Rhythm and Returns: Unleashing Passive Profits and Raps with Scott Scarano

In episode four of the Big Four Transparency podcast, we're joined by Scott Scorano, president of Padgett North Carolina and founder of Accounting High. Scott breaks the mold of what you picture when talking about an accounting professional. He may own his own firm doing roughly $2 million in annual revenue, but he has implemented EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system, to the firm and has been able to step back almost entirely and focus on more creative pursuits in life. Scott is passionate about rap music, psychedelics, and teaching people how to have the success he's had in balancing growth and lifestyle in the world of accounting. One of the initiatives, Accounting High Runs, is an annual bracket challenge where people vote on their favorite things in accounting. If you could take just two minutes to go vote for Big Four Transparency, that would be hugely appreciated. It'll be linked in the show notes, or you can go to abc.accountinghigh.com to do so. This episode is also sponsored by Pluvo by Rain Technologies. Pluvo is a one-stop shop for business owners and decision makers to plan, strategize, and project their finances with unparalleled efficiency. Pluvo integrates directly with QBO, offering you a smoother process and includes a suite of FP&A tools supporting forecasting, scenario planning, and financial reporting. Reduce the amount of time you're spending on manual tasks and focus on strategic decision making instead. Pluvo is a great addition to your firm if you're looking to step up your game in virtual CFO services with clients as well. Check them out in this episode's show notes, and I hope you enjoy the episode. Hello, and welcome to the Big Four Transparency podcast. I'm joined today by Scott Scarano, who is the founder and president of Paget, a roughly $2 million per year accounting firm, as well as the rapping custodian of Accounting High, which we're going to talk about a little bit more later. Welcome to the Big Four Transparency pod, Scott. Dope, man. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, my pleasure. You are a very interesting person in the space online. It is really cool to hear someone kind of bring in their whole selves into their social media personality and what they share, where you're like, yeah, I'm an accountant, I deal with that stuff. I'm really into this, but also a huge hip hop enthusiast. Also have a lot of other interests, and you've got some awesome projects going with Accounting High that I hope more of the listeners start to follow. You've got some awesome stuff there. Dope, dope. Yeah. Thanks, man. Appreciate you noticing. I'm pretty loud out there sometimes, depending on if I have something to talk about. Right now, we're brewing up to be the new tournament. The second year we're doing the big tournament at Accounting High, so the Accounting Bracket Challenge. I believe that might have been how you had noticed the stuff that we're doing. I did, yeah. We've got sports, we've got music, we've got everything but education at Accounting High, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. So for those who are not familiar, yeah, Accounting High runs a annual bracket all about your favorite software, your favorite podcaster. So I might be asking the audience a little bit for some nominations, both for the tools at BigFour Transparency, maybe for this podcast if we're live by then. But I think it's a brilliant growth and marketing strategy, first of all. You've really gotten that out there and at the same time, you give appreciation to other people in the industry and it's a good time to celebrate, right? And it's right in awards season, which is fun. In sports season, too. It's supposed to be off of the NCAA tournament. Yeah. True. Going into March Madness. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. And for us, it is just a way to showcase and highlight everybody that makes an impact in the profession and for the profession. So that's what we ask for when it's nomination phase is what are the five things in the accounting space that have impacted you? And so we opened it up to anything in that two months that we were collecting nominations and we got thousands of different things nominated and the ones that got the most votes is the ones that made it into the tournament. So it's sort of like the regular season. So when that's open, I think it's abc.accountinghigh.com or something like that. When that's open, you can go in there and nominate if it's before the tournament starts and you can nominate the five top things. Be sure to nominate Big Four Transparency for sure. Yeah. And it brings a lot of positivity to the space too, right? There's a lot of the conversations are always around like, oh, what are the problems in the accounting industry? And I'm going to ask some questions like that too, but it is nice to just have a moment of like, it's not all the problems that are in accounting. It's hey, what are some of the best things that are going on? So that's all I want to do with the extracurriculars in my life is just make, have some fun, make fun and make fun. You can make fun by making fun of stuff or make fun by actually making fun. So instead of poking fun at everything, why not just have some fun? Actually, most of my raps, I'm poking fun at stuff and making jokes and things like that. Yeah. I've listened to a few in the interim. We've got some good stuff out there. So before we jump kind of deeper into what you're working on with Accounting High, why don't you tell us about your kind of current situation with like the accounting firm and what most of your time is spent doing these days? Because I think, again, you're very unique in where you stand compared to a lot of the people I'm speaking to where you've managed to kind of step back a little bit and make this firm work for you. So why don't we talk about that a little bit? Yeah, it is fairly unique. So I hear like what all I did was set out to do what I thought was possible when using EOS the right way. If you're familiar with the book Traction, Geno Wakeman, there's a system, entrepreneurial operating system, EOS, and we started doing that approximately seven years now, eight years ago maybe. When we started doing that, I saw, oh, wow. So there's somebody at the top there. There's what's called the accountability chart. And in one of the examples, it's like there's the visionary at the top that can just be kind of the CEO type, running the firm. But our current situation when I saw that map was a mess. I was everywhere. I was in the firm. I was attached to everything. So it took us a long time for me to be able to get to sit in that seat where right now I'm almost the chairman of the board. Now I'm past even being the CEO. The firm is just actually running without me, and now I'm left with a lot of free time. So it was a lot of steps, a lot of phases to get there, and we can probably touch on some of the details and not to eat up too much time with this little intro. But I got a firm that is working for me, with me, and they're happier. My team's happier than they ever have been because I'm not there. The stress that I caused and the things that I wanted to do, because I want to grow. I want to grow things. I want to build and continue growing. We grew at a very rapid pace while I was at the firm. Then we hit a point where I hit a point where the growth was enough, and everybody was exhausted. Everybody was tired. This is definitely during COVID days. I got stuck in Mexico, and that's what really separated me from the firm and separated my mind from being inside of all that. It was like early days, COVID. Not necessarily stuck. I could have came back, but it was better there than it was here. That was the long and short of it. I got separated from the firm, and then I realized, they realized too, they were better without me. That made me feel bad at first. I felt bad that they didn't need me. I thought, what's my purpose? Then I started doing a podcast, and then one thing led to another podcast led to me wanting to do raps. I started rapping, and then I made a lot of friends while doing the podcast, and I met a whole ton of great people in the profession. It just made me appreciate what brought me there too, and I kept doing it. Now we do this tournament, and that's like showing tribute to everything and everybody that's made it a part of what it is today because accounting is still cool. A lot of people talk about accounting on the outside because, oh, everybody's leaving, the pipeline problem, this and that, but the ones that have been in it and that are still in it, accounting hasn't changed. It's always been the same, but it's the people that make it dope. Yeah, I've met a lot of great people along the way as well. Launching this podcast has amplified that even beyond, I'm like, wow, there's such cool people in this space, so I encourage people to try to make those connections, even just other people at your office. Everyone's got something going on, and yeah, accountants can be really cool people, absolutely. With that, what made you want to start your own firm? What were those early days like as an accountant? I imagine you didn't start right away independently, and what are the tips you would give for someone who wants to do the same? I didn't have that much of a choice. My grandfather was a CPA, and he had a CPA firm up in New York. My dad was a CPA when he was up there, and then he still works with accounting and accountants, so it was in my blood, basically. My dad had a software company. My grandfather was a CPA, so I didn't really have a choice. As much as I wanted to go into entertainment and do all kinds of fun stuff when I was younger, I also got arrested when I was younger as well. That really narrowed down my options, so one, accounting was in the blood. That's what I went to school with in the first place before I got arrested, and then I changed my major. Then I went back to accounting, and it was safe. It was stable, and I was able to get a job at a couple different firms, and I got fired from a lot of different accounting firms I worked for. I didn't even make it into the big four because I had a felony, so they wouldn't have even hired me, so I can be transparent about my situation, but I don't know much about the big four itself, but I did get hired by other accounting firms. They looked past the felony. It was like a kid mistake is what I'll say. At this point, it is what it is. I can learn from it. I can teach from it, but it made me who I was, and I was able to be a little bit more scrappy. I worked at local CPA firms. Audit, it was just too boring for me. I'd put on my headphones, and I'd get fired for that, or I would do something, and I wouldn't like just different things. I was a defiant one early days, so I had to start my own firm. I really didn't have a choice. I couldn't work for anybody. I did find somebody to manage to work for, and then I ended up buying his firm about five years after I had started, and that's my firm. That's Paget now. Okay. That's Paget. Exactly. I started at Paget. He hired me. Long story of how all that worked, but he gave me the opportunity to grow it, and he was only doing about 90,000 when I started there, so there was a lot of room for growth. It grew pretty fast once I tapped into the cloud, and I tapped into all the potential that the internet, what that can bring to an accounting practice, and it was a fun ride. The whole 2010 to 2020 was dope. It was just all new stuff, all new cloud apps, and new technology, new things, and everything was just getting better and better and better, so lots of fun. Did you go in as a senior or something similar and then turned into, I guess, business development and then firm operations and all that, or what did that evolution look like? Paget's a franchise. I came in, and then he immediately sent me to the headquarters, and I was a pretty young kid. I didn't know what was going on. I remember driving down with my wife and our young kid at the time, and they're teaching me sales from there, and they're teaching me how to grow a business and stuff with the other potential franchisees, I guess. I don't know who was in the class, but they're telling me to go door to door, and I questioned that. I said, but what about online? Why wouldn't we have a website? Why wouldn't we do that? Oh, nobody looks for accountants online. This was like 2010, and so I just left there very confused, and it was just wide open, so we started doing stuff online too. They were doing after-the-fact payroll at a lot of these firms, and that's where you, after the fact, figure out all the payroll taxes and all the calculations, and you pay that quarterly. It was a lot of work, so I saw Zen Payroll, which is now Gusto, and early days I saw Zero as a ledger, and Padgett, they had their proprietary systems, and so I expanded what he was already doing, which worked. There was a lot of stuff that worked at the firm, like functionally, foundationally, the systems, the processes there and all that. That was all good stuff, but then it's just the tools and the tech that created this whole new unlock, and it just burst open at the seams, and I grew really fast from there, from 90,000 to 500,000 within a few years. It wasn't that long, and then we'll go from 500,000 to a million pretty quickly, and then I got stuck at 1.2 million in 2016, and that was my ceiling. I got stuck there, and I just kept getting in the way, but that's the long and short of it. Interesting. We had all different types of apps and tech tools that helped us get there, and we put our sign up in different places, and we just kept getting inbound leads, and I just kept growing and hiring people, and now we have hybrid teams where we've got people in the Philippines and we got people here, and we're fully remote. We don't even have an office, so we've really changed things as we've gone, but I've just learned from my mistakes, every mistake I made along the way. Okay. Interesting. Most of it was via inbound leads. You said you were putting your sign up places, but what was it? Yeah, directories. Software directories. Software directories. Is that the playbook for growth? That's one of our playbooks. It's in our playbook. Software directories, they have their users that look for a new accountant, and Xero was prime because it was typically where a client would go if they didn't want to use QuickBooks or they disliked QuickBooks. They didn't want to work with QuickBooks, so they went to Xero, and then they look in the directory and you've got accountants because their accountant now won't work with them because they're using Xero and the accountant wants to use QuickBooks only, so now they're looking for a new accountant and they're going to the Xero directory with accountants that work with Xero, so we were the minority out there. There wasn't that many of us, especially early days, so we just gobbled up all the Xero clients we could all over the country, all over the world. We had people come to us because they had a foreign entity and they wanted to open up a sales spot in the US, and so we just kept growing and growing through Xero, with Xero. Same thing with Gusto. Same exact thing would happen. People would find us in the Gusto directory, they liked our page, and boom, and we would just land clients one after another, so it was just steady growth over a pretty long period of time. That's awesome. Yeah. The directory is kind of saturated now. I don't pay as much attention to it, but you can still definitely grow from there, but it's just not as rapid as it once was. Yeah. So, I mean, keeping up with what was new in the accounting world really probably made a huge difference for you, right? Being in the Intuit directory, I'm sure, was probably way more crowded at the time. Yeah. Intuit was too crowded and I didn't want to compete. We could have put a sign up on there, but I also grew up in a house that was in a way anti-Intuit. My parents were developing software for non-profits and their software was a competitor to Intuit, but I loved Xero. From the first moment I saw it, it was just like, and the only reason I'm talking about it is because I still got the thing above my head. I was going to say, you got the thing above your head probably coincidentally, you got the matching hat. Yeah, it's not even, this is a Rick and Morty hat. I had it on for another episode I was recording earlier. So maybe it's subconscious that I'm talking about that, but I always say Xero is like my ground zero for what I'm doing now too. So Xero helped build the community around me in the cloud accounting world. That's how I met a lot of the first people that I had on my podcast and that's how I met a lot of the people I know now today was being on Xero's partner directory and that was a pretty big deal. I applied for it and wow, I was picked and they flew me out to San Francisco, then they flew me out to San Diego and it was just a great time, especially for an accountant who I was just running my business. I didn't know that much. I didn't know that many people. So that was a pretty dope experience and I just kept wanting to recreate that. So we started like all getting together outside of Xero's ex-pack and we started like having little gatherings all across the country. We met up in Santa Barbara, Arizona, Nashville, Utah. So I plan on hosting some of these retreats eventually at Accounting High, so stay tuned for some of that. That'll be pretty dope. We might be doing some retreats in Costa Rica soon. Yeah, I want us to talk some more about that in a bit here. So talking a little bit about you, before we, as a primer for those retreats that we're going to talk about here, you are not the typical stereotype of an accountant for sure. And I think the stereotype is wrong, but you're very public about your persona. You're super into hip hop, psychedelics. You've just got like a really laid back vibe and attitude, which contrasts with kind of the accounting profession, which tends to have these like high stress environments. So I'm curious, like how'd this come to be? And if you were this way throughout your journey, like how did having that kind of attitude towards it help you as you went along? Yeah, so one of my favorite rap groups is OutKast. They were always the different ones, the OutKast, like especially their dynamic in hip hop and how different they were. Now, the sound of hip hop is OutKast. They changed the world, but that was my first rap I did too. But I always saw myself as the OutKast in any situation I was in. I was the different one. I was the odd one. I was the one that was like either garnering the attention for a good reason or a bad reason. But a lot of times it was good. I was positive attention, things like that. So whatever it was, I was the odd one. And a lot of times I thought that was a bad thing. So growing up, most of the time I wanted to try to fit in. I remember being at my core, like I would get in trouble for being as different as I was. It would always lead to a result of getting into trouble. And everybody's so serious and I'm the one who's like, you know, trying to make jokes and have fun. And I'd always get into trouble, so I was associated with that. And then it led to me getting into some big trouble when I was in college. That's when I got arrested. But I still see that everywhere I go, but now I'm able to navigate it a lot better. I understand that I'm different and that's okay, but everybody's different. That's what I also know too, is most people don't show how different they are because they hold it in, because they want to conform, because they want to be like everybody else, because they want to be accepted, because they don't want to be left alone. Everybody wants to be alone. So I understand I'm not going to be alone even though I'm different, but that was always the reason why I had to wear the polo and play golf and be the person that you're supposed to be, the accountant that you're supposed to be, had short hair and all that stuff. That's because I wanted to fit in. And I realized at one point, I don't even like golf. I'm not good at it. I just play it because that's what I'm supposed to do, all those things. So I just started to realize that over time. And now I don't try to fit in, but that's okay. I still will hang out on the golf course and I'll play, but honestly, I don't really care. I'm just having fun being around everybody. So that's just one example of the things that you had to overcome over time and realize being different's okay. Yeah. And is leaning into that a little bit what, I guess, maybe helped you push towards launching this account or taking over a more entrepreneurial role? I just made a lot of friends and I wanted to talk more and I wanted to have podcasts. So I was like, I went to two different guys and one of them said, we can't curse on it. So I was like, ah, you know what, I want to at least be me 100% if I'm going to do a show. I went to somebody else and he was like, we have to curse on it. We have to be ourselves. And so we started out just being raw and talking about everything, anything we could, stuff that you wouldn't hear on a podcast. And we were saying it on there and we were also talking about how to run successful practices too at the same time. So it was like a pretty dope contrast. And then it kind of evolved over time. But I've learned a lot. I'm not as gratuitous anymore. I don't curse as much because it's not as necessary and it takes away from the impact that you could have in other ways too. So I've started to soften the blow a little bit and then I'll come with the jokes. Usually they're coming in from the side, you don't expect it and then I'll quickly move on to something else before it gets too gratuitous or anything like that. But yes, it's just we're about having fun and as long as I can do that, I got other people around and it's great. Nice. I love that. So with not being involved directly as much in running the firm day to day, what are some of the key characteristics of the people that you've put in charge? They've been friends of mine. The key characteristics is I've been able to get along with a lot of my team and we all hang out anyway outside of just like work work. And they've all been with me for a long time. My operations manager, he's been with me for 13, 14 years and my client success, he's been with me. These are the guys that are running the firm. He's been with me about seven years. So I got somebody that's client facing, that's handling all the client facing stuff that typically closes up sales calls and they're doing sales now too. That was the last thing for me to get out of. My operations manager, he manages the team, he manages the workflow, he manages the software stack and everything. And we have a team of CPAs in the US and we have a team in the Philippines too. And all of this to me is really new to have everything remote and ever since I've been away from the work, I've let them just manage it and it's working and everybody's happy. Nobody seems to be complaining. The only time we had to let a couple of people go at one point during COVID because we overhired. But other than that, we don't have churn, people aren't leaving. Everybody's happy. Everybody's getting their work done. Clients aren't leaving. So maybe a client sells their business here and there or something else happens, but everything seems to be working and I just don't need to grow the firm anymore. I've kind of done what I needed to do or wanted to do there and it's working, it's working for them, it's working for me and it allows me the space and the freedom to do this other stuff. So it seems to be working. It seems to be great. Enough is not something you hear a lot in business, right? So I think it's refreshing that you've gone in with like a target, you know, whatever that exactly looks like. I didn't have a target. No. No. Because I would have kept going like Brandon Hall. I would have kept going and trying to get to 10 million if I knew any better. If I didn't get stuck in Mexico, I would have kept trying to grow and that was probably going to be my next goal is hitting 10 million and or whatever the next goal is after that. And I'm not down in that. That's something that drives people. You know, you need those big goals and you need to do that to keep making a bigger impact and a bigger, bigger impact on the world. And my impact has changed from trying to grow a firm to then trying to grow something else. And I don't know what that is that I'm growing right now, but it's, you know, it's fun and it's exciting. It's different. Yeah. But I see a lot of like a lot of similarities in the way I'm doing this as the way I ran my firm. Okay. If that makes sense. Like I keep getting in the way of certain things and allowing them to happen because I was the one getting in the way. Same thing at the firm. So I see a lot of behavioral patterns and I'm starting to see replications of the stuff I did in the past where I thought I could do everything. And that's just like growing anything from the bottom. Like I thought I was the one who had to touch every tax return and everything and talk to every client, close every sale and do all of this because I thought I was the one who knew best and I had to teach everybody else, but that's not really the case. Everybody's got to learn and everybody can get good at any of that stuff. So that's awesome. I love that. How has like offshore staff worked for you? And then beyond that, I'm also curious to know like how did that get started? Like what does that even look like if you go, okay, cool, I need to consider offshore talent. Like what are your next steps from there? Yeah, we got connected to a great team and it was actually Will Lopez at Gusto that introduced me to Marvin Glang at Double Rule. And that was like the connection right there, working with Double Rule because they just worked with zero clients anyway, it was perfect. So we were able to add more zero back work, you know, anything that extra, extra capacity we needed, we just kind of, they hooked us up. But eventually. we learned, if we hired them full-time and we just started to realize the skill level that they had there compared to the people we were hiring here, we were hiring CPAs here and we were getting much better work over there. The people here, they were just working from home and they were just getting by, doing the bare minimum just to get by and they're younger kids in some ways, they were all like in their 20s, late 20s and it was just like, yeah, they were cool, they were great to hang out with and stuff, but they were not great employees. They didn't want to put much effort in, they wanted everything handed to them, that's just how it is in America these days, I don't know, that's just the impression that I got from a lot of people that I hired. But man, when we hired over in the Philippines, they were just, our team loves the team that we have there now. We have four employees there and they work hard, they care about their job and they care about everything and it's just not expecting things to just be handed to them. So I don't know if this turns into a commentary on just the state of the union these days, but a lot of Americans are spoiled. I think we've been spoiled for a while and I think that it goes a pretty long way when you start comparing that and you start traveling the world and you see how it is in the real world. And also our wages are very inflated here, we have to pay a lot more, it's the cost of living here that's unlike most countries. Same for Canada, I'm up in Canada. That's been a really consistent narrative from people I've heard who are working with people remotely, or like internationally, is that they're super happy with the quality of it and sometimes maybe it's not client-facing directly in a lot of cases, but it seems like there's a ton of gratitude from the other side, right? They're just really, really happy to have this opportunity and they're just very excited about this. And yeah, even if it's much lower than an American wage, they are probably living a super high quality of life compared to what they maybe could have without that role, right? Oh, we're paying them pretty good for where they live and where that dollar goes, it goes a lot further in a lot of these countries too, so it's not like we're going cheap on them either. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right on. I love to hear that, that's awesome. And then with you not being as involved directly, what's kind of the decision been to keep ownership of that firm and kind of keep operating it when you've seen a lot of M&A? Great question. Great question. Honestly, I think I'm tied down because Padgett's a franchise and the people that have been like, oh yeah, I'll buy your firm, but I don't want to be a Padgett. And I'm like, oh, I don't know how that works. I think you have to. I think if I sell it, the owner either has to buy their way out or whatever, so that's going to cut into my price. So it's sort of been in a way like my handicap that has kept me from wanting to grow too much because I'm like, I don't really want to keep paying them royalties. It is what it is. It is what it is. And also it's maybe going to hurt me from trying to sell it too. So in a way, I'm like, eh, I'm good where things are. And I haven't hit a ceiling necessarily, I could still keep growing and all that. That's always something that's in the back of my mind too, like should I dive in and then try to level it up, start offering more? The last straw I had was we were trying to do CFO advisory type stuff and my team of accountants did not want to do that. They don't want to look forward. They do not. Well, they didn't say that out front. We would do training courses with live plan and do other kinds of ways to get them engaged, but it's the uncertainty that gets them. Being able to ask questions is hard. They want to give answers, not ask questions. They want to say, this is what you owe this year. We've been doing taxes primarily too, so a lot of our work is right up for the tax return and we're doing a lot of tax work. So it's different for them to start looking at these things from a different angle. And then I just hit the point where, okay, well then that means I'm the one who has to do this. So the next time I step into my firm, then I'm probably going to be doing those types of things if that's the case, or we figure something out, or I just let it keep going. So to give you the straight up honest answer, if the right offer came around, somebody wanted to buy my firm, I might not be able to say no, because it's also that other form of responsibility that I have that I feel like I'm letting them down by not pushing them to grow more, honestly. They're all happy, but they're comfortable. They're too comfortable. And I feel like if they had another person at the helm that wanted to steer the ship in a way for growth, then he's going to push them to grow. And maybe he pushes some people away and people quit and they leave and they want to go for something easier. That's my dilemma right now, is do I push everybody or am I just feeling guilty because I'm the one who feels like I need to grow? Yeah. I mean, it creates a space for some people, and I'm not saying that's your staff necessarily, but it is good for there to be a space for some people where it doesn't feel like it's up and out, right? I've heard stories on the accounting podcast with Blake Oliver, where they're talking about this person was a senior and they were a superstar, but they wanted to start a family or whatever and then the firm was like, ah, you got to become a manager, you got to become a manager and they didn't want that. So it's interesting. It might be like a place for people who are just kind of happy with that level. And you can make a good life too without necessarily gunning for partner as well, right, in the space. Absolutely. Absolutely. But it's all about what you want to and where you want to grow as a person. And I think right now, I don't feel guilty because my team, they're all growing individually too, you know, having kids and growing families and they don't want that craziness at the office. They don't want to have to have all that stress at the office to come home to, but they like the peace and the quiet. They like tranquility. Like I'm a wartime CEO. I like war. I like craziness. And that was a book that I read. I forgot the title of it, but yeah, it was just like, they were talking about peacetime and wartime CEOs and people that manage in peace really well and everything goes well. Profits are up. We don't have to grow too crazy. I like the craziness. When COVID happened and first happened, I was like fired up. I was like, let's go. All this is new. Nobody knows anything. Let's go for this new adventure. So that fired me up. I was having fun. And then things got quiet again and I'm like, all right, well, let me now have some fun and throw tournaments and make wraps and get on stage. To be on stage is a thrill. I love that stuff. Yeah, that's been great. And that was the first time I ever did it last year. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, so you kind of de facto end up on the other side of this, right? Like private equity has been getting involved in the accounting firms, picking them up and just owning it for cash flows. And now you're kind of de facto, you're that private equity in this situation, right? And you just don't need to be. That I am. And I'm at the point where I'm good with it. My team's good. Everybody's happy. I don't have any resentment or anything like that. So it's my annuity is what somebody else told me. I'm just using that to fuel this. And I still feel like I need to make money with this other stuff too. I don't really know if I care about the sponsorship route with all the things that I'm doing, but that's one way to make money doing it. But also maybe I start doing these retreats and be serious about that or start a community and start to build out something fun with that too or something different. Let's talk about that. Yeah. With Accounting High. So let's dig a little bit into that. You have the podcast there, mentioned wanting to potentially have some sort of like systems like the how to wrap. Let's talk about that. Oh yeah. For sure. Kind of like the other retreats. Like what? Like, yeah. Let's talk about Accounting High a little bit. Like what was the inception? Ah, so the inception. So Accounting High started, I kind of alluded to it earlier, but it started with me and a buddy of mine, Jason Ackerman. He was the one who said, if we do a podcast, we got to be able to say, fuck, we got to curse and sorry for yours. You might want to bleep that out. No sponsors yet. So that was like one of the first conversations. And we still had sponsors and we cursed on the sponsors ads too. We went hard. You should hear the carbon ad that we did. And it was just companies that we were using too. So it was like stuff that we didn't mind because we knew we were paying them enough money and then they paid us for the sponsorship and it was just like, it was kind of like we're helping them out. They're helping us out too. And it was, we were just having fun and I just loved it. I had so much fun and he's got a pretty dope size firm too. Works at his dad's firm. And so we're talking about growing practices and talking in real time. And that's what we were talking about. And that's who we were talking about with our guests and it's just loads of fun. And that was Sons of CPAs. The title came after like the third recording, a third episode. It was just a joke that I said because everybody on was a son of a CPA. So I was making a joke, Sons of Anarchy, Sons of CPAs. So that joke turned into, okay, Sons of CPAs is the title. And then it turned into, that's the middle school years because I figured out what Accounting High was at a conference. So it was one of my first times ever being on stage on a panel at a conference and it was all kinds of cool people there. It was Accounting Web Summit and in San Diego, it was just a great place, great vibe. And I was talking with all these people and it was David Leary, a conversation I had with him. I was looking to rebrand the podcast. I wanted to make it a little more universal because Sons of CPAs was a little too male centered. So I wanted to do something like, and he was like, what about I'm not high on accounting? Because he knows I like to talk about smoking weed and things like that. And that wouldn't, I liked it, but that wasn't it. And the next day I'm standing with a group of people and I'm just like, everybody's talking in conversation and I just say, Accounting High, that's what I said out loud. And they were like, what? And I looked at everybody and I see them all as students at Accounting High. And then I saw it all. I saw a flash of like exactly what it's going to be and what it will be. And I said, it's going to take me four years to get there, but this is it. That's what this is. So I'm building a school and that's why we have the tournament. That's why I do the raps. Everything is around this whole idea of this is a high school and accounting in general is the high school. And so I play on this metaphor over and over again on everything I do, all the imagery and all the discussions that I have. So then everybody else is in on it too now. We have five classes at Accounting High and now we have, we're going to have field trips. That's what the retreats are going to be. And like the tournament is like, you know, so all of it is just playing on those metaphors and having fun with it. But nowhere have we actually been explicit about this is education until we write the book and that's going to be the first textbook at Accounting High. And that's how to rap, how to run a practice, and it's probably going to have a subtitle of how to run a practice without you or, and it'll just be sort of the best, the model ways to run a practice. I don't even know if I'm going to talk about without you because a lot of the people that we're going to be interviewing, the people that are on the, in the book, they're the guest faculty. They're just talking about how they're doing it, the way they're doing it. And right now we have some models. We have some of the best rappers alive now that are running practices in a great way and we can interview them and we've kind of like laid out the foundation of the book. We have, you know, it's probably going to be another year or two before we get the freshman edition out, but you know, well it'll be like the school textbook kind of, and there's no one way of doing things, but we're going to be talking about all the right ways. So that's when our education starts. But now it's just like a fun way to talk about things on the show. And I have the other shows that are on the YouTube channel, so you can check out the YouTube channel. Accounting High TV, and I've been doing music videos all year too, so I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just having fun. That's cool, man. That's refreshing. I, you know, I love to see that. And who is like Accounting High for really? Like who is the person that like needs to go check this out? Yeah. I think it's entrepreneurs in the accounting space because that's the people that I typically have on. It's accounting firm owners and it's firm leaders or leaders in the space. So if, even if it's employees, I hear a lot of employees listen to it too because they're in this and maybe they have aspirations to maybe one day start a firm of their own. I think it's anybody that wants to do something of their own in accounting. And it doesn't matter if that's a software company or if that's running a practice, but you know, we talk about a lot of foundational things too. Each show has a different theme now. So each course or school has a different theme, but it's all geared at accounting leaders and accounting firm owners and accountants in general. Anybody that identifies with being an accountant and being that nerd. This is a fun way to say, yeah, you know, you all think I'm a nerd, y'all make fun of me in movies and stuff and, and all that. And yeah, but I'm still cool too. Yeah. Less recently, man. Have you seen like the auditor? Like there's some, there's some like. The accountants like with Ben Affleck. There's that one. And then there's, there's another one with the guy from like Better Call Saul or something. It was a pretty bad-ass one too. I think it was the auditor. Jonathan Banks. Yeah. I would love to see that. And there's, you know, but then I watched movies with my kids, like Trolls and one of the guys was like nerdy sweatshirt wearing glasses, wearing, he was the accountant, but it was still Kid Cudi playing him. So it was still like a good character. That's good. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was just a fresh version of an accountant. I don't know. I mean, we get a lot of, the thing is, is the stuff that I'm doing, people love outside of accounting. Whenever anybody sees that outside of accounting, they say, Oh wow, you're bringing some fun and some life to accounting and nobody's doing that. And so I see people doing it within accounting, but outside of it, you see us as the very boring general. So I don't know where this all leads, but right now my audience is the people that I can help. And those are the people that were, I was where they were at. I had a firm and I needed some direction. I needed some purpose. I needed some guidance. And that's why I started doing the show was being there for the people that, you know, there was people that led me. I know Blake Oliver. I was listening to his show a lot. Mike Michalowicz. I was listening to his show all the time, growing my firm, Jason Stats. I still pay attention and watch his stuff. Yeah. He's got great stuff too. So I knew that I just wanted to do that more too. He's the principal at Accounting High now and I was paying attention to him and I knew how to price clients because Ron Baker was teaching me. So yeah, that's why I was doing it. I love it, man. I'm going to be following along and I'm excited to see that come out, the textbook and see what's next for it. Before you leave, I always kind of have two questions, I guess. The first one, if you had a recommendation for young people, like entering the profession, maybe someone like you and honestly myself who feels like they didn't necessarily fit the mold of the typical path, what recommendations would you have for them just to make the profession work for them the way it has for you? Oh, that's a great question. So my recommendation is find something within anything that you're doing that lights you up. Find that spark and try to pay more attention to that. Whatever that is, pay more attention to it and then start trying to figure out more ways you can have more of that in your life, whatever that is, because it's different for everybody. For me, it was rap. So if I could grow that a little bit more and figure out ways to bridge that into what I'm doing, then everything else I'm doing is fun and I took a leap, a pretty big leap, to try to bridge that into accounting because then I saw, wow, somebody else is doing this in accounting and I saw somebody else doing it in an industry like ours. So I'm like, all right, well, that's not that far-fetched and I had a bit of a template. But whatever your thing is, try to find a way to do that and then anything else you do is probably just going to be easier. You may not have the freedom to do that right now, but try to find ways to create more freedom and more space for that because only good things can come out of that too. Nice, man. I love that. Thank you. And then finally, if you have anything to plug, we've talked about Accounting High, we've talked about a couple of things, but where should the listeners go and check you out and what should they be looking out for? Yeah, well, you might want to plug their ears after making it this far too. Like I don't know how much else I can plug. Like there's the Accounting High channel on YouTube. That would be a good thing. If you could subscribe to that, we need more subscribers there. You could listen to the show. The podcast is on any podcast player. If you search for Accounting High, there's actually six shows out there, but you can find the main one, which has all the new episodes at Accounting High. It's sophomore year right now. Next year will be junior year and then we'll senior year. We'll see what happens after. It might graduate to Accounting U in four years. So for now, while this episode is aired, it's still Accounting High. You can find me on LinkedIn too, if you've got any questions directly. That's how Dominique reached out to me. So you can just go on LinkedIn, Scottie, O-K-R, Scottie on LinkedIn. Might be Scott, might be Scottie, depending on the day. Sometimes I switch it back and forth, but yeah. Cool. Well, thank you so much for joining, Scott. I really appreciate all your input on this and I wish you the best. I'm going to be following around with what's going on with Accounting High going forward. Oh yeah. Just check out the tournament if this is timing for that. Yeah, it'll be the right time. You might be hearing of that right now. So dope. Check it out and nominate Big Four Transparency to the ABC tournament. You've heard it here first. I'll be pushing it as well. I'll be pushing it as well. For sure. Perfect. Thank you so much, Scott. Oh, can I ride us out with a rap? Oh yeah. Let's do it. All right. I'll do the Accounting High, the main intro that we have for Accounting High. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, OKR is in the house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, OKR is in the house. Accounting High. That's my daughter. She's good. Accounting High. From cloud accountancy, way back to desktop, accounting advisory and tech apps adopt, went solo with the rap, Scottie's still the same, Raleigh is the spot where I edutain. Follow me, follow me, follow me, follow me, follow me on a path to fulfillment. To trizzes, the yizzes, for us, the mindset shit, so you ain't holding yourself back. Find software to avoid those simple tasks. We'll define cash and automate tax, because we hope to educate and lead with impact. Yeah, let's go, Krik Team Management, your timesheet's impeding the relationship. Let's play the accounting game. It's the cloud to the ground, niching outsourcing, techie tax talking, increasing gross margins, automating back a house and learning blockchain, leadership tips with Coach Nick's McKenzie like, share, connect, comment, follow this, and subscribe to our podcast. Next, when we drop, because you know we don't stop, it's 24-7 on the Accounting High lot, tick-tock, clips don't watch, just some shitty tax talk, cleaning up accounting with a bucket and a mop, then we lean back and nod, because the class is about to start at Accounting High. Scottie, OKR.