The Young CPA Success Show: Episode 28

The man, the myth, the legend — don’t miss the episode with Jody Grunden, Co-founder of Summit CPA Group (now Summit Virtual CFO by Anders). Joey and Hannah sit down with their fearless leader for a discussion on transforming the accounting profession and changing industry perceptions. Jody shares his journey from public accounting to entrepreneurship, emphasizing the need for a flexible, task-oriented work culture. He discusses the benefits and challenges of remote work, the importance of curiosity in questioning established practices, and the future role of technology in accounting. The episode encourages young professionals to embrace change and develop essential soft skills.

Intro 00:00:00 Welcome to the young CPA Success Show. If you're a young accounting professional, this podcast is your ultimate guide to navigating your early career. Join us as we share valuable insights, expert advice, and practical tips to help you kickstart your path to success and excel in the accounting industry. Let's embark on this exciting accounting journey together.

Joey 00:00:23 Thanks for hopping on with us. We've been we've had this one circled for a while, and it's really funny because Hannah and I just got done recording a podcast with, an accounting student, which was really kind of cool. He's coming on this show in a couple of, in a couple of days, we're going to do a different thing there. But he asked some really interesting questions about summit CFO, BAE Anders and what it is we're doing. And this is where I really wanted to start talking. Today one of the things that we pride ourselves on is we we're trying to change the way the world thinks about accounting. Yep. that's a very a it's a great tagline because I think it very firmly encapsulates all the things that we're doing.

Joey 00:01:03 But it's vague, intentionally because we want it to be expansive. What I'm curious about is when you think about your journey over the last, I'm going to put you on blast 25 years, almost of doing this type of stuff in accounting. Why is this something that is so important to you personally? Because I know it's important to you.

Jody 00:01:23 Yeah, that's a great question. Why is it important to me? for a lot of different ways, you know, when I first came into public accounting. Well, actually back in college, when I was actually studying to be in public accounting, I, my first love was finance. And so, I thought, well, I want to be an econ major because finance is it. I'm going to go. I already accepted the Kelley Business School. So, I thought, well, this is going to be great. And then I realized that finance meant that I had to if I want to be in the stock exchange, I had to be in New York, Chicago or something like that.

Jody 00:01:54  And I thought, well, do I really want to be in a big city? That probably not. That's the big city. Life is just not me. And so, I thought, well, what can I what else can I do? And I thought, well, accounting is great, you know, because if I give me an accounting and you know what, if it doesn't work out, I could do other things. You know, there's a lot of things I can do with accounting. So, I thought, well, let's pursue this accounting degree. And in the back, you know, I thought, hey, maybe it's a stepping stone to law because I thought, law sounds kind of cool. I want to maybe be a lawyer. And so I got my accounting degree, and, during way back then, you could actually take the CPA exam while you're still in college. And so, I took the Becker course as my last semester of college. And then I, Pat and passed the CPA exam on the first try.

Jody 00:02:35 It was like one attempt, which at that time was like a 10% pass ratio. And I thought, wow, I wasn't really expecting to pass it, like right away. And I thought, well, now what that means is I've got to actually work under a CPA for a certain period of time before I get my license. And if I don't do that, then kind of I just wasted all that studying and that accomplishment for nothing. And so, I thought, let's put law school on hold. And so, at the meantime, my wife went to law school. I went to work in public accounting. And we did that for probably about two years, but real close to three years, actually. And I realized that I hated public accounting. It was one of those things. I just it was it was horrible. I, you know, I would get sick and December was like one of the worst months ever because all I'm thinking about is, oh, geez, another busy season. Oh, God, this is going to be horrible.

Jody 00:03:25 And I actually got sick every January. so it was like strep throat, January, you name it, because I just wore myself out getting diving in and, you know, working, you know, 55 billable hours that you were required to have, which meant you work in 60 or 70 hours easily. And, because then everything was billable. And so, you know, it was like one of those things, like, I hated it. And so, I thought, well, let me get out of public county. I actually got fired, actually, from Public County, I don't know, I don't know if you guys knew that or not. I was working for, a large firm, and they. The owner called me and said, hey, Jody, I love you, but, you'll never succeed in public accounting. Today is your last day. Like, wow, that was a harsh.

Hannah 00:04:05 Okay, see you now.

Jody 00:04:07 Yeah. I was like, wow, that was a harsh comment.

Jody 00:04:09 And, and so I thought, well, I guess corporate worlds for me. And so, I went into the corporate world thinking, oh, this is my cup of tea. And I just spent all this time I forego law school for this corporate world. Here we come. And that first year is awesome. Actually, I enjoyed the first year I took over an analyst position, which for a $250 million manufacturing company. And it was great. The experience was awesome. That first year, I took a 55 hour work week that the person before me had been working 55 hours for the last 30 years. I shrunk it to about 20 by automating everything I did, you know? Hey, you know, putting everything in really cool spreadsheets, getting tools to do certain things. And then it was like, oh no, now what do I do? I'm working 20 hours a week. And at that time, the company was going through the first layoffs they've ever had.

Jody 00:04:56  And I felt really bad because a lot of times I knew the person that was getting laid off. And so, I'd be going out to lunch with them and they wouldn't know it, and I would know it. And it was like, oh, this is super awkward. And I'm like, you know what? I'm only working 20 hours a week. Why don't I just bow out myself? And so, I did. I went into the CFO, which we were really good friends, and I said, you know what? I think it's time for me to move on. And I got this opportunity to run a small local CPA firm. Are you okay with that? He said, well, the only way I'm okay with that is if you take us as your first client. Wow. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So, it was like a $30,000 tax return at the time. You know, I and I've been doing the return for like, the last three years internally. And he'd say, let's continue doing it.

Jody 00:05:38 we had PricewaterhouseCoopers reviewing it. And so, it was really it was really cool. It's like, wow, that was so grateful. And so, I did that for a year. And so I didn't like the corporate world a lot of times because it was pretty much Groundhog Day. It was just kind of the same thing over and over and over again. And then I didn't like the public accounting world because me and it just. The hours are just on a on unsubstantiated I couldn't I just couldn't see myself doing that for 30 years and then I and then I went and thought, well, I'm going to, I'm going to try this entrepreneurial type of thing. We're actually running a firm and again, we're talking $100,000 firm, not a big firm. and get started and really ramp it up, which is what the goal is. And so, once I, once I moved over and did that, I grew that to a couple hundred thousand dollars wasn't a much. Within one year, I hired Adam right out of, right out of school, right out of college.

Jody 00:06:27 And, within probably about three months after I had hired him, I got an ultimatum that, hey, you know, from the from the owners above saying, hey, you've got to fire Adam or and I'm like, well, I'm not going to fire Adam. I go, I'm already working 80 hours a week, you know? Anyways, there's no way I'm going to fire Adam. And he said, well, then you've got a choice. Either quit or fire Adam. And, well, I took him up on their offer. I quit, the very next day. They were super shocked. Super surprised And I started Sama at that time. And so, when I started summit, I started and I told my wife, I'm like, you know, April, I'm not the way we were. I'm not going to do what I did with, with BCD at the time. I'm not going to do what I do with Rea magnet wire, the manufacturing company. I'm surely not going to do what I just had with Frontier Financial, another the small local accounting firm.

Jody 00:07:14 And, you know, I'm going to do things completely different. And I'm going to, and I read a lot of books and, and at that time in my life, I mean, reading books, I read a book a week easily, you know, I would probably 50 books in a year. And they're all self help books, mostly business, you know, all business related books. And, and the funny thing is, you could ask me now, I probably couldn't tell you one author I read because I don't remember the authors. I couldn't even tell the titles of the books a lot of times. And but I soaked in the message and that was what was key. And one book that really did stick out was Emyth by Michael Gerber. And that's I took that to heart, you know, hey, how can I how can I create my own new firm Bootstrapping it because I had no money. I didn't grow up with money. I had no money. I wasn't able to save a ton of money.

Jody 00:07:58 I cashed my 401 K, which was like maybe 12, $15,000. Not a lot of money. And that's how I started summit. I think I had a bunch of credit cards because that's how I paid myself, which is kind of fun. I would never tell anybody to do that now, of course, but, you know, that was fun. And I thought, I'm going to change the way we do things. I'm going to do things differently. I'm going to create it, create a company that I don't have to have a busy season. You know, I'm going to make sure that at that time, my employees only work four days a week. I'm going to make it so that they don't have to wear suits and ties and dresses and stuff like that, which was required in public accounting back then. And they can just dress normal. You know, I'm going to do a lot of things differently. And so, when I did that, my goal, you know, our basically our theme was always, you know, changing.

Jody 00:08:42 I'm going to change the way that people do things. And for the most part it was just me. I'm going to change the way that, you know, I change the way that I do things because I want to be part of my kids. When they grow up, I want to be a coach for my kids. I was a hockey coach when they were four years old, all the way through baseball, coach, soccer, softball, basketball, every sport you can think of. Dance. Unfortunately, I didn't do a dance. That would have been a bad, bad decision on my part. gymnastics would have been another bad decision. So, we had other people do that. But we are involved with our kids, and I didn't want to be that person that didn't know their dad or didn't know their mom. You know, that was that's not that wasn't that's not that wasn't me. And so, I wanted to make sure that, hey, whatever we whatever we do create here, it's not only conducive for what my lifestyle is going to be, but for my entire team.

Jody 00:09:29 And that was key, because what I didn't want to do is I didn't want to. Hey, I got I'm leaving at 330. So, you guys, you know, call me at 8:00 and you guys get done, you know? You know, that wasn't me either, you know? So, it was one of those things I wanted to make sure of that I created a company that I could, that that could really take the benefits of public accounting, the benefits of the corporate world and the benefits of family and kind of combine them all together. And that's why we created the summit. And that's why the motto has always been changing the way people think about accounting. And it's kind of funny because you mentioned changing the way the world thinks about accounting. That came up as a possibility. And Tom Barrett said, nope, too big of a goal. So, we settled on people. Yeah, no, I think I like the world personally, too, so I'm good with that too. You know, I.

Joey 00:10:14 Think if we're not trying to change the way the world's thinking, I get I get Tom. Yeah. And, you know, obviously I think the world of Tom Barrett, he's been a great coach to all of us. So yes. From a smart like an attainable goal. Yes. We're not going to change the world. But we should still try to change the world. Right?

Jody 00:10:30 I agree I firmly believe it. I, I stuck with my guns for the longest time until I said, well, we're not putting it on there. I do think.

Joey 00:10:39 It's kind of funny, though, to think about how many things you had done. And I know some of this is because you and I have personally had this conversation before, like in intros and stuff like that. Yeah, so many things that you were doing even when you got started up until, you know, five, ten years ago that were so radical. Oh, yeah, that are just kind of now the norm of what?

Hannah 00:11:02 Like I've heard from multiple people that consider you to be like a pioneer in this space in, in what we do like that.

Hannah 00:11:08 That is the adjective that they assign to you whenever they whenever we talk to them about what you did, you were ahead of the curve on so much of what we're now starting to see. People and firms and businesses like all of that start to adopt and do.

Jody 00:11:25 Yeah, it's kind of funny you mentioned that, and I do appreciate that. Thanks for the comments because I take that as definitely a compliment. You know, when the way that I've always looked at things is people have always told me no with certain things. And so no is to me is just a it's just a roadblock. Right. It's a hurdle that okay, so how can we turn no into a yes. And that goes with really anything. So, someone says, hey, we can't run that marketing campaign. Because of what? Well, okay, let's figure out how we can. How we can run it so we get this resolved or hey, you know, we can't, you know, build people by the hour, you know, or we can't build people flat fee.

Jody 00:12:01 That was people told me that from the very beginning. It's like, why not? Let's do it. Let's figure it out, you know, and here are the benefits, you know, for it. Or a subscription based billing. No one's going to ever allow you to take money out of their bank account. I was told that 20 years ago because it wasn't common. Nobody did that, right. That wasn't a normal thing. It wasn't a normal thing for any company at that time. You wrote checks, you know, and I don't know if you know what a check is, but it's one of those things that it's like that long and you write, you know, stuff in it. But anyway. Yeah, but people that's what people did. You everybody had a checkbook. You wrote checks and you know, with that it was like, well, why are we writing checks? Why not just zap their account? The fee is not going to change, you know, and people don't like writing checks anyway.

Jody00:12:40 So let's see how it works. And, and, you know, Adam was like, oh, we're going to lose all our clients. We do it this way. And it's like, no, we won't, let's do it. And we did it and we didn't lose any clients. Actually, clients loved it. It was like, wow, this is kind of cool. Now I don't have to worry about, you know, paying you or getting behind accidentally or hopping on a call and have an awkward situation where we're talking about cash flow and, and, you know, hey, my mind is like, hey, can you pay my bill even though you don't have any money in the bank, can you still pay my bill? You know, because it's due, you know, all that kind of stuff went away, and it made life a lot easier. So. Yeah. So, you know, the, you know, the way I've always looked at things is there's no, there's only the only thing that you can't you're never going to change.

Jody 00:13:16 You're going to die at some time. You know outside of that, you know, everything has everything up for grabs on how you can you know how you can, you know, change it or mold it to something, you know, to a position or a way that you think is more appropriate.

Joey 00:13:28 That's always the thing that makes me laugh the most. And it's you know, obviously I have friends and family who are still in accounting firms, and we talk about what we do, and I hear all the time, well that'll never work for us. I'm like, yeah, well, you know, we talk about Hannah, and I was talking about this earlier. Like, you know, I think Hannah and I have in the two plus years that we've known each other. We've met in person like a grand total of three times.

Joey 00:13:53 It's like, I feel like, I know I feel like I've known Hannah for my entire life. And it's the same with you. It's the same with Jamie.

Joey 00:14:00 Nah, it's the same with Adam and all our people. You know, we've done. And it's. It starts with that intentionality and the vision of, like, well, here's the culture I want. And culture becomes what you want it to be, and it becomes what you allow. And you're like, I am not going to allow someone to like, hide. We're going to create structure. We're going to create opportunities for people to communicate and grow and learn as a team. And because of that, we are so integrated as a group that it doesn't. I do not feel the difference between where, you know, physically between where we all are. It feels like we've been one big team in the same office the whole time, even though we're spread around the country. And I think that's to your point. You know, it's refusing to say that this is the way it has to be, and having the courage and the vision to say, no, no, no, we're going to figure out how to make this work.

Joey 00:14:53 It might have a few roadblocks, but we can overcome those. And I think that's such a different mentality than other places that I've seen that are just so stuck in the way they think about it.

Jody 00:15:02 Yeah, it really is. And unfortunately, accounting firms are that way because accounting accountants don't like risk, and they don't like change. And so, risk and change together is really tough for a lot of people. And it really is even for our firm, really. I mean, because we're all accountants by nature too. And so when risk and change happen, you know, people have to like, okay. And they have to kind of settle in and kind of think about it, find out the why behind it and all of that kind of stuff before they'll accept it and go with it. And the nice thing about what we've done over the years, we've hired people that we know that can accept change. We know that can take risks. You know, we hired what we call the nontraditional accountant. And whether you two believe it or not, you guys are truly the nontraditional accountant.

Jody 00:15:42 You know, somebody that can and work with risk and change and that's really key to our success. You know, you can imagine the thoughts when we decide to go virtual. You know, there was there was, you know, there was maybe 25 to 30 companies that we knew of at the time in the world that was fully remote. And, you know, we met with them in a conference that was called a fully it was called yonder. It was they brought about 15 of those companies together. you know, and it was all from a kickball company to digital marketing company to, you know, all different kinds of companies. And they were fairly I would say they're anywhere from probably on the small end, 15 people, you know, and on the high end, maybe 400 to 1000 people somewhere in there. So a wide range, nothing, nothing gigantic. And when we decide, you know, to pull the plug and say, hey, we're going to get rid of the office, you know, the I thought first of all, I thought, oh, everybody's going to love this idea.

Jody 00:16:36 You know, we're going to get rid of the office. And so, we used to have what we call stand up meetings. I don't know if I told you guys the story or not. We had stand up meetings in which, you know, so and that's where you push the chairs together. Everybody stands up. You go through everything. And the idea is that we get it done quickly. We don't like kind of rest and relax and let the meeting drag on forever. And we always start off our meetings with a joke. And usually I told the joke, you know, that's kind of how it usually went. And then we kind of did a fun fact, you know, type of thing, which we still do today.

Joey 00:17:03 So that sounds familiar. 

Jody 00:17:04 So super familiar. Right. And, you know, with the joke, you know, I thought, you know, hey, and I and it was, it was building up on me. I'm like, oh, I'm going to talk about, you know, going remote and doing all this stuff.

Jody00:17:14 I didn't even think about the joke. I forgot about it. And I went in and started talking about, hey, guys, we're going to go ahead and everybody, we're going to go remote. And it was like everybody just kind of waiting for the punchline to come. And I was like, no, seriously, we're going to go remote and, and dub, which is our IT person, said, oh, that's a great idea. And she's like, you know, I love it. And then Adam's like, I can't do that. I got kids. No way I could do that. you should have talked to me beforehand. you know, and, and, you know, and it was like, one by one, everybody's like, nope, can't do it. Deb was the only person out of the 18 people in this room that said, yeah, I can go remote. So, I thought, wow, that's weird. I go, why can't we do it? Our clients are remote.

Jody 00:17:54 We're working with them remotely. Why can't we be remotely? You know, what's the difference? And it's like, no, we can't collaborate. We can't do this. All the stuff we heard before Covid, you know, that, you know, it happened. And so, it was like, okay, well, I didn't want to lose the firm, you know, it was like it wasn't, you know, it was one of those risks. I wasn't really worth taking that I was going to lose all my people. And so, I thought, well, I'm going to spend some money and we're going to build out the office, the building I owned at the time, I thought, but it wasn't. It was only big enough, really, for 20 people. And I thought, hey, well, someday ten years from now, we'll get to about 30. So, I wanted to build it for like 30 people. And so, we gutted the office. We, we took out, we made some really cool conference rooms.

Jody 00:18:32 We had we had TVs and all the different rooms, and the cubicles were giant, if you remember, cubicles, they're really big. And it was really nice. And it took us. It took it well, first of all, I thought I was going to take four weeks. That's why I was originally told it took over six weeks. It's probably closer to eight weeks. We completely gutted the office, and so everybody had we kicked everybody out of the office. And within that eight week period, Adam built an office for himself in his home. Deb loved it. Of course, everybody's, like, all the reasons why people are giving me that. It wouldn't work. They figured it out. And one by one, miraculously, everybody but three people said, I kind of like this remote thing. Do you mind if we try it out? I'm like, gosh, I just spent 100 grand. It's going to.

Joey 00:19:14 Said that before I cut the check.

Jody 00:19:15 Exactly. It's been 100 grand.

Jody 00:19:17 And, and we never actually put the sign on the, on the back of the office. You know, we're going to have this really nice sign right behind the reception desk. We never even got the sign up. And I thought, you know what? Hold on. That we're not going to spend another dime until we figure this out. And so, you know, one by one. And so then the idea was that, well, I'm going to treat everybody as a remote working remote. So even the three people or four people that still hung by, they had no office hours to me at all. They had to work with me through cocoa, which is the software platform we're using, and it worked out really well. Eventually the people in the office said, well, you know, I might as well just work remote. And then one by one they actually ended up working remote two. And so then at that time it was like, okay, so I held onto the building for probably another, probably another year before I actually had leased it out.

Jody 00:20:03 And the bad thing about it was they tore every office out again these are completely the offices that never got used. It's literally $100,000. All the TVs I'm trying to give to people, I was like, you can give me a new TV that I never got used. Yeah, it's like you get one. Yeah. It was even the construction guy. Hey, you want a TV?

Joey 00:20:23 Are there any still in storage? I might know a guy, you know. You know. You know how to find me. You're still trying to get rid of those.

Hannah 00:20:30 What's interesting, though, about both of your stories that you told us so far is in both cases, you had people, Adam Hale, telling.

Hannah 00:20:38 You that you could against it, that you couldn't do it.

Hannah 00:20:41 And so I'm thinking like, what if you have let that be the dominating voice in the story and what like it would be we wouldn't be here right now. Or if we had, it would probably look a lot different.

Hannah 00:20:53 So like, how did you overcome that? Just that opposition in both of those cases. Yeah.

Jody 00:21:02 And I would I don't know if it's necessarily opposition. I mean because I don't look at what Adam's Adam tells me or what anybody else says really is opposition. I look at it as.

Hannah 00:21:10 Maybe that's part of.

Hannah 00:21:11 It is not looking at it that way. Yeah, I.

Jody 00:21:13 Don't I don't get offended by it or anything like that. And I always listen. So, you know, a lot of people say that I don't listen, you know, like, hey, you're bullheaded, you don't listen. You're going to do it your way. It's like, no, that's not the truth. I mean, just because I listen doesn't mean I'm going to act and that there's a huge difference between that, you know, listening. And I'm evaluating Hannah. What you're saying, Joey, what you're saying. You know, I might not agree with either one of you. I like my better.

Jody 00:21:37 So let's go with mine or it might come down to. Yeah. Joe. You got a great point. Never thought about that. Let's move towards the way you're doing it. And so that's that for a lot of people is listening. Oh, because now I'm agreeing with what your position. That's not listening in my part. My point is listening and deciding which I feel is the better opportunity to take and what's worth the risk. Right. It's kind of funny. I just kind of naturally just kind of do it all in my head. And then I go in the direction that, that I feel is necessary. And so, yeah, you're right. You know, I, I don't look at people that criticize. I mean, heck, if that was the case, my father in law would have been, you know, he was like, you know what? You need to work from nine to, you know, 8 to 8 or 7 to 330 in this construction job.

Jody 00:22:16 And it's surely income and, you know, all that kind of stuff. It's like, I'd rather control my opportunity than have, have it controlled by me. And, and that's kind of the entrepreneurial spirit that I have. But it's also the entrepreneurs. But I try to put into the business, which I don't know if you guys realize it, but when you think about it, look, you know, especially a CFO looking at the compensation plan that we have, we have a base compensation and a variable comp in reality. What is that? It's kind of a commission structure, isn't it? You're getting paid based on what you're doing now. You're not hunting for that work. You know, you're actually performing for that work. And so, it's kind of a commission structure which gives you kind of the entrepreneurial spirit to. And what I mean by that is you always have the ability to say no. And so, our CFOs, they get to a certain book of business, and they've covered what we acquire, their minimum book.

Jody 00:23:02  They can say no and not take on another client. And guess what? That's cool. that's where that's what they decided theirs was. But, you know, they may want to say, you know what, I want to I want to make more money or I'm bored. I need more, more variety. Give me two more clients. That's great too. And guess what? You're going to get compensated accordingly. And then again, that's the entrepreneur. That's what an entrepreneur does. I mean that's an entrepreneur. And that's what that's the type of people we really enjoy working with. And people that thrive within this is they have a little entrepreneur spirit into them, not a ton where they want to go out and just leave. I hope you know, if they do, great, you know, but we want that person that wants that likes, likes a little safety net, but also wants the ability to kind of flex their muscles a little bit and rise to whatever ability they want. And we let them make that decision, which is the kind of the cool part about it.

Jody 00:23:50  And I don't know where I don't know where we came about with that. But that's, you know, that's always been, you know, something that I've always tried to put into the company. In some cases now, it didn't happen in the earlier stages often is because we weren't as profitable. We couldn't figure it out. But once we figured out how to be profitable, which did take a while because again, we were the only ones doing it. So, we didn't have anybody to guide us or help us out or. Yeah, no.

Joey 00:24:11 You had no KPIs. For what? What's good or not? You're just comparing yourself to yourself.

Jody 00:24:15 Yeah, exactly. And for the longest time we were it and we were it that we knew of. Now, there might have been other companies out there doing the same thing. We just didn't know who they were or knew of them. But for the longest time we were, we were it. And, you know, it was a lot of fun going in, and I wanted to share that with other people, you know, in that regard.

Jody00:24:33 But at the same point, you know, you know, and if you're not an entrepreneur spirit, you're an ally who says, you know, hey, I want safety. Safety is more important to me. That's fine too. You can go up to that level. Here's what you're going to make and here's what you're going to do. There's no upward or out type motion. And we provide that for our team too. And so that was it was both to recognize both of them and move towards the direction that, you know, allows you to move towards the direction that you wanted to.

Joey 00:24:57  I see so many when you when you think about that, the compensation model and the thought with the CFOs, when you mentioned that you were at your manufacturing job, where you were the, you know, whatever the controller role or whatever your role was, the analyst role. Yep. Moving that from 55 to 20 hours a week, that's exactly what we're encouraging our CFOs to do. Because if you had that same structure that we did, you could have said, hey, I've got this thing on lock, I'm ready for another client.

Joey00:25:24 I've systematized. I can now do this and benefit, and I can do the same thing again with this book of business. So, I see so many shadows of your experience in terms of how we build things out. And I'm also really glad you mentioned, you know, Ali in particular, because I really enjoy working with Ali as a person and as someone who relies on her work. That's an incredibly important person in your business. I've, I've, I talked about this with, with other CPA firms all the time. I'm like, look, the person who's just a super rock star at their job who's like, happy. They're you're keeping them happy. Everything, you know, benefits and compensation or what they need it to be. Everything's good. That's the most valuable person in your organization. That is a fulcrum upon which you're going to grow a lot as a person in an organization. And too many places say, oh, well, you don't have the ambition to move up. And I hate that it makes me so sad because I'm like, no, you're completely missing the point.

Joey 00:26:23  It's not about.

Jody 00:26:24 That. Yeah it's not. And you're referring a lot to radical candor with Kim Scott. And she talks a lot about the rock star, the superstar, the no star, no stars. You got to get off the bus. You know, you can't have the no stars on there. But the but the superstars are the ones like the, you know, like the Hannahs of the world that want to go as far as they can go. You know, they want to they want to be a partner someday. They can't. They can taste it so bad that they're going to do whatever it takes to get to that position. And then you got you got the you got the rock stars that are like the alleys of the world, that you know what they're content with, what they're doing. They like what they're doing. They don't want they don't thrive for that promotion. You know that that's not a big deal to them. You know, they're going to do things really quality and get things done and be the best at what they can be, you know, within that role.

Jody 00:27:06 And both are equally important. You've got to have both. And that's super important. A lot of companies want just, you know, they think the ambition person is the one that they want to build their company with. The problem with the ambition person is, is that most of them will get to a point, and then they'll move on because they're looking for the bigger and better thing. You know, they got to their they got to their peak or they got to what they thought was the peak, or they're not getting there fast enough. So, they want to go to the next shiny object company that, you know, tells them they're going to get there faster. You know, with the rock star, they typically aren't going to do that. And so you need you need both. You need a solid foundation of rock stars. And you need a solid foundation of the hyenas of the world to make sure that, you know, everything you know, revolves around you know it really. That's how you become successful as a company, having both on the team and recognizing who that was.

Jody 00:27:54  Don't push Hannah. Don't keep Hannah down. You know, don't keep a Hannah down and say, hey, you're the best here. I don't want to move you on because I don't want to lose that position. You know, don't keep don't try to promote an Ali up just because she's been working here for, you know, nine years doesn't mean that she wants to be. Take that next step. She doesn't. You always have to go back and ask and look and make sure constantly reevaluate.

Joey 00:28:14 The priorities haven't changed. Yes.

Jody 00:28:15 Yeah. Because they could change. But for the most part, you want to make sure people are on the right lines.

Hannah 00:28:20 So we had a conversation earlier today with, like Jerry said with the student, and one of the questions that he asked us was speaking to students, young professionals, people starting out early in their career, if they were to come and apply to US summit. what would you look at just from a resume perspective that you would consider to be extremely valuable? Is that industry experience? Is it prior public experience? What helps you identify that somebody might be, a rock star or a superstar or in good fit for the company overall as a whole?

Jody 00:28:55 Yeah, that's pretty tough because I'm super optimistic.

Jody 00:28:57 So I look at everybody and think, oh, everybody's going to be can actually do this. well, not everybody can. I would say the, the, you know, being in sports has taught me a lot of things. I love it when people have sports or music or something outside of just school on the, on their resume. because, you know, sports, music, being part of a band, a group, you know, that that's there's a lot that says to that because you're accountable to people, that you've got goals, you've got work ethic because you're doing something outside of, you know, just school. So that's always been something that I've always looked at as, you know, hey, that person is on the golf team. Let's take a closer look at that person versus somebody just has a 4.0 GPA type of thing. So that that's important. it's nice to have somebody that has some experience working remotely. because we do work remotely and, with that.

Jody 00:29:46 it's not for everyone. You know, some people need to have that day to day conversation. day to day, you know, you know, touching feeling, you know, being with people type of thing. I'm one of those people, actually. I'm a complete extrovert. I love being around people. but I get a lot of sense. I get the same feeling, even more so being on video with people throughout the entire day. I feel like I'm with people more often than I'm not.

Hannah 00:30:10 I don't feel like I missed.

Hannah 00:30:12 All about.
Hannah00:30:12 Interactions and.

Jody00:30:13 I don't either at all. And I, I am a true extrovert when it comes to that. And so, if I'm not missing people, missing things, I can't. I don't know why people wouldn't be unless they're not engaged. And that's the other thing. So, like when we have our like we always have our cameras on, we're more remote. We believe in cameras all the time. When you're remote.

Jody 00:30:31 We don't believe on half a day of cameras off, cameras off when you don't want to have cameras off. No, it's cameras on. Be present. They're no different than you would be at work. You know, if you've got. I don't have my makeup on or whatever. Well, you would have your makeup on. If you're in an office, make sure that you come prepared, to be there. I actually have I change my clothes when I get done. It's kind of funny. You probably didn't know that, either. I changed my clothes. I get out of my work clothes, you know, and I put my normal clothes on when I, after the after the day is done. So you go.

Joey 00:31:00 From your work Hawaiian shirt to your play Hawaiian shirt. Yeah.

Jody 00:31:03 Usually I usually you catch me, I'm going to be like in a bar shirt with a cool, like, thing on the back. And you know that that's normally what I'd wear in a, you know, when I'm, when I'm relaxing.

Jody 00:31:12 But those things are really important that you can present those things. And it's hard to do it in a resume. Obviously, you definitely need to do it in an interview but making sure you have great presence on a camera, making sure that you're looking at people, making sure that your background is great, you know, if you're going to be virtual, you know you shouldn't be down here. No one can see where you're off to the side or whatever. You should be presentable. Make sure that what's behind you is presentable. You don't want laundry piled all over everything, because that tells people a lot about you from what's behind you and how you're presenting. And so, it's important that you do that as a remote person. It's also important to have someplace that you can close and forget about work. You know, we always said it was, you know, like Apple had a, had a, a long time they had if you work remote from Apple for a long time, you had to actually have an office inside your home.

Jody 00:32:03 You know, that or what? We called a door. And I thought that idea was awesome. You have to have a door to be able to close, and then, you know, then your day is done. You know, you never open that door until the next day. You know, with me, I don't have a door. And I'm working here on my kitchen table. You got my kitchens in the back of there. But guess what? When I'm done, my laptop closes, it gets turned off, put into a drawer, and doesn't get opened up until the next day. You know often it's too easy for people remote to be workaholics because it's like, well, I don't have anything else to do. I might as well go back and work. And then what they do is they find they're working 90 hours a week, and that's just unsustainable and not healthy. And so, you know, it's important as somebody interviewing for a job to understand, you know, hey, is this something that I really want to try? I think I love working remotely.

Jody 00:32:50 I don't want to do the commute back and forth. I live in Denver or whatever that might be. And, you know, I want to I want to get the most out of it how I can. And if you're thinking that working remote, it's also, oh, I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. Probably not the right thing. You know, you're working remotely. It's no different than being in an office. You're there from 8 to 5. The biggest benefit from working remotely in an 8 to 5 situation, or 9 or 7 for whatever you want to pick your hours, is that you need to be there for one. But for two, if something comes up like, you know, I had kids and, you know, all different kinds of sports, if I had to hop out at 330 to do something, you know, I'm back in my at my desk at 5:00 and I'm working till 730. You know, I have that flexibility where I can kind of juggle things, juggle emergencies, where I don't have as much of that flexibility, you know, in an office space, which is nice.

Jody 00:33:37 If I had to cut out a half a day because I've worked a lot, I have that flexibility. You know, there's, you know, because working remote, it's not hours work. So, you're not now hey, I'm on a clock for eight hours. I gotta make sure I get those in. Although that's important. The more important thing is I got to get jobs done. I'm task oriented, so I got a deadline. I've got to get this to Joey, you know, day before. So, he must review it before he speaks to the client. And Joey's going to. Joey's looking at me at that. He's not looking at how many hours it took me to do. He's looking at, hey, did you get it to me when I asked you? Is it quality work? If it's if it is, if it's both. Boy Joey's like check Mark. Nice job. And going forward if it gets to him that right up right, right up before the meeting time because you had other priorities or whatever.

Jody 00:34:23  And you're missing something. yeah. You could work 80 hours a week. And Joey had been like Check. Mark being bad. You know, big X, you know, and so at the type of work that you're doing is completely different as well. So, it's, it's not just the, the, the remote work environment, but it's actually the type of task, its task driven versus hours driven is the key there. You know, if Hannah was able to manage $1 million book of business and work 35 hours a week, high five, I'm not going to ask her five more.

Hannah 00:34:54 No joke.

Hannah 00:34:55 I think my highest book of business as a senior was like $970,000. And like there were a few weeks I worked more than 40 hours. But for the most part, like I had most everything delegated, like, so, you know, I was just the reviewer and a lot of things. So that's how I was able to manage it. And I think, yeah, for so long, I thought, especially early on in my career, that it was either a career or being a great mom.

Hannah 00:35:18 It, it could not be both for, for myself. And so that is one of the reasons that led me to leave the accounting industry. If you've listened to our podcasts, you know that story for me. But then I found summit, and one of the first questions that I asked, Josh in my interview was a really wanted to be where I could go get my kids from school every day. That was really important to me. I was like, Will I be able to do that? Like, is it super strict on the hours? He's like, absolutely. Like, please, do we have people who block that off on their calendar every single day? Absolutely do it. It is not based on, like you, a super rigid schedule. And so, like you're not just talking the talk like we're walking the walk over here too. Because you'll see, if you look at my calendar on any given day, I have it blocked on my calendar where I go pick up my kids almost every single day and I'm able kind of like you said, I'm able to coach my daughter's volleyball team this year.

Hannah 00:36:11 I'm able to. My son's about to start junior high sports. I'm able to, you know, block it off and go to his games. And I thought for so long that this was a needle in a haystack. I knew that this was what I was looking for when I found summit, but I was like, it's probably a pipe dream, like I'm probably.

Hannah00:36:28 Find it. And then I did, and I'm like shouting it from the rooftops now that like, this exists, like you can come here and like, love your career, but also still like, be 

Jody00:36:42  For, for the longest time, kind of a side note we had, I think we were like 20 people and my wife's like, hey, do I have an issue here? And I'm like an issue? What do you mean? I go, well, why do you have 18 women working with you and just had them like, I guess I never even noticed that.

Jody 00:37:00 So it's like, okay, so we start hiring guys.

Joey 00:37:03 So that's the Jamie not here makes so much more sense now. So yeah.

Jody 00:37:08 We thought he was a woman

Hannah 00:37:10 He still has the good hair

Jody 00:37:11 I like the hair back there

Joey 00:37:15 I want to hand. I like your story, and I want to give a little testimony to that as well. Just looking at my personal journey, like when I joined the summit team before the merger, I think it was about a month before the merger. I went to the doctor and got some blood work done, just as a normal part of the thing. But like, I got all of my statistics. You can't tell from the background. Apparently, I'm taller in real life than I looked on screen, but I'm about six foot two.

Jody00:37:42 Yep.

Joey 00:37:43 and at the time, I weighed £235. In the two years since then, my bloodwork has improved on every single thing. I'm down to £205, and I run between 5 to 10 miles a week with my wife.

Joey 00:37:59 We have exercise. We're coming here in a couple hours to go do a run. We're running a 10K this weekend, and the ability with this job, with this flexibility. And it doesn't just work for extroverts too. I am 100% an introvert. I am not an extrovert. Jody knows this because Jody is going to shut down the bar. I usually leave because I'm tired and need to go to bed and just recharge. But the ability to do this and take control and find the sim. You know, it's not about work life balance. In my opinion about work life integration and finding the symbiosis that works really well for you, it's night and day for me. And it's reinvigorated. I was ready to quit accounting two years ago.

Jody 00:38:49 Yeah.

Joey 00:38:50 And I can't see myself doing anything else for the rest of my career. And that is a testament, Jody, to what your vision was and your intentionality behind that vision, to have this be something different and remarkable. And I'm you know; I'll be the first to say we still have some things that we're trying to fix and change.

Joey 00:39:13 And that's part of it. That's part of continuous growth and continuous learning. And I want to come back to that. But I did want to just say thank you for what you've done for me personally, for everyone here at the company in terms allowing this for us, because this has become the gold standard in my mind for what this could and should be.

Jody 00:39:36 Now, I agree, and I appreciate that you both super great compliments and I guess I appreciate it a ton. yeah. As an entrepreneur, I had that flexibility. I had that opportunity, and I had that dream and goal kind of circling back to the way we wanted to change the way that people think about accounting, because there's a there's three meanings to that. You know, the one meaning is that we want to change the way customers think about it. Right? You know our clients look at things. Hey, how we're not always looking in the past. We're looking at things and now we're trying to teach them, coach them, model things so that they can look forward in the future.

Jody 00:40:12 You know, it's kind of funny. You get the clients to say, I have no idea what's gonna happen in the future. It's like, well, you can kind of predict it. And there's a way of doing that and we can show you how to do that. And so that was the that was the one thing, right? The other thing was, changing the way the industry looked at it. Right. That was the bigger global thing, you know, hey, you know, we want to we want to be the, the, the, the beacon for change within the industry. We want to be that firm that everybody's referring to. How does summit do it? You know, I might not do everything the way summit does it, which is fine. But, you know, hey, how did they do what did they do? And we've opened our playbook completely to the accounting industry. You know, we were at all these different conferences and teaching them how we do it, what we failed at, what we succeeded at.

Jody 00:40:53 You know, what worked, what didn't work. You know what works better, you know, and also and the nice thing about that, it gives the accounting industry, you know, hey, some ideas on how to improve the entire industry themselves, how to bring the entire industry up, which has always been a goal. But the other thing was, is that employees, you know, changing the way that employees think about, you know, this, you know, with, with me being the starting, I didn't want, I didn't want to do what I was doing at Crowe and BCD. I didn't want to do that Price Waterhouse offered me an opportunity right out of right when I was working at Rei, and I'm like, I don't know if I want to get back into that. And, you know, because there's a lot of great things that that has. And for some people, that's perfect. A perfect scenario for me, it really wasn't it wasn't a good fit for me.

Jody 00:41:38 And I'm not saying it's not a good fit for everybody because public accounting is a great fit for a lot of people, but just not me. corporate world thought was the great fit too. And I realized not a great fit for me either, you know? And so, it's like, how can I make combine these two? And like I said earlier, you know, combining it and creating this idea of summit and then be able to grow it to where we've grown from nothing. When we first started, we had that $30,000 client. You know, that rea magnet wire allowed us to continue on as their tax person for a few years, even after summit. you know, and that was the foundation that I was able to pay Adam and get things started and all that kind of stuff and grow it to where we eventually got to a little over $10 million in revenue. and at a growth rate of, doubling our size every three years. A bottom-line profit margin of about 2,025%.

Jody 00:42:33  Growing really well, merging into Anders, a much bigger firm and, continuing on what we're our legacy and what we're doing with Anders and really helping them grow a service line that they that they had initially, but adding to it and really kind of expanding on it with, you know, ultimate goal, eventually getting to a $50 million service line within sight of Anders is the ultimate goal. Now, that's going to take us probably, you know, five years, six years, seven years, whatever it might do, or maybe it's quicker, who knows? But that has that ultimate dream or ultimate goal of, hey, getting something bigger, even making it more so, you know, changing the way that people think about accounting, you know, how many times can you buy another, another arm or another service line to have it grow at a really high pace and speed, keep it intact and bring a ton of value to the company. And so, you know, those are all the dreams and goals and the stuff that have circled around.

Jody 00:43:26 And it's all because I was just kind of a misfit when it came to accounting. And, you know, if I were to went into finance, I'd probably be on the stock market somewhere or a stock exchange somewhere and, and, dealing and trading and all that kind of stuff. I'm glad I didn't go that route. I'm glad I went to this route because it's much more fulfilling. wasn't all it wasn't all roses going through. And believe me, it was struggle after struggle after struggle. You know, every year was the next year I was going to do it. My wife is getting tired of hearing, I hear you're going to do it next year. I'm like, yeah, this is going to happen. All these great things are going to happen next year. And then all these things I didn't know about hit me and I had to make changes and stuff like that. And so, then it was the next year. Adam was tired of it, too, if you ask him. He was tired of hearing next year also until next year actually truly came.

Jody 00:44:10 And then and then and then it just excelled tremendously. And it allowed us to hire people like the two of you. You know, we would never be able to hire you when we started, we couldn't afford you. You know, there's no way that it just couldn't have. Wouldn't have happened. Couldn't have happened and didn't it happen to where? Now we can. We can hire the best and the brightest, and we can have the best and brightest working alongside us. And hopefully someday taking my position over and moving forward and leading the company, which is the ultimate goal, I think, of an entrepreneur and definitely the ultimate goal of mine.

Joey 00:44:44  Well, I'm so glad you said that. And it's you know, that was along the lines of what, you know. We hear about it all the time. Right? And I tell people we're looking for the best, the brightest, throw all the ideas in the middle. The best idea wins. And, you know, I think we're very, very well positioned not only to grow, but to find some really good people to grow along with.

Joey 00:45:04 And, you know, we talk all the time about the wonderful hires that we're making. We've got a lot of good people that we're working with. Yeah. We're, we're I really want to kind of end this conversation, Jody, is I want to kind of step back for a second and kind of put our galaxy brains on like we've done a little bit of a journey here over the last 20 to 25 years where we started with, again, a $30,000 client moving to where we are now. Putting on your visionary cap for a second, what are some things that when you're, when you're reading the, the crystal ball about what the next 5 to 10 years are going to look like. Where does your mind go about, you know, what the next big change is? What I mean, obviously AI is something that we're thinking about a lot, but I'm curious, what's the next big shift that you're planning for? Kind of like how the world sort of just needed to become more remote.

Joey 00:45:56 And you were ahead of the curve there.

Jody 00:45:58 Yeah. The AI is obviously going to play a huge part of this, and it's really accelerated it for me or my thoughts. You know I wrote an article probably about ten years ago talking about how accounting was actually going to eventually go away. You know it's going to be. And what I mean by that is counting the way that we look at it now. No different than when we used to do tax returns, man. We used to do them by hand. And you'd have to have all these sheets, and you'd make sure one said, you know, one she'd agree to the next. And it was it was a complicated issue where a software takes care of it just like this. And you're now being the reviewer, making sure it looks good, sounds good, it does what you want it to do. And accounting is going to be the same way. You know, eventually, you know, bill paying and counselors, you know, are all that kind of stuff will just simply be automated.

Jody 00:46:43 And guess what? Advisory will be the biggest thing that accountants really need to understand, really need to work with and really need to be good at it, because that's going to be what clients are going to want. You know, the accounting stuff's going to be done in the background by AI, by something else, you know, super simple. whereas the advisory component to it is going to be the key that that business owner is going to rely upon to make those decisions. And that's going to be, you know, I think that's coming sooner than you think. And I and I hope, firms out there positioning themselves to, to make that change or make that shift and not focusing on what worked in the past, because I don't think what worked in the past is going to be what's going to what's going to work for accounting firms in the future.

Hannah 00:47:27  I think that speaks to something Joey and I have talked about a lot, is the fact that you can read the books, you can go to school for accounting, you can be a CPA, like whatever the credential is, you can have that and probably be a decent advisor.

Hannah 00:47:40 But I would say the soft skills that you need to have in this role today more than ever are going to absolutely be essential for our industry within the next few years. And that's something that like, you got to put in the work for yourself, like you've just got to get the reps, you got to do it. You got to, you know, look at the training like learn from other people, get mentorship, like whatever that is. But that I think even for me in my role now, I feel like that's half the battle sometimes is my relationship with the clients and the connection that I can make with them and just having the ability to walk in a room and talk to anybody like that is so incredibly valuable and will be even more going forward.

Joey 00:48:24 And I've got the perfect business case to support what you're saying. We have a we're working on a particularly challenging client onboarding right now. And we were not doing things exactly the way we needed to do it just because it is a challenging client.

Hannah 00:48:38 We had some things we needed to figure out. And you know, the work that we did on the personal level, on the advisory side of the house, creating those relationships, creating that partnership with the client that's given us the buffer that we needed to fix the back-end stuff. Had we not done that, we would have lost that client. And with that, all of the annuity streams of revenue, all of the work that we've done so far, like the opportunity cost of the CFOs and the seniors, the brilliant minds that we put on that account, we would have lost that, but we didn't because we invested in our team and our team that invested in their relationship. And that's it's the number one thing I tell high school students all the time, like, look, you've whatever it is you're going to do in life, whether you're an accountant, whether you're a historian, whether you're a lawyer, whether you're a, you know, a plumber doesn't matter what it is. The biggest thing you can learn right now is how to communicate, how to tell the story, and how to create those relationships with your customers and your team.

Joey 00:49:42 If you don't do that, it doesn't. It doesn't matter how good you are, you'll never figure that out.

Jody 00:49:47 Yeah, I think being curious is a component there as well. You know, not just doing it because it was done that way last year or someone did it in the past that way, or it's always been that way, you know, try something different, you know, be curious and find out why. You know, ask the ask the question why many, many times to figure out why you're doing something versus just what you're doing. A lot of times you'll find that a lot of people don't know why they're doing it to begin with, you know? And it's kind of funny. You know, the story you probably heard of where the grandma was baking cakes, and every year she would cut the corners off the cake. So, it kind of looked like an octagon type looking cake. And then everybody loved it, you know, she cut it and did it.

Jody 00:50:26 And so guess what? It got carried down to the next generation, and the next generation did the same thing. And they cut the corners of the cakes off and put it in there. And grandma came over one day and it's like, why did you cut the corners of the cakes off? And he's like, well, grandma, that's what you've been doing forever. It's like, well, yeah, because I couldn't fit it in my oven. You know, it's like, you know, something as silly as that, you know and so asking the question why is super important. So, you understand why you're doing something and not to challenge it. You're not challenging it. You're just simply being curious, you know, why is it done that way, you know, and then what you're doing is, well, is there a better way of doing it? And you mentioned this earlier. Is that intuition that you get, you know, by just continually asking why? And figuring out better ways of doing something.

Jody 00:51:14 It's going to make your job a lot better. The company's job. You're working a lot better, and because you're innovating and that we're going to use a lot. But that's truly what innovation is, it is trying to figure out how we can better something by just simply being curious and asking why?

Joey 00:51:29 Well, Jody, it sounds like it sounds like it's time to wrap up the podcast. I know I've got a few things that are on my, on my calendar left to do here, but thank you so much for, for joining us. This has been a true pleasure. And I'm really excited to see where we go, and where we're going next. And, and I hope that the students and folks who, who want to work with us, who if this is for you, we want to hear from you. So, I'm very excited to see where we're going. Is there a place, Jody, where we can connect with you? Obviously, we know how to connect with you, but like, our audience can connect with you or learn more about any of the multitude of books that you have also written, in addition to reading.

Joey 00:52:10 How can we find out more about you?

Jody 00:52:11 Yeah, it's kind of funny if you just Google me. It's weird. I'll pop up, like, all over the place. Jody?

Hannah 00:52:18 Yeah, just Google Jody, flex their YouTube.

Jody 00:52:21 YouTube me.

Jody 00:52:22 Google me, or pop on LinkedIn. I'm there as well. So yeah, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. My email is obviously something you have access to. Jody at Summit CPA net dot net because originally, we couldn't afford.com, so we went dot net. So, Jodie had some at CPA dot net and yeah, feel free to reach out to me. I'd be happy to chat with you for a little while. If you want to schedule a time, just a chat. Be happy to do that. or correspond, you know, through email or, on LinkedIn.

Hannah 00:52:52 Great. Thank you so much for being here with us. We're excited to be along for the ride.

Jody 00:52:56 Yeah. Thank you.

Outro 00:52:57 If you're a young CPA looking to develop in their careers, we're always looking for great people. Visit our website for remote work opportunities with Summit Virtual CFO or find all our open positions at Anders CPAs and advisors.