Accountant's Flight Plan

In this episode, Gina and I dive into the finer points of her hiring process so you can instantly come away with practical, implementable “to-do’s”. She explores common pitfalls most of us are making, simple tweaks in our hiring conversations that make substantial changes, and a workflow to sift through your candidates.

Recently, Brannon had an exciting conversation with Ryan Lazanis. Ryan is a CPA who considers himself more of an entrepreneur than an accountant.  In 2013 he founded a fully cloud-based accounting firm which was acquired five years later with the help of the Poe Group team. Now Ryan is focusing on his passion to help modernize the traditional accounting firm model and foster innovation in the prof...

If you want to get out of the bottleneck position in your firm, you have to delegate. The first step toward delegating is Auditing Your Time.  Brad’s advice, “Audit yourself…for a week or so just audit. Every time you sneeze document it. And estimate how many hours per month you’re spending on [any given] task.” 

Mitch Baldridge is a CPA based in Houston, Texas and he has been steadily growing his firm, Baldrige CPA, since going out on his own in 2014. His first year, he essentially made no revenue and now he has several employees and steadily growing margins. Mitch found Brannon a few years ago when he was thinking about acquiring a firm. He thought he would purchase an existing practice to help build the...

On the most recent episode of The Accountant’s Flight Plan Podcast, we interviewed Shehan Chandrasekera, who is one of a handful of CPAs in the country recognized as a real-world operator and conceptual subject matter expert on cryptocurrency taxation. He is the Head of Tax Strategy at CoinTracker, partner at JAGArgueta CPAs a Forbes Tax Contributor and a CPE instructor who has won various awards.

Communicating with clients like they are another accountant doesn’t cut it. Justin Hatch shares with our listeners that what clients want from their accountants is simplified language and visual reporting first, and then a dive into the details. Accountants have to give their clients a high-level perspective written in layman’s terms when it comes to data.

Even without a start in public accounting, (or perhaps because of that) Rich Stang built a powerhouse of a firm by focusing heavily on one thing – Hiring for culture. In this podcast he dives into how his team is the source of that growth and success. The art of hiring well takes finesse and several counter-intuitive perspectives, some of which Rich explores in today’s episode.

In 2019 we helped Jim sell his CPA practice in the Washington, DC area and we wanted to share with you a bit about what it was like for him to successfully go through that process. He talks about taking the leap to start his own firm, how he decided to exit, and what he wished he had known in the midst of managing his firm. A pearl of wisdom that Jim shared with us in this episode is that: “You go...

Guess what? You don’t get to choose whether or not you have a brand; you either have a weak brand or you have a strong brand. That’s just one of the powerful ideas that Matt Wilkinson and Maggie Antone share in this episode of The Accountant’s Flight Plan Podcast. Listen in (or watch ) to learn from Maggie, a seasoned branding expert who’s worked with big brands such as Coca Cola, BP, McDonald’s,...

If you’ve listened to this podcast for any amount of time you’ll know we usually focus on business fundamentals over tech, but Gusto was an exception to the rule. At Poe Group Advisors, we switched to Gusto for our payroll this summer and it’s incredibly easy to use. I haven’t been this excited about a software in a long time. It’s one of those companies where after you integrate it you sit there...

It’s no coincidence that niche rhymes with rich. Brandon Hall is the CEO of the Real Estate CPA. His company provides advisory, accounting and tax services to real estate investors. Brandon is also a CPA and a national speaker. Listen in about how he built his fast-growing, highly focused CPA firm, and his unique insights into the world of accounting and real estate. If you have been thinking abou...

Recruiting and retaining accounting talent is one of the most challenging and impactful responsibilities for CPA practice owners, so you don’t want to miss this one. Mark Goldman is the founder of MGR Accounting Recruiters in San Antonio, Texas. He has over 20 years of accounting experience and has served on the board of directors for the Texas Society of CPAs, the San Antonio Chapter of TSCPA, an...

Wayne is the founder of both The Back Room , and Findlay & Co Chartered Accountants in New Zealand. Wayne transformed (and sold) his local accounting firm to go on to build a global business for Accountants by creating incredible processes and cutting-edge methods to increasing capacity. This is one you don’t want to miss!

We have a very special guest on our podcast today. Alan Miltz is a co-author of the global best-selling book – Scaling Up by Verne Harnish. Alan is a renowned author and speaker who is dedicated to helping companies scale up their profits. His techniques and Optimist software have become a global standard and are used by 500 Global Banks and 30,000 businesses! The common theme in Alan’s business i...

Daniel Moshe is a successful entrepreneur and renowned speaker. Daniel founded Tech Guru out of his dorm room during his freshman year of college! Fast-forward to today, and Tech Guru has grown into a successful nationwide firm specializing in IT services ONLY for accounting firms. They are currently in “growth mode” with the increased need for remote systems.

Carrie and Sean have some great insights to the process of owning, hiring, training, and working remotely in a virtual world that may be new to many. They were the owners of Gnarlybooks.ca and managed a team of 14 remotely throughout Canada. They operated a full-service cloud-based bookkeeping and accounting firm with the fundamental concept of ‘Helping More’. With this belief, all decisions, oper...

Please join us for an enlightening and light-hearted podcast with Peter Margaritis. Peter is also known as “The Accidental Accountant.” He is a CPA, author, podcast host, world renowned speaker and “Chief EDUtainment Officer.” Listen in to learn how you can incorporate improv with your business. It is especially useful when you need to get the creative ideas from your team out on the table AND tig...

This podcast is definitely worth your time especially now as tax season is ramping up! Ed gives some great advice for streamlining and saving time during tax season. We recorded this podcast with Ed Mendlowitz in January of this year. This podcast episode was full of so many great tax season tips, we decided to share again. It will help you get ready for any tax season! Ed brings a ton of experien...

Brannon recently had the pleasure of being a guest on David Spray’s IC-DISC show podcast. Listen in for a candid recap about ideal clients, accounting practice values, financing of accounting practices, and the biggest misconceptions about buying and selling accounting practices.

Did you know that currently in the U.S., only about 10% of firms are cloud-based; whereas in Australia and New Zealand the rate is around 50%? Also, did you know that cloud firms typically sell for much higher multiples than traditional firms? Why is that? Listen in on Brannon’s conversation with Ben Richmond, who is the Vice President of Business Growth for the accounting software company Xero to...

This week, Brannon sat down with Anna Liotta for a podcast you DO NOT want to miss! This isn’t your typical accounting podcast, as they discuss generational differences in the workplace and the importance of understanding them to run a successful company. No wonder Fortune 500 companies keep bringing Anna back to talk about generational codes and the large impact they make on a business’ success!

If you are thinking about modernizing your firm, you don’t want to miss this podcast. Brannon recently sat down with Tate Henshaw to discuss the ins and outs of transitioning a traditional firm over to a cloud-based firm. Tate led the charge transitioning Polay+Clark from server to cloud, which led to his current position at Xero as a local ambassador in the Atlanta area, sharing insights from his...

Blake Oliver is our latest guest to sit down for a conversation with Brannon. Blake is an entrepreneur, accountant, writer and speaker who specializes in cloud accounting technology. He is the Director of Product Marketing for FloQast. In 2016 and 2017, he was named a “40 Under 40” in the accounting profession by CPA Practice Advisor. I had the pleasure of meeting Blake and David at a CalCPA event...

Jason Ding is our latest guest to sit down for a conversation with Brannon. Jason is a young practice owner who purchased his CPA firm in the Vancouver, BC area through Poe Group Advisors in 2018. Jason is the proud owner of Jason Ding, CPA Inc., which provides accounting, tax and consulting services. What’s really interesting about his story is just how he’s grown his CPA firm since purchasing. H...

Many of you we presume are already familiar with Ron Baker because he truly is a trailblazer in the accounting industry. If this if your first time hearing Ron speak, then you are in a for a real treat! Ron is essentially the father of “value-pricing” in the accounting world. We could not be more excited to share his and Brannon’s conversation with you. In 1989 he first began switching from chargi...