“cas gets stronger as tech gets better. the market’s expanding, not shrinking.”
this is a preview. the complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to pro members | go pro here
sponsored by “it’s not just the numbers: how to move beyond the numbers and deliver real value for your clients.”
by penny breslin and damien greathead. see today’s special offer
stream, listen, download, and subscribe to 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 podcasts anywhere: apple, google/youtube, spotify, iheart, deezer, amazon music and audible, player fm, audacy, rss
big 4 transparency
by dominic piscopo, cpa
for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
in this episode of big 4 transparency, matthew may, former co-founder of acuity and now cas leader at sorren, pulls back the curtain on one of the most significant private equity-driven rollups in the accounting profession. speaking with host dominic piscopo, may details how acuity, alongside other firms, became part of a growing national platform backed by dfw capital, and why he believes client accounting services (cas) will soon eclipse audit.
more dominic piscopo | more pay & compensation | more cas
the seeds of the sorren platform were planted in a bdo alliance roundtable where six firms fantasized about joining forces. that vision crystallized when dfw capital, with a thesis to invest $100m in the space, entered the picture. from there, may and his partners at acuity ran a rigorous process, engaging investment bankers to evaluate 250 potential paths, leading to 11 indications of interest (iois), seven in-person meetings, and five formal offers. the decision to join sorren wasn’t about cashing out – it was about autonomy, cultural fit, and the chance to help shape a future-focused firm from the ground up.
notably, the deal was structured with unusual flexibility: two acuity partners exited entirely, taking cash, while may and one other stayed on, rolling equity to remain invested in the new platform. “it was the first time we were misaligned as partners in 12 years,” may shares, describing the emotional complexity of reconciling personal timelines with a shared business legacy.
sponsored by “it’s not just the numbers: how to move beyond the numbers and deliver real value for your clients.”
by penny breslin and damien greathead. see today’s special offer
may now oversees a $27m cas practice within sorren, leading 225 professionals across 10 firms – many of whom he believes are just scratching the surface of their potential. “most cas leaders are still under audit or tax partners,” he argues, calling for cas to stand on equal footing as a revenue-driving powerhouse.
reflecting on his own leap from a cherry bekaert audit partner to co-founder of a 100-person cloud accounting firm, may speaks candidly about the toll it took: negative k-1s, home equity lines tapped, and layoffs. but he emphasizes the long-game payoff – personally, professionally, and financially.
the future, in his view, lies in creating scalable cas solutions that grow with tech-savvy clients. “we’re coming for you, audit,” he jokes, but the sentiment was serious: as automation climbs the value chain, firms that fail to invest in their cas models and cas leadership will be left behind.
5 key takeaways
- understand how to evaluate and structure a private equity deal from the sell-side. gain insight into the mechanics of deal sourcing, banker engagement, and navigating multiple lois.
- evaluate the pros and cons of different post-deal roles (exit vs. roll equity). learn how firm leaders can navigate divergent personal timelines and equity appetites.
- position cas as a strategic service line, not a secondary function. learn how cas’s recurring revenue and tech enablement make it a key pillar in firm modernization.
- develop personal clarity before entering strategic negotiations. take note of may’s banker-driven advice: know your superpower, state your role, and advocate for what you want.
- apply a long-term mindset when pursuing entrepreneurial paths. understand the financial realities of leaving partner-level roles to build a firm from scratch, including negative earnings and personal financial exposure.
more about matthew may
matthew may is the leader of the accounting services practice at sorren, a new top 50 firm. his team of 200+ fractional cfos, controllers, accountants, and bookkeepers helps outsource the accounting function for their clients.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
dominic piscopo (00:01.122)
hello and welcome to the big 4 transparency podcast. i am joined today by matthew may, former founder of acuity. i guess, i mean, you remain the founder of acuity, you can’t take that away. however, now in a new title as the cas leader of sorren. welcome to the pod, matthew.
matthew may (00:10.531)
yeah, you can’t take that away from me. you can’t take that away.
matthew may (00:22.548)
thanks for having me. i really appreciate it.
dominic piscopo (00:24.686)
yeah, my pleasure. i got the pleasure of seeing you speak at bridging the gap last year and you’ve been definitely, you know, a name i’ve written down since then. i really like your style. you’re a fun, very fun speaker as well. and i’m going to get the pleasure to see you there again this year. so i’m looking forward to that.
matthew may (00:40.707)
and whoever edits the pod will have to bleep me every once in a while. sorry if you don’t allow for language. my mom’s working on me. so like, can you like clean up your language at least on the podcast? that’d be great.
dominic piscopo (00:51.534)
no stipulations from any of the sponsors we work with and my fiance edits it. acuity as well as a bunch of other firms just got merged into sorren a couple months ago.
matthew may (00:56.259)
so i apologize in advance. i’ll try to be good.
you
dominic piscopo (01:18.634)
curious to understand how that came to be because this is you know, you hear of that this had been in the works for a really long time with a lot of the member firms of the bdo alliance who kind of ended up forming sorren. was this a bunch of conversations between you and the other firm owners who wanted to do this and then you went and found an equity partner? or was this kind of presented to you all as an option?
matthew may (01:43.779)
well, there’s kind of two paths to that question. so of the 14 to date firms that have joined, six of the firms were in a round table group together in the bdo alliance and had talked, you know, like joking around about like if we could take over the world, kind of joking, you know, like, oh, we could come together and get a financial partner. the way the financial partner and their name is dfw capital,
so dfw had a thesis and they wanted to put $100 million to work on in like in the space, right? but the way that kind of unfolded is starting in january of 24. they did the first firm, then kind of like two firms a quarter. basically, they negotiated with and figured out all the details on how that would work on a firm by firm basis. when you talk about the acuity journey, those are people we had never met in our entire lives. one,
one of those firm owners we had actually met previously. and so our journey started in, i guess, march or april of 2020, but 24, sorry. and we were at a point where we’re getting approached constantly. we had passed the $10 million in revenue threshold and we’re getting literally weekly barrages from private equity and other people that were interested in us joining forces with them. so we did.
dominic piscopo (02:53.079)
okay.
matthew may (03:09.219)
what we thought was responsible is kind of took a proactive approach and hired an investment banker and explored like literally 250 possibilities. we narrowed that down. can talk about that if you want, but that was our process. and then that culminated in january of this year of us joining, i think we were the 10th or 11th of the 14 firms to join.
dominic piscopo (03:33.792)
okay, wow. and what was it about, you know, this deal, or dfw specifically that that brought you in? because again, i’ve i’ve spoken with a lot of private equity leaders and groups who are either already doing this or trying to do this. and again, like something made them stand out or this deal stand out for them to be the chosen ones, right?
matthew may (03:55.555)
yeah, that’s fair. so we started the first part of our process. so from, say, march, april through july, we were getting our house in order. so we did a bunch of diligence and sell-side diligence, including equality of earnings and understanding where our cash flow was and what we could take to market. then in july, our investment makers talked to over 250 people in the universe.
just letting them know what our profile was, what we were thinking about from an interest level. and that got us 11, what they call indications of interest. the bankers call it an ioi. so we got 11 iois in kind of that august, september timeframe. and we narrowed it down to seven who we wanted to meet in person. and at that point we were like, show us something from everything. so we had a strategic come in that was kind of way off like,
completely random. had firms with financial backers, we private equity firms, we had just kind of all over the map, like coming in to atlanta for these four to six hour meetings. so we pitched kind of what we wanted to do to them. and that was an interesting, you know, kind of running through the same story for like seven groups in a 10 10 business day period was just
it was just mentally and physically exhausted. but then at the end of that, we got five lois, or yeah, we got five of the seven submitted letters of intent or lois. and then amongst those, it’s easier to answer. that gets me to answer your question. so there were a couple of things that were really interesting, like the two, it came down to kind of two business models, two of the groups.
were private equity groups that were in the process of bringing firms together to create a new one firm concept to go to market, right? so we would be on the planning end of things. like we would be able to have input, influence culture and all that kind of stuff. on the other side, you had these mega firms that had already take private equity and we’re kind of like getting plugged in to a path. and then there were a couple like rando scenarios in there.
dominic piscopo (06:02.915)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (06:12.739)
yeah.
matthew may (06:19.223)
but the two ones we really thought about a lot, were like, that would be nice for somebody to just tell us how to do stuff. and we could like plug in to this thing and maximize value. we torched what i called the tortured path. and then it’s like, we’ll build the plane while we’re flying it. and that’s just how we’ve rolled. but there were two groups doing that. i thought that were interesting. one was called springline and one was soarin. and we ended up picking soarin. and then a lot of things come into play in that, like.
dominic piscopo (06:25.742)
yeah.
matthew may (06:48.631)
management team, structure a deal, like all those kind of things.
dominic piscopo (06:50.317)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (06:53.984)
interesting. and when you say in there, you say we told them kind of what we wanted to do. what was it that you wanted to do? because it’s not like, you know, it doesn’t seem like acuity got picked up as like a distressed asset. and you’re like, my god, this is needs to exchange hands like seems like you’re doing super well. but then there was some next step that you were after.
matthew may (07:13.047)
well, there were four of us that were kind of equity owners, right? so the first step was like, do you want to stay or do you want to go for what we were calling acuity 3.0? so we, for those of you that aren’t familiar with acuity, acuity had been in business 20 years. so like we have been through decade one, which was we called acuity 1.0, then acuity, decade two, acuity 2.0. and we were planning for what was 3.0, which we ended up choosing as sorren. but amongst that, we got some great advice from our bankers. it’s like we were all in our 50s.
dominic piscopo (07:17.07)
mm-hmm.
matthew may (07:42.933)
at the time. and so we have different horizons kind of from an age perspective, at least the equity owners were all in their 50s. so we all, they’re just like, look, you’ve got to go into this thing and say, not what are the roles that you have and i can be flexible and do whatever. they say, go into these meetings and say, i’m in, this is my superpower, i’m in, this is my superpower.
dominic piscopo (07:49.922)
mm-hmm.
matthew may (08:10.487)
then we had two people saying like, we’re going to leave. like, we’re going to leave and that’s the business we built sustains without us. and this is what makes sense. that was the most significant, best piece of advice we got from our bankers was like, tell people what you want and just have the faith that like the people are and two of the groups opted out because they were like, if kenji leaves, like, like
dominic piscopo (08:13.528)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (08:23.513)
mm-hmm.
matthew may (08:34.755)
i don’t know if that was it, but that was probably one of the factors. if kenji and patty are leaving, they were like, hey, maybe this is too big of a risk for them, right? and that just ended up being okay. and we just had to be comfortable with that, right?
dominic piscopo (08:43.788)
yeah. yeah.
dominic piscopo (08:49.058)
yeah, no, think that’s a tremendous exercise because the last thing you want is that, know, two people being caught in a whatever two year earn out when you know, all they want to do is kind of move on and either retire or maybe they have some other passion project they want to move to. yeah, no, that’s really cool. and as part of that different optionality of different people wanting different things out of this deal was their flexibility in, you know, the proportion of maybe rolled equity versus
matthew may (09:04.396)
right.
dominic piscopo (09:18.935)
just kind of cash payout for it and, and did people opt for kind of different, different directions of that.
matthew may (09:24.929)
yeah, some of the structures, so we had five offers. so some allowed for, you know, everybody had kind of like.
there’s a percentage that they’re trying to get to overall in cash, percentage they’re trying to get to enrolled equity. some of them had earnouts, some of them had seller notes, like they had all different kind of components to the deal. the unique thing about having a banker is like they’re talking to all these people about not just the value of the firm, but also the structure of the deals that had been proposed because we have a different input on that. so because two of the…
dominic piscopo (09:58.883)
yeah.
matthew may (10:02.083)
partners wanted to leave like they were disproportionately wanting cash. like that favored in the decision process, those
kind of offers that allowed us to mix and match like personally what we each individually did to make it work on their side cumulatively. so that ruled some people out like of the five kind of right away, right? the ultimate one that we picked sorin allowed, you know, one of the partners to take all cash at the beginning of the deal, like 100%.
dominic piscopo (10:24.429)
mm-hmm.
matthew may (10:33.507)
one to disproportionately take a ton of cash and a little bit of equity and then the other two of us to make that up the role the ones that were staying we made up the role and took less cash in the front end of the deal
so it created disalignment for the first time in our partnership, which was really super interesting from just personal struggle decision-making perspective. because previously, for the previous 12 years, was there out of the 20. because i came in eight years into the qd journey. that was the first time i had been disaligned.
dominic piscopo (10:51.734)
yeah, for sure. yeah.
matthew may (11:09.987)
from my business partner, kenji, who you met too. so that was interesting, because we were talking apples and oranges, right?
dominic piscopo (11:14.115)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (11:19.31)
yeah. and was that not already present maybe to a degree in terms of deciding what to do with, you know, additional cash flows in terms of either partner distributions or reinvestment into growth and the firm?
matthew may (11:32.693)
no, one of our secret weapons was that like we had always been really aligned on that. our kids were kind of the same ages. we needed money at the same time for, for like college. needed like, we, had all stayed at, we had stayed in our same homes the whole time. like we hadn’t done anything crazy to disalign from each other in 12 years. so it was kind of a real interesting change for us from a personal relationship perspective.
dominic piscopo (11:54.99)
yeah, okay.
dominic piscopo (12:02.038)
yeah, yeah, no, that’s interesting. and was kind of the openness to the deal a result of some people maybe wanting to retire and or move on? or was this like you really wanted to be able to make more strategic investments or just, you know, we’ve been doing this for so long. let’s let’s take a different spin on things.
matthew may (12:20.215)
yeah, think, i think patty kind of sensed that like in the initial, like when you go back, rewind all the way to when we started the journey, patty was leaning towards, i think, retiring, at least for a period of time. she wanted to take a break. she had been running, catching clouds, you know, for a decade before she joined the qd to like decades. so she’s, and she was, you know, thinking about doing something different and
and wanting to take a break. think she was the one that probably was most likely to like leave when we started the process. but that wasn’t the point of the process. the point of the process was we were being reactive to the largest decision that we would make for our employees and ourselves and probably our lives. right. and we weren’t ok with that.
dominic piscopo (12:56.504)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (13:09.036)
mm-hmm.
matthew may (13:11.555)
we wanted to go look at the whole ecosystem, do what was right for our people, for us, and make a really proactive run at it. so the process at the end of it, we had no doubts that that was the right thing at the end because we had taken, we had looked at literally 205, 250, guess, different options. and so we really had a sense for…
dominic piscopo (13:21.272)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (13:34.552)
yeah.
matthew may (13:38.625)
like we weren’t walking away from money. like we had value assessed because seven different people said, this is kind of what you’re worth. right. and the range was huge. like of what people thought the different, the different things we were worth was, were, it was just super interesting. so.
dominic piscopo (13:49.988)
interesting.
matthew may (13:56.899)
no, like if we had just dealt with one of those people, like we wouldn’t have that sense for value, i think. and there’s a lot of misinformation, i think, out there right now on how much firms can get. i think people have relatively unreasonable expectations sometimes for what the value of the firm they built is. so at end of the day, like these financial buyers were buying my cash flow.
dominic piscopo (14:04.354)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (14:19.394)
yeah.
matthew may (14:23.713)
like if you don’t have evida, like you don’t like it’s really tough to say you’re worth whatever.
dominic piscopo (14:28.056)
yeah.
yeah, yeah, that’s for sure. and these are like more developed, established businesses, right? like you’re a little bit further along in the journey where it’s probably relatively predictable where things are going. and so i find that interesting that there was a big span and indifference. like, are we talking about, you know, 50 % difference between the higher end and the lower end? or like how extreme of a
matthew may (14:53.389)
especially it was extreme. can’t remember the exact percentages, but it’s at least 50 % difference in the 11 iois. like it was just night and day from like, well, one was double the lowest. like the highest was double the lowest for sure. so, but the lowest was like, it was so out of market low, you’re like, what are you doing? you know? so.
dominic piscopo (15:12.909)
wow.
dominic piscopo (15:19.598)
yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah, i mean, some people are just going to be fishing for whoever is kind of desperate to leave and that’ll happen all the time, right? like, i get approached for big four transparency, people like, oh, would you take this for it? i’m like, no, like, are you like, you kidding me? but you know, people will take shots for sure. yeah, no, i find that super interesting. and then for yourself personally, like, what what excited you about kind of taking on a cas leader role here? because certainly you, you know,
matthew may (15:23.874)
yeah.
matthew may (15:27.393)
and your life.
dominic piscopo (15:49.048)
presumably weren’t in a position where that’s something you had to do. and maybe along with that, are there any big ambitions and plans for the cas function at sorin?
matthew may (16:00.771)
well, i mean, it’s super exciting, right? i’m looking at running this year, like i was, we were about a $12 million business, like the consolidated cas practices, somewhere around $27 million practice with about 225 people strong. so like just…
you know, just having more resources. there’s 10 different cas practices, around the country, that are, that are there that i kind of can help put together and support and, and, and really, you know, a lot of them were, you know, small teams really like five to 20 people teams, right. that we’ve already been through all the pitfalls of growing those teams past five, 20, like when i started peculiar was 10 people, right. so like we’ve been through the pitfalls of
dominic piscopo (16:40.248)
mm-hmm.
matthew may (16:50.149)
going from 10 to 20, 20 to 30, 30 to 50, right? so i can help them regionally, like help them break through those barriers and like bring some insights on kind of one of the, some of the problems we’re going to solve. um, but i guess i’m, i’m 50. so my grandfather lived 105. like i got to, i got to, i got to, i got to 104. i got to live for, i got to work for a while to like, to like keep busy. my kids are leaving.
dominic piscopo (17:08.6)
wow.
dominic piscopo (17:16.588)
yeah, it’s a lot of time to be. yeah.
matthew may (17:18.359)
my kids are, an empty nester this year. so like kind of pouring myself into something fun and different. even historically every four to five years, try to change our roles up, kenji and i have. and so this was kind of, we were all kind of in like ready for some kind of change. so this is super interesting. it’s not boring. so.
dominic piscopo (17:36.813)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (17:40.782)
that’s cool. yeah, you know, if, your, your father made it to one oh five, 55 years along or sort of grandfather, it’s a, it’s a long time to be a, yeah, that wouldn’t have math out. that’s a long time to be doing, you know, sudoku on the front porch for sure. if you retire at 50. so, um, yeah, that’s cool. and you seem like you’ve kind of taken some big leaps in your career too, right? like, so you were, um, you were a partner at, at cherry bechert beforehand, right?
matthew may (17:45.725)
grandfather. yeah.
matthew may (17:54.251)
yeah.
matthew may (18:07.587)
yeah, i was an audit partner at cherry bucket. so i’m like, i think almost 15 years recovered from that. just look like 15 years recovered from audit almost. i can’t remember what year i left. probably 12 or 13 years recovered. i think 12 or 13 was last year i was there.
dominic piscopo (18:23.853)
yeah.
matthew may (18:24.577)
yeah, i started my career in audit, you know, in my, started at arthur anderson. i had the good fortune to follow my wife down to graduate school, so moved to ernst & young and then avoided all the…
arthur anderson employees closure because arthur anderson didn’t have an austin office and i so just left out there and then early in my career i left to be a controller during the dot-com days at a startup ended up selling that startup, you know, that was the stupid multiple days so we had like a million in revenue sold for a hundred million and then i learned i’m not gonna make a lot of money as an employee
places, you know, at these startups and stuff like that. so, but i stayed on at a fortune 50 at the time and joined their corporate accounting group and we had, learned about shared services and that’s kind of how my entree into cas, i guess, came with a fortune 50 where we had 10,000 business units and i was managing 150 of the audits that we had to do. that was when everybody leveraged the crap out of everything, right?
dominic piscopo (19:04.429)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (19:20.328)
dominic piscopo (19:31.596)
yeah, for sure.
matthew may (19:32.137)
because we had nine sec registrants within the global entity, but i was doing the non-public stuff. then when my wife got back into her phd program, me being the glutton for punishment, went back to public accounting and ended up then, when she graduated, that brought us to atlanta. and that’s when i made the switch to cherry to kind of stay in the mid-market. when i transferred to ernst here,
dominic piscopo (19:35.916)
wow, okay.
dominic piscopo (19:40.941)
yeah.
matthew may (20:01.239)
you know, that was all upmarket stuff. so i came back to the mid market, helped run the tech practice at cherry. and then 13 years ago, 12 years ago, i got the opportunity to buy half of acuity and took the plunge and i haven’t looked back since. and then we made a dent in the earth. so.
dominic piscopo (20:04.012)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (20:16.526)
cool. going back to that industry experience, do you think that made you a better partner and then firm owner having seen kind of the client perspective? yeah.
matthew may (20:23.423)
way better. my gosh, like a hundred times better auditor. like i was like a hundred times better. like i totally knew, i knew what i was half-assing on the journal entry side and estimate side. i knew what i would do. like, and then especially once i got into this big corporate blob, i was like, like, it’s a real thing. the cfo calls you and be like, hey, what, anything?
know, move eps a penny this quarter in your group? like, is there any accruals we need to like, like really think about? like, if you’re just like, then you start learning about pennies on eps and you’re like, this is a real thing. so that was super crazy, interesting.
dominic piscopo (20:52.184)
yeah.
yeah.
dominic piscopo (21:02.07)
yeah, yeah. that’s a perspective i like hearing from people because, again, people kind of more, you my age or younger as well in the profession, they view everything with such a sense of finality, right? like, when i left deloitte, like, they’re like, you know, what a crazy move or whatever, right? and it’s like, well, i mean, i could probably come back and i’m gonna have a lot more perspective or whatever that might be. right. and i do think, you know, this crazy journey of life, like,
a lot of these things do actually kind of pay off and come full circle. so i like i like asking that of people who’ve done a stint and then found success in in accounting as well.
matthew may (21:39.651)
yeah, well, i mean, the irony for me was in my career arc, like 12 years after i left cherry becker, cherry becker was one of the seven firms that came in to talk to us about, you know, come and join their cast practice. so that was really super interesting too. so you like, everything’s kind of full circle and it really emphasizes why you always try to leave without burning bridges and the good terms, which luckily i had at cherry becker. so, but there’s, i mean, phenomenal people there. so like, that was not surprising.
dominic piscopo (21:48.685)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (21:53.25)
that’s cool.
dominic piscopo (22:00.323)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (22:08.94)
yeah. and then when you chose to leave cherry bekert, like what was it that you were pursuing in in this kind of new practice, new endeavor? like what what was different in your experience as a partner? because for a lot of people like that’s end game, right? like, i’m partner, i made it. this is awesome.
matthew may (22:25.259)
yeah, i mean, one of the epiphanies i had when i made partner was that i was starting my career. that was not a culmination point. it was almost like a new beginning, which was super non-intuitive to me before that point. and then when you just look at like, what was that? i can’t remember what year that was, but i was.
dominic piscopo (22:33.838)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (22:37.569)
okay.
matthew may (22:49.579)
early 30s, right? like, so you’re like making partner in your 30s and you’re like, i’m going to work till 60. like i got like, i’m just, i’m starting a career right now. so that was super interesting. you know, the, nobody ever talks about income partner versus equity partner when you’re making partner. so i had just made income partner and not equity partner. and then there was this other, so i kind of had this window between income partner and equity partner.
dominic piscopo (22:57.698)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (23:09.346)
yeah, income partner, okay.
matthew may (23:18.135)
where i had just realized that making an equity partner was going to be a different decision, right? and then when i started looking like i had this opportunity, kenji was pretty much my best friend at the time and his business partner had left to pursue some other endeavors. and, you know, at that time i was signing pcob audits as a partner, right? as an income partner.
dominic piscopo (23:42.978)
yeah. yeah.
matthew may (23:43.605)
signing pcv audits as an income partner. was also having trouble seeing how my group was going to scale. like i was already in my second year partner. i was already kind of like at that two, two and a half million dollar book of business. and just like my business book of business grows, i just do more work like it was just. and so.
dominic piscopo (24:01.378)
yeah.
matthew may (24:03.959)
the opportunity came up, it was a 10 % shop with controllers and cfos. it was gonna put me back into the today as opposed to in the past with clients. so i decided to do something crazy and not make any money for a while. and that was kind of crazy, but that…
yeah, i don’t know how to explain it. it seemed like, it seemed crazy, but i knew i would never regret it. and i knew after i made equity partner, it was just gonna be much harder to make any kind of career decision change. so.
dominic piscopo (24:41.358)
yeah, i’ve had that conversation with some people before who are kind of at that cusp and are like, i think it’s time to move because it, yeah, again, it’s way harder to unwind later on for sure. um, and so when you talk about, know, not making money for a couple of years, that’s actually a question i have for people who kind of jump out, like was there, and, i mean, i’m talking super rough, rough timelines, but was there kind of a tipping point where you became better off, you know, maybe financially speaking for the, for the,
move of jumping to acuity? like, are we talking three, four years or more? okay. okay.
matthew may (25:12.707)
it was like january 12 years later like no, i mean so my first k1 that year was negative eight thousand dollars. just so you guys like that and that included no salary like like a salary included like i negative i was negative seven negative seven or eight thousand dollars. i can’t remember what it is but it was like i literally got a negative k1
dominic piscopo (25:24.79)
nice.
dominic piscopo (25:38.958)
wow.
matthew may (25:39.253)
so that was kind of crazy. thank god i had my home equity line of credit set up. so we used my home equity line of credit and kenji’s home equity line of credit the first probably six years. so it took us about six years to get, well, i was paying off his partner basically how we structured the deal. so i was paying off the debt for his partner. that didn’t include.
dominic piscopo (25:51.022)
wow.
dominic piscopo (25:57.673)
yeah, okay.
matthew may (26:01.463)
that wasn’t even counted in that negative $8,000. so i was paying payments. i was making negative cashflow. so i was shifting money from a seller note to a line of credit on my house for the first probably three years. and then i started like, like we got from the first year we did 850 k or something in revenue. the second year we did like a million.
dominic piscopo (26:04.13)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (26:14.574)
cheers.
matthew may (26:25.239)
five, then we did like two seven, then three five. so we had some like rapid growth, which like actually hurts cashflow, which is weird. so.
dominic piscopo (26:31.544)
yeah. yeah.
matthew may (26:35.317)
even though we’re going great, like i have a presentation i did, i think it was last year bridging the gap about like, okay, here’s what it looked like to the outside world. and like, here’s what my cashflow looked like. and here’s where we almost went bankrupt in year six together. like it’s where like, i literally had in year six, i had tapped out my line of credit, like or five or six. i can’t remember when it was. think it was.
dominic piscopo (26:46.733)
yeah.
matthew may (26:58.691)
2017 2018 something like that like where i was just like i’m i’m host like or can’t remember i actually can’t remember what year was but it was like i have a go back and look at the thing
dominic piscopo (27:05.069)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (27:09.288)
far into the journey though. january is probably the tipping point, like you said, of where it’s like, hey, this was probably from a strictly financial perspective worthwhile, which is quite a journey.
matthew may (27:20.429)
well, it’s crazy because cherry beckaert took private equity too. so i would have been on that journey, you know, had i stayed. like apples to apples, i don’t know which one would have been better financially. i know this one was probably better for my family for sure. it’s probably a push or slightly better doing the acuity path financially. so it works out.
dominic piscopo (27:25.176)
yeah.
yeah.
dominic piscopo (27:45.728)
interesting. yeah, no, that’s super cool. and i guess i probably know the answer. but like, there times in the acuity journey where you’re kind of like, my god, have i made a mistake in leaving that behind? or
matthew may (27:58.493)
i mean, when you’re just going into the, when you’re just going into that, like, yeah, like you like, you always ask yourself questions like, hey, you know, because everybody up like the months that are the hardest is like, you’re literally writing checks to make payroll. like, like, it was different for whatever reason to like not take payroll.
dominic piscopo (28:15.597)
yeah.
matthew may (28:20.503)
personally and then to also then not take payroll and write a check so everybody else can make payroll. like those are probably the hardest days emotionally. that’s like what am i doing? but i don’t, even in those days, i mean except for when we like had like that one really bad run where we had to fire a bunch of our salespeople, we fired like eight people in one day.
dominic piscopo (28:20.6)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (28:25.858)
yeah, that’s fair.
yeah. yeah.
matthew may (28:45.679)
and just because we were like getting over our skis and we never should have had that big of a sales group at that run rate anyway. but like that was like, that was the worst probably was when we had kind of over hired in, cause you can’t really over hire how we built the business on the production side, but on the back office size you can. and we had made that mistake.
dominic piscopo (28:45.901)
hmm.
dominic piscopo (29:03.342)
yeah.
matthew may (29:07.509)
affected at least eight people’s lives. so that was the worst probably. that was a low point of my acuity career that day.
dominic piscopo (29:16.014)
okay, interesting. yeah, that’s pretty common i hear from people who’ve had to do layoffs like as their their business where pretty universally people are like, wow, that feels super low. changing gears a little bit though to something maybe more positive. so kaz has had and continues to have i would say like quite a quite a you know, an evolution. so
even looking back not that far ago, you know, i was in big four, seven years ago or something like that. and it felt like the teams who were doing type of kaz style work were very much kind of like the the b team, like, and that’s not a dig on the people at all. but it just felt the way it was regarded by the firm, that was kind of the lesser priority. and that was just like, well, just do that, i guess, to make people happy. now kaz seems to be at least
in the circles i run like a lot more in the spotlight getting a lot more attention and respect and recognition. what do you think led to that change?
matthew may (30:21.251)
i think there are some great leaders in the space now. so, like most of my job is to shut that down now, right? because there is that little feel, like i still see some of that tension with the tax partners and the cas partners in this. i think the tension’s created with how people are compensated.
like disproportionately compensating people to do business development over execution. so cas tends to be a bunch of people working on execution and maintain like monthly, monthly cadences. i think cas is more valuable because it doesn’t have the peaks and valleys of audit and tax, right? so one of my challenges with tax partners, audit partners in particular is
dominic piscopo (30:44.706)
yeah, for sure.
dominic piscopo (30:58.712)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (31:05.506)
yeah.
matthew may (31:13.549)
they don’t understand the different business model. and also just to give you like a perspective like of the, in the 10 firms that we were looking at, two of the 10 firms had partners associated with cas that were focused on cas. the other ones, eight of them had tax partners or audit partners who were over cas trying to like play one foot in both camp, right?
dominic piscopo (31:17.666)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (31:29.763)
wow, okay.
dominic piscopo (31:39.939)
yeah.
matthew may (31:40.545)
so from a leadership perspective, if you don’t have somebody fully dedicated to it, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy to me. like you’re not investing in the people. so i think the big difference that you’ll see at these firms is those with strong leaders shut that down, right? plus they know who they hire, they understand the business. like we know cas, the qa. i’ve never used that term actually in 12 years, so it’s kind of weird to use that term. like we just ran…
dominic piscopo (31:47.778)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (31:57.57)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (32:03.406)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (32:08.77)
yeah.
matthew may (32:10.231)
we weren’t at the county firm, so it was just our business. so like us coming in, like, and we joke around with, like i joke around the head audit all the time. like, hey, enjoy it now because you’re going to be the second, like i’m going be the second language practice over here. our group county services is going to take over audit pretty quickly in the next three to five years. so like, sorry, but like they’re going have to get over that. so as that starts happening, i think you’ll start seeing a big shift in how people.
dominic piscopo (32:13.912)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (32:27.469)
yeah.
matthew may (32:39.619)
think about cas and accounting services and big firms. it’s a huge market opportunity. it’s getting bigger. cas increases as technology increases. so you like the market for increases. cause like as technology improves, then it…
dominic piscopo (32:40.098)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (32:51.01)
yeah.
matthew may (32:56.813)
drives out hours of the process. so that makes it less likely you need a full-time person even as you go higher and higher in the market. so that started with, know, million dollar companies, two million dollar companies. now it’s gonna get into with ai into the five and $10 million companies. if you just think about payroll practices and micro like people payroll department, there used to be a thing like people used to have a payroll department, right?
dominic piscopo (33:02.743)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (33:13.954)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (33:20.364)
yeah.
matthew may (33:22.849)
so like that is like way far in your progression now, like your growth trajectory before you need a payroll department. so that’s starting to happen with accounting departments now, right?
dominic piscopo (33:31.916)
mm-hmm. yeah, for sure
yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. yeah, yeah, the the the the kind of salary and compensation differences, which is obviously like the angle i come from with big for transparency a little bit is super interesting with cas. so i launched it as its own category. i’m trying to like gather a little bit more cas specific data to serve that type of firm more. but when i speak with people
matthew may (33:38.125)
so we’re coming for you audit. we’re coming. all of us are.
dominic piscopo (34:01.346)
you know, sometimes, because i tend to work with the more traditional yet tax and audit type firms. but then sometimes when i speak with people, they want to benchmark their cas and audit salaries in line or sorry, cas salaries in line with audit or audit and tax even sometimes. but then other people are like, no, there’s going to be this like discount to it. and so we don’t want to include kind of tax and audit salaries and what we’re doing for cas, right?
and it does feel like it’s one of those things where it’s just so in flux that there’s no clear cut definition of it. and people are trying to figure out like, hey, where is this going to land? right? because i also think kaz has many different definitions in many different places. so it’s a little bit tricky.
matthew may (34:40.995)
yeah, you ask 10 people what it is. they give you 10 different answers in the industry right now. that’s, that’s, we, know what it is at our group. ours in like, i’m responsible for bookkeeper through cfo. so anything an internal shop could do. and then for somehow sales tax got thrown into my group. so yeah, it’s interesting. yeah, i know. i think i was just like that everybody was like trying to figure out and i would think i was not at that meeting. and so they’re like, okay.
dominic piscopo (34:46.807)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (35:00.322)
sales tax got thrown in. interesting.
dominic piscopo (35:09.134)
you
matthew may (35:10.179)
kaz is gonna run sales tax. no, if you think of sales tax, it’s more monthly recurring. those tax people like those once a year things, so.
dominic piscopo (35:18.422)
yeah, no, it does make some sense from like a, you know, client relationship. and and yeah, like you said, monthly recurring cadence perspective that is just that’s surprising to me, but makes sense.
matthew may (35:30.075)
1099s and sales tax are in my group this year.
dominic piscopo (35:32.92)
huh, interesting. yeah, no, is actually, yeah. now we’ll see if that becomes more kind of broadly recognized. that’s good to know though. i have some consult people. i might talk to you about that later, but yeah, no, that’s, okay, cool. maybe off the pod. perfect. yeah, i mean, that’s.
matthew may (35:35.017)
isn’t it?
matthew may (35:43.051)
we’ll find out.
matthew may (35:48.272)
i’m looking. i’m looking. who wants to run a sales tax practice? it’ll be great.
dominic piscopo (35:57.806)
that’s super interesting. love that you have not been afraid to kind of make bold moves in your journey. again, although at times maybe financially speaking, that didn’t seem like the like the play. it’s cool to see that be rewarded now. and, you know, i think i think beyond the financial perspective, though, i think this is going to be a very rewarding role as well.
matthew may (36:18.903)
yeah, think so. think we undervalue kind of like our work, like what kind of work we do. so that’s like when we’re going through the process and the banker is telling us like, tell us what you want to have the outcome be. like what do want your job to be? like, is it important that you’re running the department or not running the department or just?
dominic piscopo (36:26.635)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (36:35.628)
yeah.
matthew may (36:39.083)
if you’re just a role player, like that was a hugely impactful, like piece of advice i got when we were thinking about this, but it really kind of, it’s been consistent to my career. one of the best, business development coaches i’ve ever had was at, cherry becker and they had turned me into a business developer and, they were like, you really got to understand your ideal client profile and who you want to work with. cause if you’re successful, that’s what you’re doing. and i always joke, like i always hated hospitals. it was like,
dominic piscopo (37:04.129)
yeah.
matthew may (37:08.899)
so like, cause hospitals were easy to get at the time and they’re like, oh, we could go do this hospital. but then i have to go out at a hospital. and then i was like, i don’t want to do that. like i want to audit tech companies. so then, then i ended up being the tech cpa and like, like that’s how that came about. it’s like, i want to work with tech companies, you know? so.
dominic piscopo (37:12.248)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (37:16.163)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (37:19.523)
yeah.
dominic piscopo (37:28.588)
yeah, yeah, yeah, no, think i think developing a niche kind of early on and a preference of where you want to be is is super underrated. and i see people do that all the time of like, listen, i’m just looking for work. and i do think that’s where we do tend to kind of devalue what we do.
matthew may (37:39.65)
yeah.
matthew may (37:44.545)
yeah. i, yeah, if i could give one piece of recommendation to everybody, it’s like figure out what you want to do and say it. and so people, when that comes up, you get it. and then over time, it’s, it’s usually over time, but like over time that becomes what you do, you know?
dominic piscopo (38:00.172)
yeah, 100%. and then in case there’s anyone listening who’s kind of like, maybe we should be part of sorren or something like that. i have a quick operational question as well. is it sort of like a platform model? like firms come in and then they’re kind of supported from a head office perspective? is that kind of a part of how this is working?
matthew may (38:08.832)
yeah.
matthew may (38:21.027)
no, it’s a little different. so everybody’s changing their name to sorren. so we’re going to the one firm concept right now because we’re doing 14 at once.
dominic piscopo (38:24.972)
okay. wasn’t sure.
okay.
matthew may (38:32.511)
migrating people slowly like my firm that we joined in january like we’re not even scheduled to do some of the technology integrations until maybe q4, q1 the next year. like that part’s slow. so like you kind of operate independently for the first year, like try not to, what we’ve been talking about is kind like the do no harm mantra. like first do no harm, right? and then if there’s some better process to add to you, we’ll add that as we go.
so we’re going to have lot of local autonomy for people that have local presence so we don’t mess up local relationships. so they’re going to have lot of local autonomy, but it’s definitely people that want to.
work on best practices right now and adapt to what those are in each of the four kind of practice lines. so our practice lines are defined as tax, audit, accounting, and advisory. and our advisory is more like litigation support, like business valuation, like stuff that’s not at the cfo level. i know some people have advisory in different places. it’s all over the map, but we kind of split it up a little differently.
dominic piscopo (39:20.077)
mm-hmm.
dominic piscopo (39:39.064)
yeah, it’s all over the map. yeah.
dominic piscopo (39:46.094)
that’s cool. awesome. well, yeah, thank you so much for joining me, matthew. and i look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks, up bridging the gap as well. and yeah, and yeah, it’s just, it’s great to hear someone like you sharing your journey. i appreciate how open you are about kind of all of the things, all of the challenges. i think that means a lot for people who are maybe finding themselves in the same situation or considering making a jump like that. so i think it’s a great service to the industry.