randy crabtree: allow your employees freedom in two critical areas to win talent wars.
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the disruptors 
with liz farr for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
randy crabtree talks to a lot of other accountants and admits that he “steals ideas from everybody else.” imitation, after all, is the sincerest form of flattery.
more: erik solbakken: yes, you can work less and make more | donny shimamoto: future firm growth requires a mindshift | jennifer wilson: empower young workers to build the firm everyone loves | mike whitmire: re-think your hiring and training practices | hector garcia: success strategies of a quickbooks youtube superstar | blake oliver: why tax work yearns to be free| private equity explodes in u.k. | brannon poe: the status quo must go | accounting nerds, unlock your super powers | disruptor: jason statts shakes up the status quo | think small to think big with matt wilkinson | when financial statements go extinct with corey schmidt | can geraldine carter save accountants from themselves? | re-inventing accounting with tyler anderson
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one topic he’s been talking about a lot lately is the issue of mental health in the profession, which he feels is largely self-induced. although he’s been asked to talk about mental health without mentioning burnout–don’t be a downer–crabtree says it’s impossible. “i’m like, i’m sorry, but i can’t do that. it doesn’t go away if i don’t talk about it,” he said.
while it’s true accounting has a stigma as a high-stress profession with long hours and non-stop deadlines, randy said there are lots of things professionals in the accounting industry can do to combat the stereotype, including allowing everyone to establish focus time to work undisturbed for a few hours and permission to fire difficult clients. he added that establishing the habit of taking downtime is also helpful because “we don’t need to be available 24/7.”
crabtree offered additional tips to lessen the stress of busy season, including in the area of recruiting.
if we want to retain and attract more people, we need to give people the option of remote work with flexible work schedules, crabtree added. his firm has grown to about 60 over 15 years and is largely remote, with a few satellite offices where only a few people work. but over those 15 years, only seven people have left his firm voluntarily. this demonstrates that it’s possible to build a culture, attract and retain good people, and help people move up in their careers, even in an all-remote firm.
accountants, crabtree said, need to change the mindset of doing things the way the profession has been doing things for the last 100 years just because it’s been successful in the past.
why? private equity will be coming in and forcing changes. venture capital started with the top 25 firms and is now moving into the top 100 firms. eventually, vc will look at the $2 and $3 million firms and will likely be most interested in those with a strong niche emphasis.
crabtree said his firm does three things to keep staff happy:
- don’t micromanage
- give people flexibility for where they work.
- give people flexibility for when they work.
3 more takeaways from randy crabtree
- if you communicate the value of your work, the client will pay you for it.
- growing to be the biggest firm may not be what you need, but being the most profitable is important. increasing top-line revenue is great, but if it doesn’t increase partner pay or employee pay or net profit, what’s the point of growth? if you bill correctly and price correctly, you can grow net profit without having to grow top-line revenue. you’ll also most likely save on employee issues at the same time.
- empathy, listening and understanding another’s situation combined with the ability to communicate your professional knowledge of that success or struggle, whether business or personal, are vital skills for today. you can offer ideas or solutions or even just be the shoulder they can cry on.
more about randy crabtree
co-founder and partner of tri-merit specialty tax professionals, randy crabtree is a widely followed author, lecturer and podcast host for the accounting profession. since 2019, he has hosted the bi-weekly “the unique cpa,” podcast, which ranks among the world’s 5%most popular programs (source: listen score).you can find articles from crabtree in accounting today’s voices column, the aicpa tax adviser, 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 and intuit’s taxpro center. he is a regular presenter at conferences and virtual training events hosted by national accounting associations, state cpa societies and other industry associations. crabtree was listed in the “ones to watch” section of accounting today’s 2021 “top 100 most influential people in accounting.” in may 2022 randy was appointed for a three-year term to the intuit tax council. prior to starting tri-merit, crabtree was managing partner of a cpa firm in the greater chicago area. he has more than 30 years of public accounting and tax consulting experience in a wide variety of industries and has worked closely with top executives to help them optimize their tax planning strategies. schaumburg, illinois-based tri-merit is a niche professional services firm that specializes in helping cpas and their clients benefit from tax credits and incentives including r&d tax credits, cost segregation, energy efficient incentives (179d and 45l), the employee retention credit (erc) and the work opportunity credit (wotc).
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible.they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr 00:02
good. welcome to accounting disrupter conversations. i’m your host liz farr from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. my host today, my guest today is randy crabtree, co founder and partner of trying merritt, specially tax professionals and host of the unique cpa podcast. how are you today, randy?
randy crabtree 00:28
i’m doing great. liz and i, i really appreciate you having me on the show. i’m really looking forward to this conversation.
liz farr 00:35
well, it was nice to meet you at xerocon and hang out with you a little bit. so that’s why i invited you on.
randy crabtree 00:44
i guess i passed the test at xerocon. great. i’m i’m thrilled for that. yeah, i had a great time. there. it was, it was nice. i had known you have you. i knew your name. but we had met in person before that. so it was so great to meet you in person.
liz farr 00:57
oh, thank you very much. now let’s get started. because we have a lot to cover. accounting talent in the us in the world has been scarce for years, and the pandemic made it worse. what are some ideas that you have on how to make things better? yes,
randy crabtree 01:18
this is i love this question. because there’s 1000 different answers here. you know, you had mentioned earlier that i do host a podcast, the unique cpa, this is a common topic that comes up on there as well. i think for me, i’m very fortunate, i get to go out and speak at conferences and cpa firms and podcasts like this. and, and one of the hot topics i talk about these days is mental health. so i almost always go back to mental health. unfortunately, our profession has this reputation probably as a high-stress profession. and i think that’s somewhat self induced. i think that’s a lot self induced. but we had that that’s a side note. i think we have this reputation. and so what’s happened is just people don’t want to deal with that. and so not only do they want to deal it when they’re in the profession, and there’s easy things you can do to to change, that i think we need to as a profession, start changing that. but there’s things you could do. and i’ll talk about what my ideas are or the ideas i steal from everybody else. they’re here in a minute. but, but it’s it’s something that has to change, because not only are people leaving the profession, as you know, i think, you know, you had you’ve seen what the great recommendation, but it’s really technically not a great resignation, it’s a great migration, they’re still going somewhere, people are still working somewhere, they may just be leaving the profession. and in addition, we’re not getting as many students going into accounting degrees at least, i’ve always assumed that jennifer wilson and i were talking a couple of weeks ago, and she confirmed that that’s accurate. so i’m basing it on her telling me that that is a true statement. and so it’s i think part of the stigma of high-stress profession, long work hours, you know, nonstop deadlines, which is somewhat true, but there’s things we could do. and so when i look at the sorry, if i’m rambling too much, you can stop me anytime, right? and so so some things i look at when i look at a profession, i look at it from a mental health standpoint because i get to go out and talk about this is what can we do and i learn every time i go out and talk about mental health. so me personally in the profession i buy everybody deals with stress. now, whatever that that happened, then it’s not necessarily bad if the stress just keeps going on and on and on. that’s bad. that’s where we get people talking about burnout. you can’t ignore the burnout. i’ve talked to many cpa firms that say, and they actually had someone come to me and say, hey, we want you to come out and talk about mental health awareness. but don’t talk about burnout. i’m like, i’m sorry, but i can’t do that. it doesn’t go away if i don’t talk about it. so i think we have to address that. and there’s plenty of things we can do to address that. it’s not something where people have to leave the profession, i think we can control burnout. simple things are that i’ve learned just talking to people is is how do we make this a better work experience for people coming into the profession? or how do we attract more people? just just be smarter about your work time, you know, have a focus time this is something i’m hearing more and more and i didn’t know much about this, but have a focus time have this whatever two or three hour block where you’re not going to do anything else. but the project that you’re working on, you’re not going to look at email, you’re not going to answer your phone, you’re not going to answer tasks, you’re not gonna search the internet. and and i was talking to someone on my podcast, dan brown’s his name. he said every time we get distracted we lose 20 minutes of productivity. if we spend that two or three hours just on that project, yeah, how much more productive will be how much less time we’ll have to work, and how much happier we’ll be. i think that’s huge. i can’t say i’m very good at that. at this point. i just like i said, i steal ideas from other people. i think that’s great. another thing we could do in the profession, just to help us be better, and our employees would appreciate it. and this i think, is huge. we don’t have to be the biggest firm out there. we, we can we can get rid of the clients that as i say, no, as i’ll say, cpas eas tax repairs, i’ll use them probably interchangeable. but let’s say cpas, because i am a cpa. so i’m going to use that as cpas. we have this mindset that we have to help everybody. we’re we’re in the service industry. and we know this, we’re experts, we know this stuff, we have to help everybody. if we don’t help them who’s going to? well, you don’t. and so you have to just get rid of those things. people call it the c and d clients, you have to get rid of these nonpayers, slow payers, somebody that’s tough on not just tough, but rude to your employees, you know, somebody that’s not responsive, that’s all unproductive and not worth our time. and so i think if you’re trying to keep people, and you show them that you’re not going to deal with this, you’re not going to allow somebody to treat an employee that you’re working with this way. just start getting rid of clients, and you’re gonna be more productive, probably. and you’re probably more profitable when you do it as well. so i think that’s a big thing i can keep going on and on. on this, because there’s just there’s so many things i think you could do. let me go a few more things if you don’t mind. yeah. all right. a few more things.
liz farr 01:18
i think.
randy crabtree 06:53
another thing is, and i was just to have a discussion with brian cush, who brian’s a partner at intend to lead. they’re out there, like a cpa for advisory type firm, they come out and help you be more productive in your practice. he’s talking about downtime, turning it off. at the end of the day. no, that’s the end of the day. and it’s a ritual you have to go to figure out that this is i am not going to work 24/7 anymore. i am at five o’clock, i closed my computer at five o’clock, i started having thoughts of, what am i going to do tonight? what am i going to think about tonight, and it’s not work at all. and it’s a ritual. but i think it’s so easy for every possession profession. but for us to just not ever turn off, we’ve got our phone, we got our text, we can look at anything on the weekend, the the evening. and i think that hurts our productivity in the long run. and that will lead to potentially burnout and stress and anxiety or anything else. so i think turning offs extremely important. again, i’m not the greatest at it. i am personally working on those things. and i can see it’s making a difference not only for me, but for the people i work with because i no longer will send them a message on a sunday afternoon. i didn’t expect them to read it, i would do it because it was in my head. i had to get rid of it. and then i get a response. and i’m like, oh, no, i should not have sent that message. because i don’t want somebody thinking they need the work on a sunday afternoon. so i’m trying to get better add at those types of things. like i said, there, i got about five more things i could probably ramble on for another 20 minutes on this topic. and if you want to go to another topic, i’m completely fine.
liz farr 08:30
yeah, you know, i really agree with getting rid of those c and d and not even not even mentioning the f clients. yeah, you know, there there were enough of those d and possibly f clients that i had to deal with that. they the partners just kept stringing along and stringing along and you know, it was just not okay. you know, one of my co workers said, yeah, the cfo says everything that she did wrong is my fault. you know, anytime we have a meeting, it’s always my fault for something that she did. right. and, you know, and they kept her on and burned out a couple more people. yeah, it was just awful working with those people. yeah.
randy crabtree 09:28
but unfortunately, we have too many too much mindset thinking this is the way it is. and it needs to stay this way. and we need to help everybody. so
liz farr 09:36
yeah, yeah. and i love your idea of turning it off at the end of the day, too. that is so important.
randy crabtree 09:45
that’s something like i said, i’ve been working on more as well, even before i was talking to brian about this last week. sounds like i was talking to everybody last week. i’m very fortunate. i get to talk to people like you all the time. people in the industry that i respect so much it is it is just i don’t know how i got this lucky. but i enjoyed talking about this profession, you know, because i love this topic. can i go one more thing? alright. and once i could do one more, i’ll probably do two more. that’s just the way i work. so hopefully we’ve got two hours to record today. but i appreciate this list. the other thing that i think that we need to do, the world’s changed in the last couple of years, obviously, the last two and a half years, the last three years, it’s been changing forever. and i’m sure every generation says the world’s changed, we’ve gone through a pretty dramatic change lately. but i think there’s a fear of remote work right now, at some leadership levels. i think if you’re looking at new employees there love that opportunity to remote work. somehow that gap has to change. and we have to not have this fear of remote work, because we’re going to retain, retrain, attract, and retain more people if we give them this flexibility. and i think flexible work schedules are great. i mean, there’s obviously things you have to do when clients are in their office. and that has to happen. but i have no problem if somebody wants to work at tenant nights because they had their kids t ball game at two in the afternoon or whatever i mean, and so i think flexible work schedule, as long as someone getting their work done. as long as you know, i don’t have to micromanage and well, i don’t personally manage anybody anymore. i gave that up five years ago, i don’t want to do that. but as long as you know, somebody’s getting their work job. that’s all that matters. and we’ve been a remote practice really, from day one, we have an office and outside of chicago, we have an office in the dc area, we have a handful of offices. but we have one or two people there for the most part, people work remote. we are 60 people now about an a 15 year timeframe. i think we’ve had seven people voluntarily leave. and i think that’s a pretty good. you know, i think that’s a pretty good sign that we’re able to build a culture still, while we’re on that together. and so i don’t think we have to be afraid of this. how do we have a culture? how do we train people? how do we get people to move up in their careers? we’ve had we’ve done all of that. i can’t say how it’s just been our way of doing things from day one. so i think that also will help attract and retain people if we’re not afraid of that flexible remote type scheduling.
liz farr 12:39
i agree, you know, yeah. flexibility is such a big thing. and there were there’s so many firms that i was affiliated with that you will be here at this time. and oh, you can flex your time, but only about half an hour a day. right. right. so flexible. yeah. yeah. and i got to commend you on your really low turnover rate. you know, the main the number that you had leave in 15 years, is how many left within 18 months of the last firm i worked with?
randy crabtree 13:24
yeah, it’s it’s an issue. i don’t know. we’re very we’re very fortunate. i understand that. i can’t explain why other than my can tell you things we don’t do. we don’t micromanage. i know, that’s probably the thing, we give people flexibility. and you know, of where they work and when they work. so those i think are three key things.
liz farr 13:45
yeah, those are all really important. now, until recently, the business model for accounting firms hadn’t really changed too much, are still relying on hourly billing. and there was this hierarchical org chart. but we’re beginning to see a few firms move out of that with value pricing, fixed price, even some subscriptions. and instead of the partner structure, a ceo structure. what are some things that you’re seeing firms that you work with? and in your own firm, too?
randy crabtree 14:32
so let’s talk about our own firm for so we’re kind of that traditional model we have. we’re an llc, we have partners in the firm. from that structure standpoint, we’re not a co lead. we’re not although we are i mean, one of our partners is managing partner so you could look at it that way. i think one thing we do a little different is we do look at this as a business. i think a lot of times in the accounting industry, the partners don’t realize they have a business. they what they have is they think, oh, i’m, i’m in the service industry, i just service other clients, other people, it rather than looking at it as a business, and so i think that’s important to still have that service. i mean, that’s if we don’t have that service, we’re not in business, but we still have a business. and so look at it from that standpoint, we’re always trying to figure out how we are better how we’re more profitable, how we, you know, keep people happy within the firm. and so, i think that’s important. and i think you can, this is there was just somebody put out the, like, a thought provoking question a few weeks ago is, our accounting firms even needed anymore. and i love that, that idea, i and the whole thing is an accounting firm is needed, but i think it was more than they needed in the structure that currently exist. i know you i think you’re familiar with blake oliver, this is something he says a lot. is this even needed? do we need accounting firms? do we need the partnership structure? and how can we do things different, i can see that happening. i don’t know why it has to be a partnership. i mean, you can you can make a lot of money in this industry, whether you’re a partner in a firm or not, you can still be a you know, a c level, let’s say in a firm or even a management level, and still still do well. and you’re also seeing this changing, i think pretty rapidly with private equity coming in, in the industry, that’s gonna completely restructure the way that the the industry, the i call it industry profession, the way the profession is going to be looking over the next few years, and that may not be the partnership structure anymore, it may just be with their service c-corps out there that are working with the, with clients, and so i can’t predict where it’s gonna go, i think it’s going to change, i think there has to be reaction to what’s going on in their profession from the lack of employees and, and private equity. i think as part of that, you know, we’re coming in, we’ve got lots of money, we’re going to help make this you more technical, more technology based. and to be able to do that other people are going to have to pivot and convert to another structure, most likely, i you know, we’ll see what happens. but from a billing structure now to that. what i’m seeing first go back then, from a structure of of how your firm is set up, i still see the traditional model, when we work with cpa firms across the country, i still, that’s pretty much the model i see. i don’t see many things change from that. i think it may be coming. but i really haven’t seen that. i can tell you a couple people i know, have started doing that. i guess i’ll stop dropping names, but some other people i know, are giving just ownership to their employees as well. and so whether you’re a partner or not, you’re just now an owner of the firm. and so it’s just a different mindset. but everybody has that opportunity to be an owner of the firm after probably meeting a certain amount of time being there and this type of thing, almost potentially, like an esop, i guess i could see that happening as well. so but i’m not seeing it, i’m not seeing it very often, it’s, you know, if i deal with 1000 firms, i’m seeing one or two that are doing some kind of different structure. but it’ll change, it’ll happen more, from a billing standpoint, from a pricing standpoint, that i think has a lot more legs right now i’m seeing it at the smaller, firm level more than the large firm level, or at least i talked to the smaller firms about it more and see that happening there. the larger firms in general, seem a lot harder to pivot, just because they’re so set in their ways, or they’re so they’ve been structured this way for so long. and now i’ve got 50 partners and getting all 50 that say we’re gonna do something different, is not always the easiest. so from a pricing standpoint, i think that’s slower to change. and i can think of one firm that i talked to, oh, was just this last week. and he was talking about a certain service that they do that they do bid value billing on that service. and he had said, and this is a pretty large firm, and this partner said, i wish i knew about this years ago because we were the completely restructured how we do business, that portion of our business is more profitable than any other portion of our business. and it’s not just the value billing. it’s communicating the value because the client will pay for it. if you communicate, there’s a value there. if you can’t communicate, there’s a value, they just think there’s a higher price. and so that’s what they’ve been able to do so. so smaller firms, i definitely see that happen at a much faster pace than i see the larger firms. doing it from a pricing standpoint?
liz farr 20:03
yeah. and, you know, to be honest, even the firms that said they did hourly billing didn’t always stick to that 100%. you know, i remember having a conversation with one of the partners my first or second year there, and i said, well, how could you? how could you build this, this return out of $800? when i only have like, you know, there were only maybe $300 worth of work and it needs a well, that’s because that’s what the client values the work act. like, okay, yep. and then why are we keeping time?
randy crabtree 20:50
yeah, we had a, i had a firm that was i was friends with major partners. so i came out of the public gallery before i started try, merritt, i was, you know, my, the generalist doing taxes, doing helping every type of client out there from 1040s to every entity type. and probably way too many types of businesses within the business. i mean, i worked with the, you know, whatever construction, fast food doctors offices, it’s hard to be an expert in any of those areas, when you’re dealing with that many things. and i didn’t learn that until after the fact. but what i was gonna say is, one of my friends was managing partner of a larger firm in my area. and i couldn’t remember this is probably 16 718 years ago, they had a timecard burning party, wherever they took their last time card, they went out and had gone nowhere. but for the for the other big bonfire. and they did this ritual of we’re burning time cards were no longer billing based on time. i haven’t asked him if that’s still the way they’re doing things. i kind of think they probably restricted that a little bit. that’s what the rumor i heard. but that was pretty, at least in my mind, progressive, you know, 17 years ago that they had made this decision that no longer were they going to base it on time. and that’s great.
liz farr 22:12
yeah. yeah. and, you know, when you bring in technology, then how can you build for something that now takes two minutes that used to take two hours? right, right. yeah, you go broke? yep, nope,
randy crabtree 22:29
exactly. and that’s why you have to really bill and that’s why, but then the other thing is, too, you have to realize that you have a cost of technology. now, it’s not nearly the cost you had before, but you have to make sure that you know that you’re making them something as well. yeah. so no, i, i agree. that’s, that’s the way to look at it. i think going forward and for tri-merit for we’ve, we’ve pretty much, you know, a hybrid of value billing from the start, i would say it’s, you know, we do go based on value. and we do make, you know, we do look at time, and we cap our fees. so our fees, you know, because we with us, when you’re doing credits, incentives, you could show the value. i mean, you know, okay, it’s pretty easy to show the value. okay, yeah, you’re getting $100,000 refund. and so one things we’ve done is we’ve we’ve set a cap on that our fees will never exceed x percentage of the value of the savings. and so you know, that’s what i’m kind of saying it’s a hybrid, we don’t charge a percentage. we don’t, we don’t charge by the hour, but we do set a fixed fee, based on time based on value, that kind of probably going to guess to keep name dropping. i told ron baker this about seven months ago, who’s the pricing guru, or the subscription pricing now? and he told me, randy, you got to stop that hybrid part of it. it’s got to just be value based. i said, all right, ron, i will. oh, he’s actually saying we could do what we’re doing subscription model. like, alright, ryan, you’re gonna have to tell me how to do that. because i’m not sure i see subscription model in credits and incentives. but who knows?
liz farr 24:03
yeah, you know, that’s what i was just thinking because not every firm needs that on an ongoing basis. right. exactly. my, you might need it for a couple of clients now and then. right. and then you might not need it at all.
randy crabtree 24:26
right, exactly. so some of our services, credits we can look at each year. some of them are one and done. and so i guess it’s just depends on the specific service potentially we do. but yes, to answer that my long winded answer to your question is that the imc and change? i think more change is needed. and that’s just as another commentary. i think, way too long. we, as tax professionals, accounting professionals, have undervalued our worth. um, and so that’s a change that needs to happen. because, honestly, if we could start building billing more as well, we don’t need as many clients to deal with, we start solving our employee issues that as well, because we can get less done with, or more done with less people or more revenue with less people.
liz farr 25:19
exactly, exactly. now, speaking of that, what about growth? do firms even really need to grow? that’s a good thing to
randy crabtree 25:37
so in general, because this is that’s funny. the topics you pick, the questions you keep asking is things i’ve been thinking about a lot lately, because this is one that i was thinking about recently, in the last month or so is that, you know, we’re growing at a fast pace right now. like, and our biggest our personal business is growing at a fast pace, which is, which is great. when you have more growth, we do have a little more. i mean, we don’t have drama, but we have a little more than we had before. we never had any trauma before. we have a little now here and then and just managing that gets tougher, the bigger you get, just because you know, everybody has a different personality, and not everybody agrees on everything. i think if we’re looking at growth in general, i don’t think being the biggest is what you need to be, i think being the most profitable is important. i mean, well, for some people. so you could you could be the same, you know, increase in top line revenue is great. but if that doesn’t increase your your your partner or whatever employee take home pay or just net profit or whatever, in general, what’s the point of the growth other than i guess, maybe attracting some more private equity to come in? because we have this, but but i don’t think growth, especially when we go back to question one you had with retaining or attracting employees into the business, you know, why try to continue to grow when we’re going to fight this battle of, we’re gonna grow, but where do we get the employees to do this growth. and i think this almost all ties into everything we talked about so far. because if i can bill correctly, price my work correctly, i can i can grow net profit without having to grow top line revenue, and then i also save employee issues. and, and so i think that’s important. myself, i’m, i’m a big proponent on niche practices as well. i think that’s extremely important. again, going back to things we talked about already, when private equity is coming in right now. and they’re going to make larger firms. although private equity is coming down the chain, it’s, you know, started with top 20 cpa firms. now, it’s top 100. you know, it’s going to be, you know, your two $3 million firm eventually, if they have what one a nice niche practice, i guess, would help with that, too. i wasn’t even thinking that. but if you could build a niche practice, that’s going to help if you do want to grow top line, i think that helps the growth tremendously. because as we kind of talked before, when i was a practice, that was dealing with every industry, how can i be an expert dealing with every industry, i just can’t. and so if i could build a niche practice, and be able to show that i know your business, mr. and mrs. client, i know your business, i know your industry. i am an expert in in dealing with the trucking industry or the restaurant industry or the and i think you and i both know, josh lance, the craft brewing industry, he does an awesome job with that. and so if i can build this niche practice, i can grow that firm, i probably not only going to grow top line, but i’m going to grow bottom line, net profit as well. and showing myself as the expert in the passion that i have for that industry. i think that that’s great. so i don’t think we necessarily have to grow. if we want to grow. i think the path is niche. i think i know people are arguing with me on that because it just happened last week seems like a lot happened in my life last week, but it actually did. i was having an argument, chat argument, and i think it was zoom about whether we need to concentrate up in this practices, and i think it’s, i think it’s important.
liz farr 29:35
i think it also depends on what kind of practice you want to bill. because i can see the merit of not i live in a rural community, and i can see the merit of being the accounting firm in this town that works with the dry cleaner. during the roofers and the construction people, and the little restaurants, and the little businesses, i can see that you know, but if you want to be able to help these businesses become the best dry cleaner possible, or the best trucking company or the best construction company, then you can’t do it. if your mind is pulled in 1000 directions, you just can’t do that. no, i
randy crabtree 30:38
agree. but that the years what your scenario makes a lot of sense, because it’s timeless, like time and place. okay, this is my locale. this is my client base i have access to, and they need my services, because right now, there’s a lot of clients that need services that can’t get it just because there’s just not enough people. i think that that’s completely fine. if you’re, if you’re in a, you know, where i’m in chicago, i mean, there’s, there’s, there’s so many clients and so many different industries, it would be easier to build a niche practice here. and then reality, with just the ability to do any clients work anywhere remotely right now, that also increases the ability to be able to build a niche practice. because if you’re a niche practice with an industry that has one of these clients, and and then every colony, let’s say and not multiple, other than your client bases spread out around the country, and that gets harder to do, but remote work will help that.
liz farr 31:39
yeah. yeah. and, and on the other hand, you know, these itty bitty cpa firms in rural areas are the ones that are really having a hard time when it comes to sell. you know, i’ve talked to brannon poe about that a lot that they just can’t find anybody. yeah. right. and you mean, to sell their practice to or to sell their practice to yeah,
randy crabtree 32:06
yeah, no, i’ve heard that too. yep. and then what happens, then? i have no idea because those clients don’t go back to that. i want to help everybody, those group, which i can’t, but those clients still need to be serviced. and maybe it just becomes the we’ve got this online accounting and tax service that is going to do that. and i know, people that built these practices that way as well.
liz farr 32:30
absolutely. now, what skills do accountants need to be successful today in in the future, you know, we used to have to keep the tax code and fasb regs in our heads, and we had to be really good with a 10 key, but what do they need? now? what is what would you counsel somebody to brush up on?
randy crabtree 32:59
so there’s, there’s a, depends on what your goal is, i guess, in the profession. i mean, i had when i was in practice, i had a partner, who was a great technician, wasn’t great at talking to people communicating wasn’t great at business development. you don’t have to be i mean, that’s fine. no, but but so if that’s your goal is just you love pumping out tax returns, i mean, then you need that, you know, tech skill, that now is the expertise to be able to do that. if you really want to go out and be an entrepreneur and build a practice. i mean, anybody can, i shouldn’t say this, but i guess anybody can have a skill of doing a tax return or doing a financial statement or whatever. i think real, it’s really important. especially, i began, i think things have changed, but i’m the old guy. now. maybe everybody my age thinks days had changed at some point. but i really think just i think empathy is really important. i think understanding the situation that somebody is in that you’re talking to is extremely important. and i think we don’t think about well, maybe we do, but i don’t think i see people thinking about that lot. it’s just, you know, understanding the current situation someone is and being able to communicate your knowledge of, of what they’re going through, whether it’s a business success, or business struggle, or personal success or personal struggle, or whatever it is. so i think i think empathy is big. i think listening ties in with that. and i’m not listening right now a lot because i’m talking a lot so sorry, let’s i probably should be listening. i think listening is a huge skill. so i think it ties together with empathy. and example. i have been saying this a lot lately, and i think maybe this goes into how our business has retained people. but i personally do this thing. i guess i’m patting myself on the back now, but i promise so they do this thing is every time we we hire a new person, i don’t i call them on teams because we are pretty much remote. i’ll call them a team. and i’m probably about three people behind right news now. so i need to catch up and talk not about what their job is or what their role is or what they’re doing, and just talk about them and who they are and what their passions are outside of work. and, and i think that’s important to get to know people, one on one, and i, i hear so many cool stories, when i do that, talking to people that you never would have heard about, if you’re just talking about, well, you know, code section 48 d says we had to do this. so can you give me an explanation of that, i mean, that’s not going to tell me anything about them. and so, so i think listening to their stories and who they are, is important. and then, and then i guess this all ties together. but i guess the next step i would say, is, is communicating. because you need to be able to communicate whatever it is that that they’re looking for, if you can help or you have an idea, or you have a solution or, or you just want to be the shoulder that they can cry on their whatever but communication is so what they say empathy and listening, communication, probably all kind of goes together. anybody anybody can, and i, not really, but anybody can have the skill of, you know, filling out a tax return or be in the report or have an income tax, which i’m a big fan of reporting what happened, i’m a big fan of advising effective, what happens, but really, if i could do that, so having these interpersonal skills, i think are important if you want to build your business, build your true internal practice, or just help people in general.
liz farr 36:54
empathy is a really highly underrated characteristic for accountants, you know, we’re used to being the ones who have the answers. and when you’re exercising empathy, you don’t really necessarily have the answers, or there may not be an answer, the answer may just be, hey, i’m here. and you can vent at me about whatever’s going on. or i can celebrate with you when things are going great. but that certainly is not something that we you know, i don’t recall ever reading that in any of my textbooks. no. certainly not. and, you know, was not part of the cpa exam prep course that i did. and it it certainly wasn’t something that they pushed us to do when i was in practice. right. you know, i’m hearing it more, you know, and as i started taking myself to conferences, and i started hearing it. and i was thinking, you know why these are the conferences that the partners and the managers go to? why don’t they bring everybody? yeah. why?
randy crabtree 38:22
i like that idea. yeah, that’s one thing. we don’t we, we do as a company, not for going to a conference standpoint, but going to our own, we’ll call their own trimaris summit. i actually think we’re gonna call it the tray merit summer summit this november. that’s right. it is the trade merit team summit 2022. so look for that on social media, we’ll probably be promoting this. but what we do is we just get together as a group, since we are all remote and just get to know each other. and you hear so many stories that have an empathy, i think is important, especially with, you know, the way the world’s been the last few years. it’s, it’s, at least i think, been helpful for me.
liz farr 39:10
absolutely. now, we’ve talked so far about the things that accountants should do. now, what should accountants stop doing immediately?
randy crabtree 39:24
immediately? well, we talked about this already. so let me see. i’ll see if i can come up with a second one. but i think immediately the first thing i think is stop working. 24/7 i mean, stop. this is what we talked about earlier at the turn it off at the end of the day. i think that is one of the biggest things we could do for our own personal well being and for our businesses well being, honestly is just turn it off at the end of the day, so stopping 24/7 on keep yourself from waking up at three in the morning because you can’t even turn it off yet. and you’re thinking about this next deadline or that next tax return or this, you know, financial statement i got to get done for this client. i honestly think if we could do that we’re going to be more productive and better personal experience with work. and really a better example of if you’re a leader in your business better example of what things should look like to others coming up in the profession.
liz farr 40:31
absolutely, i, you know, i actually did have a good example of one of the firm’s that was that the founder and main partner, used to run marathons. so that took discipline of training plus the time to travel to new york city and boston and places like that. and he’s also an avid skier. so weekends, during ski season, he goes skiing, and i went skiing with him a couple of times, and had some really wonderful conversations with him about that. and that was, that was really valuable time. so he was a good model for that.
randy crabtree 41:22
right? i think, i think i tried to be a good model for that. you know, we do a lot of fun things. but i personally am also involved in a craft beer bar in chicago. so people know that that’s a thing i do outside of work and the passion of mine. and like, we had a great time this weekend, we had a big event at the bar, and i got to be there. i haven’t been there a lot lately, just because i do travel a lot for business, but but just having that time where there was no thoughts of anything to do with business was a was a lot of fun. and i think i think we try to model that as leaders in our firm as well. you
liz farr 42:04
you know, what do you what do you think keeps people from changing, you know, accountants have known for a long time, the things that they need to do, they need to create firms that people actually want to work in. but what keeps them from making these changes?
randy crabtree 42:25
history, i guess, it’s always been this way. so it’s gonna keep being this way. and if it keeps being this way, and you don’t look at the things are changing, you’re not going to be around. so i think mindset of, hey, we’ve done this for the last year was some firms probably 100 years, it’s done this way for 100 years, and look how successful we are. and so we’re gonna keep doing it for the this is just the way it is. it’s just a mindset thing. it is, it’s something that that needs to change. again, going back to things we talked about already, but private equity coming in, things are not going to be the same. you can’t just stay down the same road. and if you do, i think you’re going to have trouble. and so i think a good example of this in my mind, and i think again, these are people you know, in fact, i think one of these have been on your podcast is matthew man, kenji? claire moto, from acuity. you’re familiar with them, right?
liz farr 43:21
oh, yeah. yeah.
randy crabtree 43:23
i thought you knew that pretty well. so so i think if you look at them, and i’ve talked to both of them, they’re great guys. i’ve talked to both of them. and, you know, they they specifically talk about, you know, building their firm. and i think they use the word weird ways. and so they didn’t have that that old mindset that this is the way it is. and this is the way it has to has to be. and they’re there. i don’t know what they technically kenji was in business for awhile. but the matthew came out, let’s say 12 years ago. and this is where they really started to change the way they did things. and they’re 150 person firm now, right? in that short time frame, because they didn’t one. they didn’t look at their firm as just a service firm. but it is a business that they want to run as an entrepreneur as well. so we need to look at that. that’s something we, you know, that mindset has to change to. they did things like they started with a lot of high tech startups, and they took a lot of ideas from the startups and they integrate into their business. and one of the things they did this, they just no other firms that i know are doing this and some of them are asscher but they haven’t really seen it. just they have they call it outbound sales, but inside sales team, they’re just calling to get new business. obviously, that’s where they’re, they’re building that business. they’re, they’re, you know, they they’re just their mindset is completely different than the traditional mindset. and so therefore, we just have to know that this industry is changing. this industry is going to go through some major changes. i keep saying industry and people sometimes complain next, the industry, this profession. but if i say profession, then they’re looking at this i’m not i’m not a business that they industry, now i am a business. so i’m gonna stay with industry because i want you to think of this as a business. this industry is changing. and if you if you if you have this mindset that this is the way we’ve been, and we’re always going to be this way, unfortunately, i think you’re gonna have trouble down the road.
liz farr 45:22
yeah, i agree, you know, and then, and i do really like the way that kenji and matthew are operating their firm, it’s a really different place to work. and that’s why whenever any of my cpa friends are looking for a new place to land, i always put out acuity is one of my top choices, top recommendations. yep. and, yeah, and i also want to say, you know, you’re not going to get any any guff from me by calling it a profession or business, or an industry. i did graduate work in linguistics. and what that did for me was informed me that languages are really flexible. and as long as the intention is communicated, it don’t matter what word you used, all right, your grammar doesn’t have to be perfect. you just have to communicate that is the object of language. so
randy crabtree 46:28
well, that’s good for me, because i’m a numbers guy, i’m not having my wife’s another there. so when i do rate things, she’s very good at coming in and fixing my grammar, at least, or my punctuation marks and all that. i just like i have the ideas and just get him down, and then someone else will clean them up for me. so that’s good to know. thank you.
liz farr 46:49
yeah, yeah. now, client accounting services, client advisory services, client accounting, and advisory, whatever you want to call calves. that’s a big thing these days, what do you think is going to be the next big thing.
randy crabtree 47:10
so i don’t know if you’d already say this is a big thing or not, i think it needs to be a big thing. we mentioned it already. and so i kind of keep going back to things i’ve already i’ve already talked about. but i really, really believe this nit being a niche expert is going to be extremely important. and we said it earlier too. and because i think this is going to accelerate the need for smaller firms to be conditioned experts, because all this private equity that’s going to be coming into our profession, who i said profession, that time that’s going to be coming into our profession, is just going to change things. and it’s just you’re not going to be able to compete with just certain areas, just because the technology, the dollars that they could put in technology as a smaller firm, you’re just not going to be able to do. but if you have that go back to the skills, the communication, the listening skills, the ability to talk with people, and you have the expertise now in the industry that they want to talk to you about. i just don’t see that that can be a bad thing. so whether niching is already a thing or not. it definitely has started that way. i mean, i started as a niche practice now 15 years ago, we have a niche service, you know, credits incentives, now their niche industry, you know, not restaurants or whatever. but i think i think that is just going to get stronger and stronger and need for having these experts that communicate this knowledge to the accounting and tax clients that want to have that personal touch. and that’s one way you’re going to be able to compete with these bigger firms coming down to the smaller client size, which i think is going to happen with private equity as well.
liz farr 48:56
yeah, i and i got to reiterate your commitment to being a niche practice. you know, there were so many times when i was in practice, when clients would ask me a specific question about their industry, and i would have no clue. and we worked with a craft brewery. and he was asking about how do you track the keg shells that go out that you send out to the different taprooms around the state? and i like, i don’t have any clue how you do that. right. right. yep. and i started researching it and turned out oh, there really is stuff that will let you do that. and so i reported back to him and he said, oh, that’s too expensive. i think we’ll stick to our excel spreadsheet on the ipads and and we’ll just kind of hope that it works out in the end.
randy crabtree 49:56
yeah, well, hopefully. hopefully there’s easy to do rules that going forward when you’re that niche experts are going to be able to help them with.
liz farr 50:05
yeah. well, we made it through all those questions. i want to thank you, randy for coming on, you know, as podcast hosts, we got to stick together. so thanks for taking the time to talk to me. now if listeners want to connect with you, where’s the best place to find you? yeah,
randy crabtree 50:28
i probably our website is the best place with just try dash merritt calm and i assume you’ll have some show notes or something. otherwise, i could spell it out. okay. that’s probably the best place. i mean, we have a really good marketing team that puts me on a lot of social media places. linkedin is probably the most saturated but we are we’re getting very good at all the other ones now including tic tac, i’ve got some videos out there and different tax credits and then send those no dancing or anything just explanation. but yeah, the website is going to be the best place to least reach out and look at the meet the teams or the team button or i should probably know this. that’s why our marketing teams there because i don’t know how to explain how to get a hold of me. so but that’s probably the best part.