Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Jeff Call on Trusted Advisor Relationships, Lateral Partner Strategy, and Scaling a $125 Million Accounting Firm

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Jeff Call on Trusted Advisor Relationships, Lateral Partner Strategy, and Scaling a $125 Million Accounting Firm · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. As you listen today, let one
0:17
idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
0:21
today's guest is Jeff Call, Managing partner and CEO at
0:25
Bennett Thrasher LLP. They are a privately held
0:28
accounting and consulting firm offering tax, audit, advisory
0:33
and business process outsourcing services to businesses and high
0:37
net worth individuals. Founded in 1980 in Atlanta, it
0:41
has earned praise in industry rankings for integrity and top
0:45
notch client service. Jeff has been with the firm
0:48
since 2002 and founded their personal financial services
0:52
practice specializing in estate and wealth transfer planning.
0:57
He also holds CPACFP and PFS designations.
1:01
Jeff has been named to the Atlanta Magazine 5 Star Wealth
1:05
Manager list multiple times and as a frequent speaker featured
1:09
in outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the Atlanta Business
1:12
Chronicle. Before joining Bennett Thrasher,
1:15
he honed his expertise at Arthur Andersen and Deloitte.
1:19
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Back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
2:17
today, Managing partner and CEO, Bennett Thrasher.
2:20
Jeff Call, thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
2:23
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Anthony.
2:24
Really appreciate it. So, Jeff, you graduated Auburn
2:27
in 96 with both a bachelor's and a master's in accountancy and
2:32
taxation. What's?
2:34
First sparked your interest in this field.
2:37
So originally my father's ACPA, so he was a partner at a large
2:43
firm in the Midwest called Sikich.
2:45
And so I was around accounting a little bit as a, as a young man
2:50
actually did not think I was going to go into accounting.
2:53
I thought I wanted to study marketing and my dad convinced
2:56
me that marketing was too general of a degree and I should
2:59
go into accounting. So it's a language of business
3:00
and I'd have plenty of chances to do marketing if I was
3:03
successful in the accounting field.
3:05
OK, so if I'm reading this right, your first job right out
3:09
of school was Arthur Andersen, and then from there to Deloitte.
3:13
So you work for two of the big boys right away.
3:16
Yes, I did, yeah. How did the culture at those
3:17
places compared to each other? I mean, Anderson was, you know,
3:22
one of the largest firms, like you said, in the in the country
3:25
and in the in the world. And so, you know, it was, it was
3:28
a good atmosphere for a big firm, you know, but obviously I
3:32
think one of the things that's one of the things I think we
3:34
have as a benefit of Bennett Thratcher just a more
3:36
entrepreneurial culture better, you know, for our employees at
3:40
earlier stages of their career, it's not as much of A grind.
3:43
We do try to have a much better work life balance, but overall
3:46
good culture for big firms, but definitely different than what
3:49
we experience here at a firm like Bennett Thrasher.
3:51
So how did the opportunity to join Bennett Thrasher come
3:53
about? Yeah.
3:55
So I was at Anderson. Anderson, as some may know, went
3:58
through a lot of scrutiny around the Enron situation.
4:03
They were the auditor for Enron and Anderson basically was
4:07
collapsing. And so the Anderson practice in
4:10
Atlanta went to Deloitte. So I went to Deloitte and
4:13
actually we had one day off between our last day at our
4:16
three Anderson and our first day at Deloitte.
4:18
I was actually playing golf 'cause that's one of my hobbies
4:21
and passions. And I got a call from Headhunter
4:24
about the position that Bennett Thrasher had that kind of start
4:26
their personal flights and services group.
4:28
And so, you know, I ended up being at Deloitte for about 8
4:32
weeks because I was in negotiations of whether or not I
4:34
was going to join Bidet Thrasher, but it was a pretty
4:36
short tenure at Deloitte before I joined Bidet Thrasher.
4:41
OK. So you were kind of checking out
4:43
options there. What was it that ultimately drew
4:46
you independent? I've been a thrasher.
4:48
I think what really what attracted me was first of all,
4:50
an opportunity to be the leader of a practice that they didn't
4:52
have. So I kind of put my own
4:53
entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial stamp on the practice.
4:56
And, you know, I, I learned a lot at Arthur Andersen and
5:00
Deloitte about, you know, how to run a successful kind of high
5:03
net worth, tax and trust in estate practice.
5:06
And they also just had a really appealing culture.
5:08
You know, the culture of our firm is really about a lot about
5:12
family and people 1st. And that really attracted me and
5:15
I met a lot of the partners and could tell that a lot of people
5:18
talk about that and even the big firms talk about it, but they
5:20
don't walk the talk very well. And so it was clear to me that
5:24
they did walk the talk and I was going to have the opportunity to
5:27
have a lot of freedom and, you know, entrepreneurial
5:31
opportunity to grow the practice and the best way that I saw fit,
5:34
but also having good balance in my life at the time that
5:37
happened. My, my son, my, he's my oldest.
5:41
He's a little, he'll be 24 this year.
5:44
He was a newborn. So basically I had a newborn as
5:47
Arthur Andersen was collapsing. And so it was appealing to me to
5:50
find an A firm that really put in that, you know, people first,
5:54
family first opportunity, and that was attractive to me.
5:58
So like you said Jeff, a lot of people talk about their culture
6:02
and being people 1st and family first.
6:04
How did you what made you so confident that Bennett Thrasher
6:08
was actually walking the walk and not just talking the talk?
6:11
It was actually a pretty interesting story.
6:13
So I was meeting with Rick Bennett and Ken Thrasher in the
6:17
final stages of my negotiations or recruitment to the firm.
6:21
And we're in a meeting in their office talking about, you know,
6:24
potential compensation and what I could bring to the firm and
6:27
all that great opportunity. And Rick Bennett, one of our
6:30
founders, actually got a phone call on his mobile phone and he
6:34
said, excuse me, I need to take this call to my son.
6:36
And he stepped out of the meeting when he's trying to
6:38
recruit a high level candidate. And that meant a lot to me.
6:42
He's like, I don't know if it was a planned call, but a
6:45
planned call. But you know, he, they, they
6:47
live, you know, they, they live what they, you know, they say.
6:49
So it was, it was pretty clear to me that, yeah, they do put
6:52
family 1st. And that's, that was important
6:54
to me and really resonated with me that, hey, this is how they
6:58
react, you know, then this is this is the place for me.
7:01
So I know that you ultimately founded Bennett Thrasher's
7:05
personal financial services practice.
7:07
Was that the idea with you coming in in the 1st place or
7:10
did that kind of unfold later? On yeah, that was that when they
7:13
were hiring me, that's what they were trying to do is launch this
7:16
practice. They didn't really have a
7:18
formalized practice in this area and they knew that I had the
7:20
expertise. So yeah, they were hiring me to
7:22
kind of launch that practice for them that they didn't already
7:25
have. They saw it as a a good growth
7:27
opportunity coming out of, you know, at that time we had
7:30
Sarbanes-Oxley and there's a lot of transition going on.
7:33
A lot of the big firms had a lot of the high wealth business at
7:36
that time. But it was I think clear to them
7:38
and me that there was going to be a tremendous opportunity for
7:41
middle market firms to really grow practices in this area.
7:45
And so they saw that as an opportunity to bring me in and
7:47
help launch that practice and kind of take to the next level.
7:50
Explain that opportunity. What was going What is
7:52
Sarbanes-Oxley? Why was that creating an
7:55
opportunity for? So Sarbanes-Oxley was a law that
7:58
was put in place kind of coming out of some of the audit
8:00
failures of Enron and Worldcom and other large companies.
8:04
They basically wanted to separate the amount of work that
8:08
audit firms could do around executives and other specialty,
8:12
you know, tax planning. And so they basically were
8:15
asking firms to disclose if they're doing this other work.
8:18
And really what ended up doing was it kept a lot of that high
8:22
net worth, you know, executive tax work and other large
8:25
engagements like that ended up being separated.
8:27
So a lot of times they didn't want their auditor to do that
8:30
work. And so it moved to another firm.
8:32
And so it created opportunities for firms like Bennett Thrasher
8:34
to kind of tap into that market and pick up work from some of
8:38
these, you know, public companies, executive work as
8:42
well as it also just kind of created a disruption in the
8:46
entire ecosystem where a lot of these big firms then focused
8:51
heavily on their audit practices.
8:53
And it created an opportunity around tax.
8:54
They flushed out some of their really good tax clients that
8:57
were maybe privately owned companies.
8:59
And so that just created tremendous opportunity for firms
9:02
like, you know, thresher size to really grow market share.
9:05
And that's really the, you know, the firm grew from an O2, we
9:09
were about 8 million in revenue and went to you know, this past
9:13
year we finished a little over 125 million in revenue.
9:15
And so a lot of that came from the opportunity that kind of
9:19
started with Sarbanes-Oxley and some of that regulation that you
9:23
know, disrupted the Big 4 market a little bit, created
9:26
opportunities for mid sized firms to to gain some market
9:29
share with the high wealth market as well as with the
9:32
private company market. So let me see if I understand
9:35
this and help me fill in the gaps where I'm getting it wrong.
9:39
So Sarbanes actually came in and that kind of forced people to 1
9:44
you know, this the the big companies were going to continue
9:47
to do the audit work, but now tax consultancy or like
9:53
individual you like taking on advising the high level
9:57
executives that kind of needed to be peeled away so there
10:00
wasn't this perceived conflict of interest.
10:03
That's correct. I mean, I think they, they did
10:06
have the opportunity if they wanted to, to keep that work,
10:08
assuming that the audit committee would sign off on it.
10:10
But a lot of audit committees asked for it to be separated to
10:13
keep this, you know, perceived conflict of interest and make it
10:16
go away. And so that, that created a lot
10:19
of opportunity for firms like Bennett Thrasher to kind of come
10:21
in and be a, A, you know, an alternative resource that could
10:26
pick up some of that business. And so that created an
10:28
opportunity for us to pick up, like I said, some of these very
10:30
successful private companies that were kind of dislodged
10:33
because the BIG4 focused a lot of their effort on the Fortune
10:37
100, Fortune 500. And so if they had other nice
10:40
middle market private companies, they also kind of pushed some of
10:44
that out the door. Gotcha.
10:46
And so did you get to put that marketing hat on that you wanted
10:49
to back in college and. Yeah, yeah.
10:51
So to go. Out and find this.
10:53
That was a big part of it was me getting out in the market and,
10:56
you know, really trying to generate business for us,
10:58
tapping into all my network that I had in the Atlanta market and
11:02
helping you grow the firm and say that was a big, a big piece.
11:05
And of how I spent a lot of my time in the early days with the
11:08
firm was going out and letting all my contacts know, hey, I'm
11:12
now I've been a thrasher. Here's what we can do as an
11:14
alternative to maybe what you've seen in the Big Four, and that
11:17
it helped us gain a lot of market share pretty quickly.
11:19
So from your experience advising high net worth individuals,
11:24
entrepreneurs, family business owners, what are some common
11:27
misconceptions about wealth transfer and real estate
11:31
planning that you encounter on a regular basis?
11:33
I mean, I, I think a lot of people think it, it, it is
11:36
complex, but you know, a lot of times it's just doing the
11:38
blocking and tackling. You know, some people just don't
11:41
do it at all because they think it's such a complex topic.
11:44
They don't want to engage in those conversations.
11:46
And so, you know, if you have a good advisor or a good, you
11:50
know, individual tax advisor and a good estate planning attorney,
11:53
they can definitely do that. But you, I see a lot of people
11:56
that are, you know, come to us as wealthy clients and they
11:59
haven't done their planning yet because there's this perception
12:02
that it's so, so difficult that they don't, or they're, people
12:05
are just afraid because of the nobody wants to face their own
12:08
mortality, you know, And so a lot of people just put it off
12:12
and then, you know, unfortunately, you see
12:14
situations where people haven't done their planning and they do
12:17
have a premature death. And then you end up with a real
12:19
chaotic situation that we're having to deal with.
12:21
So we've had to deal with those a number of times.
12:23
And it's always better if people proactively address it and, and
12:27
make sure that they're, you know, getting the proper advice
12:30
and counsel. So walk us through layman's
12:34
terms, what the firm does today. Across the all of our practices
12:39
or the yeah, I mean, so we serve a lot of privately owned
12:43
businesses as well as, you know, high wealth individuals, you
12:47
know, from, you know, we do audit work for private
12:50
companies, we do forensic accounting for private
12:52
companies. We do business valuation, we do
12:56
outsourced accounting and then we also do a lot of tax work.
13:00
So those are those are kind of the the big swaths we have also
13:03
we have specialty practices around, you know, forensic
13:06
accounting, dispute resolution, as well as camera.
13:12
If I mentioned business valuation, we do transaction
13:16
advisory services. And so we're really able to kind
13:20
of provide a full suite of services to the private company,
13:23
the middle market company. We also do do some work for
13:26
public companies primarily on the tax advisory as well as a
13:30
risk advisory doing, you know, sock sock work, which is
13:34
statement on incorrect controls. And and so we're, we're kind of
13:39
we have our services look a lot like what you might get from the
13:42
BIG4 firms as far as all the different specialty services.
13:45
But we're offering in a kind of a more entrepreneurial package,
13:48
more hands on from your partner and a more advisory oriented
13:52
kind of trusted business advisor status.
13:55
It's really where we focus a lot of our effort.
13:58
So would you say that's kind of one of your differentiators is
14:00
that you guys are able to provide the same services that
14:05
the big guys can, but with more of a personalized touch?
14:09
That's a big piece of it. I mean, we we have a big focus
14:12
as a firm on really being proactive business advisors to
14:15
our clients and you know, trying to be their most trusted
14:18
business advisor delivering, you know, five star client service
14:22
on a regular basis. I think that's the one thing I
14:25
think sometimes the big firms they get so big they they lose
14:28
touch with client service and that's a big thing that we think
14:32
is a real differentiator for us is that proactive, you know,
14:36
advisory oriented, you know, trusted business advisor status
14:39
that we have with our clients where we become hopefully their
14:42
most trusted business advisor and they're, they're calling us
14:45
and touching base with us about any, you know, major decision
14:49
they're making. As you know, kind of our first
14:50
point of contact. And that's really the position
14:52
we want to put ourselves in is having that elevated trusted
14:55
business advisor status. So yeah, kind of walk me through
14:58
a little bit what the relationship might look like.
15:01
Is it mostly the client coming to you saying, hey, I have this
15:04
need or I have this question? Or is it also you proactively
15:09
reaching out, saying, hey, there's this new thing, this new
15:12
law, this new opportunity, this new whatever that you need to be
15:16
aware of? Yeah, it's both.
15:17
I mean generally our large clients, we're trying to touch
15:20
base with them on a regular basis at minimum quarterly and
15:23
talking though about different, you know, ideas or strategies we
15:26
may have for their business to you know, help them optimize
15:28
their overall business operations or you know, tax
15:32
position. But then also, you know, clients
15:35
are reaching out to us as they have, you know, big transactions
15:38
or other activities going on as well.
15:40
So we, we try to have a very proactive approach where we're
15:44
the one that's leading the client.
15:45
But certainly, you know, clients are feel free, you know, are
15:48
free to call us at any point if they have a, a key issue that
15:51
they are want to think through or help me understand how you
15:54
guys would look at this or you know, what are the options I
15:56
have for planning a strategy around this particular
15:59
transaction. And Jeff, remind me the timeline
16:01
of Sarbanes-Oxley again. Sarbanes-Oxley came into place
16:05
in 2002. 2002, OK. So there was a lot of new
16:09
business to be had from sort of the fallout, if you will, of
16:13
that you guys saw a lot of growth during that period.
16:17
What have been the big growth levers since then?
16:21
For our firm, I mean, I think a lot of it, obviously anytime
16:24
there's a new tax law that's a little bit of a lever, you know,
16:27
'cause clients want to get, you know, informed about the new tax
16:30
law and how that impacts them. But a lot of our growth has
16:34
really been driven by us hiring really high quality, talented
16:38
people and different specialty practices and building teams
16:41
around them. So you know about, I guess it
16:44
was not eight or nine years ago we decided we want to have a
16:47
transaction advisory services practice.
16:49
So we went and found a key partner in that area and built
16:53
A-Team around him. And that team now is, you know,
16:56
doing, you know, tremendous amount of revenue averaging 20
17:00
to 30% growth per year. And yeah, that's, that's a, you
17:05
know, we went from one partner to four partners in, you know, a
17:08
couple years just cause of the growth trajectory of that
17:11
practice. And so we have a number of
17:13
stories like that where we decided to, hey, we're going to
17:15
launch a new practice or launch a new industry segment.
17:18
We're going to go hire the talented individual that has
17:21
that specialty expertise and then we're going to, you know,
17:24
support them and build a team around them to support that
17:26
growth and opportunity for the firm.
17:28
And so some of those practices have had tremendous growth and
17:33
become kind of national practices, not just, you know,
17:35
we have offices in Atlanta, Dallas and Denver, but some of
17:39
these, you know, offices have, you know, or these opportunities
17:42
have, you know, fuelled national growth.
17:45
So when you want to grow into a new direction, do you ever look
17:49
at acquisitions or is it mostly identifying a high level person
17:52
bringing them in then? Yeah, we've done both.
17:54
I mean, so we've done over the history of the firm, we've done
17:57
a few acquisitions. None of them have been really
17:59
massive, but we have done a couple acquisitions.
18:03
We've also done, you know, a lot of lateral partner acquisitions.
18:07
So bringing a lateral partner from another firm that has that
18:10
specialty expertise and then kind of building the team around
18:12
them. So we think of a lateral partner
18:15
bringing a lateral partners kind of like a small acquisition, but
18:18
usually you're just acquiring a person, maybe they have a team
18:21
member or two that comes along with them and then we, you know,
18:24
kind of build the team around them over time as.
18:26
The so somebody who's got a smaller firm that you can then
18:29
absorb because they've got the expertise, a little bit of a
18:31
client base that, but you can mostly you're tapping into that.
18:34
Expertise and tap tapping into the expertise.
18:37
We also, you know, generally when we're trying to do this,
18:41
we're trying to find somebody that has kind of, you know, the
18:44
three little three legs of the stool.
18:46
They have the ability to do the work, they have the ability to
18:49
sell the work they have they're good market facing.
18:52
And then they're also really good at kind of developing
18:54
people below them. You know, they have that
18:55
coaching and development mindset to, you know, help, you know,
18:59
build the team around them that can be their future partners.
19:03
Is that something that's sort of baked into Bennett Thrasher
19:06
this? That's a big, I mean that's a
19:07
big piece of our success of our firm is finding those talented
19:12
individuals that have all those three skill sets and are able to
19:16
deliver on that consistently. And then we can, you know, then
19:20
we can build those teams around them to, you know, help fuel
19:23
that growth and opportunity. Even with your kind of frontline
19:26
employees, is there a big interest in investing in them
19:29
and educating them? That's a big piece of, you know,
19:33
training and development's a big piece of our firm.
19:35
And so we're always investing in our younger people, you know,
19:38
even to the fact that most firms don't do this, but we've all
19:41
even done business development training for people in the first
19:44
year of their career. You know, usually if most firms,
19:46
you don't see any business development training until they
19:48
get to maybe year 6789 when they're starting to get closer
19:52
to partner. We've done business development
19:54
training all the way down to our staff level and trying to, you
19:57
know, give them the skills. And, you know, the different,
20:00
the skills for business development look different for a
20:01
staff person versus the person that's a manager, senior
20:04
manager, director, that's, you know, on their pathway to
20:06
partner. But we're definitely, you know,
20:08
making sure that they have the skills to start those, build
20:11
those tools in an earlier stage of their career, which helps the
20:14
overall firm. And we pay, we pay commissions
20:16
and there's referral incentives for employees to generate
20:20
business at the earliest stage of their career.
20:22
So if they have contacts or people in their network or
20:24
people in their family that could become clients, they can,
20:27
you know, get paid for that as well.
20:29
I'm. Going to go back to what you
20:31
were talking about before in terms of wealth transfer.
20:34
And sometimes people haven't done the planning and there's an
20:37
unexpected event and it throws things into chaos.
20:40
In its simplest form, what should somebody do?
20:44
High net worth individual, a business owner?
20:47
What is sort of the basic building blocks that they need
20:50
to have in place? I mean generally the the
20:53
building blocks that we would expect to see for a high wealth
20:55
individual be first of all, you need a will, you know, it says
20:59
what happens to your assets if you pass away.
21:02
You want to have hopefully sufficient life insurance,
21:05
sufficient disability insurance, and then you'd also need to
21:09
have, you know, powers of attorney, medical powers of
21:11
attorney and you know, durable power attorney financial.
21:15
So if you were incapacitated or something, who's in control of
21:17
your assets? Who's in control of your health
21:19
care situation? So that's kind of the basic
21:22
blocking tackling. And then if you have a very
21:24
complicated situation, then you're probably going to have a
21:27
more complex estate plan, which is going to have maybe trust and
21:30
family partnerships and other vehicles that you're utilizing
21:34
to pass wealth, you know, at, you know, use it utilizing some
21:39
of the tools that are available in the state and tax code to be
21:42
able to, you know, minimize your state even further.
21:46
What's the difference between a medical power of attorney and a
21:49
durable power of? Attorney medical is basically
21:51
who's who has control of your healthcare decisions.
21:54
You know, so if if you're in the hospital and they say, hey, do
21:57
we need to pull the plug? Who's making that decision or
22:00
saying, do we want to give, you know, sustaining life care,
22:03
feeding tube or whatever financial power of attorney is?
22:07
Who's in control of your financial assets if you're
22:09
incapacity in some way? So if you were, you know, hit in
22:13
a car accident, you're in a coma.
22:15
Who's going to be in control of your financial decisions during
22:18
that time? Now, generally, if your people
22:20
are married, they're going to name their spouse first.
22:22
But if they're not married, they may have, you know, siblings or
22:25
parents or whoever's around that's going to be in, in
22:28
control of those, you know, decisions until they're, you
22:31
know, if they pass away, then at that point, then their will
22:34
takes control. But if they're incapacitated,
22:36
you need to have somebody that's in control during that time.
22:39
And, and unfortunately, you do see some situation, bad stories
22:42
where something happens and people don't have those
22:44
documents and then you have to go to court to try and figure
22:46
out who's in control of things. And those can always be
22:49
problematic and troubling. So you joined Bennett Thrasher
22:53
almost 24 years ago. They brought you into build.
22:57
Say it again. July of O2, correct?
22:59
July of O2, OK. And then in July of 22, you
23:04
moved into the CEO managing partner role.
23:07
Were there other sort of steps on the ladder in between there?
23:11
Yeah. So I, well, I think as we talked
23:13
about, I LED kind of, I was led and was a senior founding
23:16
partner of our personal fighter services group for a number of
23:19
years. I also served as the service
23:23
line leader of our tax practice, entire tax practice for about 5
23:26
years. In the middle.
23:27
I was a board member of the firm for I, I was admitted to the
23:31
board of the firm when I was like 3132 years old.
23:35
And so I've been on the board of the firm for I think every year
23:39
except one over the last 20 years or so.
23:42
And so those were some of the, I guess, stepping stones to
23:45
leadership that I had kind of before I became the CEO.
23:48
What was that transition like coming into the CEO role?
23:52
Yeah. So the way our process works is
23:54
you have kind of a two year transition.
23:57
And so I was elected as the, you know, incoming managing partner
24:02
in July of 2020, right in the middle of COVID.
24:04
Elected by the board. Our board, well it was elected,
24:08
but I'm put forward, we have a special committee basically who
24:12
decides who would be the next managing partner.
24:13
They make recommendation to the board and then to the full
24:16
partnership for a vote and you have to get a 75% vote of the
24:19
partnership to be admitted. So that's that's kind of the
24:23
process. So then I had a 24 month
24:25
transition and so I was riding alongside of our current Ceoi
24:29
was working on transitioning some of my clients and other
24:32
things that I needed to do to be positioned for the role.
24:35
And then, yeah, took over the role officially July of 22, but
24:40
unofficially I took it over January 1 of 22.
24:43
We decided with myself and the prior managing partner that
24:46
would make the transition easier.
24:48
So basically once I was, you know, I guess managing partner,
24:52
CEO and and waiting, he and I would basically collaborate, you
24:55
know, daily on any major decisions.
24:57
He wouldn't make any major decision without talking with me
24:59
because he didn't want to set me up for, you know, having to deal
25:02
with a decision that I didn't agree with.
25:04
And so for the first 18 months of the transition, that's kind
25:08
of the way it worked. He was kind of driving and I was
25:09
copilot. And then the last six months I
25:13
did, he basically put me in the seat.
25:15
I was operating as acting CEO and he was kind of copilot.
25:18
So I would talk with him about any major decisions to make sure
25:21
that he didn't think I was driving the train off the
25:23
tracks. And so that made the transition
25:25
much easier. When I took over July 122,
25:28
everybody had kind of been and used to me being the seat for
25:30
six months. And so it was pretty seamless
25:32
transition for much. More is this same transitionary
25:36
framework used for other key positions.
25:39
We've done it not. For two years, typically we're
25:42
doing like 6 months for other roles like service line leaders
25:47
and things like that. As you made that transition into
25:51
the CEO seat, what was something that really surprised you?
25:56
I mean, I think I didn't realize how many just unusual personnel
26:01
matters come up to the CEO desk. You know, I thought, oh, our
26:05
people officer deals with all that.
26:06
Well, they deal with a lot of them, but they don't deal with
26:09
the partner issues and they would deal with like very senior
26:11
people issues. They want the CEO to sign off on
26:13
those. So you end up getting a lot of
26:15
those unusual, you know, personnel matters across your
26:19
desk because it's like sometimes like, hey, we've never dealt
26:21
with this before, how should we deal with this?
26:23
And so those, those, those were, I wasn't totally, I mean, I
26:28
guess in my transition, I started to see and hear about
26:30
those. But those were some, those were
26:32
some things that I didn't anticipate fully, I guess as
26:34
much until I got in the seat. When that happens, I'm going to
26:37
guess there's still quite a bit of dialogue with your chief
26:40
people officer, maybe with some, you know, outside counsel as
26:43
well that focuses. I mean, you, you, you know,
26:46
sometimes we're bringing our legal counsel in than our, you
26:49
know, employment attorney if it's a unique issue that we
26:51
think we need to involve them in.
26:53
But a lot of times it's myself from the people officer making
26:55
that decision based on, hey, what do we think is the right
26:57
thing to do here? But yeah, we, we came across,
27:00
you know, pretty early in my CEO tenure, we had a employee that
27:05
their spouse died fairly unexpectedly.
27:07
And we're like, what, what do we do?
27:09
You know, we've never had this happen in the firm.
27:10
And so, you know, we had to figure out what's the right
27:14
pathway to, you know, how to navigate that and how much time
27:16
we give and what kind of, you know, parameters around leave,
27:19
etcetera, that you know, are well beyond what you would
27:21
normally expect for bereavement leave.
27:23
So the different situations like that do come up at times.
27:27
Whether it's at Bennett, Thrasher, you know, earlier work
27:30
at Arthur Andersen, can you tell us about a curveball situation?
27:34
You know, a difficult thing that you had to kind of work through
27:37
from a work perspective. Taught you a powerful lesson
27:40
just to hold with you today. I mean, that one, that one was
27:44
one just dealing with, you know, an unexpected death for, you
27:48
know, an employee and trying to figure out how do we best
27:51
support this person? How do we give them the time
27:53
they need to grieve? This individual had a, you know,
27:57
a young family with three young children and, you know, how do
28:00
we just navigate through that and support them as best we can?
28:03
I mean, that was, that's probably one of the biggest
28:05
curveballs I've been thrown. Obviously, you know, we've had,
28:07
we've had other, you know, situations where we've had
28:09
other, you know, employees with really, really dire, you know,
28:13
health situations and we, you know, have to kind of operate
28:17
outside of the normal confines of our benefits plan to kind of
28:20
provide additional, you know, support to them, things like
28:22
that. So I mean, there's always, not
28:25
always, but there's often these things that come up that you
28:27
know, aren't really in your, you know, employment manual.
28:30
How do you deal with this? So those are, those are always
28:34
interesting. And you know, we always, I think
28:36
we always with our people first mentality, we always try to do
28:39
what's what do we think's in the best interest of this person and
28:42
give them a lot of grades and try to work through it to
28:45
support them as best we could. I mean, it sounds like obviously
28:48
a firm your size, you have to have a pretty good size, you
28:52
know, and play handbook, you know, here are the rules, here
28:54
are the benefits, Here's what happens in XY or Z.
28:57
But it also sounds like there's a fair bit of flexibility.
29:00
Yeah. I mean, there's times where
29:02
we're like, you know, the standard handbook is not going
29:05
to be sufficient to address this situation.
29:07
And so, yeah, we're going to try and do what we think's in the
29:10
best interest to support this person if they're dealing with a
29:13
really catastrophic, you know, situation in their family that
29:16
we, we, we want to be, you know, if we say we're people 1st and
29:20
family first, then that's how, how do we take care of this
29:23
person and allow them, you know, the grace and opportunity to
29:26
work through this and, you know, keep their position here and
29:29
make sure that they feel comfortable with how we'd handle
29:31
this and they know that we did the right thing for them.
29:35
You know, a lot of accounting firms are really experiencing
29:39
rapid technological change. Can you walk us through one or
29:45
two recent innovations at Bennett Thrasher that's helped
29:48
you guys stay a step ahead? Yeah.
29:50
So I mean, I think obviously AI and automation are a big, big
29:53
topic. And so we've we've invested in a
29:56
number of different automation technologies.
29:59
There's something we use called Laurel AI, which is basically a
30:02
helps people enter their time. So basically it sits on top of
30:06
your system and it tells you all the different things you did
30:08
today. So instead of you having to like
30:10
write down or somewhere monitor how you spent your time, Laurel
30:14
AI will basically tell you, here's what I think, here's how
30:17
I think you spent your time. It'll give you kind of first
30:18
draft of your time entry, which is a big, you know, pain in the
30:21
butt for a lot of accountants having to keep track of that.
30:25
You know, we've also invested in other tools.
30:27
Trulian's a tool we use on the audit side that has a lot of AI
30:30
built into it. And we're also, we're using
30:34
copilot. Yeah.
30:34
So just about all of our people have access to copilot and a lot
30:37
of them are using that. We're trying to get, you know,
30:39
where the best use cases for how do you use copilot to make your
30:43
job more efficient and take out the monotonous task of your day
30:47
that, you know, maybe isn't, you know, your favorite thing to do.
30:49
And it can, you know, streamline some of those elements can help
30:53
you write memos. Other things like there's a
30:54
number of also tax research softwares we use Blue Jay is one
31:00
of them and Co counsel's another one that have a lot of AI built
31:04
into those tools. And so it makes tax research
31:07
much quicker, allows people to, you know, very quickly, maybe
31:10
produce a letter or a memo that can give the, you know, basic
31:14
elements of a tax idea or strategy to a client.
31:18
And now you still need to have somebody that understands the
31:20
law overlooking it to make sure it's not hallucinating,
31:23
etcetera. But it can, you know, if you
31:26
might have a, maybe it would have taken somebody, hey, it's
31:29
going to take me 4 hours to write this memo.
31:31
Or maybe now it takes you 30 minutes because it gives you a
31:33
great first draft and, you know, a minute and then or less and
31:37
then you're, you know, cleaning it up to make it a, a fit your
31:40
client's needs. So those are some of the tools
31:42
that we're seeing. And you know, we're also
31:45
starting to invest in Domo, another tool that has some
31:48
automations and other things that overlays, you know, ways
31:52
for us to help, you know, build out some automations to do
31:55
certain tax work, etcetera. You know, the Laurel AI is the
31:59
one that really caught my attention because geez, what was
32:02
this 2526 years ago, one of my companies built one of the first
32:06
SAS products out there. It was a time tracking solution.
32:10
And people love that you could do this now on your computer
32:13
rather than, you know, a program that had to be uploaded.
32:16
But the the biggest problem was people didn't want to enter
32:19
their time. They got busy.
32:21
They were doing this. And So what you're, you know,
32:23
describing they're very basic, but sounds like, wow, what a
32:26
time saver. Yeah, I think, you know, we're,
32:29
we're, we've been using it for probably 8 months or so.
32:33
So we're trying to get everybody to use it.
32:36
Some people have, you know, go, I still like to do my old way,
32:39
but we're trying to get as many people to use it as possible and
32:41
make sure that we think it is a we think it is a tool that can
32:44
be very beneficial to firm if everybody uses it and helps
32:48
capture more time. Maybe people, I think based on
32:51
what Laurel has done for us and our first little pilot of it,
32:54
they're saying that the average person captures an extra about
32:57
20 minutes a day if they use the tool versus time they may have
33:00
somehow just slipped through their fingers.
33:03
And so there's a way for it to create, you know, additional
33:06
efficiencies there. Plus, hopefully it's it's making
33:08
a lot easier for people to get their time entry and in addition
33:11
to capturing time that may have previously just gone vanished.
33:15
Yeah, fantastic. And what is the Domo tool?
33:17
How are you guys leveraging that?
33:19
Domo, we're using that in a couple ways. 1 is on the tax
33:22
side. There's a way to use that to
33:25
create automations to get information, you know, things we
33:28
may ingest from clients into our tax software more efficiently.
33:33
And then we're also going to be using it to do a lot of overlay
33:37
and financial analytics and reporting across our entire all
33:40
the different softwares we have within our firm basically pulls
33:43
pieces that together and makes them all work with kind of API
33:47
type strategy or API kind of integrations.
33:50
So Jeff as you. Look into your crystal ball.
33:53
Where do you see AI tech going? How do you see this fitting into
33:58
your workforce, replacing folks, supplementing folks?
34:02
How do you think about it? I think I mean our view is it's
34:05
not going. To stop us from hiring people,
34:07
it's going to, my view is it will make our people more
34:11
efficient. They can probably be more
34:13
productive. So if you know, let's say maybe
34:16
20% of their day today is doing stuff that, you know, they don't
34:19
consider productive or it's, you know, monotonous, you know,
34:23
number crunching, if that can do a lot of that and do that really
34:26
quickly, that gives them more time to do more, you know, high
34:30
level advisory work for our clients and be more advisory
34:33
oriented earlier stages of their career.
34:35
A lot of times early stage accountants, they're doing a lot
34:37
of crunching numbers and analytics.
34:40
If a lot of that analytics can be done by these tools, that's
34:43
going to give them more opportunity to spend more of
34:45
their time at earlier stages of their career is, you know, true
34:47
trusted advisors to our clients and we'll be spending more time
34:51
upskilling them at earlier points in their career.
34:54
So I think that's my general view is I don't think it's going
34:56
to reduce the number of accountants.
34:58
It's just going to make each of our accountants, you know, more
35:00
efficient. Now, I guess maybe over some
35:02
period of time, you say we don't need to hire quite as many
35:04
people, but we're not going to be eliminating positions.
35:07
I think it's just going to allow us to do more work with the same
35:10
number of people and and be more advisory oriented, which we're
35:14
that's really where I think a lot of the value add for our
35:16
clients is if we're more advisory oriented versus
35:19
compliance oriented, that's where they that's where they
35:21
want to spend our time anyway, this may be oversimplifying.
35:25
It but kind of getting out of the spreadsheets and getting
35:28
more face to face with the clients, correct.
35:30
Yeah, I think more, more. Opportunity for consultative
35:33
discussions and consultative oriented planning and strategy
35:37
for the clients is is where we would like to be spending more
35:40
of our time and I think the clients will appreciate it too.
35:42
And generally that's what they're willing to pay more
35:44
money for the is that, you know, that real strategy and planning
35:48
versus, you know, pure kind of compliance oriented work.
35:52
So I expect it's going to be a continued emphasis for us.
35:56
I do think we're not going to be building our own AI tools.
36:00
And in great part, I think we're going to be fast followers.
36:03
You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of, you know,
36:07
technology providers that are rolling out new tools every day
36:11
for the accounting industry. And so our view is, you know,
36:13
find the best tools and then adopt those and and utilize
36:17
those to serve our client base in the best way.
36:20
And it, it's evolving very quickly as you would expect.
36:24
Bennett. Thrasher talks a lot about being
36:26
Better Together. Yeah.
36:29
I'm curious to hear your approach to attracting and
36:32
retaining good talent in a tight labor market.
36:36
Yeah, I mean, it's a big. It's a big emphasis for us.
36:38
I mean, so yeah, Better Together really came from, we're a very
36:41
collaborative firm. And so we have a mindset of
36:45
trying to bring all of the services the firm offers to our
36:47
clients and, and not just have like a partner say, oh, this is
36:51
my client and I just do this and nobody else gets involved.
36:54
And so we have a big focus on cross serving clients and trying
36:57
to make sure that we're bringing the full breadth of all of our
37:00
services across the firm to all of our clients.
37:04
But a big part of that is, you know, if we're is leaning into
37:07
our people and making sure that we're engaged with them and
37:10
creating opportunities for their learning, growth and
37:12
development. And so that's a big piece of how
37:14
we keep quick people is we give them opportunities at earlier
37:18
stages in their career to accelerate and advance what
37:21
they're working on. And that keeps as long as people
37:24
are making progress in their career and seeing that
37:27
opportunity for the future. And they can see that, you know
37:30
that we as a firm have promoted 45 partners over the last 10
37:34
years or created 45 partners. That gives them that opportunity
37:38
to say, hey, there's a lot of opportunity or this firm for me
37:41
and this is a place I want to be, especially if they have that
37:44
family atmosphere and they kind of feel that people first.
37:47
Hey, we care about our people and that's one of our key
37:50
differentiators. That creates the opportunity for
37:52
us to have tremendous retention of our great people 'cause you
37:55
see that a lot from your folks. Is that they really want to
37:58
advance in their career. They want to know that, hey,
38:00
there's an opportunity for me to grow here.
38:03
Definitely, yeah. So I I.
38:05
Also note that you're actively involved in different
38:08
philanthropic and advisory boards, like the Children's
38:11
Healthcare of Atlanta Legacy Advisors Board.
38:14
You're a busy guy, You've got a family.
38:16
Why take time away from your busy schedule to get involved in
38:20
this kind of work? Yeah, So I think you know I.
38:22
I'll give my parents credit for that at an early stage.
38:25
You know, they, they were both very philanthropically oriented
38:29
and, you know, charitable. And so they, they taught me that
38:32
was important to always give back to the community.
38:34
And so pretty early stage in my career, as I had opportunities,
38:38
I got involved with different charitable activities and making
38:40
sure that we're giving back within the community.
38:43
It's a big element of what our firm does.
38:44
Yeah, we have our own foundation and we give, you know,
38:47
percentage of our top line profits goes directly into our
38:50
foundation, which we're giving out to, you know, different
38:52
charitable organizations across the entire country where we
38:55
operate. And, and we also have a big
38:58
element of we give each of our people at least, you know, two
39:01
days a year to dedicated to philanthropic activities as
39:04
well. And, you know, we also have a
39:06
big element of, you know, last last past year, we did, you
39:10
know, Foundation Day where we had, I think close to 300 plus
39:14
people across the firm, across the entire, you know, you know,
39:17
swath of our different offices doing charitable activities in
39:20
their markets. So it's a, it's a big piece of
39:23
what we are as a firm. It's a big part of what, you
39:25
know, I was taught from a young age by my parents.
39:28
And so we love to give back. And, you know, giving back is a
39:31
great way to, you know, just, yeah, pay, pay, pay back to the
39:36
people that have helped us have so much success.
39:38
I like that. Is there an observation from
39:42
your job 'cause you get to, you get sort of a special view,
39:45
right? You have many clients, lots of
39:47
different industries. I'm curious, do you get any
39:50
insight into the broader economy, like what's really
39:53
going on right now, What's taking place?
39:55
Yeah, I I, I get to see it A. Lot you know, so I'm in in
39:58
addition to just. Interacting with clients I'm
40:01
also part of the Vistage CEO group and so I sit in the room
40:05
with 15 other peer CEOs once a month and we're talking about
40:09
our businesses and interacting with each other.
40:11
And so I get to see a lot of the, you know what's going on in
40:15
the economy for through multiple different industries and Vistage
40:19
as well as as sitting in my CEO seat.
40:22
So yeah, it's definitely in, in, in generally, I would say right
40:25
now the economy is in pretty good shape actually with, I was
40:29
at the Atlanta Rotary today and we had a presentation by Rafael
40:32
Bostic, who's the President and CEO of Atlanta Fed.
40:35
And so he was talking a little bit about the economy as well.
40:38
But what we're seeing is consistent with what he was
40:41
saying. He said, you know, I think last
40:42
year GDP growth's probably in the 2 1/2, maybe a little bit
40:46
higher percent range and they're expecting similar if maybe not
40:50
slightly better this year. And that's pretty consistent
40:52
with what I've been seeing from our clients.
40:54
A lot of our clients are doing quite well across many different
40:57
industries. Do you see your clients?
41:00
Being broadly speaking in hiring mode this year or more
41:05
sustaining, I think I. Think we've seen some hiring for
41:09
sure. I don't I think we would say
41:13
it's not like massively robust, but I think you're seeing people
41:18
add some some headcount, but it's it's probably you know,
41:23
maybe slightly above average, but not like it maximum levels,
41:27
no where are. You seeing what are the
41:30
headwinds, the headwinds, I mean, I.
41:32
Think there's certainly some concerns still around impact of
41:35
tariffs. A lot of folks are still talking
41:38
about that and is there going to be a additional impacts from
41:41
that, you know, concerns around inflation, you know, the markets
41:45
had a, you know, stock markets had a really good run.
41:47
You know, is there some softness there that may come into play?
41:51
But for the most part, I think, you know, the, the general, you
41:55
know, economy we've seen to be pretty strong, you know, our
41:58
transaction advisory groups having a tremendous start to the
42:02
year. And so there are a lot of times
42:04
a good bellwether for what we're seeing in the economy.
42:07
If if transaction activity is strong when people are buying
42:10
companies, that typically bodes well for the overall economic
42:13
environment. Oh, that's interesting.
42:15
OK. How about something surprising
42:18
you've come to understand about human psychology from your work?
42:23
Something, well, I think well, one thing I would say is, you
42:28
know, people what's in it for me, you know they, they people
42:33
always want to know what's in it for them first, you know, so
42:35
that there are that's something you have to be, you know, making
42:39
sure your messaging, you know here, if I'm going to ask you to
42:41
do something here's what's here's the benefit to you.
42:44
And so I think there that's that's one interesting thing I
42:47
think I've learned from psychology over time for sure.
42:52
But certainly that's not. Surprising.
42:55
It's not. It's not overly surprising.
42:56
But I, I, I don't know, I guess I, I generally, I don't always
43:01
think about myself first. I try to think of others.
43:03
So maybe it's, and I think a lot of our people do, but it is
43:06
something that you, you, you come across as you're working
43:09
through. Where's the firm?
43:12
Going What are the exciting things that are on the horizon?
43:16
Well, I I. I think I mentioned earlier
43:17
briefly, you know we've launched into Dallas and Denver over the
43:20
last couple years. Both those markets are growing
43:23
at tremendous clips. And so we're continuing to
43:25
invest in those markets, hiring lateral partners in those
43:28
markets and trying to create a lot of opportunity.
43:30
We think there's tremendous growth there, but while also
43:33
continuing to invest, you know, in our Atlanta market, which,
43:36
you know, we have a very nice market share here.
43:39
So I, I think our goal is, you know, to continue to grow at a
43:43
double digit clip. And I think this past year we
43:45
finished right around 10% growth.
43:48
And so it that's our, that's a goal for us generally annually
43:52
is to try and continue to grow around that level.
43:54
And it's, it gets harder and harder the bigger you get, but
43:58
we've had some pretty good success and a lot of it is just
44:01
making sure that we're continuing to, you know, lean
44:04
into our people. I think my view is if if we're
44:07
taking great care of our people, they're taking great care of our
44:09
clients. And that continues to create
44:11
opportunity for growth. Yeah, But we've had a big focus
44:15
just on growth and accountability across our entire
44:17
partnership. Like what are we, what are we
44:19
doing every day to continue to focus on that and making sure
44:22
that we're executing for our clients and for our people.
44:25
Jeff, who's your ideal? Client Our ideal client A.
44:30
Lot of them are privately owned. So you know, we, I would say we
44:33
spent a lot of time working with companies between 50 million and
44:36
$500 million in revenue that are privately owned.
44:40
Those there's a lot of opportunity for us to work with
44:42
those types of clients. A lot of times, many times those
44:45
clients might or prospective clients might be working with a
44:49
smaller firm and they maybe about that firm and they didn't
44:52
realize it. Or maybe even occasionally maybe
44:55
they decided they thought they needed to use a big four or a
44:58
national firm. And then they realize, well, I'm
45:00
not getting the kind of service I want.
45:01
And so that's where usually our, our business is coming usually
45:04
from people that have outgrown their CPA firm, accounting firm
45:07
and somebody brings, brings it to their attention, or they just
45:10
realize, hey, maybe there's a better way.
45:12
Or they went up market with a national firm and they realize
45:15
I'm too small or I'm not getting the level of service I want.
45:18
And so they, you know, they re evaluate the market and see who
45:22
else is out there that really has the the right mindset to
45:24
serve them in a really proactive way.
45:27
And so when they do that. Obviously they're talking to
45:30
multiple firms at that time. Many times, yes, yeah.
45:33
Why do? They ultimately decide on.
45:34
Bennett Thrasher Then I think a lot of it, you know, is
45:37
generally the. You know, the relationship we we
45:40
build with them through that process, their ability maybe to
45:43
see that we have expertise in their industry.
45:47
And, you know, the really some of the ideas and strategies we
45:50
may bring to them in our, you know, initial evaluation process
45:54
that they can see that, you know, we really have talented
45:56
individuals that have a lot of skill sets that, you know, bring
45:59
something different to the table that maybe they weren't seeing
46:02
from their previous provider. What industries are your
46:05
strongest? In our biggest, well, our
46:08
biggest. Industries are, you know, high
46:10
net worth individuals. If you consider that an
46:11
industry, real estate, technology, manufacturing,
46:16
distribution, professional services, healthcare, those are
46:21
some of the biggest investment companies.
46:23
So like private equity backed companies and investment
46:26
companies is another large industry segment for us.
46:28
So those are some of the biggest ones for us as a firm.
46:32
Let's shift gears for a moment, Jeff.
46:34
You know, behind every success story there's usually a chapter
46:37
that almost broke someone. Can you share a serious
46:40
challenge that you've gone through, personal or
46:42
professional, how you got through it and what you learned
46:46
well? One of my biggest, I think
46:48
challenges was the whole collapse of Arthur Andersen.
46:51
You know, I went to Arthur Andersen thinking this is like
46:54
BIG4 safest firm in the world. I'm going to try and make
46:58
partner here. And then kind of one day you
47:00
wake up and you're, you're reading about your firm in the
47:04
Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and it looks like we're
47:07
going out of business. So that was a that was a pretty
47:08
crazy time, especially at the time that, you know, I had a, a
47:12
brand new son who was born in April of 2002, right as the firm
47:15
was, you know, collapsing. So that was pretty stressful
47:18
time for me. I'm just trying to figure out
47:20
what I want to do, you know, do I want to stay in the big four?
47:23
Do I want to go, you know, launch out with a firm like a
47:26
Bennett Thrasher? And so, you know, I've been
47:29
fortunate. It worked out quite well, but at
47:31
the time it was very stressful. And I remember my wife, my wife
47:34
and I are like, you know, this is yeah, we didn't, this wasn't
47:36
on the playbook. Yeah.
47:37
We didn't think that, you know, you working Arthur Andersen was
47:40
ever that your company was going to be out of business.
47:42
You know, fortunately we landed at Deloitte.
47:44
But nevertheless, it just created a lot of chaos that
47:47
wasn't foreseen. And, you know, it was at the
47:50
time, it was very, very stressful.
47:51
But it worked out. And, you know, been been pretty
47:54
good, pretty good run. I've been a thrasher.
47:56
But it was not without its challenges at the time.
47:59
So what was the time? Frame between when the news
48:03
started hitting the fan to where you landed at Bennett Thresher.
48:08
Yeah. So I think.
48:10
The news about Enron hit in October of 2001 when like Enron
48:16
was failing. And then I think it was maybe
48:18
like early January when they started trying to point the
48:22
finger at at Anderson saying, you know, hey, some documents
48:26
were were shredded and, you know, eventually the whole thing
48:30
was overturned like a year and a half later.
48:32
But at the time, once, you know, Anderson's was in was in the
48:36
news as a potential, hey, you are to these guys, there's
48:39
questions about some of the crazy, you know, financial
48:42
positions they took. And so it went from being in
48:46
news everyday, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, from
48:48
pretty much I think that January of 2002 all the way up till, you
48:54
know, the firm was indicted in March of 2002.
48:58
So basically once March, March, March, mid March, I think of
49:01
2002 happened, It was pretty clear Anderson can't continue in
49:05
business, even though a lot of the clients I worked with high
49:07
wealth clients, they had no intention to leave the firm.
49:10
But once you lost all the really large held the company audit
49:12
work, they had to find a, a landing ground.
49:15
And so, you know, going to, you know, merging into the Deloitte
49:19
practice was the option and many, many parts, many parts of
49:22
Anderson across the country, Atlanta, Deloitte, some went to
49:25
other BIG4 firms, but Deloitte picked up the biggest piece of
49:29
the Anderson practice across the United States.
49:31
And so, yeah, it was, it was pretty, pretty crazy times from,
49:36
you know, every day you're reading about, you know, your
49:38
firm in the news. And occasionally we would get
49:40
some voicemails from the voicemails or emails from the
49:43
CEO of Arthur Anderson at the time.
49:45
But yeah, it was, it was very chaotic times for sure.
49:49
Where did you find support? And stability through the chaos.
49:53
I mean some of. My colleagues, because we were
49:55
all talking about it, obviously, what's happening, What are we
49:58
going to do? But also, you know, my, my
50:00
parents, you know, they were good advisors to me to remain
50:04
calm. And also my wife was also
50:07
another stabilizing force at the time.
50:09
But yeah, I was definitely, definitely something.
50:11
Just don't, don't anticipate when you go into the accounting
50:15
field with a big firm that, you know, that could ever happen.
50:18
Yeah. And here's something.
50:19
That I think I heard you said. I want to make sure I
50:21
understand. It was actually all overturned a
50:23
year and a half later. Yeah, later on that Arthur.
50:26
Andersen indictment basically ended up being overturned.
50:30
They were found not guilty, but that damage was done by that
50:33
point, you know, so it was, you know, once, once the reputation
50:37
was in shambles, they basically had to every firm part of the
50:40
firm had it kind of scattered in the wind to go into other firms
50:43
that where, you know, people could take the clients because
50:46
the clients trusted their partner or their manager,
50:49
whoever was working on their account.
50:51
And so most of those relationships kind of went to
50:54
those places. But yeah, it was the the firm's
50:57
name basically was tattered at the time.
51:01
So funny enough, now the Anderson name was rekindled and
51:06
Anderson tax is all actually became a public company late
51:11
last year. So somebody basic, some of the
51:14
Anderson partners went to another firm, which was called,
51:18
I think, World Tax and Advisory Services.
51:21
They bought the Anderson name back, I think about 10 years
51:24
ago. I guess enough time had passed
51:26
that they felt like the name was still OK and they bought it.
51:30
And then they rebranded their firms Anderson Tax.
51:32
And then they basically went public here recently last year.
51:36
Oh, interesting. So they're hoping Anderson
51:38
name's back in business. So they're hoping that enough
51:41
people. Remember the positive legacy,
51:43
but not the negative for the most part if you talk to.
51:46
Most people, because Arthur Anderson, I, you know, I'm, I
51:50
guess I'm biased. It had one of the best
51:52
reputations in the entire industry at the time, you know,
51:54
very kind of premier firm, obviously.
51:57
And a lot of people realize, hey, what happened with that,
52:01
you know, and ended up getting overturned.
52:02
And it was kind of Enron needed a scapegoat And you know, we
52:06
became the scapegoat at the time and it all ended up getting
52:09
overturned later. But nevertheless, you know, a
52:11
lot of damage was done to a lot of people.
52:13
A lot of people lost their jobs. Some people lost their jobs and
52:16
didn't, you know, get a job at Deloitte or wherever and you
52:20
know, and also a lot of the partners lost a lot of money.
52:22
So it was it was definitely trying time.
52:25
I was fortunate I was not a partner.
52:27
I was just below partner. But it was still still still
52:30
quite trying at the time and not not a fun process, Jeff.
52:35
What's your superpower? I would.
52:38
Say my superpower is ability to compartmentalize and focus so I
52:43
can have a lot of different crazy things going on in one
52:47
aspect of my life for dealing with some crazy client
52:51
challenges or whatever. And I can just put it in the
52:53
compartment and focus on what I need to focus on at that moment.
52:57
And allows me to be able to continue to be very, you know,
53:01
successful even in spite of, you know, other little storms going
53:05
on in the background. If you had.
53:08
To recommend a book or a podcast to our listeners, something
53:11
that's been really helpful for you.
53:12
What would you say? Well, I'm I've.
53:16
Got a few that I'm reading now. I'm reading the AI Driven Leader
53:20
here by Jeff Woods. I'm early stages on this one.
53:23
I haven't finished it. I'm trying to.
53:27
I mean, there's there's a lot of good books out there.
53:30
When I was young, my dad was a big proponent of Tony Robbins,
53:34
so I read Wake and the Giant within.
53:36
I love Tony Robbins stuff. I'll watch a lot of his stuff
53:39
now on Twitter and Instagram, little some of his little videos
53:43
and snippets. I listened to all of his at that
53:47
time, all of his tapes. So I'm a big fan of Tony, you
53:54
know, some good books, good to great's a great book.
53:57
I love Malcolm Gladwell. I'm trying to think of other
54:02
ones that are. I've been waiting for him to
54:04
come out with a new. Book, I love his stuff.
54:07
Yeah. No, he's he's great.
54:09
Yeah, yeah. Patrick Patrick Lanciani.
54:13
Is another one that I've I liked a lot of his stuff.
54:16
What's a message from him that you?
54:17
Take away. I mean, he's got.
54:19
You know, death by meeting 5 dysfunction as a team.
54:22
Those are both great books that I read and just trying to, you
54:25
know, be more how how do you be more efficient?
54:28
You know, how do you compartmentalize things?
54:31
You know, he's, he's really good in that realm.
54:34
Any daily habits I don't know help you get your day started or
54:38
keep you on track? I mean, I'm, I'm pretty.
54:41
Religious about calendaring myself, you know, so I
54:44
basically, if it's not on my calendar, it doesn't happen.
54:47
I schedule most everything. I also try to block out a couple
54:51
hours a day for just kind of focus time, you know, just to
54:54
catch up on things and, and spend a little time around focus
54:58
and strategy. I, I like, I read a lot.
55:01
I read a lot of, you know, books.
55:02
I read a lot of articles. I'm just always trying to keep
55:05
kind of, you know, ahead of what's.
55:08
Out there and. Try to look at a lot of
55:09
different perspectives on things.
55:13
Jeff, I've just got. One more question for you today,
55:15
but before I ask it, I'm going to do 3 quick things.
55:18
First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with Jeff call
55:21
or guest today. First of all, you can go to
55:23
their website whichisbtcpa.net BT as in Bennett Thrasher,
55:28
btcpa.net, also his e-mail address
55:32
jeff.callcalljeff.call@btcpa.net. And you sure you want me to get
55:40
about your office number? I'm going to do it.
55:43
All right, here come 6. 7830214566783021456 that's his
55:51
office number. You can call him 678-302-1456.
55:55
All that information will be in the show notes if you missed it.
55:59
Also, if you're enjoying the show, a quick comment or review
56:02
on your favorite podcast app goes a long way towards helping
56:06
others discover our show. So thank you for taking a quick
56:09
moment to do that right now. And as a reminder, if you want
56:12
to be the hero advisor that shows your clients how to get
56:15
their employees access to therapists, doctors and
56:17
prescription meds that, as paradoxical as it seems,
56:21
actually increases the company's net profits, reach out to us at
56:25
Add Back benefits.com. So last question for you today,
56:28
Jeff, a year from now, what is 1 specific thing that you hope to
56:32
be celebrating? I think we're, we're hoping that
56:37
we're going to be able to hit over 135 million of revenue this
56:42
coming year. So that's a big, that's a new, a
56:44
big target for us. And I'm hope I'm, I'm hoping I'm
56:47
celebrating an another record year for growth for the firm
56:50
and, and all of our people being really pleased with how we
56:54
finished out 2026. Love it.
56:57
We'll check back in. In a year to see how you're
56:59
coming along with that Jeff call from bed and Thrasher, I want to
57:02
be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your
57:05
story with us today. I really appreciate you being
57:07
here. Yeah, it's my pleasure.
57:09
Thanks. Anthony for having me, folks.
57:11
That's a wrap on another episode of.
57:12
The Inspired Stories podcast Thanks for learning with us.
57:15
And if one thing stood out, try putting it into action today.