Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 65. Why Independent CPA Firms Should Think Twice About Private Equity with Erin Daiber

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65. Why Independent CPA Firms Should Think Twice About Private Equity with Erin Daiber · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful, the show where I sit down with
• 0:07
  your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated or
• 0:12
  because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple Consulting
• 0:16
  Firm and Pineapple Analyst AI, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun fact of
• 0:21
  the day: San Diego is our country's top producer of avocados. That's kind of fun.
• 0:26
  However, it led to the much bigger thing of the birth of the California burrito.
• 0:30
  Who doesn't love french fries and some guacam burrito, all right? But that's neither here
• 0:35
  nor there. Today I'm joined by my friend Erin Daiber. She's the founder and CEO
• 0:40
  of Well Balanced Accountants. So look, they help independent CPA firms grow, free of capacity,
• 0:44
  stay independent is one of the big things. We're gonna dive into that for sure.
• 0:49
  She's CPA and certified coach, started off an audit at EY. She worked as an
• 0:54
  in-house financial analyst, then went off on her own. was a high-performing CPA, burnt out,
• 0:58
  recovered, now helps people make or helps companies actually become a place that people want
• 1:03
  to work at in the accounting firm. So Erin, I'm super excited to chat with
• 1:07
  you. I know we run a lot of the same circles. We know that you
• 1:12
  are successful today. The question we have for you, do you think you fall more
• 1:17
  on the sophisticated side or on the scrappy side?
• 1:20
  You know, that's actually a tough question because I can look back and see times
• 1:26
  where I was absolutely just grasping at straws and and operating in it more of
• 1:32
  a scrappy fashion to see what works. you know, I think as an entrepreneur, everybody
• 1:38
  goes through those stages. and at the same time, the systems and the processes behind
• 1:44
  things were sophisticated. But if I'm honest, there's still a lot more. of the figuring
• 1:50
  it out as we go. So I think that qualifies
• 1:54
  Yeah.
• 1:55
  as scrappy, right? Things are changing so quickly in this profession. As soon as we
• 2:00
  get it systematized, it has, it needs to be evolved again. So I'm gonna say
• 2:05
  Exactly.
• 2:06
  scrappy. I'm gonna own it.
• 2:08
  Okay, I love it. We'll see if the data agrees with you. but let's
• 2:11
  Okay.
• 2:12
  dive in. take us back to the beginning. Where did you grow up? Did you
• 2:15
  have any entrepreneurs in the family?
• 2:17
  Yeah, grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and
• 2:19
  Okay.
• 2:20
  I absolutely had entrepreneurs in the family. My both my grandfathers served in the Navy,
• 2:26
  and coming out of the Navy, my grandpa on my dad's side started a tool
• 2:33
  company. And so that's my first exposure to entrepreneurship. I watched him work. My dad
• 2:39
  worked and helped grow that company. And I worked in that company both as a
• 2:46
  little kid. They would show me how to put one piece together with another. Very
• 2:53
  simple. And we were doing that when we were very young, my siblings and I.
• 2:59
  And then in college I worked there as well. So I was around entrepreneurship a
• 3:06
  lot. actually as I was thinking about this, I also spent time with my grandmother
• 3:12
  who did the books for that company.
• 3:16
  Okay.
• 3:17
  And so when we would have sleep overnights on Saturday mornings, her job was to
• 3:22
  go and do the bookkeeping and write the checks, pay the bills. And I would
• 3:27
  sit there in her office and watch her type out checks on a a typewriter.
• 3:32
  So that tells you about when it was and it was a little bit more
• 3:37
  old school. The books were all done by hand. And that's I think that was
• 3:42
  really some of my initial exposure both to running a company and being an entrepreneur,
• 3:48
  but also my first exposure to the accounting side of things.
• 3:52
  Okay. So you got the the small the kid role of put one part on
• 3:54
  top of the other on the tool side. Did you get any
• 3:57
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 3:58
  of that small work on the bookkeeping side?
• 4:01
  N not at that time, not at that age, but when I came and worked
• 4:06
  in the company in college, it was one of my main functions was doing the
• 4:11
  invoicing, recording all of the transactions. And at that point it had gotten, of course,
• 4:17
  more sophisticated onto a computer, thank goodness. but I was I was doing a lot
• 4:22
  of the back office bookkeeping and sometimes would also go out into the shop and
• 4:27
  do some of the shipping and receiving. So it was very hands-on,
• 4:32
  Okay.
• 4:33
  all hands-on deck in a family business like that.
• 4:36
  Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So from a young age you get the exposure. Did you get
• 4:40
  the entrepreneurial bug as a kid? Like we were just joking. Did you have a
• 4:44
  secret lemonade franchise that you were running?
• 4:47
  No, I didn't. I think you know, one of your one of the things we
• 4:52
  were chatting about a little bit was like where did I learn money came from?
• 4:57
  And
• 4:58
  Yeah.
• 4:59
  certainly again, I had seen the the entrepreneurial side and that you have to work
• 5:04
  hard to earn money, but I also had the experience early on with my grandmother
• 5:09
  who had worked I had a full-time job of her own at this time, of
• 5:14
  course, was retired, but she would say, Erin, do want to go shopping? And they
• 5:19
  were products of the depression era. And she would go pull out envelopes of money
• 5:24
  from her linen closet that were like tucked between the sheets and between the towels.
• 5:29
  And that's where we so originally I thought money came from these envelopes in a
• 5:34
  Ha ha ha.
• 5:35
  closet somewhere. Unfortunately, my house didn't come with that. So
• 5:40
  Yeah.
• 5:41
  We've had to find a new way.
• 5:44
  that's awesome. Okay. You're like, wow, money does it just grows in here. That's pretty
• 5:47
  cool.
• 5:48
  Right.
• 5:50
  that's too
• 5:51
  Yeah.
• 5:51
  funny. Okay. Give me give me like thirty seconds, sixty seconds on today, what you
• 5:54
  do for well balanced accountants today, and then we're gonna build a bridge from finding
• 5:58
  money
• 5:59
  Sure.
• 6:00
  in the living closet to today.
• 6:02
  So today we are a boutique consulting firm. It's myself and a small team of
• 6:08
  all people who have come out of accounting or finance backgrounds. So I think that's
• 6:14
  something that sets us apart and we focus on working with CPAs and accounting firms
• 6:20
  somewhere between two and fifty million in revenue primarily. And as you mentioned, our main
• 6:26
  focus is helping those firms build capacity and build firm value. And that's usually in
• 6:32
  service of a couple of different things. One might be long-term succession planning and the
• 6:38
  other may be this commitment to staying independent. Either way, It's imperative that they're building
• 6:44
  that firm value. And in order to build firm value, you have to take on
• 6:50
  these reinvestment initiatives in your team development, technology, and all of that requires capacity. And
• 6:56
  that's likely the one thing I I would say is the most common thread among
• 7:02
  accounting firms is we just don't have time. We're maxed out. And so that is
• 7:08
  really in a nutshell the things that we work on with these firms. So
• 7:14
  I it's funny in the I I love it. I it's in the world that
• 7:17
  we live in with AI and all this other stuff, like at the end of
• 7:20
  the day, it still comes down to time. It's still
• 7:23
  huh.
• 7:24
  just do you have capacity to do something and to your point, there's no easy
• 7:26
  button even with AI or with anything else. Like you still have to work hard,
• 7:29
  you still have to put in the processes, you still have to invest time to
• 7:33
  grow the business. And so that is
• 7:35
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 7:36
  what you help free up the most of. That's awesome.
• 7:39
  Yeah, and that takes on a number of different forms, which we can certainly get
• 7:43
  into, but I would say everything that we do all feeds into and supports that
• 7:48
  idea. And and I like to just highlight also that it's not necessarily time to
• 7:53
  work more. You know, I like to make sure that we're freeing up time so
• 7:58
  that you can enjoy more of the things that matter. You can get out there,
• 8:02
  you can travel or do the things that you like to do outside of the
• 8:07
  office.
• 8:08
  Right, right. Yeah, it's I as you've experienced, we're gonna dive into this too, like
• 8:11
  burnout hits in a bunch of different ways. And if you're not enjoying life a
• 8:15
  little bit, burnout will win. And it's it's real tough to beat. So take us
• 8:19
  back. How do you get into accounting in the first place? Like give me give
• 8:23
  me high school erin, how were the grades?
• 8:26
  Mm-hmm.
• 8:27
  Like what what were you doing for fun in high school? Give me give me
• 8:30
  a look into that.
• 8:32
  I played high school golf, so that took
• 8:34
  Nice.
• 8:35
  up a lot of my time. I think it built into the competitive spirit that
• 8:39
  I still have today. I I don't now I just get to play for fun,
• 8:44
  but it was great
• 8:46
  Yeah.
• 8:47
  to compete and build that connection with a team, and that was how I spent
• 8:52
  a lot of my free time. I was also definitely committed to schoolwork. I wanted
• 8:57
  to do well, I wanted to be a high performer. I think my parents had.
• 9:03
  implemented like a a good level of fear that if I didn't do well there
• 9:08
  it was going to impact everything else, which is true. So that my main focus
• 9:13
  there was, you know, have fun, do well on the sport side, and then get
• 9:19
  into a good school. That was my that was my objective in high school. And
• 9:24
  Going into college, I actually thought I was going to study graphic design, because there
• 9:29
  is more of a creative and artistic side to me as well. But soon came
• 9:35
  to realize that the money in that, which thank goodness now with with AI,
• 9:40
  Yeah.
• 9:41
  thank goodness I ch I didn't pursue that because a lot of that work has
• 9:45
  really been gobbled up by some of the tools. But
• 9:49
  Right.
• 9:51
  kind of quickly learned that that wasn't Going to be something that I really wanted
• 9:55
  to focus on. So made the pivot to business school. And I tell this story
• 9:59
  a lot, but one of the first things I said to both my family and
• 10:04
  just going into business school was I don't know exactly what I want to do,
• 10:08
  but anything but accounting. So how do you how do you end up here? yeah.
• 10:13
  Yeah, I mean yeah.
• 10:19
  I had a professor that was historically known to be the guy that would gatekeep
• 10:23
  the accounting profession. He took that very seriously. He didn't want anybody getting into accounting
• 10:28
  that wasn't going to be able to cut it. And of course, I ended up
• 10:33
  in his class. So I was terrified I wasn't even going to pass the class
• 10:38
  and get through, you know, into my next. It was just my core education requirements
• 10:43
  for the business school. And Still undecided about what direction I was headed, but they
• 10:48
  he came up to me one day and said, Miss Daiber, you're really good at
• 10:53
  this. You should think about a career in accounting. And when you're young and you're
• 10:58
  unclear about where you're headed and you don't have a, you know, any other sort
• 11:03
  of guidepost out there to navigate by, that was pretty much all it took. And
• 11:08
  next thing you know, I was a an accounting major.
• 11:12
  Wow, okay. So the guy who typically says, No, you can't cut it came to
• 11:15
  you and said, Hey, you can cut it, you should do this and you're
• 11:19
  Yeah.
• 11:20
  like, Graphic design who? Let's do accounting
• 11:22
  Well, I thought if he thinks I'm good, I must be really good at this.
• 11:24
  And so let's
• 11:25
  Okay.
• 11:28
  do it.
• 11:29
  Did you like it or were you just good at it?
• 11:33
  Frankly, I don't know that either one of those are true. I don't you know
• 11:38
  like Yeah, I know we're jumping around a little bit, but if we fast forward
• 11:43
  a bit, I started to learn a lot more about myself, my personality style, my
• 11:49
  leadership style, how I problem solve through, you know, taking DISC assessments and those types
• 11:54
  of tools. And I came to find out that I really am skewed more towards
• 12:00
  the people side, the human relationship side. And that details are challenging for me. And
• 12:05
  that still shows up today, which I think is what made accounting, once I got
• 12:11
  into the profession, made it really hard. I struggled, you know, I would have seniors
• 12:16
  and managers coming back to me and saying, well, like pointing out these little micro
• 12:22
  details of things, which of course are important. I just could not bring myself to
• 12:27
  care. I was like, really? It's $30 or it's 40 cents.
• 12:32
  Yeah.
• 12:33
  Who cares? I mean, I remember thinking to myself, I'll give you the $30 to
• 12:36
  get off my back. And that is
• 12:38
  Yeah.
• 12:39
  just not it's not the approach that they really want from somebody doing your books.
• 12:46
  So I yeah,
• 12:48
  Yeah.
• 12:49
  I don't know that I really was good at it. I think I was a
• 12:52
  good student and a good test taker.
• 12:55
  Okay. Okay. Which is important and
• 12:58
  Yeah.
• 12:59
  I think in a lot of ways, like I this is I I'm projecting even
• 13:02
  further forward now, like this is why you're a business owner because you're focused on
• 13:06
  the overarching strategy, not the fourteen cents that are missing. And I
• 13:10
  Yeah, exactly.
• 13:12
  s I I talk with a lot of business owners on this podcast, just in
• 13:15
  life in general and stuff like that too. And some of them are like you
• 13:19
  get off a call and they're like, Okay, cool, like yeah, just like go go
• 13:23
  make an ad. And she's like, okay, cool. Any specifics? No, just like do it.
• 13:27
  It's like, okay, cool.
• 13:28
  Mm.
• 13:29
  And then others are like, make an ad that is exactly forty-six seconds long and
• 13:31
  it has to have this and this and this and this. And it's like, okay,
• 13:34
  that's that's just too detailed. Like there's that big middle ground. So all right, so
• 13:37
  you're in this
• 13:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:39
  profession, you're like, all right, kinda not for me, maybe it was just a thing.
• 13:44
  And then you hit burnout. And this is at EY, right?
• 13:49
  Yeah, I was an auditor at EY, which while the the technical side of accounting
• 13:54
  really was never what was exciting me and getting me out of bed in the
• 13:59
  morning, I loved the people that I worked with. I think that was one
• 14:04
  Okay.
• 14:05
  of the highlights. I got to work with some incredibly talented, very smart people who
• 14:10
  You know, yes, we were kind of in a nerdy profession, if you will, during
• 14:16
  the day. At least the outside perception is that it's nerdy. I don't think it
• 14:21
  is. but we're also super fun outside of work. And so that was a really
• 14:27
  awesome environment to be a part of. a lot of people will call it like
• 14:33
  a work hard, play hard environment, and I think that's
• 14:37
  Yeah.
• 14:38
  absolutely true at that time. So
• 14:40
  Okay.
• 14:43
  But it did catch up eventually. And I think a lot of that, again, now
• 14:48
  hindsight being 2020, a lot of it was that because I didn't know a lot
• 14:53
  about my natural approaches to things, I was trying to operate in a way that
• 14:59
  was pretty unnatural for me. Like really that that Deep it attention to detail, that
• 15:04
  takes a I can do it. Takes a lot more energy for me than it
• 15:09
  does for other people. And I think that contributed to this sense of burnout or
• 15:15
  really not ever being able to catch up out of this depleted state. I was
• 15:20
  also working with a lot of people who had. a different approach to getting work
• 15:26
  done. And so they would, you know, I think as leaders, sometimes we have this
• 15:31
  natural tendency to want everyone to work the way we do. Sort of to your
• 15:36
  point, right? I can either give you this high level of detail or this this
• 15:42
  really like not a lot of detail, just big picture and expect you to be
• 15:47
  a bit more creative with it or or I guess own it yourself, figure out
• 15:52
  your own way to get it done. And so that was a mismatch also for
• 15:58
  me. And I approached things a slightly different way, wanted a lot more autonomy, wanted
• 16:03
  to be more creative about how things get done. And that's not necessarily what was
• 16:09
  needed. So while I I think I was a decent employee, right? I don't know
• 16:14
  that it just really wasn't working for me. And so it it did start to
• 16:19
  wear on me quite a bit.
• 16:22
  I could see the the work hard, play hard coming out being like, you know,
• 16:24
  this day job isn't great, but man, happy hours a good time.
• 16:27
  Exactly. It I mean, especially during busy season, you might live for a happy hour.
• 16:32
  Just get me a little bit of relief, a little bit of an opportunity to
• 16:37
  blow off some steam and have a good time and just connect with people.
• 16:42
  Right. And I I say that kind of jokingly, but it's also a hundred percent
• 16:45
  true because like if you like the people that you're working with, you're not crazy
• 16:49
  about the work, but the environment itself is okay and the people are great. Like
• 16:53
  you need just a non work setting to connect with those people. And that keeps
• 16:57
  you going for days, weeks, months, through busy season, whatever it is.
• 17:00
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 17:02
  Is this sort of the formula for why like the term in the industry is
• 17:06
  like a recovering accountant or recovering CPA kind of thing, right? Like Is this why
• 17:11
  that happens so often? Because people are a little bit mismatched between skill set and
• 17:16
  working style, or mismatched in terms of like, I don't want to do four months
• 17:20
  of busy season. Like, why does that happen so often?
• 17:24
  I think so. I mean, i certainly there's this old process or this old mindset
• 17:28
  that some organizations more than others continue to carry on with us, which is that
• 17:33
  it's normal to work hundreds of hours a week during busy season and then have
• 17:38
  these periods where it's a little bit slower, although those have kind of gone away.
• 17:42
  So it's like peaks and smaller peaks instead of peaks and valleys, with
• 17:47
  Yeah.
• 17:52
  in terms of workload and hours now. And so that's not normal. It has never
• 17:57
  been normal. We're not designed to work like machines that way. It just is again,
• 18:02
  it's sort of like a relic of how things used to be, and it doesn't
• 18:08
  have to be that way anymore. So I think that's part of it, that the
• 18:13
  expectation is still of that old mindset that we should be able to do that.
• 18:18
  I do think there's a component of it though that firms haven't yet, and it
• 18:24
  would be it is interesting to see when firms put more emphasis on helping someone
• 18:29
  learn about themselves early on. That can give that individual more of a voice, more
• 18:35
  language to put to their experience or the frustrations that they might have. For example,
• 18:40
  I could have perhaps gone to my managers and expressed, like, hey, this is how
• 18:45
  I problem solve or this is how I would approach the situation. And we could
• 18:51
  have maybe found a common ground. Instead, I I didn't have those, I didn't have
• 18:56
  that insight. or the words to s to put to that and
• 19:01
  Yeah.
• 19:02
  have a meaningful conversation. And so I had to sit in my frustration about it
• 19:06
  and kind of think, well, this is what it is. It's never going to change.
• 19:12
  So I do think that's that's something. And we've done that with firms in some
• 19:18
  onboarding programs and bringing on especially new hires, really helping them from the beginning to
• 19:24
  to put more emphasis on the self-reflection and that realization so that they have the
• 19:30
  ability to really thrive long term in the profession.
• 19:34
  Okay, so take me to starting your own business now. So you've got all this
• 19:39
  lessons learned, you've experienced burnouts, you realize somehow it's always tax season, it's always busy
• 19:44
  season. what was the what was the defining moment or the story around starting your
• 19:49
  own business?
• 19:50
  I had a mentor at the time who had well, I had already left public
• 19:55
  accounting. So I had left EY, I was working in industry because I thought maybe
• 20:00
  if I get a job that is pretty much a nine to five, that will
• 20:05
  solve the problem. Which again, hindsight, not exactly true because then I
• 20:10
  Yeah.
• 20:11
  had lost a lot of the peers that I worked with. I was working with
• 20:16
  a much older group of people then in that organization. And still it's not nine
• 20:21
  to five. And again, still not a great alignment of my skill set to the
• 20:26
  work. And so a mentor had suggested a coach training program, which I enrolled in
• 20:31
  mostly for the personal development, because I thought if I'm not going to do accounting,
• 20:36
  this is what I went to school for, what do I do next? Does that
• 20:42
  mean I need to go back to school? Do I need to get an MBA?
• 20:47
  Do I go back into more of a marketing role? Again, kind of directionless at
• 20:52
  that point. And I didn't want to make a mistake and burn a bunch of
• 20:57
  time. pursuing something that wasn't going to work out. And in that coach training program,
• 21:02
  we did do a lot of self-reflection. We received coaching as a part of that.
• 21:07
  And they encouraged you to get out there and actually start coaching people as a
• 21:13
  way to build that skill set. And also to ask people to pay you for
• 21:18
  that service. So to again get you the exposure and the experience of exchanging value
• 21:23
  for money and really starting a business with it. And so that was that was
• 21:28
  the assignment. I was going to be a good student and do that. So I
• 21:33
  was actually coaching paying clients from my car in the parking lot of that job.
• 21:38
  So I would
• 21:40
  Nice.
• 21:41
  leave at lunch, go take my lunch, but I was just in the car coaching
• 21:44
  people. And then at the end of the day I would leave and Again, sit
• 21:48
  in my car. I didn't want to be driving or doing other things while I
• 21:52
  was coaching people. And this was all of course over the phone at that time.
• 21:55
  It wasn't all Zoom then. and I would sit in the parking lot and coach
• 21:59
  for an hour or two before I drove home. And
• 22:02
  Wow.
• 22:03
  so that's how it started. And Because I I think a lot again, a lot
• 22:08
  of people when you start a business, we don't realize how long it takes to
• 22:13
  build something you can actually live off of. And so I definitely couldn't afford to
• 22:18
  give up my day job in the beginning.
• 22:21
  How were you finding these clients that were willing to just have a phone call
• 22:25
  at lunch and be coached? Like where where did you find these people?
• 22:29
  That's a good question. I think again as part of that program, they a few
• 22:34
  of them were referrals from other people in my pro in my coach training because
• 22:39
  they were maybe their friends, their siblings, professional contacts, anyone who wanted coaching, but we
• 22:45
  can't coach our friends. We're too close to it. So you
• 22:49
  Yeah.
• 22:50
  really need that neutral third party. And so we would refer leads back and forth.
• 22:56
  and I had definitely started to promote things out in, you know, through social media
• 23:02
  and in my network as well. It was so long ago I can hardly remember
• 23:09
  where those initial initial ones came from.
• 23:12
  I mean it sounds like a pretty good gig. what
• 23:15
  Yeah.
• 23:16
  Okay, so you've got a somewhat of an ICP forming, ideal client profile forming at
• 23:22
  this time. How does it evolve into what it is today?
• 23:28
  Well, I think in the days of coaching in the car, that that makes it
• 23:31
  sound like I was homeless too. I I wasn't.
• 23:34
  Yeah, it does.
• 23:36
  It was, I mean, we're we were talking about being scrappy. We were just trying
• 23:37
  to find the hours where we could find them. yeah,
• 23:39
  Yep. This is perfect for the shower.
• 23:44
  those those early days there really wasn't an ICP. It was anyone
• 23:49
  Okay.
• 23:50
  who's willing to pay for this service and who needs coaching and I'm willing to
• 23:56
  help.
• 23:57
  Okay.
• 23:58
  And I I think part of that too was because I was still in my
• 24:03
  burnout and frustration about accounting. There was a part of me that wanted to get
• 24:09
  as far away from that profession and the people that I could as I could,
• 24:15
  right? Get away from that, separate myself from this past life and form this new
• 24:21
  identity. So I was doing a lot of networking around San Diego, getting involved with
• 24:27
  the Chamber of Commerce and things, but Few maybe about a year into it is
• 24:33
  when I decided maybe it is okay to come back and and embrace accounting again
• 24:39
  in a different way.
• 24:41
  Saying very hesitantly.
• 24:43
  Yeah, well I I think I wasn't sure. and at that time I was doing
• 24:48
  a sort of piecing a lot of things together to build revenue. So I had
• 24:54
  worked on building a leadership program with a friend of mine who runs a consulting
• 25:00
  practice geared towards salon owners. So we launched a leadership program and we're tr traveling
• 25:06
  around and delivering that live at her events and that gave me a lot of
• 25:12
  ex exposure and experience leading Teams in front of a room. And then I had
• 25:17
  started to speak at accounting conferences, small ones locally here in San Diego, and then
• 25:23
  that expanded over time. So I think it started as I'm open to this while
• 25:29
  also bringing in these other streams of income from wherever I can find them. I
• 25:35
  also trained for a program that I think their objective was to sell this diagnostic
• 25:41
  tool to firms to help them figure out where their opportunities were in client service.
• 25:46
  I don't even exactly remember. I don't believe that company still exists today. but they
• 25:52
  had
• 25:53
  Yeah.
• 25:56
  me come in and train their content. So again, it was a revenue stream. I
• 26:02
  was being paid to to help onboard their clients and Again, more exposure into the
• 26:08
  accounting profession and met some of these accountants and financial advisors during that time. But
• 26:14
  you know, I think ultimately once I embraced accounting and embraced that love for the
• 26:20
  people that work in accounting, that's when things really took off. So I think that
• 26:26
  once I solidified that as yes, this is my ICP, these are the people that
• 26:32
  I relate to in a number of different ways that changed everything, changed the trajectory
• 26:38
  of the business for sure.
• 26:41
  That I mean, that makes perfect sense. They, you know, riches are in the niches,
• 26:43
  like pick your favorite cliche. It all kind of ties into that.
• 26:46
  Yeah.
• 26:48
  anything that you really overthought in the beginning of starting your own business, anything that
• 26:52
  you were like, this is totally gonna matter a hundred percent, and I'm gonna spend
• 26:57
  weeks on this, and then it just it didn't matter.
• 27:00
  So many things. So many things. I mean, I think
• 27:01
  Yeah.
• 27:04
  there's, you know, one of the downsides of like perfectionist tendencies is you want it
• 27:09
  to all be perfect before it goes out there into the universe. And
• 27:14
  A hundred percent.
• 27:16
  right, like I didn't I didn't want any of it to be a reflection on
• 27:21
  me. And I think again, being early in the business had some insecurities about Value
• 27:26
  I could provide to clients, and it was sort of unproven, untested. I didn't have
• 27:31
  that feedback yet from the market. So that made it even worse. So I think
• 27:36
  that was one of them that just everything was so over-engineered to be perfect that
• 27:41
  it slowed things down a lot.
• 27:43
  Yep.
• 27:44
  The other thing I spent a lot of time and money on was creating marketing
• 27:49
  funnels for online marketing and email marketing at the time. Which I guess is something
• 27:55
  you have to live and learn from, but gosh, what a what a time suck
• 28:01
  and a financial drain that was. And turns out this is not really a a
• 28:07
  product or a service that you can sell through email marketing.
• 28:12
  I've I've had very slower thoughts there of like, okay, like you gotta build a
• 28:14
  process, you have to build system, which marketing means a funnel. Let me go build
• 28:16
  a funnel. And I was like, there's only two people in the funnel. I can
• 28:18
  reach out to
• 28:19
  Yeah.
• 28:22
  them personally.
• 28:24
  Yeah, and I think I've come around, I think that was a little bit of
• 28:28
  like getting influenced into that. Everybody was
• 28:30
  Yeah.
• 28:31
  doing it and and some of my friends that have businesses in other niches, that
• 28:36
  that does work for them. But I didn't realize yet that yeah, to your point,
• 28:42
  like their list had hundreds and thousands of people on it. Mine was not that
• 28:48
  big yet. And
• 28:50
  Yeah.
• 28:52
  And also it really is a relationship business. So I think I I lost sight
• 28:57
  of that or or maybe hadn't had that true realization yet. But
• 29:02
  Yep. Yeah.
• 29:04
  that's part of the process, isn't it? Yeah.
• 29:06
  It is. It's a live and learn for sure. another one that I like to
• 29:09
  ask too, any early on clients that you're like, this is, you know, hated classified
• 29:13
  as like easy money, but you thought like, Okay, easy project, good money, whatever, but
• 29:17
  then that
• 29:18
  Yeah.
• 29:19
  client ends up being a total headache and loses you money?
• 29:23
  Ooh, interesting. yeah, I've had some of those. I i yeah, right. No, no, no.
• 29:30
  Okay. Okay. You don't have to name names or anything, but
• 29:40
  maybe over a beer or something. But
• 29:41
  Yeah.
• 29:44
  yeah, I had a few, but l I've actually been very lucky and I don't
• 29:47
  know if that's
• 29:48
  Nice.
• 29:49
  just that again, because it is a relationship business, the people that are drawn to
• 29:54
  me tend to be like pretty cool and fun, or maybe the ones that I
• 29:59
  choose to follow up on are the ones that I think we're going to really,
• 30:04
  you know, have a good working relationship with. But certainly I'm sure there are projects
• 30:09
  I took on early on that if I really went back and dug into the
• 30:15
  numbers were absolute loss leaders in terms of
• 30:18
  Yeah.
• 30:20
  ROI and profits.
• 30:23
  Yeah. And and I like where you went with it too, 'cause like part two
• 30:26
  of the question is like what are the lessons learned? But like it's okay, you
• 30:29
  like especially in a relationship business, like you just connect with some people better than
• 30:33
  others and those are
• 30:34
  Yeah.
• 30:35
  the people that you follow up with. And then become they become good clients and
• 30:38
  you don't have these sort of loss leader clients too. So that's awesome.
• 30:41
  Yeah, and I think part of that lesson too is people are always showing you
• 30:44
  who they are. And so
• 30:46
  Yeah.
• 30:47
  trust them. And so that's something that I I try to watch out for as
• 30:53
  much as I can, but you never know. You never know how
• 30:58
  Yeah.
• 30:59
  it's gonna go.
• 31:01
  Okay. on the topic of something that maybe seems tempting but may not be the
• 31:06
  right choice, talk to me about helping independent firms stay independent. So obviously private equity
• 31:11
  coming in and buying up all sorts of accounting firms. Tell
• 31:16
  Yeah.
• 31:17
  us the rationale, why stay independent?
• 31:20
  Well, it's different for every firm, but I'm particularly passionate about that for a number
• 31:26
  of reasons. But one of them is in schools, some still today, there's this push
• 31:33
  to get accounting students into these mega firms, right? We used to call it big
• 31:39
  four or bust. I was
• 31:42
  Sure.
• 31:43
  part of that. And no shade to the big four or to large firms because
• 31:48
  I had a good experience there. I learned a lot and it has provided a
• 31:53
  lot for me even after leaving. So And it's a great fit for some people.
• 31:59
  The reality is though that some people are not going to thrive in a large
• 32:04
  environment like that, much the same way that not everybody's going to thrive at an
• 32:10
  Ohio State or a Penn State or right a huge fur a huge college campus.
• 32:15
  They need a smaller environment where they get a little bit more individualized attention. So
• 32:20
  that's true for the employees going into these firms, but it's also true on the
• 32:26
  client side that we need And there are clients out there that want more individualized
• 32:31
  attention, they want that relationship, they don't want to just be a number. And so
• 32:37
  I think there's a real place and a need for this diversity of firm shapes
• 32:42
  and sizes out there, both for the clients and for the people that are entering
• 32:47
  the profession. And we don't need them to all look the same and be these
• 32:53
  profit machines that are only worried about. where their next dollar is coming from. so
• 32:58
  That's really the the driver for me is I think in terms of having a
• 33:04
  thriving profession going forward, we need diversity. It we need to protect those small firms,
• 33:09
  mid-sized, even regional firms with multiple offices. There is absolutely a place and a need
• 33:14
  for all of those organizations. I don't know what I would do if I was
• 33:20
  forced to go be a client of a huge firm. There's no way I would
• 33:25
  get what I needed for my business and for myself. So that's really the the
• 33:31
  driver for me. Of why.
• 33:33
  Yeah. I c I can see you breaking out the typewriter and going back to
• 33:38
  old school if you were forced to do it.
• 33:41
  Well, yes. Maybe not quite that far back, but yeah. If we have to, if
• 33:44
  we've gotta break it down. But one of the
• 33:47
  Right.
• 33:48
  things that sort of struck me when all of this started happening, you know, the
• 33:53
  question for me was why accounting firms? PE has invested in all of these different,
• 33:58
  you know, ti what's the word I'm looking for? Like all these different types of
• 34:03
  organizations, all if they were in healthcare and car washes and God only knows what
• 34:08
  else, right? All
• 34:10
  Right, right.
• 34:11
  sorts of things. So what is it that they see in the accounting profession that
• 34:16
  is enticing? And what I started to talk about was they are signaling that there's
• 34:22
  opportunity in this business that firms are not tapping into themselves. They just think they
• 34:27
  can come in and do it better than you. and faster and bring the systems.
• 34:33
  And so I started thinking, if that's me, if I'm a firm owner, I'm wanting
• 34:38
  to figure out how to do this myself. Why have somebody else come in and
• 34:44
  run it for me? They're basically telling you you could be doing this better. So
• 34:49
  let's figure out what that looks like and how to execute on it so that
• 34:55
  we don't have to have a boss because most people come into being an entrepreneur
• 35:00
  to do it on their own.
• 35:03
  Yeah. Yeah, they're almost giving you the playbook. They're signaling where the opportunity is. And
• 35:08
  the the opportunity is to go do it on your own also.
• 35:13
  Yeah.
• 35:14
  It's pretty cool. I where do you stand on AI? What how do you use
• 35:18
  AI? What are your thoughts on it? Do you have similar thoughts to private equity
• 35:23
  as you do with AI?
• 35:25
  Well, I no. I think PE is right for some firms. At least that's what
• 35:31
  they tell me, right? That's what the firms say. PE was right for us. Okay,
• 35:38
  great. More power to you, go on. It's not right for everybody. and I don't
• 35:44
  know I I actually my personal thought is that it's not good for the profession
• 35:51
  in general, like at a high level. AI, on the other hand, I think if
• 35:57
  done right, can absolutely unlock opportunities for firms to operate in a different way and
• 36:04
  to eliminate some of the work that frankly their people were overqualified to be doing.
• 36:11
  Hey.
• 36:12
  The day-to-day bookkeeping and like transaction type work, even some of the basic analysis, you've
• 36:17
  got highly qualified, highly intelligent people that can be doing a lot more that were
• 36:24
  just getting bogged down in the minutiae. And so I think there's a huge opportunity
• 36:31
  for that. I personally use it Say, I'm probably a moderate user. I wouldn't consider
• 36:38
  myself a super user, but it's a great like brainstorming partner. It does automate some
• 36:45
  of my admin that we take on on a regular basis. So I'm using it,
• 36:52
  but I also think firms have an opportunity, but they need to have more strategy
• 36:59
  around it.
• 37:00
  Yes.
• 37:02
  That's what I think is missing is the strategy because I I fear that they're
• 37:07
  not going to see the ROI. We're already seeing that a little bit where firms
• 37:12
  have been, they were early investors, but without the strategy, they weren't investors in AI.
• 37:17
  They were investing into AI products
• 37:20
  Right.
• 37:21
  and tools and are probably now at the stage where someone's going to say, we've
• 37:25
  been spending a lot of money on this. What are we getting out of it?
• 37:30
  And then the risk becomes that they just ditch it altogether because they're not seeing
• 37:35
  ROI, which again, I think we just need to re-prioritize and kind of re-strategize around
• 37:40
  how you're using it and what you want it to do for you.
• 37:45
  I a hundred percent agree. mean I I run an AI platform and I still
• 37:49
  completely agree. You have to have a strategy first, or else you're gonna ditch our
• 37:53
  platform because you're not using it right, or because the ROI is not there. And
• 37:57
  I I forget the stat, but it was something like, you know, fifty, sixty percent,
• 38:02
  something like that of firms are pretty actively using AI,
• 38:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:06
  but like three percent can actually measure its benefits. And
• 38:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:11
  that comes back to did you have the strategy in place? Did you kind of
• 38:14
  think through? Were you just playing Let's add to the tech stack and see what
• 38:18
  works. Like, you know, I don't want to say aimless, but a little bit of
• 38:23
  aimlessness of hey, new fun thing.
• 38:25
  Well, yeah, and I think that comes from the capacity that we were talking about
• 38:29
  earlier, right?
• 38:30
  Exactly.
• 38:31
  It's and it's a s it's such a natural thing. If we're absolutely drowning in
• 38:36
  work, and I experienced that when I was burning out or burnt out, you will
• 38:41
  grasp at anything that seems like it will give you relief. And this was marketed
• 38:47
  as the thing that was going to help firms get out of that and build
• 38:52
  all of this capacity. But Yeah, we should always take that with a grain of
• 38:58
  salt. Anytime the promises are too good to be true, there's a layer in there
• 39:03
  of we still have to manage the change. We have to bring that intention and
• 39:09
  strategy. We also have to like do the change management part of it to make
• 39:14
  sure that people utilize it appropriately. So I think it was just a function of
• 39:20
  that almost desperation for some kind of relief. on the part
• 39:24
  Yeah.
• 39:25
  of those firms. And I I cannot blame them for wanting to choose the easy
• 39:30
  button.
• 39:31
  Or at least try it out. Exactly, yeah.
• 39:33
  Yeah, yeah. But it's not too late. I mean, I think they can turn that
• 39:38
  around. We've walked firms through that strategy and really trying to understand what are the
• 39:43
  problems you're trying to solve? What are the most costly problems you experience in your
• 39:48
  client delivery? And let's back into what you need your AI to do then to
• 39:53
  solve that problem. And then to get people to utilize
• 39:57
  Okay, so this is where you
• 39:59
  it.
• 40:00
  Right, and then utilize it and make the most out of it to get the
• 40:02
  ROI from it. So this is kind
• 40:03
  Yeah.
• 40:04
  of the stuff that you come in and help accountants with. It's laying out this
• 40:07
  full strategy, where to find capacity, here's some growth we can find. You kind of
• 40:11
  put this all together to build that go for it roadmap, so to speak.
• 40:15
  Yeah, so we do a capacity diagnostic with firms because that's another
• 40:20
  Nice.
• 40:21
  place where the lack of capacity comes in and I guess a way that it
• 40:25
  shows up is firms will say, Well, we know we need to do something, but
• 40:30
  we don't know where to start and I'm too busy to take the time to
• 40:36
  figure out where to start. Let me just do these things that are screaming for
• 40:41
  my attention. And then we stay stuck. We keep Keep going in the status quo
• 40:46
  and nothing ever changes or it takes a long time. So we started to do
• 40:52
  this diagnostic where we walk through different categories with firms and help it it really
• 40:57
  helps them to prioritize. Here are some ways you could get a quick win with
• 41:02
  capacity. And here are the midterm things that are going to take a little bit
• 41:08
  longer, but still you'll start to see the ROI. More quickly, and then here are
• 41:13
  the long-term things we should be building to make sure you can scale the capacity.
• 41:18
  But that has been really helpful to give a roadmap and a prioritization and just
• 41:24
  clarity. Hey, go do this. That's the one thing you need to do. One pla
• 41:29
  and we always like to start with things that either generate more revenue for the
• 41:35
  firm quickly. or reduce inefficiencies quickly so that we have those extra hours and that
• 41:40
  extra manpower to reinvest in the next step, which you know could be change management,
• 41:45
  it could be team development, any number of things.
• 41:49
  Yeah. I I love it because so often on this podcast I've I find that
• 41:53
  just having expectation, just setting expectations goes so far. And the same thing goes for
• 41:57
  prioritization. If it's hey, like there are a million things to do, and we can
• 42:02
  reduce it by one, but it's still basically a million things to do. Here's the
• 42:06
  one thing that you have to do though. This is the most important. It's gonna
• 42:11
  take a bit of time, but do this one first. And you'll like I'm sure
• 42:15
  you've seen this, like people's shoulders relax.
• 42:18
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:19
  They smile a little bit, it's like, okay, I know, like, I have my expectations.
• 42:21
  I know what I'm gonna do tomorrow. And that's awesome. And then that's a revenue
• 42:25
  generating thing, and they say, ooh, I want more of that. This is really cool.
• 42:28
  Okay, awesome.
• 42:29
  Yeah.
• 42:31
  I'm super excited to kind of follow the journey, but also super quickly, I gotta
• 42:35
  run you through the scrappy versus sophisticated lightning round. Okay.
• 42:38
  Yeah. Okay, let's do it.
• 42:41
  All right, so early days, we'll start off easy. Early days of running well-balanced accountants.
• 42:45
  your version of like a ramen noodle dinner. Anything like that where you're just kind
• 42:50
  of piecing things together, maybe cereal over the sink or something like that.
• 42:55
  Well, I think it's the coaching from my car was the that version
• 42:58
  Yeah.
• 43:00
  of that. Was you know, just trying to figure out where am I going to
• 43:03
  where's my next bit of revenue coming from and how do I service these clients
• 43:07
  and keep my job.
• 43:09
  Yep. Okay, okay. especially early days. Anything you've ever done, you're like, yeah, can totally
• 43:16
  do it, hundred percent confident, absolutely, but you've never actually done it.
• 43:23
  My motto in this business has been sell it and then build it. And so
• 43:26
  yeah, there were
• 43:27
  Love it.
• 43:30
  a number of things. The training programs that conceptually I maybe had a framework in
• 43:35
  my mind, but the slide deck did not exist. The format
• 43:40
  Okay.
• 43:41
  for how that workshop was going to be delivered didn't exist. Yeah, sell it, then
• 43:45
  build it.
• 43:46
  Absolutely. I'm a big fan. do you have to play or have you ever played
• 43:51
  the credit card timing game where you wait till tomorrow to charge something 'cause that's
• 43:56
  next month's statement?
• 43:58
  Yeah, for sure.
• 43:59
  Yeah.
• 44:01
  I've I think I used to like use one account to pay off another to
• 44:07
  then have a little bit of like credit card capacity to then get to the
• 44:13
  next. It was not not the healthiest, but we got there eventually.
• 44:19
  But Yeah, you gotta keep the plate spinning.
• 44:22
  Yeah.
• 44:23
  ever get a review from a family member?
• 44:27
  A review? Like like a
• 44:28
  Hopefully five stars.
• 44:32
  no, mostly the advice I got from my family was you're crazy to leave a
• 44:35
  good paying job
• 44:36
  Yeah, yeah.
• 44:37
  to start this. And then once the once the data started to show that this
• 44:41
  was viable, then now they're fully supportive. But I think they were a little bit
• 44:46
  scared in the beginning.
• 44:48
  Gotcha. Okay. Okay. Yep. Got the same speech as well. take me inside the
• 44:51
  Yeah.
• 44:52
  inbox. How how many emails unread is too many.
• 44:56
  right now I'm at five hundred and forty, but that's mostly junk. So I I'm
• 44:59
  not
• 45:00
  Yeah.
• 45:01
  I'm not a good example of that. As long as the important ones are addressed,
• 45:04
  that's my goal.
• 45:05
  this is great. Okay. I mean, could be a hundred percent. I'll give you 80%
• 45:10
  scrappy. Because there's a lot of sophistication that does come through, but on the scrappy
• 45:16
  side, and I'm a hundred percent a fan.
• 45:20
  Nice.
• 45:22
  thank you so much for coming on. What do you want the folks out there
• 45:24
  to know? Anything you want to promote? I know you've got speeches, conferences, all that
• 45:27
  stuff. What do you want the folks out there to know?
• 45:30
  Yeah, I guess if you want to learn more about our services, I'm more than
• 45:35
  happy to always jump on calls with people. They can check out everything on our
• 45:41
  website, which is wellbalancedaccountants.com. couple of things we're really excited about coming up and expanding
• 45:47
  are some of our CPA exam coaching cohorts. So that it's a good time of
• 45:53
  year for that. There's still time for your team to pass an exam or two
• 45:59
  before the next busy season and definitely conferences. So I'm out on the circuit and
• 46:05
  would love to meet people in person if we're in the same place.
• 46:11
  Very nice. Awesome. Erin, thank you so much for coming on. I'm a big fan.
• 46:13
  I'm excited to keep running the same circles and hopefully see you at some of
• 46:16
  those conferences. Thank you so much for coming on.
• 46:18
  Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. This was awesome.
• 46:23
  Awesome. Thanks everybody. Stay day driven.