click “play” to see: what jason deshayes talks about when he’s talking about a “forward-thinking enterprise.” (via wordclouds.com)<\/span><\/h6>\n<\/p>\n
deshayes’ role as coo came about as they worked out their remote post-covid strategy, with team members spread between three states and split between tax and wealth management. even though the firm had grown from five people to 16, everyone still reported to a managing partner in massachusetts. \u201cwe needed someone to take the strategy that our managing partner had crafted and bring it down in a tangible fashion to the various teams\u201d so that everyone works together in concert. \u201cthat is helping us at cook wealth really operate like a forward-thinking enterprise, like a business,\u201d he said. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nbesides keeping everything moving in sync together, for deshayes, building a business means creating something that will live past him, and creating opportunities for the people below him. \u201cas leaders, as business owners, our job is to make life so good for those people below us that they want to be there, and they want to keep moving forward,\u201d he explained. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\npart of creating opportunities for future generations is developing succession plans. deshayes’ firm has a succession plan in place for his firm and for everyone in it. while the aicpa has a toolkit for succession planning that includes a practice continuity agreement, only 7% of sole practitioners have put one in place. \u201ci think a sole proprietor who does not have a plan is doing a horrible disservice to their clients, and to their families,\u201d he said. without a plan, a practice \u201cthat could be worth half a million bucks turns to nothing\u201d after the owner\u2019s death, deshayes added.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n13 more takeaways from jason deshayes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- consider looking beyond the usual colleges to find great team members. one of jason\u2019s best hires was a restaurant manager. she could work under pressure, she understood budgeting, and she knew how to work with people, which are all the kinds of skills you want in accounting.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- find out what someone\u2019s natural inclinations are. not everyone wants or should be on the partner track. some can be excellent technicians, while others are great at business development. these people will be miserable if you force them to do what they don\u2019t enjoy.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- people who have taken a break from work to be stay-at-home parents have powerful life skills: experience in crisis management, resource consumption, scheduling, and time management. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- find ways to compensate your people and create pathways for everyone. many people leave the profession because we either push them too hard and expect too much or won\u2019t give them enough flexibility.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- most cpa firms are not businesses. they\u2019re more like silo practices that happen to be co-sharing locations and some systems.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- firms should be intentional about the end they seek when they grow. however, most firms grow accidentally. growth isn\u2019t just about getting more clients, but also about the tactics of getting new experiences. growth can also be negative, where you shed clients or entire practice areas to focus growth is a specific area.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- adaptability will be a key skill for the future. the old mindset of \u201cit works, don\u2019t change it\u201d has to go out the window at this point. clients and employees will gladly switch to a system that makes their life easier.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- spend time with your peers and talk to them about their experiences. no one is a competitor. there is a blue ocean of work.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- an abundant mindset means you create a welcoming and happy environment for your employees, so you\u2019re not worried about them leaving for a competitor. you get to know other accountants and help each other out. a scarcity mindset means your employees aren\u2019t encouraged to talk to colleagues at other firms out of fear they will leave your firm.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- drop the pyramid structure and treat your firm like a business. key people do not need to be owners to be well-compensated.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- accountants don\u2019t need to limit themselves to just the basic services at public accounting firms. there are many more opportunities to use your accounting skills in completely new areas.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- our clients are not as change-phobic as we are. many may be quite willing to adapt to working with remote team members or switching to paperless delivery if we just ask them. for some clients, a zoom meeting may be easier to fit in than driving 30 minutes to an office for an in-person meeting and back home. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
- no one ever has time to make changes unless you make the hard choice to give up something you\u2019re doing.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
about jason deshayes
\n<\/strong>jason deshayes is a seasoned cpa and cfp\u00ae with nearly 20 years of experience providing tax accounting and consulting services to individuals, dental and medical practices, and closely held businesses. jason is the chief operating officer for cook wealth in raleigh, nc.? his areas of specialty include personal financial and tax planning, business accounting and financial consulting, succession planning, individual financial consulting, charitable gift planning, and personal and business income tax. prior to joining cook wealth, deshayes was a senior manager in the firm services team for the association of international certified professional accountants. he also previously served as vice president and partner of butler and company cpas, an albuquerque, new mexico-based accounting firm.<\/em><\/p>\ntranscript
\n<\/strong>(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)<\/em><\/p>\nliz farr<\/strong> 0:04
\nwelcome to accounting disrupter conversations. i’m your host, liz farr from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. my guest today is jason deshayes, chief tax officer and chief operations officer at cook wealth. welcome to the show, jason.<\/p>\njason deshayes 0:22<\/strong>
\nthanks, liz. i really appreciate you having me.<\/p>\nliz farr 0:25<\/strong>
\nyeah, it’s great to have you, you know, and jason and i go way back. we were classmates at the anderson school of management at unm back in the early 2000s. so it’s really cool to have one of my old classmates on the podcast.<\/p>\njason deshayes 0:43<\/strong>
\nwe’ll be reminiscing about those days and be like, wow, remember, we were hobbling over anderson school that’s like, oh, yeah. that’s just forensic accounting class. all that fun stuff.<\/p>\nliz farr 0:54<\/strong>
\nyeah, good stuff. yeah. that was a fun class. well, let’s get into the meat of our discussion. now, accounting, talent has been scarce for years, and covid made it worse. what are some of your ideas on how to make things better?<\/p>\njason deshayes 1:16<\/strong>
\nwell, you know what, historically, in the accounting space we’ve done, we just go to colleges, right? we just now it’s high schools, but we were trying to tap people who have naturally inclined or were born elected you. and i honestly don’t think that’s the best place to find people as much a more, i do think there’s fantastic students there. and we’ve hired a number of them, and i’ve hired them or them in the past, and they’re great. but you got to pick the right person. and i think depending on your firm, certain people fit really well and some don’t. and i do think there’s some really good opportunities with people who have more industry experience who are in vet jobs before, maybe they’re trying to look at doing something different. one of the best hires i’ve ever had was a restaurant manager. and she understood how to work under pressure. because that was her life. she understands budgeting, she can understand, love and make money because you actually look at labor costs and food cost and occupancy and seats, and all that stuff. and she knew how to work with people, because that was your job. and she had to take care of people in the restaurant and they enjoy they’re happy with their experience, and she could communicate and she was calm under pressure. me all that sounds great, don’t you think? i mean, like, that’s the kind of person i will with me, especially if you have a thing like a tax department, or maybe you’re you have to you’re in private company, and you’ve got a lot and the cycle kind of things, those again, people who know how to do that, and they can do it well. and so i find that, the more you can think of people as listening to their overall picture, the see what their natural inclinations are. and let’s find those people, and they may not be the traditional crew of folks. i also think and this is just looking at them all. i mean, i’ve been in this industry since i graduate college so you know 20 some years now, and it’s it’s was interesting is still like, eventually everyone’s gonna raise the partner, or should raise the partner if they’re doing it right. and i’m not sure that’s the right solution, either. i think there’s a lot of people who could be excellent technicians, and they love to get in the meat and potatoes of tax law and auditing regulations. and they can be there. and you should be able to reward those people with being harder, harder situations, and they can become subject matter experts and firms and not feel this push the suddenly have to be an owner, because if they don’t, they’ve failed in their career, in that a kind of up and out kind of model. likewise, there are people who come in and you do not have the core business develop, they have all the core business development, leadership skills, and they’re not great technicians. and they just happen to have accounting degrees, because that’s what they slipped into. but that was probably not really where they should have been.<\/p>\nand they get told, hey, guys, yep, put your time in, can be really good technician. that’s what people care about. and then you make them grind through this process, and they’re miserable, and they hate what they’re doing. and instead of going, hey, let’s create a track that lets you do the things you’re good at. and so i think that’s one of those things that as firms as companies, we really have to look at the kind of roles we want and place people that fit the role. not look at this blanket job of staff accountant or senior or manager and say, well, here’s a vanilla-y kind of thing. and now i can also have comp ranges that go from the people order well, we pay the technicians because that will make us as much money. and then we’re going to really pay well for the business development people because they go to work and figure out ways to like compensate people also create pathways for everybody. i think that’s a lot of what the we see people leave the profession, because we either push them too hard, expected too much, wouldn’t give enough flexibility you’ll receive, especially mothers, and my wife is a mom of three kids. and, man, those little darlings are amazing. and they take a lot out people. and if they need, we have to be better about looking at families, amen, say dads to a point. because sometimes you got situations where that makes more sense for them for either parents to work because maybe not always mom, that is stay at home. we can make that flexible and not not judge them for it. actually, anytime i see someone comes with a resume gap, and i was taking care of the kids like dude, you have had more experience and crisis management, and resource consumption and scheduling, you have life skills that are very powerful. and also speaking as a parent of three. prior to having kids, i was not the best use of time. now with three kids, i can clean a house really fast, picky a lot things done in a quick succession, which made me a better worker, because homie ain’t got time for this kind of stuff to mess around. oh, we had so much hours in the day. so i think there’s a lot of things we can do not hard things, just things, we just have to like, drop some stuff that will help us find different people, but keep the ones we got to.<\/p>\n
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