Bet on People with Barrett Young

This episode of Bet on People, we invited Barrett Young to join us. 

Barrett Young is the Marketing Partner at GWCPA, an 80-year-old firm he's actively transforming. He and his partner are making big changes like shifting to subscription pricing, embedding AI across client experiences, and building tools like The Generations Advisor, a custom GPT for business owners navigating succession. 

He hosts The Art of Succession podcast, where he talks to leaders about stepping into ownership, and writes Against the Grain, a weekly newsletter on using AI creatively in professional work. Right now, he's in the middle of some of the hardest decisions of his career — but approach stays the same: stay curious, bring others along, and keep building something that lasts.

In this episode we talk about:

1. How to make big changes that impact your business's ecosystem
2. The importance of staying anchored in your values while parting ways with clients and employees
3. The value in embracing change in an industry that hasn't changed in decades
4. & so much more!

Connect with Barrett and Euda:

Subscribe to Against the Grain on LinkedIn: https://gwcpas.com/against-the-grain

Learn more about GWCPA: www.gwcpas.com

The Art of Succession podcast: available wherever you listen to podcasts

Learn more about Euda at euda.io

Subscribe to The Euda Debrief: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7435041512645718017

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

I'm Keegan Evans, and this is Bet on People, where we explore the decisions behind human-centered leadership and why betting on people isn't just good for people, it's smart business. My guest today is Barrett Young, a marketing partner at GWCPA, an 80-year-old firm he's transforming for the future. He hosts the Art of Succession podcast, where he talks to leaders about stepping into ownership, and he's making some of the hardest decisions of his career, choices that have cost him team members, cost him clients, and that he believes are necessary for survival. Barrett, it's great to have you on. Tell me a little bit more about yourself, your background, uh, and uh why you're doing all this.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me, Keegan. Um, so I've been in public accounting as a CPA for uh this will be my 20th tax season, actually. Um actually got out of the Marines in 2006, and so we have that in common. Um went straight into public accounting, did a short stint, um, leaving tax and ran my own accounting company for about five and a half years, then came back to this firm to join up with a mentor of mine and help her transform our firm for the future as you described. Um, that was about eight years ago, coming up on nine years ago at this point. Um I'm in Maryland, south of DC. I've been married for 21 years and I've got two teenagers uh that are getting up there in age, making me feel older too. Um but yeah, I just I absolutely love public accounting. We've got a team of about uh 13 to 14 people within the firm right now that my partner and I lead. And um, I I love my career. I love the uh proximity that it brings me to business owners and the decisions that they're making. Um, and we're gonna talk about it on the show. Yeah, the the tough uh tough decisions that have to be made as a business owner.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

What um what drives you you you talked a little bit about the you love connecting with people, business owners, and and their careers. Is there an even more distilled value or or or thing that drives you around that?

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Um I love entrepreneurship. I love the effect that business owners that we have to see a problem in the world and solve it and then make the world better because of what we do, especially working with smaller businesses. You know, um they, you know, small business in the world is like under$100 million revenue. Right. So we're we're more in the micro business, really five to thirty million in revenue are our target clients, um, which, you know, having started my own company, it's like that's big business. What are you talking about? Um But no, that that is what it is. It's you're a you're a small business, you're tightly um involved with your team when you're at at those smaller sizes, you know, under 100, under 200 people, in some cases 10 or 20. But it's like you've seen the direct impact of the decisions you're making, of the products that you're bringing to the world. Um, every team member that you add changes the culture of your company, every team member that you lose changes the culture of your company. Um, and I I just love being a part of that. Like I can solve something with financial knowledge that is confusing to a lot of business owners and a lot of entrepreneurs. They know how to make money, they just don't know if they actually are, and they don't know how to keep more of it so that they can make better decisions for their business as well.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Yeah. Uh as a micro business owner with aspirations towards small business owner uh on the definitions, I deeply appreciate that uh that kind of a support uh and that having finding that person to provide that kind of perspective is is crucial. Um I'd love to know a little bit about your leadership philosophy, especially we we share the marine roots uh in in common. And one of the things I I find so valuable about my my my Marine Corps foundation is anyone and leadership is it doesn't matter what position you're in, and like everyone has leadership experience in what we have to do there. And that is echoed down with downstream for the rest of my life. What what is kind of the through line of your leadership philosophy and approach?

SPEAKER_00 4:22

I think it's shifted a little bit towards my team more than my customers. So when I started my company, obviously cust what the customer wants is like the driving focus. That's where sales comes from, right? Identify their problems, solve it for them. Now that I've got a larger team, I have to step back from solving problems for my customers and really focus on taking care of my team. I think that's where my philosophy is right now. If I take care of my team, they are freed up. They don't have to worry about, you know, their status, they don't have to worry about, you know, CYA, like we always did in the in the Marines, and they can they can focus on the mission. And I think that you know that is one of the the lessons that the Marine Corps taught me. Like you said, leadership happens at every level, and every level you have somebody that you should be taking care of so that they can focus on their job. Um and you know, that's I think that's my ultimate through line on that. Um I think one of the other things the Marine Corps does really well and has just been ingrained in me is my job as the leader is to do the things that I can do that the without passing the buck down, like um shielding them from the hard decisions, shielding them from the things that don't cause them to grow. You know, sh uh I don't know where you're at with your new podcast, but crap doesn't roll downhill.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Oh, yeah, we're we're fine.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

You're fine with that. Okay. So yeah, I mean, your job as an NCO in the Marine Corps is to keep the officers away from the enlisted and to bridge that gap between it. And I kind of feel like that as a business owner, my job and as a business owner is to make sure the right customers get in the door and the wrong ones exit the door, and then it's the same with the team. Like it's my job to say this is who our team is, this is what our company stands for, and protect that rather than getting them into micromanaging, into the nitpicking, so that my team doesn't have to worry about, oh no, am I going to screw something so badly up that the customer leaves? Like I have accountability for that. That's my job is to make sure nothing goes out the door that my name's not, you know, proudly on. And to keep you know one of the earliest um things that I did when I came onto this company is I stopped customers from yelling at my team members. Like that is the easiest way out the door for me and my company. You don't get to treat my team members like they're idiots because if you do that, you're out you're really saying that I'm an idiot as a business owner for hiring idiots. And so you don't get to you don't get to correct my team members, you don't get to yell at them. If they screw things up, I will deal with it, I will take care of it. But that is not your role to do that. Um, and that's very different from the firms that I grew up in where it was very much the partner would side with the customer and yell at the staff accountant. Why are you such an idiot? Why did you screw that up so badly?

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Yeah. So you're not rolling in uh the therapist vertical into the accountant. Uh oh, there's so much therapy here.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

There is so much therapy. Um it's very much a therapy job uh with the client, with the with the team member. But but it is a boundaries thing too. And it is making sure they understand, you know, you paid us to do this job, you did not pay us to so that you could beat us up and you know make everything urgent because you forgot about it for two weeks until it was actually due.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

Awesome. Well, I'll tell you what, you you mentioned something in there about the leadership uh philosophy being uh shielding or or or taking accountability for the really hard decisions. And I couldn't ask for a better segue into our uh into the meat of our show here. So we're gonna talk about three decisions that you've thought about, reflected on, and and that have been important and influential in your life and professional career. And the first one up is uh I'd love to hear what what's the example of that decision where there was a little bit of deprioritizing people, where there was the I've got to put the business first and and the people second. Um give us a little bit of the context of it, uh kind of how you walk us through how you uh uh how you how you processed it, how you and how you came to the decision you did, and we'll talk about the outcomes.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Yeah. Um we're still in the middle of this one, I'll admit it. So um accounting, tax preparation is in trouble. If we continue doing things the way that we're all we've always done them, AI is going to eat our lunch, you know, outsourcing overseas, even software platforms like Intuit, TurboTax, QuickBooks, they are all trying to make us non existent if we continue always doing the work that we've always been paid to do, file tax returns for as cheap and fast as possible. So that's been a profitable model for our 80 years. And each partner in a traditional CPA firm model, each partner has the clients that they work on. They have the manager that they work with and the staff that works with that manager, and it's very siloed. I've been in companies that felt like it was five or six companies um under one roof with a common name, but five or six different, you know, uh methods of delivery, approaches, interests, services being provided. So my partner and I do not like that model. We didn't enjoy being in that model when we were team members, and we don't think that that model serves um the future of our profession. And so deprioritizing the people, we've had team members leave because they liked the old model. We've had partners that we've had to escort out and have retire earlier than they might have wanted to. Um, and we've had clients leave that like the old model of you guys used to do a two-week turnaround, you guys used to always pick up the phone every time that I would call. You guys used to be a lot cheaper, what happened? Um, and we're making decisions that for the good of the company, for the good of the profession, this is what we see is out there, and we need to be proactive and make short-term painful decisions that affect our bottom line to reinvest into the long-term future of the company. So that's that's the first thing that I would think of uh when I was prepping for this show.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

What are what are some of the things that um and I I I love this example because uh the original premise of the question was, hey, we earlier on in your career, where was something where you're like, oh, I gotta make the business decision and I'm gonna just cut people? Like pure, pure bottom line thinking. I love the nuance you brought to this because it's it's not uh it is more it is a bottom line thinking. There are some uh impacts to people in ways that may not uh that you may that you may not love or feel comfortable with, but it is very much in the service of recognizing not just your business, but the entire industry is making this huge shift. Uh what are some what's a w without giving away trade secrets, of course, are there are there pieces of the of the long-term vision like what what is important about the long-term vision in in more specificity? Uh that's that's a first principle for these decisions?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

It it is shifting more towards what our clients are actually paying us for. And you know, there's a couple drivers on this. One is like I said, AI outsourcing, um, other people doing the work for faster and cheaper. Our model for a hundred years, the billable hour, has been like the right, the uh driving model of compensation in public accounting, in attorney in legal services, in a lot of professional services. And when a tax return takes you 20 hours, I mean, people always like freak out when I say that, but 20 hours to prep a tax return is not a long one. Like I've had tax returns that have taken me 20 hours to review the tax return. Yep. When that was the model, the compensation mo uh model tied well to it and made a lot of sense. But when AI is cutting that down from 20 hours to 20 minutes, and then you know, as soon as AI actually starts prepping the tax return, um, that model's not going to exist anymore unless we raise our fees to, you know, I'm now$10,000 an hour for a billable rate, um, it's not going to make sense in the future. So that that's one of the things driving that decision. Um billable hours also just means you need to do more of them. If you're not profitable, you need to work more of them. Um and so that has a cultural impact on our team right now being tax season. People feel that. And we used to have minimums for how many hours are required in tax season. Um we'll we'll get into it in the next question, but we now have a maximum because it's harder for me to replace team members than it is for me to replace uh clients, replace customers right now. So those are some of the things that I think the industry is shifting. And um I think you know it's our job to educate our clients and say, do you really are you really paying me because this takes me 45 minutes to do? Or are you paying me because this would take you five hours to do? Are you paying me because understanding your tax situation lets you know how much you've paid in to keep the government happy, but it also frees up so you don't have to pay more in so that you can make decisions on hiring or moving into new industries? You know, is it effective to um establish this service line and promote this new product, this new service that we're doing? Is it making money there? Um so that's really the value that isn't going anywhere, I think, in an AI world because business owners still want to know, am I making the right decisions? And the data supports that. Um and so we need we need to proactively move in that direction.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Yeah. How did you you mentioned some people have left the company, some people have been helped out. What what was the what was the process of working to get by in, figuring out where that wasn't gonna happen, figuring out what that was gonna look like. Uh and and and was there a line kind of sooner in this particular case of get on board or not um than you might in others?

SPEAKER_00 15:06

My my partner, Samantha, she's been here for her entire career. So she started here right out of school. Um, and she grew up in this firm and had to prove herself in this firm. And so her model was always, I'm going to do it this way with my clients. Like I said, we used to be, you know, five five or six companies under one roof. So I'm going to prove that it works with my clients before making every client move in that direction. Um eventually some other partners, I came in nine years ago, I took over a retiring partner's client list and was on board with her um moving my clients in that direction. Other times partners would say, okay, I see that makes sense because from a, you know, it saves me effort. Um, so I'm going to do that with my clients as well. Eventually it just got to the point where it we would have to tell the partners that weren't doing it this way, you are adding stress and strain to our team who want to be able to treat all of our processes the same, who want to be able to work on all clients from anywhere rather than just mine and have to come into the office to work on yours. So there was a little bit of proving and then a little bit of social or cultural pressure. And then eventually it was just like, no, this is the hard line in the sand that we're drawing. And um, we all clients are going to be this way, and we're going to, you know, introduce the good clients to peers that'll still service them the way that they're used to. Um, the ones that are not A or B clients will just be like, we're not preparing your tax return anymore. Please find a preparer before next year. So it's a little bit of everything there, but yeah, it's not just like a we can't just come in and say this is the way it's gonna be on everything and you know, deal with it. Yeah. We have to pick our battles on some of that thing, some of those things.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Something that jumped out to me in in that last part there as well was the break point for uh in-house, uh whether people were on board or not, was your decision not to get on board is affecting the rest of the team. And uh which uh uh you know, it it destroys the premise of this first question, but it I like it as a really great example of you're prioritizing the the people um who you feel an obligation and f and recognize as the responsibility for for the future. Um and so that's uh uh I thank you for sharing that piece. Uh I'm also gonna use that as the nice segue into all right, well what's what's a what's an example of where you explicitly you came into it knowing that it people-based was gonna be good business.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Yeah. This one we're also in the middle of a shift. This is our second tax season doing it this way, but the one that I was thinking about is last year we made the decision that we are extending all clients before the tax season even begins. So this is definitely a shift for us. It used to be work as hard as possible between February to uh April 14th in some cases to get as many done as possible and then drop everything at the last minute and extend the remainder of them and apologize for it. And then once they're all extended, try to get them done as quick as possible, um, you know, between April 15th and May 31st or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Aaron Ross Powell And just for our our listeners who throw their tax documents over to an accountant or deterbo tax r remind us what the extend means.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Aaron Powell Sure. Yeah. So an extension j means that you have an additional six months to file your tax return. So um extensions are due. If you can't file by April 15th, you should file an extension. That will reduce the late filing penalty. Um but there is still you should be overpaid or paid in enough, otherwise there could be some late payment penalty or interest if not paid in by April 15th. A lot of people are afraid of extensions. I will say that. We're still fighting that. Back in the 70s and 80s, there was this perception that if you can't file your tax return on time, it's because you're shady and you're making stuff up. Um Tax code has I don't think the tax deadline has moved, except for COVID, in something like 40 or 50 years. So it's even as investment um income gets more complicated, even as pass-through businesses where you are waiting on the business to be filed before you can do your personal, all of these things have put no pressure on the April 15th deadline. And so with the majority of our clients, it's like if you could get your business and your personal done by April 15th, I would be more concerned about that because how thorough is the actual preparation of the tax return. And I will say for your audience, we're not dealing with W-2 employees at this point. Um we have stopped taking on that type of business. Um we work with larger um entities that have multiple businesses, family groups, especially in what we specialize in in succession planning. Um but there was still an expectation, even with those more complicated tax returns, that as soon as the stuff comes in the door, we're gonna have a two-week turnaround on it and get it done. And that's just not realistic to our team. It's not realistic to our clients as business owners because it puts all the pressure on taxis and actually matters. You know, when we have a long year-round relationship with our clients rather than once a year, you should know where you stand with your estimates with your tax projections throughout the year so that April 15th just comes and goes. You know, if you do have an overpayment, I always joke with newer business owners. I'm like, you don't get refunds anymore. I'm sorry. It just gets rolled forward to next year and it cuts down on the estimates you have to pay next year. Um, but that should be the reality of it. You should be making decisions that make your business strong, make your business healthy, and not worrying about, oh, it's the deadline. It's like you should be focused in focused on first quarter goals or second quarter goals, not I need to get this piece done by this date. Um so we've had to slow that down. We have, you know, I left tax season after six years and went out on my own and didn't do taxes for five years because of the hours, because of the burnout. Um we've lost people that should have continued in the profession. I mean, our profession has a pipeline that's college to big four accounting companies, accounting firms, where they'll burn you out eighty hours a week minimum. Um and if you can survive that, you do that for three years, you've got it on your resume. Most people get out of the profession entirely. Yep. A lot of people will go to private accounting industry. Um go be a controller for somebody in an accounting department. And then a a lot of us will just go find a small firm with a more sustainable pace out in the suburbs or something like that. But we don't want to do that to our team anymore. So we made that tough decision to prioritize their health over the feedback that we immediately started getting from customers.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Yeah. Well, with that kind of a pipeline, it it uh it completely backs up the headlines I see every so often about uh the the the w the just drawdown and number of accountants uh and also how hard it was for me to find an accountant at times.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

And there's another piece of that too, and I will say my I've been in the profession for 20 years. So I've seen times when it's easy to find clients and times when it's difficult to find clients too. Our profession is aging out, and so I think 60 something percent of the profession are baby boomers within five to ten years of retirement. A lot of them would have retired a lot sooner. And generationally, um, millennials are just barely reaching baby boomer size. X was much smaller than both of those generations, but there's just not a pipeline of people filling in all of those um jobs left by that retiring demographic. And so we are in a place right now where it's like there's more work than there are people, and that that's good for customer selection, but that also means you do have to prioritize the people that you can retain because you're going to have more work than capacity.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

Aaron Ross Powell was there a moment or uh Yeah, was there was there a kind of a moment of change where there was there is an insight of, hey, this we don't want to do it this way anymore. Uh or we have to figure out something different.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Aaron Ross Powell It was always something we wanted to do. Um we in we started encouraging our team to not stress about the work, about the overtime, about um but last year was the first year we ever capped overtime. And so it used to be a minimum. 55 hours was the minimum, and if you only did 55 hours, what w where do you really see your future here in this company? Like I think of like office space, uh the scene in um, you know, the T J Fridays restaurant. And it's like, you know, seven pieces of flair is like the minimum, but you should have like 20 something. Um look at Brian with all his flair. And it's like if you wanted the minimum to be 20, you should have just said 20. Um the So that's the way ours always used to be. Um last year we capped it. Um, and so we said no more than 50. And and honestly, we had to do that for our team our managers who've been doing this for 15, 20, 25 years because they're so used to shutting down their lives and just working. It was like, you know, the joke was was always with my kids when they were younger. I'm like, I'll see you in May. I I dad's gone and I got to get this done, and this is just the life. Um a lot of my peers had parents who were in public accounting, and they're just like, I never saw dad uh after Christmas. So so last year we had to cap it, and we just like, if you work more than 50 hours, we're not paying you. And that got people to stop. But that was really the we have six months. We've built this in now, and we've sold it. We've, you know, started early talking about it with our biggest clients so that they understood what we're doing, why also. And they're, you know, they're business owners and they have teams that they care about too. And so that that also was really a defining moment for us. You talked about like those those moments. That was a defining moment for us of which customers are actually worth keeping as well, because they want us to take care of our teams because they see us as more than just a service provider, that it's like, well, I paid you money, jump, jump through hoops to get it done. They're like, you're a valued advisor. And I would hope that you run your company in a way that reflects how I want to run my company.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

You just talked about the the the good feeling and uh and recognition of retaining clients that are values aligned in this and want to have that. Um did you see ha have you seen a measurable uh positive business impact of this? Uh how are you measuring success out of that?

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Yeah, I think we are. Um for one thing, when you start to So we did define our core values um three years ago. We went through a rebranding when my partner Samantha became managing partner. Uh that was a big trigger, triggering point or you know, decisive point for us is she was in charge now. There wasn't um anybody that could um overrule our majority vote anymore. Um we went through we went through a rebranding and we discuss we discovered what our core values were. And we started to release team members, we started to release clients based off of you've violated our core values of empathy, accountability, empowerment, and foresight. Those are our four for our company. So we were able to point to that and say, empathy is a core value for us, or accountability is a core value for us, and we have asked you multiple times over months to get us the information, and you always are waiting until the last minute, and so you need to go somewhere else because you're straining our team by delivering the information to us a week before the six-month extension is up and expecting us to still get it done. It's going to be late, and then you're gonna need to find somewhere else to go. So uh that was what that does when you start to define and work with clients that release clients that don't match up with your values, that frees up a lot of capacity. And I think that's where the business impact comes from, is because now we have breathing room and we have space to be able to look at our clients and say, what else can we do for you that we used to not have enough time because it was like I'm joking with the clients. I'll see you in May. I've got, you know, 200 of these tax returns that I've got to review over the next two months. I would love to help you on your project right here, but can this wait until our off season? And they you know, that's rough to be in when you're saying I'm a trusted advisor, but you're also saying, but I have to stop paying attention to you for four or five months out of the year so I can shift my focus over here for these smaller clients. So a freed up capacity, you know, from the human perspective, um, we've had clients who've, you know, had spouses or parents pass away in February and March. I think last year was the first time I was ever able to go to clients' funerals during tax seasons. Um not that I wouldn't have before, but you always had reasons not to. And, you know, last year one of our clients' mom mother passed away, who was also a longtime client, it was like not even a question. I think we had three or four people from our firm um at that funeral during the week. Um because and then being able to have that client and his brother come into the office and talk with them about estate planning needs for like four hours in the you know, in the middle of February when we used to be so slammed uh that I couldn't take four hours to have a conversation with anybody. Yeah. So that's made better business decisions. That has, you know, proven that we're on the right track here is higher trust, higher level of service for the clients that we need to prioritize.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Yeah. Which directly feeds back into the first uh topic of conversation around where where is the v value of where your company and where your industry is going to be going and how do you provide that more value. And so by prioritizing and creating that space for for the people, you're really doing that for your clients and and that cascades to repeat and expand a business individually. It repeats it cascades to referrals, it cascades to all sorts of things. Thank you. I want to move on to our third one, which is the what's what's what's a favorite decision story around people, people dynamics that you like to tell?

SPEAKER_00 30:28

So this one's a little hard. It's a favorite because it's it's an example of the perils of not pushing deeper into these relationships with our clients. So one of the first, you know, I I came in here nine years ago. It took about two years to retire the partner whose client list I ended up taking over. Um, and one of the first companies that I worked with, it was a company that had been around for 40, 45 years, and they actually they built a component of schools. Like that was the there were Masons. And um It was these two older guys in their late sixties, early seventies, and I worked with them for a couple of years, and it was based off the tax returns and we'd try to get financial meetings, and it was like pulling teeth to get one of the, you know, the one that was out in the field to come to these meetings. Sure. The admin guy, he loved them. Um but it would just be around, you know, the tax return or you know, not really asking questions of like what's next for you. So I share this one because unfortunately that company, after trying to find buyer, trying to find somebody inside the company for a couple years, um, one of the guys, his son even worked in the business, and still the decision was he didn't want to take it over. And the sales cycle was so long, the contracts that they were working on were such old relationships that there was no like real new business coming in. There was no sales pipeline that was strong and healthy that that that business closed after you know 45 years in existence. And it always provided a good living for the two business owners, but it wasn't attractive to anybody else. And so they ended up selling all the equipment for like yard sale rates, you know, um liquidation value. Yeah. That one stuck with me because that was like my first indicator that it's not enough to run a profitable business if you don't if you can't walk away from that business and have something of value there that somebody else would buy. Um you've effectively been self-employed for your entire life. You've you've owned your own job. But that there's a hole now in the community from where that business was. Um there's schools that are not going to be built as efficiently or as effectively as their model had it built because they didn't invest into building something there that lives on beyond them. So when we did our core values shift three years ago, the one thing my partner and I could come to agreement on when we were like, who's our target market? We all had all these industries that we like working with, but we decided being an 80-year-old CPA firm, our target market is not a who, it's a when. And so we really said, I feel like we've had clients that have been clients of ours for 40, 50, 60 years, they're into their second and third generation. Like that's special knowledge that I couldn't fake tomorrow by going out and starting a new c accounting company. Yeah. That's our differentiator, that's our value in the marketplace. Not just transfer the business, but transfer an engine of the economy that continues to produce income that the kid or the employee is not taking over because of guilt or because of family pressure, but is gladly taking over because this is a business that runs well and you know has a sales pipeline, it has a leadership team, it can continue on, even though dad, who had such a strong personality, is now retired, it continues on after. Um, so that is a story I love to tell. It's a warning sign, but for me, it was like we have got to push past the tax return and the tax deadlines because every entrepreneur starts this thing and it's about more than money. It's about legacy, it's about providing for my family, my future, you know, grandkids, great grandkids, all of that, and the community, my team, everything that I care about. And then to just see it close down or get sold for pennies on the dollar to private equity because I never stopped from doing the day-to-day work to make those big decisions on the structure, the business operation outside of myself. Um so that's one that I love to share and it it resonates deeply with me because that's why we do what we do, so that this business won't be a burden on the next generation or that next employee that takes it over. They will gladly walk into it and be excited how they can build on that foundation.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

We call this podcast Bet on People, and I talked a little bit about the kind of the premise of like a hey, where's a real learning example, where's a proud of your example, and then the favorite story. And and something that I love that you did by bringing in these three examples is create a through line not in line with the whiplash uh of the of perhaps the initial premise, but you captured the different categories of people that are important to you in business outcomes. Um in the first one, it's it's your team, it's the team that's going to be on board, but it's also the broader people of uh of the accounting profession uh and and in large scale moments of change, in really reflecting what is what is important about this to uh as these professionals and for our clients. Uh and in the second example, you really focused on in the service of that business, our team is how do we make how do we create the space for them to be the most uh bring the most value, bring the most of them of their purpose to to our clients. And what I really like about the third, the third example is it ties it together and expands it to, and it's not necessarily a responsibility and an obligation, but a consideration of the place in the community and the place in family and the original why of any entrepreneur or or leader that extends beyond just the purely, purely commercial. Uh what was what's going to outlive you? What why do you want to make a mark more than just a comfortable life? Uh and there's plenty of people, I'm sure, who maybe they don't need to worry about or think that. But in terms of really impactful and successful businesses um and organizations, uh having that longer consideration beyond just self uh is really powerful. Um so thank you for sharing all that. Also, I think I uh with that as one of your most powerful motivating stories, uh it's no seek no secret really why you created a podcast about succession.

SPEAKER_03 37:34

Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

That that became clear to me. You know, I wanted to do another podcast. Um I wanted to do an interview podcast. And once I figured out that target market, I'm like, okay, there's the stories that I get to tell. Because business is business is about more than money, as your podcast uh, you know, knows. And it's even about more than the people, because the people are going to come and go. And I've had great clients who become not great clients. I've had not great clients who become great clients. I've had team members that, you know, left because we no longer allied with their vision, and they were great team members while they were here. It's like the impact of the organization on the community is also going to shift, but you should have a purpose there. You should have a clear distinction and a direction. This is where we're going, because it's again about those boundaries that I talked about, your job as the business owner. I always tell I tell my team, it's like, my job as the captain or co-captain of this ship is not to do all of the sailing of the ship, but it's to say we're going in this direction, and then you can decide do you want to get on that ship or not? And too many business owners, you know, at this firm and in a lot of businesses, they're just like, it's hard. You're trying to keep your head above water in the daily basis. But it's like, where are we going? Like, what is the purpose of what we're doing here? Is this just a tax season and we're going to do the same tax season again next year? And you know, we save people a couple dollars on, you know. That for me, I was like, I don't know that I could do this for another 40 years. But once I saw the tax season, which is very season at seasonal and necessary and uh, you know, uh part of business, once I saw that that has a larger impact and frees up those decisions that are I can hire somebody because I saved money on my taxes this year, or I know that I made money um and you know that this is the right direction. Those are those are like the longer term um impacts of those of the regular cycle of accounting seasons.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

Yeah. Yeah. It's huge.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Any uh any other kind of insights as we've been talking? Uh anything jump out, reflect, surprise you?

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Your questions leading into this thing, um, I was not expecting them. And I do want to thank you. Um, thank you and Molly for you know the idea behind the podcast and the questions that you ask. It did cause me to stop and think because it can feel whips on, like you kind of shared there of, well, this is a decision you have to make regardless of people's feelings and how they're going to be hurt. This is a decision that you're going to make and because of people's feelings that might get hurt. And that's the that's the struggle that we run into as business owners all the time is I can't just make all the business decisions that benefit my team, because then it's like, well, who's the leader? Who's the one hurting the feelings? Who's the one drawing that line in the sand? And I can't just steamroll over everybody either, else it's just going to be a constant cycle of new people coming in the door, customers or employees. Um, and we can never actually make any traction or any gain any efficiency or make forward movement if we're always training new people how to do this. And so every single decision, you've got to decide, is this is this the hill worth dying on in the in this particular case with these people that are on board with me at this at this point in time in the direction we're going. And it is. It's it's exhausting, but it's also like so much more satisfying than than the money that should be involved in it. Don't get me wrong. You should be rewarded for this risk that you're taking. Um but if it's just about the money, go be a highly compensated employee and sleep well over the weekend knowing it's not, you know, it's not your company, it's not your business. But for me, it's like it's it's no longer about that. It's about the people who are like, I'm in this profession because Barrett was a great boss and he really inspired me to want to invest into this thing. And I and I love my time there. As short as it might be or as long as it might be. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

All right. We uh we were we we like to wrap up with our our lightning round questions. We uh we're going for deep insights and uh emotional pulls, uh, but we're also a a a media entity now, so we gotta have some laughs. Uh all right, quick quick answers uh as fast as possible. I've I've on previous podcasts I've had to qualify lightning round with uh capacitated burst of energy, but we're gonna try for lightning round with you. All right. What was your first job, Eric?

SPEAKER_00 42:47

Um my first official job working for somebody else was Hollywood video as a teenager. My brother worked at the movie theater. I worked at Hollywood Video, so I'd be at the theater, watching movies, and then go home and watch more movies and have a great, great time as a kid.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

That's awesome. Uh what's one leadership skill that you wish you learned earlier?

SPEAKER_00 43:09

I may I talk a big game about firing clients, and that's an easy decision for me in many cases. Um and that was unique to me. I mean, that was new to me. Uh I didn't see that modeled at my first firm. I had a peer, a mentor, who really showed me that that's possible. I wish I would have learned how to make the same decision with team members earlier. Um that got me in trouble in my own company that I ran for five, five and a half years. I should have let somebody go sooner than I did because it was not healthy for me, for the business, for her. Um, and then even you know, twenty years in this, I've always deferred or let other people talk me into yes, it's time for this person to go. Um and then that that is a hard. Hard place to be in, but it is something I wish I could could have come to terms with. Because I like being liked and just like anybody else. And and that is a lot harder for me than letting money go, letting revenue go by firing a client is letting someone go who you've invested years into and didn't work out.

SPEAKER_02 44:20

Yeah. I suspect that uh everything that I've seen, getting to know you and talking to you and today, uh it's not just a matter of years invested in people, but uh a recognition of people as people and a deep understanding of what it means to let someone go and what and the impact it's gonna have on their life and identity and emotions and how they have to deal with something and the stakes that are involved. And that heaviness makes it very, very, very hard. Uh so thank you for sharing that one. Um conversely, what's the biggest myth about leadership uh that you think is out there?

SPEAKER_00 45:00

Um that leadership or that that it's all about titles and it's all about acclaim and it's all about praise. Um it's about service. And you know, we we both were taught this from a young age by by our branch of the military, but you are there to make other people's lives better, to make other people's jobs easier, to make it as smooth as possible. Um and if you start coming in there as a drill instructor and you're like, I'm a drill instructor, and you better listen to me, it's like there's a role that there is, you know, you you do salute officers, but you know which officers you're saluting and meaning it and which ones you're just doing because of the title. And the second an officer comes in and says, I'm a second lieutenant, you better listen to me. It's like lost. You've lost you've lost the point of leadership there. It's more like I have these strengths, these capabilities. What can I do to make your job better? What can I do for you today?

SPEAKER_02 46:04

Yeah. Having uh having spent uh my last job on active duty was as a series commander. Uh so I was the officer who the drill instructors reported to. That example that you just gave, because the perception, especially outside the military, but even in the military, that the perception is that the drill instructor, the authoritarian, and the shy, and they can get away with anything, they can get away with treating people whoever they are, just and that's just what they do, is so it's so much missing the point. The drill instructors perform that way and actually, I observed, sacrifice so much of their risk sacrificing so much of their humanity to to behave that way in order to deliver an outcome for the recruits, transforming them into Marines and doing so walking very fine lines of ethical and appropriate behavior. My role as a series commander, similarly, was not to be a you know a drill instructor that the recruits have to salute, but my role was watching out for the drill instructors, helping make sure that they were taking care of themselves or I I was taking care of them where they needed to, because they were putting themselves through it in that service. And the stacking chain of that service lead servant leadership is fantastic. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 47:16

I think the perception is, especially in the military, is and don't get us wrong, if someone says something, you do comply, you do listen to it because there's a mission reason why they're saying that. But you can't all that can't be your default go-to. And I think that that's the difference. It's like we talked about, you know, some decisions you have to make for the good of the organization, other ones you have to make for the detriment of the organization. It's knowing your leaders and knowing if they are pulling rank on me and if they are saying, listen to me on this one, it's because they're that's not their default mode and they don't walk around stomping around like that all the time. So you can trust them. It's it happens so rare, it's like, oh crap, this actually is something I'm not aware of in this case.

SPEAKER_02 48:00

All right. Uh what's the worst professional advice that you've ever received?

SPEAKER_03 48:07

Oh man. You don't have to quote who said it.

SPEAKER_00 48:12

It's what the client wanted. I don't know how to put that in a I don't know how to put that in an actual quote, but or you know, back to my conversation, the client never asked us to do that. Or it's what the client asked for, it's what the client wanted. It's like that whole idea of the cli the customer's always right. Yeah. That yes, they are paying us money and we should, you know, we should serve them and we shouldn't lord it over them either. Yeah. But they don't always know uh what's right. They don't know what's best for them in all cases. And in many cases, I would hope they're coming to me to pay for my context, my understanding, my opinion. And if we just give them what they want all the time, they ne they never will consider questions like what do I want to do after I retire from this company? What do I want to do to make sure I'm not pulling all the money out of this business for 40 years and not reinvesting it into the life, you know, the the the lifeblood of this business. So I think that that's just terrible business advice. It's not nuanced enough, as you can tell from this conversation. We like a little bit of nuance. And I think that that one's just way too transactional.

SPEAKER_02 49:23

Aaron Ross Powell I'm right there with you. Uh everything I've learned in design thinking, customer-driven innovation, and and all the pieces reinforce exactly what you said. It's I mean, it's Steve Jobs.

SPEAKER_00 49:35

Design thinking and Steve Jobs. And if the client, you know, if we gave them what they wanted, we would have given them a faster buggy kind of thing. You know? So All right.

SPEAKER_02 49:44

Final home stretch. You've had the whole uh the whole hour to think about this one since I uh dropped it on the in-pre-show. Uh podcast or book, or uh on Molly's excellent suggestion, uh any media that you have as a recommendation that's not leadership or business related.

SPEAKER_00 50:00

That is so hard for me. You guys did tell I didn't expect that to be the hardest lightning round when you guys shared them at the beginning. Um I don't read a lot for just for fun. I I do watch a lot of YouTube videos for fun. So the things that I've been getting into over the past six months or so, I'm converting my swimming pool into a pond. Okay. Converting it into a wildlife pond and um bringing it back to because my kids don't swim in it and it's a lot of chlorine I'm dumping into that thing otherwise. So I'm I'm watching a lot of YouTube on guitar playing all the time. Um other media, how do I kick back? My daughter is gonna be 18 next month, and we're going through Suits, the USA show about the higher-powered attorneys in New York City. And it is business related, but it's also just fun and dramatic. And I just watched that show like I did when I first watched her, and I'm like, man, I'm glad I don't live that life. I'm so glad that is not the that's not the high-stakes world that I've ever served in my profession. So I'm a little bit of relief there.

SPEAKER_02 51:11

Love it. Love it. All right. Uh I'm gonna I'm gonna have you tell people where to find you, but first I'm gonna do another plug on uh your Art of Succession podcast. Um uh it's it's an excellent premise, it's an excellent set of stories. Uh, and also I'm selfish because uh I got to join you on it. Uh and for anyone who uh has a little more of a curiosity in what Barrett referred to in in the first segment around the direction that um the industry, his industry is going, especially vis-a-vis uh intersecting with AI, uh, we spend a lot of time talking about that. Uh and that episode will have already been out by the time this one comes out. So go check out Art of Succession, uh, wherever you get your podcasts. Uh and Barrett, where else do you want people to find you?

SPEAKER_00 51:52

Yeah, thanks for plugging that, Keegan. Um I'm glad it brought us together. Um That is my primary focus is the Art of Succession podcast and our YouTube channel where it's hosted. Um I'm also on LinkedIn, and anybody that wants to reach out to me there, connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't immediately send me a DM because I will ignore most of them. Um but connect with me on there and then start interacting and asking questions. Um and I do write a weekly um email that goes out to um my mailing list that you can find on there as well, just talking about AI and how to use it to make you a better professional rather than replace uh what you do. So um, that's called Against the Grain. And I've been writing that for about a year, and I really enjoy that every Saturday morning. That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 52:41

Uh Barrett Young is a marketing is the marketing partner at GWCPA. Uh and uh you can find him at all the places we just talked about. The links will be in the show notes. Uh and Barrett, thanks again for uh for coming on for this. Really, really loved the the path he took us on. Yeah, thank you so much, Keegan. I'm Keegan Evans, and this is Bet on People.