through? And just being willing to ask real
• 11:14
  questions. I felt like I just need to learn who this person is. What What
• 11:19
  do these leaders and accounting firms think about when they close the door and leave?
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  What are they worried about? What leads to their success? What are the commonalities that
• 11:29
  go on? And so that's just that's just where I made a lot of my
• 11:34
  time and tried to get into those conversations anywhere I could.
• 11:38
  Okay, so take me through this. So you're physically in the office next to the
• 11:41
  leader, loading in a floppy disk, saying, All right, this is tech support and then
• 11:45
  while you're in there, might as well ask a couple of questions. Like that's that
• 11:48
  is the what's happening right here, right? okay, okay.
• 11:51
  The in in those cases actually phone calls, right? Tech support on the phone, right?
• 11:55
  But I would do the same thing. So after tech support I got into doing
• 11:59
  training, consulting, software training and and so forth. And in even early software training days,
• 12:03
  it was over lunch. It was before, it was after, it was I could show
• 12:07
  you how to use this feature. Why you don't care about this other one? Why
• 12:11
  not? Tell me more. What's going on? Your clients don't like that. What does your
• 12:15
  team not want to do this for? And so I hardly ever took anything just
• 12:19
  at face value. It was a matter of digging in and asking more questions, maybe
• 12:23
  being a bit annoying, but that's just the way I would roll. And and and
• 12:28
  and just trying to learn more about them and have a better sense of of
• 12:32
  what's happening. So
• 12:33
  Were they were they open to responding to those not they're not prying questions, but
• 12:36
  that's not like, hey, how's the weather? It's a little bit deeper.
• 12:40
  So I get better at it over time, right? Timing is everything. so i if
• 12:44
  you can show some knowledge about the industry, about the software tools, then they're gonna
• 12:49
  go ahead and they're gonna go, all right, this guy's intelligent at least in these
• 12:53
  areas. I'll open up a little bit more. And when you make it about them,
• 12:58
  people love to talk about themselves. So I make it about them and their firm.
• 13:02
  And and not about I wanna share my opinion about your firm. It was never
• 13:07
  that way. It was always letting them talk. People have talked about themselves and when
• 13:12
  there's when there feels like a a a safe place to do that and you
• 13:16
  give them the opportunity the right way, they're gonna take it. And so it's a
• 13:21
  matter of what do you do with that information? Are you gonna just sit there
• 13:25
  and nod and go, Can't wait till the day's over when I can go back
• 13:30
  to my hotel or are you gonna say, That's fantastic. I don't know how I'm
• 13:35
  gonna use this, but I'm gonna file this away somewhere and understand. So, you know,
• 13:39
  even back I remember training on it was a brand new paperless audit package. So
• 13:44
  a lot of firms back in the day were Still carrying around the giant briefcases
• 13:48
  of documents and firms were then moving into paper lists. We had a lot of
• 13:53
  administrative staff and audit firms. So their sole job was typing financial statements and then
• 13:58
  retyping financial statements because of journal entries that would come through later. And I remember
• 14:02
  going into a firm and one of the partners pulled me aside. He said, Hey,
• 14:07
  I got two ladies, this is what they do. Could you go share with them,
• 14:11
  please, that they're not gonna lose their jobs? Now, first of all, I thought that
• 14:16
  was an interesting position to put the 28-year-old
• 14:19
  Yeah.
• 14:20
  software trainer in.
• 14:22
  Yeah.
• 14:24
  But who am I to say no? I'm not sure if this is in my
• 14:26
  scope of service or not. Actually, I'm sure it wasn't. And
• 14:29
  Yeah.
• 14:30
  I never told anybody there at my workplace that I did this, but
• 14:32
  Yeah.
• 14:33
  I went ahead and had that conversation. You just sit and you when I've asked
• 14:37
  the questions I've asked before. It didn't make me uncomfortable. Couldn't go in and and
• 14:42
  talk about, hey, your value is understanding the client, understanding deliverables, understanding how we communicate
• 14:46
  well. The tools we're gonna use to do that are different, but the role and
• 14:51
  the importance stays the same. And so and the number of clients we can work
• 14:56
  on goes up. And so just having those conversations. Now, I had to make sure
• 15:00
  that management was actually gonna fall through on that and not make me look terrible
• 15:05
  and then axe them a couple days later, but you know. We rolled with it.
• 15:10
  There you go. Okay. Okay. So yeah, I guess you've got the training of j
• 15:14
  it's not even uncomfortable conversations, but it's a little bit again deeper than how's the
• 15:19
  weather. And so
• 15:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:21
  you go in there, did they did those ladies that you had to deliver that
• 15:24
  news to, albeit positive news, did they understand the value before you kind of explain,
• 15:29
  like, yeah, the value is knowing the client? Like, did they get that? Or did
• 15:34
  you have to kind of coach them through it?
• 15:37
  Hard to say, Jack. I mean, that was a twenty minute conversation about almost twenty
• 15:40
  years ago. I I rem I r I remember executing.
• 15:43
  Ha ha ha.
• 15:48
  I don't I don't remember exactly the the full on response. It wasn't negative. It
• 15:52
  didn't no one threw anything at me. you know, I was not referred to as
• 15:56
  the Bobs from Office Space or anything like that. So yeah. But I
• 16:00
  Okay. Okay. Okay. Very nice.
• 16:04
  You're right. That generally speaking, as as business evolves and grows, if you've attached your
• 16:09
  value to the steps of how you execute work, you're going to put yourself into
• 16:14
  a mental problem. Right. I had a I had a team member who was a
• 16:19
  very good software trainer. there's a particular product that there are rumors about this product
• 16:24
  being sunset and a new product coming in and they came to me and said,
• 16:29
  What am I gonna do? My product is going away And I said, Well your
• 16:34
  value is not the product. Your trainer, your consultant, your value is you understand how
• 16:40
  to communicate complex functions in simple ways. You know you you've done the training, consulting
• 16:45
  work enough that you know the environment that our clients are operating in. So you
• 16:50
  can contextually talk about functions they have to perform. It doesn't matter what the function
• 16:55
  is, the understanding, the communication, these things are what your value is. You should be
• 17:00
  able to plug and play any tool in there and execute what your value is
• 17:05
  and where your skills are. I just think over time, if we don't watch that,
• 17:11
  we start to associate value to how we do the work instead of what we're
• 17:16
  actually doing.
• 17:17
  And take that to today, right? Like the value isn't, hey, the books are clean.
• 17:21
  The value is here's what to do now that the books are clean, we can
• 17:25
  make decisions, stuff like that. So how do you get into kind of what has
• 17:29
  now been the hot topic for years, client advisory services and that conversation that you
• 17:34
  have with leaders?
• 17:35
  How did I get into it?
• 17:37
  How, why, how does it go now? Wherever you want to take it, honestly.
• 17:39
  Yeah. You know, so it's interesting. That's been i it's been a journey through that.
• 17:44
  I helped create the practice for program at Thompson, which helped transition firms from being
• 17:49
  compliance centric in their client relationships to being advisory centric. And back then, twenty fourteen,
• 17:54
  twenty fifteen, you had to explain what advisory was, right? now no one explains it
• 17:59
  anymore, although I feel like we have twelve million defin definitions of what what is
• 18:04
  and what it looks like, right? So, but
• 18:07
  Classic.
• 18:11
  The reality is that firms know some of them very front of mind, some a
• 18:17
  little bit more back of mind, and don't pay much attention. But firms know they
• 18:24
  have to make sure that they're delivering value. And at the end of the day,
• 18:31
  filling out a form has limited value. Helping and helping your client understand how their
• 18:37
  actions tie directly to achieving their goals, hopes, and dreams in a bigger, faster, stronger
• 18:44
  way. There's a lot of value there, right? And what better profession than the accounting
• 18:51
  profession be able to tie daily action to goal result, right? It it
• 18:57
  Yeah.
• 18:58
  it's it's all measured in the numbers. And so we're in a fantastic position to
• 19:02
  be able to do that. And so we just have think about how do we
• 19:07
  enter into that conversation because we're ner we love the concrete. And and we fall
• 19:12
  back to the concrete, but to use the concrete well, we have to be free
• 19:17
  into the abstract. So I've got to be able to pull away from the concrete
• 19:22
  numbers, talk about goals, hopes, dreams, all these other things, get people to share real
• 19:27
  information, not just about the business, but about their life, about their motivations, all those
• 19:32
  kind of things. Then I can weave it back to the concrete again. And the
• 19:37
  more rope I let out from concrete to abstract. the better the concrete looks to
• 19:42
  the client when we come back to it because the more understood they feel and
• 19:47
  the more connection points I can make. But I've got to get over some of
• 19:52
  that natural tendency to only want to hold on to the concrete if I'm the
• 19:57
  advisor. And and I I gotta go into abstract land. Have to get over the
• 20:02
  fear of doing that. And the fear of what if I don't have an answer?
• 20:07
  Your job isn't to have the answer. They have to have the answer. You have
• 20:12
  to have some questions. And then based on their answers, we tie back to the
• 20:17
  concrete. So we've got to get used to that kind of rhythm, to do well.
• 20:22
  And you gotta be a little bit uncomfortable because the first time you do it's
• 20:24
  gonna be very, and the second time will be a little bit less. And then
• 20:27
  soon you're telling people, hey, you're not gonna lose your job. I'm 28 years old.
• 20:30
  Okay,
• 20:31
  Ha ha.
• 20:34
  so take me to the start of starting your own business. You've got all this
• 20:39
  knowledge, you're fresh off of being in the top 100 most influential people in accounting
• 20:44
  in 2021. You start your own business. What prompted the actual jump to do your
• 20:50
  own thing?
• 20:51
  so it had been a idea I was toiling with for a long time and
• 20:55
  and it was a matter of how do I how do I commercialize my knowledge
• 20:59
  and
• 21:00
  Yeah.
• 21:01
  skills? Like that was what was rattling around in my brain for probably five years.
• 21:04
  and then I went I actually went to start it in twenty nineteen. I had
• 21:09
  just gotten a new boss, my new boss asked me to stick around for a
• 21:13
  while. I said, okay, COVID happened, so I'm pretty glad that I kind of worked
• 21:18
  through that. And
• 21:19
  Yeah,
• 21:21
  then it just became apparent over time that it was my time to go. And
• 21:25
  and so it was, you know, that first that first month going, All right, I
• 21:30
  know that I can help firms, but in a consultative way. That isn't necessarily boxed
• 21:35
  up and packaged up. So I spent a bunch of time on how do I
• 21:40
  communicate what I'm going to do. Now, thankfully, I knew a lot of firms and
• 21:45
  I knew a lot of firm owners over over the years. And so it was
• 21:50
  a matter of I gotta put myself in a position to have this conversation. And
• 21:55
  so one of my one of my longer running clients right now. I I won't
• 22:00
  say who he is in case he listens to this, but I didn't think he
• 22:05
  was gonna say yes. I couldn't sell the guy anything when I was at Thompson.
• 22:10
  but we had a great connection. And so I called him like I'm gonna get
• 22:15
  turned down. That's how I prepared myself. I'm gonna get turned down, but he'll be
• 22:20
  encouraging and pat me on the back virtually and and and it'll be good practice
• 22:25
  for me to to get this pitch in, right? Yeah. No, he's been one of
• 22:30
  my clients for a very long time. Right. And
• 22:33
  Night.
• 22:34
  he wasn't client number one, but he was he was in the first ten and
• 22:38
  has has been there for the whole four year ride so far and You know,
• 22:43
  that's that's been great. I I think one of the other things I really realized
• 22:48
  was I stopped trying to create too much that I didn't know if I was
• 22:53
  gonna use it or not.
• 22:55
  Mm.
• 22:56
  Right. So Early on you get a little bit nervous of like, what if this
• 23:01
  doesn't pan out? Do I create alternative income streams? Like how how do I protect
• 23:06
  myself in this? And I I have three kids. and my wife was working a
• 23:12
  couple evenings doing remote triage work as a nurse at the time. Like she wasn't
• 23:17
  working a whole lot, which is fantastic in my opinion. She can work as much
• 23:22
  as little as she wants and that's great. And so but it was hey, if
• 23:28
  this This doesn't work, what do we do? So, like for example, I I had
• 23:33
  some connections with wealth management as well. And so I was studying for the series
• 23:38
  sixty seven, whatever one where when you refer work to a wealth manager, you can
• 23:44
  get Paid on that. So I couldn't actually do an investment, right? So
• 23:49
  Yeah. Yeah. The important one.
• 23:51
  I was studying for this exam, like, well, if I can get some some of
• 23:56
  this going on too on the side with firms, then maybe I can make something
• 24:01
  on the side work. And I put a bunch of hours into that, miss passing
• 24:06
  by I think two questions. And then enough other things picked up that I quit
• 24:11
  even trying to go back to it. I thought about some other things. I spent
• 24:16
  hours kind of building out these workflow model tools that I thought I was going
• 24:21
  to use and they never came up. And so I had to sit back and
• 24:27
  while I was the consultant to help them, I had to turn the mirror on
• 24:32
  and really assess where am I helping? Where is the value really resonating? And I
• 24:37
  gotta just put effort into that. particular area that's there, especially as you get started.
• 24:42
  So it's a weird kind of put effort where it's working, but you still have
• 24:47
  to be testing other stuff as well. And so sometimes you feel like you're just
• 24:52
  going in a million different directions at at the same time. So
• 24:57
  One the questions I ask is, did you overthink anything when you started? Sounds like
• 25:01
  you you covered a a wide gamut of things. Did you underthink anything of this'll
• 25:06
  be totally easy and then holy crap, personalities are really difficult to deal with or
• 25:10
  something along those lines?
• 25:12
  Yeah, you know, I I think I I'm I don't think I know. I underthought
• 25:18
  some of the vendor and association relationships. So I know a lot of software vendors
• 25:24
  because I've been in the industry for 21 years. at that point in time. I
• 25:30
  knew a lot of associations because I had gone as part of Thompson and spoke
• 25:36
  at different places. What I wasn't really ready for was I I just had not
• 25:42
  realized, when I showed up to speak at event X Thomson had ponied up some
• 25:48
  serious cash to have me go there, provide sponsor. Like I'm like, they must think
• 25:54
  I'm awesome 'cause I came in and they had me speak and I did fantastic.
• 26:00
  And so now like getting back in to get a speaking gig was more difficult
• 26:06
  because I kinda not appreciated the relationship shift. Like, Will's the same guy, but he
• 26:12
  doesn't have orange dot money sitting behind him at this particular point in time. So
• 26:18
  how does that work? And And and and flow through. And my main strategy for
• 26:24
  marketing was thought leadership activity. And it still is, right? So doing things like a
• 26:30
  podcast, speaking at events, writing articles, that sort of stuff. So definitely underthought the approach
• 26:36
  that I was gonna have to take in those relationships.
• 26:40
  Okay, makes perfect sense. how about your ICP, your ideal client? Did you nail that
• 26:45
  from the get go or did that evolve?
• 26:49
  I love that question, Jack. Because I I talk to firms about who their ideal
• 26:54
  client is all of the time. And I was challenged by a former colleague of
• 26:59
  mine who said, Hey, who's your ideal client? Well, the problem with my journey at
• 27:04
  Thompson is I spent a bunch of time with the top 3,000 firms in the
• 27:09
  US, which is a a large number but big firms. And I spent a bunch
• 27:14
  of times with soul practitioners, the opposite end of the marketplace.
• 27:18
  Right.
• 27:19
  And so I said, Well, I and so figuring that out, I didn't nail right
• 27:24
  away. I think I wanted to serve everybody. I still, you know, I I'll have
• 27:29
  calls with top hundred firms today on certain things. I've helped one of them go
• 27:35
  through some leadership development program that I've done. and you know, I'll hang up with
• 27:40
  the phone call and pick next call and the sole practitioner or the part time
• 27:46
  admin and and we're getting after it, right? So I'm still kind of across the
• 27:51
  board, but what I've understood a little bit more as time has gone on has
• 27:57
  been how how do you communicate to them differently and about what their needs are
• 28:02
  and where am I kind of opening up the toolbox saying here's some things that
• 28:08
  just don't apply and just separating some of my knowledge across size or operational structure
• 28:13
  of of the firm that's there. So
• 28:16
  Okay. early on, any any clients that you thought would be easy money that ended
• 28:21
  up being call it money losers or whatever nicer term you want to put on
• 28:26
  it.
• 28:27
  Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, there's a there's a couple of jobs that I
• 28:32
  bid low on to make sure I got I got some work as I was
• 28:37
  getting started and they ended up being very complex in in some areas. I I
• 28:42
  think that, you know, there's some partnership work I did as well. And, you know,
• 28:47
  in the in the sole practitioner consultant world a lot of us will work together
• 28:52
  on different types of jobs. And so I have had several of those. I still
• 28:57
  still today I've got a couple that I contract for their organization. and and do
• 29:02
  work under them. And that's totally fine. But and how you do that It okay,
• 29:07
  I at one point I think I had four different work email addresses, Jag just
• 29:13
  Yeah.
• 29:14
  and I was like, Okay, I gotta stop doing that like so trying to figure
• 29:18
  those things out and what kinda bind. There was there's one individual, he's very well
• 29:23
  known, we get along fantastic. We started doing some work together. And I could tell
• 29:27
  his team was frustrated with me. I was frustrated with this team. And it wasn't
• 29:32
  a matter of time before the client was gonna get irritated as well, right? They're
• 29:36
  gonna sense that at some point. And so I just called him up. I'm like,
• 29:41
  hey, I I think we're doing similar stuff, but I think our work style is
• 29:45
  really different. I don't I just don't think it meshes. And he was like, I'm
• 29:50
  glad you called because I was gonna call you and have this conversation, right? So
• 29:55
  Ha ha ha.
• 29:56
  it's one of those things where if you're uncomfortable in the work environment and the
• 30:00
  work that work style pairing or you take on a job, it's not going well.
• 30:05
  If it's really short term, it's gonna be one and done anyways, maybe a swallow
• 30:09
  it, get more detailed than you want to, get less detailed than you feel comfortable
• 30:14
  with, whatever side of the fence you're on, and just plow through it. But if
• 30:18
  it's in like kind of an ongoing area, man, have that conversation and save the
• 30:23
  relationship. yeah, you might end the job early, you might you might not get three
• 30:27
  other clients that were coming down the pipeline. Who cares that the work that doesn't
• 30:32
  fit? We dread it. So we put it off. Then we have to do it
• 30:36
  in a hurry because we're pushing deadlines. So then we get anger and frustration because
• 30:41
  now it's we're not charging enough and we're bitter about it. And it's just a
• 30:46
  cycle that we put ourselves into. And I tell firms the same thing with you
• 30:50
  know, you have clients that you always put off doing the work because it's annoying.
• 30:55
  Well, the problem is then it gets more annoying 'cause it's pushing against your deadline
• 30:59
  and you're feeling the pressure and now you hate them even worse. So either
• 31:04
  Yeah.
• 31:05
  stop doing that or fire the client. Like w one of those two things has
• 31:09
  to happen. Why are you hurting yourself like this? So
• 31:12
  Yeah. I it's a it's a very scrappy mentality that you've that you've rounded out
• 31:16
  with some good sophistication. There's a lot of fractionals, a lot of coaches that have
• 31:20
  that like, well, if we all band together, we can get a really big client
• 31:24
  and then a bunch of work together. And what you've it sounds like what you've
• 31:28
  found is that works to an extent when everybody's in their zone of genius, so
• 31:32
  to speak. Do you shy away from collaborations now or do you still lean into
• 31:36
  them?
• 31:37
  No, I don't shy away from collaboration at all. I love it. and I think
• 31:41
  that it's it's one of the things where being out on my own, and right
• 31:46
  now I don't even have an admin, it is purely just me. but being out
• 31:51
  on my own, I'm I'm more connected than ever. And so you you get intentional
• 31:56
  with the connections, I think, as an entrepreneur to say, what are we trying to
• 32:01
  do? and It this allows me to say I don't have to do everything and
• 32:06
  I can be comfortable in that. And there's there's a lot of stress that gets
• 32:10
  built up trying to be everything that you're not for somebody. Especially when you see
• 32:15
  they have a need for it. So I can relax. I've got a few marketing
• 32:20
  places I can kick leads over to. I've got some other consultants that do specialized
• 32:25
  work that I don't have to do. I've got a guy that does all the
• 32:30
  clawed AI work for you. If you want, I'll send you his way. I don't
• 32:35
  need to do it. Right. So I much rather have that collaborative effort. as as
• 32:40
  most businesses know. cost of client acquisition and the challenge of client acquisition, maybe not
• 32:44
  as much for accounting firms these days, right now, but that that's a high component
• 32:49
  of what it is. So as an entrepreneur, if you can collaborate with somebody else
• 32:54
  in a in a way for both of you to kind of bring some of
• 32:59
  those costs down and and and to be intentional with what you're finding, I think
• 33:04
  it's healthy.
• 33:05
  Okay, okay. it makes sense. I think I agree. All right, one more before we
• 33:11
  get to the scrappy versus sophisticated lightning round. how do you continuously prove value in
• 33:17
  your work today?
• 33:19
  Hmm. so one of the things is that I have to point it out, right?
• 33:28
  Interesting.
• 33:29
  So I and I'm not gonna say, look, I'm valuable to you. That doesn't go
• 33:31
  over very well.
• 33:32
  Yeah, right.
• 33:36
  But when a client hits a milestone, let's let's bring it up and celebrate it
• 33:41
  together, right? I don't I But for us to do that, we've got to know
• 33:47
  what the client's goals are. So I
• 33:50
  Yeah.
• 33:51
  have to be intentional what the goals are. Hey, what are we trying to do
• 33:54
  here? Where do you want to be? Well, I want to sell 20% more this
• 33:58
  year. Okay, great. And we'll get into some commercial strategy stuff, some pricing elements, client
• 34:02
  niche, whatever we want to get into and drive at it. But I gotta remember
• 34:06
  to ask them where we at? How are we trending towards that 20% growth this
• 34:11
  year? Hey, let me give you a high five. You hit 20%, that's awesome. I'm
• 34:15
  glad I was here to watch you do it. Right.
• 34:18
  Very smooth.
• 34:19
  Yeah, so I I just I wanna make sure that I'm part of that conversation.
• 34:23
  But if you wanna show value, you've gotta understand the goals up front. Cause I
• 34:28
  could decide what I wanna see this firm do. I wanna see operational efficiency increase
• 34:32
  by ten percent and put throughput up. Great, but if that's not connected to the
• 34:37
  goal of the owner spending more time with her kids on the beach, th they
• 34:41
  don't Okay, thanks. And I could point it out all day long and I'm just
• 34:46
  annoying. But we gotta get back to the goals and what what do they want
• 34:50
  and then we can like I said with the concrete stuff we can trace it
• 34:55
  back. What are the steps we're gonna do to get there as we go through.
• 35:00
  Man, it's the exact same in my data world of hey, I can I can
• 35:04
  make the most beautiful AI enabled dashboard for you, but if it doesn't tell you
• 35:08
  information that you care about, then it's a useless piece of data. So
• 35:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:13
  all right, man, I love it. Scrappy versus sophisticated. Let me hit you with some
• 35:18
  lightning round questions. We were just talking collaborations, partnerships, as a kid, any bartering with
• 35:23
  friends, any garage sale tactics where you're kinda you know moving and shaking a little
• 35:28
  bit.
• 35:29
  definitely definitely bartering with friends. growing up in my house, here's a good example. my
• 35:34
  parents didn't do Halloween. So I would go over to one particular buddy's house the
• 35:39
  d every well, I went over there quite a bit, but went over there def
• 35:45
  I'm like, Hiddle get anything you don't like? I would I
• 35:49
  Yeah.
• 35:51
  would just grab everything he didn't like. Tuck that away in my room, hide it.
• 35:54
  Hopefully my son is not listening to this right now.
• 35:57
  Yeah just getting some tips in Halloween City. that's good. how are the grades in
• 36:04
  high school?
• 36:06
  really good except for math. I had like B pluses in math, everything else was
• 36:09
  an A. There was
• 36:11
  Okay. All right. Well, I guess yeah.
• 36:13
  they would make fun of me in high school. Instead of where there's a will,
• 36:15
  there's a way, they say where there's a will, there's an A. So
• 36:18
  Nice. That's pretty good. just starting out with the business. Things are going well. It
• 36:24
  sounds like wife was working kind of part time at the time. Did you have
• 36:31
  to kind of make any unique like birthday, holiday gifts, like a handwritten card instead
• 36:38
  of a big fancy vacation or any scrappy solutions like that?
• 36:43
  No, it did not have did not have to do that. we
• 36:49
  Pretty good.
• 36:50
  were we were debt free. I say work.
• 36:51
  Nice.
• 36:52
  We weren't in our house, we were in a rental house at the time. So
• 36:55
  we're not
• 36:56
  Okay.
• 36:57
  so not debt free anymore, but we're debt free at the time, so we're in
• 36:59
  a in a in a d we had scrapped previously, so we didn't have to
• 37:03
  be scrappy then. So
• 37:05
  Okay. Give me some of the scrapping previously. Is this pre post kids? Gimme some
• 37:10
  scrappiness. Ramen noodle dinners, what are we doing?
• 37:13
  you know, just I my lowest mileage car right now is a hundred and eighty
• 37:19
  five thousand miles on it.
• 37:22
  There we go. Thing's brand new, what you mean?
• 37:28
  Yeah. Yeah. So
• 37:30
  that's good. I like it a lot. All right, take me inside the office. how
• 37:34
  many monitors do you use on the desk? Are
• 37:37
  Two.
• 37:38
  they the same make and model?
• 37:40
  No, one's the laptop monitor I flip open. The other is a larger Acer that
• 37:45
  I got on that tax free weekend here in Tennessee to not have to spend
• 37:51
  a lot of money on it.
• 37:54
  There we go, there we go. Keeping it scrappy. Okay, any business cards currently on
• 38:00
  the desk?
• 38:01
  not on the desk right now. so they're tucked away somewhere. I have my own
• 38:06
  business cards. I also use the dot card for myself.
• 38:10
  Yep.
• 38:11
  I'm a fan of the dot card. Not sponsored, by the way. But
• 38:17
  Okay, okay. anything really unique in your office? Any trinkets, any awards? I see a
• 38:22
  Wheaties box in the background. Could be something like
• 38:25
  So yeah, we got w you know, the the folks at Canopy made the accounties
• 38:29
  serial and sent that out to some folks. So I got my picture. My son
• 38:33
  saw that. He ran up the stairs going, My dad's on a cereal box. My
• 38:37
  dad's on a cereal box. so I think we had a
• 38:41
  It's pretty good.
• 38:42
  a friend from church hand painted the logo as a as a wall
• 38:46
  Well.
• 38:47
  art piece for us. So I thought that was pretty cool.
• 38:49
  That's pretty good. Okay. Pretty sophisticated office. does your phone currently have any cracks or
• 38:54
  screen issues?
• 38:55
  yeah.
• 38:59
  That sounds like an ever going, ongoing thing.
• 39:02
  I cannot the the port does not work anymore, so I have to charge it
• 39:05
  with a lay on top battery charger and if I'm gonna be in a spot
• 39:09
  where socially you should not be on speakerphone, I'll have to hold it up to
• 39:13
  my ear because I don't have earbuds that work.
• 39:16
  Okay.
• 39:18
  So
• 39:19
  Wow. One of the one of the original questions are what year are your earbuds
• 39:22
  from? And you don't even have them. That's great. Yeah.
• 39:25
  They're all w and if I do, they're wired. So if that gives you the
• 39:29
  answer.
• 39:30
  Wired and white for sure.
• 39:32
  Yes.
• 39:34
  all right. You're a social guy, you like people. If you're in a networking conversation,
• 39:39
  you're at conferences, whatever, and the conversation has very much run its course, how do
• 39:45
  you get out of that conversation?
• 39:48
  so that's gonna depend on the scenario, right? So needing to use the restroom is
• 39:55
  an option if
• 39:57
  Classic.
• 39:58
  you're can if you're kind of stuck there. refilling the water or whatever beverage also
• 40:04
  an option. and then sometimes I'll see if I can switch it up to sports
• 40:10
  just to go with something different. and we'll go from there. Final option is you
• 40:16
  see someone else walk. Hey, I see someone I was gonna go talk to. It's
• 40:22
  been great.
• 40:23
  Okay, I mean, you've got a playbook for it. It's pretty good. It's pretty good.
• 40:29
  take me inside the inbox. How many emails unread is too many?
• 40:34
  One. I can't. I can't.
• 40:35
  One. Okay. It's pretty good.
• 40:41
  My goal for my inbox jack is and I'm not achieving my goal right now,
• 40:46
  but my goal is no vertical scroll on the inbox.
• 40:50
  Yes. Very good. Okay. I'm a big fan. I I think I'm a Gmail man.
• 40:56
  It caps out at like twenty emails or something like that. And I have a
• 41:02
  very similar rule. do you ever send any emails that are only in the subject
• 41:08
  line, nothing in the body?
• 41:10
  occasionally in the body though I usually type like a EOM for end of message
• 41:14
  or something like that just because it catches people sometimes if there's nothing in the
• 41:19
  body.
• 41:20
  Okay. Okay. Do you thank people for quick replies?
• 41:26
  I've started using for for do I thank them for replying quickly? No. if I
• 41:33
  want to say thanks but don't want to contribute to too much email garbage, I've
• 41:40
  started using the thumbs up out of in Microsoft Office, so I'll start using that.
• 41:47
  I've read apparently that makes me old and annoying, so I
• 41:53
  Ha ha ha
• 41:55
  I I don't I I don't know how to enter I I just feel stuck
• 41:58
  at that point. Like I wanna acknowledge that I got this, I understood it, I
• 42:02
  appreciated it, but I don't wanna type all that up. And to me the thumbs
• 42:05
  up icon is where it's at for there. So I I don't know.
• 42:09
  It's it is a bit of an elegant solution. It's much like you end a
• 42:13
  text conversation. You don't have to say, see ya there. Okay, thanks. Okay, well see
• 42:18
  you there. Okay, in five minutes. It's just somebody sends be here and you send
• 42:23
  a thumbs up back. It's a sophisticated solution, honestly, I think. have you ever used
• 42:28
  two previously used dryer sheets instead of using one new dryer sheet?
• 42:32
  No, man Jack, we cut our dryer sheets in half.
• 42:36
  There we go.
• 42:40
  And only after it's, you know, been colored up a little bit then we can
• 42:44
  we can pitch it. But yeah.
• 42:46
  Yeah.
• 42:47
  Same with the color catchers in the washer, right? Those we can kinda reuse if
• 42:50
  they don't get too dark the first time. We can we can cycle that back
• 42:54
  in. If you put it through the dryer, it's it's good there.
• 42:58
  I love it. I love it. A hundred percent scrappy. Will hill everybody. This is
• 43:02
  fantastic. buddy, thank you so much for coming on. what do you got coming up?
• 43:06
  What are you speaking at places? What do you got coming up? What do you
• 43:10
  want the folks out there to know?
• 43:13
  Yeah, so you know, it's as we record this, we're hanging out in September of
• 43:18
  twenty twenty six. I'll be at the digital CPA conference in December out in San
• 43:23
  Diego. speaking a couple of times there, once on change management, and once on tax
• 43:29
  advisory items with a practitioner as well. So if you're gonna be at DCPA, come
• 43:34
  on out and we'll hang out.
• 43:37
  Nice, nice. I love it, man. we'll have links to LinkedIn and your website and
• 43:42
  all that good stuff in description. A hundred percent scrappy will. Thank you so much
• 43:47
  for coming on, man.
• 43:49
  I appreciate the time, Jack. Appreciate it.
• 43:51
  Excellent. Take care and stay data driven, everybody.