Caring for Your People: Creating a Culture with Randy Crabtree

Randy Crabtree is an Accounting Today Top 100 Influencer, the co-founder of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax, and the host of The Unique CPA podcast. On part one of a two part conversation, he joins John Randolph on Episode 29 of CPA Life to talk about the benefits of a niche focus within a firm and the good that comes from being intentional in creating a place people want to work. Related to these elements are allowing remote work, using value-based billing, and maintaining a strong company culture during a firm’s growth—one that makes people feel valued and like more than just a cog in a wheel.

Transcript:

Welcome to another episode of CPA Life podcast where we spend time peeling back a few layers of what has been done in the industry by many of the leaders of today’s firms to build a more people-centric culture in the world of public accounting. And today, we’re joined by one of those leaders, the co-founder and partner of Tri-Merit, Randy Crabtree. Randy, nice to talk to you.

John, thanks for having me. Looking forward to a fun conversation.

I think that we’ve probably got a few things to talk about because I’ve listened to two or three of the podcasts you’ve done on other people’s shows, as well as your podcast, and you have a lot of stories to tell. And I love stories.

I do tell stories. I don’t know how this happened, but somehow I became a storyteller. So we’ll see where it goes today.

You know, it’s interesting. In the recruiting world when I’ve trained people for years, one of the things I was telling is you’ve got to be a good storyteller, and I don’t mean a liar, I mean the ability to paint a picture and put somebody in the middle of that, where they feel it even though they weren’t there. And I think that’s a trait and quality that we’ve lost a lot in today’s world.

Yeah. I don’t know if I put people there, but I enjoy it, when I’m saying it I enjoy that at my end of it. So, hopefully, they do too. I guess, well, someday, maybe I’ll find out.

And it works most of the time, right?

Yeah. Exactly.

Well, we’re gonna spend some time talking a lot about the different topics today that you’ve talked a lot about on your podcast and some other places that you’ve been on. But there’s a couple of titles that you carry on top of “Partner” at your CPA firm, you’re host of your own podcast, The Unique CPA.

Yep.

And I also believe that you can add “conference creator” to the LinkedIn profile because you’re now already planning next year’s Bridging the Gap conference in July of ’24. You’ve been pretty busy.

Yeah. I actually thought I should put that on somewhere, because it was a big deal—running a conference. And I shouldn’t even say running it. I had the idea, marketing ran it, and they did an awesome job, but the fear of—and I don’t get afraid, I don’t get nervous, I don’t very much—but this one stressed me out a, little because the fear of, okay, I have this idea, and what if nobody shows up? You know, what if it doesn’t live up to my expectations? But, man, it was amazing and exceeded my expectations because of the people that were there. They were just awesome people. So, yeah, I should add that. And just as a side note—see, I’m already going into the stories. I came up with another brainchild yesterday, which is top secret right now, but I’m guessing marketing is gonna be like, oh, Randy, now what are you getting us into? So I’m working this one out still, but in the next couple months, I think it’ll be out there.

So are you like marketing is with my wife to me? I always tell my wife, when she comes into my office and says either, hey, I’ve been thinking, or she walks in and says, I’ve got an idea. That means either I’m getting ready to spend money or build something.

Yeah. And those are probably the two things marketing thinks. Oh, Randy spent the money again, or what are we building? So yeah. I just picture them rolling their eyes when I when I say, hey, I’ve got an idea. But we’ll see.

Well, one of the things that we typically try to do when we talk to folks on the podcast is give people a little bit of a snapshot of how you’ve arrived at this point in your career as the partner and cofounder of your firm. So how did all this start?

Yeah. It’s, well, I don’t know how long you have, so I can do the short version. So I am a CPA, but that is actually my 3rd career, the first two being very short lived. I graduated in a computer science degree, And the interesting thing is all these little—I don’t call them missteps—these little, whatever deviations into different areas, you learn along the way.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Even though I don’t use my computer science degree—well, at this point, it’s pretty much obsolete. There’s nothing that happens today that I know anymore. Although my son is in IT, and he mentioned a language that he was using, and I go, hey! I know that language. You know, 37 years ago, I think we used that! So I was pretty amazed. Graduated Computer Science, did that for a year. Decided it wasn’t for me. My friends who were making the money were in sales. So I thought I’m gonna go into sales because that’s where the money was. You know, I was making 22 grand and they were making 30 grand, so that’s where the money was. And, I was awful at it. I learned, but I was awful at it.

What were you selling?

Food, which I eat, I’m really good at eating. I just wasn’t passionate about selling food. We were a food broker, and we were selling to distributors. And, you know, it was a great company, but it’s just I wasn’t at that point in time, at least, cut out for that role.

Mhmm.

So did that and, I’ll tell a quick story then. One day, I’m in Chicago. I live in the suburbs. I’m driving down North Avenue, which is a fairly, you know, well known street in Chicago.

Yep.

And all of a sudden—remember, I get ideas and then I have to share it with people. So I had this idea, and I had to tell my wife right away. So I pulled out to the side of the road to a phone booth because we didn’t have cell phones. Called her at work and said, hey. I’m gonna quit my job, I’m gonna go to school full time. I’m gonna be a CPA. And she was like, what? We’ll talk when we get home. But that’s kinda how the CPA career in me started. And then it’s deviated and branched out, many times since then. But I was a generalist for a long time—20 years—four years working for other people, 16 years managing my own firm, starting and building, and ultimately selling my own firm. And now 16 years of, Tri-Merit Specialty Tax, which is, you know, really a niche practice. We’re still in tax. But man, I didn’t realize how exciting and fun and interesting and the path that starting in niche practice would do for me, but it has been an amazing 16 years.

Well, I was gonna ask you, you know, you walked the path of generalist. Now you’re on this path for the exact same amount of time now. It sound like 16 years on with your own firm 16 years with starting and building Tri-Merit.

Yep.

What would you say has been the biggest difference as all, you know, obviously, the specialization and focus in niche But outside of that, I mean, what would you say has been the biggest difference in those two tenures?

Right. So one of the biggest differences, and it took me—probably the most important difference that it took me a long time to realize was—that I don’t have to do everything. When I was a generalist, I thought I had to do everything from multiple standpoints. I had to help every client, one because it’s revenue.

Right.

I’ve got a fast food restaurant that needs help. I’m gonna do it. I got a dentist that needs help. I got a construction firm, a hair salon, all these different industries. One, you just see revenue. revenue, you don’t think about, you know, the specialization and the niche, and do I have the skills that they need? Well, when we started Tri-Merit, we were solely when we started an R&D Tax Credits firm. So all I had to know was code section 41 of the IRS code and dig deep into that and finding that I was passionate about it? I mean, I get to go in and I get to save a company $200,000 in taxes? Man, that’s exciting!

So to try to make it the short answer, the biggest difference—which is really hard for me to do, short answers. But the biggest difference is one, just knowing that I can dig so deep into what we’re doing because I’m not trying to help everybody. And then two, realizing that I’m really good at starting businesses—I don’t really like managing the business once it gets going, and it took me the longest time to realize. I’d rather be out just meeting people, telling people about what we do, educating. And so those are the two biggest differences for me, I suppose. The the the niche, the expertise that you can share, and then about halfway through Tri-Merit, realizing that I don’t have to do everything with this firm. In fact, I’m not even good at a lot of this stuff, and so let’s just concentrate on the stuff I’m good at.

And that really is where you start to find your sweet spot and your wheelhouse, and when it stops becoming work, and a drudgery of having to do the things that you have to do versus the things that you wanna do.

Yeah. I don’t feel like I work at all. Honestly, I feel very spoiled, but I don’t feel like I work, because I love what I do.

I’ve said for years that I’d rather be, you know, a mile deep in an inch wide than a mile wide an inch deep. And there’s so many firms, CPA firms, and also firms in our industry that are they they really don’t know how to say no.

Mmm hmm.

And I think that that’s one of the beautiful things about being in a niche space from my perspective is as a people pleaser, if you put lanes on yourself, you kind of force yourself to have to say no, which ultimately then is a value to the other people in your firm.

True. No, that’s perfect.

You create a little bit of a safety net for them because I remember being on the receiving end of the desk of working for other people in sales meetings, you know, going out on a sales call with our president or CEO of a firm that I work with, and they would say yes to a client, and I’m sitting there thinking he’s gonna get on a plane, he’s gonna fly back to Tampa, and we’re gonna have to deliver on this, and we don’t do this.

Yep! Yep!

So the ability to to as a leader to know, hey, this what we do is is critical, and I’m sure that’s something that your people see and value and benefit from.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Because, you know, as I said before, we were an R&D Tax Credit firm. We’ve added eight different credits and incentives now, but there’s probably eight at least that we’ve analyzed and just say, no, it’s just not in our wheelhouse, we’re not gonna have the expertise, we’re not gonna be able to be the top firm out there to do this just because it’s different than what we do.

Right.

And so in fact, there’s one out there, The Taxpayer Transparency Act, I think, whatever it’s called. A new bill where clients have to report changes in ownership of their business and all this. And I was like, okay, people are asking us if we’re gonna do this and we looked at it, and it’s just like, no. It doesn’t fit with what we’re doing. We’re not gonna have the passion or the skills to do this. And so we’ll help you find somebody.

That’s one thing we do where we’ll be like, hey, we know so many people in this profession, why don’t we find somebody that’s doing this and let’s see if you can build that relationship with them that makes sense.

Yep. I think that that brings more value because you’re able to find a solution for them, put them in touch with somebody that, that’s their wheelhouse. And then you step out and go back and do what you do best: Adding value to your customers.

I wanna touch on a couple of topics that I know you’re pretty passionate about because you spend a lot of time talking about two things, and I think they dovetail nicely together: culture and mental health / burnout in the profession. We’re at a point in the industry where, you know, it’s a tipping point of available talent and openings in the industry. Turnover is at an all time high. Burnout is at an all time high. People departing the profession is at an all time high.

One of the stats we track as a firm on the recruiting side of our business is how many conversations with people that don’t approach us, so we’re approaching them—whether it’s a cold call, recruiting call, we’re reaching out on a referral, Whatever the case may be, how many of those phone calls somewhere in the first 3 to 5 minutes turn into, I hate public accounting, get me out, I don’t wanna do this. And 5 years ago, when we started this niche, that number was about 80 to 82 percent. That number’s at about 88 to 90 percent now. So with all of those things going on, I wanted to hear your thoughts on what are some things that you’re seeing that you guys are doing, as well as some of the other firms that you coach, mentor, talk to, interact with, that are working to combat the the turnover burnout issue, mental health issue, but also around culture, what’s worked.

Yep. And you said it perfectly. I think they tie together. It took me a while to actually, because I’ve been talking about burnout for about a year and a half, two years now and not just, you know, whoa, look at us, burnout’s terrible, and there’s nothing we can do. I talk about things we can do, solutions. But when I started to see organizations that weren’t having burnout—that were having people that were enjoying what they were doing, that were growing significantly, and our company being one of those—I started looking deeper and said, okay, so what are people doing right up and above what I say? You know, manage your time correctly. You know, take breaks during the day. Shut off at the end of the day. But what else is happening? And it ended up being, they have a place people love being part of, and that was the culture. They created a culture where people enjoyed being there. And so simple things.

One of my biggest examples that I really started seeing these with was a gentleman, Josh Lance. Josh—I’ll talk about Josh for the rest of my life, and, unfortunately, Josh passed away a couple months ago. But Josh taught me so many things that he was doing. He built this firm from, you know, nothing to you know, when he passed, it was probably, I don’t know, 20, 25 people. So not a giant firm, but a nice firm. But things he did where I saw why people love being part of this were: One, 15 years ago when he started, they were a remote office. He wasn’t afraid of remote. I hear so many people complaining. How am I gonna train somebody when we’re remote? How can I teach them these skills? How I do that? And I’m like, you know what? You just do. We’re a remote firm. We’ve been remote from day one. We’ve got close to eighty people now. We don’t lose anybody, and we’ve been listed as one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the US for the last two years in Inc. magazine. So I think we’re an example that you can do it. And so Josh, I saw Josh. We were remote, but he was remote. Things that I am super passionate about.

We’re niche. He was niche. Oh, wow. I just didn’t realize that we’re kinda clones of each other, I guess. It just clicked into my head. I don’t understand this. I never compared my firm to his firm before. They never tracked hours from day one in their firm. It’s not billable hours, It’s value based billing, it’s subscription pricing, it’s setting a fixed fee. And the other thing I hear from people is, well, how can I tell profitability on a job? If I’m not tracking hours, I’m like, okay. We’re probably one of the most profitable businesses—now I feel like I’m bragging. We’re probably one of the most profitable firms out there too, and we haven’t tracked hours from day one.

And do you know what probably the biggest thing people complain about at their—besides their clients, but only their C & D clients—is billable hours. Nobody wants to track hours.

Right.

And so Josh was doing all these things: Fixed fee pricing or value billing, niche, remote office, flexibility on when you work, where you work. You know, we have somebody in our office right now. The 1st 6 months, he’s been in the country Colombia, working there. Because that’s where he wants to be. So he works remote. We have no problem with that. And he is actually heading up one of our brand new offerings now, and he’s been putting this together while he’s in Colombia. If you can do it.

That’s amazing.

Yeah. And so those are the types of things that I think culture’s so important. And the bottom line, it comes down to, just don’t micromanage people. Have faith that they are going to get the work done when it needs to be done, but also be open that they feel that they can ask any question anytime, you know? There’s no dumb questions. There’s no Hey. You just asked me that. You should have known that. No. They didn’t know it. Allow people to show that they don’t know something and don’t chastise them for that. Don’t say, go figure this out for yourself. It’s like, yeah, let’s all work on this and see what the solution is. So basically just treating people you the way you wanna be treated, and that’s a good culture in my mind.

And, let me expand on that real quick. Because I know I’m not letting you ask me any questions.

That’s okay! That’s okay.

So I recently was trying to define culture, and it’s really hard to define a good culture. Dan Hood and I from Accounting Today just recorded a podcast, and we were talking about culture, but he said, you know, culture could be bad culture too, and that’s a culture. You could still define that as a culture. What if you wanna create a firm that’s based on burnout and you wanna create a burnout culture? Because you know you’re just gonna churn through people, but you’re gonna be super profitable because they’re gonna work their butts off for 80 hours a week for two years, and then they’re burnt out and they’re gone. That’s a culture too.

Mmm hmm.

I want a good culture, because I don’t wanna to have to replace people. I want people to enjoy what they’re doing. And so when I was trying to define culture, and this doesn’t define it, but to me, I think it sets the stage on at least thinking about what a good culture is. And this was back and forth between doing some research and talking with ChatGPT, and we came up with these two lines: A bad culture is based on rules; a good culture is based on relationships. So it’s just the relationship part of things.

I would completely agree with that, Randy. You know, I’ve said for years, so 20 plus years ago, I worked for a very large recruiting and staffing firm that’s a specialty niche in the accounting finance space. Everybody would know who they are if I mentioned them. I sat in a leadership conference and will never forget the COO of the organization saying—and this is when I knew it was time to leave and do something else. The COO said—and I have a horrible memory, but to this day, I remember exactly what he said—“People do things at work for one of two reasons: They either love what they do or they’re scared of their boss.” And then there was that pregnant pause and he said, “98% of the people don’t love what they do.” And what he was doing was validating some things that we were gonna be putting in place that were rules based.

Yep. Yep.

And I remember sitting there. I’ll never forget it. It was 1994. I remember sitting there and thinking, I don’t agree with that. I absolutely do not agree with that. It is time to go somewhere else. And after I left there, one of the things that I realized is that you can build an organization with a bad culture like you’re talking about. There are four firms today in your industry that have done that.

I think I know who you’re talking about!

There’s two to three in my industry that have done that. And the way that I’ve phrased it is you can build an organization on on one of two platforms. You can build an organization on process and rules. Those processes and those rules say that desk is worth x amount to us. We’ve built a process, and we have rules in place that if you do x, y, z, that desk generates y for us.

Right.

Don’t ask questions. It is our recipe. That’s what we do. And if you have a problem with that or you wanna change the recipe, there’s the door because there’s thirty people on the other side of that door that wanna come in and be a part of us.

And then you can build an organization based on people, i.e. relationships. I would much rather build an organization based on relationships that give people the autonomy to ask questions, to say, hey, I’ve been thinking—I have an idea. Those are critical things.

I worked for a guy in my company back in 2006. I sold a firm to a guy that—you and I probably work very similar in nature. My personality style is, I think, out loud.

Okay. Yep.

And I may spout out 15 different ideas before the one that sticks. You know, it may be rolling off my tongue, and I’ll go, no, no, that’s not gonna work. That’s not gonna work. Well, this guy had bought my firm. When he said it, whatever it was, he had thought about it for days and weeks already. And so when he said it, it was done. So I’ll never forget one day getting a call from Charles. I had stuck my head in his office about doing something, walked out, and he called me. And he said, John, we can’t do this. And I said, do what? He said, we can’t spend that kind of money off the cuff. And I said, what kind of money are you talking about? So he starts telling me back what I said to him. I said, Charles, I was just thinking out loud! We’re not gonna go do that. That’s ridiculous. I mean, we need to think about this, not just say it. And it dawned on me that there’s a difference in that, but he was a rules based guy.

Yep.

He was a rules based guy. And I think that culture—I like the way you put that because a culture based on rules is gonna be very very confining to people that have any type of a desire to have any creativity in the organization. It’s easy to do that when you’re two, three, eight, ten people. There gets to be a point. I don’t know where that number is, Randy, but there gets to be a point in growth, especially when you’re at 70, where that gets to be a little bit tougher to manage and and the word that keeps coming to my mind, and and I’d like to ask you your thoughts, is intentional. Is something I think you would have to be intentional about. How do you guys do that at 50, 60, 70, versus three, five, ten, 15, 20?

Yeah. A couple of answers to that. First off is one for me personally—realizing where my skills were, and that as you grow, there are certain procedures, processes, KPIs, all the stuff you have to have in place, so that you can’t ignore it completely, but you have to have in place, but it can’t be the overall management theme, I think, of the firm. And so for me personally, six years ago, I stepped down as manager partner because we were at a point in time in growth where I knew I wasn’t prepared to manage all these new rules, even though we’re still relationship space, but all these new rules that we needed to follow.

So for one, it was Andy Lane, who started Tri-Merit with me, and I don’t wanna say from a negative standpoint, but he is that guy you were kinda talking about from the standpoint that he thinks things through before he acts on them, where I just act. But what happened for us is, we both got in the right role 6 years ago. I got in this role where I get to, you know, come up with ideas and see if they work and if, you know, and see if people buy into them or not and do it, but then he also gets to do the like, we’re we’re installing the EOS system, you know, for the last year now—the entrepreneurial operating system.

Yep.

I would never have the patience to do that. He does, but I get to go out and build all these relationships that ends up generating revenue for the company too. And so those two things, you know, kind of, we just lucked into the fact that—well, I think he knew it before I did that we needed to do these different roles. So, but we did that.

But then while we’re growing, so that’s where the growth started, six years ago when we made these changes. And then what we did is just as new people came on, it was about the person, not the job title. And so we value the person and who they are up and above how much can you bill per hour for us. And so relationships comes in from that standpoint. And so how are we intentional? We’re intentional that, you know, every time we get it on a call, somebody gets to share their passions outside of work and tell us about themselves.

Twice a year, we have a remote get together. In fact, I’m leaving tomorrow to go to it—it’s gonna be in Orlando this year. Then we go there and we just build relationships. We just get, you know, there’s probably, you know, I don’t know, not as much as the last few years, but probably five, six, seven new people since we all got together in May. And so now I get to go spend more time meeting them.

When a new person’s hired, our payroll software system automatically sends me a Teams message that says, you know, Jane Doe is starting on this date. And what I do then, is a few weeks after Jane—obviously, that’s not a real name—I reach out to Jane on Teams and just randomly introduce myself when we talk about anything but work. You know, we just talk about—

Now, now hold on. When Jane gets a phone call from you, has she interviewed with you at all? Does she know who you are?

No. I know as we grow and we get bigger, I’m guessing the first thought through people’s mind is who’s Randy and why is he calling me? And if they do know that, you know, I’m a founder, maybe they’re like, oh, boy.

Why is this guy calling me?

Yeah, and getting nervous. But I honestly, I don’t know—when our head of HR, was hired a year and a half ago, and before that, we had someone else doing HR internally and that, you know, we were probably a little behind getting the whole HR department. But when she started, I did this with her. And a few weeks later, she said, can you do this with everybody when they get hired? I said, I do already. She goes, alright. That’s awesome because she thought it was so great. So I’m just basing it on, she thought it was great—hopefully, everybody thinks it’s great when we get off the calls. But I think just intentional, little things like that, just reaching out you know, finding out about their family and their passions outside of work and what they they love, you know, doing puzzles or whatever it is. It’s just meeting the people and finding out who they are, I think, is so important.

I think that, again, it goes back to being intentional. Years ago in my career, when I left that large firm, I went to work for a smaller firm that was about a $20 million privately held firm. We had 6 offices. And 5 years later, we had grown to about a billion in revenue, 13 acquisitions, a public offering, a secondary offering. I remember sitting in our divisional president’s office. He was going out to see some of my offices on the west coast, and he called me and he said, hey, what do you need me to do?

And I said, I need you to sit down with every single person in my offices and ask how they’re doing, ask how they’re feeling right now about the growth and what we’ve gone through, and just find out about who they are and what they do. And he said, you don’t need me to train? You don’t—I said, no. I don’t need you to do any of that. I said, you need to understand you’re the division president of this part of the company. Those people need to hear that you’re a person just like they are. And he said, well, I am. I’m just one of the guys, and this was a guy that I started with at the same level. He had grown into that role. And I said, Peter, I understand that you and I drink a beer together and you and I hang out, we’ve broken bread. But these guys don’t know you.

Right.

They just need to hear from you. And I think that intentionality says to your people, hey, he’s just one of the guys that cares, first and foremost, about me, not necessarily the guy on the business card.

Yep. So what you just said, one of my favorite people in the world is John Garrett. I don’t know if you’re familiar with John.

Oh, yeah. I’ve had John on the podcast.

I thought you did, actually. So people have heard this then, but John wrote the book What’s Your “And”?. And, you know, I felt like I’ve always lived What’s Your “And?”—the people you work with are more than just their job title. They’re the mountain biker, the craft beer enthusiast, the whatever, sports fan. But John spoke at our conference this last year, and what you just said really resonated with me, because he said the same thing at our conference, and he got these statistics from somebody else—he didn’t make this up. It’s research he’s done. But he said for somebody to feel valued at work, all they need is 40 seconds a day of just real interaction—how was your weekend? I went know you went to the play. You were going to see this play. How did you like it? How was your daughter’s softball game this weekend? All it takes is 40 seconds of somebody to ask you and show real interest in you for them to feel valued at work. And that was so amazing.

So the fact that you suggested that, you know, he just go reach out to people and see how they’re doing, that’s awesome. And I love to see that.

Well, I think if we get so caught up in the chaos of the battle of the day, the to-do list, the got to dos, that we forget, you know, I guess it’s probably the same thing with our families. You know, they’re the ones that always pay the price for the crap that’s going on in our lives that detracts us from them, and so much of time at work as a leader—the chaos of the job—pulls us away from, you know, just stopping by somebody’s desk or picking the phone up or setting up a Teams call to say, hey, how are you doing? I know last week when we passed in the hall or we talked, you mentioned X. I wanted to see how that’s going.

Yep.

And not a project, not a tax return they’re working on. You know, their daughter’s play, their son’s baseball game, their wife’s doctor’s appointment, their flat tire they had on their car.

I’ve got a client here that I work with in the Dallas area, and I think that the culture—every time I talk to people about this firm, I tell them, we start talking about culture, and I tell them there was a period about six or seven years ago where—and this is one of the partners that told me this, because I called her when I worked with her for the first time, and I always asked, you know, anytime I’m working with a firm of any size, I always ask the leadership, why are you there? What keeps you there?

And Kelly told me she said, John, we we had a point in the firm a few years ago where we were working crazy hours. We didn’t expect to have the business we had. We normally don’t work stupid over time, but this year, we were. Everybody was. And we’re sitting in a leadership meeting on a Monday morning, and I’m talking about how we’ve been so busy, I need new tires on my car, and I can’t even take the time to go do that. And, she said, and we finished that meeting, and Jim came into my office and said, hey, I need the keys to your car. And she said, what for? And he said, you need tires on your car. I’m gonna get them taken care of.

Wow.

And she said, no you’re not. And he said, yes I am. It’s the least I can do for you. So she said, I gave him the keys. And, you know, later on that day, I go to lunch, I come back for lunch, my keys are on my desk. And there’s the receipt, and I’m expecting, you know, a number circled or something that says, this is what I owe him for the tires or something. What there is is a note there that says “Thanks for all your hard work. Tires are the least I can give you. Please don’t try to repay me.”

Well, I had a feeling that’s what you’re gonna say. That’s pretty cool.

And little things—I mean, you say little things—that’s a big thing, but it’s just, it’s just the fact that in passing in a meeting, you hear something as a leader.

Yeah.

And make a mental note of that, and then go and say, okay, I’m gonna solve this problem for this person. But again, it comes back to intentionality.

We’ve reached the end of part 1 of John Randolph’s conversation with Accounting Today Top 100 Influencer, Randy Crabtree, and we hope you enjoyed the episode. Be sure to tune in January 31st for part two, check out our website at CPALifePodcast.com, and we’ll see you next time on CPA Life.

Important Links:

Randy Crabtree on LinkedIn

Tri-Merit Specialty Tax

Bridging the Gap Conference

Caring for Your People: Creating a Culture with Randy Crabtree

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