Getting SALTy with Sabrina Parris

Hello and welcome to the Big Four Transparency podcast. I'm joined today by Sabrina Paris, as many of you might know her, Sabrina the Salty CPA and the president at Honeycomb State Tax Strategies. Thank you for joining the pod, Sabrina. Thank you for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. So I've been following you for quite a while, I assume probably a lot of these listeners will probably be familiar with your Twitter. It's hard to avoid on tax Twitter. In a good way, absolutely. But I'm very curious to kind of hear your journey to where you are today. Because in conversation earlier, we were talking about how your new kind of salt practice is actually like very, very recent. And so yeah, I'm kind of curious about just kind of the general story of how you got to where you are today. Yeah, so I majored in accounting in college, I did a Big Four tax internship, I actually did two summer internships in the tax department. My first one was my junior year, and most of their internships are the summer between senior year and your Mac year. And so I got to intern twice. And then I went to graduate school, came back full time, got recruited into the salt practice at a Big Four firm, same one where I interned, and worked there a few years. I worked a year in industry, I got married and moved and worked at a couple of small firms locally. And then I started my own tax practice in 2018. Worked with a lot of small business owners, did some fractional controller work. I sold that firm in December of 2023. So five months ago. And I have since started Honeycomb State Tax Strategies, which is a consulting practice where I contract directly with other tax professionals to help them tackle state and local taxes. Awesome. Thank you. And you kind of mentioned that after swapping over to the multistate tax group during your time in Big Four, that's where you started to like really enjoy what you did. And that was like a major turning point for you. And I'm really curious to know, like, what is it about kind of salt practice specifically that you love? So I mean, I think a lot of the reason that a lot of us are drawn to tax is it's always fresh and new. I feel like lately, though, like the IRS changes are fresh and new in a way that's very exhausting. And I'm sure the state changes are very exhausting to everyone else, too. But honestly, that really energizes me. I see it as an opportunity. I feel like, you know, just since the pandemic and even before, people were allowing their employees to work remotely. People were expanding operations in other states. And so really, it's kind of opened up that whole world to a lot of very small businesses who weren't really having to think about state and local tax issues before. OK, that's interesting. And so you were kind of interested in that. And then when you launched your own firm, ultimately, that's not necessarily what you specialized in. Is that because it felt like a little bit too much of a niche? A little bit of that and a little bit of imposter syndrome. I really felt like when I moved away from Charlotte, like I felt like nobody needed me anymore. I felt like the salt specialty that I was doing at Deloitte just really like didn't translate well to a town of 40,000 with a lot of manufacturing. And I wasn't really ready at that point to think outside the box. And then, you know, down the road when I started my own firm, I still wasn't ready to think outside the box. I was thinking, you know, catering to the local businesses and working with small businesses, helping them solve their problems as opposed to businesses that were expanding in other states. It really kind of took me a while. I really blame it on imposter syndrome. It took me a while to kind of get over that and realize what an important niche it was and how useful it was to so many people. And now to be able to kind of make that salt practice work, like do you find yourself still very kind of local or have you really branched out, you know, with like sort of more remote management of clients? It's a lot more remote. And honestly, I think, you know, everything, everything happens on its own timeline. My network of other tax professionals from Twitter, from conferences is so huge now. That's really the biggest source of my business. So they're all over the U.S. and Canada and really connect me to those those taxpayers who are having these issues. And so when you actually kind of mentioned your, you know, kind of like business development network, I'm curious to know, like, is that very different when your clientele are businesses directly versus when your clientele are probably mostly other firms and other practitioners? Like what does the shift in strategies look like when you started serving other firms and practitioners versus businesses directly? Yeah, I'm starting to, you know, this is so new. This practice is so new that I'm still kind of exploring what that looks like. But one thing that's been a huge positive is that I feel like other tax professionals really have a deep appreciation for what I'm doing. I think, you know, you go on Twitter and you see complaining. A lot of the complaining is rooted in in taxpayers not seeing the value in the services we provide. And by direct working directly with other tax professionals, I know they already see that value. Yeah. Yeah, I'm surprised there aren't kind of more niche providers that have gained scale or maybe that I'm just not like aware of. Like I know there's Trimerit, for example, but like I know when I worked in tax, like I was working at a big four firm. We had kind of like all the resources, but I would still get stuck with like this file that was way out of my wheelhouse. You know, I just blow the budget to the moon. Like it was it was awful every time. And I always thought that I was like, this makes absolutely no sense that like these things are coming to me. Meanwhile, there's like a backlog of all these other projects that I would be very, very effective on. But I can't do those because I'm too busy, you know, billing five times as many hours as I should on this farming client or whatever. Right. Like I think I think it's a very natural evolution of business. So I'm happy to see that that's kind of working out. Yeah, I agree. Has it been a lot easier kind of now this being essentially your second time around, like what are some things that you're doing differently now in your first six months of the new practice versus the last one? The biggest thing I learned about my firm that I was running for five or six years is the importance of setting boundaries and setting them early. I'm also in a position where, you know, I think when I started my last firm. It was just so exciting to get new clients, it wasn't I wasn't necessarily putting as much effort into making sure they were the perfect fit, let alone like, are they a good fit now or will they be a good fit long term? Whereas I'm in a cash position now where I can really think about those things, be very particular about the work I'm doing and be very insistent that, you know, this is the kind of work that I want to be doing going forward. And if it's not this work, then, you know, I'm probably not the tax professional for you. OK, interesting. And what are your goals with this new firm? Like, are you hoping to be able to scale it really long term or are you kind of just seeing where things go sort of one day at a time? And I'm curious if you are looking to scale long term, like what are some some decisions you're making now to allow that? I think about that a lot because ultimately, you know, a lot of what I enjoy is the actual practice management and building and strategizing around the business. Whereas the work I'm doing now is very technical and I'm I'm the brain, I'm the only technical person here. So I am kind of thinking about what I want to do long term and how this could be scalable if I want it to be scalable. I would say in the short term, you know, the next two to three years, I'm really building a lifestyle practice. Right. I want something that I can, you know, be around for my 12 year old daughter and go to all her orchestra concerts and and pick her up from school and and a lot of the things that maybe I necessarily wasn't necessarily doing earlier in my career when I had less control over my time. So the short term goal is really like, I don't want this to be like a huge thing. A time suck, you know, my last firm really became when I let it grow organically, it kind of became a monster that I didn't have control over anymore. And I didn't have control over my schedule anymore. It was like all the things I went out on my own for, like we're kind of going away because I let it grow organically instead of being very intentional. So I think I'm going to go in one or two directions in the long term, either maintain this as sort of a lifestyle business or scale it in a way that I can completely step out of the technical factor. And I'm kind of trying to wrap my brain around what that would look like. Right. So like when I was at Deloitte in multi-state, we had this directory we would go, we would meet the other like people at the other offices in training. So it was like if I had a question about Arkansas, it's like, oh, I know that guy in the Memphis office or the Little Rock office. I'm going to give him a call and ask him about this weird thing. And when you're doing it on your own for 50 states, obviously I can't be an expert in every everything of every state. So what would it look like if I built sort of a network of other professionals like me who enjoy the work, have the expertise, but like have those experts all over the country so we really gain that kind of collective knowledge? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really like one of the superpowers of like those large firms while there's a lot of like gripes and I have my opinions about how a lot of things are run there. But like one of the big advantages, it's like, yeah, you need that. Like, we'll take care of that internally. No worries. We've got someone for you. Right. So, you know, me being from Ottawa, like one of our biggest successes here is Shopify. And like their their slogan is basically they're arming the rebels. Right. So they're they're they're making like. E-commerce accessible and, you know, something that can be scaled massively for all these kind of independent practitioners, and it kind of seems like your mission, if you were to do that, would kind of be the same thing, but just for tax practitioners rather than like people in e-commerce. Right. And I think that's like a really, really powerful like business model and value proposition to the people involved. I'm sure very hard to pull off, but I'm I'm rooting you on. I hope that that works out. Thanks. I think, you know, whatever it looks like, it's not going to look like anything that currently exists. So I'm going to have to get really creative and and hopefully kind of, you know, navigate that over the years. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying having sort of a lifestyle practice. Yeah, yeah. And so in the meantime, as well, like you mentioned imposter syndrome earlier on, but you also kind of have to be the one to make those like real decisions from a tax perspective for your clients. How do you overcome that? Because I'm not someone who, you know, people are going to roll their eyes at the white male, but like I'm not someone who like typically suffers from imposter syndrome very much, but but I do have trouble giving like a definitive tax answer. And maybe some of that is just like a lack of technical know-how. But like when things are evolving quickly, sometimes there seems to be a little bit more nuance that gets introduced into these things. And I have trouble with that from like a tax perspective. So, yeah, I'm curious how you get yourself to kind of that confidence level to be able to as an independent person, just say like, yep, here it is, especially when it starts to become kind of like some larger numbers at play. Sure. Well, I think there's kind of two parts to this, and one is the tax technical knowledge. I think, honestly, clients and other practitioners will have a lot of respect for you if you say, I don't know, but I know how to find the answer. And so I think a lot of it is really like, what do you know and what do you have the skills to find out? Right. And so really. I think with that, it kind of cuts down on the risk of giving bad advice. I mean, obviously, none of us want to give give bad advice. So I think it's really a matter of just being forthright with what you do know and what you don't know and what you can find out. The second piece of that is just like imposter syndrome as a whole. And it's funny you mentioned that. I know Logan Graff tweeted yesterday about a 23 year old buying a practice and that got a lot of heat. And I think about, you know, what what would a 23 year old man do? You know, I feel like I see a lot of people with a lot less technical knowledge than me like really trying to do some heavy lifting. And, you know, with PE firms, I mean, these are people that don't know anything about our industry, but they want to buy tax practices. It really kind of helps put the imposter syndrome into perspective in terms of like what my expertise is, what my background is, my education, all the experience that's led me to this point. No matter what insecurities I have, I'm still light years ahead of people who are also doing very big things. Yeah. Yeah. It's terrifying to see with how much confidence people on TikTok will just give you like, you know, the worst advice. Brandon Hall has been like all over that. And he had posted one recently where it was like, you know, the graph of like how much effort this is versus how much in savings it is. And I was like, honestly, you need a third dimension, which is like how much jail time you're going to do if you follow this TikToker's advice. Like it's it's insane that the people out there like content creation has gotten completely out of hand in terms of like where they're overstepping into. Like you can't just be some person just throwing around tax advice like that. It's horrible. But yeah, I was I was watching TikToks on like a completely different topic. It was like psychology type stuff. And I was sitting there thinking like everything she says could be complete BS, but it's the confidence in what she's saying it that I believe it. And then I'm like, that's it. That's why all these tax TikTokers, they just come in and say things with just like the utmost confidence. And it can be just complete and utter nonsense. Yeah. Yeah. I think there is such a thing as like when you start to know a little, you realize like how little you actually know. Right. Like I think that that's very common. Whereas if you're just in complete ignorance, like, yeah, sure. No problem. It's very simple. So right. Oh, terrifying. Yeah. Terrifying. OK, sorry. We went down a little bit of a rabbit hole here. But I'm I'm one of the things I'm very curious about is sort of how have you built up this network that you have? Like, have you been very intentional about building up this network kind of on Twitter or has it just been like you're going to share your thoughts regardless? And people have happened to resonate, you know, with it, because I know a lot of young people who are who see the success other people get from building these audiences and building these communities and want to replicate it. And I'm kind of curious if there's any like little nuggets of wisdom in there. So I never set out to have a huge Twitter following. I you know, my screen name is Ira Gilligan. It's the accountant from Arrested Development. I started off anonymous and I was trying to be anonymous for years. I want to say it was 2015 or 2016. I made the Forbes list of 100 tax Twitter accounts to follow. And I was shook because at the time, like my account was completely anonymous. Like I was not not talking about running a firm. I still work somewhere. I like didn't want my employer to like see this Twitter. And, you know, from there it started growing. But I really feel like once I started my own firm is when it really expanded. And it was never again, it was never my intention to have 13,000 followers. It was more just saying things that I think really resonated with a lot of people. And I think that's the thing a lot of people miss. You know, if you set out to have a huge following on whatever your social media platform is, it's really the authenticity, because if you don't have that authenticity, nobody's interested. If people feel like you're selling to them, they're not interested. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And when that first kind of went public, when they first kind of exposed your identity, did that cause any problems for you? Or was that all in your head that that would be an issue? It was all in my head. And my former employer, she follows me on Twitter and we interact from time to time. And I don't think she really would have cared at the time or now. So not really a big deal. Do a lot of your clients follow you on Twitter? Like, do a lot of them find you from there? No. Well, OK, let's this is a two part question, too. So with my old firm, absolutely not. I mean, my Twitter, I tried to make it very clear that like, this is my space to be very authentic and raw, particularly with other tax professionals. Like, I'm not here dispensing tax advice for potential clients. But now, now that I get most of my client referrals from other professionals. I think, you know, the dynamics slightly different, I do want to kind of maintain that authenticity just because, I mean, I think it's really important for people to be authentic. I felt like and I don't know if you ever felt like this, but particularly when I was in the big four, I felt like I couldn't be myself. I felt like I had to be a very buttoned up version of myself and that the real me was, you know, too much Southern accent and too many ear piercings and and, you know, too much cleavage showing and like everything I did that was authentic to me was incorrect. And so I think a big part of the pipeline issue is, is this stereotype that we've that we've like worked so hard to create this caricature of like the buttoned up accountant that's not appealing to young people. Right. And so I think part of the pipeline issue is going to be letting young people know that you can show up to work authentically and still be an outstanding tax professional. And I went down kind of a rabbit hole there on that to say. I love that. That's a different it's like a unique take. Not a lot of people, at least in conversations with me, have have really gone that direction in terms of like the talent pipeline. And I think you're right. Like, I think there is an image issue is like in every movie, in every book, like the accountant is like super lame. Or now there's like random movies where the accountant is like a trained assassin. But like there's no there's no representation of like just like a normal, fun accountant. Like they're always like crazy, super boring. Like, you know, so I do think there is an image issue there. And it's nice to see people like, you know, yourself, Yuri, like Roman, like there's a lot of people who are like really kind of breaking that mold. Which is super nice to see. Yeah, I didn't I didn't really adhere to the buttoned up thing super well in office. Like, I mean, I dress I dressed up and stuff. And I noticed it definitely made my journey very, very turbulent because I was being very like authentically me. And I continue to like I've always done that at work. And like it creates huge wins and then like huge problems. Yeah. And it's kind of like just this cycle. Right. So like in Big Four specifically, like I was getting sent to all the conferences as like an intern because I worked a lot in nightlife. Like I just did well in that scene. You know, at one point, like I wandered off and like they found me later and I was playing pool with like the CEO of this Target company that we wanted to get. Right. So that got me really far. And that was really good. And like, you know, I drink a lot at these events and whatever. And that actually like strangely did really well and kind of had people identified as like, oh, he's got promise for business development. But then I think in the office, like there was kind of like the click of seniors ahead of me that like were really not fans of me. And like I think that really made like work life very difficult because there's just a lot of friction where there should be. Right. So it's been really ups and downs in terms of like my experience of just kind of like being yourself in the firm. Like, yeah, it created a ton of wins, but then a lot of friction in places where there shouldn't be. Right. So, yeah, that was my experience as well, particularly with the friction. And you mentioned, you know, getting sent to the conferences. My first conference I was sent to is a multi-state pro. So you may remember like people getting in trouble for there was a lot of alcohol at these conferences. Right. I mean, it doesn't matter what office you're coming from. There was a lot of free booze. And, you know, it was made very clear that like if you're going to have fun, like you need to clean up, sober up, shower and be ready to roll at 8 a.m. for your classes because the company spent a lot of money for you to be here. And, you know, people would sometimes get in trouble for partying too hard and being hungover and oversleeping and missing class. Well, like I took this aspect very seriously. I mean, I appreciated that they were investing this into me. Right. And like sending me to this training, particularly since I was new at multi-state learning, I really saw the importance of being in the classroom and meeting people and learning. Right. And so I was there every morning at 8 a.m. But when I got back to my office, the managing partner called me to his office. And was like, Sabrina, you got this award for being like one of the top 10 outstanding participants. And he was kind of joking with me. He was like, was there another Sabrina there? I was like, no, it was me. I was there every morning, like ready to learn. That's funny. Yeah. Those trainings are a lot of fun. Like they are. Yeah. We all got shipped to like another city and like everyone from like Canada would like they'd get all the like analyst classes in and like you'd all be there. And it was it was honestly like really a highlight moment of my time at Deloitte. And I know like there's a KPMG lake house and stuff like that. And I would really, really, really urge people like make the most of that. Like, you know, don't end up on the news. Don't be crazy, but like do make the most of that and try to make those like real genuine connections at those places, because there's people that I'm like still in touch with. And that like becomes really powerful sort of later in life as it compounds when you make those like real genuine connections. Like if I ever was in a pinch and needed a job like I bet I could get one in two weeks. Right. Because you just you have enough people who are willing to kind of pick up a phone for you. And that that starts right away in your career is just like go meet people and try to have fun again. Don't don't overdo it, but like meet people and try to have a good time. That goes a really long way. It really does. And I wish I think, you know, I was there making the connections, but I wish I'd continued nurturing those connections after I left the big four. That's that's probably one of my biggest regrets from those days. But you live and learn. And I think I do better now. So, yeah. Slightly selfish question, because I'm really curious to know. But I feel like you talk about like conferences and like travel for like work quite a bit. And I'm very curious to know, like, do you have any favorite conferences that you would recommend for? like accounting professionals, like if you can only pick like two or three conferences? Man, that's, yeah, I do have I do pick favorites. Um, I really, you know, this is a ICP I did not pay me to say this, but a ICP engage is probably one of my favorites. From the first time I went, I mean, again, it's like making those connections and meeting people. And I feel like the knowledge being shared at that conference is is really next level. I think they do a really good job of figuring out like, what are kind of like the newest, latest and greatest things that we need to be talking about, for like, really the top 10% of the profession, like, who's having these conversations? And, and what are they about? Like, they're kind of on the cutting edge of everything, honestly. Um, and then QuickBooks Connect, honestly, like, I think that's a really good one to particularly like, if you're not a CPA, maybe if you're an enrolled agent, or you run a bookkeeping practice, or you have some other role, like maybe I think that would be a really good one to send staff to if you have a team and you have the budget for that. Um, because there's a lot of like, a lot of good conversations happening there too. And a lot of a lot of like, really good people to connect with. Okay, interesting. Not me going to neither of those two this year. But anyways, that's okay. I I'll keep that in mind for next year. I was actually really surprised I was looking at a CPA engage. And I was like, Oh, like, just for fun, like, I wonder what it'd be like to do a booth. And it was a lot cheaper than I thought. So it was like, it was a lot like more accessible than I thought. So far, I'm only enrolled for bridging the gap. I've heard so many good things about bridging the gap. I think that may be one that I add to my list, but I've never been. Yeah, yeah, I spoke with Randy about it on here as well. And it seems like a little bit of like more of like an intimate thing. I think there's maybe gonna be like 300 people. I think it's like, a lot of like firm leaders and stuff like that. And so it's a bit of a different vibe, like maybe less for like a student, but I do know some students going. So you know, I, I think I think it depends on what your own kind of like area of interest is. But I'm looking forward to that one as well. But yeah, I'm gonna have to look into engage a little bit more. Yeah, I haven't heard a ton about it. And then yeah, before letting you go, I have one question I kind of like to ask everyone. So what would your advice be for kind of like a new fresh professional entering the profession or someone who's like considering either becoming a CPA or just like an accounting professional in general? Yeah, what would you advise them to kind of like make the best out of the profession be able to kind of like have a happy career? So the cool thing about being young, or, you know, if it's a second career, like new to the profession, people are very eager to talk to you. And so I would recommend taking advantage of that time in your career to reach out to professionals like, you know, connect with people on LinkedIn and tell them, hey, I'm new in the profession, like just looking for people to connect with, find a mentor, find several mentors, and really be proactive from day one. I think when you feel like you're a cog in the wheel, it's really easy to just kind of come in and get the job done and get out. But I think you really need to take your early years in the profession as an opportunity to really take ownership, whether it's ownership over the the client deliverable or ownership over your career progression. I think if you do that, like people definitely notice, and I think you're going to get a lot more out of those early years and progress faster and with less friction than you and I experienced. If you really like put it all into kind of taking ownership. Interesting. I love that. And yeah, there's a couple like examples of people doing it really well. Like there's Chayton. I'm sure you've come across him. He's inevitable online. Zach Bebo. There's a couple people kind of in the profession who are students or like analyst level people and are like really, really, really kind of making their presence known. And it's just by like sharing their enthusiasm about what's going on and sharing their enthusiasm about the profession. And I think that the accounting profession is so lacking of that, that that goes such a long way because it really, really, really stands out. And so these people like are building connections that I think will serve them for the rest of their careers just because of kind of that extra little push they're putting in now. So I think that's awesome advice. Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you very much, Sabrina, for joining the podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time. It's been really nice getting to know you firsthand. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.