Thanks for tuning in to CPA Life, where we now rejoin John Randolph on part two of his conversation with Jason Blumer of Blumer CPAs and Thriveal. Their discussion centers around deep strategies for maximizing your firm's potential from time management to the power of niching and more. Welcome to CPA Life. I had a mentor years ago, put it real simply, and I, and I thought there's a lot of truth to it. He said, you know, people, people don't roll out of bed.
Every morning and put their feet on the floor and, you know, their, their elbow on their knee and say, okay, how can I screw my job up today? They just don't do that. People don't do things at work that you want them to do because either one they don't know Or they don't care and he said number one Is okay, right? I don't know. We'll teach them. That's our job, right?
We absolutely have to teach them but if it continues on and we've taught them Then they may not just care and again, do they not care because we didn't Show them how important this was let's give them the benefit of the doubt But if it ultimately gets to the point of the fact that they just don't understand like you said the weight Of the responsibility board as they do, then, then change has to be made, but we're going to create an environment to let them learn from that
and grow from that with the 15 people that you have there, has it been a pretty consistent team or have you guys grown that team over the last three to five years as the whole industry has grown? Yeah. Yeah. So we've gone in growth and spurts, you know, basically. So it's weird right before the pandemic. And then some during the pandemic, some team members really struggled. And so groups of two or three would leave. And I think we all went through a period of stuff, you know, since 2020.
It's just been a really weird time on us. All of us learning our roles, the value of our work. A lot of, maybe younger people learning the values of their careers and their commitments and what those were or were not or what they expected. And so yeah, we had, we had groups leave and so we would replace them with two and three.
So I think probably the last hiring we did, we, we hired five people, Spring in 2023 in last spring, and they're all still there, but we do have some other strong people been here. Five, six, 14 years. Uh, Julie's been with me, uh, over 12, you know, I've been doing this for close to 25. So when you start getting longevity in on team, uh, that man, that's where you can really see things change. Cause when they've been here two or three years, They start to just embody the culture.
They kind of know the firm. They know how to roll around in the firm. They know what to do. And when you get to that point, you just lean more heavily on them and that you can put your weight on those kinds of teams. But if you're a firm that's constantly going through people, That's a real rocky foundation. And so you really, you have to create an environment that people want to stay.
And it's hard, you know, when you have two or three people in your firm, you're a real small firm, it's really hard to give them enough money to give them enough of a title to really start to make career commitments. But over time you can do that. And so a team with longevity is a really valuable. Strong team. Uh, and that's what we have now. And so Julie and I don't have to be in any of the technical processes, but we're still there. We're the CEO CEO. We lead the team meetings with them.
So we're very, very close to the team and we love them very much. And we don't do everything right. You know, it's not that they stumble and they have support. It's. We stumble and we have their support too. So I, I'm a human and I say things wrong and I do things wrong. Uh, so, you know, owners as leaders, we don't say, Hey, I've got your back, you know, make some mistakes. We're making mistakes all the time.
So we, it all, it's just, everybody's a bunch of humans making mistakes and that's okay in a community. Yeah. I joke with my team all the time. Sometimes they won't. You know, they may not want to tell me something that's going on and then I'll call a client and the client will let me know something that was done. And I always tell him, look, I do good enough job making myself look bad. Right. I don't need any help. Just tell me what's going on. Give me some information, man.
Don't make me look stupid because I'm good at that already. That is a core competency of mine. I got that one down. Um, you know, along the lines of intentionality. And, and growth and people, you guys have a remote firm and, uh, you were, you were remote before remote was cool. Yeah. Um, so you guys have been doing this a little while and, you know, I'll tell you, Jason, I still talk to firm owners today that either they struggle with the.
minimal amount of hybrid work they have with their team. Or, or they have no, no hybrid piece to it. Everybody's in the office and the conversation always comes back to culture and productivity. How do you address that? If you're sitting talking to an owner and he says those things, what is your response to that? As a guy that's run a remote firm successfully for 15, 16 years now. Yeah, those are hard. A virtual firm, we learned.
You know, when we went virtual, cause we were brick and mortar when my dad started the firm. And then, you know, five years later, when I came and started running, I'm like, woohoo, let's be virtual. This is going to be awesome. Y'all. And, you know, my form of virtual was, let's all go home and we'll all just kick butt. And that did, that's not what happened. So, so just virtual team really do struggle in personal situations. And it makes sense. I I'm in a co work space right now.
So I get up and get ready and I drive to my office every day. Um, that's me cause I need that, but not all our team do that. And that's fine. They have the choice to work at home, but we really have to ask them, you know, how are you going to stay focused? Do you have a place where you can do work? You know, your background has to be clean. You know, you can't be disturbed when you're actually in meetings. And so a lot of that's done in the hiring process.
So in really the second part of the hiring process is sharing our core values with them saying, we're inviting you into a community. These are the values we all espouse and you'll have to adopt them too. Uh, and it's not, it's not values that you couldn't adopt, right. There, you know, integrity, stuff like that, uh, confidence and, you know, collaboration. So these are the things by which we're going to live. And so you also have to adopt our values.
So that's a really, uh, a look at the culture. that we're inviting them into. But we also have to be super clear for remote team. And that basically is you have to have a title. You have to have a job description. Those are the two things you cannot start a job without. And many firms do just hire somebody and just say, will you help me with taxes? They start to not know who they are.
where their authority lies, who they're accountable to, who's accountable to them, and a lot of that's hurtful to the team. So you have to bring people into a role. So one thing we always do, and when, when firms are struggling, we consult with some of the first things we're going to do is build a visual accountability chart. We're going to get them to take their whole team and put them visually on a chart. And we're going to teach them how to do that.
And it's amazing how unclear they've been because they find out some people who they know and think are the boss of another person are actually lower than that person. The other person is really their superior. They didn't know. They're not titled with senior or manager. They don't report to them. And they're like, This is going to be a problem. We're like, this is the clarity you need. This is why y'all are in chaos. Cause nobody knows who is who.
And when you do that, when you're a team of three to five and you don't fix some of those clarity issues, like you're not telling people, this is your role title. Here's your job description, and we will hold you completely accountable to everything on that job description. You will never go without help or support, but you will do everything on that job prescription without question. And you will struggle personally, just like I do.
And we're going to help you get that job done because you're going to get paid twice a month and we're never going to forget. So you're never going to not do your job. So we get real clear up front. And so. So now they can be in an environment, uh, and they can struggle with their work and we call them back to their job and go, you are not doing the job you accepted. You signed the paper on the job description. How can we help you? That's the first line of defense.
And then it gets more and more severe to a point where it can't be on the team anymore. If you can't manage yourself in a, in a job, and sometimes as firm owners, we don't know who can and who can't, right. We just hope they can, that you can't predict. And if the team member's like, I love virtual, I'm going to be a great virtual employee. Uh, that's not always true. They don't know. So we lean heavily on clarity, being super.
Super clear with their role and the expectations are extremely high as to doing the job. It's not more expectations than they know about. It's actually only the job you signed up for because you wanted the salary. Yep. You're going to do it. And if you don't, it'll be probably a couple months, two to three months and you'll be, you'll be gone. Yep. So. You got to get clear, like tight, tight, clear, super. My mindset for years has been rules, roles, and responsibilities have to have clarity.
So good. We'll, we'll deal with equality. And fairness once we have clarity there you go And I think that so many times as people We we want to have those conversations of well, what if? What if my daughter has a doctor's appointment at two o'clock? Okay. Well, hold on How many times in the last year has your daughter had a doctor's appointment? Two o'clock. Right. Um, once. Okay. So that's an exception. That's not a rule. Right.
So, so, so from a clear standpoint, unless something comes up, you're going to be working at two o'clock. That's right. Now, now something comes up. Communicate. Yeah. Yeah, that, that's it. And so you have to communicate a lot in a virtual firm. So that's a big part of it. And so one thing my, my partner says is they, you know, we don't have unlimited time off.
They have to document when they're leaving and they get to take what they want, but they have to plan with us and go, here's what I'm leaving. Here's who it's going to affect. And we say, Okay. You kind of get to do whatever you want to do and you just have to plan with us as long as it doesn't affect team collaboration. You don't hold your team up and it doesn't affect client service. And if you get, that means they go change the meetings with the client, which is fine.
They work through the meetings with their team and tell the team, I'm going to be out at the beach. Are you good? And they're like, I'll get that next week from you. Long as they collaborate, go. We're like, Do not work go away and do not work because you you've really met those two standards. That's all we care about Some people do that beautifully some just cannot do it They just cannot do it. They're like i'm going to do whatever I want to do.
I work at home and we're like That you're not going to work here and do whatever you want to do. This is a job and boy, we are holding you to a pretty high standard. I'm held to a high standard. The team requires me to work. They are my boss in a sense. I can't just skip out. They need me to look over a project and I have to do it when they assign it to me. I have to do it. I don't have a choice and that's okay. Because I want to be there for them.
But there's an expectation that it's, that it's absolutely going to get done. Totally. It has to. There was a candidate I talked to recently that was wanting remote, I don't recall if she was in a remote situation already or not, but wanted remote work. And, um, one of her questions as we were talking about a client that we work with, she said, you know, to have to work, you know, every day from, Eight to five, nine to five kind of thing. Or can I pick and choose when I, when I want to work?
And my response was, look, you know, every client's going to have a little bit of a different setup in a different scenario. I'll have to talk to my client and get back to you, let you know what they say. But here's my thought process on it. You're in a client facing client service role. You may do great work at two o'clock in the morning, but I'm going to guess your clients probably don't work at two o'clock in the morning. So if your client needs you at.
Nine in the morning or 11 in the morning or three in the afternoon. I'm going to venture a guess that you're going to have to be available. at that time for that client. And that's just one of the things that I think that most people understand in a remote type situation or even a hybrid situation. But you're right. I think there are people that feel like, I just want to work whenever I want to work. You know what? None of us have that kind of freedom.
No. Like, Yeah, I don't know what we got in our head through the pandemic about I'm going to this remote job. I get to do whatever I want. That is so far away from the truth. For any human on the planet that actually pays their bills and eats food every day. They are doing what somebody is wanting them to do to make money. And so you also will take a job that will have a salary and you will Probably be abiding by some of the protocol and the policies of that firm.
And you just don't get to do whatever you want with our team. We're like, this is intentionality. You have to block your calendar a week in advance every week. That's just part of us helping you learn how to prioritize and be intentional. You're going to block 40 hours a week. So that. Nobody's questioning that because you're full time. So go ahead and block 40 hours, but put them where you want to put them.
As long as it doesn't affect client service, because you're not going to put them at three in the morning or your team's collaboration, because they're not working at three in the morning. So now you're accountable to the clients. You're accountable to your team. You're stepping into a place where we're an accountable community. And so you get to do what you want within. The commitments you're making to the community that you signed up for. And so it's not do whatever you want. That's not right.
As one of my bosses said to me years ago, I worked for a firm that when I started there, we were somewhere in the neighborhood of 25, 26 million in revenue. And through multiple acquisitions and, and a couple of IPO or an IPO and a secondary offering, you know, we, we blink and we're almost a billion in revenue. Good grief. And, and I remember talking to the CEO who had hired me. years before one day at a corporate leadership event.
And we're standing in the lunch line and he said, you know, how are things going? And I said something to the effect of, you know, people are really frustrated in the field. It's gotten to be more of a corporate structure that people feel like they can't be entrepreneurial anymore. And so we're talking about this and he looked at me and he said, John, you understand there's a difference between entrepreneurial.
And, uh, and, and I said, well, I mean, philosophically, yeah, but I, I guess you're going somewhere. Help me understand. And, uh, he said, entrepreneurial means that there is this box. Okay. And somebody has written a check to have the right. To draw the parameters of that box. Now, when you get hired, you get to be entrepreneurial anywhere within that box that you want to do whatever you want. Stay within that box.
Whoever paid the money to draw that box, they put up the parameters of what that box is. Now that's entrepreneurial. Now, if you would like to be an entrepreneur. And have the right to draw some of those lines of that box I have a price in mind And if you want to write a check Yeah, you can now become you can now become an entrepreneur right and determine the boundaries of that box That's right. But until then You can be entrepreneurial anywhere within this box that you want to be.
But I'm the one that puts the boundaries of what those, that box looks like. And I think that that was a great visual for me to understand because at the end of the day, you're right. There is a trade off in responsibility and tasks and duty and delivery to the community and to our customer that we all agree to when we step into that role, whether it is in an office.
Or it's on a remote basis and there is weight to that and as a leader there has to be intentionality of how you're running that and how you're making sure your people get that and see that and feel that and understand that. Yeah, that is a great way to put it and you know, some of our team feel that, that pull or that stretch. Like why, why can't I do anything I want? Well, you know, and it's hard to say you didn't write the check to do anything you want, but that's even a misbelief, right?
I, like, I may have written the checks. Some of them bounced and, you know, and so I bounced some checks. So it doesn't mean I know what I'm doing necessarily. I've learned a lot. Now I do now have a lot better view of that, but now I don't even get to do what I want. I wrote the checks. I don't get to know what I want. I, and that's okay. I'm saying that's okay. Because it means I'm in a place that where I'm valued, I'm needed. And I'm going to show up when those people tell me to show up.
They need me. And I'm not going to stiff them. And I'm not going to leave them. So now, yeah, I got into this because I wanted to do whatever I want. And I had to grow up and go, no, I'm going to do what the people that I'm committing my life to in the community need from me. And that's what I'm going to do now. I think that's a phase that I think we all go through in maturity. In an entrepreneurial type situation.
I think there's a little bit to a lot, depending on the person of, Hey, I'm going to do this myself and I'm going to do what I want, when I want, how I want. Right. And through that growth process, sometimes you start to realize that you're doing all of it. All the time for everyone. Uh, right. Yeah. And accounting, accounting entrepreneurs sometimes are the worst. This profession is the most giving caring people.
And so they'll dump everybody's work on their shoulders and they'll make sure nobody feels bad. You don't delegate, you don't hold them to accountable places. You know, you don't expect your clients to be. Good people to you. You let them run off. So accounting professionals that become entrepreneurs sometimes become just doormats and just because we have, we're this profession that has a heart to serve people. I think we really do have that embedded in us.
We want to, Help people with hard things they don't understand, and we're good at it, but we get taken advantage of sometimes, and we think that's good, and it's not good at all. You know, Jason, as you're sitting here saying that, I'm thinking about a client that we work with in our advisory model that we have, and he's a firm owner that's owned his firm for 30 plus years. He bills zero of his time. Zero. Mm hmm.
And one of the things that came through discussions with his team when we were talking to him was his team absolutely loves him. He's got probably 15 20 percent of his team that's been with him for over 15 years. Mm, that's great. But he's had high turnover in the last five to six years. Mm hmm. And it's because they've grown so fast and he's so busy. Yeah. That he doesn't have time. These younger people don't have the time to get to know who he is like these other people know who he is.
Yeah. And all the people that have been there forever say, you know, I'm here because of him. I love him. When I sat and talked with those same people about, hey, why do you think these other people are leaving? The answer is because they don't know him. If they knew him like we knew him, they'd stay because they'd understand his heart. And, and sitting there talking to him, again, you talk about how you take all that work on and you want to give and, and, and just bear that burden.
We were talking to him and I said, look, And I didn't know they didn't bill his time. That came through the course of discussion with, with a couple of other leaders in the firm. And I said, what would it look like if, if you reduced your individual workload, you're not billing it anyway. What would it look like if you reduced your individual workload and that time that right now you're working on a client's tax return, you spent sitting with your people in the office?
Hmm. Going back to doing what you did when you were a five, six, seven person firm and learning about their families and their kids and their spouses and their dreams and their goals and their visions and how, how you helped them achieve those things. Your ROI on that time as a leader will be paramountly more than any 1040 return you're cranking out for a guy that's been your client for 25 years. Yeah, if that returned to somebody else.
Yeah, yeah, and I think that so many times you're right, and I've seen it in, in so many leaders that we've talked to in the industry, they get so, so busy because they're taking on so much because they don't know how to say no. Mm hmm, right. That they feel like they're being a hero, but at the end of the day, they're ending up being really nothing to anyone in that process because they're just spinning their wheels. Yeah, yeah, it's not how you become a hero. Yeah. No, no, not at all.
Um, I mean, and you guys have not only built a successful business. From an accounting perspective in the Blumber side of the business, but you guys have done it in a very niche market. And I think that's one of the other things that intrigued me. The more I looked into your firm, you're not trying to be everything to everyone. You guys serve a pretty narrow focus niche. And has it always been that way? Well, it's yeah, for a number of years. I mean, my dad didn't build.
You know, a niche focused firm. He was a generalist. My dad's older, you know, he's in his seventies. He's been retired for a long time, but, and that, you know, there was probably a generation that didn't do those kinds of things, but I read about it and I thought it was something we should do. And so, yeah, you know, probably close to 15 years ago, started leaning into really focus and basically all in niches.
Is narrowing into a market is being intentional is saying we are for this client, which means we're not for everybody else. So that that's super intentional. That kind of stuff is scary, you know, and it is risk based. Yeah, it's scary to do. We teach a lot of things in Thriveal just to dispel a lot of the myths of that. Like that sounds boring and it's not. The depths of a niche is so deep. You just go deeper and deeper into helping a client and all.
I mean, you're starting to run their business with them, operations. Like there's so much you can get into other than a tax return. And when you're a niche based expert, they start inviting you into those places to help them. So it's, it's a wonderful way to do things. But. It's just about intention. It's just going, you know, I'm going to serve this market on purpose. And so I think the way we find niches a lot of times is that sometimes they'll find us, right?
We go, Oh, I've got five real estate investors. I guess that's my niche. But there's a point at which you got to put that on your website. You got to claim the positioning of that expertise in that market and you got to start pushing into those markets and Podcasting to them, going to their conferences, networking around some of that, or meeting with attorneys who work in those professions to get referrals.
So, so intention starts to really build, you know, a valuable firm and yeah, we picked that niche a long time ago. I lean a little creative, so I really get these people. They're, you know, they're weirdos and so am I. So. I get them, I can speak their language and you know, they, they want freedom and do whatever they want. That's the way I am. And so they need to grow up just the way I did. So we can yell at them and smack them around and they know we love them and that's okay.
So that was our niche. Uh, you just got to pick the right one. Yep. And I think you're right. I think that, that. The people that I've talked to that, that have a pretty niche focus in their business, it's either been intentional about it, it's something they're passionate about, something they love. Maybe it was a hobby that they started doing more of whatever it may be. But then there's this other side that kind of fell into it.
Yeah. And they looked up and they realized that it made up 10, 20, 30 percent of their book of business. Right. And this guy referred his friend who referred his friend and next thing you know it's 60 percent of our business. Okay, let's go ahead and put a stake in the ground and say this is who we are. Right. And, and let's start owning it.
And I think that, In a small to mid sized business, I think that's one of the things that, that you have to be intentional about because in the market that we're in today, you've got firms that can throw all kinds of dollars at problems and all kinds of people at problems, um, that, I mean, let's just be honest with a 15 person firm or five like me, you don't have the bandwidth to compete with. Yeah. With a multi million, multi billion dollar firm. Right. In the marketplace. Right.
But if you can go to your customer base and say, Hey, they're good. I'm not saying they're not good. Yeah. But we're better and here's why we're better because this is all we do. Yeah. This is it. Yeah. We don't play over here also. We, we strictly focus on you. We get you. Yeah. And I think there is some value to that, some significant value to that. Yeah. And it lets you compete. I think you're right.
You, you become an expert in ways, sometimes that larger firm, which a larger firm with a lot more resources can be experts at a lot of different, more broader industries, but small ones like us, we got to pick one or two. You know, and really get good at them and make sure that niche is big enough to give us enough clients. We need to support our firm and its growth. And if we do that, man, we can blow bigger firms out of the water.
Cause we can go, no, we know how your business operates and runs. And the bigger firm is just going to assign, you know, people that don't understand you and our team are trained to understand your, your industry. So a niche is very powerful in the market. Very powerful. Yep, and sometimes that niche could be industry, that niche could be geography, that, that niche could, that niche could be a lot of different things.
You've got a client in Houston that is a small 20 person state and local tax consulting firm. That's all they do. They work all over the country, but they're state and local tax. That's it. Yeah, which is super complicated area. They don't touch anything on the federal side at all. Wow. Um, everything they do is state and local. And when we started working with them, they said something that was really pretty interesting to me.
We were talking about how they needed, I don't remember if it was a manager, a senior manager they needed, and they said, here's what we don't want. We don't need somebody out of a big four firm. Uh, and I said, okay, help me understand why. And they said, because we need somebody that has true multi state tax experience. And if they're coming out of a big foreign firm, they probably don't have it. I said, okay, again, help me understand why. And they said, because they're in Houston.
They said, let's say you find somebody at Deloitte here in Houston, that's in their state and local tax group. They're in their SALT practice. They're in their indirect tax practice. They probably know everything there is to know within Texas and the contiguous states of Texas. But if they got a client in Pittsburgh, that's got a problem, they, they don't know what the answer is. They pick the phone up and they call somebody in the Pittsburgh office and say, Hey, can you help me?
I got a problem in Pennsylvania. We don't have anybody in Pennsylvania for them to call. So, so we, we need someone that's great at research or somebody that has worked at a firm where they're working with, you know, the 45 states where they're potentially your nexus issues. Yeah, or yeah, or the localities like in Pittsburgh. That's crazy. Exactly. That's tough. It's hard to know that, especially those localities. So that's a great niche for them. Exactly.
And so, but you know, on the surface, I'm looking at it going, okay, well, state and local tax, there's probably a guy at Deloitte or EY or KPMG that hates what they're doing at a big firm. And he's like, nope, I don't want that guy because that guy, Isn't niche enough for us.
That's a true so There's always those little those little things that when you're playing in that in a niche that can come out that you can obviously sell The value you bring to the table a little bit more a little bit better Well, you you have obviously had great success with what you and your leadership and team have built over the last two decades with You know, the plumber and associate side of the business, as well as your desire to, to give back
and pass on those nuggets of knowledge that, that have come through success and failure with the Thriveal organization. So if there are firm leaders or owners that are looking to make changes in their firms, uh, they want to build a more modern minded, future focused CPA firm. Be more intentional in what it is that they are doing.
If that's, if that's something that is in their head, what is the best way for someone to reach you or consume some of the amazing content that you and your team constantly are putting out there? Yeah. You can follow me on LinkedIn. That's a great place to follow me. So a lot of our content, follow our LinkedIn pages, Thriveal and Blumer. You can follow both of those LinkedIn pages, but if you follow me, you're going to see me reposting a lot of those things.
Uh, but also if you're, if you need to know how to build a modern firm, we at Thriveal, we have programs like the incubator. There's a program we have called the incubator and you can go to Thriveal. com hit events and it's a two and a half day. Firm building intensive, and it's like 10 hours. So you got to work for 10 hours straight in these days. And Julie and I are with you that whole time. And we teach through some just really basic modules about how to run a firm.
And so if you're a new firm owner. And you're going to be in the room with 30 other firm owners. And the things you're going to learn from these people, it's going to, it's just blows your mind that, you know, in a, in a small group, the transparency, the intimacy you get when we have confidential places like that, people just share their struggles and you're going to be supported, cared for, and we're going to teach you some things that are going to really help you, uh, to make strides.
So. Thriveal has programs for firm owners, right? We teach you through these entrepreneurial, modern minded, uh, firms. So that's coming up July 17th. So hit Thriveal. com and then hit, uh, events at the top. And there's an incubator, uh, that you can come to follow me, you know, on LinkedIn, uh, you can follow my, my Twitter, Jason M. Blumer too. I don't post as much on, on Twitter. I'm busy. So Yeah, those are the places to find us go to Thriveal. com. I do write, you know at Thriveal.
com on the blog So yeah, those are the places to find us perfect We'll make sure and add all of those links in the show notes So that people can find those especially the incubator link Sure, because I was looking at that on your website. Also, I was going to ask you about that So so thank you for bringing that up. Jason. I've i've enjoyed talking with you today Learning a lot about what you guys have done.
Thanks, john If you enjoyed this episode of the CPA live podcast, then make sure you hit the subscribe button on your platform of choice so that you can keep up to date with all of the great guests that we have coming up as we enter season two. Until next time, make it a great day. Take care. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting app, leave a five star rating, and visit our website for links and show notes at cpalifepodcast. com.
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