The Unique CPA

Randy Crabtree left Tri-Merit after nearly 40 years in the profession, and the shift hit him before he knew it. At Bridging the Gap 2026 in Charlotte, he came to realize he was quietly mourning the loss of a firm he built, without even recognizing the feeling. And yet nine or ten weeks later, people keep telling him he looks younger, so Terrell Turner, Episode 293's host, and Randy, unpack why. On...

Rob Brown returns on Episode 292 of The Unique CPA to unpack, among many other things, what he calls the "alignment gap," the chasm between decisions made behind closed doors and what the rest of the firm actually sees, feels, and hears. When partners spend months absorbing a deal or preparing for a big change, and all staff get is a 30-minute town hall, panic sets in. Rob identifies three breaks:...

Randy and Terrell team up on Episode 291 of The Unique CPA , as each of them sat down with a returning BTG attendee at Bridging the Gap 2026 in Charlotte. Angela Jenkins found the conference through a tip from Nayo Carter-Gray, who told her it was the only accounting conference focused on wellness. She booked it that same day. Angela recalls the yoga room, the speakers who weren't parceled off fro...

After 25 years in accounting and finance, Lisa Poslusny discovered that switching careers didn't switch off the pressure. The same overwhelm she felt juggling deadlines and deliverables followed her right into health coaching, which led her to mental fitness. On Episode 290 of The Unique CPA , she explains that mental fitness is not mere positive thinking, but rather, the ability to catch the unhe...

At Bridging the Gap 2026, James Donovan of the Accounting Leads Now Podcast sat down with Camden Bean, founder of Ping for a live conversation. Camden traced Ping's evolution from a basic note taker into a platform that detects upsell opportunities and generates proposals before a client meeting even ends, and told the story about the now-legendary ping pong ball jacket stunt that got the team esc...

Okorie Ramsey built a legacy statement around six words: "To live a life that mattered." As Vice President of Sarbanes-Oxley at Kaiser Permanente and the first African American male to chair the AICPA, he's spent his career turning that philosophy into action. He launched the National Pipeline Advisory Group, grew accounting enrollment for three straight years, and brought HBCU students into the p...

Douglas Slaybaugh has spent close to 10,000 hours coaching accounting leaders, and he's seeing something he doesn't like: partners drowning in chargeable work, admin, and meetings. They then don't have any capacity to do the one thing that actually matters, sit across from a client and talk deep strategy. He calls it the partner bottleneck, and it's pushing experienced professionals toward burnout...

Most firms measure AI adoption by efficiency gains and dashboards full of green checkmarks. Jennifer Harrity, author of The Human Cost of AI, argues on Episode 286 of The Unique CPA that the real numbers worth tracking are psychological safety and burnout. Associates who once learned judgment through repetition now babysit AI agents instead, quietly losing the muscle memory that built professional...

Tom Angelo started his career above a pizzeria, hired as the first staff accountant at a three-partner firm in New Jersey. He made partner at 28, built an IT services arm years before "digital transformation" became a buzzword, and eventually merged his own firm into HBK. Now its second CEO in 75 years, he's steering the company through Catalyst 2030, a strategy built around industry-led teams rat...

Matt Armanino traded a law career and a stint at PeopleSoft for the CEO seat at Armanino, a top-20 firm he once never imagined joining. He tells Randy on Episode 284 of The Unique CPA that nearly two decades later, he's steering almost 3,000 people through what he considers the largest technology shift of his lifetime. Focusing on AI's effect on billable hours, Matt explains why his firm shifting...

The first thing we learn on Episode 283 of The Unique CPA is that Randy has real trouble saying the word "multidisciplinary." Once we've worked that out, we learn that his guest Mike Payne built his career on a bet that most professionals avoid: pairing a law degree with a CPA license instead of picking a lane. That combination became the foundation of BOSS Advisors, a firm he grew to $2 million b...

Randy Crabtree sits down with Justine Lackey, founder of The Incubator, on Episode 282 of The Unique CPA . Justine originally built one of the earliest virtual bookkeeping firms out of necessity, long before "remote," or even anything besides QuickBooks Desktop, became standard practice. Their conversation moves from the mechanics of scaling and selling a firm to the grief that follows a successfu...

Half of all offshoring relationships collapse within five years, and Anshul Agrawal has spent his career figuring out why. Randy Crabtree sits down with the founder of June15 Consulting on Episode 281 of The Unique CPA to unpack the real difference between renting offshore talent and owning it outright, as well as how that distinction shapes everything from culture clashes to client trust. Anshul...

Randy Crabtree sits down with Luke Frye, who's gone from hand-stamping journal entries as a small-town government accountant to scaling Bench to thousands of customers, running his own firm through a messy business divorce, and now advising practices at Canopy. Their conversation on Episode 280 of The Unique CPA keeps circling back to a single, uncomfortable question: What actually makes a firm va...

Change has never moved this fast, and accounting firms are feeling it everywhere: AI eating into bookkeeping and tax work, private equity reshaping ownership, generational splits over who's willing to adapt. Matt Rampe, a change management specialist at Rosenberg Associates, joins Randy on Episode 279 of The Unique CPA to break down why partnership structures built for consensus often become ancho...

Randy Crabtree steps away from tax season and toward retirement from Tri-Merit, joining forces with Jeremy Clopton of The Upstream Leader for a crossover conversation on Episode 278 of The Unique CPA . AI dominates firm conversations right now, but Clopton argues the real anxiety comes from chasing an uncertain future instead of holding onto what won't change: being the protector of public trust....

Dr. Rachel Anevski quit high school at 16 and attended three different colleges to get her bachelor's degree, then built an independent consulting practice for 13 years before folding it into Winding River Consulting this year. On Episode 277 of The Unique CPA , she tells Randy that the move rattled her more than she expected: she fought the firm's processes, demanded to know the reasoning behind...

Randy Crabtree and Terrell Turner team up to co-host Episode 276 of The Unique CPA , previewing what's coming July 28th at Bridging the Gap 2026 in Charlotte . Four years in, the conference has moved past simply naming burnout and connection as problems worth discussing, with the focus now turning to implementation: accountability structures, longer workshop formats, and the potential for speakers...

This episode of The Unique CPA is brought to you by BILL and BILL's Accountant Console. Accountants deserve tools that work as hard as they do. Learn more at BILL.com/uniquecpa and get a $250 gift card. Terms apply. Small business clients are increasingly showing up to their accountants armed with AI-generated answers, and Ariege Misherghi thinks that's actually an opportunity. A Senior VP at BILL...

Additional support is also provided by Magnetic. AI prepared 1040s with remarkable accuracy and form coverage, so your team gets complete returns ready for final review. Check it out at MagneticTax.com .  Scott Showalter has spent more than 50 years in accounting, with 33 of them at KPMG, the last 22 of which were as a partner. Since 2008 he's been bringing that experience into the classroom at NC...

Randy is put in the unusual position of being a guest on his own show at Bridging the Gap 2025, as Terrell Turner sits down with him just hours after a keynote that left much of the room in tears. On Episode 273 of The Unique CPA , our final entry in this special BTG series, Randy talks about his speech, which was years in the making and drew on pivotal moments from Randy's early career, including...

Terrell Turner sits down with Lisa Simpson of the AICPA, who leads the organization's Transforming Your Business Model initiative, live from Bridging the Gap 2025 on Episode 272 of The Unique CPA . Lisa makes a compelling case that the old model, with its long, billable hours where firms carry too many of the wrong clients, is not only unsustainable, but actively unnecessary. Firms that have right...

Recorded live at Bridging the Gap 2025 in Denver, Randy Crabtree sits down with founder of LiveCA, tech commentator, and full-time glamper Chad Davis for a wide-ranging conversation that captures exactly what makes BTG different from every other conference on the calendar. On Episode 271 of The Unique CPA , Chad talks about why he rerouted his entire week just to be there, and the two get into the...

The Unique CPA is also supported by Magnetic. Magnetic's AI-prepared 1040s are built for accuracy with every return checked before it comes back to your firm. Learn more at  MagneticTax.com . Recorded live at  Bridging the Gap 2025, Terrell sits down with Questian Telka, co-host of the She Counts Podcast and a late-diagnosed ADHDer, for a conversation that goes well beyond the typical conference i...

Continuing the conversation at Bridging the Gap 2025 in Denver, Randy Crabtree sits down with Krystal Joiner from the conference's marketing team on Episode 269 of The Unique CPA for an honest look at what goes into making BTG what it is. Krystal talks through the months of behind-the-scenes planning that attendees never see, and why the relaxed, connected energy on the conference floor doesn't ha...