LINKS
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GUESTS
\n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/a/a8a7f2ae-7bda-419d-a36b-dfc630e788d2/avatar_small.jpg?v=1\"){kind=avatar} | \nJonathon Morrison | \n
On this edition of the HABU Accelerator Podcast, we sit down with Jonathon Morrison who provides knowledge on navigating the complex landscape of estate and gift tax planning as it relates to current events and forecasted changes.
\n\nJonathon guides us through ongoing tax law transitions and characteristics of those most impacted. We conclude by exploring synergies within the Optimized Gift Trust that advance traditional concepts through additional protective layers.
\n\nClarity is brought to risks of less experienced advisors for high net worth clients.
\n\nLooking ahead, our HABU conference promises deeper dialogue on these sophisticated techniques.
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SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
\n\n | \nJonathon Morrison | \n
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
\n\nJeff: On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we welcome back our friend, Jonathon Morrison, senior partner at Fraser, Ryan, Goldberg and Arnold, who's going to help us navigate the incredibly complex world of estate and gift tax and discuss the optimized gift trust and how his firm partners with CPAs to help their clients optimize their estate plans. Take a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice. Well, hello again everybody. This is Jeff Palow, and I am the president of the Engineered Advisory family of companies and your host for the Advisory Accelerator podcast, a show that works to help CPAs become more advisory-minded in their practices. On today's show, I'm happy to welcome back our friend, Jonathon Morrison, who is a senior partner at Fraser, Ryan, Goldberg and Arnold, and he's going to help us continue to navigate the incredibly complex world of estate and gift tax planning. As CPAs, I'm sure you've had clients who have turned to you for advice in this incredibly complex area, so I'm looking forward to today's conversation. Jonathon, welcome back to the Advisory Accelerator podcast.
\n\nJonathon: Thanks, Jeff, I appreciate you having me. Yeah, today we're going to be talking about a really interesting solve, a turnkey solution for estate and gifts tax changes that are going to be occurring in about a year and a half, and so it's come a long way on this vehicle, but I think it's going to be a real help for a lot of your listeners.
\n\nJeff: Now the date that you just mentioned. There is the sunsetting of the ‘17 Tax Act, correct I think that expires January 1st of 2026.
\nJonathon: Yeah, that's really the kind of the urgency that a lot of the CPAs, a lot of the listeners, are going to be focusing on. We've gone through this a couple of times in 2012 and then in ‘20 and ‘21. And now again in ‘26, where it's use it or lose it. You've got these huge exemptions that you can use right now, at least temporarily, in terms of how much you can gift to your children during life or at death. Right now it's 13, about 13 and a half for a single person and 27 million dollars for a married couple. Those exemption amounts just 20 years ago were like a million dollars. George W took it up to three and a half or seven for a married couple. Obama took it to five and seven for a married couple. Obama took it to five and 10 for a married couple. Trump doubled it to 20 for a married couple. With inflation, we're all the way up to 27 million. But those limits are scheduled to be cut in half in ‘26, unless you use those exemptions through making a big gift. Wow.
Jeff: And last time we were together we spent a lot of time talking about the OCLAT product and you know have had incredible success with that. Today you want to talk about the Optimize Gift Trust.
\nJonathon: Yeah, yeah, so I'll touch on both vehicles. I'm going to touch on that CLAT again at the end. But yeah, really, right now we're seeing already I just had seven of these gift trusts come in on Friday alone. So we're already seeing huge waves, people that are trying to get ahead of ‘26. But let's back up for a second and just talk about big picture.
\nI know it's a pretty technical audience, but the problem wealthy people have is they've got too much wealth, and so there's really two problems. While they're living, they've got a lot of wealth that's exposed to creditors and lawsuits, unless assets are inside of irrevocable trust, there really isn't a whole lot of protection. Even a single member LLC you can do some stuff with some protection. Getting it out of your estate into an irrevocable trust protects those assets. Likewise, perhaps a bigger problem is at death, or at the second spouse's death, there's a 40% federal inheritance tax and some states even have up to 20% state tax. So the government essentially takes somewhere between 40 to 60% of a wealthy family's wealth, total net worth, at death. You've got to file a federal estate tax return within nine months, most CPAs are familiar with that, and then the government needs a big check and you've got to get valuations for every asset, every business, every real estate, and pay that 40 to 60% tax above a certain limit, that's the federal estate and gift tax exemption, and that's what's really in flux and so, yeah, so that's the problem we're trying to solve and I have a solution for.
Jeff: Well, lead us down that path. Last time you did such a fantastic job, focusing on the technical nuance that I know all of our CPAs appreciate. The need is there. The timing is short, let's just start at the top and walk us through.
\n\nJonathon: Sure, yeah. So there's really four headwinds okay, four headwinds ahead of us that are creating some urgency, and then we'll get into the product itself. And I also want to direct everybody to what we're going to cover today. This vehicle, this Optimized Gift Trust, is going to be on the cover of the National Estate Planning Journal in May, next month. Finally. It went through a peer review process without a single substantive change. It's going to be on the cover of the journal, full write-up, legal citations, case studies. This is something that's come a long way.
\nThis solution I developed in 2020. We've since done over 200 of them without a single IRS audit. It is audit defensible. So we pick up to $10,000 of legal and accounting fees. If there ever were an audit, I've got a number of former IRS trial attorneys in my office that would defend it, but none of this is over the line. That's the key to this solution that we'll get into is optimizing it, meaning giving the client maximum access to control with minimum IRS risk.
\nSo, before we get into the product, we talked about the problem, the estate tax, really, and asset protection, and so to solve those problems, and the federal estate tax is notoriously famous to plan around. Okay, the key is plan. A Harvard professor famously says it's an optional tax as long as you plan for it. And I've got a finance accounting background, I've got all sorts of models, but I don't care how much you have, if you've got 20 plus years of life expectancy, we can usually wipe out that estate tax through pretty straightforward, non-risky gifting strategies. But it does require clients, parents to irrevocably gift assets out of their names into an irrevocable trust. So the first headwind is well, you're telling me, Jonathon, you need to gift 13 and a half or $27 million out of my name into this irrevocable trust or business interests out of my name. I want to be able to have access and control. I want to control that money. What if I need to get it back? What if I need to change the beneficiaries who inherit. Well, a well-designed, irrevocable trust, as we're going to get into, you can solve those things. So that's the first one.
\nThe other headwinds are legislative risk. The IRS has lost a lot of cases in the last 40 years in the world of estate and gift tax. That has really opened up the level of access and control that we can include in these irrevocable trusts. But Congress almost patched this up in ‘21, Building Back Better Bill, remember that it didn't pass because of Senator Manchin and Sinema.
\nBut if it had, they were going to abolish grantor trusts, which really encompasses pretty much every flexible, irrevocable trust out there, effectively putting guys like me out of a job, because if you don't have a grantor trust you really can't include much access and control. So there's rumors they could take another stab at abolishing grantor trusts, or i.e. flexible, irrevocable trusts. But under that bill we would have total grandfathering. That's why I did so many of these gift trusts back then, because if you got it funded before President Biden signed it into law you would have been grandfathered in. So again, clients don't want to gift out because of retained access issues. Legislative could plug and kill off these flexible trusts.
\nAnd then the two other headwinds are the gift limits which are going down. You can only put so much into these trusts without triggering a 40% gift tax and also interest rates. As interest rates go up, a lot of our major estate tax planning tools, i.e. installment sales for notes and GRATS and CLATS; those become less attractive. So we've kind of got this golden age of estate planning: huge gift exemptions, low interest rates, great legislative environment that could be changed in the near future and that leads to these ultra-accessible gift trusts. If they're done well, the family can get assets out of their name, a lot of assets out of their name, and still have total use control in many ways, as we'll get into. So does that make sense?
Jeff: It does. And, Jonathon, let me ask you my guess is, as we are nearing the presidential election and entering that cycle, probably not any major legislation on the horizon between now and the end of this calendar year. It was good to hear that the proposed legislation did include the grandfather clause, but really, what I heard you say there is in 2025, depending on how the election goes and who controls Congress, this could be back on the table. For our listeners, from the time they say go, they've got a client that's interested, they think it's a good fit, they're ready to pull the trigger and go. How long are we talking from start to finish, just so people can factor that into their planning timetables.
\n\nJonathon: Yeah, well, this really gets into my very unique process, which let me just touch on that for two minutes. So I'm a senior partner at the largest trust in the estate firm in Arizona. We have 25 T&E lawyers. It's a huge group. I was at the largest in Silicon Valley. I was out there for a decade at the top. Our top group only had 15, believe it or not and we did IPOs for virtually any company you can think of.
\nI grew up in Arizona, moved back here in ‘15. Couldn't believe this firm existed. Been around for 35 years, hired best in class in pretty much any area that a wealthy family will need. So we've got about a dozen estate planners. I'm the senior partner that focuses exclusively on advanced planning for large and complex estates. You would think I have an army of junior lawyers. I used to, but I got rid of that model about six years ago. I couldn't sleep at night.
\nI'm like any other business owner, a control freak, and so what I decided to do was just put in really great systems and processes, take a limited number of cases and charge a premium fee. But I can tell clients look, yeah, you're going to buy my brain. Every document, every memo it doesn't have to rely on passing this down to some third-year lawyer that might make mistakes that aren't caught, or delay or things fall through the cracks. That happens all the time at law firms, especially big law firms, where there's just these senior partners that are sourcing business and passing work down and there's a gap there. And so back to your question on timing. I can guarantee getting these things done within 72 hours. We charge a surcharge, expedited surcharge, but we've done this. There's going to be a sale of a company in like a week or two. You need to rush it. So yeah, I mean I've never missed a deadline.
\nAgain, I did 160 of these in ‘20 and ‘21. Not a single audit. It's compelling. And the process itself once a client goes through it. I do it with financial model, I've got a financial model that I built out. I've got a front-end memo, I've got FAQs and an overview for this particular product. At the end of the process, I've got an instruction manual that I send out for the CPAs and the client, six, seven pages customized, exactly how to operate, the structure, When the note payments should be due, et cetera. So yeah, I've done this over 500 times advanced planning transactions, and once you've done it enough times you master the product, you learn how to communicate it and you develop systems and processes to get it done very quickly.
Jeff: Awesome. Well, I think you've got everybody's attention right out of the shoot here. Let's talk a little bit. Maybe we start with who's the profile and then take us through the OGT as a product.
\n\nJonathon: Yeah, yeah. So you're really looking at anybody that's got a married couple or a single that's got a net worth of, I'd say, at least 10 million. And when I say that that includes the value of businesses and real estate, it's on a minimum. I'd say it's probably more like 15 million because, remember our gift exemptions in ‘20, they're going to go down to somewhere around 7 million for a single person and somewhere around 14, 15 million for a married couple, and so you know, that's kind of, I'd say, right around 15 million. So that's when I start to tell people look, you know, you really don't need this. I make a good living, I don't need. I'm happy to tell people you don't need this. I think 15 million is kind of threshold. Or, you know, keeping in mind also if it's somebody that has, is young or has a they're going to grow their net worth.
\nOr most of my clients, business owners, where their business is just growing and growing in value and could be sold for a huge multiple. That's kind of your classic case for this type of planning, where you need to get wealth out before the client gets any wealthier. They're already bumping against those limits and maybe in the next few years they could double or triple their estate. So that's kind of a classic case of where you want to gift it. Another case we're going to see over the next couple of years these are people that have I don't know 20 to 50 million, just a nice boring balance sheet, cash stocks, maybe some investment real estate. They sold their company years ago and now they just want to lock-in these gifting limits. So most, when we're not in this kind of environment, most of my cases I'm doing are kind of business owners or people that are they're growing their estate or they already have a large estate, we need to reduce it. But we're going to see a different kind of client that pops up in the next year and a half are people that say, I just want to lock in my exemption. You know I need to do, I need to gift it out, lock-in this big exemption, it's user to lose it and I want all the controls that maybe the business owner, everybody else wants the same controls. So that's kind of what we're looking for.
\nOkay, let's talk about this so-called optimized gift trust. Let's talk about a lot of the listeners. Okay, I get this a lot. People say, well, everybody kind of knows there's been a lot of talk over the last 10 years about generation skipping trusts and dynasty trusts and SLATS and IGITS, Defective grantor trusts. Okay, All of these things are good, they're just not enough, okay.
\nSo the optimized gift trust, what I did back in 2020, as I said, look, I said attorneys have made this so complicated. They've got all these acronyms. Nobody knows what they mean and how do you distinguish between all these things? Well, take SLATS, for example, Spousal life access trust. That's not an actual trust, that's just a provision within a gift trust to add access and control through a spouse, Okay. So if you say, hey, I've got SLATS, isn't that enough? Well, not necessarily. What if that spouse that has the SLATS powers dies? Well, you're going to need backup access points, and so it's not just you know.
\nSo this optimized gift trust that I developed took everything. I call it a hybrid gift trust. It takes everything that the IRS permits: swap powers and loan powers and slap powers, all the and defective grantor trust powers and generation skipping. It puts it all into one kind of state of the art where we are now irrevocable trust that maximizes the client, the parent's access and control and if it's done right, like the Optimized Gift Trust is, there's literally nothing that we can't do. Our client can make this big gift and still borrow from it. They can put their real estate in and take cash out. That's a swap. They can pay the income taxes for the gift trust.
\nThat's not a gift the so-called effective grantor trust. If they're married, we can have slap powers so we can have one of the spouses being able to withdraw assets out of there. If they're not married, we can have SPAT powers where a trust protector can even appoint assets back to the client to gift it. So we can cancel the trust. We can do all these things that the IRS has either acquiesced over the last 40 years or lost cases. We're just at this point now where irrevocable trusts, American irrevocable trusts, allow for such flexibility, control where in the old days you might have to go offshore to do this sort of stuff. Now we've got a lot, even foreign clients, that are coming to, creating American trust to enjoy the protections under American law but also have all these flexibilities that are now permitted, largely because the IRS has given up or lost on some of this.
\nSo the optimized gift trust, so-called defined, is an irrevocable trust that is, generation skipping, permanently exempt from federal estate and gift tax, immediately and permanently, Number one. Number two, protected from creditors forever. Again, just like generation skipping trusts are exempt from estate taxes forever, these trust assets can be passed down and they're protected from children's, grandchildren's creditors, lawsuits, divorcing spouses. Number three, critically while the client is alive, maximum retained access control. I'm making this big transfer. I still want to control the investments. I still maybe need to be able to get it back, I might want to change the beneficiaries. So this gift trust makes it technically irrevocable, but giving them virtual full control, directly or indirectly.
Jeff: You know, I got to believe our CPAs. The wheels are spinning. At this point. It just does seem like there is a convergence of a lot of things that make this very appealing right now. Are there any instances,
\nJonathon, where it doesn't make sense? Is there something that might kick it out? Or just like hey, in this instance, we're not going to recommend that.
Jonathon: Yeah, well, let's. Yeah, I mean, we talked about the net worth level, but let's say you've got a $50 million client. Here's the rub. Here's why I created this OGT in the first place back in 2020. There's just not standardization in my industry. Okay, here's what I mean by that. If you go to Manhattan or Silicon Valley or Chicago and you work at a top firm and you get the right attorney and that attorney is actually doing the drafting okay, so you have a lot of conditions there. They're going to just design the optimized gift trust okay, they're not going to call it that, they're just going to do it, because that's just the right way to do it. It's state of the art.
\nThe problem is, you know, I've been practicing in Arizona for almost 10 years and you get to these relatively smaller markets and Phoenix is the fifth largest metro, right. But the problem is, is the attorneys and professionals don't get enough repetitions, right? When I was in Silicon Valley, I was working on nine, 10, 11, 12 figure estates every day, all day, and had, you know, 500 transactions under my belt. You learn, you know, I didn't know anything until a couple hundred gift trusts in. Smaller markets are really not anything other than those major markets. You get a lot of attorneys that maybe hear seminars or they've done five or 10, they're rarely getting eight, nine figure type clients, and so they're including some of these flexibilities maybe in their irrevocable trust, but not all of them. And so what I see is what I saw in 2021, is a lot of attorneys that don't specialize in high net worth that are doing this very complex. There's so many ways to goof up right. That's why I don't have any junior lawyers. I don't trust them. There's not many senior lawyers in most markets I trust, and so your CPAs, your listeners, are going to maybe you know the hesitancy is to send your clients to a non-specialist, and the specialists are few and far between. There's probably only five in the entire state of Arizona that I would really trust with this type of planning, and they're going to be buried over the next two years. So the hesitancy is yes, I wouldn't, If I had 50 million bucks, I wouldn't put it in one of these trusts unless I was guaranteed that it had all these access controls and that it's been time-tested and the person doing it has done so many transactions. Because when you run the financial model out, Jeff, like 20 or 30 years, the bulk of the client's wealth is going to be in here.
\nIt's like you're building a house, but the thing is it's an irrevocable. Once you've built this house, once you have this irrevocable document, if you haven't baked-in all these flexibilities and controls, you can't change it. It can't be changed. So I joke, I charge a premium fee, but it's like a lot of clients say, well, that's more expensive than I can get down the street. I'm like what, You're telling me, that you know $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, delta.
\nI'm like you're building a house that there's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars inside and you can't, you might not be able to, if you don't get it right, you're not going to be able to change it, get the money back, do all this stuff. That’s the same delta as like a kitchen remodel. You know most of my clients, you know, have sports cars with wheels that cost $35,000. So I think you need to understand, you know they're not drafting documents. They don't know the strength of these documents. This is really tricky and there are so many ways to screw it up. You've got to make sure that the attorney you're working with has, as deep understanding, has done hundreds of repetitions and that you're actually buying their brain and they're not passing it down. That's my spiel.
Jeff: No, that makes a lot of sense. Talk a little bit, because obviously you're working very closely with the CPA on this and you've got your role and they've got theirs. Talk a little bit about how you create synergy between your firm and the CPAs that you work with.
\n\nJonathon: Yeah, yeah. So my goal is, when I'm engaged or brought into an engagement, my goal is to advocate and represent the client and basically put myself in their shoes. And I think what would I do if I was this client, knowing their net worth, knowing everything I know about tax and trust, what would I do? That's my measurement, okay.
\nBut at the same time, when I'm referred from most of my referrals come in from financial advisors and CPAs my job, what I try to do best, is be a good reflection of that CPA. Okay. So my goal is for that CPA to say at the end of the process, the client comes back and says, hey, thanks for referring me to that lawyer, he made it easy, he had a turnkey solution. Okay, he charged a premium fee, but hey, I got it. He got it done with two or three phone calls in a matter of weeks and I understand it, it was done well, thank you for bringing me in. It's like the same thing when I'm referring a client to a CPA, I want that CPA to be responsive and not talk over their head and hopefully not reinvent the wheel. So yeah, that's my goal. And so yeah, and also to see.
\nI think another power of this is I've got a finance accounting background and so I model, I've got financial models that I've created for all this stuff, and so I think it's helpful for CPAs to also see the power, monetary savings and the cash flows out 30 years of how this works. So I'd say I relate well with CPAs because of the financial modeling and all the numbers. I'm an attorney that understands numbers. But also the instruction manual that goes out at the end explains exactly how to file the gift tax return and it explains exactly how to operate this.
\nCpas and bookkeepers are the ones living with these structures that attorneys put in place. A lot of attorneys set this stuff up and then they don't even have a backend memo. They just say, okay, figure it out. Or CPAs get a copy of the binder the next year and say what you did all this? How do I report this? And so it's just a really, like I said, it's a turnkey solve and I do this for my CLATS and my GRATS and everything. It's just a. I think it's a nice process that CPAs really appreciate.
Jeff: So let's talk about a real world application here. You've got an accounting firm and this is all about education First educating the CPA and then subsequently educating their clients. What works best for you? I mean, the CPA can get educated by listening to this podcast. You've got the cover story coming out in the May issue. I know there's a ton of information on your website, but my sense is it begins initially with a conversation with the CPA that has some interest and then at that point they've got one or more clients that are interested in learning more and having a conversation with you. Do you prefer to do those one-to-one? Do you prefer for the CPA to set up kind of a meeting with multiple clients? What, in your experience, is kind of the best path to the quickest and most sustained result?
\n\nJonathon: Yeah, that's a great question. So, yeah, I've done many hundreds of lunch and learns on advanced planning. So if there's a CPA firm that wants me to do a presentation like this and I share my screen and I show all the numbers and I do all that happy to do lunch and learns for groups. I think most commonly is I'll get an email or a call and say, hey, I've got this client and here's the facts, here's their net worth, here's their ages, here's what they're trying to do. My paralegal, I got a really great 40-year veteran paralegal. She'll usually pick up the phone and gather some initial information and do a short memo for me, but just reach out and give me as much information as you can and what I typically do. I've got again. I've got these processes. I've got a stock form email that I'll respond to that CPA and say, look, this sounds like a good case. Here's the information about the gift trust. It takes no more than 45 minutes to review. Feel free to send this to your client.
\nI've got an overview for the gift trust. I've got a frequently asked questions about eight pages. It's a great document that answers pretty much most questions and I'll even if I've got enough information, I'll even send over a sample financial model that shows hey, here's the amount that this client should be put into the gift trust to wipe out their estate tax, to protect most of their assets from creditors and then, based on their spending assumptions, make sure that they've got plenty of assets outside of the trust for all their lifestyle spending so that all that future growth of the estate is soaked up outside of that gift trust. Because a lot of times you know I try to model it out so they'll never actually need to actually access the gift trust. We've got backup mechanisms in there. But I think it's critical as the financial modeling to make sure they've got plenty of cash flow outside of the gift trust.
\nYou don't put everything in there and then we usually, after I've sent that TPM, maybe forwards it to their client. Then we can have a 45 minute zoom and I can walk them through any questions that they have that weren't covered in the materials, but also my process. I can walk them through the financial model and change assumptions on the fly. It's not a static model like you get from a lot of the big banks. That's why I developed this model. I like to be able to change all the inputs on the fly at the meeting spending inputs, investment inputs. So it's, and then it's no commitment.
\nYou know I do all these. I have plenty of calls. We don't charge for any of that. And if they decided to proceed, very unique, one-time flat fee, typically tax deductible if they've got any kind of business interest, and you never get another bill from our firm again. Again, I try to solve all these issues that attorneys aren't responsive, Attorneys they have all these ongoing hourly fees. Attorneys talk over my head. You know I try to keep it can be the anti-attorney and so one of those is fee, upfront fee, tax deductible, and then they can call me down the road. They can add assets. We can have annual reviews. They're never going to get another bill from us again.
Jeff: Awesome. So for our CPAs that are listening to the podcast, whether you've got a relationship through engineered Tech Services or through the Growth Partnership or you're part of the HABU Advisory Accelerator, the path here is to reach out to your contact at the organization. They can then get you introduced to Jonathon and, as you just heard, there's kind of a disciplined approach to getting you the information you need and then subsequently cascading that down to your clients. And many of you are already familiar with Jonathon. We had a previous podcast where we talked about the OCLAB and I know, Jonathon, you wanted to circle back to that briefly before we concluded, but just want to throw out a plug quickly. Jonathon will be back with us at our conference coming up the last week of July, the HABU conference down in Plano, Texas. So if you're interested in considering attending and you're interested in this particular product, great opportunity for you to get some face-to-face time with Jonathon at that meeting. And before we wrap things up today, Jonathon, did you want to circle back briefly about the OCLAT that we talked about last time?
\n\nJonathon: Yeah, yeah, I'll touch on that and also I'll say you know, even though I'm licensed in California and Arizona, what's neat about our this is federal tax based planning. The OGT, this is the federal estate tax, and so I'm actually able to practice in all 50 states and I've probably set these up in at least half. So, yeah, so don't let the geography be a barrier. Even if they have an existing attorney that says, look, I don't know how to do advanced planning, I can do Wills and Trusts. I'm brought in to just do as almost like a one-off transaction. But the CPA, of course it's their client, the attorney, if they have an attorney, it's their client. But there's a lot of attorneys that just don't specialize and they acknowledge a lot of risk and they want to bring in a specialist. So happy to do that.
\nYeah, the Optimized CLAT still is in play. That's a fantastic vehicle done over 150 of those over the last eight years and remember that is really an income tax deduction play for typically clients that are relatively younger I'd say under 60. And they've had some charitable intent. They want to give to charity or set up a charitable vehicle. So the CLAT's a great way to create a big old income tax deduction. Think sale of business or any asset, or even just high income earners. I've got surgeons and attorneys and wealth managers that make a couple million a year and the CLAT is essentially, it's almost like a synthetic retirement account where they can put 30% of their income into it. Right, it's not like 401ks where you can put $20K into it. If you make $10 million, you can put $3 million into this every single year and it pays out to charities, typically for 20, 30 years. So to get that deduction the optimized clat, you've got to give about three times what you put into it right now to charities. It's based on interest rates. Right now. If you put a million dollars in it, you get a million dollar deduction. You're going to give $3 million to your favorite charity, pretty much years 25 to 30. It's backloaded and then whatever's left in the account can come back to the family free of gift and inheritance taxes.
\nOn a 30-year class the 1-3-5 rule right now a million dollars goes in. I get a million dollar federal and state income tax deduction. I give $3 million to my favorite charities and at the end I should expect $5 million. That assumes an 8% rate of return over the 30-year period, investing that $1 million at 8%, there's 5X at the end. That $5 million can either come back to the client that's not an income taxable event, it's not like a 401k, $5 million just transfers back in kind. Or, more likely, if they've got a sizable estate, they're going to transfer that $5 million to children without any gift or inheritance taxes. It doesn't use up any gift exemption. It's just like a GRAT, if you're familiar with that, and that's an in-kind transfer.
\nSo this is again a great solve for somebody that's you know, just comes to you and says I'm making a bunch of money, millions a year. I'm tired of just putting 401k in profit sharing plan or in DB plan. Isn't there more and this is something that there is more. Again, I have clients every year that will fund this with up to 30% of their income, create a future charitable giving bucket and a wealth transfer bucket at the end. So very compelling. They control the investments, they're the trustees. If you can get 10% return, there's 12X $12 million. 1, 3, 12. I have some clients that are more aggressive with those investments because if the CLAT fails, if you run out of money, can't pay the charities, there's no personal liability to make up that difference. There's just nothing that comes back at the end. So there's only upside. Get your full deduction, million dollar deduction up front, give charities and then have the potential of getting a bunch of money back at the end.
Jeff: For the CPAs that are listening whose ears perked up when you've considering clients that might be charitably inclined. This is a no brainer. We explored it in episode 12, and it was actually almost a year ago, April 5th of 23. So we're only four days off being back to back on an annual basis, Jonathon, but I would encourage you to go back and listen to that episode if you want all the details. Today, fantastic conversation talking about the Optimized Gift Trust and just a reminder, if you want to check out Jonathon and his firm, the website frgalaw.com Frazier, Ryan Goldberg and Arnold frgalaw.com you can get all the information there. And, Jonathon, before we turn everybody loose, anything else that you wanted to share before we wrap.
\n\nJonathon: No, I'd say you know, if you're interested in either of these products, again email me or look at the website. Or, Jeff, you might be able to put links. But we've got overview and FAQ for both the Optimize CLAT and the Optimize Gift Trust, so feel free to reach out directly, but I'd recommend taking a look at those overview and FAQs. It's going to answer a lot of questions, but happy to directly interface if you want to reach out.
\n\nJeff: Jonathon, thanks so much for being with us again. It's always timely and appreciated the level of technical depth that you go into in these conversations. Our CPAs eat that stuff up. So thank you for the time and look forward to seeing you in Dallas.
\n\nJonathon: Thanks, Jeff.
Special Guest: Jonathon Morrison.
","summary":"On this edition of the HABU Accelerator Podcast, we sit down with Jonathon Morrison who provides knowledge on navigating the complex landscape of estate and gift tax planning as it relates to current events and forecasted changes.\r\n\r\nJonathon guides us through ongoing tax law transitions and characteristics of those most impacted. We conclude by exploring synergies within the Optimized Gift Trust that advance traditional concepts through additional protective layers. \r\n\r\nClarity is brought to risks of less experienced advisors for high net worth clients. \r\n\r\nLooking ahead, our HABU conference promises deeper dialogue on these sophisticated techniques.","date_published":"2024-04-12T08:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/25541612-bca4-4097-a5c8-2c6988e7798e.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":25654170,"duration_in_seconds":2130}]},{"id":"ba58991f-8f52-45ba-8766-bee4b82a4f25","title":"Ep017: The Evolving Cybersecurity Landscape","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/017","content_text":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, I connected with Shawn Long, the CEO at ViLogics, to discuss how his firm partners with CPAs to help their clients better manage their cybersecurity infrastructure. \n\nThe threat is real, and there's quite a bit of accounting firms can do to help their clients mitigate this incredible risk. So take a listen and learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory potential.\n\n \n\nSHOW HIGHLIGHTS\n\n\nShawn Long, CEO of ViLogics, shares his company's approach to providing businesses with a turnkey solution for protection against these threats.We explore the landscape of cyber threats and discuss how AI and automated hacking techniques have made it easier for cyber criminals to target businesses of all sizes. \nWe delve into the importance of multiple layers of protection in cybersecurity, using the metaphor of a fortress with firewalls, VPNs, and endpoint protection as various layers of defense. We also discuss the role of social engineering in cyber attacks, using the MGM Las Vegas attack as an example.\nWe navigate through the complexities of assessing compliance and risk requirements, a crucial first step in understanding the scope of cyber threats.\nWe shift our discussion to the economics of cybersecurity, examining endpoint security pricing and packages and the shared service model as a cost-effective approach to high-level security.\nWe tackle the challenges of recruiting and retaining cybersecurity experts, highlighting the importance of having a team of specialists available 24/7 to monitor and respond to threats.\nSean introduces us to ViLogics three packages - TSO Light, TSO Standard, and TSO Enhanced - which are designed to meet a variety of needs. He explains how the pricing model works and how it offers flexibility for businesses of all sizes.\nWe emphasize the importance of cybersecurity and monthly governance in maintaining a secure digital environment. We also highlight how ViLogics assists organizations in getting onboarded and safeguarded from cyber threats.\nWe discuss how cyber criminals are able to target unsuspecting organizations, regardless of size, and the serious repercussions of their malicious actions.\nWe delve into the steps that organizations can take to protect themselves from cyber threats, with Sean providing insights on how to create a fortress of protection through different layers of security.\nWe conclude the episode by exploring how the pricing models associated with cybersecurity services can work for businesses of different sizes, and the process of getting in touch with a sales representative to learn more about ViLogics' services.\n\n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout viLogics\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nShawn LongAbout Shawn\n\n\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIPT\n\n(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)\n\n\nJeff: Well, hello again everybody. This is Jeff Pawlow, and I am the president of the engineered advisory family of companies and your host for the advisory accelerator podcast, a show that works to help CPAs become more advisory minded in their practices. On today's show, I am happy to welcome Sean Long. He is the CEO at ViLogics, who will help us navigate the incredibly complex world of cybersecurity and how technological threats are becoming more prevalent and worrisome. As a CPA, I'm sure that you've had clients who have turned to you for advice in this area, so I'm really looking forward to the conversation today. Sean, welcome to the advisory accelerator podcast. \n\nShawn: Oh, thank you very much, Jeff, and I'm looking forward to this conversation. \n\nJeff: You know it's interesting how often I am hearing CPAs talk about how often they are hearing their clients approach them about some help in the cybersecurity area. So maybe we can start today with you giving a little bit of background of your firm, what the need was in the market that you sought to fill, and then we can get into some of the nuts and bolts of what's actually going on in the threat environment out there today. \n\nShawn: Oh yeah, sure. So originally I started back in 1996. We actually first got into the IT business being a actual healthcare claim processing at a clearinghouse. So back in the early days we're still using modems and dollops and all that stuff that some people might not even be familiar with today. Security wasn't really a big thing. Right, it was a password because there wasn't any internet, there wasn't any true exposure to what we have today. And so having that understanding of healthcare and how, even before HIPAA was around and the security around it, that kind of how we, how I, developed this into ViLogics, as always being a kind of a security mindset first approach for anything that we do related to IT, and it really is a mindset, isn't it? \n\nJeff: And I think that's evolved, where I think in the past it was like, hey, you hire somebody to kind of manage this and you forget about it, and the complexity of whether it's a phishing scam or some type of active hack or anything that's going on there just becomes more and more sophisticated. \n\nAnd you've got the stuff that's kind of cringy meme worthy where our entire organization received a message from me that I needed them to run out and buy some Apple gift cards, and I think everybody's to the point where they understand, hey, that's not legit, right? \n\nAlthough I did have a few people reach out to ask me how many I needed them to get. But then you've got the stuff that is just uber professional stuff that even somebody that has a mindset and I think I'm pretty savvy on this there was one that was set out from my bank and it was so well done in terms of the email address masking and the quality of the email that I received. But I just kind of thought at the end of the day, well, I don't think they would reach out to me for this in an email, and I called and sure enough, it was a scam, but I'll tell you what that's me and I'm paying attention to it. I can't imagine how many people actually get caught up in that. So maybe talk a little bit about just what you're seeing in the threat environment out there and educate our CPAs on what their clients might be experiencing. \n\nShawn: Yeah, so obviously the whole threat vector we call this tax surface as you refer to it, which is the technical terms, obviously is evolving faster than as we're speaking. It's evolving right. So what I say, even on this call, will probably be different by the time we're done with this call. And one of the biggest things we're seeing, which is really the scariest piece, is the use of AI, artificial intelligence. So we're getting to a point now where, you know, traditionally there was some team of people or could be a lone wolf type of hacker out there. Now it's really just being done automated, which is kind of scary in itself to think about. \n\nSo obviously the only way to fight fire is with fire, right? So we're saying that you know all these, you know ransomware attacks and so on, and the mindset of I'm too small to be of a valued target. Well, that's not true anymore, because the fact that they can just do gross canopy, you know hack deployments, be it whatever fishing, spyware or you know, you know directory harvesting it's irrelevant because they're using just the volume approach. If I submit 10 million attacks and 3% hit, it's a good day at the office for them and you could be just a small, you know 15 person organization, be whatever, a warehouse or a small bar, restaurant, and it affects you, right, if you were out of business for two or three days or a week, it affects somebody small at that size a lot more than does even larger because, just as simply as a you know, they're living that day to day operational cost. Right, they don't have cash flow like some of the larger organizations. \n\nWhat we're seeing is right is how do you bring enterprise solutions that they need at a cost point that is effective for even the five person organizations? And that's kind of where we focused on them was how can we make this very complex, very dynamically, very fluid situation as easy as possible and consumptional as possible for the customer? And that's where we come out with what we call TSO, total secure office, and we kind of give them the you know the turnkey solution saying hey, how can I get protected and what's my cost? And we've broken that down into a simple you know so many dollars per month, per endpoint, and so hopefully it gives them a very fixed costs, fluid, you know or dynamic cost also so they can grow or shrink with it as they need. \n\nJeff: And that's interesting because the CPAs work with clients that are of all different shapes and sizes, so the ability to kind of scale up and down based on a solution that would make sense for the revenue volume of a particular client makes sense. Let's talk about what you do inside of that environment. Obviously, data management would be a big piece of that. I know you do some threat protection and the ultimate goal is data loss prevention. So that's a big piece of this. \n\nShawn: Yeah, I mean, we kind of refer to it the seven layers. Right, we look at this as a fortress, right? Obviously, the whole goal is to not have the enemy penetrate your fortress, but the fact of the matter is right. We have to be prepared that we have multiple layers of protection, be it firewalls and VPNs and people a lot of CPAs or customers were referred to, as you know. Those are all pieces of the puzzle to prevent force entry into your environment. But also, but at the same time, we have to deal with the fact that, you know, 87% of the breaches are still occurring because of human interaction. Right, it's just half, it is what it is. \n\nRight, they get tricked into a clicking on a link. They go to a website that they thought they're going to. It was the wrong website. They enter in credentials into a website that they thought was the right website but it wasn't. \n\nAnd then it starts, just for example and I'm sure everybody, most people, heard of this the one in Las Vegas. They had a big MGM and them had a huge event and the actually was caused by somebody pretending to be an employed MGM contacting the help desk and were very good at social engineering and actually got the technician or technical support rep to give them credentials and elevated permissions and left them basically unlocked the door for them. So I mean, wow, when those events happen, that's why you need that alter or you need them additional layers, right? So in case that event happens, you still have, like endpoint protection and and syslogs and all this stuff being recorded. So you're seeing an events that, should they penetrate the fortress and should they get inside the castle, you still can have a somewhat of some security level of detecting that somebody is, that's inside of your environment. It doesn't have the ability just to freely roam around inside it. \n\nJeff: So the fortress is, let's do everything we can to keep them out. But then inside of the fortress, if the window has been left open and somebody has managed to penetrate the system, then let's have some redundant systems that are looking for behavior that might not be routine or what have you, where we can identify something and hopefully stop it sooner than later. \n\nShawn: Correct. Correct. I mean, one of the biggest things we've seen and I think IBM had it was this is less than a year ago. The average time to detect was almost 240 days. So a lot of these systems and this happens a lot of systems, you know they've been breached and it just kind of sets there like a Trojan horse, right, just sleeping, to be executed upon whatever they feel is the right time. Those type of things happen. \n\nThat's where you need to be able to have those additional protection mechanisms in place and be able to say, ok, we know that, we detected, the window was left open, we detected that. Right, that's detecting that there's a gap in security, but also detecting who came through there and what came through there and where did they go. And once we and then we track them. So that's where you get into vectors and start to do detection of like thread hunting. So, ok, not only did I sense which way they came in, I also can tell you exactly where they walked and exactly where they stopped and exactly where they're at today and stop them and then also go back through and make sure that they didn't leave anything behind. \n\nJeff: So let's walk through the life cycle of building a relationship with the vi logics. So you're working to get to know our CPA firms that are members of the accelerator. You know big part of the conference, nice presentation, and I'm a CPA that says you know I'm getting these questions all the time. I need a partner that I can turn to to help my clients with these issues and I've made that introduction. Take me through what the experience is for that client. Is there an initial assessment, like how does the whole thing unfold? \n\nShawn: I mean generally. The recommendation would be do the initial assessment, find out if there's any compliance or risk requirements that they're looking to satisfy, be it SOC2 or PCI, hipaa, nist. If there are DOD customers that work with the have DOD. We have a lot of manufacturers. There's a new product or new requirement out there called CMMC, so we try to identify that first right. So, okay, let's work backwards and try to make sure that we understand exactly what your compliance and reporting requirements are. So we've got to incorporate that into it. \n\nThe next phase we would say would be, obviously, get a understanding of what your actual layout is. Do you have one location, six locations? Do you have remote users? How many come in? How do they access systems? Do you have stuff in the public cloud? And then we start to formulate basically a solution and then I would say, if they're once, they're really okay, I understand, I got a rough order. You know wrong we call it rough order of magnitude what this would be entailed and what it would cost. We would recommend a true penetration test so we get a true look at your fortress and see if there is any windows open and start to do some analysis there and say, hey, these are immediate stop gaps that we would recommend and then we would talk about. Okay, this is how you know. \n\nObviously this isn't a big bang theory. You just roll a software package out and it protects everything. It is absolutely a you know, a formulary that's specific to that customer and it gets rolled out in phases because security does have to be turned on piece by piece and tweak, because obviously we can't limit the customer's ability to work, because that's probably one of the number one reasons that security programs that get initiated end up blowing up is because they try to do too much too fast. It impedes on the end user experience and then all the pushback from the business side comes back and next you know you're backing off your security and that's obviously not a win situation for the customer. So that's, it's a very methodic approach, but it's. But it is very I want to say it's boutique, but it is very unique to each customer and it's all based on all these different identified requirements and, as I said, like locations, number of users, number of remote users. \n\nJeff: See, I think that's a pretty savvy observation as well, because it's one thing to build the fortress, it's another thing to convince everyone to live inside of it, and you know somebody who knows what they're doing. I think is taking that into account. It's not just the physical infrastructure, the fix, if you will, it's also the cultural evolution where, hey, these are the new rules and behaviors that we need to live by in order to make this work. And I think you're right, we've seen instances where people have gone too far, too fast, and I've got to do multiple logins and multiple times a day and people kind of throw their hands up and to say the juice isn't worth the squeeze and you, like you said, you end up backing off of that. \n\nThe fact that you kind of take that into account in your engagements. I think is pretty astute. \n\nShawn: Yeah, I mean, obviously it's only going to be as good as the end user accepts, and obviously you have to have employees, you have to have people be able to do their job, and obviously we can't impede performance, but at the same time so that's the goal of it, right Is to try to make security as transparent as possible but still effective, and there is an art form to it, but it is doable. And the other piece of it, too, is just end user training. Right, doing the phishing trainings and bringing people up to speed on making everybody in your organization be a stewardship they have to become a steward of that security mindset, right, there's no different than the TSA saying, hey, see something, say something. It's kind of that kind of having that idea, playing like I don't live in paranoia, but I also say, ah, you know what? This was a weird email, I didn't like this. Right, I need to send this over for somebody to look at. \n\nAnd that's what our team does. Right, we always are analyzing customers' data and customers' emails and customers whatever it is SharePoint folders and say, hey, okay, yeah, I see what you're saying, let's go look at it. No, it's good, we validated it. Or, you're right, it's an encrypted ransomware that got infected. And then on top of that, we just don't kill it right. We also identify how did it get there right? So we're looking at the root cause, just not the effective cause. \n\nJeff: No, that makes sense, and it's amazing how you do have to bring that culture along, because it's not write the check and forget about it. It's write the check and you actually have to go to the gym to do the workout. \n\nShawn: Yeah, exactly, you're going to have to do the reps. \n\nJeff: So let me ask you that and you mentioned this early on but the challenge is how do you bring the amount of expertise that every firm needs? I mean, if you're a 15-person firm or you're a 1,500-person firm, the expertise that you need is the expertise that you need. I mean, people aren't coming to the smaller firms and say, hey well, we'll take it easy on you and only use our dated tools to hack you. Everyone's coming at everybody full bore. So talk a little bit about the economics. How does your model price and how do you make that work for a 15-person firm? And the same way, you make it work for a 150-person firm. \n\nShawn: Well. So basically right, from our perspective, this is almost like a shared service. We have security experts, engineers all the expertise that you would need in a Bank of America Chase Bank environment, and I'm sure they're sitting there managing about 50, 60,000 endpoints. We're doing the same thing, except our endpoints are 15 over here, 20 over here, 30 over here. So to us it's no different, it's still just managing endpoints. Yes, the customer's requirements are a little bit different. They have different applications. Somebody's using a Dropbox, the other one might be using just a box, other ones might be using Azure, some might be just using Google. So there is those caveances, right, but at the end of the day, it's a endpoint or a cloud offering that is managing data flow, and our systems are organically designed that they start to learn the way that each one of the customers data transpires and moves and shifts, and so when it starts to fall outside of those norms, that's when it gets detected as OK. \n\nThis is an abnormal event. Let's look at it. It could be just a fluke or it could actually be. There's something going on here and that's where the differentiator is and that's how we can bring that scale of economies to these organizations, to get that Bank of America security posture, obviously at a lot economic standpoint, of only having to pay for 15 versus 50,000. And the point of it is the biggest thing and we're still all struggling with this. Doesn't matter what business you're in. Is the human resource factor right? It's just keep getting people, training people, staffing people, keeping them on. You know, we bring that value proposition that we have the ability to bring these expertise and these higher level engineers that most organizations even of a 2,000, probably have a hard time to not only recruit but retain, and so what I'm hearing is it's really the price, is really a function of the endpoint. \n\nJeff: It's all based on endpoint. So that's an easy calculation. It's easy math. \n\nShawn: It really is. It's easy math and that's the whole point of it. Right, you gotta be simple, you gotta be easy understanding. We basically have three packages. We kind of broke it down. So, hey, we got TSO light, tso standard and TSO enhanced. So and here's, you know, here's the matrix, here's what you get in TSO light, and obviously you know it's the bronze, silver, gold package. \n\nObviously, we're most of our customers. If they start with light, they end up with standard or, most likely, end up with enhanced. If they, you know, are price conscious, they can start with light. At least they're getting something right. They're getting that 70, 80% maybe. At least they're way better off than they were when they started. And once they build a comfort level and say, oh, wow, okay, I get it, I see the value, hey, I like to get this. Yeah, we can protect you for that, and that, you know, and they kind of, it's just a natural progression. \n\nSo the whole goal of it is to make sure that we're meeting what the customer needs, not what we're trying to sell them. And you know we've done this long enough that we know exactly what the minimums are. So here's the TSO light. This will get you going. \n\nAnd then you can always say, okay, you know my requirements have changed or I liked I'd feel a lot better if I had a little bit more. You know better security posture with my organization. You know my data's a little has changed. It's I like to see a little bit better protection or better reporting, and then it can select different plans. But the thing about it is it's all based on endpoints. So you know we have customers that you know they go up to 90, they go up to a hundred and end of season, whatever their business is, it drops to 75, they do a change order and they back. So that's the other value of it is that it does give them pricing elasticity to their organization so they're not married to a, you know a shelf wearer if they had to go out and buy it and then they're, it's sitting there and not being fully utilized. \n\nJeff: Okay, so if I'm one of the CPAs listening to this and I'm saying you know what I think this would, these guys would be a great trusted partner. Or maybe I met you at the conference, or whatever the case may be, do I reach out to you, like, what's the path? Like, do I reach out to you for that initial conversation? How do you want that to work? \n\nShawn: Also, so we have sales reps and we have our, you know, account executives and we have our SES, our sales engineers. Generally, what happens is with our other, with any of our other customers that contact us they, you know, they contact us. We schedule a discovery call with them. We kind of go through exactly what we kind of are talking about here packages, what we offer, what are you doing today? Do you have a current partner? Do you have a current provider? Do you have gaps? Number one did you have an event? Why are you on the phone with us today? \n\n80% of the time they had something just happened, right, it's like hey, I just, you know, my girl at the front desk is wired 100 grand to the wrong bank. Okay, we can help you with that, right, can't help you with the 100 grand, but we can help you that she doesn't do it again. That's a tough lesson. And then basically, we just basically formulate an official quote to them, say here's the official quote, they agree to it. And basically we kick them over to a project management team and we start the implementation and that's. You know, they schedule the you know, the agents. \n\nWe generally what we'll do is we'll put agents out there. We like to put agents out there for like 30 days and put them in what we call listening mode. Only To my point is we just want to go on there and start cranking you know, putting the crank on all your doors right and not having them be able to open and we come back and say, okay, here's what you look like, here's what your environment is currently at, and if there's right now current issues, you know we can sanitize that for you. We call it, you know we'll sanitize the environment and say, okay, you're clean, you're good to go now. And this is how we start to turn on all the security functions and features. \n\nJeff: And then we slowly just turn it on over the next 30 days and pretty much you you move into basically run and maintain mode, I think that's the thing that impressed me the most as I started to learn more about the ILogix is just how formulaic it is to getting people set up and onboarded and put them in, and I think that will resonate well with the accountants. They are very work paper oriented in terms of processes and procedures and methodologies and you've got a very similar approach. So you guys are kind of speaking the same language in terms of how you execute what you do as a core competency. So, sean, anything else I mean no, I think it's pretty straightforward. \n\nShawn: I mean, I think some of our biggest successes have been like the large organizations that had some IT resources in house and are just overwhelmed or over consumed with just that day to day. You know, the printer doesn't print, the Wi-Fi doesn't work, the laptop won't fire up and we have found that we've been a true asset to organizations that can, we can come in and just take that security piece off of their plate and give the owners be it the you know, the partners or the you know or the board members, whoever it is, depending on how the organization is structured that true independent third party piece of mind that they know that there truly is somebody, 24, seven, 365, watching their environment. And I think the biggest thing we bring in we always try to stress this we do a thing called monthly governance with every one of our customers. We're a strong advocate of it because our goal is to make you know the old saying teach you to fish, not feed you fish. We want to make you very and the customer very aware. \n\nThis is exactly what we did for you this month. This is how many attacks we stopped, this is how many attacks were attempted, and we have all those analytical tools and all those reports that are. It's like it's very factual, right, it's not to scare you, it's just for them to understand, like this is exactly what's happened, what's been happening on your environment, on your firewalls, onto your email accounts, and you know it's sobering. Right, it's not a threat, it's not scary, it's just like wow, you know, I didn't think I was, I'd be that you know of a target, but you are. If you're on, if you're on the net, internet, you're a target. That's the bottom line, doesn't matter what size you are. \n\nJeff:And that's the perfect way. Yeah, just a perfect way to wrap things up If you're on the internet, you're a target Period, that's, it Doesn't matter how big you are, you're in the crosshairs. \n\nShawn: I had a one lawyer firm and with a secretary to front desk and somehow they compromised his email and a wire transfer went through and it didn't go through and so it was not a good situation. And then we had if you've ever heard of Marine Maxx, a big boat broker dealership, working on a case right now, where the buyer bought the boat wired the money to Marine Maxx. Marine Maxx wired the money to the broker, gave him his commission and then went the wire of the money to the seller and he wired it to the wrong place and so the guy that bought the boat wants his boat. The guy that owns the boat's not giving him his title until he gets his payment. So it's just a very ugly situation that can be avoided and unfortunately it's nobody's fault. Right, there's no intent, there's no evilness to it. It's just that somebody made a mistake, wired the money. We're tricked into what they changed the bank account, wired it to somebody that they see what happened. Was they seen the wire come through? They knew that there was a transaction in play. They see the emails go through. So they knew that there was another wire going to come and they basically played right off of it and tricked them into changing the bank account for the remaining balance. \n\nAnd, as they say, the rest is history. And so that if there's anything to you know, once again you got. You're going to have a bad customer right To a business right. One thing we don't want is bad customers right, and that's a way to get bad customers right. And then who's going to eat that? You know, half a million dollars. I think it was actually more than that, it was like over half a million dollars. Somebody's going to have to eat it. The insurance companies won't pay for it because it wasn't criminal mischief and it wasn't the employee theft, so there's no coverage for it. So it's just a. We try to avoid those situations like that Makes sense. \n\nJeff: Makes sense. And her Sean thank you so much for taking the time. I think this has been pretty insightful. I know the CPAs are being asked about this. You've got an incredible solution that can help the CPAs help their clients really take themselves off or out of the crosshairs if you will build the fortress that you talked about, and I just appreciate the good job that you're doing for our clients. So thanks for taking the time this afternoon and I appreciate having you be a guest on the podcast. \n\nShawn: I appreciate it, Jeff, and I look forward to talking soon. Take care everybody. Special Guest: Shawn Long.","content_html":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, I connected with Shawn Long, the CEO at ViLogics, to discuss how his firm partners with CPAs to help their clients better manage their cybersecurity infrastructure.
\n\nThe threat is real, and there's quite a bit of accounting firms can do to help their clients mitigate this incredible risk. So take a listen and learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory potential.
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SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
\n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/c/c8934187-d369-484c-b4a9-b328cff3a95f/avatar_small.jpg?v=1\"){kind=avatar} | \nShawn Long | \n
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
\n\nShawn: Oh, thank you very much, Jeff, and I'm looking forward to this conversation.
\n\nJeff: You know it's interesting how often I am hearing CPAs talk about how often they are hearing their clients approach them about some help in the cybersecurity area. So maybe we can start today with you giving a little bit of background of your firm, what the need was in the market that you sought to fill, and then we can get into some of the nuts and bolts of what's actually going on in the threat environment out there today.
\n\nShawn: Oh yeah, sure. So originally I started back in 1996. We actually first got into the IT business being a actual healthcare claim processing at a clearinghouse. So back in the early days we're still using modems and dollops and all that stuff that some people might not even be familiar with today. Security wasn't really a big thing. Right, it was a password because there wasn't any internet, there wasn't any true exposure to what we have today. And so having that understanding of healthcare and how, even before HIPAA was around and the security around it, that kind of how we, how I, developed this into ViLogics, as always being a kind of a security mindset first approach for anything that we do related to IT, and it really is a mindset, isn't it?
\n\nJeff: And I think that's evolved, where I think in the past it was like, hey, you hire somebody to kind of manage this and you forget about it, and the complexity of whether it's a phishing scam or some type of active hack or anything that's going on there just becomes more and more sophisticated.
\n\nAnd you've got the stuff that's kind of cringy meme worthy where our entire organization received a message from me that I needed them to run out and buy some Apple gift cards, and I think everybody's to the point where they understand, hey, that's not legit, right?
\n\nAlthough I did have a few people reach out to ask me how many I needed them to get. But then you've got the stuff that is just uber professional stuff that even somebody that has a mindset and I think I'm pretty savvy on this there was one that was set out from my bank and it was so well done in terms of the email address masking and the quality of the email that I received. But I just kind of thought at the end of the day, well, I don't think they would reach out to me for this in an email, and I called and sure enough, it was a scam, but I'll tell you what that's me and I'm paying attention to it. I can't imagine how many people actually get caught up in that. So maybe talk a little bit about just what you're seeing in the threat environment out there and educate our CPAs on what their clients might be experiencing.
\n\nShawn: Yeah, so obviously the whole threat vector we call this tax surface as you refer to it, which is the technical terms, obviously is evolving faster than as we're speaking. It's evolving right. So what I say, even on this call, will probably be different by the time we're done with this call. And one of the biggest things we're seeing, which is really the scariest piece, is the use of AI, artificial intelligence. So we're getting to a point now where, you know, traditionally there was some team of people or could be a lone wolf type of hacker out there. Now it's really just being done automated, which is kind of scary in itself to think about.
\n\nSo obviously the only way to fight fire is with fire, right? So we're saying that you know all these, you know ransomware attacks and so on, and the mindset of I'm too small to be of a valued target. Well, that's not true anymore, because the fact that they can just do gross canopy, you know hack deployments, be it whatever fishing, spyware or you know, you know directory harvesting it's irrelevant because they're using just the volume approach. If I submit 10 million attacks and 3% hit, it's a good day at the office for them and you could be just a small, you know 15 person organization, be whatever, a warehouse or a small bar, restaurant, and it affects you, right, if you were out of business for two or three days or a week, it affects somebody small at that size a lot more than does even larger because, just as simply as a you know, they're living that day to day operational cost. Right, they don't have cash flow like some of the larger organizations.
\n\nWhat we're seeing is right is how do you bring enterprise solutions that they need at a cost point that is effective for even the five person organizations? And that's kind of where we focused on them was how can we make this very complex, very dynamically, very fluid situation as easy as possible and consumptional as possible for the customer? And that's where we come out with what we call TSO, total secure office, and we kind of give them the you know the turnkey solution saying hey, how can I get protected and what's my cost? And we've broken that down into a simple you know so many dollars per month, per endpoint, and so hopefully it gives them a very fixed costs, fluid, you know or dynamic cost also so they can grow or shrink with it as they need.
\n\nJeff: And that's interesting because the CPAs work with clients that are of all different shapes and sizes, so the ability to kind of scale up and down based on a solution that would make sense for the revenue volume of a particular client makes sense. Let's talk about what you do inside of that environment. Obviously, data management would be a big piece of that. I know you do some threat protection and the ultimate goal is data loss prevention. So that's a big piece of this.
\n\nShawn: Yeah, I mean, we kind of refer to it the seven layers. Right, we look at this as a fortress, right? Obviously, the whole goal is to not have the enemy penetrate your fortress, but the fact of the matter is right. We have to be prepared that we have multiple layers of protection, be it firewalls and VPNs and people a lot of CPAs or customers were referred to, as you know. Those are all pieces of the puzzle to prevent force entry into your environment. But also, but at the same time, we have to deal with the fact that, you know, 87% of the breaches are still occurring because of human interaction. Right, it's just half, it is what it is.
\n\nRight, they get tricked into a clicking on a link. They go to a website that they thought they're going to. It was the wrong website. They enter in credentials into a website that they thought was the right website but it wasn't.
\n\nAnd then it starts, just for example and I'm sure everybody, most people, heard of this the one in Las Vegas. They had a big MGM and them had a huge event and the actually was caused by somebody pretending to be an employed MGM contacting the help desk and were very good at social engineering and actually got the technician or technical support rep to give them credentials and elevated permissions and left them basically unlocked the door for them. So I mean, wow, when those events happen, that's why you need that alter or you need them additional layers, right? So in case that event happens, you still have, like endpoint protection and and syslogs and all this stuff being recorded. So you're seeing an events that, should they penetrate the fortress and should they get inside the castle, you still can have a somewhat of some security level of detecting that somebody is, that's inside of your environment. It doesn't have the ability just to freely roam around inside it.
\n\nJeff: So the fortress is, let's do everything we can to keep them out. But then inside of the fortress, if the window has been left open and somebody has managed to penetrate the system, then let's have some redundant systems that are looking for behavior that might not be routine or what have you, where we can identify something and hopefully stop it sooner than later.
\n\nShawn: Correct. Correct. I mean, one of the biggest things we've seen and I think IBM had it was this is less than a year ago. The average time to detect was almost 240 days. So a lot of these systems and this happens a lot of systems, you know they've been breached and it just kind of sets there like a Trojan horse, right, just sleeping, to be executed upon whatever they feel is the right time. Those type of things happen.
\n\nThat's where you need to be able to have those additional protection mechanisms in place and be able to say, ok, we know that, we detected, the window was left open, we detected that. Right, that's detecting that there's a gap in security, but also detecting who came through there and what came through there and where did they go. And once we and then we track them. So that's where you get into vectors and start to do detection of like thread hunting. So, ok, not only did I sense which way they came in, I also can tell you exactly where they walked and exactly where they stopped and exactly where they're at today and stop them and then also go back through and make sure that they didn't leave anything behind.
\n\nJeff: So let's walk through the life cycle of building a relationship with the vi logics. So you're working to get to know our CPA firms that are members of the accelerator. You know big part of the conference, nice presentation, and I'm a CPA that says you know I'm getting these questions all the time. I need a partner that I can turn to to help my clients with these issues and I've made that introduction. Take me through what the experience is for that client. Is there an initial assessment, like how does the whole thing unfold?
\n\nShawn: I mean generally. The recommendation would be do the initial assessment, find out if there's any compliance or risk requirements that they're looking to satisfy, be it SOC2 or PCI, hipaa, nist. If there are DOD customers that work with the have DOD. We have a lot of manufacturers. There's a new product or new requirement out there called CMMC, so we try to identify that first right. So, okay, let's work backwards and try to make sure that we understand exactly what your compliance and reporting requirements are. So we've got to incorporate that into it.
\n\nThe next phase we would say would be, obviously, get a understanding of what your actual layout is. Do you have one location, six locations? Do you have remote users? How many come in? How do they access systems? Do you have stuff in the public cloud? And then we start to formulate basically a solution and then I would say, if they're once, they're really okay, I understand, I got a rough order. You know wrong we call it rough order of magnitude what this would be entailed and what it would cost. We would recommend a true penetration test so we get a true look at your fortress and see if there is any windows open and start to do some analysis there and say, hey, these are immediate stop gaps that we would recommend and then we would talk about. Okay, this is how you know.
\n\nObviously this isn't a big bang theory. You just roll a software package out and it protects everything. It is absolutely a you know, a formulary that's specific to that customer and it gets rolled out in phases because security does have to be turned on piece by piece and tweak, because obviously we can't limit the customer's ability to work, because that's probably one of the number one reasons that security programs that get initiated end up blowing up is because they try to do too much too fast. It impedes on the end user experience and then all the pushback from the business side comes back and next you know you're backing off your security and that's obviously not a win situation for the customer. So that's, it's a very methodic approach, but it's. But it is very I want to say it's boutique, but it is very unique to each customer and it's all based on all these different identified requirements and, as I said, like locations, number of users, number of remote users.
\n\nJeff: See, I think that's a pretty savvy observation as well, because it's one thing to build the fortress, it's another thing to convince everyone to live inside of it, and you know somebody who knows what they're doing. I think is taking that into account. It's not just the physical infrastructure, the fix, if you will, it's also the cultural evolution where, hey, these are the new rules and behaviors that we need to live by in order to make this work. And I think you're right, we've seen instances where people have gone too far, too fast, and I've got to do multiple logins and multiple times a day and people kind of throw their hands up and to say the juice isn't worth the squeeze and you, like you said, you end up backing off of that.
\n\nThe fact that you kind of take that into account in your engagements. I think is pretty astute.
\n\nShawn: Yeah, I mean, obviously it's only going to be as good as the end user accepts, and obviously you have to have employees, you have to have people be able to do their job, and obviously we can't impede performance, but at the same time so that's the goal of it, right Is to try to make security as transparent as possible but still effective, and there is an art form to it, but it is doable. And the other piece of it, too, is just end user training. Right, doing the phishing trainings and bringing people up to speed on making everybody in your organization be a stewardship they have to become a steward of that security mindset, right, there's no different than the TSA saying, hey, see something, say something. It's kind of that kind of having that idea, playing like I don't live in paranoia, but I also say, ah, you know what? This was a weird email, I didn't like this. Right, I need to send this over for somebody to look at.
\n\nAnd that's what our team does. Right, we always are analyzing customers' data and customers' emails and customers whatever it is SharePoint folders and say, hey, okay, yeah, I see what you're saying, let's go look at it. No, it's good, we validated it. Or, you're right, it's an encrypted ransomware that got infected. And then on top of that, we just don't kill it right. We also identify how did it get there right? So we're looking at the root cause, just not the effective cause.
\n\nJeff: No, that makes sense, and it's amazing how you do have to bring that culture along, because it's not write the check and forget about it. It's write the check and you actually have to go to the gym to do the workout.
\n\nShawn: Yeah, exactly, you're going to have to do the reps.
\n\nJeff: So let me ask you that and you mentioned this early on but the challenge is how do you bring the amount of expertise that every firm needs? I mean, if you're a 15-person firm or you're a 1,500-person firm, the expertise that you need is the expertise that you need. I mean, people aren't coming to the smaller firms and say, hey well, we'll take it easy on you and only use our dated tools to hack you. Everyone's coming at everybody full bore. So talk a little bit about the economics. How does your model price and how do you make that work for a 15-person firm? And the same way, you make it work for a 150-person firm.
\n\nShawn: Well. So basically right, from our perspective, this is almost like a shared service. We have security experts, engineers all the expertise that you would need in a Bank of America Chase Bank environment, and I'm sure they're sitting there managing about 50, 60,000 endpoints. We're doing the same thing, except our endpoints are 15 over here, 20 over here, 30 over here. So to us it's no different, it's still just managing endpoints. Yes, the customer's requirements are a little bit different. They have different applications. Somebody's using a Dropbox, the other one might be using just a box, other ones might be using Azure, some might be just using Google. So there is those caveances, right, but at the end of the day, it's a endpoint or a cloud offering that is managing data flow, and our systems are organically designed that they start to learn the way that each one of the customers data transpires and moves and shifts, and so when it starts to fall outside of those norms, that's when it gets detected as OK.
\n\nThis is an abnormal event. Let's look at it. It could be just a fluke or it could actually be. There's something going on here and that's where the differentiator is and that's how we can bring that scale of economies to these organizations, to get that Bank of America security posture, obviously at a lot economic standpoint, of only having to pay for 15 versus 50,000. And the point of it is the biggest thing and we're still all struggling with this. Doesn't matter what business you're in. Is the human resource factor right? It's just keep getting people, training people, staffing people, keeping them on. You know, we bring that value proposition that we have the ability to bring these expertise and these higher level engineers that most organizations even of a 2,000, probably have a hard time to not only recruit but retain, and so what I'm hearing is it's really the price, is really a function of the endpoint.
\n\nJeff: It's all based on endpoint. So that's an easy calculation. It's easy math.
\n\nShawn: It really is. It's easy math and that's the whole point of it. Right, you gotta be simple, you gotta be easy understanding. We basically have three packages. We kind of broke it down. So, hey, we got TSO light, tso standard and TSO enhanced. So and here's, you know, here's the matrix, here's what you get in TSO light, and obviously you know it's the bronze, silver, gold package.
\n\nObviously, we're most of our customers. If they start with light, they end up with standard or, most likely, end up with enhanced. If they, you know, are price conscious, they can start with light. At least they're getting something right. They're getting that 70, 80% maybe. At least they're way better off than they were when they started. And once they build a comfort level and say, oh, wow, okay, I get it, I see the value, hey, I like to get this. Yeah, we can protect you for that, and that, you know, and they kind of, it's just a natural progression.
\n\nSo the whole goal of it is to make sure that we're meeting what the customer needs, not what we're trying to sell them. And you know we've done this long enough that we know exactly what the minimums are. So here's the TSO light. This will get you going.
\n\nAnd then you can always say, okay, you know my requirements have changed or I liked I'd feel a lot better if I had a little bit more. You know better security posture with my organization. You know my data's a little has changed. It's I like to see a little bit better protection or better reporting, and then it can select different plans. But the thing about it is it's all based on endpoints. So you know we have customers that you know they go up to 90, they go up to a hundred and end of season, whatever their business is, it drops to 75, they do a change order and they back. So that's the other value of it is that it does give them pricing elasticity to their organization so they're not married to a, you know a shelf wearer if they had to go out and buy it and then they're, it's sitting there and not being fully utilized.
\n\nJeff: Okay, so if I'm one of the CPAs listening to this and I'm saying you know what I think this would, these guys would be a great trusted partner. Or maybe I met you at the conference, or whatever the case may be, do I reach out to you, like, what's the path? Like, do I reach out to you for that initial conversation? How do you want that to work?
\n\nShawn: Also, so we have sales reps and we have our, you know, account executives and we have our SES, our sales engineers. Generally, what happens is with our other, with any of our other customers that contact us they, you know, they contact us. We schedule a discovery call with them. We kind of go through exactly what we kind of are talking about here packages, what we offer, what are you doing today? Do you have a current partner? Do you have a current provider? Do you have gaps? Number one did you have an event? Why are you on the phone with us today?
\n\n80% of the time they had something just happened, right, it's like hey, I just, you know, my girl at the front desk is wired 100 grand to the wrong bank. Okay, we can help you with that, right, can't help you with the 100 grand, but we can help you that she doesn't do it again. That's a tough lesson. And then basically, we just basically formulate an official quote to them, say here's the official quote, they agree to it. And basically we kick them over to a project management team and we start the implementation and that's. You know, they schedule the you know, the agents.
\n\nWe generally what we'll do is we'll put agents out there. We like to put agents out there for like 30 days and put them in what we call listening mode. Only To my point is we just want to go on there and start cranking you know, putting the crank on all your doors right and not having them be able to open and we come back and say, okay, here's what you look like, here's what your environment is currently at, and if there's right now current issues, you know we can sanitize that for you. We call it, you know we'll sanitize the environment and say, okay, you're clean, you're good to go now. And this is how we start to turn on all the security functions and features.
\n\nJeff: And then we slowly just turn it on over the next 30 days and pretty much you you move into basically run and maintain mode, I think that's the thing that impressed me the most as I started to learn more about the ILogix is just how formulaic it is to getting people set up and onboarded and put them in, and I think that will resonate well with the accountants. They are very work paper oriented in terms of processes and procedures and methodologies and you've got a very similar approach. So you guys are kind of speaking the same language in terms of how you execute what you do as a core competency. So, sean, anything else I mean no, I think it's pretty straightforward.
\n\nShawn: I mean, I think some of our biggest successes have been like the large organizations that had some IT resources in house and are just overwhelmed or over consumed with just that day to day. You know, the printer doesn't print, the Wi-Fi doesn't work, the laptop won't fire up and we have found that we've been a true asset to organizations that can, we can come in and just take that security piece off of their plate and give the owners be it the you know, the partners or the you know or the board members, whoever it is, depending on how the organization is structured that true independent third party piece of mind that they know that there truly is somebody, 24, seven, 365, watching their environment. And I think the biggest thing we bring in we always try to stress this we do a thing called monthly governance with every one of our customers. We're a strong advocate of it because our goal is to make you know the old saying teach you to fish, not feed you fish. We want to make you very and the customer very aware.
\n\nThis is exactly what we did for you this month. This is how many attacks we stopped, this is how many attacks were attempted, and we have all those analytical tools and all those reports that are. It's like it's very factual, right, it's not to scare you, it's just for them to understand, like this is exactly what's happened, what's been happening on your environment, on your firewalls, onto your email accounts, and you know it's sobering. Right, it's not a threat, it's not scary, it's just like wow, you know, I didn't think I was, I'd be that you know of a target, but you are. If you're on, if you're on the net, internet, you're a target. That's the bottom line, doesn't matter what size you are.
\n\nJeff:And that's the perfect way. Yeah, just a perfect way to wrap things up If you're on the internet, you're a target Period, that's, it Doesn't matter how big you are, you're in the crosshairs.
\n\nShawn: I had a one lawyer firm and with a secretary to front desk and somehow they compromised his email and a wire transfer went through and it didn't go through and so it was not a good situation. And then we had if you've ever heard of Marine Maxx, a big boat broker dealership, working on a case right now, where the buyer bought the boat wired the money to Marine Maxx. Marine Maxx wired the money to the broker, gave him his commission and then went the wire of the money to the seller and he wired it to the wrong place and so the guy that bought the boat wants his boat. The guy that owns the boat's not giving him his title until he gets his payment. So it's just a very ugly situation that can be avoided and unfortunately it's nobody's fault. Right, there's no intent, there's no evilness to it. It's just that somebody made a mistake, wired the money. We're tricked into what they changed the bank account, wired it to somebody that they see what happened. Was they seen the wire come through? They knew that there was a transaction in play. They see the emails go through. So they knew that there was another wire going to come and they basically played right off of it and tricked them into changing the bank account for the remaining balance.
\n\nAnd, as they say, the rest is history. And so that if there's anything to you know, once again you got. You're going to have a bad customer right To a business right. One thing we don't want is bad customers right, and that's a way to get bad customers right. And then who's going to eat that? You know, half a million dollars. I think it was actually more than that, it was like over half a million dollars. Somebody's going to have to eat it. The insurance companies won't pay for it because it wasn't criminal mischief and it wasn't the employee theft, so there's no coverage for it. So it's just a. We try to avoid those situations like that Makes sense.
\n\nJeff: Makes sense. And her Sean thank you so much for taking the time. I think this has been pretty insightful. I know the CPAs are being asked about this. You've got an incredible solution that can help the CPAs help their clients really take themselves off or out of the crosshairs if you will build the fortress that you talked about, and I just appreciate the good job that you're doing for our clients. So thanks for taking the time this afternoon and I appreciate having you be a guest on the podcast.
\n\nShawn: I appreciate it, Jeff, and I look forward to talking soon. Take care everybody.
Special Guest: Shawn Long.
","summary":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, I connected with Shawn Long, the CEO at ViLogics, to discuss how his firm partners with CPAs to help their clients better manage their cybersecurity infrastructure. \r\n\r\nThe threat is real, and there's quite a bit of accounting firms can do to help their clients mitigate this incredible risk. So take a listen and learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory potential.","date_published":"2023-11-16T08:00:00.000-06:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/ba58991f-8f52-45ba-8766-bee4b82a4f25.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":20116114,"duration_in_seconds":1668}]},{"id":"02ee0343-7edf-4fa3-adda-898f70abeea7","title":"Ep016: Managing the Client Revenue Cycle with Aiwyn","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/016","content_text":"On this episode of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, I connect with Pat Morell, the Chief Revenue Officer at Aiwyn, to discuss how his firm partners with CPA firms to help better manage their client revenue cycle.\n\nI learned how Aiwyn's system taps into legacy management platforms while innovating with solutions like engagement letters. Pat elaborates on drastically reducing administrative tasks and increasing billable hours. \n\nWith nearly 80 customers and strong reviews, Aiwyn is achieving success. However, what was most reassuring was Pat's emphasis on data security and reliable service.\n\nTake a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice.\n\n \n\nSHOW HIGHLIGHTS\n\n\n\nPat Morell, the co-founder and chief revenue officer of Aiwyn, joins us to discuss how their system is revolutionizing the CPA revenue process through automation, liberating CPAs from time-consuming administrative tasks.\nAiwyn’s system integrates with legacy practice management systems to automate tasks from billing to collections, to payments and account management, which enables CPA firms to focus more on client service.\nWe discuss the benefits of Aiwyn's system, such as increasing billable hours and improving clients' revenue. Pat shares that the pricing model is accessible for firms with as little as $2 million in top line revenue.\nPat outlines the challenges firms face when adopting a new system and explains how Aiwyn assists in overcoming these obstacles.\nWe provide an overview of the process of getting started with Aiwyn, which includes an initial Q&A, a demo, and understanding the pricing structure.\nPat shares the success story of Aiwyn, which currently serves almost 80 customers and has a high net promoter score.\nWe discuss the benefits of Aiwyn's software, its security features, and how it can help firms of all sizes, emphasizing that it can free up staff from time-consuming billing tasks.\nPat explains the details of Aiwyn's pricing model, which is designed to help firms grow. The pricing model is based on the firm's top line revenue and scales as the firm grows.\nWe discuss how Aiwyn's software is constantly updated and improved, with security features and uptime SLAs in place to ensure reliable and secure operation.\nWe conclude by expressing gratitude to Pat for his enlightening insights and to our listeners for tuning in. We encourage interested firms to reach out to Pat for more information on Aiwyn.\n\n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout Aiwyn\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nPat MorellAbout Pat\n\n\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIPT\n\n(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)\n\n\nJeff: Well, hello again everybody. This is Jeff Pawlow, and I am the president of the engineered advisory family of companies and your host for the advisory accelerator podcast, a show that works to help CPAs become more advisory minded in their practices. On today's episode, I'm happy to welcome Pat Morell, the chief revenue officer and co-finder of Aiwyn, who will help us explore how their system really allows CPAs to better advise their client in the areas of revenue process automation, and that includes billing, payment processing, collections and overall account management. So we've got a lot to cover today, Pat, welcome to the advisory accelerator podcast. \n\nPat: Jeff, thanks for having me Really excited to be here. \n\nJeff: You bet, and full disclosure. Not only am I interviewing Pat today, but we're also interviewing Pat and his company to be part of a solution at engineered advisory. So we're looking forward to working with you as a client and appreciate everything that you've done with us to figure out what solution is going to best meet our needs. So I'm excited to share some of what we've learned with our listeners as we go through the podcast, and one of the things that I thought was interesting on your website is you've done a nice job of kind of historically calling out what the revenue process used to be. You had pre 1980, where it's almost a hundred percent manual processes, and then we got spreadsheets in the 80s and more internet enabled tools in the 2000s, and that brings us up to today. And so talk a little bit about what I win does as a product at a high level, and then we can dig down a little bit deeper from there. \n\nPat: Sure, and I'd love that you put this on a historical continuum, because I think we, before starting the business, were operators on that continuum and actually the core use case that drove us to start I win is we had a not so great billing experience as clients of a very big firm, and it's set us off on this journey to figure out how we can improve the client experience, specifically through the lens of the billing and collections experience. \n\nSo the high level on I win is we work right now with about 80 of the world's largest CPA firms and we are helping them internally automate their billing, collections and payment processes. \n\nWe quite literally built software that plugs into some of the legacy practice management systems that a lot of these traditional firms operate off of what they use for their time, their billing, et cetera and we pull out some data and we present data to clients in a modern interface that allows clients to see their payment history, to pay their bills. Oftentimes, folks listening to this, you probably have clients who have multiple business entities. They probably have multiple projects going on at any given time. What we've observed is a lot of those times I just wanted an easy way to go in, see their invoice, one click and pay, and we've created the apparatus to do that and in doing so, in kind of what we say, unlocking data from this legacy practice management infrastructure and by that I mean, you know again, firms listening to this. \n\nYou all probably work off of things like CCH access or Thompson Reuters practice CS, those traditional tools. By unlocking those data we've been able to not only build solutions that automate really our core focus right now billing collections and payment but we've expanded to additional use cases throughout. Again, just to bring it full circle, what we call the quote unquote revenue cycle, kind of that cyclical flow of behaviors that underlie the flow of revenue to a firm. You know everything from acquiring a client all the way to getting paid. We're now moving upstream and we made this announcement recently we have an engagement letter solution. So all of the nice bills and whistles of automation that we've brought to Billion in collection, we now basically give clients and their firms kind of a one quick, easy button for automating engagement letters and client onboarding. So big visions, big appetites and by unlocking data we're able to do a lot. So that's where we are right now, three years in. \n\nJeff: So talk a little bit I mean any accounting firms you know at the upper end of the market is pretty impressive. Let's dig into that a little bit so I win. I'm assuming is the system that they're using to automate their revenue process. But then I'm guessing they're also recommending and referring that to their clients as well. So talk about the dynamics of that relationship you have with the CPA firm. \n\nPat: Sure, yeah, so our firms. It's an interesting dynamic we have with our firms. Yes, they are using us as their internal systems and the value proposition, jeff, they're being you plug in Iowan and Basically you can put on autopilot. All the billing collections work, so measurably what happens is your day sales outstanding decline. You save a lot of time, you know, instead of your partners making collections called day in, day out. They don't have to because we can automate things like statements and we get clients an experience where they can literally go to one portal, click pay and be done. \n\nThe firm love it because it's unlocking Kind of time at the margins. That's freeing up capacity which, when we talk about transitioning to a kind of advisory services, that's a paramount concern. One of the foundational stats, jeff, for us that we see is 55% of CPA time is spent not on client service work, it's spent on something in the administrative back office. And for Iowan, as we think about our value proposition to the market, if we can turn that 55% into 25%, holy cow, that's a tronche of 30% of billable or workable time that could be allocated to new service lines, allowing folks to kind of staff up, etc. So we see us as kind of a behind-the-scenes asset to unlock capacity. \n\nIt was been interesting to your point. A lot of our CPA firm customers work with other CPA firms. So yes, absolutely. What we've seen is they have a great experience with us, is their clients have a great experience paying through us, and then there becomes a virtuous cycle of referral where we can kind of propagate that trend of Capacity unlocking just by virtue of operating as we operate. \n\nSo it's one of the things I love about the CPA space is how well networked and I mean that's in a good way, talk it into the firms are they all share best practices and ideas and, as we're now again three years into this journey of I, when we've been growing very quickly and that's why we'll spending even faster as a function of that network effect, you know it's interesting and I really like the, the mindset of unlocking or freeing up capacity At that partner level. \n\nJeff: I do quite a bit of speaking and one of the questions I use to kind of get air moving in the room is by a show of hands, how many of you have done work over the past week that honestly should have been done at a level below you or Automated and predictably every hand goes up in the room we create a nice breeze. \n\nBut we look at that and you know we I've got the benefit of having a little bit of data at our disposal through. You know we own the Rosenberg survey, we own inside public accounting, so we've got a lot of those benchmarking and analytic points to reference. And what's amazing to me, staggering to me, is the amount of work that we're just holding in with and not billing. And you know how reluctant the partners are to follow up on the billing and what some of the aging for the receivables are With these firms. And I look at this and I say, okay, if you've got an automated solution where you know the partners involvement plummet, we can continue to move the customer through that revenue Journey and I can reduce whip and I can free up capacity for the partners to be doing advisory-minded services where the value is. That's just a win-win and we see in the data how much lack of capacity there is at the partner level and what the AR aging and what the whip looks like in these firms, and in a lot of cases it's simply not pretty. \n\nPat: Well, and you're absolutely right, and the data are jar in some cases, by a firm's own admission. I mean, I think most firms would kind of look at their days in whip or their days in AR and say, yes, that's not ideal, that's not what we want, and the and, of course, the irony is those are the same firms that, in many ways, are Having some of their best years ever, and it's a function of some macro kind of tailwinds in favor of the profession. What we've observed further, though, is Well, the data perhaps, and and the the rubber meets the road, day-to-day experience is unique to the CPA space. There's a thematic consistency between this challenge in the CPA space and other professions that we've worked in. So, just for context, for the listeners, I did not come from a CPA background. \n\nI'm a career of software entrepreneur and, jeff, I think I've shared this with you and your team my previous venture prior to I when was a healthcare technology business. Basically, we were focused on automating Financial processes and interchanges of data between large hospital systems and insurance company, and the core focus there was doing that Automatically, so that doctors and nurses wouldn't have to do it manually, and the same pains that persisted in healthcare, or what we see in the CPA space, which is you got a high dollar per hour or high salary professionals who want to operate at highs and best use kind of the highest, the most creative end of their licensure, and they sit there and eight hours a week they're beating their head against the wall doing something manual in a spreadsheet and what we want to do is unlock that time and again, you hear me say that a lot. We actually have a user conference in a couple of weeks and it's called Unlock. One of our missions is to unlock time and money for professional services firm. \n\nBut the idea here being that there's a compounding return. If you're able to do this well, if you can kind of cut in half your days in with just because you can get bills out the door faster, you're not only gonna free up time, you know that's. You know time in we spent on billing is now time for business development. Taking a client to play golf, you know, calling a client to say, hey, how's your business I mean all the things we want to do as professionals. We now have time for it. \n\nBut here's something else that's really fascinating. There's a direct correlation between the speed of billing and billed realization rates. A lot of firms we talked to, a lot of the firms we've seen have said, hey, listen, you know, we know that. You know we're not billing realization at the rate we want because there's some ungoverned processes here and there's behaviors of just you know, we just always give discounts, we write some realization down, just because that's what we've always done and what we've observed is the likelihood of writing down realization increases the more time lapses between the date of the last whip entry and the date the invoice is sent. \n\nSo the interest of that is also true, and we've corroborated that the faster you bill, the less likely you are going to write something down. And it's totally logical because I always use this example. You know, if you pull it all night or for a client and then you wait two months to bill them, you're kind of going to forget how hard you you beat yourself up to do right by them. But if you bill three days later, you are going to remember every minute of that and you are going to command the revenues that you rightly earned. So we're excited because we're not just unlocking time, we're showing a compounding benefit to the bottom line of the firm as well by growing realization rates. \n\nJeff: Now, pat, I know on your website, you know, in terms of target market, you're looking at, you know, maybe the 500 largest accounting firms in the country, so you're probably $20 million in revenue on up. Is there a floor at which firms are kind of priced out or the utility starts to not make sense, like what's the minimum size firm that you look at and say, hey, this is our sweet spot? \n\nPat: Jeff, great question. I'm glad you asked because, frankly, the total addressable market as we see it is expanding in both directions. Actually, when we started the firm, yes, we thought we were really going to be best economically suited to sports, to the top 200, 300 firms. But what we now see is firms all the way down to those with, say, even 2 million in top line revenues are fantastic fit for us, not just to realize value in terms of statistical impact on cash flow free enough time but we have kind of a fee model that makes economic sense as well. So I think our biggest customer now you're right, you see this a fantastic firm, very impressive. Everyone knows them by name. \n\nWe have a number of firms that are outside of the top 500 that are doing 3, 4 million in top line revenues, growing quickly of course. But we've designed a model that makes sense for them, makes sense for us. So we're excited to see that rephrase. It's unfortunate that the pains we see at the big firms are felt up and down the chain, but we're encouraged because those pains are pains we know we can solve and we figured out a model that allows us to do that. So, yeah, $2 million a year firms fantastic fit for IWIN. \n\nJeff: All right, that's fantastic, and just to reiterate that for our listeners. So there's no confusion $2 million firm and on up, which is well below, obviously, the top 500 firms in the country, and it sounds like you've been able to do something with a pricing model that makes it more palatable to those smaller firms. So let's come back to that in a minute. But as you're reaching out to a firm, says, hey, I want this right, I want to improve WIP, I want to improve realization, I want to improve AR aging, I want to be more profitable as a firm. \n\nI'm guessing the number one hurdle that you've got to get over is what system does it replace and how do I get a new system adopted in my firm? Because it's amazing how the tax season is now year round. The firms used to have a little bit of downtime where they could focus on a big technology installation or something like that, and now there's a couple pockets, but for the most part they're just busy. So what kind of resistance do you get from potential customers when they're just trying to get their arms around the lift that it takes to install a system like IWIN? \n\nPat: I'm thrilled you asked me that question because we spent about a year behind the scenes doing a lot of heavy duty engineering to make sure that the answer I'm about to give is corroborated and grounded in reality. The very sincere answer, jeff, is it is not a big lift for us, and I say that because we are not asking firms to do a holistic rip and replace of their practice management system. In fact, it's the opposite. You can leave your practice management system in place and, with a couple of toggle system switches and a little bit of testing, we can integrate our solution. We're talking in a matter of weeks and that is true across basically every practice management system in the space. We've done and have in the wild in production, integrations with, again, thompson-royders, practice CS, cch Pro System and Access, practice Engine on-premise and Cloud Stor, delltech, meconomy, quickbooks, as you name it. We've covered the market and I mentioned we spent a year doing some engineering. \n\nWe started this company in June of 2020, so peak COVID and the reason we focus on this use case of billing and collection, because we started interviewing CFOs, managing partners, firm administrators, billing managers of top 500 firms. We were looking for a corroboration of use case and pain. They said hey, two things are true. I went if you guys are going to do anything of value, one, give us the easy button for billing collections and payments, give us a cash flow no-brainer. And two, make sure it plays nice with all the other stuff we have in place technologically speaking. \n\nSo for about a year nobody knew about us because we were consciously under the radar. We did not announce ourselves yet and it's because we were doing all that integration work so that when we did come to market say, hey, here's us saying that we got the greatest thing since widespread, we could back it up with some really robust integration work. I think further again. We have almost 80 customers now. One of the bright points for us is our net promoter score, jeff is. I think our latest score is a 74, which is to say very good. \n\nYeah, we're really proud of that. A reflection of that metric is the ease of integration and the investment we make on what we call customer success, making sure you don't just buy this off or you get a lot of easy value out of it. \n\nJeff: Just to give our listeners a little bit of context on that, the average NPS score across all US businesses is a 16. The scale is negative 100 to positive 100. Pat, yours was a 74? It was a 74. That is world-class. \n\nPat: Thank you yeah. \n\nListen I got the credit words too. I got to give a hand to my co-founder, chris Furlong, who built he and his team, I should say built the software that makes people so happy. My other co-founder, tanner Fritz, who oversees our customer success team. His team oversees the implementations. They give people very detailed this is how you use it guides. They help facilitate client-facing communications. A firm wants to use our software. You got to tell clients who's a change in how you pay your bills. We have a whole playbook for how we do that. This is very much a team effort that we go through to maintain that score. \n\nJeff: You've got a pretty comprehensive website. I mean, there's a lot that I can learn just by visiting the site and learning a little bit more about it. For our listeners it's I-WINA-I-A-I-W-Y-NA. I would encourage you to come out here and check this out. But if I'm an accounting firm that likes what I say, who do I reach out to? How do I get the ball rolling? Take me through the process that would end in a sale and then the process that would end in we switch the system on and you're ready to use it. \n\nPat: Absolutely. First of all, folks can reach out to me, and I say that because there's obviously a unique partnership between I-WIN and engineered advisory. This is a premier partnership interest of mine and I want to be a contact for any folks who are interested. You can email me at patrickmorell at I-WINAI my information is on the website as well or reach out to me on LinkedIn. \n\nWhat would then happen is the following you probably end up having two calls with us. The first would be some initial Q&A. What we like to do is get through some baseline what's your firm pain point? What systems are you on? How can we help you? The subsequent call would then be a demo of the solutions that are going to make the most sense for your firm, because, again, we have to your point, a wide range of solutions. We want to be sure that what we're going to present to you is applicable to the pain point you got and to that point, you'd see a business case and a proposal. We want to map out some ROI for you. Make it clear that it's either a validated business decision or we'll tell you hey, listen, you know what? We obviously can't help you. \n\nJeff: That has yet to happen. \n\nPat: But we want to be totally transparent on the map. And then, from the point of go, you sign a contract with us, you say, hey, we're ready to use IWIN. What we typically advise is you can. You can anticipate between four and six weeks between date of signature and date of solution. Go live. And that is a reflection of hey, listen, there are other projects underway. Your IP team may be busy, but really from a net standpoint there's about 13 hours total of work that needs to be done from a testing, feedback, planning standpoint, and then it gets up and running. So this is a low lift. We move very quickly. And then, from a pricing standpoint, oh sorry, jeff, go ahead. I can clarify pricing if you'd like. \n\nJeff: Yeah, go ahead, I'll let you finish pricing and then come back. \n\nPat: Perfect. We learned some lessons early based on feedback from customers. Burns did not want to be kind of nickel and dime on per seat licenses or volume licenses. Jeff, one of the ideas we had initially is oh great, we're a billing and collections company. What is charged like per bill issued? But the variance between two firms of comparable size and the number of invoices they send was so dramatic we said no, we need a more intuitive and fair model. So, listen, job to be done. \n\nWhy does IWIN exist? We exist to strengthen and speed up firm cash flow. I mean, that's the metric by which our ROI is measured. So what we created is an index model that basically takes a firm's top line revenue, we drop it into a calculator and, based on the revenue size of your firm, we give you an annual license fee and it's unlimited usage, unlimited users, and it scales as you grow. So a lot of our firms have doubled in size and the revenue model will actually grow with them. Our fees won't double in size as well. It's actually a tiered model so that basically the net percentage of revenue equivalent they pay us decreases over time. \n\nBasically, we get cheaper as the firm grows and it's exciting to see that. \n\nJeff: All right, so let me just recap that a little bit. The thing I like initially is, if I'm a firm and I just want to dip my toe in the water and learn more about it, the first call you're going to learn about me, you're going to determine what my pain points are that may be different from my competitive firm down the street, and then, as a result of that first call, you're going to do a demo that is actually customized to my specific situation. So, speaking to how you can address the things that I have challenges with, and then if I decide that, yeah, this makes sense, I'm going to move forward. I've got a pricing model that kind of scales as my firm scales as I hit these different tiers, which I'm guessing is how you've opened this up to some of the smaller firms that we talked about a little bit earlier. And then, once I pull the trigger we're talking four to six weeks from the time we sign to the time I'm actually sending an invoice and everything's kind of turned on and functioning. You nailed it. \n\nI mean that's impressive in terms of the function that you're talking about automating here and I just in the environment of the accounting firms today, where staffing is a challenge finding good people, keeping good people you know, a lot of firms have a lot of bodies wrapped up in this revenue function where, hey, we can free them up. In some cases, maybe we can replace them or not need to replace them. I just think there's an accelerator here that happens by the automation that comes into this process, and I'm guessing you're seeing that in spades. \n\nPat: Precisely, yeah, there's. We've had firms who've been with us now for two, over two years and they're seeing a consistency of ROI. And so, again, compounding return Because the other piece, that value added listen, we need to distill ourselves down so that you're paying I when X and you're getting in return X plus a heck of a lot more. And we showed that through the DSR reduction, savings and merchant processing, et cetera. There's a range of qualitative benefits as well and those reflected it. And it's not just we're saving billable professionals time, it's we're saving them the headache of having to spend that time on billing. \n\nAnd for anybody who's done billing out of a legacy practice management system. You know that's not the most pleasant thing in the world and further we're delivering kind of experiential wins to their clients as well. And I look at it this way we're a client and we use this example all the time. \n\nI'm a client in the real estate business and maybe I have, you know, dozens of different business entities and if I'm going to pay my, you know my, my bills, my CPA firm, without I, I may be looking at an hour's worth of handwriting checks and putting stuff in the mail. I went one click and I'm done. So we try to balance the quantitative ROI with the qualitative, because then today this is again a people business, as we well know, and we want to deliver people felt wins as they use our software. \n\nJeff: Okay. So let me ask I don't want to say the hard question, but probably a question that you know once the CPA gets excited about bringing this into his or her practice, then the technology people start creeping and you know we have questions about. You know, how is this upgraded? What is the security? Etc, etc, etc. So talk for a minute to our IT professionals that might be listening to this and give them some sense of what they're in for in terms of updates and security and all that good stuff. \n\nPat: Absolutely so first of all, to my friends in IT and I am one of you were hosted in the Google cloud and while the security bells and whistles that come with that were PCI compliant, we're not to comply. We are also talk to type two audited and we have an updated report, totally clean. So people are appreciative of that. Obviously, it's a flag to waiver. On data security in terms of releases, yeah, so we are the belief software is never finished. We are always constantly enhancing feature sets, but with that comes plenty of advanced notice around kind of additional releases, and obviously being a cloud deployed asset makes it very easy to push those releases live. And then, yeah, all kinds of best in class SLAs in terms of uptime and data security. So what we've found is and again, I won't put words in the mouth of our IT sponsors, but we find that we're often among the easiest to deploy solution and we got some great testimonials on our website from some leading CIOs in the space who can corroborate that. \n\nJeff: Okay, well, I think we've covered kind of a gamut that an accounting firm would want to know as they evaluate the solution. We've talked about your process, how you diagnose and then prescribe a custom solution. We've talked about the timetable to implement. We've talked about your billing structure. You've been very generous and advise people that if they have questions that are part of the accelerator to reach out to you directly and in your role as the chief revenue officer and the co-founder, I appreciate them being able to go directly to the top to ask their questions. And it sounds like the next step is exactly that for me to reach out, schedule some time for you to get to know me, and what information should I bring to that initial phone call? Like, what do you want to know about how we're doing business right now? That will help make that initial call productive. \n\nPat: The fantastic question, jeff. Thank you for asking that. So the key things we're interested to understand are some initial blocking and tackling how big is your firm, how many partners, what's your top line revenue, the practice management system that you have in place and also how do you profit payments currently. \n\nWhat are you using to have people sending checks to the bank, et cetera? The big thing, though we'd love to have a discussion, not around kind of bits and pieces of a tech stack, but what are the big strategic goals for your firm? Are you interested in cutting costs and freeing up some cash flow? Are you interested in really driving capacity? Are you just interested in getting a win for your people? Do you have folks who are really beating their head against the wall around billing and they just need an easy button for it? What we find is firms want to do all those things, but they typically have a pretty clear stack rank of what they want to prioritize first and, in our experience, the more kind of transparent and, to a certain degree, even vulnerable firms can be as they get to know us, it helps us really calculate how we can be a good business partner to them. \n\nSo if you're willing to give us a 30 minute kind of back and forth discussion, we can then give you a 30 to 45 minute demo and, frankly, jeff, folks are going to know within a couple of hours if I went is going to be a fit for them and how we can help, and we can typically take it there pretty quickly. \n\nJeff: Awesome, pat. I really want to thank you for taking the time today to further educate our listeners on the product. Again, full disclosure. We are in the process of building a relationship with IWIN and using them for some of the needs we have in our revenue process. It's been a good experience and can share that with all of you that are considering having a conversation. But the first step is to reach out to Pat. Again, very gracious of you to provide your personal contact information for them to do that. \n\nAnd I encourage you to get that done because if you take a look at your whip, if you took a look at your AR aging, if you took a look at your receivables, you know the realization piece is real the closer you bill to doing the work, the more you're going to bill for doing that work and the quicker you're going to capture that money at a higher realization point, and we see this in the Rosenberg survey. You know, if you want to know what correlates with net income for partner, it's rates and leverage, and if we can use tools like IWIN to help better leverage the time of the partners, then you can look forward to increasing net income for partner. It's as simple as that, you know. Bring up your realization, reduce your whip, increase your leverage and the profits will follow. So I encourage all of our listeners to reach out to Pat and learn more. Pat will look forward to seeing you at next year's conference when we reconvene down in Dallas, and I really appreciate you taking the time to be with us today. \n\nPat: Jeff, it was my pleasure. Thank you for your partnership, thanks for letting me dial in today and thank you all for listening. It's been a pleasure. \n\nJeff: That's it for today. Take care everybody. Bye-bye. Special Guest: Pat Morell.","content_html":"On this episode of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, I connect with Pat Morell, the Chief Revenue Officer at Aiwyn, to discuss how his firm partners with CPA firms to help better manage their client revenue cycle.
\n\nI learned how Aiwyn's system taps into legacy management platforms while innovating with solutions like engagement letters. Pat elaborates on drastically reducing administrative tasks and increasing billable hours.
\n\nWith nearly 80 customers and strong reviews, Aiwyn is achieving success. However, what was most reassuring was Pat's emphasis on data security and reliable service.
\n\nTake a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice.
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SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
\n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/6/6411f15f-71a9-4263-bfce-e70e39d81696/avatar_small.jpg?v=1\"){kind=avatar} | \nPat Morell | \n
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
\n\nPat: Jeff, thanks for having me Really excited to be here.
\n\nJeff: You bet, and full disclosure. Not only am I interviewing Pat today, but we're also interviewing Pat and his company to be part of a solution at engineered advisory. So we're looking forward to working with you as a client and appreciate everything that you've done with us to figure out what solution is going to best meet our needs. So I'm excited to share some of what we've learned with our listeners as we go through the podcast, and one of the things that I thought was interesting on your website is you've done a nice job of kind of historically calling out what the revenue process used to be. You had pre 1980, where it's almost a hundred percent manual processes, and then we got spreadsheets in the 80s and more internet enabled tools in the 2000s, and that brings us up to today. And so talk a little bit about what I win does as a product at a high level, and then we can dig down a little bit deeper from there.
\n\nPat: Sure, and I'd love that you put this on a historical continuum, because I think we, before starting the business, were operators on that continuum and actually the core use case that drove us to start I win is we had a not so great billing experience as clients of a very big firm, and it's set us off on this journey to figure out how we can improve the client experience, specifically through the lens of the billing and collections experience.
\n\nSo the high level on I win is we work right now with about 80 of the world's largest CPA firms and we are helping them internally automate their billing, collections and payment processes.
\n\nWe quite literally built software that plugs into some of the legacy practice management systems that a lot of these traditional firms operate off of what they use for their time, their billing, et cetera and we pull out some data and we present data to clients in a modern interface that allows clients to see their payment history, to pay their bills. Oftentimes, folks listening to this, you probably have clients who have multiple business entities. They probably have multiple projects going on at any given time. What we've observed is a lot of those times I just wanted an easy way to go in, see their invoice, one click and pay, and we've created the apparatus to do that and in doing so, in kind of what we say, unlocking data from this legacy practice management infrastructure and by that I mean, you know again, firms listening to this.
\n\nYou all probably work off of things like CCH access or Thompson Reuters practice CS, those traditional tools. By unlocking those data we've been able to not only build solutions that automate really our core focus right now billing collections and payment but we've expanded to additional use cases throughout. Again, just to bring it full circle, what we call the quote unquote revenue cycle, kind of that cyclical flow of behaviors that underlie the flow of revenue to a firm. You know everything from acquiring a client all the way to getting paid. We're now moving upstream and we made this announcement recently we have an engagement letter solution. So all of the nice bills and whistles of automation that we've brought to Billion in collection, we now basically give clients and their firms kind of a one quick, easy button for automating engagement letters and client onboarding. So big visions, big appetites and by unlocking data we're able to do a lot. So that's where we are right now, three years in.
\n\nJeff: So talk a little bit I mean any accounting firms you know at the upper end of the market is pretty impressive. Let's dig into that a little bit so I win. I'm assuming is the system that they're using to automate their revenue process. But then I'm guessing they're also recommending and referring that to their clients as well. So talk about the dynamics of that relationship you have with the CPA firm.
\n\nPat: Sure, yeah, so our firms. It's an interesting dynamic we have with our firms. Yes, they are using us as their internal systems and the value proposition, jeff, they're being you plug in Iowan and Basically you can put on autopilot. All the billing collections work, so measurably what happens is your day sales outstanding decline. You save a lot of time, you know, instead of your partners making collections called day in, day out. They don't have to because we can automate things like statements and we get clients an experience where they can literally go to one portal, click pay and be done.
\n\nThe firm love it because it's unlocking Kind of time at the margins. That's freeing up capacity which, when we talk about transitioning to a kind of advisory services, that's a paramount concern. One of the foundational stats, jeff, for us that we see is 55% of CPA time is spent not on client service work, it's spent on something in the administrative back office. And for Iowan, as we think about our value proposition to the market, if we can turn that 55% into 25%, holy cow, that's a tronche of 30% of billable or workable time that could be allocated to new service lines, allowing folks to kind of staff up, etc. So we see us as kind of a behind-the-scenes asset to unlock capacity.
\n\nIt was been interesting to your point. A lot of our CPA firm customers work with other CPA firms. So yes, absolutely. What we've seen is they have a great experience with us, is their clients have a great experience paying through us, and then there becomes a virtuous cycle of referral where we can kind of propagate that trend of Capacity unlocking just by virtue of operating as we operate.
\n\nSo it's one of the things I love about the CPA space is how well networked and I mean that's in a good way, talk it into the firms are they all share best practices and ideas and, as we're now again three years into this journey of I, when we've been growing very quickly and that's why we'll spending even faster as a function of that network effect, you know it's interesting and I really like the, the mindset of unlocking or freeing up capacity At that partner level.
\n\nJeff: I do quite a bit of speaking and one of the questions I use to kind of get air moving in the room is by a show of hands, how many of you have done work over the past week that honestly should have been done at a level below you or Automated and predictably every hand goes up in the room we create a nice breeze.
\n\nBut we look at that and you know we I've got the benefit of having a little bit of data at our disposal through. You know we own the Rosenberg survey, we own inside public accounting, so we've got a lot of those benchmarking and analytic points to reference. And what's amazing to me, staggering to me, is the amount of work that we're just holding in with and not billing. And you know how reluctant the partners are to follow up on the billing and what some of the aging for the receivables are With these firms. And I look at this and I say, okay, if you've got an automated solution where you know the partners involvement plummet, we can continue to move the customer through that revenue Journey and I can reduce whip and I can free up capacity for the partners to be doing advisory-minded services where the value is. That's just a win-win and we see in the data how much lack of capacity there is at the partner level and what the AR aging and what the whip looks like in these firms, and in a lot of cases it's simply not pretty.
\n\nPat: Well, and you're absolutely right, and the data are jar in some cases, by a firm's own admission. I mean, I think most firms would kind of look at their days in whip or their days in AR and say, yes, that's not ideal, that's not what we want, and the and, of course, the irony is those are the same firms that, in many ways, are Having some of their best years ever, and it's a function of some macro kind of tailwinds in favor of the profession. What we've observed further, though, is Well, the data perhaps, and and the the rubber meets the road, day-to-day experience is unique to the CPA space. There's a thematic consistency between this challenge in the CPA space and other professions that we've worked in. So, just for context, for the listeners, I did not come from a CPA background.
\n\nI'm a career of software entrepreneur and, jeff, I think I've shared this with you and your team my previous venture prior to I when was a healthcare technology business. Basically, we were focused on automating Financial processes and interchanges of data between large hospital systems and insurance company, and the core focus there was doing that Automatically, so that doctors and nurses wouldn't have to do it manually, and the same pains that persisted in healthcare, or what we see in the CPA space, which is you got a high dollar per hour or high salary professionals who want to operate at highs and best use kind of the highest, the most creative end of their licensure, and they sit there and eight hours a week they're beating their head against the wall doing something manual in a spreadsheet and what we want to do is unlock that time and again, you hear me say that a lot. We actually have a user conference in a couple of weeks and it's called Unlock. One of our missions is to unlock time and money for professional services firm.
\n\nBut the idea here being that there's a compounding return. If you're able to do this well, if you can kind of cut in half your days in with just because you can get bills out the door faster, you're not only gonna free up time, you know that's. You know time in we spent on billing is now time for business development. Taking a client to play golf, you know, calling a client to say, hey, how's your business I mean all the things we want to do as professionals. We now have time for it.
\n\nBut here's something else that's really fascinating. There's a direct correlation between the speed of billing and billed realization rates. A lot of firms we talked to, a lot of the firms we've seen have said, hey, listen, you know, we know that. You know we're not billing realization at the rate we want because there's some ungoverned processes here and there's behaviors of just you know, we just always give discounts, we write some realization down, just because that's what we've always done and what we've observed is the likelihood of writing down realization increases the more time lapses between the date of the last whip entry and the date the invoice is sent.
\n\nSo the interest of that is also true, and we've corroborated that the faster you bill, the less likely you are going to write something down. And it's totally logical because I always use this example. You know, if you pull it all night or for a client and then you wait two months to bill them, you're kind of going to forget how hard you you beat yourself up to do right by them. But if you bill three days later, you are going to remember every minute of that and you are going to command the revenues that you rightly earned. So we're excited because we're not just unlocking time, we're showing a compounding benefit to the bottom line of the firm as well by growing realization rates.
\n\nJeff: Now, pat, I know on your website, you know, in terms of target market, you're looking at, you know, maybe the 500 largest accounting firms in the country, so you're probably $20 million in revenue on up. Is there a floor at which firms are kind of priced out or the utility starts to not make sense, like what's the minimum size firm that you look at and say, hey, this is our sweet spot?
\n\nPat: Jeff, great question. I'm glad you asked because, frankly, the total addressable market as we see it is expanding in both directions. Actually, when we started the firm, yes, we thought we were really going to be best economically suited to sports, to the top 200, 300 firms. But what we now see is firms all the way down to those with, say, even 2 million in top line revenues are fantastic fit for us, not just to realize value in terms of statistical impact on cash flow free enough time but we have kind of a fee model that makes economic sense as well. So I think our biggest customer now you're right, you see this a fantastic firm, very impressive. Everyone knows them by name.
\n\nWe have a number of firms that are outside of the top 500 that are doing 3, 4 million in top line revenues, growing quickly of course. But we've designed a model that makes sense for them, makes sense for us. So we're excited to see that rephrase. It's unfortunate that the pains we see at the big firms are felt up and down the chain, but we're encouraged because those pains are pains we know we can solve and we figured out a model that allows us to do that. So, yeah, $2 million a year firms fantastic fit for IWIN.
\n\nJeff: All right, that's fantastic, and just to reiterate that for our listeners. So there's no confusion $2 million firm and on up, which is well below, obviously, the top 500 firms in the country, and it sounds like you've been able to do something with a pricing model that makes it more palatable to those smaller firms. So let's come back to that in a minute. But as you're reaching out to a firm, says, hey, I want this right, I want to improve WIP, I want to improve realization, I want to improve AR aging, I want to be more profitable as a firm.
\n\nI'm guessing the number one hurdle that you've got to get over is what system does it replace and how do I get a new system adopted in my firm? Because it's amazing how the tax season is now year round. The firms used to have a little bit of downtime where they could focus on a big technology installation or something like that, and now there's a couple pockets, but for the most part they're just busy. So what kind of resistance do you get from potential customers when they're just trying to get their arms around the lift that it takes to install a system like IWIN?
\n\nPat: I'm thrilled you asked me that question because we spent about a year behind the scenes doing a lot of heavy duty engineering to make sure that the answer I'm about to give is corroborated and grounded in reality. The very sincere answer, jeff, is it is not a big lift for us, and I say that because we are not asking firms to do a holistic rip and replace of their practice management system. In fact, it's the opposite. You can leave your practice management system in place and, with a couple of toggle system switches and a little bit of testing, we can integrate our solution. We're talking in a matter of weeks and that is true across basically every practice management system in the space. We've done and have in the wild in production, integrations with, again, thompson-royders, practice CS, cch Pro System and Access, practice Engine on-premise and Cloud Stor, delltech, meconomy, quickbooks, as you name it. We've covered the market and I mentioned we spent a year doing some engineering.
\n\nWe started this company in June of 2020, so peak COVID and the reason we focus on this use case of billing and collection, because we started interviewing CFOs, managing partners, firm administrators, billing managers of top 500 firms. We were looking for a corroboration of use case and pain. They said hey, two things are true. I went if you guys are going to do anything of value, one, give us the easy button for billing collections and payments, give us a cash flow no-brainer. And two, make sure it plays nice with all the other stuff we have in place technologically speaking.
\n\nSo for about a year nobody knew about us because we were consciously under the radar. We did not announce ourselves yet and it's because we were doing all that integration work so that when we did come to market say, hey, here's us saying that we got the greatest thing since widespread, we could back it up with some really robust integration work. I think further again. We have almost 80 customers now. One of the bright points for us is our net promoter score, jeff is. I think our latest score is a 74, which is to say very good.
\n\nYeah, we're really proud of that. A reflection of that metric is the ease of integration and the investment we make on what we call customer success, making sure you don't just buy this off or you get a lot of easy value out of it.
\n\nJeff: Just to give our listeners a little bit of context on that, the average NPS score across all US businesses is a 16. The scale is negative 100 to positive 100. Pat, yours was a 74? It was a 74. That is world-class.
\n\nPat: Thank you yeah.
\n\nListen I got the credit words too. I got to give a hand to my co-founder, chris Furlong, who built he and his team, I should say built the software that makes people so happy. My other co-founder, tanner Fritz, who oversees our customer success team. His team oversees the implementations. They give people very detailed this is how you use it guides. They help facilitate client-facing communications. A firm wants to use our software. You got to tell clients who's a change in how you pay your bills. We have a whole playbook for how we do that. This is very much a team effort that we go through to maintain that score.
\n\nJeff: You've got a pretty comprehensive website. I mean, there's a lot that I can learn just by visiting the site and learning a little bit more about it. For our listeners it's I-WINA-I-A-I-W-Y-NA. I would encourage you to come out here and check this out. But if I'm an accounting firm that likes what I say, who do I reach out to? How do I get the ball rolling? Take me through the process that would end in a sale and then the process that would end in we switch the system on and you're ready to use it.
\n\nPat: Absolutely. First of all, folks can reach out to me, and I say that because there's obviously a unique partnership between I-WIN and engineered advisory. This is a premier partnership interest of mine and I want to be a contact for any folks who are interested. You can email me at patrickmorell at I-WINAI my information is on the website as well or reach out to me on LinkedIn.
\n\nWhat would then happen is the following you probably end up having two calls with us. The first would be some initial Q&A. What we like to do is get through some baseline what's your firm pain point? What systems are you on? How can we help you? The subsequent call would then be a demo of the solutions that are going to make the most sense for your firm, because, again, we have to your point, a wide range of solutions. We want to be sure that what we're going to present to you is applicable to the pain point you got and to that point, you'd see a business case and a proposal. We want to map out some ROI for you. Make it clear that it's either a validated business decision or we'll tell you hey, listen, you know what? We obviously can't help you.
\n\nJeff: That has yet to happen.
\n\nPat: But we want to be totally transparent on the map. And then, from the point of go, you sign a contract with us, you say, hey, we're ready to use IWIN. What we typically advise is you can. You can anticipate between four and six weeks between date of signature and date of solution. Go live. And that is a reflection of hey, listen, there are other projects underway. Your IP team may be busy, but really from a net standpoint there's about 13 hours total of work that needs to be done from a testing, feedback, planning standpoint, and then it gets up and running. So this is a low lift. We move very quickly. And then, from a pricing standpoint, oh sorry, jeff, go ahead. I can clarify pricing if you'd like.
\n\nJeff: Yeah, go ahead, I'll let you finish pricing and then come back.
\n\nPat: Perfect. We learned some lessons early based on feedback from customers. Burns did not want to be kind of nickel and dime on per seat licenses or volume licenses. Jeff, one of the ideas we had initially is oh great, we're a billing and collections company. What is charged like per bill issued? But the variance between two firms of comparable size and the number of invoices they send was so dramatic we said no, we need a more intuitive and fair model. So, listen, job to be done.
\n\nWhy does IWIN exist? We exist to strengthen and speed up firm cash flow. I mean, that's the metric by which our ROI is measured. So what we created is an index model that basically takes a firm's top line revenue, we drop it into a calculator and, based on the revenue size of your firm, we give you an annual license fee and it's unlimited usage, unlimited users, and it scales as you grow. So a lot of our firms have doubled in size and the revenue model will actually grow with them. Our fees won't double in size as well. It's actually a tiered model so that basically the net percentage of revenue equivalent they pay us decreases over time.
\n\nBasically, we get cheaper as the firm grows and it's exciting to see that.
\n\nJeff: All right, so let me just recap that a little bit. The thing I like initially is, if I'm a firm and I just want to dip my toe in the water and learn more about it, the first call you're going to learn about me, you're going to determine what my pain points are that may be different from my competitive firm down the street, and then, as a result of that first call, you're going to do a demo that is actually customized to my specific situation. So, speaking to how you can address the things that I have challenges with, and then if I decide that, yeah, this makes sense, I'm going to move forward. I've got a pricing model that kind of scales as my firm scales as I hit these different tiers, which I'm guessing is how you've opened this up to some of the smaller firms that we talked about a little bit earlier. And then, once I pull the trigger we're talking four to six weeks from the time we sign to the time I'm actually sending an invoice and everything's kind of turned on and functioning. You nailed it.
\n\nI mean that's impressive in terms of the function that you're talking about automating here and I just in the environment of the accounting firms today, where staffing is a challenge finding good people, keeping good people you know, a lot of firms have a lot of bodies wrapped up in this revenue function where, hey, we can free them up. In some cases, maybe we can replace them or not need to replace them. I just think there's an accelerator here that happens by the automation that comes into this process, and I'm guessing you're seeing that in spades.
\n\nPat: Precisely, yeah, there's. We've had firms who've been with us now for two, over two years and they're seeing a consistency of ROI. And so, again, compounding return Because the other piece, that value added listen, we need to distill ourselves down so that you're paying I when X and you're getting in return X plus a heck of a lot more. And we showed that through the DSR reduction, savings and merchant processing, et cetera. There's a range of qualitative benefits as well and those reflected it. And it's not just we're saving billable professionals time, it's we're saving them the headache of having to spend that time on billing.
\n\nAnd for anybody who's done billing out of a legacy practice management system. You know that's not the most pleasant thing in the world and further we're delivering kind of experiential wins to their clients as well. And I look at it this way we're a client and we use this example all the time.
\n\nI'm a client in the real estate business and maybe I have, you know, dozens of different business entities and if I'm going to pay my, you know my, my bills, my CPA firm, without I, I may be looking at an hour's worth of handwriting checks and putting stuff in the mail. I went one click and I'm done. So we try to balance the quantitative ROI with the qualitative, because then today this is again a people business, as we well know, and we want to deliver people felt wins as they use our software.
\n\nJeff: Okay. So let me ask I don't want to say the hard question, but probably a question that you know once the CPA gets excited about bringing this into his or her practice, then the technology people start creeping and you know we have questions about. You know, how is this upgraded? What is the security? Etc, etc, etc. So talk for a minute to our IT professionals that might be listening to this and give them some sense of what they're in for in terms of updates and security and all that good stuff.
\n\nPat: Absolutely so first of all, to my friends in IT and I am one of you were hosted in the Google cloud and while the security bells and whistles that come with that were PCI compliant, we're not to comply. We are also talk to type two audited and we have an updated report, totally clean. So people are appreciative of that. Obviously, it's a flag to waiver. On data security in terms of releases, yeah, so we are the belief software is never finished. We are always constantly enhancing feature sets, but with that comes plenty of advanced notice around kind of additional releases, and obviously being a cloud deployed asset makes it very easy to push those releases live. And then, yeah, all kinds of best in class SLAs in terms of uptime and data security. So what we've found is and again, I won't put words in the mouth of our IT sponsors, but we find that we're often among the easiest to deploy solution and we got some great testimonials on our website from some leading CIOs in the space who can corroborate that.
\n\nJeff: Okay, well, I think we've covered kind of a gamut that an accounting firm would want to know as they evaluate the solution. We've talked about your process, how you diagnose and then prescribe a custom solution. We've talked about the timetable to implement. We've talked about your billing structure. You've been very generous and advise people that if they have questions that are part of the accelerator to reach out to you directly and in your role as the chief revenue officer and the co-founder, I appreciate them being able to go directly to the top to ask their questions. And it sounds like the next step is exactly that for me to reach out, schedule some time for you to get to know me, and what information should I bring to that initial phone call? Like, what do you want to know about how we're doing business right now? That will help make that initial call productive.
\n\nPat: The fantastic question, jeff. Thank you for asking that. So the key things we're interested to understand are some initial blocking and tackling how big is your firm, how many partners, what's your top line revenue, the practice management system that you have in place and also how do you profit payments currently.
\n\nWhat are you using to have people sending checks to the bank, et cetera? The big thing, though we'd love to have a discussion, not around kind of bits and pieces of a tech stack, but what are the big strategic goals for your firm? Are you interested in cutting costs and freeing up some cash flow? Are you interested in really driving capacity? Are you just interested in getting a win for your people? Do you have folks who are really beating their head against the wall around billing and they just need an easy button for it? What we find is firms want to do all those things, but they typically have a pretty clear stack rank of what they want to prioritize first and, in our experience, the more kind of transparent and, to a certain degree, even vulnerable firms can be as they get to know us, it helps us really calculate how we can be a good business partner to them.
\n\nSo if you're willing to give us a 30 minute kind of back and forth discussion, we can then give you a 30 to 45 minute demo and, frankly, jeff, folks are going to know within a couple of hours if I went is going to be a fit for them and how we can help, and we can typically take it there pretty quickly.
\n\nJeff: Awesome, pat. I really want to thank you for taking the time today to further educate our listeners on the product. Again, full disclosure. We are in the process of building a relationship with IWIN and using them for some of the needs we have in our revenue process. It's been a good experience and can share that with all of you that are considering having a conversation. But the first step is to reach out to Pat. Again, very gracious of you to provide your personal contact information for them to do that.
\n\nAnd I encourage you to get that done because if you take a look at your whip, if you took a look at your AR aging, if you took a look at your receivables, you know the realization piece is real the closer you bill to doing the work, the more you're going to bill for doing that work and the quicker you're going to capture that money at a higher realization point, and we see this in the Rosenberg survey. You know, if you want to know what correlates with net income for partner, it's rates and leverage, and if we can use tools like IWIN to help better leverage the time of the partners, then you can look forward to increasing net income for partner. It's as simple as that, you know. Bring up your realization, reduce your whip, increase your leverage and the profits will follow. So I encourage all of our listeners to reach out to Pat and learn more. Pat will look forward to seeing you at next year's conference when we reconvene down in Dallas, and I really appreciate you taking the time to be with us today.
\n\nPat: Jeff, it was my pleasure. Thank you for your partnership, thanks for letting me dial in today and thank you all for listening. It's been a pleasure.
\n\nJeff: That's it for today. Take care everybody. Bye-bye.
Special Guest: Pat Morell.
","summary":"On this episode of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, I connect with Pat Morell, the Chief Revenue Officer at Aiwyn, to discuss how his firm partners with CPA firms to help better manage their client revenue cycle.\r\n\r\nI learned how Aiwyn's system taps into legacy management platforms while innovating with solutions like engagement letters. Pat elaborates on drastically reducing administrative tasks and increasing billable hours. \r\n\r\nWith nearly 80 customers and strong reviews, Aiwyn is achieving success. However, what was most reassuring was Pat's emphasis on data security and reliable service.\r\n\r\nTake a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice.\r\n","date_published":"2023-11-09T08:00:00.000-06:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/02ee0343-7edf-4fa3-adda-898f70abeea7.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":20762470,"duration_in_seconds":1699}]},{"id":"32d016e6-986f-4338-86ae-e8972c6b0bcf","title":"Ep015: Overcoming Your Firm's Staffing Challenges Once and For All","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/015","content_text":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, Join me as I speak with Nick Sinclair, founder of TOA Global. Listen in as we discuss how TOA Global's unique model builds long-term relationships between their placements and the client's firm. It creates a seamless integration that feels like they are just down a long hallway.\n\nNick touches on the benefits of outsourcing for cost and talent arbitrage and the importance of effective communication in building successful remote teams. \nLastly, we discuss how the pandemic has changed how many firms view global staffing solutions.\n\n \n\nSHOW HIGHLIGHTS\n\n\n TOA Global provides a global staffing solution through the Philippines and South Africa to help accounting firms find and retain top talent.\n Their model is different from traditional outsourcing, as they help firms build a team that becomes part of the client's firm.\n The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the acceptance of building global teams and remote working.\n Language barriers are minimal with talent from the Philippines and South Africa, making communication easier.\n TOA Global's staff works the same hours as their client firms, making collaboration seamless.\n Outsourcing provides cost arbitrage, allowing firms to pay above-market salaries to local teams and retain the best talent.\n Meaningful work improves employee attraction and retention rates.\n Security measures taken in TOA Global's office environment include employee privacy, IT department investment, and bank-level security systems.\n Employees work in the client's IT environment, eliminating data security risks.\n TOA Global focuses on people as the biggest asset of a service-based business.\n\n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout TOA Global\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nNick SinclairAbout Nick\n\n\nSpecial Guest: Nick Sinclair.","content_html":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, Join me as I speak with Nick Sinclair, founder of TOA Global. Listen in as we discuss how TOA Global's unique model builds long-term relationships between their placements and the client's firm. It creates a seamless integration that feels like they are just down a long hallway.
\n\nNick touches on the benefits of outsourcing for cost and talent arbitrage and the importance of effective communication in building successful remote teams.
\nLastly, we discuss how the pandemic has changed how many firms view global staffing solutions.
\n\n
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
\n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/c/c3c9a84b-f2af-44d5-af58-f74dd3c32811/avatar_small.jpg?v=3\"){kind=avatar} | \nNick Sinclair | \n
Special Guest: Nick Sinclair.
","summary":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, Join me as I speak with Nick Sinclair, founder of TOA Global. Listen in as we discuss how TOA Global's unique model builds long-term relationships between their placements and the client's firm. It creates a seamless integration that feels like they are just down a long hallway.\r\n\r\nNick touches on the benefits of outsourcing for cost and talent arbitrage and the importance of effective communication in building successful remote teams. \r\nLastly, we discuss how the pandemic has changed how many firms view global staffing solutions.","date_published":"2023-06-13T14:15:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/32d016e6-986f-4338-86ae-e8972c6b0bcf.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":22243759,"duration_in_seconds":1846}]},{"id":"38a7b5cb-839a-4baa-961d-372c8803522c","title":"Ep014: Tax-Efficient Jet Ownership through Charter Aviation Programs","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/014","content_text":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we had the pleasure of speaking with Quinn Ricker, CEO of Jet Access Aviation. Quinn provided an in-depth look at how to use the charter program to reduce the cost of ownership and maximize the tax benefits of private plane ownership. \n\nHe explains the importance of exercising the asset, understanding the pedigree of the plane, and leveraging the upfront tax benefit of private jet ownership. In addition, Quinn touched on the importance of safety in the private jet industry and how it can lead to a great customer experience.\n\nWe discussed his insights on the world of private aviation and how it can benefit both businesses and individuals. Listen in as Quinn explains the importance of having a flight school to ensure a steady pipeline of highly trained, skilled pilots, the importance of having an FBO to store planes, as well as the need for proper maintenance and sales and acquisition services.\n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout Jet Access\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nQuinn RickerAbout Quinn\n\n\nSpecial Guest: Quinn Ricker.","content_html":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we had the pleasure of speaking with Quinn Ricker, CEO of Jet Access Aviation. Quinn provided an in-depth look at how to use the charter program to reduce the cost of ownership and maximize the tax benefits of private plane ownership.
\n\nHe explains the importance of exercising the asset, understanding the pedigree of the plane, and leveraging the upfront tax benefit of private jet ownership. In addition, Quinn touched on the importance of safety in the private jet industry and how it can lead to a great customer experience.
\n\nWe discussed his insights on the world of private aviation and how it can benefit both businesses and individuals. Listen in as Quinn explains the importance of having a flight school to ensure a steady pipeline of highly trained, skilled pilots, the importance of having an FBO to store planes, as well as the need for proper maintenance and sales and acquisition services.
\n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/0/0c308fed-6e8e-424f-8e88-dbe97bb5257b/avatar_small.jpg?v=0\"){kind=avatar} | \nQuinn Ricker | \n
Special Guest: Quinn Ricker.
","summary":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we had the pleasure of speaking with Quinn Ricker, CEO of Jet Access Aviation. Quinn provided an in-depth look at how to use the charter program to reduce the cost of ownership and maximize the tax benefits of private plane ownership. \r\n\r\nHe explains the importance of exercising the asset, understanding the pedigree of the plane, and leveraging the upfront tax benefit of private jet ownership. In addition, Quinn touched on the importance of safety in the private jet industry and how it can lead to a great customer experience.\r\n\r\nWe discussed his insights on the world of private aviation and how it can benefit both businesses and individuals. Listen in as Quinn explains the importance of having a flight school to ensure a steady pipeline of highly trained, skilled pilots, the importance of having an FBO to store planes, as well as the need for proper maintenance and sales and acquisition services","date_published":"2023-05-23T10:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/38a7b5cb-839a-4baa-961d-372c8803522c.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":27611086,"duration_in_seconds":2212}]},{"id":"2868f3bc-b218-4d27-a1d1-a7a1403b9713","title":"Ep013: Conservation Easements and Land Preservation Strategies","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/013","content_text":"On today's episode of The Advisory Accelerator show, we're talking to Murang Pak of InVia Capital, who will help us navigate the complex world of conservation easements and how to identify when using one might be appropriate for your clients.\n\nTo make sure that nothing slips through the cracks when it comes to offering important clients proactive estate planning and tax strategies, an increasing number of firms are collaborating with members of the Advisory Accelerator. With the incredible complexity of today's tax code, no individual CPA can ever expect to have all the answers. \n\nLearn more about what it takes to advance the advising practice at your company by listening to this.\n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout Invia Capital\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nMurang PakAbout Murang\n\n\nSpecial Guest: Murang Pak.","content_html":"On today's episode of The Advisory Accelerator show, we're talking to Murang Pak of InVia Capital, who will help us navigate the complex world of conservation easements and how to identify when using one might be appropriate for your clients.
\n\nTo make sure that nothing slips through the cracks when it comes to offering important clients proactive estate planning and tax strategies, an increasing number of firms are collaborating with members of the Advisory Accelerator. With the incredible complexity of today's tax code, no individual CPA can ever expect to have all the answers.
\n\nLearn more about what it takes to advance the advising practice at your company by listening to this.
\n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/d/dbbc0a02-5487-47c0-9e37-89a9a21147c6/avatar_small.jpg?v=0\"){kind=avatar} | \nMurang Pak | \n
Special Guest: Murang Pak.
","summary":"On today's episode of The Advisory Accelerator show, we're talking to Murang Pak of InVia Capital, who will help us navigate the complex world of conservation easements and how to identify when using one might be appropriate for your clients.\r\n\r\nTo make sure that nothing slips through the cracks when it comes to offering important clients proactive estate planning and tax strategies, an increasing number of firms are collaborating with members of the Advisory Accelerator. With the incredible complexity of today's tax code, no individual CPA can ever expect to have all the answers. \r\n\r\nLearn more about what it takes to advance the advising practice at your company by listening to this.","date_published":"2023-05-09T13:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/2868f3bc-b218-4d27-a1d1-a7a1403b9713.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":21269444,"duration_in_seconds":1764}]},{"id":"3073473f-2a5a-443a-9f08-533521b9e486","title":"Ep012: Exploring the OCLAT (Optimized Charitable Lead Annuity Trust)","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/012","content_text":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Jonathon Morrison at Frazer, Ryan, Goldberg & Arnold, LLP, to discuss how his firm partners with CPA firms to help expand their capabilities in the estate planning area. By partnering with the firm, CPAs are able to add expertise to their in-house personnel, allowing them to engage their clients with a more holistic and advisory minded approach.\n\nWith the incredible complexity of today's tax code, no individual CPA can ever expect to have all the answers, and that's why more and more firms are partnering with members of the Advisory Accelerator to ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks when it comes to providing key clients proactive estate planning strategies. \n\nTake a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice.\n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout Frazer Ryan Goldberg & Arnold LLP\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nJonathon MorrisonAbout Jonathon \n\n\nSpecial Guest: Jonathon Morrison.","content_html":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Jonathon Morrison at Frazer, Ryan, Goldberg & Arnold, LLP, to discuss how his firm partners with CPA firms to help expand their capabilities in the estate planning area. By partnering with the firm, CPAs are able to add expertise to their in-house personnel, allowing them to engage their clients with a more holistic and advisory minded approach.
\n\nWith the incredible complexity of today's tax code, no individual CPA can ever expect to have all the answers, and that's why more and more firms are partnering with members of the Advisory Accelerator to ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks when it comes to providing key clients proactive estate planning strategies.
\n\nTake a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice.
\n\nAbout Frazer Ryan Goldberg & Arnold LLP
\n | \nJonathon Morrison | \n
Special Guest: Jonathon Morrison.
","summary":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Jonathon Morrison at Frazer, Ryan, Goldberg & Arnold, LLP, to discuss how his firm partners with CPA firms to help expand their capabilities in the estate planning area. By partnering with the firm, CPAs are able to add expertise to their in-house personnel, allowing them to engage their clients with a more holistic and advisory minded approach.\r\n\r\nWith the incredible complexity of today's tax code, no individual CPA can ever expect to have all the answers, and that's why more and more firms are partnering with members of the Advisory Accelerator to ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks when it comes to providing key clients proactive estate planning strategies. \r\n\r\nTake a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice.","date_published":"2023-04-05T08:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/3073473f-2a5a-443a-9f08-533521b9e486.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":29852260,"duration_in_seconds":2480}]},{"id":"a954c323-ef7b-46bc-9ca5-13191b25a8dc","title":"Ep011: Offering 401k Services and Programs to your Clients","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/011","content_text":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Bob Rubin of your 401k source.com about how his firm partners with accounting firms to help them offer 401k services to their clients. \n\n401ksource.com can also help companies with their own 401K programs to make sure they're as impactful as possible. Bob is behind our 401k program at Engineered Advisory and all of our related companies.\n\nWe had a great conversation about helping people retire financially stress-free who might have flunked a compliance test by working around the average deferral percentage tests and force refunds to give contributions back to the employees that were deducted from their pay.\n\nHe does a fantastic job and you will enjoy listening to what he has to say. \n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout 401ksource.com\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nRobert RubinAbout Robert \n\n\nSpecial Guest: Robert Rubin.","content_html":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Bob Rubin of your 401k source.com about how his firm partners with accounting firms to help them offer 401k services to their clients.
\n\n401ksource.com can also help companies with their own 401K programs to make sure they're as impactful as possible. Bob is behind our 401k program at Engineered Advisory and all of our related companies.
\n\nWe had a great conversation about helping people retire financially stress-free who might have flunked a compliance test by working around the average deferral percentage tests and force refunds to give contributions back to the employees that were deducted from their pay.
\n\nHe does a fantastic job and you will enjoy listening to what he has to say.
\n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/6/643efc6b-e476-456f-ade0-a92ec79ce46f/avatar_small.jpg?v=0\"){kind=avatar} | \nRobert Rubin | \n
Special Guest: Robert Rubin.
","summary":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Bob Rubin of your 401k source.com about how his firm partners with accounting firms to help them offer 401k services to their clients. \r\n\r\n401ksource.com can also help companies with their own 401K programs to make sure they're as impactful as possible. Bob is behind our 401k program at Engineered Advisory and all of our related companies.\r\n\r\nWe had a great conversation about helping people retire financially stress-free who might have flunked a compliance test by working around the average deferral percentage tests and force refunds to give contributions back to the employees that were deducted from their pay.\r\n\r\nHe does a fantastic job and you will enjoy listening to what he has to say.","date_published":"2023-01-31T09:00:00.000-06:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/a954c323-ef7b-46bc-9ca5-13191b25a8dc.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":22240135,"duration_in_seconds":1845}]},{"id":"356b6a92-d3b1-4730-a7db-5805495484d7","title":"Ep009: Using Benchmarking and Analytics to Deepen Client Engagement with Glenn Dunlap","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/009","content_text":"On the show today, we connect with Glenn Dunlop of Peerview Data, a firm many of our clients have used for several years. Peer View provides easy benchmarking and analytical data that allows CPAs to engage their key clients.\n\nYou enter the client's information. You can compare it against their peers in the industry. You can sort by SIC and NICS codes, geography, revenue, and bands, and analyze the KPIs that lead to substantive conversations with your clients. \n\nTake a listen and learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice.\n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout Peerview Data\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nGlenn DunlapAbout Glenn \n\n\nSpecial Guest: Glenn Dunlap.","content_html":"On the show today, we connect with Glenn Dunlop of Peerview Data, a firm many of our clients have used for several years. Peer View provides easy benchmarking and analytical data that allows CPAs to engage their key clients.
\n\nYou enter the client's information. You can compare it against their peers in the industry. You can sort by SIC and NICS codes, geography, revenue, and bands, and analyze the KPIs that lead to substantive conversations with your clients.
\n\nTake a listen and learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice.
\n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/b/bfd585b7-798d-4f2c-8d8a-058010908e14/avatar_small.jpg?v=1\"){kind=avatar} | \nGlenn Dunlap | \n
Special Guest: Glenn Dunlap.
","summary":"On the show today, we connect with Glenn Dunlop of Peerview Data, a firm many of our clients have used for several years. Peer View provides easy benchmarking and analytical data that allows CPAs to engage their key clients.\r\n\r\nYou enter the client's information. You can compare it against their peers in the industry. You can sort by SIC and NICS codes, geography, revenue, and bands, and analyze the KPIs that lead to substantive conversations with your clients. \r\n\r\nTake a listen and learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice.","date_published":"2022-12-20T10:00:00.000-06:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/356b6a92-d3b1-4730-a7db-5805495484d7.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":23709925,"duration_in_seconds":1968}]},{"id":"b0440db7-2a0a-4bca-a7bb-bf5a029d0380","title":"Ep008: Engaging clients through an advisory approach with Nick Burgess","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/008","content_text":"\"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Nick Burgess of the Burgess Financial Group to discuss how his firm partners with CPAs to help expand the capabilities of their existing tax practice. By partnering with Burgess, CPAs are able to add expertise to their in-house personnel, allowing them to engage their clients through a more holistic and advisory minded approach.\n\nWith the incredible complexity of today's tax code, no individual CPA can ever expect to have all the answers. That's why more and more firms are partnering with Burgess to ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks when it comes to providing key clients with proactive estate planning strategies.\n\nTake a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice.\"\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout Paragon Tax Advisory Services\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nNick BurgeesAbout Nick \n\n\nSpecial Guest: Nick Burgees.","content_html":""On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Nick Burgess of the Burgess Financial Group to discuss how his firm partners with CPAs to help expand the capabilities of their existing tax practice. By partnering with Burgess, CPAs are able to add expertise to their in-house personnel, allowing them to engage their clients through a more holistic and advisory minded approach.
\n\nWith the incredible complexity of today's tax code, no individual CPA can ever expect to have all the answers. That's why more and more firms are partnering with Burgess to ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks when it comes to providing key clients with proactive estate planning strategies.
\n\nTake a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice."
\n
About Paragon Tax Advisory Services
\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/6/6c37cbad-4910-45b8-a8a4-9b7fb4dfcf9e/avatar_small.jpg?v=1\"){kind=avatar} | \nNick Burgees | \n
Special Guest: Nick Burgees.
","summary":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Nick Burgess of the Burgess Financial Group to discuss how his firm partners with CPAs to help expand the capabilities of their existing tax practice. By partnering with Burgess, CPAs are able to add expertise to their in-house personnel, allowing them to engage their clients through a more holistic and advisory minded approach.\r\n\r\nWith the incredible complexity of today's tax code, no individual CPA can ever expect to have all the answers. That's why more and more firms are partnering with Burgess to ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks when it comes to providing key clients with proactive estate planning strategies.\r\n\r\nTake a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice.\"","date_published":"2022-11-29T08:00:00.000-06:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/b0440db7-2a0a-4bca-a7bb-bf5a029d0380.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":19027785,"duration_in_seconds":1578}]},{"id":"9e0c1fb3-b7c2-403c-8314-14cc39eb1210","title":"Ep007: Extending CPAs Capabilities using Virtual Tax Offices ","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/007","content_text":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Stephen Way of Paragon Tax Planners to discuss how his firm partners with CPAs to help expand the capabilities of their existing tax practices. By partnering with Paragon CPAs create a virtual tax office that expands the capabilities of their in-house personnel and allows them to engage their clients through a more holistic and advisory minded approach.\n\nWith the incredible complexity of today's tax code, no individual CPA can. Ever expect to have all the answers. That's why more and more firms are partnering with Paragon to ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks inside of their key client relationships. Take a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice..\n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout Paragon Tax Advisory Services\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nStephen WayAbout Stephen \n\n\nSpecial Guest: Stephen Way.","content_html":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Stephen Way of Paragon Tax Planners to discuss how his firm partners with CPAs to help expand the capabilities of their existing tax practices. By partnering with Paragon CPAs create a virtual tax office that expands the capabilities of their in-house personnel and allows them to engage their clients through a more holistic and advisory minded approach.
\n\nWith the incredible complexity of today's tax code, no individual CPA can. Ever expect to have all the answers. That's why more and more firms are partnering with Paragon to ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks inside of their key client relationships. Take a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice..
\n\nAbout Paragon Tax Advisory Services
\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/f/ff5fd26b-cc1b-4343-9d60-103e48642efb/avatar_small.jpg?v=0\"){kind=avatar} | \nStephen Way | \n
Special Guest: Stephen Way.
","summary":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Stephen Way of Paragon Tax Planners to discuss how his firm partners with CPAs to help expand the capabilities of their existing tax practices. By partnering with Paragon CPAs create a virtual tax office that expands the capabilities of their in-house personnel and allows them to engage their clients through a more holistic and advisory minded approach.\r\n\r\nWith the incredible complexity of today's tax code, no individual CPA can. Ever expect to have all the answers. That's why more and more firms are partnering with Paragon to ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks inside of their key client relationships. Take a listen to learn more about what it takes to accelerate your firm's advisory practice.","date_published":"2022-11-08T08:00:00.000-06:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/9e0c1fb3-b7c2-403c-8314-14cc39eb1210.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":21241565,"duration_in_seconds":1762}]},{"id":"aca3eb29-7172-4605-8b12-abcd7d6779cb","title":"Ep006: Disaster Recovery with Victory Claims Consulting","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/006","content_text":"\"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we connect with Benny Wright, the president of Victory Claims Consulting to discuss how his firm partners with CPA firms to help their clients overcome the impacts of a disaster and to maximize their insurance reimbursements. \n\nThe need for this expertise is becoming more immediate with the recent increase in severe weather events and chances are either you or a client will have a need help to navigate this type of crisis. \n\nWhen disaster strikes, your clients will turn to you to help navigate all the complexities related to the event and Benny can partner with you to ensure you can assist like a pro. Take a listen and learn what it takes to accelerate your advisory practice.\"\n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout Victory Claims Consulting \n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nBenny Wright About Benny \n\n\nSpecial Guest: Benny Wright.","content_html":""On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we connect with Benny Wright, the president of Victory Claims Consulting to discuss how his firm partners with CPA firms to help their clients overcome the impacts of a disaster and to maximize their insurance reimbursements.
\n\nThe need for this expertise is becoming more immediate with the recent increase in severe weather events and chances are either you or a client will have a need help to navigate this type of crisis.
\n\nWhen disaster strikes, your clients will turn to you to help navigate all the complexities related to the event and Benny can partner with you to ensure you can assist like a pro. Take a listen and learn what it takes to accelerate your advisory practice."
\n\nAbout Victory Claims Consulting
\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/c/cbc7301e-9627-447b-b9ad-a05e1389db44/avatar_thumb.jpg\"){kind=avatar} | \nBenny Wright | \n
Special Guest: Benny Wright.
","summary":"\"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we connect with Benny Wright, the president of Victory Claims Consulting to discuss how his firm partners with CPA firms to help their clients overcome the impacts of a disaster and to maximize their insurance reimbursements. \r\n\r\nThe need for this expertise is becoming more immediate with the recent increase in severe weather events and chances are either you or a client will have a need help to navigate this type of crisis. \r\n\r\nWhen disaster strikes, your clients will turn to you to help navigate all the complexities related to the event and Benny can partner with you to ensure you can assist like a pro. Take a listen and learn what it takes to accelerate your advisory practice.\"","date_published":"2022-10-18T07:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/aca3eb29-7172-4605-8b12-abcd7d6779cb.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":16985596,"duration_in_seconds":1407}]},{"id":"f4761392-20b3-4ed2-b03a-e49cf9a00909","title":"Ep005: Exploring ERTC and WOTC with Philip Wentworth at Rockerbox","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/005","content_text":"\"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we connect with Philip Wentworth, the CEO of Rocker Box to discuss how they are partnering with CPA firms to provide expertise related to both ERTC and the WOTC credits. \n\nThe ERTC, which stands for Employee Retention Tax Credit, is a refundable tax credit that was designed to reward and encourage businesses to keep their employees on payroll. \n\nThe WOTC, which stands for Work Opportunity Tax Credit, is a Federal tax credit available to employers for hiring individuals from certain targeted groups who have consistently faced significant barriers to employment.\n\nIn this Episode, Philip does a deep dive on both these tax credits and so much more.\n\nTake a listen and learn what it takes to accelerate your advisory practice.\"\n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout The Growth Partnership\nAbout Rockerbox \n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nPhilip Wentworth About Philip \n\n\nSpecial Guest: Philip Wentworth.","content_html":""On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we connect with Philip Wentworth, the CEO of Rocker Box to discuss how they are partnering with CPA firms to provide expertise related to both ERTC and the WOTC credits.
\n\nThe ERTC, which stands for Employee Retention Tax Credit, is a refundable tax credit that was designed to reward and encourage businesses to keep their employees on payroll.
\n\nThe WOTC, which stands for Work Opportunity Tax Credit, is a Federal tax credit available to employers for hiring individuals from certain targeted groups who have consistently faced significant barriers to employment.
\n\nIn this Episode, Philip does a deep dive on both these tax credits and so much more.
\n\nTake a listen and learn what it takes to accelerate your advisory practice."
\n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/4/4c4b596f-be85-4d51-8814-484dbe040a8d/avatar_thumb.jpg\"){kind=avatar} | \nPhilip Wentworth | \n
Special Guest: Philip Wentworth.
","summary":"\"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we connect with Philip Wentworth, the CEO of Rocker Box to discuss how they are partnering with CPA firms to provide expertise related to both ERTC and the WOTC credits. \r\n\r\nThe ERTC, which stands for Employee Retention Tax Credit, is a refundable tax credit that was designed to reward and encourage businesses to keep their employees on payroll. \r\n\r\nThe WOTC, which stands for Work Opportunity Tax Credit, is a Federal tax credit available to employers for hiring individuals from certain targeted groups who have consistently faced significant barriers to employment.\r\n\r\nIn this Episode, Philip does a deep dive on both these tax credits and so much more.\r\n\r\nTake a listen and learn what it takes to accelerate your advisory practice.\"","date_published":"2022-09-27T06:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/f4761392-20b3-4ed2-b03a-e49cf9a00909.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":36161484,"duration_in_seconds":3005}]},{"id":"3c70d679-d3b2-4cc9-9fd3-a67296fda088","title":"Ep004: Establishing a Financial Services Practice with Oggi Ruiz","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/004","content_text":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Oggi Ruiz of the World Financial Group, a leading financial services platform provider, to discuss their elegant approach to helping CPA firms get into the financial services business and jump-start their success.\n\nIt's a fascinating conversation, and their mission to help every family access financial knowledge, products, and resources to prepare for a better future really shows in their approach.\n\nTake a listen and learn what it takes to accelerate your advisory practice.\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout The Growth Partnership\nAbout World Financial Group Solutions\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nOggi RuizAbout Oggi \n\n\nSpecial Guest: Oggi Ruiz.","content_html":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Oggi Ruiz of the World Financial Group, a leading financial services platform provider, to discuss their elegant approach to helping CPA firms get into the financial services business and jump-start their success.
\n\nIt's a fascinating conversation, and their mission to help every family access financial knowledge, products, and resources to prepare for a better future really shows in their approach.
\n\nTake a listen and learn what it takes to accelerate your advisory practice.
\n
About World Financial Group Solutions
\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/0/08ed5f8c-1719-41ab-86c9-765f9b7845e0/avatar_thumb.jpg\"){kind=avatar} | \nOggi Ruiz | \n
Special Guest: Oggi Ruiz.
","summary":"On this edition of the Advisory Accelerator Podcast, we connect with Oggi Ruiz of the World Financial Group, a leading financial services platform provider, to discuss their elegant approach to helping CPA firms get into the financial services business and jump-start their success.\r\n\r\nIt's a fascinating conversation, and their mission to help every family access financial knowledge, products, and resources to prepare for a better future really shows in their approach.\r\n\r\nTake a listen and learn what it takes to accelerate your advisory practice.","date_published":"2022-09-07T07:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/3c70d679-d3b2-4cc9-9fd3-a67296fda088.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":20377342,"duration_in_seconds":1690}]},{"id":"417e9439-eda5-4673-8c99-ea6722bfe5d1","title":"Ep003: The Ins and Outs of IC-DISC with David Spray","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/003","content_text":"Today on the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we're talking with David Spray, President of Export Advisors, a specialty tax firm based in Houston, Texas.\n\nWe discuss how Export Advisors are partnering with CPA firms to provide expertise related to the IC-DISC, a tax incentive helping exporters retain more of their profits.\n\nDavid's approach helps CPAs better equip themselves to identify suitable candidates for this offering.\n\nThis is another great example of identifying opportunities to accelerate your advisory practice.\n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout The Growth Partnership\nAbout Export Advisors\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nDavid SprayAbout David \n\n\nSpecial Guest: David Spray.","content_html":"Today on the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we're talking with David Spray, President of Export Advisors, a specialty tax firm based in Houston, Texas.
\n\nWe discuss how Export Advisors are partnering with CPA firms to provide expertise related to the IC-DISC, a tax incentive helping exporters retain more of their profits.
\n\nDavid's approach helps CPAs better equip themselves to identify suitable candidates for this offering.
\n\nThis is another great example of identifying opportunities to accelerate your advisory practice.
\n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/8/81270743-dd0d-47d8-985c-d06112cd40c8/avatar_thumb.jpg?v=0\"){kind=avatar} | \nDavid Spray | \n
Special Guest: David Spray.
","summary":"Today on the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we're talking with David Spray, President of Export Advisors, a specialty tax firm based in Houston, Texas.\r\n\r\nWe discuss how Export Advisors are partnering with CPA firms to provide expertise related to the IC-DISC, a tax incentive helping exporters retain more of their profits.\r\n\r\nDavid's approach helps CPAs better equip themselves to identify suitable candidates for this offering.\r\n \r\nThis is another great example of identifying opportunities to accelerate your advisory practice.","date_published":"2022-08-16T14:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/417e9439-eda5-4673-8c99-ea6722bfe5d1.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":39236037,"duration_in_seconds":2411}]},{"id":"c2071445-8a2d-4e53-9e66-0cc60d290a8e","title":"Ep002: The iClat: A Charitable Giving Strategy to Reduce Taxable Income","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/002","content_text":"Today on the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we're talking with Brad Gornto, President & Founder of iCLAT Solutions, a firm dedicated to partnering with CPA firms to provide a straightforward charitable giving framework that can help reduce taxable income in a year when a client's tax liability is unusually high.\n\nAn \"iCLAT\" is simply a trust that makes annual distributions to charity for a specified term of years and, at the end of the term, distributes the remaining trust assets back to its grantor.\n\nA well-established but rarely used type of charitable planning strategy, Brad and his team have worked with 100s of individuals, attorneys, accountants, financial planners, charities, DAF sponsors, and fiduciaries in the proper design, drafting, establishment, and administration of iCLATs. \n\nTake a listen and learn what it takes to accelerate your advisory practice.\n\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout The Growth Partnership\nAbout iCLAT Solutions\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nBrad GorntoAbout Brad \n\n\nSpecial Guest: Brad Gornto.","content_html":"Today on the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we're talking with Brad Gornto, President & Founder of iCLAT Solutions, a firm dedicated to partnering with CPA firms to provide a straightforward charitable giving framework that can help reduce taxable income in a year when a client's tax liability is unusually high.
\n\nAn "iCLAT" is simply a trust that makes annual distributions to charity for a specified term of years and, at the end of the term, distributes the remaining trust assets back to its grantor.
\n\nA well-established but rarely used type of charitable planning strategy, Brad and his team have worked with 100s of individuals, attorneys, accountants, financial planners, charities, DAF sponsors, and fiduciaries in the proper design, drafting, establishment, and administration of iCLATs.
\n\nTake a listen and learn what it takes to accelerate your advisory practice.
\n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/a/abf86f24-1bb9-4b51-907b-55e04e8a6a75/avatar_thumb.jpg?v=0\"){kind=avatar} | \nBrad Gornto | \n
Special Guest: Brad Gornto.
","summary":"Today on the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we're talking with Brad Gornto, President & Founder of iCLAT Solutions, a firm dedicated to partnering with CPA firms to provide a straightforward charitable giving framework that can help reduce taxable income in a year when a client's tax liability is unusually high.\r\n\r\nAn \"iCLAT\" is simply a trust that makes annual distributions to charity for a specified term of years and, at the end of the term, distributes the remaining trust assets back to its grantor.\r\n\r\nA well-established but rarely used type of charitable planning strategy, Brad and his team have worked with 100s of individuals, attorneys, accountants, financial planners, charities, DAF sponsors, and fiduciaries in the proper design, drafting, establishment, and administration of iCLATs. \r\n\r\nTake a listen and learn what it takes to accelerate your advisory practice.","date_published":"2022-07-11T07:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/c2071445-8a2d-4e53-9e66-0cc60d290a8e.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":31297112,"duration_in_seconds":1900}]},{"id":"137d592f-eb5e-4efe-9e4d-b28d5f9fc6ca","title":"Ep001: Understanding the Tax Advantages of Private Aviation","url":"https://podcast.engineeredadvisory.com/001","content_text":"Today on the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we're talking with Jerry Winkelmann, Executive Director at Engineered Advisory Services, Jack Lambert, Managing Partner at Jet Access Aviation, and Bart Peters, Managing Attorney at Business Aviation Law Group, about their unique jet aviation program.\n\nAs a CPA, you may have clients who would benefit from exploring the purchase of a private aircraft as an investment vehicle, especially when the plane is placed inside of a charter fleet, and from a tax minimization standpoint.\n\nWe had the opportunity to dive into the current tax guidelines, the nuances of owning a jet, and the advantages it can provide to the owner.\n\nThis is a great episode, especially if you're a CPA looking to drive value into your client relationships.\n\n\nLINKSShow Notes\nAbout The Growth Partnership\nAbout Engineered Tax Services\nAbout Jet Access Aviation\nAbout Business Aviation Law Group\n\nGUESTS\n\n\n\nJerry WinkelmannAbout Jerry \n\n\nJack LambertAbout Jack \n\n\nBart PetersAbout Bart \n\n\nSpecial Guests: Bart Peters, Jack Lambert, and Jerry Winkelmann.","content_html":"Today on the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we're talking with Jerry Winkelmann, Executive Director at Engineered Advisory Services, Jack Lambert, Managing Partner at Jet Access Aviation, and Bart Peters, Managing Attorney at Business Aviation Law Group, about their unique jet aviation program.
\n\nAs a CPA, you may have clients who would benefit from exploring the purchase of a private aircraft as an investment vehicle, especially when the plane is placed inside of a charter fleet, and from a tax minimization standpoint.
\n\nWe had the opportunity to dive into the current tax guidelines, the nuances of owning a jet, and the advantages it can provide to the owner.
\n\nThis is a great episode, especially if you're a CPA looking to drive value into your client relationships.
\n
About Business Aviation Law Group
\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/d/d4f5a845-1154-4ac4-93a3-cb507570a966/avatar_thumb.jpg?v=0\"){kind=avatar} | \nJerry Winkelmann | \n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/b/b4696123-a43a-49fd-b010-cba0f065effa/avatar_thumb.jpg?v=0\"){kind=avatar} | \nJack Lambert | \n\n![](\"https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/images/0/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/guests/8/8a72b100-63cc-4e42-a353-fea25a8d2f24/avatar_thumb.jpg?v=0\"){kind=avatar} | \nBart Peters | \n
Special Guests: Bart Peters, Jack Lambert, and Jerry Winkelmann.
","summary":"Today on the Advisory Accelerator podcast, we're talking with Jerry Winkelmann, Executive Director at Engineered Advisory Services, Jack Lambert, Managing Partner at Jet Access Aviation, and Bart Peters, Managing Attorney at Business Aviation Law Group, about their unique jet aviation program.\r\n\r\nAs a CPA, you may have clients who would benefit from exploring the purchase of a private aircraft as an investment vehicle, especially when the plane is placed inside of a charter fleet, and from a tax minimization standpoint.\r\n\r\nWe had the opportunity to dive into the current tax guidelines, the nuances of owning a jet, and the advantages it can provide to the owner.\r\n \r\nThis is a great episode, especially if you're a CPA looking to drive value into your client relationships.","date_published":"2022-06-27T12:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/0efc8162-f773-4640-80f1-5f5f639a8e76/137d592f-eb5e-4efe-9e4d-b28d5f9fc6ca.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":35275871,"duration_in_seconds":2932}]}]}