Hello, and welcome to The Unique CPA with your host, Randy Crabtree. We're committed to creating a thriving community of accounting professionals who are physically and mentally healthy, fulfilled, and energized by their work. Our ultimate goal is to elevate the reputation of the accounting profession and vastly improve the lives of those in it. The Unique CPA is brought to you by Tri-Merit, the specialty tax professionals. Today, my guest is Logan Graf. Logan is a CPA.
He is, according to LinkedIn, at least, he is the chief tax officer at the Graf Tax Co. I'll let Logan expand on that. I'm very fortunate to follow Logan on social media and get to, I got to meet him in person for the first time at AICPA Engage where I got to film a little video with him, which was a lot of fun. So Logan, welcome to The Unique CPA. Thanks for having me, Randy.
Yep. Logan Graf. I own my own CPA firm down in Austin, Texas, where I serve kind of a small amount of clients, but business owners, individuals, typical CPA firm services. And I also run a YouTube channel that Randy got to experience. This year and be on a video. So if you're interested in watching that video, it's why did you become a CPA on my YouTube channel? I think you can just search me Logan Graf, but yeah, excited to be here and talk with you, Randy. Yeah, I'm excited.
So I screwed up twice. you and I tried to record the first time I had to reschedule because I can't remember. I was somewhere that my schedule is just crazy, but no excuse. And then today it was like 15 minutes late. Cause I just gave a presentation and I, and then I saw my calendar. I'm like, Holy crap. I got to run back to the hotel and get on with Logan. So thanks for your patience with me and we're good.
So let's talk about your firm a little bit, because I think I saw recently weren't, wasn't it recently you were talking on social media about hiring your person? Did that happen and how'd the process go? Yeah. Right before we met at AICPA Engage over the summer. I had made the decision and it was like, I need to hire somebody because I'm at the point where I neither either need to cut back on a bunch of clients or I need to hire somebody because my capacity is just gone between Jane or in April.
So I landed on I think hiring somebody would be The way to go more fulfilling that way as well. And so as I was flying to the conference, I was getting all these applications in to work with me. And so I basically utilized Twitter, the community that I've built, we'll quote that community and LinkedIn to essentially link to a web form saying, Hey, fill this out if you want to work with me and provide all this information. So as I was flying to Vegas, I was.
Monitoring all the submissions that went through and ended up hiring somebody right at the beginning of July. And they've been with me now for a few months and it's been great. Can't wait to see how it works during tax season. So what, what role did you hire for tax work or administration or? combination. Yeah, for tax work and accounting work. I called it a taxologist position just because I wanted to name it something cool.
So they'll be doing a lot of taxes, primarily personal tax returns, and hopefully helping me with my monthly accounting. So it's kind of a hybrid role. Essentially, almost like a mini me that's helping me out with all the work. Nice. So this is, I guess, a testament to social, your presence on social media that you were able to get people applying through that. The process went pretty smooth. I mean, did you, I mean, it sounds like you had enough applicants.
Did you, I assume from an interview process, did it all go through Zoom or, you know, Teams calls or something like that? Yeah, all virtual. And I had about 25, 30 applicants right off the bat within the first week. It was crazy. I don't know what the typical, it's my first time hiring somebody, so I don't know what it's usually like. Right. And as I was looking through all the resumes, a lot of them were great, but there's one that just stood out to me.
And I think he'd be comfortable with me sharing this, but he reapplied twice. He reached out to me on Twitter. He is like, Hey Logan, can I reapply? I just wanna adjust some things. And in my application I said, how much would you like to be paid? Because that helped me gauge budgeting and you know, can we actually make it work? Right? You know, how much do you need to be paid?
Because this was a very limited position between start date and January, because you know, I can guarantee you 10 hours a week. But that's it. I'm going to pay you for 10 hours a week, no matter what. If you don't work 10 hours, that's fine. I'll still pay you, but You know, I, I can't guarantee you, you're going to be paid that much.
So there's a very restricted, you know, pay, and then it's going to change, you know, beginning of the next year when, cause we'll have tax season and all this other work that they'll have access to. And so what he did was he lowered his rate that he wanted to be paid. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. Like, he really wants this job, seemed like, and like, he's the first one I scheduled a meeting with.
And the interview went so well, I was like, I just have a really good feeling about this guy. And he has great character. He's very like well spoken. Like I was fumbling during the interview like with words. Yeah. And he was like very clear and communicated well. And he's very young guy. I think he'd be a Zoomer technically. And I was just super impressed. And someone told me at Engage, I was kind of asking people, all these other CPAs or professionals that have been there and done that.
I was asking like, you know, I'm about to hire somebody. Do you have any advice? And everyone's, one advice that I got, I think it was from Kristen Keats. We're just talking about her. She's like, if there's someone that shows initiative. Like go for it. And Gary, my employee, like he's showing a ton of initiative. It seemed like to me, and I was like, okay, I think Gary's the one.
Like I did one interview and I was, I told my wife, I was like, I don't know if this is right to do, but I think I'm just going to go with it. I don't want to interview everybody else and have to, you know, have to go through all that process. So let's make it. You know, let's cut all that out. And so far, like I've been very proud of the decision, no regrets. And, you know, he's very new to accounting. He has very little experience. That's the thing.
He didn't meet my experience requirements, but I think I can train him to be a good accountant. Yep. I think now is this person an accountant by degree? is it a CPA? What is them? Not a lot of background. What is the background? It's going to blow your mind. He has no degree and no CPA. He's studying for his EA. Okay. so yeah, he's, you know, he doesn't have, as far as I know, I don't think he has A college degree. And so that was also like, okay, is this the right decision?
If he has no accounting training, but really, I don't think that's that necessary to be a good accountant. Of course, it's going to help, but I do have to teach him a lot, but I still think his like loyalty to me and his willingness to work. and get better and take feedback, like has all been amazing and very positive. That's great. And that's probably like where it matters the most right now, because I'm not expecting him to be a whiz kid.
Yep. And initiative and willingness to learn and curiosity and all that. I think that's, I mean, honestly, and I'm a lot older than you, but when I, again, remember what I learned in school, I learned so much more after, I mean, just out working, that's where you learn everything, honestly. So degree, the letter CPA, sure. It stands for something or EA as well. I don't want to, I know we have a unique CPA podcast, but we are the, Unique Accountant Tax Advisor More. podcast.
And so I think that's great. I love this getting on the ground floor of seeing how your firm's growing and all that. That's pretty cool. Let's segue a little bit into, and I want to talk about social media at some point, but I want to talk about the firm. So you mentioned accounting tax, you know, 1040, business tax. Yeah. Do you have a, what would be the word? Do you have a game plan in place of how you want to grow or the type of clients you want, or are you like.
A lot of people, Hey, you're starting out and you're going to take everybody on. And then you're going to learn which ones you do like and which you don't and where you are in that process. Yeah, I started off very 1040 heavy and only like five to 10 business returns, maybe at the most. And I've quickly learned that like heavy 1040 work just completely blows like everything and it takes so much time for each client. And it just complicates things.
So I'm, I've now set my minimum for 1040 to be a thousand dollars to get in the door. And I might increase it by the end of the year, cause I try to increase it every year. Last year was a thousand. So maybe I'll do 1100 or 1200, but that's just to, Make people realize like, okay, if I'm going to work with this guy, it's got to be worth it to me. And that makes my job better when they see that value. And then it also prevents how many 1040s come to me. Right.
I definitely don't mind working with them. Like I love. specific 1040s. And I'm really gearing towards business returns and business accounting services because I get a lot of energy from other business owners and talking to business owners because I'm one. And I found that like, it's like, there's way less grind time between January and April essentially, because you're doing all their accounting throughout the year and everything. It's just a lot more smooth.
And yeah, so I've never done any sort of marketing. And I was just on a podcast with Jason Staats, we were talking about like YouTube and I was telling him, I don't use YouTube for any marketing, but I think I, I'm actually going to start doing that because I want business clients and I can use the skills that I've learned so far in my CPA channel or accounting firm owner channel to attract business owners. So I'm really excited about marketing and advertising for the first time.
I've never done that. So yeah, I've never had to. So let's talk about that then. So when did you actually start the firm? How long have you been in practice now? Yeah, started it in end of summer 2020. So height of COVID essentially. Perfect timing. Where it's like, is the world economy going to explode? And yeah. Who cares about accounting if that happens? Like is the world gonna end? I don't know. It was like very dark Thoughts were happening. Yeah.
Like completely irrational thoughts, but . But it was a perfect opportunity to launch a virtual CPA firm. As a matter of fact. Yeah. Like people didn't wanna see people in person and meeting people virtually was great. And what happened was, I was working for a firm that previous tax season earlier in the spring, and we had an agreement, I'm gonna. Purchase a set client list for a set amount that I billed for those projects during tax season.
They're going to move over to my firm and any clients that I added that year under their firm, I didn't have to pay for. So I started with 60 to 100 clients probably has a great base to start a firm off of like a livable amount theoretically like to survive for the next year. Like no work comes in, I can survive, but you know a ton of work did come in to where I was able to financially like make more money than I've ever made as a CPA. So pretty crazy how that happened.
So you started with a great base, which is awesome. I kind of did the same thing when I started my firm, which is pretty cool because it got something. You take a lot of the risk out of the, or maybe some anxiety out of the, out of it. Although I never, I personally don't see risk, which is a problem probably. But, you take that out, but now you did mention that. You know, you have had quite a few new clients come in and we were talking about that you're, you really haven't been marketing.
So how did the firm grow then and how did you get ahold of these new clients or they get ahold of you? Yeah. So there's another firm down the road where I live essentially, and he runs a great firm and has, he's established himself well in the community. And so he's at capacity. Ever since I've known him pretty much. And graciously he puts me on his referrals for other tax preparers. So I get like a constant stream of potential clients hitting my intake form from his firm, essentially.
It's awesome. That's like at least half of my new clients, probably. So yeah, I try to ask, you know, like, how'd you hear about me? They'll say it's referral, so I'm assuming it's from this other CPA firm.
And that's why I tell a lot of new people that start their firm is, you know, if you're trying to grow, there's going to be other firms in your area that aren't taking new clients that you can reach out to, and they would love you To direct somebody to go to, because it's always hard to be like, sorry, we're filled up, can't work, and then just cut it off. You want to have some sort of like way to help somebody. And this is a great way for both parties to win. That's nice.
I kind of have the same thing. You know, people know I'm a CPA. And so I get people reaching out to me like, Hey, can you do our 1040? I'm like, no, I don't do taxes, but I do have somebody that I send them to now. And it took me a while to like. Realize if I have people coming to me, I should be sending them to somebody. I know so many people in the profession. Why am I not? And so I'd have done that now where I have somebody I send them to, which is great.
I love being able to support the profession and that's something I probably missed for a while, but now I got that in place. So, so we're doing that. Let's talk a little more about the direction of the firm then. Are you, I mean, you're three years in, you're growing, you're building, got the first employee now. Have you. Determined or even decided that you want to have a certain niche. Is that part of this practice or are we just still growing and we're going to see what makes sense?
You know, sounds like from a standpoint of the first growth, Hey, 1040s, let's kind of change that and let's go more business, but now when you're getting into these businesses, is there a certain group of clients that you really are trying to target more, or I guess, you know, hoping to come to you? Yeah, I'm, really trying to stay in my wheelhouse and not accept clients that I know require skills that. I may or may not have.
So anybody with, you know, like high tech R& D credits, I'm not going to take on. Anybody with a lot of construction accounting, I'm not going to take on. Anybody with inventory, I'm not going to take on just because. I'm not the best skilled person for that. So it's really the easy people, you know, the easy businesses, quote. So, you know, really just service based businesses. And just because it really simplifies things. I, don't have a specific niche right now.
And as I create content to attract clients, I am going to have to market towards a specific niche because I don't just want to attract any business owner. It needs to be someone that would be a good fit for me. And that's going to narrow down a lot of things. So it's going to, I think it might take a little longer to build base or build You know, get, those clients, but maybe not. I don't know. Well, let's talk about that then, because social media is a place you hang out.
You've got what, 16, 000 followers on Twitter, I think, and over 2000 subscribers on your YouTube channel. You already mentioned you haven't been using that for marketing. So what has those, I mean, it's a great base now that you have set up, but what have you been using the social media for?
Yeah, so I'd account for my first employee as a result from having a Twitter following and just having a wide base of people to choose from because if I never had a Twitter account, this person never would have applied to my job, in my opinion, because you would have never seen the application, never would have gotten in front of them. So I attribute like Maybe the best hiring decision I've ever made, hopefully, is as a result of social media, which is really cool to think about.
I'm using social media right now for specifically YouTube. I'm trying to help the next generation of accountants, CPAs, EAs, firm owners to think about running their own firm or inspire them to get into the profession. Because as we all know, it's not looking too good for The who's in the workforce, you know, I see all these articles about lack of accounting students and we need to inspire the next generation. And the way a lot of firms are set up right now, aren't doing that.
A lot of things have to change. So I'm hoping to move the needle just a little bit on that and get it, get the next generation excited about accounting. So, and I love that because I'm the same way it is. We need to show that this is a fun profession. We need to show that. The stigma attached or the perception of somebody at their desk, you know, a hundred hours a week during tax season, never sleeping, you know, all stressed out, pulling their hair out, whatever, that's not reality.
And this new generation, I know, to me, you're the new generation, you know, I'm 61, you're in your thirties. But I'd love to see the fact that you're already trying to think of that next generation. And to what you just said, one really cool thing that I just saw today, Lisa Simpson from AICPA posted this, I think today, it was talking about Purdue University and how they've seen a really big spike in accounting applicants or people going into the accounting profession.
And partly it's because they've been proactive. At promoting it, which I love to see. They're changing the program. They have almost some incentives there, but they've seen an increase in the people applying and staying. So not just starting in accounting, but staying in accounting. So, so that was at least a piece of good news that came out of this. And hopefully we'll see that as a trend.
Hopefully what they are doing at Purdue, other universities will start to mimic and we'll continue to see this uptick because we need it. Yeah, if colleges and universities use social media to reach out to students, I think that would be a great start, like an easy way to start. Makes sense. This is our accounting program, and this is what our graduates are doing. Yeah, and that's what they did. That's a good point.
What it is, they had graduates come back to talk to the classes, and there was actually a requirement. I've just read it briefly, but I'm excited about it. I want to dig deeper into it. But they talked about How there's a requirement first year class, which is more, what are the, you know, paths that accounting can take you into? And so it was, yeah, it was a pretty cool thing.
The other thing that you mentioned and you've seen that's the, just the bashing we're getting, I mean, the wall street journal, for some reason, seems to be bashing the accounting profession lately. Just talking about how, you know. We've got this burnout and nobody's coming in and you know, it's, I'm on a rant here. Sorry, Logan. I'm going to go on a rant for a minute because of that.
I just wrote an article, which that's kind of refuting what they're saying and see there is positive and there is, we are not this dying profession. We, we are an exciting profession. We got people like Logan Graf out there putting all these cool videos on YouTube showing how, how cool it is. And so let's get, I'll stop my rant now. And let's go into now this transition in your social media.
From what you've been doing is supporting the accounting profession with what you've put out there to turning it into a, business generation tool. Have you come up with a game plan to, to do that? Randy? I, in my dreams, I have not put it on paper 'cause I am running my own firm and so projects are getting in the way. I love like half of my time spent in my firm and half of like. Creating content, that's kind of my goal one day, and hopefully my new employee is going to get me there.
But I haven't quite planned it out yet, because I'm so focused on the projects in front of me. I am set on creating a tax channel, a specific tax channel. And, you know, I'm That was my original YouTube channel idea, was to talk about tax on the Tax TeleGraf on Twitter.
So I'm going to make a Tax TeleGraf YouTube, talk about taxes, and I made a bunch of tax videos, and then I would sprinkle in some like, how I run a CPA firm in there, and all the views were hitting The videos where I talked about running my firm, I was like, maybe I need to shift what I'm talking about because my audience is here to watch me and hear me talk about how I run my firm and how much money I make and my transparency and all that.
And so tax, let's put taxes down and talk about firm running. And so I want to create a specific tax channel just for the, that type of audience. And through there. I will do a call to action for who I want to work with. Like, let's say I'm discussing business. Entity set up or certain, a specific business type deduction.
And I'd be like, well, if you want information or you need help with this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you need all these requirements, you know, please feel free to watch out. So I'm hoping to create a channel through that lead funnel, as they say, and that will help gain some traction. That's just an idea. You know, we're not, you know, us accountants, we're not like social media savvy.
And so, well, you are, maybe not all of us, but, I remember, I don't know, if it was last year or something, you and Jason Staats were having this race to what? 10, 000 followers or something on, Twitter. And I've talked to Jason about this actually, when he was on the podcast, but I brought up the fact that you won and he gave me a hard time for bringing that up, but. You would. Exactly. He doesn't like losing, that's for sure.
But he accused you of rigging the, the, I got accused for somebody's, one of my supporters, buying a bunch of bots to follow me at the last moment, minute. And I don't know if that's true or not, cause I really think my supporters pulled through and I did like a last minute call to action on LinkedIn. And I think that helped push me over, but he was, I'm not willing to accept it. But if you look, at the numbers now, his, he is like gapped me with followers.
He's, he has several thousand more followers than me now. So he should probably feel good about that. He calls it vanity metrics. So he, understands like it's all vanity. Yeah. I'm looking right now. It's less than 2000 more than you. So. Oh, okay. Maybe I'm catching up. Like he, he did like a big jump. And now maybe I'm catching up. I think I saw you at like 16.6 and he's at 18.2. So I think you got to do a race to 20 now. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.
Maybe he's gained so much popularity in the last year. Oh yeah. You know, he's at every conference. I can't compete with that. If he's just going to a conference and he says, here's my Twitter and he gets like a 300 followers right there. Well, he was at our conference. I'm sure that's pushing them through the roof. So you should have been at our conference and we would've got you there then too. I'm going to take credit for it. So, all right, I'm going on tangents now.
What I want to do is I want you and I to talk again in a year or something, and I want to follow how this went, how the social media marketing to bring in new clients is going, I want to see the plan in place, no pressure, whatever you're doing, but I'm really curious to see, you know, you're going to pre qualify them. On that list, but then are you going to have even a data sheet when they link to your website where it's like a yes or no?
And as soon as there's a no, you know, they're out there. They're not a potential client or, you know, something like that. Just curious to see how this ends up evolving over the next year. Me too. Cause that stuff, I love that kind of stuff, even though I've like never done it. I love marketing in college. And in high school, so it's just been so hard when you're at capacity and you don't have any employees, you do it all, but now I have an employee, so I should theoretically get some time.
Well, there was a lot of other things I wanted to discuss today, but if we're going to do this again, I will bring them up next time. Just about, I mean, like things like how you're billing, are you doing. Doing, you know, subscription pricing or by the hour and all that. But we're not gonna talk about now. We'll talk, I mean, you know, there's other things I would like to discuss to see how you're, building this practice.
'cause I'm just so, I get so excited when I see, again, you're a lot younger than me, so I see somebody young getting energized about this profession and building their practice and I just love. Follow in that progression. There's a handful of people that I'm doing that with on this podcast that, you know, it's about time for episode two for these people. So I'm going to start reaching out to a bunch of them to do that. So if you don't mind, let's plan on this again in a year. Yeah, I'd love to.
Yeah, talk about anything. I love talking about myself, so. I'm pretty good at that too, so. Who doesn't? alright, before we wrap up today, a couple questions. Anything you want to add before I go in a different direction? Yeah, if you're interested in seeing how I run my firm, I have a lot of videos on Why I do what I do and how I do what I do. And I'm very transparent and running my firm through those videos. So you can see how much money I made in 2022. I did see that.
I didn't watch it, but I saw that you have that out there. So, so we'll promote, have you tell us the links and everything, and we'll put that on the notes section of the podcast. So before we wrap then, before I get to that, everybody who's on the podcast gets this question, I think, although I think I forgot once or twice, but. I'm not forgetting today. So we just talked about, you know, what you do in the tax and the growth and the social media, but what do you do when it's not work related?
Whether you're outside of work passions, what do you love doing in Austin or wherever you're out doing things? Yeah, I love to work on my car. I have an old. Classic Mustang that I, it's my forever project. I'm trying to get it restored by at least my oldest kid when she can drive, which gives me like 10 years. So 10 more years, I get to work on it, but it's an old 1965 Mustang that I used to daily drive and, she needs some love, tender love and care. So any chance I get.
I'm out in the garage trying to work on that thing. And then I love, being outdoors, mountain biking, and just getting exercise and making YouTube content. So I'm a pretty simple man. Well, those are cool things. All right. And then the final thing then, so if people want to see your, YouTube channel or Twitter and all that, or just reach out to you in general, what's the best place for them to look? Yeah, LoganGrafTax on Twitter and it's at LoganGrafTax. I guess X we're calling it.
Yeah. Yeah. And then on YouTube, my handle is LoganGrafTax where you can probably search Logan Graf and I'll pop up on YouTube that way. All right. Awesome. Well, well, Logan, I really appreciate you being here. I really, again, appreciate you being patient with me being, 15 minutes late today. Yeah. Anything else you want to talk about? Oh, yeah, let's talk about, well, we'll do this next time, next year. Okay. There'll be more things we'll talk about. A little teaser.
We could talk about, I mean, I guess we could talk about your hair compared to Jason's hair and who has the better, we're going to talk about who has the better, follower. I don't want to compete on that. I don't want to compete with Jason's hair, so. You think he spends like, Two hours a day, getting every strand in the right spot. I've seen his products line and he's, he means business. All right. That's too much Jason talk. We have to stop. All right, Logan. Thanks again.
I appreciate you being here. Yeah. Thanks Randy. for joining us today on The Unique CPA. You can find the show notes for today's episode and learn more about Tri-Merit at TheUniqueCPA.com. Remember to subscribe and leave a five star rating on your favorite podcasting app. And join us next time for more expertise and insights on The Unique CPA. ProfessionalProductions.net