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TfP 006. Starting your own firm and growing the right client base · Transforming: Tales of Business Evolution

• 0:00
  FEMALE_1: Welcome to Transforming: Tales of Business Evolution, where we delve into the dynamic world of business transformation. Each episode is designed for firms of any size and scale, exploring both innovative long-term planning and day-to-day operating practices that help organizations adapt to a changing landscape. Join us each month as we hear from leaders in the public accounting profession sharing their experiences of reshaping their business models and inspiring you to explore new ways to evolve your own organization. Let's dive into this month's conversation now.
• 0:01
  Erin Hartman: Hello. I am Erin Hartman, Senior Manager with the Firm Services team at the AICPA and CIMA. PCPS or Private Companies Practice Section is focused on the evolution of accounting firms and modernizing accounting operations through our transforming your business model project. We aim to highlight practitioners who are doing things differently to make this a sustainable profession and one that works for their lifestyle.
• 0:02
  Erin Hartman: Yuri has worked for Big Four and other major accounting firms, but he took a bold step and left all of that to open his own practice, Kapilovich and Associates. Yuri, I would love to talk about your journey that got you to where you are now, both professionally and personally because I feel like all of that goes together why people make the decisions that they make. What motivated you to leave the big firms that you worked for and start your own practice?
• 0:02
  Yuri Kapilovich: It's a great question, and it's one that's got a lot of story to it, but I'm going to try to condense it for you. I feel like I've always been entrepreneurial in mindset, and I've always been someone who thinks maybe a little differently in the bigger firms mentality. When I was at the big firms, I jumped around a few firms, all the way from Big Four, all the way down to a smaller regional firm with about 100 people.
• 0:03
  Yuri Kapilovich: Throughout that experience, I've always taken the goods and the bads, if you will, learned and adjusted. My big thing about it was, I just wanted to do things my way and a lot of the battles that I was having during those times where obviously, I saw the profession and I saw the way that I wanted to do things, but there were certain things that were limiting me in some of the firms. That's really what led me to go out on my own, try to pave my own path, and to make what's now known as a lifestyle firm.
• 0:03
  Erin Hartman: Three years ago. How did you decide that it was the right time in your life to make that change? Had you thought about it for years or had you always known that you would do it?
• 0:04
  Yuri Kapilovich: I thought about it for a while, but there's this concept of, well, I'm sure you've heard the term golden handcuffs. It's that when you're at the firms, you're making good money, I was making $150,000 right before leaving to go out on my own. I was at a great firm that had good support, a good resource system, and everything, and it's scary. more importantly than that, I also had a three-year-old son, my son was three years old at the time and health insurance that my family was covered under.
• 0:04
  Yuri Kapilovich: It's very hard to just leave all that and go out into that wild abyss, wild open field, as I call it, of self-employment. But the answer of why I ended up doing it when I did three years ago, because I didn't want to do it before, but the opportunity presented itself to buy out a firm. I was $100,000 worth of work that I was going to buy out and that was the premise of when I gave notice. It was basically because I had that in the pipeline.
• 0:05
  Yuri Kapilovich: Five days after I gave notice, that deal fell through. The person who was going to give me the work actually ended up getting sued, and he was not able to do so. Basically, I had a decision to make. Five days after giving notice. Do I just go back and say, never mind, I'll stay. Just kidding, or just roll with it, and I decided to roll with it. That was the initial jolt of entrepreneurship. Starting off in a scary way in many ways.
• 0:05
  Yuri Kapilovich: It would have been hard. Interestingly enough, I had this vision in mind that I would get a certain amount of prospect work for myself. Fifty thousand was what I thought. If I could secure that, I would leave in November or whatever it is of that year, and then I'll be able to start off in April, so that January to April, I'll collect that 50,000, and I'll be okay. That was my initial thought, but then that deal came through and I was like, perfect. I'll do that. But then that fell apart, so yeah, a lot of factors.
• 0:06
  Yuri Kapilovich: It would have been hard. Interestingly enough, I had this vision in mind that I would get a certain amount of prospect work for myself. Fifty thousand was what I thought. If I could secure that, I would leave in November or whatever it is of that year, and then I'll be able to start off in April, so that January to April, I'll collect that 50,000, and I'll be okay. That was my initial thought, but then that deal came through and I was like, perfect. I'll do that. But then that fell apart, so yeah, a lot of factors.
• 0:06
  Yuri Kapilovich: A lot. It was a lot of conversations with my wife and myself internally. Do I do it? Do I not do it? But at that point, I said, I already gave notice. Going back on a notice is typically not something I would recommend doing to anyone. For me, what I ended up doing was I start thinking, how can I do it? How can I basically fix this temporarily, but still go? My solution to that was contracting.
• 0:07
  Yuri Kapilovich: I ended up going out there, finding a great firm that I contract with and actually, interestingly enough, the first firm I contracted with straight after this whole mess and they started looking around happened, they were in Manhattan. I live in Central Jersey area, and we basically take the bus. I would take the bus two days a week to Manhattan to work at this contracting gig that I had. I did that for about a month, but that's actually where my LinkedIn posting began. It's all crazy when you think back at it.
• 0:07
  Yuri Kapilovich: On that bus ride, takes about an hour to an hour-and-a-half, in there, I would just make posts about how to make the accounting profession interesting. The things that I've learned during the time, things that I've always wanted to share with people for value and help them thrive versus survive in public accounting. I would just share that, tips for staff, tips for managers. Then eventually, it just evolved into more and more posting.
• 0:08
  Yuri Kapilovich: Not as much time. There is an upside to being on a bus or on a train, too, to just sit there and hang out and take your mind off of things.
• 0:08
  Erin Hartman: For sure. I want to get back to your LinkedIn posting at some point in the conversation. Also you brought up a good point. You talked about leaving in November, which I think that's what you're saying. In the accounting world, there are narrow windows of time that you're not just seen as betraying by leaving. That's a good that's a good point those windows run out. Again, I'm sure you were thinking, if I don't do it now, I'm going to have to wait until after the next because he sees them.
• 0:09
  Yuri Kapilovich: The easiest thing one can do is keep pushing it back and pushing it back, knowing deep down inside that that's what you want to do. But honestly, there's really never a good time. The reality if it is November is probably the best time because, yes, it's after October 15th, you're not letting anybody down. You don't want to burn any bridges on the way out. That's very important.
• 0:09
  Yuri Kapilovich: November 1st, if that would be your last day, you would give notice on October 15th, you'd have two weeks, basically by November 1st, and then you can start your processes, get your tax preparation software, get your own client portals, do all those things. December, you can roll out your engagement letters, and January, you're ready to go. That's why I, in my mind, thought November would be great and that's what I typically recommend people that would reach out to me as far as timing.
• 0:10
  Yuri Kapilovich: Sure. I like these questions that they make me go back in time. A lot of times you really just roll with it, and next thing, three years passes, and you forget, so good question. The first thing that jumps in my mind is health insurance. To be perfectly honest, that's the biggest one of the biggest hurdles. Obviously, when you're in a firm, your health insurance is most it covered. You may be paying like 500 bucks a month. That's what I was paying for a family of three at the time.
• 0:10
  Erin Hartman: Right, $24,000 worth of income, and you don't have your book of business yet?
• 0:11
  Yuri Kapilovich: Yeah, you get more or less nothing, so that's very scary in and of itself. By the way, these plans for $2,000 a month are not great. Let me tell you. You're paying that and you're paying out of pocket. I won't dive into the healthcare system, but that's another podcast in and of itself, but that's big. The other thing obviously is getting clients in that hurdle, but again, contracting eases that pain a little bit because by doing two days a week in a firm and getting 75 to $100 an hour for that, it keeps the lights on.
• 0:11
  Yuri Kapilovich: We had a healthy savings and all that. That part of it, I was okay with. Then you grow the firm the way that you want to do it. Other hurdles, to be honest, I was fortunate enough to have spent about 12-ish years in big firm/public accounting in general. The resources, the friendships, the connections that I've made have been tremendous in helping me still feel like I had resources because one of the biggest challenges is resources.
• 0:12
  Yuri Kapilovich: But when I went out on my own, I don't want complexity anymore. I got nice easy clients to deal with, five million below in gross revenue, we don't have complications over here, no international, no crazy issues, your bread and butter, small businesses. That's what I like.
• 0:12
  Erin Hartman: That's a good point. We talk about this a lot, a smaller firm, especially a sole practitioner, just not having the people to bounce ideas off of and if you do, they're often your competitor. If you know them in town or whatever, so it is a different dynamic. But that is something interesting to think about. You're talking about that, but I would love to hear about key differences between the client experiences you had and the interactions at a larger firm compared to now when you start your own practice. Like you just said, it's totally different clients. You weren't bringing some of those clients with you.
• 0:13
  Erin Hartman: That's a good point. We talk about this a lot, a smaller firm, especially a sole practitioner, just not having the people to bounce ideas off of and if you do, they're often your competitor. If you know them in town or whatever, so it is a different dynamic. But that is something interesting to think about. You're talking about that, but I would love to hear about key differences between the client experiences you had and the interactions at a larger firm compared to now when you start your own practice. Like you just said, it's totally different clients. You weren't bringing some of those clients with you.
• 0:13
  Yuri Kapilovich: No. What I'm going to say is I hope that anybody that's thinking about having their own firm, anybody that's considering it, anybody that is remotely thinking how it would play out, the first thing to focus on and the first thing I focused on is who do I want to work with. To your question, to your point about what's the main differences, for example, between clients, the biggest difference is, as a manager, as a senior, as whatever I was throughout my career, I never had the ability to control what I worked on.
• 0:14
  Yuri Kapilovich: You come in to a new firm, you're told, here's your client base, here's your client list. Most of the time, the clients were fine. A few times I've had some fair share of not nice clients, let's just say. But the reality is you have no control over that. The moment I went out on my own, I had full control over that. By contracting, I was able to obviously keep the lights on, pay bills, do that stuff. The other days, I was trying to figure out, how do I get my ideal client, a client that values my time that isn't sitting there pestering and bothering, and demanding, and driving a lot of my time?
• 0:14
  Yuri Kapilovich: That's how you build out the client portfolio. Now, I have about 100 clients. They're all phenomenal, they're great to work with. It's a value based firm. I'm not looking to bring on hundreds and hundreds of clients. I focus on, like I said, the lifestyle firm, which for me, it's working reasonable hours. You and I chatted about this offline, under 40 hours a week during tax season, and right now I'm at about 10-15 hours a week outside and all the rest of the year.
• 0:15
  Erin Hartman: Which is wonderful and what we're trying to share that message because I think it's what everybody wants. It's just trying to figure out how to get that and how to make it work. I would love for you to talk about, especially you were talking about not having pesty clients. I hate to say it, but often those smaller clients, they are the pestier clients because they don't always understand the value you're providing.
• 0:15
  Erin Hartman: They are more nickel and diming you, is what my personal experience has been from working in very large firms to very small firms. The larger firms, I'm like, I wish you would look at your tax returns to see how much you're paying. It would make me feel more comfortable if you had a question. But the smaller firms, they're going to go line by line, a lot of those clients. Tell me about that and how you are able to be, like you said, a value practice and not living that traditional lifestyle.
• 0:16
  Yuri Kapilovich: What I'll start with saying is what most people, and I talk about this a lot on LinkedIn, I post a lot about it, but this is the initial thought that somebody would have when they start their own firm. When you start your own firm, you're scared. I say that from my own experience. I was very scared. I went from $150,000 salary to more or less nothing. That's scary. I got family. I got a kid, now I have two kids, but at the time, I had one kid, and that's scary.
• 0:16
  Yuri Kapilovich: Your initial thought is, bring money in the door. This is why harp and I keep talking about contracting. If I didn't contract, and this was by accident. I'm no guru or genius here. But if I didn't focus on contracting and able to really hone in on the clients that I have, my initial thought would be bring in anybody and everybody. $300, $400, $500 tax returns are the exact clients that you just mentioned that will eat up your time. We can do simple math. For me to do the same amount of money, and that's gross income, we're talking about, if I charge $500 a return and I want to get to $150,000 of income that I used to have, that's 300 clients. This is now as I analyze this.
• 0:17
  Yuri Kapilovich: Your initial thought is, bring money in the door. This is why harp and I keep talking about contracting. If I didn't contract, and this was by accident. I'm no guru or genius here. But if I didn't focus on contracting and able to really hone in on the clients that I have, my initial thought would be bring in anybody and everybody. $300, $400, $500 tax returns are the exact clients that you just mentioned that will eat up your time. We can do simple math. For me to do the same amount of money, and that's gross income, we're talking about, if I charge $500 a return and I want to get to $150,000 of income that I used to have, that's 300 clients. This is now as I analyze this.
• 0:17
  Yuri Kapilovich: That would be my initial thought if I didn't contract. I need to equal out my earnings. However, I get it. The first thing you know, I know how to do tax returns, so I would have jumped into that and we can ignore self employment tax, which is a whole different conversation. But 300 clients. The simplest client, the one W2 client, I know people will say, but it only takes you 15 minutes, it does not, you got to chase them. We got to chase them.
• 0:18
  Yuri Kapilovich: No matter what, nothing takes 15 minutes in our space, unless they sent you the information return, everything is clean, everything is perfect, but then you got to answer the questions. Let's just say an hour. An hour at 300 clients to make the same amount of money would be 300 hours. Now, when do we get our information? Not January 1st. When are W2s issued? Most of the time, by January 31st.
• 0:18
  Yuri Kapilovich: Best case scenario, if your clients are perfect, you'll get all 300 of your documents by February 15th. Now, I'm talking about the best, most ideal clients in the universe that are sending you that. Now, you've got 300 hours starting February 15th in the ideal perfect universe.
• 0:19
  Yuri Kapilovich: Stopping there for a second, that's hard enough to achieve 300 clients, period, let alone perfect clients that give you all the information. Now, you layer onto that, every client is going to ask you a question. Nobody is just taking their return and then it's like, great, all done. They're going to ask you questions.
• 0:19
  PARAGRAPH: Now, you're layering on at least half an hour of questions maybe, even 15 minutes of questions per client and that as the time. You could see how simply just that math to make the same amount of money you made before will drive you insane, all right off the start. To go to your question about how do you build a value firm, again, contracting first.
• 0:20
  Erin Hartman: Having the contracting work was gave you a little security and being able to be a little choosy and set your prices to start with.
• 0:20
  PARAGRAPH: I can review returns, prepare returns efficiently. I can pretty much use any software because tax is all the same. I just got to figure out the software. That's where my value came in at. I was making probably about 4,000-$6,000 a month doing that.
• 0:21
  PARAGRAPH: Because I don't want to work with them, I don't need a volume practice, so my focus is business owners. Then, when you say minimum 2,000, now you're dealing with somebody who is either, I mean, I've had a few times I've had a client that has a $1.5 million W-2.
• 0:21
  PARAGRAPH: It's literally one W-2, and you know some investments and stuff, but they pay $2,000. Fine. But that's my point. I think a lot of times when I'll speak to either current business owners, firm owners or on thinking about it, the hardest thing to do, and my example of 300 clients and $150,000, the hardest thing to do is to say, no, I don't want to do that anymore.
• 0:22
  Erin Hartman: Correct. That gets me to what I was thinking about when you were talking, and I know you've only been doing this for three years. Have you strategically changed what you're doing? Have you gotten rid of some clients since you started or have you really thought about this as you're growing your client base?
• 0:22
  PARAGRAPH: That's my composition of my firm, clientele. Now, to the point of how did I manage that, obviously, at the beginning, I did have a few clients that were on the lower end, maybe, 500 or 800. If they were a good relationship, I kept them steadily increasing not by double.
• 0:23
  PARAGRAPH: But steadily increasing the fee to get to my minimum. But the most important thing to me was I was always willing to again, because of the comfort that I've had with contracting, I was always able to fire clients.
• 0:23
  Yuri Kapilovich: Just like you said, the clients that are seeing the value, the clients that are paying the most understand what they're getting. Again, it's all connected. Another piece of the thought process is if you have 300 clients, and that's 300 clients. That's not that many, you're making the same. What time do you have to answer the questions?
• 0:24
  Erin Hartman: That is huge. I would say that is priceless, especially these days. Let's say I have a W-2, that's $1.5 million. I wish that was the case. I came to you. But every now and then, I have a question. If I call you, am I going to get another bill or am I just paying the $2,000?
• 0:24
  Yuri Kapilovich: That's another phenomenal question. That's part of my biggest thing. I will not. I refuse to send invoices for 25 minutes, a half an hour. I can't sit there and invoice you 0.5 hours and bill you at my rate of whatever, $300 an hour.
• 0:25
  PARAGRAPH: The billable at which we can talk about, I know, this one is a favorite topic of mine a lot. A billable hours silly, I mean, I was driven by that at the big firms, and I refused to take that over to my firm. I don't bill by the hour. I don't track my time or anybody's time. I don't care. I don't care where you are.
• 0:25
  PARAGRAPH: Hey, I think it's a great idea or whatever it is. I'm not going to send you a bill, for a text message or for whatever. I just found it to be silly. I try my best to incorporate into my fee when I quote the engagement. Any and all those things and I tell my prospect clients. I said, look, I'm going to bill you quarterly at 2,500 a quarter. You're never going to see another bill for me. That's it. There's not going to be any surprises.
• 0:26
  Erin Hartman: I have heard practitioners say what you're saying, and it was a good point not too long ago, talking about how she does that. Like, she's charging that premium for that in hope that they will tell her about things they are going to do or thinking about doing ahead of time instead of just afterwards and you trying to help them fix it.
• 0:26
  Yuri Kapilovich: That's another great point because I've learned this again, summoned you to your other question about what do you learn? What are the issues that you ran into it? I've realized that as I was going along the process of learning about my firm and clients and the psychology behind it, I want to align my service with payment.
• 0:27
  Yuri Kapilovich: Obviously, the most common sense one is the tax return is done, you pay. Easy. Now, what I really like, and what a lot of the newest clients that I've gotten, they do, is the quarterly one. Now, what I do is, I'll charge a quarterly fee that includes the preparation of the returns, the quarterly meetings four times a year, and then tax planning and tax advisory stuff. Now, what happens? Imagine you are that same client.
• 0:27
  PARAGRAPH: What I do, and I'm actually in the process of making more automation around that. But what I'll do is, "Here's the bill for 1,500." That wakes them up. They pay that bill, and then now we schedule all the time. This is what I mean when I say you align the service with the invoice.
• 0:28
  PARAGRAPH: Because now you've said, "Okay, I'm paying and what am I getting?" Because what would happen is if, for example, I've heard of other practitioners, and I have my own podcast, too, so I recently had somebody on that said, "Hey, I like to have my regular tax prep fee broken out monthly, so if it's a 1,200-dollar client, it's $100 a month." Now, see, there, I've tried something similar to that, for example, and what happens?
• 0:28
  Yuri Kapilovich: What are you paying me for? What am I paying you for? Now, you've activated this desire in the client to do something every month. Now you force them to ask you questions every month. Or now you're getting something every month. But the engagement is a tax only, just as an exam. It's this thing that I've realized over the time to align the service with the fee. Especially on the quarterly side, that forces us all to be accountable.
• 0:29
  PARAGRAPH: During the year, not playing catch up in April when we can't do anything about it anyway.
• 0:30
  Yuri Kapilovich: Quite simply, and I had this conversation again. How many times in my life with myself with other folks that I talk to. Here's the reality. Currently, with a 5-year-old and an almost 2-year-old, I don't have that much time. I also have a commitment to working out and exercising and such. I do that four days a week. But my day starts at 11:00, typically, on a given day, especially in the last six months. And then it ends when my son comes home at 3:30 on the bus.
• 0:30
  Yuri Kapilovich: Quite simply, and I had this conversation again. How many times in my life with myself with other folks that I talk to. Here's the reality. Currently, with a 5-year-old and an almost 2-year-old, I don't have that much time. I also have a commitment to working out and exercising and such. I do that four days a week. But my day starts at 11:00, typically, on a given day, especially in the last six months. And then it ends when my son comes home at 3:30 on the bus.
• 0:31
  PARAGRAPH: 11:00-3:30. That's four-and-a-half hours. I also eat lunch for about half an hour, and I have four hours left, and then my daughter comes home later. Simply that's just my day. Now, I can adjust that some days. I don't go to the gym, so I could start a little earlier, whatever it is. But that's the constraints that I have. I got to build something around that. The simplest answer is I can't even picture a way where I could work at any firm and have these hours. That's not possible.
• 0:31
  Erin Hartman: I love what you said. Your kids are growing up with a dad who they don't think. I remember years ago when my kids were younger, they knew I couldn't do anything until April 15th. Then I try to make a big deal about it once it was April 15. I'm still stressed out because all the work is not done. But that's the biggest gift that you could give to your family for sure, that they don't even know that deadline, I bet.
• 0:32
  PARAGRAPH: Being the biller, the doer on a lot of stuff, the reviewer, the processor, whatever you want to call it, the client question answerer, all these hats, still take up a lot of time, so it's certainly challenging in many ways. But, the underlying thing is I am there. Business season is just a time of year that's a little bit more hectic. I log on after we put the kids down in tax season, and I'll work until 11:00 to get a seven-hour day in. By the way, my birthday is April 11th.
• 0:32
  PARAGRAPH: Being the biller, the doer on a lot of stuff, the reviewer, the processor, whatever you want to call it, the client question answerer, all these hats, still take up a lot of time, so it's certainly challenging in many ways. But, the underlying thing is I am there. Business season is just a time of year that's a little bit more hectic. I log on after we put the kids down in tax season, and I'll work until 11:00 to get a seven-hour day in. By the way, my birthday is April 11th.
• 0:33
  Erin Hartman: Well, good for you, because you've made it work for your family, but also you've stayed in the profession that you love and you've shown that you can make it work. Tell me a little bit about your firm as far. Do you have other people working for you right now?
• 0:33
  Yuri Kapilovich: Right now, basically, I have a bookkeeper. She is outsourced, so she has her own firm as well. Currently, it's a tough point in the journey to bring on someone full-time. But that's where I'm at these crossroads. They are scary. To say that self employment is scary at the beginning, and that's it, is not true. It's scary throughout.
• 0:34
  PARAGRAPH: There's various things, ups and downs and such. But this is another one. Where do you cut your profit and hire someone so that you can grow even more? Or do you stay where you're at, which I'm content with, of course, but you obviously do want to grow. But, remembering that the key is not money, although money is important, the key is the hours. The key is less than 40 hours a week and all year long. That's the goal for me.
• 0:34
  Yuri Kapilovich: Feeding them work and such. I just recently did this bookkeeping outsourcing thing. I used to have it in-house, the bookkeeper. But the challenge realistically is because my whole career in the bigger firms was in tax. Guess what I didn't see. Not that much bookkeeping. I never was fully involved in the bookkeeping process in the big firms, because you're not.
• 0:35
  Erin Hartman: Having a real bookkeeper who knows how to do that is huge and it's a lot hard to find these days.
• 0:35
  PARAGRAPH: But, it's, like I said, this crossroads period. My staff, whenever that happens, hopefully here soon, would also not work more than 40 hours a week. That's the goal. It's not just me that's going to be enjoying it. I want everybody in my firm to enjoy that.
• 0:36
  Erin Hartman: I want to ask you, you've been in several large firms. You've been in Big Four, huge global accounting firms. There's certainly things about that with just unmatched professional development and global client exposure, networking opportunities that small firm cannot give. But we talk a lot to practitioners who feel that they cannot compete with Big Four as far as recruiting. What ideas would you have for them or what suggestions?
• 0:37
  Yuri Kapilovich: It's not easy, because, again, the golden handcuffs, the security and the feeling that, yes, while you might be working crazy hours at Insert bigger firm name. That you're pretty likely there's a very relatively low chance you would get let go. It could happen, obviously, but there's more security obviously in a bigger firm than there is in a smaller firm. Everybody knows that.
• 0:37
  Yuri Kapilovich: Now, the real question is, is, and I spend for me, I focus even as of right now is when I'm looking and considering having someone to bring on board for me, is what do they want? Because what do I want? I know what I want. I want somebody who is going to work on these smaller clients, and work out a lot of hours and blah blah blah.
• 0:38
  Yuri Kapilovich: But the question is, when I speak to people, it's like, "What do you want?" I know a few people, especially during my career, I've run into many people who they love this. Like they love the complexity. I don't want complexity in my life. I got enough with kids and schedules, so I don't need complexity on the tax side. I don't need a 50 state tax return with 54 72 and, you know, international issues.
• 0:38
  Yuri Kapilovich: I don't need that. But for some, they thoroughly enjoy that. They thoroughly enjoy that research, the memo writing and all that. Those would not be a good fit. Now, on the flip side, whenever I even mention the word, that I may be looking for someone when I was looking at, when I was looking for a bookkeeper back at the beginning, I easily got 200 comments and messages personally from folks who were willing and wanted to join.
• 0:39
  Erin Hartman: Will you talk a little more about the fun CPA and your LinkedIn posting and how all that came about?
• 0:40
  Yuri Kapilovich: I just wrote that, and then I'm like, "This is cool." I kept writing it. Like I kept saying. Then eventually, it started catching, What is that? What does that even mean that I knew I was onto something. Then I went to an event, basically for wealthy people.
• 0:40
  Yuri Kapilovich: But it was so foreign to people that when they came to me and they looked at, they were like, "What is it? Let's say the funk pa?" It just doesn't process. That's how I knew that something was there. I just continued with it, the process of being trademarked now for the fund CPA.
• 0:41
  Yuri Kapilovich: You are out and about, you are doing things like I do every day, and to show that there is another world out there that isn't your stereotypical world that, unfortunately, when you Google and look at Reedit or any one of those fishbowl or any one of those accounting career websites that tell you about it, it doesn't look good, but believe me, it's good when you intentionally do it that way.
• 0:41
  Erin Hartman: But what advice would you give to a practitioner who wanted to make that change, who wanted to go out on their own? You've talked a lot about it, but just like one piece of advice.
• 0:42
  Yuri Kapilovich: The biggest piece of advice I would say is simple at hard at the same time, which is, before you do anything, think about your ideal firm that you want, not the firm that everybody tells you that you need to have the 500 or 600 client firm making 200-$300,000 a year. That's great, by the way. But what do you want? Do you want to have more flexibility and not work 80 hours a week? Or do you want to do that?
• 0:42
  Yuri Kapilovich: Because that's fine, too. By no means, is that a negative thing? So that's the first consideration and work backwards from there. If your goal is you don't want to work 80 hours a week, like you just were doing for X amount of years, what do you want to work? Then to get there, what do you do? You contract for a little bit, to get the ideal clients to put you in that position. That would be my recommendation. Ahead of doing that, think what you want and work backwards from there.
• 0:43
  Yuri Kapilovich: Yes. September 15, ain't it, and July is okay, again, depending on your workload and all of that. There's not going to be a perfect time. It's not going to happen because there's always going to be something. But November is as close to perfect time as could be.
• 0:43
  Yuri Kapilovich: My favorite part, honestly, it's the connection that I have to my clients. It's the fact that they will call me with the craziest stuff. Sometimes, don't tell my wife this. Don't tell my wife that. It gets weird. But we've always had that, I'm sure throughout everybody.
• 0:44
  Yuri Kapilovich: Your trusted advisor can mean a lot of things. But the reality of it is, is you are the trusted advisor. People are relying upon you. To me, it's just going out with my clients, having a good time, really making it more of a chill, it's really just taxes. But we're doing in a nice laid back environment, no pressure, no craziness. We do our best to really make it fun. Really, that's what it comes down to.
• 0:44
  Yuri Kapilovich: We got real estate professionals, financial planners, everybody. It's fun. It's really just really fun and enjoyable. We're going to have some handmade pizzas, beer, show show Courier boards. Really it's flipping the script on that. I don't know what this the fun CPA will bring. I don't know what it is that's in the future for it. But for now, the key is just to showcase the profession in a different light.
• 0:45
  Erin Hartman: Well, I think you are doing that, and I appreciate you sharing with us today. I appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing your story because I do think it will help a lot of other practitioners who are thinking about similar things and hearing success story, trials and tribulations really helps others to make a positive change in their life. We really appreciate you being here with us today and sharing with us. This has been great.
• 0:45
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• 0:46
  MALE_1: This content is designed to provide illustrative information with respect to the subject matter covered and does not represent an official opinion or position of the ARCPA, the association or SEMA. It is provided with the understanding that they are not engaged in offering legal accounting or other professional services. If such advice or expert assistance is required, the services of a competent, professional person should be sought.