Unbalanced

Julie Ship started out helping Jason Blumer fix a few broken things in his firm. She was so good at it that she eventually became his partner, and that's when the opinions she'd been keeping to herself started coming out. She reminded him she was an owner now, and Jason realized he had a choice to make. Jason, CEO of Thrival, joins Sam and Candy to talk about the growing up he had to do once partn...

When Amy Nubson noticed the rates she could charge had dropped back to where they were twenty-five years ago, she realized something fundamental had shifted in her industry. On this episode of the Unbalanced Podcast, hosts Sam and Candy talk with Nubson, who runs two firms, New Fire Collective and Women Getting Visible, about what happens when artificial intelligence starts competing on price and...

Kate Johnson almost didn't say it out loud: having a stable, supportive spouse gave her an advantage she calls uncalculable, and she wanted her audience to hear that plainly. Kate owns Heritage Business Services, a bookkeeping firm she niched entirely around one accounting software, and she built a free community, including a Facebook group and YouTube channel, to help other bookkeepers consider e...

Jessica Fox still remembers waking up at 3:30 in the morning in a cold sweat, convinced she'd forgotten something for a client, only to find she'd already done it. She just had nowhere to prove it. That moment became a turning point for Jessica Fox, owner of Florida Virtual Bookkeeper, who rebuilt her business around documentation, workflows, and a plan for what happens if she can't show up one da...

Mark O'Riordan once landed back in Detroit less than 48 hours after attending Nelson Mandela's funeral, only to be called in the next morning to help work a homicide case. That whiplash defined his eleven years with the Secret Service, much of it spent as a polygraph examiner conducting hours-long interrogations. In this conversation, Mark talks about leaving federal law enforcement to build New M...

Hope Brown figured out one of her most important lessons in year two, and she is honest that it came later than it should have. Running a firm she never planned to open, she got so caught up in the work she loved that it nearly swallowed her whole. In this episode, she talks with Sam and Candy about balance, and why loving what you do is not enough if there is no core left for yourself. Hope runs...

Ryan Lazanis noticed something counterintuitive: the firms building the most elaborate AI automations were often the busiest, not the freest. In this episode, the founder of Future Firm and former owner of Zen Accounting, one of North America's earlier online accounting firms, joins Sam and Candy to talk about why fundamentals still matter more than the latest shiny tool. Ryan draws parallels betw...

The day before her husband was set to join the new company they had spent months building, Jennifer Scott opened the inbox to a reporter asking for comment on the arrest of the business owner behind it all. The FBI had raided the New York office. Overnight, a two-income family became a zero-income family, and the firm they had planned no longer existed. Jennifer runs HireEffect™, a client advisory...

Tyler Otto once fired a client in their first month, after a 6 p.m. Monday request to rebuild a cost segregation report by 8 a.m. the next day was followed by an all-caps email asking why nobody had responded yet. Tyler, who leads Specialized Accounting (a firm built around hotels, restaurants, and marinas) and hosts the UnAccountable Podcast, joins Sam and Candy to talk about the parts of running...

When Trevor Myres admits his firm got better the more he stepped out of its way, it lands as an honest reckoning rather than a humble brag. On this episode, the owner of Myres CPA joins Sam and Candy to work through the parts of building a firm nobody warns you about: conducting his first interview with zero real management experience, learning that hiring for potential can quietly cost you, and d...

At a recent conference, Alicia Katz Pollock asked a room of one hundred accounting professionals to raise their hands if they had explored QuickBooks' newest features. Three hands went up. One was hers. In this conversation, Alicia, founder of Royalwise and a longtime QuickBooks trainer, unpacks why that gap matters: the software now does far more than it did eighteen months ago, and the recent pr...

Natalie Browne once went to make a $25,000 federal estimated tax payment and sent it to the state agency instead. She caught it, canceled it, and told the client. That kind of honesty runs through this conversation with the founder of Adding Technology, an accounting firm focused on construction and real estate. Natalie talks about the long road from solo bookkeeper to leader of a small team, and...

Michael Coronado of Pronto Advisors still remembers walking into a restaurant decades ago and asking how they closed out the register each night. The answer: someone opened it, took out the cash, and put it in the safe. No one ever counted it. That story sets the tone for a conversation about what happens when businesses skip the basics, whether it's cash controls, tax planning, or pricing. Michae...

Nicole Davis built her accounting firm without ever working in public accounting, and she will be the first to tell you how much she had to figure out the hard way. In this episode, Nicole shares what a scathing one-star review taught her about client experience, why she developed a "client match" tool to filter for fit before a relationship ever starts, and how a self-induced cash crunch after ac...

Nicole Nieves didn't set out to run a firm on her own terms — she got there because her health demanded it. After years of pushing through long hours in New York, she found herself repeatedly hospitalized and forced onto medical leave. What came out of that hard stop was a set of policies most accounting firms still resist: documents due 30 days before the deadline, a standing Wednesday off, and a...

Ashley Connell spent a year having 60 one-on-one conversations with accounting firm owners before deciding to go all in on the profession. What she heard most often surprised her: loneliness. Not just the need for peers, but the need for someone inside the business they could actually talk to. Ashley is the founder of Prowess Project, which matches accounting firm owners with fractional operators,...

Rick Meekins had built something real. Multiple companies running simultaneously, an engineer on staff, hands in product development, construction, and more. Then COVID hit, and almost overnight, everything stopped. What followed were months of debt, difficult conversations, and a slow reckoning with what comes next. In this episode, Rick, founder of Polaris Story and host of the Relentless Pursui...

Jan Haugo spent 40 hours a week for over 18 months learning, building, and breaking AI tools outside the accounting industry because she felt what was available inside it wasn't enough. What she came back with wasn't a collection of tips for writing better emails. It was a system: general ledger error detection, 1099 audit checking, brand voice training, and over 80 operations built to match how a...

A nonprofit's CPA said they didn't qualify. Their payroll company said the same. So did a second advisor. Richard Soo Hoo, owner of Richard Soo Hoo CPA and Associates, looked at the paperwork anyway, told everyone they were wrong, and three weeks later the organization had $425,000 in Employee Retention Tax Credits in hand. That story sits at the center of this conversation, but it's hardly the on...

Richard Roppa-Roberts did not plan to start a business. He bought a house on October 11, 2014, and was laid off the very next day. What followed was an accidental entrepreneurial career that now includes two businesses, over 7,600 hours of live peer conversation, and a near-coma hospitalization that tested every contingency plan he had built. In this episode, Richard shares what he has learned run...

Ron Stauffer walked in the door after his second layoff, gave himself one afternoon to feel bad about it, and had a check in his hand by the next day. That mindset, combining deep curiosity with relentless relationship-building, is at the core of how he has run Leader Digital for eighteen years without spending a single dollar on advertising. In this conversation, Ron shares why most businesses as...

In this episode, David joins Sam and Candy to talk about what really drives small business financial trouble, why the root cause is almost never what the owner suspects, and what it takes for accountants and bookkeepers to make the shift into genuine advisory work. They also get into the realities of building a first-year conference, why most accounting-adjacent advice stays frustratingly surface-...

Melissa Guinn once found $180,000 of loan proceeds misclassified as income. Her client had paid taxes on money that was never earnings. A corrected return later, the client received $40,000 back. That kind of discovery is not luck. It is what happens when a bookkeeper asks enough questions, runs a real onboarding process, and knows what to look for. Melissa is the owner of Lookout Bookkeeping in C...

Erin Pohan, founder of Upkeeping and creator of WAVE Seattle, joins Sam and Candy for a conversation about the parts of firm ownership no one really prepares you for. From building real community in the accounting profession to navigating a $100,000 IRS notice and a years-long fight to protect her business, Erin shares what it looks like to keep going when the unexpected hits. Along the way, they...

What changes when you go from doing the work to leading a team doing it for you? In this episode, Rachel Dauchy shares what growth actually looks like behind the scenes, from navigating client expectations that don’t evolve with your business, to hiring, letting go, and learning how to trust your team. She talks about building a firm rooted in systems, automation, and specialization, while still h...