only firms embracing culture, collaboration, and client impact will survive the next era.
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by rory henry cfp®, bfa™
for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
the traditional cpa firm model is at a major crossroads. with an aging leadership base, evolving client expectations, and growing private equity interest, firms must rethink how they operate—or risk falling behind.
“many firms are still stuck in outdated models centered around hours and billables,” observes randy crabtree, cpa, founder of tri-merit specialty tax professionals, during a recent panel discussion for contributors to my new book holistic guide to wealth management. crabtree says he’s avoided time tracking for most of his career because he believes it distracts from real value delivery.
“we can do things better and more efficiently,” says crabtree. he argues that if working more efficiently means it takes less time to get the work done, then we shouldn’t be paid less money.
like crabtree, fellow panelist, susan bryant, cpa, ctc, founder of unboxed advisors, stresses that compliance work — while still important— can no longer be the centerpiece of a thriving firm.
i agree. this is where cpas can create transformational value: by helping clients proactively address succession planning, estate planning, and holistic personal financial planning. rather than simply looking backward at tax returns, firms must help clients envision their future.
“we’ve been roped into conversations with estate planning, not just for our clients, but for our clients’ parents,” notes bryant. “it’s going to have a downstream effect to them and their kids. so, we have to connect the dots.”
as bryant discovered, taking a “deeper focus” on clients’ financial lives and solving their biggest issues has been so “exciting and rewarding.”
crabtree shares findings from the 2024 tri-merit cpa career satisfaction survey that underscore this need for change. despite assumptions that long hours or pay are the primary drivers of dissatisfaction, the survey found that cpas who felt supported by their firm, who had diverse work assignments and client mix, and felt their firm supported them when working with difficult clients, were far more satisfied than cpas who didn’t share those attributes and experiences.
bryant reinforces the discussion around moving beyond compliance work to build lasting client relationships.
“at the end of the day, clients are not going to show up at your funeral,” quips bryant. your work “is just not that significant when you’re just doing tax returns,” she said, reflecting on how transactional work often lacks long-term meaning or connection.
both panelists agree that firms that continue to operate reactively while focusing only on tax returns and compliance tasks risk losing both clients and rising talent. by contrast, both bryant and crabtree say firms that invest intentionally in leadership development, meaningful client engagement, and internal culture are the ones that thrive, with both their people and the clients they serve.
another recurring theme is the importance of building multidisciplinary teams that cater to client needs. from where i sit, firms today need to think like they’re assembling their own “avengers” team — bringing together different experts to meet a client’s full range of needs. bryant emphasizes that firms must move beyond traditional service silos and customize teams around client goals.
“you have to figure out what your client needs and build around it,” she says. “you don’t have to do it all yourself, but you do need to coordinate it and make sure they’re getting what they need.”
crabtree echoes that sentiment, stressing that cpas don’t have to be experts in everything, but they must know how to orchestrate the right solutions at the right time.
this team-based approach mirrors the virtual family office (vfo) model outlined throughout my book, maintaining the cpa’s position as the primary relationship holder while surrounding the client with a collaborative network of specialists.
the panelists agree that strong leadership and culture are essential to being a firm of the future. crabtree emphasizes that today’s leaders must be willing to say, “i don’t know, but i’ll find out,” rather than clinging to a sense of authority. bryant emphasizes the importance of creating genuine growth pathways within firms, granting emerging professionals ownership over outcomes, not just tasks.
5 advis-ror® takeaways:
- operational freedom—not billable hours—is becoming the new success metric.
- building multidisciplinary teams delivers greater client value and loyalty.
- mid-career dissatisfaction is real; firms must address culture and leadership development proactively.
- strong client relationships are built through holistic advice, not just compliance work.
- cpas can future-proof their firms by adopting a virtual family office model and coordinating expert teams.
more about susan bryant, cpa, ctc
susan bryant is a certified public accountant and certified tax strategist with over 20 years of experience in the accounting industry. as a seasoned business owner, she specializes in helping accomplished entrepreneurs maximize profitability, optimize tax strategies, and preserve their wealth. her expertise as a holistic business adviser and strategic planner has earned her recognition as a woman of empowerment, enterprising woman of the year, and one of the top 50 women in accounting.
more about randy crabtree, cpa
randy crabtree is co-founder and partner of tri-merit specialty tax professionals and an author, lecturer, and host of the unique cpa podcast. he is a nationally recognized speaker who helps cpas expand their value proposition through specialty tax services and proactive client strategy.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
[00:00:44] rory henry: all righty. hello, everyone. welcome back. i’m thrilled to bring to you another great conversation in our ongoing holistic guide to wealth management book panel. i have two wonderful guests and friends joining me today. let me first introduce susan bryant. she’s a ceo and founder of unboxed advisors. she brings over 20 years experience as a cpa. she’s also a certified tax planner and a licensed investment advisor representative. susan, thank you so much for joining the panel today.
[00:01:12] susan bryant: thanks for having me. excited to be here, rory.
[00:01:15] rory henry: yes. and we also have the unique cpa joining us. he is the founder of tri-merit specialty tax services as well as a widely followed author, publisher, podcast host, as well as the founder of the bridging the gap conference. and as he just told us pre-recording, he is known as a unicorn of knee recovery surgery. randy, thank you for joining us today.
[00:01:41] randy crabtree: well, rory, thanks. you didn’t need to share the unicorn, but i appreciate it. i appreciate it. i’m really looking forward to having a fun conversation with susan and yourself today.
[00:01:52] rory henry: yes. and i know you both have interesting stories in some of the topics we talk about in the book, having that greater return on relationship. i know you talk about burnout frequently here. so why don’t i have susan’s first start off and really talk about your story. i know you went from, i think, two years ago, we had a conversation, susan, your old firm, and you said, hey, rory, i think i’m looking to move into a new venture. and you started unboxed advisors. so can you kind of give our audience a little bit of background about that journey and why you created unboxed advisors? yeah.
[00:02:24] susan bryant: well, i feel like i’m kind of the unlikely accountant. i’m an accountant with a degree in marketing. so i don’t even think i really ever intended to become a cpa, but here i am, alas. so i’ve worked in a very traditional accounting environment pretty much my entire career until i got to close to the end of my tenure at my prior firm, which i recently exited from a couple of years ago, as you alluded to. and kind of restarting, i wanted to go back to kind of those relationships and really be able to advise people. and the only way to do that is to know everything about them. and that is just something that takes more time. that means serving less people, but serving the people you choose to with a whole broad range, a much broader range and a much deeper focus in solving the issues that are a priority in their financial lives. and so it’s been an exciting experiment, is what i would say. and rewarding, learned a lot. i’ve learned that, man, was it borderline malpractice what i was doing before? because i didn’t know those people. i mean, i didn’t know anything. i mean, really, how much did i know was the question that i keep going back to. so i mean, it makes me really wonder if accountants are really doing everything that they really could and should be doing because they’re just serving so many people, they can’t stop to think to really know the people that they’re working with. so anyway, that’s my story. i’ve really enjoyed doing something different and serving people and really helping them to think through things in a completely different way, which is really sort of the unboxed mantra. we’re never not trying to find a different way to think about something.
[00:04:19] rory henry: yeah. and seth was on one of the first panel discussions and he talked about this movement from volume to value. and it’s really what we talk about as far as understanding our clients, doing the holistic financial planning, having that greater return on relationship by understanding their family, intergenerational aspects of estate planning, right? understanding the ins and outs of their business. can you kind of talk about for the audience, susan, the different types of service offerings you have there at unboxed?
[00:04:49] susan bryant: yeah. so we kind of have things in tiers as a guide. but really the package that we ultimately create for our customer has their fingerprints on it and is 100% customized to them. i refer to this as like the montessori method of working with a client, which is follow the client, right? what’s important to them. we’ve got to keep pursuing what’s important to them. but it’s really a lot of the focus is you’ve got to get the accounting strained out because if accounting is bad, you can’t do any tax planning. if you’re not doing any tax planning, then you’re really not doing any investment planning. so we’ve got to work with the advisors, the financial advisors. i don’t manage people’s money. and then it’s really from there going deeper into what’s happening in the business, all aspects of the business, because most of the time it’s messed up. i mean, like you wouldn’t be surprised. and everything’s hitting the bottom line, right? so the bottom line is mismanaged by all these operational challenges. we need to fix those. and whether that’s us or someone else, an expert we bring in, we just try to make sure that those things get the attention they deserve because otherwise they’re working harder and longer to get where they want to be from an exit standpoint. so yeah. yeah. and then spending a lot of time with them just personally. i think we can all go through and say, we’ve got to get to know people on a personal level. and like you mentioned, roy, like their families, their kids, their parents. i mean, we’ve been roped into conversations with estate planning, not just for our clients, but for our clients’ parents. because it’s going to have a downstream effect to them and to their kids. so we have to be connecting the dots and all that stuff. yeah. so that’s what we’re working on. but it is an experiment because we don’t know. it’s just not something that’s been done before. this advisory level, these services, the duration of them, the breadth, the depth, all those things. we really are. we’re figuring it out.
[00:06:57] rory henry: yeah. yeah. i like it. you know, the concierge model, you know, i know is something that you reference and ron baker references and really going deeper with those clients and having less clients. now let’s shift over, randy, because, randy, let’s talk about your story. we can talk about your knee story. we can talk about your partner story.
[00:07:18] randy crabtree: so we’ll start at age 12 and then we’ll go to three weeks ago with my second knee replacement. is that that we want everything in between? yeah, we got a couple hours here. all right. thanks. all right. i’ll give my accounting industry story, i guess, and we’ll go from there and then we’ll skip some of the other stuff. actually, we’ll start like susan. i’m a little bit of a, accounting wasn’t my original path. i graduated with a computer science degree, did that for a year, decided i’d go into sales for a year, realized i was really bad at that. and i had a light bulb moment that i should have been a cpa. so i went back to school full time, got enough hours to pass, to take the exam, not enough hours to pass. it took me two tries, but we got past the exam and never actually finished an accounting degree, but had enough hours to start. and when i did that, i gave myself four years to start my own firm. and three and a half years later, we started our own firm. we meaning me, myself and i, and started our own firm. and like susan said, for the first 16, 17, 18 years, i was a generalist and i was trying to help everybody. and i never, i think, said it this way, but malpractice may be one way to describe it. i could not be an expert at every industry. it was just not possible, but i was trying to help every industry and try to help everybody and putting in way too many hours and being too controlling with touching everything and not delegating and not outsourcing and all this stuff. and for me personally, that led to a point in time where i just, it was like, that’s it, i’m done. and 16 years into my firm, i sold it. but this is where the fun starts then. and that was fun. i enjoyed it. but then started tri-merit, which we’re a specialty tax firm. we support tax advisors by bringing really intricate parts of the tax code to them so they can bring it to their clients. and that’s been an 18-year ride, longest i’ve ever done anything, 18-year ride. well, my marriage is 39 years this year, so i’ve done things longer. that’s number one. yes, exactly. but that’s been a lot of fun and becoming an expert in a niche area, concentrating, like susan says, getting to know your clients. we get to know specific parts of the tax code so deep. and man, i never realized how much fun that would be to just not deal with 2 billion pages of tax code, but hundreds of pages of tax code and be able to dig into that and be the expert at that and know that you’re offering services that are going to, really everything we do saves money for the client. it’s been a lot of fun. so i guess just to kind of finish that out, i was managing partner of trimerite for the first 10 years. and eight years ago, almost to the day, we’re a couple of weeks past it, i gave that roll up, which was one of the best decisions i’ve ever made because we as a firm took off at that moment in time. and i found my passion, niche practice with trimerit was a passion, but i found my passion for helping move this profession forward by inspiring change. and that’s been so gratifying for me for the last eight years.
[00:10:43] rory henry: yeah. and i know, obviously, you had a health scare, rainey, that you frequently talk about that led to some changes there. can you want to briefly touch on that for our audience?
[00:10:53] randy crabtree: you say briefly, but i can’t do anything briefly. yeah. and it’s not the knee, we already talked about one health issue. eleven years ago, i had a stroke, and that changes your outlook on a lot of things. i was super fortunate that i physically recovered very fast. but mentally, it was about a four and a half year struggle of, you know, panic attacks and ptsd and depression. and i didn’t identify everything really in the moment. looking back, i know that’s what it was now. i would say things like, i would not hide it. i would tell my wife, i’m having this melancholy feeling. looking back, it was depression. so that was a four and a half year on and off struggle. it wasn’t constant. it was up and down. but for me, that kind of coincides with the last eight years when i came out of that, a little bit after that. and that’s where i found this passion for, let’s make sure we can do everything possible to have people in this profession, or in any profession, really. but avoid burnout, avoid putting all this undue stress on themselves. like susan and i both said, it was all about the client and helping everybody and forgetting about ourselves. and so that’s been that, giving up manji partner and allow myself. and fortunately, my partners at trimerit don’t have a problem with me going out and doing this as well. but it’s been, the stroke has led to so many positive things, which sounds odd to say, but it has led to so many positive things for me. and i feel guilty saying this, because not everybody is recovered as physically as i have, but i wouldn’t change anything. i wouldn’t say, i wish i never would have had a stroke, which is, i know, i feel guilty because there’s so many people that, i am not the norm when it comes to stroke survivors. usually people have deficits, but that’s one reason i want to do what i can to help people not put this undue stress on themselves and avoid that situation.
[00:13:05] rory henry: yeah. well, let’s speak about that undue stress, because i think you talk about the six steps of burnout, and you’ve touched on it here, randy, and susan has too. we think we can help everybody, we want to fix all the problems, we’re never ending deadlines, especially in the profession here, and unappreciative clients. can you kind of talk about those burnouts and ways that we can kind of adjust our mindset to have a better practice?
[00:13:33] susan bryant: so, well, a couple of things. one, i understand randy’s sentiment about reducing stress. so when i exited my prior firm, i mean, i think like the day after, it was like someone sort of just, i don’t know, it was like a blood pressure thing or whatever, but it was almost like this immense burden was lifted off of my shoulders. i mean, i really, i could feel it. it was, i mean, like i didn’t realize i had normalized that stress and that, i mean, i had normalized insanity is what i had normalized. i mean, so the other thing that i learned in exiting from that business and then in restarting was that nobody really gave a shit about me. okay. i mean, there might’ve been a few people. i mean, i had one person call me and it was like, after i got my message, i was like gone. are you okay? are you like dying of cancer or something? and i was like, no. and he’s like, okay, i just wanted to make sure you were okay. like literally, you are an accountant, okay? we all want to place a lot of importance on the work we’re doing. and i totally understand that. but at the end of the day, the client is just, they’re not going to show up at your funeral. it’s just not that significant when you’re just doing tax returns. so like, sorry.
[00:15:00] rory henry: and that goes back to the return on relationship on what you’re doing, susan. yeah.
[00:15:05] susan bryant: i mean, there was no return on that relationship. i invested, i gave all of myself to all of these people, thousands of people, saving millions of dollars in taxes and they could have cared less. now that’s not to say there haven’t been some people, yes, but it has been a slim majority. and i work with those people now and they know i care and i know that they care about me on a personal level. and i’m willing to work hard for them because they’re willing to be great clients for me. it’s a partnership versus this monetary exchange. and there’s just not enough money in the world. i mean, honestly, i just don’t dedicate yourself to people who really are not going to care about you.
[00:15:43] rory henry: well, let me ask you this then, susan. for those people who are listening here, what’s your advice to them if they’re just scared to make that leap of faith, to make the change that you did?
[00:15:55] susan bryant: i would go back to the words of bart scovel shinn, and i would say, when you see a lion on your path, you walk up to it and you face it straight on and you cannot let those things deter you. so what? you’re afraid, do it anyway. i like it.
[00:16:10] rory henry: well, let me ask you this, randy, i saw the survey that you did and a number of the recommendations that you talk about is checking in regularly with your employees, recognizing their contributions, talking about work-life balance, removing the stigma around mental health. so can you kind of talk about ways in which we can improve that relationship with our fellow employees or for homeowners with the people we work with?
[00:16:45] randy crabtree: yeah, i understood that question, so we’re good to go. so for me, the most important thing is, and i understand clients are important and they need to be important, but for me personally, clients are serviced the way they should be serviced if the people are taking care of first. i have lots of statistics that prove that out, even with trimerit, i can spout out statistics. we don’t lose people. we’ve been listed as one of the top growing privately held companies in the us for the last three years. our turnover in 18 years is nine people have left and we’re at 80 people total right now. every year, one half a person leaves. but it’s not just talking about it. you can look at those statistics and you can say, okay, well you keep everybody, even if they’re not doing a job. and so yeah, sure, you can have retention if you just treat everybody with kid gloves and a cushy job, but that’s not how it is. if you look at revenue per employee, we’re way up there. these positive things are there. and so for me, it’s a matter of just, and susan said this, relationship with your clients, relationship with the people you work with. and we’ve done this in a remote environment, which people say, you can’t do it. you can’t build a relationship as in a remote environment. we’ve done it. and there’s some simple little things you could do. and i just did one yesterday. every time a new hire comes in, my assistant, and that was another thing we can talk about. it took me forever to get an executive assistant and which i waited way too long for that because she is awesome. my assistant sets up a call. and she’s overseas, right? she’s in mexico. so not technically, there’s not a sea in between us, but there’s a border. there’s a gulf, i think. i guess if you want a straight line, there’s water. but she’ll set up a call and it’s just a one-on-one with the new person. my concern is they’re like, well, who’s randy and why am i talking to him? because i’m not part of the hiring process. i don’t get involved with that anymore. i know my boundaries, my limitations, and that’s just not something that i want to spend time on. but once they’re hired, i want to get to know them personally. so we get on this one-on-one call and it’s just like we’re old friends talking about, you know, hey, what do you like doing? did you go hiking last weekend or what do you enjoy, you know, museums, do you like books? they just tell me what they like. i tell them what i like and we just connect. and right there sets the stage of, okay, i’m an important part of trimerit. and that’s the relationship part to me is super important. and i want to say one more thing on that. oh, i could say about a hundred more things on that. and i’ll let you see if i want to go further. but i said we do this in a remote environment and we do. it’s still super important to get together in person. and so twice a year, we have a whole team retreat where we go to an offsite location. we have people all over the country. this may, we’re just weeks away, i’m not sure when this is released, but in may of 2025, we will be all getting together in chicago, probably 10 people that i’ve never met in person before. and it’ll be fun to meet everybody. and then we do regional events. so we have a bunch of people in houston, a bunch of people in michigan in general, a bunch of people out west. and so we try to coordinate regional events where people get together and, you know, trimerit will put up x dollars to go have a pizza night or whatever and get together. so relationships for us, with the people we work with, for me, has been the key to our success. and i’ll never, i’ll never not continue to do those.
[00:20:58] susan bryant: well, you know, it’s interesting, because i think one of the things that we’re finding is that accountants are extremely important in the general ecosystem of the entire economy.
[00:21:12] rory henry: right.
[00:21:13] susan bryant: i mean, like, i have, i’ve decided, like, make accounting great again, is synonymous with making everything in the entire world great again. and so, like, we need this, this concept of service, not only to the people we’re serving outwardly, but to the people we are serving inwardly. right. yeah. and that includes ourselves, right. but there are co workers. and i mean, we have a lot of stakeholders. so we need to be thinking about how all of that can be cultivated. it can be curated. and honestly, that we are intentional about how we are allocating our time instead of just the default of the day, you know, like, just defaulting to somebody else’s process, defaulting to someone else’s level of service, defaulting to someone else’s expectations or boundaries or whatever. we have to get clear on that. just like we are. we’re so good about maintaining other people’s boundaries. the irs has a rule on that. sorry, i can’t. okay. fasb says i can’t do this. but we can’t create the rules for ourselves to follow and say, this is on my level of expectation. so i believe that is what has that has to be the new driver in the new culture that makes this profession amazing is us being the ones who say, this is how i do. this is what i demand for my firm, myself, my colleagues and my clients. these are my boundaries.
[00:22:41] randy crabtree: yeah, that’s awesome. one thing i want to say real quick, susan, because what you said at the beginning was it was cool. a friend of mine, jennifer wilson, at our conference last year, got up on stage. we had given her award because she does such amazing things. and she looked at the audience. and she said, you are the guardian of the galaxy’s economy, say an accountant, the guardians of the galaxy’s economy. i’m like, oh, that’s really cool way to say it. so that was, i agree completely with what you see. we are very important.
[00:23:15] susan bryant: we are important. i mean, probably, i mean, like, seriously important to so many things that are happening, not only in our country, but on our planet. we have undervalued ourselves and so have other people. and there have been, there’s bad things that happen when accountants aren’t in the room and good in the right positions. and so i feel like we should all be extremely validated in the fact that our skill sets are probably one of the most important and essential to the functioning of the free world.
[00:23:53] rory henry: yeah. well, speaking of skill sets, you know, let’s talk about mental health here, which is a big part of your conference, randy. and i know in part of the report, you talk about, you know, being vulnerable, right? i think you talk about encouraging folks out there to celebrate, to celebrate passions outside of work. so maybe from a leadership perspective, how do we create a culture, you know, where we’re opening up? it starts from the top, right? being vulnerable. you’re very vulnerable, randy. so let’s talk about how we can improve those, that skill set, but more of the soft skills or the personal skills, we like to say, that human first approach in working with our folks.
[00:24:33] randy crabtree: yeah, it has to start at the top, doesn’t it? it can start elsewhere, but at the top, meaning leadership, but i don’t look at, when i look at leadership, i don’t, i don’t know, i have a, i have a mind block on this. it’s horizontal to me. like we’re all here together. now, people will look at me as a leader and i hate when they say that. i don’t know why i have this block with it. but if that’s where i’m at, then it has to start with somebody. and so i’m not afraid to say anything. i’m not afraid to cry in front of anybody.
[00:25:05] rory henry: we cried at dinner in, in, yeah, in san diego, right?
[00:25:10] randy crabtree: yeah. yeah.
[00:25:12] rory henry: is that where it was? in san diego? no, we’re in vegas for engage.
[00:25:15] randy crabtree: okay. yep. oh yeah. yeah. but do that. and if you’re vulnerable, if you’re willing to share, if you’re willing to show you are not perfect at everything, you don’t have all the answers. there are things that you, you struggle with, then everybody else is not going to be afraid. they’re not going to try to power through something that’s going to cause undue stress on them and cause burnout with them because they’ll know it’s okay to say, i need help with this. one of the, if i can give this example, this is, this is, this has said such a huge impact on me just from the moment in time. and i go out and that’s, you’re getting me passionate now, rory, you’re getting me going. so we want you ready. passion is one, i’ll say passion about a thousand times. i was at a fairly large cpa firm. they asked me to come out, do a discussion on mental health. and this was january. it was a pre-tax season thing and they want, you know, everybody to have a mindset going into tax season of, you know, not, you know, overdoing themselves. and i, i am vulnerable. i tell my story, i tell the struggles with depression and everything post-stroke. and at the end of that session, the managing partner who happens to be a man in this case, which unfortunately that’s probably too common that it’s a man in the, in these larger firms. i shouldn’t, i digress. i hopefully we’re changing that. hopefully we’re getting a little more diversity at leadership levels, but he really nice guy. and he comes up at the end of my presentation, thanks me and says, start sharing a story of his family struggling with depression. and he’s breaking down and i’m breaking down. everybody in the audience is breaking down. but what i saw in that moment, and they may have had this already, but i felt it that, that everybody in that room realized that they can go talk to him about anything. there’s nothing off the table. and that’s because the vulnerability that he showed to share that story, the comfort that he had to break down in front of this crowd and, and share what was going on. and that i’ll, i’ll, i’ll die on the pedestal of vulnerability as the key thing, i think in any leadership, i have about four of them that are key, but vulnerability, i always start with it from a leadership level.
[00:27:34] rory henry: yeah. i just had on dr. daniel crosby and randy johnston on a prior panel is actually research that shows that people go to therapy, men on average, make 12% more annually, women make annually 8% more. so on average, 10% more, if you go to therapy, and you know, the main predictor of earning more money is actually education. so if you get those letters next to your name, right? the tax planner, right, or the investment advisor representative, you’ll make more money. and then a big one is also his mentorship, which we can talk about, talk on, you know, it’s a big indicator of success for folks, being that mentor, especially when we’re working with a profession that is having a capacity issue, and not having that talent. i think it’s more important than more than ever to have those type of programs. so i’ll send that over to susan.
[00:28:29] susan bryant: i think i was very fortunate in my career, or i was very, i was a professional pesterer of the people who i worked for, i was like, i have a question, i have a question. i mean, like, you know, when this was when texting first got started, you know, like, i need two minutes. i need two minutes.
[00:28:46] rory henry: were you proficient at t9 with all the numbers? yeah, right. t9 texting.
[00:28:50] susan bryant: yeah, exactly. that’s how i guess i’m good. you know, if i have a question, i have another question. i think it’s, i think it’s a two way street. it’s important for those people who have the knowledge to share it, but also important for the people who are just learning to take the initiative to reach out to the people who have the knowledge to gain it. so it’s, it goes both ways. the people who have the most knowledge are going to be the most busy, because they get the most tasks assigned to them, because they’re the ones who can actually do the work, right. so it’s very challenging when you’re now talking about a less skilled individual who’s like, wants, you know, it’s assigned something, now they have to go to the person who’s super busy to get the information to do the work. it puts a strain on the more busy person. so i think we have, there needs to be a balance around that, in order to transfer the knowledge, in order to delegate the tasks, in order to create, basically a more higher functioning professional, it’s going to take time, this information, i mean, it took me 20 years plus to gain the knowledge that i have right now. and a lot of that i gained, not from, you know, reading books, but really doing the work and then going to someone who had done it before and saying, help me solve this. i don’t know in this specific situation what to do. and that other person had to have the capacity in order to help me. so it’s a two way street right there. but critical, and i think to randy’s point, when we also now have introduced the concept of remote work into that, now we have even more intentional communications that have to happen in order to facilitate the transfer of this knowledge and to make sure people aren’t getting stuck and aren’t getting frustrated. and then ultimately don’t have the right attention or don’t learn it properly. and then they leave or they get, you know, or they, something else becomes more attracted to them because they’re just lost. so we, the duty and the responsibility is definitely on the people who are the experienced professionals to create those pathways, to create those opportunities. but i don’t think it’s, i don’t think we can neglect the fact that we have to have our staff and our newbies, you know, the green, the folks that are a little bit more green, they have to have a lot of initiative and they have really got to start banging down and are hitting the team’s call button a little bit more frequently to get the information that they need in order to continue to be successful.
[00:31:27] randy crabtree: so, rory, if i can add to that a little bit, because it’s, it was really strange to me, that survey that you mentioned that we did, it was, it was really a satisfaction survey for the accounting profession and find what creates satisfaction, what creates dissatisfaction within the profession. and one of the findings that i found perplexing was that mentorship did not increase satisfaction levels. and i don’t think, and i want to dig that deeper in our next survey, because i think it does. i just think we need to ask deeper questions on it because i think maybe the programs are not in place. and that’s why people were saying it didn’t increase their satisfaction level. maybe there was not, as susan said, intentionality on both sides about doing this. and so, but that, that really surprised me because i’ve talked, i talk to people all the time in this profession and people always are talking about how this mentor has helped them so much and this mentor has helped them so much. but often what i’ve heard is it’s a mentor that’s not in their firm that has helped them. and so, maybe that’s something we need to look at more. but i think, i truly believe mentorships has a positive impact. unfortunately, our survey didn’t find that. i think we just need to ask different questions this next round. and i’m hoping that we’ll see a more positive outcome on that.
[00:32:48] rory henry: yeah. maybe let’s touch on the survey too, because i think what i got out of the survey and the stats there was the middle was really getting squeezed. oh, yeah. yeah. you had the solo practitioners, smaller firms, and you had the larger firms, but it was the middle management or the midsize firms that are really having issues. can you kind of double click into that here, randy? yeah.
[00:33:07] randy crabtree: it’s kind of, if you look at it, when i ended up looking at it, it was kind of like a duh. yeah. that makes sense. because it’s a few different ways. firm size, small firms. okay. we’re doing our thing. we’re good. we have our base of clients or our niche, large firms. we can do everything. we can help everybody. and now these middle firms, they’re trying to compete with both. we want to grow. we want to start dealing with some of these larger firm clients, but we’re still also competing with these smaller firms who are more nimble and can react faster than we. and so that, what was it? 50 to 100 size firm, something like that was the ones where we saw really the satisfaction levels go down quite a bit. and then it’s the same thing. and susan kind of just alluded to this too. it’s the same thing at the level, the mid management level, because now you’re getting controlled by somebody above you, but you’re trying to manage somebody below you and you’re getting it from both ends too. and so you may be trying to be the mentor and this may be where we found some of the issues too. you may be that mentor level, but now you just are also, as susan said, the one with all this knowledge and you’re doing everything, but now you’re trying to help and now you’re getting, people want you to do everything, but everybody wants you to help too. and so just to kind of made sense that middle of everything was where we see all the lowest satisfaction levels, which really is an area where we need to figure out how do we change that? because that’s where we’re having an exodus. that’s where people are leaving then because they have so much stress and pressure and dissatisfaction. the most highly satisfied people in the survey were pretty much people newly in and partner level. and then it kind of changed in between there until you got to middle and it was the lowest. so we have to address that.
[00:35:00] susan bryant: i mean, i feel like i lived most of my career in that mid level. i mean, honestly, i mean, every time we turn around, i mean, something, somebody wanted something more from you. it was like more, more, more, more, more, more. we need more time. we need more clients. i need you to take care of more staff. and you like, it was just a constant of like, you were getting spread so thin. i think that’s why, i mean, i’ve seen this amazing proliferation of new firm owners supporting each other on linkedin, where it’s like, oh, i’m starting a firm. oh, i’m starting a firm. i’m starting to start helping each other. and they’re like, you need to leave now, man. exit, exit. like, what are you waiting for? don’t be afraid. i did it. you know, and they’re sharing their financials. yeah.
[00:35:40] rory henry: yuri’s my friend on instagram and linkedin and i’ll message him from time to time. he’s the fun cpa. he’s putting it all out there.
[00:35:48] susan bryant: yeah. it’s amazing. it’s great. and so guess what? i think that there’s this awareness now that you pretty much just don’t know how to put up with that anymore. or if you’re going to be squeezed that thin, you might as well just go do it for yourself.
[00:36:08] rory henry: and that’s what you did, susan.
[00:36:10] susan bryant: yeah. why are you working for the man? you know what i mean? don’t do it. you know, i mean, if you’re going to take all that stress, you might as well take the risk too and benefit from the reward. and the reward, yeah. so yeah, i think that that is a, it’s going to be a big problem if the cpa firms can’t figure it out. otherwise, all the partners, you’re going to see the partner satisfaction rate decrease because they’re going to have to go back to work.
[00:36:34] rory henry: yeah. all right. i agree. now let’s finish up here. final thoughts. let me throw this over to randy. anything that you want to share final thoughts wise for our audience?
[00:36:48] randy crabtree: yeah. i think that the biggest thing is that we have to not be happy with status quo. i mean, there is a- you speak my language. there is, and it is so easy in our profession to, you know, consistency is a key thing. we get drummed into us and we need consistency, but it doesn’t have to be with managing your practice too or managing your people. we can do things better. we can do things more efficient. susan, the way she’s building her firm and having this concierge type service now, we can, you know, get rid of the hourly billing. that’s a killer. i hate hourly billing. i hate- personally, i really avoided time tracking my entire career. i don’t know how i’ve done it, but that was one of my things i never wanted to do. even when i worked for somebody else, i don’t know how i managed that, but getting rid of that and then realize our brains are programmed to see, you know, obviously short-term pain. you know, hey, something’s flying at me. i’ll get out of the way. we’re programmed that, and we see that with change too. oh, change. no, i can’t do that. it’s going to be too painful to make change. but what we don’t see is this long-term gain that all this change is going to create. and if we see that, if we can get out of the short-term window and more into that long-term planning, we’re just going to have so much more fun. we’re going to keep people in this profession. i’ll be smiling every day we go into our desk because i get to do this another day. and so, yeah, just don’t be afraid to change and figure out a way to manage it.
[00:38:31] rory henry: yeah, i agree here. let me throw it over to susan. you know, you basically have a concierge-type model, the virtual family office i talk about throughout the book, you know, having that greater return on relationship. you deeply know your clients, and it seems like you have peace of mind and a profitable business there. so you want to provide any closing thoughts to our audience?
[00:38:52] susan bryant: well, if the listener is a cpa who is squeezed in some capacity or another, either with the fact that they’re kind of stuck in the old ways, figuring out, trying to figure out how to break out of those, i would say go back to figuring out and asking yourself the question, what do i really want? what am i really trying to get out of this, whether it’s my career or my business? build your normal, healthy boundaries around that. start rowing in that direction. and baby step after baby step, make yourself move forward. so don’t get stuck. i like to call it never not trying. we’re never not trying. they’re always trying. we’re always trying. even though the book atomic habits made me crazy, like thinking about like, i have to get 1% better. i can’t think that way. but every day we just try to do something to move ourselves toward the goal that we’re trying to achieve. so work on that and get really laser focused on it. i mean, we even cpas, we get on the hamster wheel of tasks and busyness. and then we look up and you’re like, five years of my life is just done by what am i doing here? so take the time to figure out what it is you really want and start pursuing it. like you’ve never pursued anything else in your life. you will get there and you will be happier because you will have created boundaries and a system and a process for what it is you want. and then you’re going to be like randy. and you’re going to be like setting a vision for not just yourself, but for all these other people and potentially an entire profession. so go get them, tiger.
[00:40:39] rory henry: i love it, susan. all right, randy. bridging the gap.
[00:40:46] randy crabtree: yes, we’re having a conference. when is it?
[00:40:48] rory henry: how do people get tickets?
[00:40:50] randy crabtree: yeah, it’s year three of bridging the gap, july 22nd through 24th in denver, colorado. rory, you will be speaking at the event. looking forward to that. talking about ror and roi, both talking about people and the importance of that. tickets are at btgconference.com. we’re currently in the early bird pricing phase, which ends may 31st. but it’s a great event. i pinch myself every day because i don’t know how this happened, but it is a passion project of mine and i love it so much.
[00:41:27] rory henry: it is my favorite conference. i go to a lot of wealth conferences. i go to a lot of accounting conferences. it is by far the best conference out there. and we have a lot of fun. and it’s the gala. do we have a theme for the gala yet, randy?
[00:41:39] randy crabtree: well, so we’re going to be in, it’s called, the whole conference is innovation expedition. and so we’re kind of, it’s denver mountains. we’re kind of leaning into something with a western theme a little bit. so i don’t think it’s official yet, but you may see me come out in some crazy outfit to do the introduction the first morning. so, but the gala event will be a lot of fun. there will be a theme, something around west and mountains and hiking or some wild west. who knows? we’ll see what happens. cowboy randy. i like it.
[00:42:14] susan bryant: sounds like there might be some saloon activities.
[00:42:17] randy crabtree: oh, saloon activities are definitely involved in all our conferences.
[00:42:23] rory henry: all right. thank you so much, randy. thank you so much, susan, for contributing to the book and coming on the panel.
[00:42:28] disclaimer: all opinions expressed by rob santos and rory henry on this website podcast interview are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of arrowroot family office, llc or their parent company or affiliates and may have been previously disseminated on television, radio, internet, or another medium. you should not treat any opinion expressed by anyone as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of their opinions. past performance is not indicative of future results.