Episode Summary

This episode is sponsored by Truly Financial. Learn more at https://trulyfinancial.com/

Scott Scarano joins the DM Disruption! Tune in to learn about his own podcast, Sons of CPA’s, the importance of succession planning, and how improving the productivity of your firm may not be as hard as you think. Listen now!

 

Episode Notes

Post Covid and Importance of Staying Present

Scott and Dawn discuss how this post-covid season is affecting their firms. Dawn brings up how the tax atmosphere has now changed, and CPA’s are expected to be doing more than ever before. Scott agrees and says that trying to get a hold of the IRS is even more challenging than it used to be, and how waiting for the IRS to respond is taking up a lot of their firm’s time. 

Scott brings up how he no longer has the notifications turned on on his phone, as he found that his time off work was still spent doing work related tasks. Dawn adds that she now uses Liscio to converse with her clients and never gives out her personal phone number to her clients; this has helped her spend more quality time with her children. 

 

The Sons of CPAs Podcast

Scott is the host of the Sons of CPAs podcast. Scott says that he and his colleagues are the next generation of CPAs, and that they are focused on presenting new ideas and new ways to run a successful firm. He remarks that many accounting firms may not see issues that are causing them to lack in productivity, and his podcast can help firm owners and CPAs be exposed to new ideas that may help the performance of their firm.

 

Dawn also talks about how she partners with other accounting firms to split certain costs and save on business expenses. She also says that it gives her a sounding board to bounce ideas off of, and it allows her to learn new ways to improve her practice.

 

Succession Planning for your Firm

Dawn and Scott also discuss the important step of devising a succession plan for when you choose to retire from your firm. Scott says that he sees a lot of single entrepreneurs who own their own accounting practice fail to create an easy transition for the person that either buys or takes over their firm. Many accounting firms also use old or outdated technology and refuse to update their practices, which can lead to issues when trying to grow or expand the productivity of your practice.

Scott’s Motivation

Scott also shares the story of meeting his wife while working at the same restaurant in college. He shares that she is the biggest motivation in her life, and credits her for giving him the motivation to pursue his current career path.

 

Check out Scott's Podcast, Sons of CPAs

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sons-of-cpas/id1571747680

 

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Transcript:

Dawn Brolin
Hi, I'm Dawn Brolin. I'm a certified public accountant, Certified Fraud Examiner, and the author of the designated motivator for accounting professionals. Today I want to introduce you to Truly Financial. They're a digital bank and you can visit them at TrulyFinancial.com. They are part of the team rollin starting lineup, which is the best of breed roster for technology solutions and partners that I use in my own accounting practice, Powerful Accounting, Inc. In fact, my entire ecosystem or playing field, if you will, is called Truly Financial field. Here's why. Banking the right kind of banking is essential to everything you or your clients need to do when it comes to money. Truly financial is changing the banking game. For starters, they're a digital bank, no more going to the bank for me, those days are over. I can do everything online, and so can your clients. Partnering with Truly Financial helps you offer clients and their customers frictionless collaborative banking solutions anywhere in the world. Truly financial provides accessible all in one banking that gives small businesses superpowers that were previously only available to larger businesses. When you or your clients open a truly financial account, you get multicountry corporate Visa cards, local and international bank accounts and the ability to send or receive payments seamlessly. I use Truly Financial to help the business owners I work with grow without getting slowed down by high fees, or big bank bureaucracy. Learn more about how truly financial is changing the game for accounting professionals and their clients. Be sure to check out their partner program for accounting professionals to at TrulyFinancial.com Thanks so much for listening.

Hello, everybody. And welcome to the DM disruption. Another episode here really excited to talk to Scott Scarano. Most of you probably have heard of Scott, he's out there. He's, you know, forging the way as an entrepreneur and doing a lot of really great things. We have him here today to talk a little bit with me about motivation and how we can kind of he seems like he's like a little bit down today. So we're gonna pick him up and drag him along and shoot for that motivation for him today for this episode. So Scott, thank you so much for joining me here today. Let's talk about Scott Scarano. Otherwise known as Scotty to his friends sometimes, or Beam me up, Scotty. We can even have that do that.

Scott Scarano
Yeah,we got the new Sopranos that just came out. Usually draw the comparison. That yeah, the higher brow people on sopranos a soprano. And the the typical everyday man is usually things soprano. So I've noticed this in my life. And I just started noticing as I was watching that new one, it's like, you know, I usually say soprano, Soprano tomato tomahto.

Dawn Brolin
Exactly. So there's another good like now your high brow?

Scott Scarano
That's where you get this Scarano right. That's in my accounting world. It's always Scarano.

Dawn Brolin
So I love it. I love it. So Scott, talk to me, tell me what's been going on with you. What's, what's this? What's this kind of feel a little down? What's happening in your world?

Scott Scarano
I think this, this new posts COVID, going back to the world is what's getting me down. Okay. I think it's trying to marry the reality that was created during COVID that I very much enjoyed. So now, I think the rubber meets the road. And there's more going on. Everybody just wants things done now and I got to actually get back to work. Like that's, that's ultimately why I'm down is, is I can't just be absent from the firm to like, I was enjoying I have a podcast of doing other things besides just working. I feel like a CEO now. But yeah, see, you actually has to do some work. And, you know...

Dawn Brolin
It's so true. Right. So so clients are kind of coming out of the woodwork a little bit more. And I definitely see of course for us as a CPA is the the atmosphere of tax right now is so frustrating, really, at the end of the day. It's frustrating, mostly, I think, because the IRS, which I had a great conversation with Matt Fulton on Friday, just talking about, you know, the new tax bill and all the spending and all the stuff that's going on. And I said to him, I said Matt, dude, I can't even get through to the IRS for an amended return from two years ago. Nevermind, slapping on more stuff that's going to be coming down the pike here as we go through the fall and then into January. So I can see where your, you know, who wants to I call it reentry. So we have to re enter into that mindset of madness really a little bit, right? So I can see where that that challenge is here for you for sure.

Scott Scarano
I mean, you know, you and I both know that anything like, like you said, like two years ago amended return, like anything that we're sending to the IRS, first we have to mail it, and everybody knows that, you know, or fax it. And it's just gonna sit there like we're dealing with, you know, S corp elections and things like that. And it's just, you know, it's back and up. We don't know if they're accepting it or not. It's just anything here and there. So what we've done at our firm, at least is just add a line item to everybody's monthly prices, IRS correspondence, protection, anything that comes up, we'll handle it, otherwise, they're getting bills every time. You know, that's, we're not billing my time. But yeah, I mean, you do a lot of IRS, don't you do a lot of representation and different, you know, aspects of that. So, you know, from a practical standpoint, you're still going to deal with long phone calls, you know, anything. So, I don't know how you personally handle that. Or if you have people that do that. And it's yeah..

Dawn Brolin
No, I for the representation, I need to handle 100% myself and, and I use something called actually one of those supporters of our podcasts call ENQ, call E N Q. And so that gets you into like, the front line, there's a lot of on social media, there's people who are like, that's just not right. You know, it's bad enough, blah, blah, blah, I'm like,

Scott Scarano
Well, you pay extra for it, right?

Dawn Brolin
50 bucks a month. I'll take that. And it puts me You know, I say faster. But I'll tell you what, you know, it's really interesting to Scott, I have a client who has like an identity protection letter that came in regarding their 2020 return. And of course, he's got a nice $25,000 refund coming. You call that 1-800 number you can they actually say due to high call volume, call back another time. We're not even going to put you on hold.

Scott Scarano
Not even yet. It's a courtesy. Sometimes it used to be a courtesy hang up. Now. They're just not even putting anybody on hold like that. Sorry. Got your order. Yeah...

Dawn Brolin
I'm just like, what I mean, it's crazy. What's happening. So when it's true to Scott, like, we just had that reentry issue. It's like, you know, I personally enjoyed the last year and a half of not meeting with people. I'm much more productive. I'm turning returns over faster, because I'm not having that one hour...

Scott Scarano
And just anything else. Yeah, like, you have more control over your day, I think. Yeah. When Nobody's interrupting, you know,

Dawn Brolin
Yeah. Which is almost never, which, you know, I mean, it's, it's constant, right? So, and you think about it, over the course of a day, when you're having a normal workday, you're probably communicating with, okay, people say, Oh, I've talked to this many people, but you're probably communicating with 30 to 40 to 50 people a day, between texts and phone calls and emails. And well, thank goodness for

Scott Scarano
Sometime more, yeah.

Dawn Brolin
Which is, which is funny, because one of the reasons our firm moved to Liscio, which we talked a little bit about Chris Farrell, before we started the episode, but, you know, that has given us the ability to consolidate all communications with the exception of a phone call, but texts and emails and everything going into one place, where we're not having to go to, you know, which cell phone here and look at...

Scott Scarano
Well, there's less misinformation, there's less duplication of communications, like, you know, it's just like now at our firm, it's text call and email, when you need to tell them something or reach out to them, because we don't know which ones they're gonna respond to. Right, like...

Dawn Brolin
And that's it. Yeah. You know, it used to be like, from a communications perspective, used to be communications meant, you know, alright, you send out an email, and hopefully someone get back to you in the next day or two. But people it used to be a text was almost like an emergency, like a text was, hey, I need something now. But now, texting is so common. I was like, I'm not giving out my personal cell phone. I am not doing it. There's nothing that important. I have Liscio on my phone if I decide to open it and communicate. But I've decided I want it to be the driver of the communication. I didn't want to necessarily be interrupted when I'm on a boat, like, like we were talking about before, right? Because I want to be present when you have three kids, right? So you have three kids, when you're with your kids, you want to be present with your kids. Because like you said, we know we work all the time. We're workaholics of sorts, right? So we work so much that when you do get that time you want to spend with your kids, right?

Scott Scarano
I think we in to me, I'm trying to marry the idea of of workaholic versus wanting to help to write like a lot of us always say that's what we want to do. We want to help. You know, the first part I always say it's money first, you got to make money first, it's about money until it's not. And then when it's not, then it's about you know, whatever it might be and I think managing the interruptions to like I think I'm gonna call this episode The DM interruption, right. And that's usually because I'm always interrupting people not and that's another out of context statement, but this is more Yeah, more and more in the sense of, you know, managing the interruptions. And I've turned off notifications for everything on my phone, which is a big deal, because I don't even get notified if I get a phone call, or anything else. So I really have to, and this is part of what what brings me down is like to have to turn those back on now. Like, am I getting? Am I missing some calls? Am I not scheduling my day, right are missing an important text or an important email? It used to be a notification for every email that came in. And a lot of people might still have that. And to me, by turning that off, it just creates more anxiety when I do go into the emails now. So it's like, you can't win.

Dawn Brolin
That's interesting. Yeah. Okay. You know, and I love that mentality, though, what you're saying, is to shut off notifications. I had a client in here on Friday, and he was saying, you know, I want to I don't want to leave my phone on vibrate, because he's a plumber. So he would have people, you know, texting and calling at 530 in the morning, and he's like, he just has newborn babies. Like, I can't be having that. And he's like, Well, what do I do? If it's like, I want obviously, if my what my wife is with me, but let's say she's away or something like that, I want to be able to get that notification at 530. In the morning, I said, That's what favorites are for. You set up your favorites on your phone, and you shut off notifications from anybody but your favorites. And so that's a good tip. And I like that because obviously I have kids that are home with me. So I need to be able to be available for them. But you're right, the notifications, stress me out, stress me out. And so I don't allow notifications on my phone either. Because I'm like, Okay, I'm going to check my tax. I'm going to check my emails, I'm going to check my phone calls. And yeah, you know what, Scott, you might miss a thing or two. You know, you're like me, we're both people pleasers. You know, and I think accountants are, I think most accountants are people pleasers. We're in the service industry, we're working with people...

Scott Scarano
It's the forward facing ones are the ones that want to be put in the back room and just do the work thing that they're not always people pleasers, they're usually people displeases, but you got to put your to put somebody else with them to make it work. And I usually the firm owners that I speak to probably as well that we mingle with, they're the front facing ones, they're the ones that want to talk to clients. And usually you've got somebody on your team like them to you know, it's, this is the one I want to put in front of when a client is upset or when something's going on. That's important. Yeah, put them in front of this employee. Right. And we've, what we've tried to do at the firm, and I'm, you know, dive into those details, but it's like, we want to figure out, okay, what pairs of people can work well with clients, and then usually with that pair, you can get a lot of the front end overhead, and just really, you know, most of that client facing aspect of the work that we do. Right, then maybe we have an outsourced team to handle some of the lower level work, but it's like marrying those type of employees to work together as a team, sort of like in a pod, you know, so to speak, in this remote work atmosphere like we did, we had an office, and we don't anymore since COVID, like we've sold their office, right. And now, part of me to is that have been down for the past couple weeks is like, I want to go back, I want to go back to the office. I'd have three kids and my son was out of school for three weeks when they have year round school, so everybody's on a different schedule for years. But not in school, obviously, nothing like that. I could still hear footsteps above me. My daughter in high school. And that's just a regular schedule, like everybody, you know, has she has a summer office, and then year round school for my son and elementary. And that's like, they get three weeks off, and then they go for a quarter. And then they get another three weeks off. I think it's a quarter. I don't know what it is. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's, we used to like that, because they were on the same schedule. We go on a trip, you know, middle of the year, not that busy. You know?

Dawn Brolin
Absolutely. Yeah. You know, it's interesting that you say that, because, yeah, I have an office on my property. So I've had a an office in New Haven about an hour drive from here and decided that just was too much. But you're right. I mean, the flexibility that we have been able to enjoy over the last year and a half has made things a lot better. And you're right about the forward facing person. So I have Tracy in my office, she's a gem. She's one in a million. She handles all things clients, she loves to talk to the clients and not that I don't because I do. I like to talk to the clients. But really, at the end of the day, I got to have the head down, keyboard shuffling, we're just like, bang hitting away. And really, when you're right when there's a conflict or an issue, she handles it so much better than I do. She really does. You know, so she's she's able to do that. And I think, you know, having the ability to have somebody she's works 20 hours a week between 20 and 30 Maybe in tax season. But for the most part, you know, she just handles that stuff and boy, it just takes a huge burden off of me.

Scott Scarano
Have you seen a split between like she's doing she got her head down for 20 hours and then 20 hours she's like communications are just about 20 hours.

Dawn Brolin
She only does she works about 20 hours a week total. All she does is client communications.

Scott Scarano
So she is that whole front facing for most of the front, is she more of Like your clients access specialist, what do you call her?

Dawn Brolin
Absolutely, absolutely. Without her, you know, she, she handles follow up on client organizers, which we do all digital anyway. But, you know, she handles all of that she handles, okay, you know, I let me just make sure that this bank accounts, right and whatever. And so she'll just, yep, let me give him a call, she'll set all my appointments, I'm not allowed to make appointments, because I just got all...

Scott Scarano
I'm dealing with that today, like, I can't make my appointments, because I've missed them, like, I'll double booked them, you know, all kinds of things. So, yeah, we get to that, we usually do pretty well, because it does have the team approach, you know, and, you know, just round robin type things, but then when it comes to me, you know, a proposal follow up of double. And that's important.

Dawn Brolin
And those are important. So tell me more about like, you're out there helping other CPAs moving forward, right, and helping them get past it. Tell me about that. I want to hear about that.

Scott Scarano
So I don't take the motivator approach. I like the way you've really framed it very well, for us, it's just very conversational. Right. So that's the podcast. And that's, that's more of like, you know, we're the next generation, we call it the sons of CPAs. And we're the next generation of, I'm not even a CPA, but like accountants and CPAs, that are taking a charge in this, you know, industry that's been going through a lot of change, and we'll go through a lot more. We've got, you know, people doing things, one way, that's traditionally speaking way, it's always been done. And then a lot, you know, not a lot, but a subset of firms out there that are doing things a lot different, I think, you know, you're probably very acutely aware of that. There are some that just, you know, that are just in their own bubble. And I think, you know, to a certain degree, we're all looking to change and do things better. And do you think our clients, so it's like, what are the best practices, and nobody really has any generally best practices that somebody else doesn't do differently? Like, everybody's doing things a little bit differently. But when you look at the traditional, so to speak, it's very much the same, you know, hourly billing, we're doing this, we have this partnership model. And this is, and then I know that you in particular, to have a very unique approach to that partnership model. Right. And I think that's, you know, that speaks to this next generation of people doing things that kind of work for our current world, right?

Dawn Brolin
Yeah, totally. I mean, like, so I have, I have packed partners, okay. And they are, you know, we formed this partnership, we're all our own CPAs, we all have our own clients. But we decided partnering together, splitting the cost of software, having a firm license together, having that ability to bounce things off of each other without invading or impeding on the way we want to run our practices. And so that's been a really great marriage between the three of us, it's been really awesome. And so you're right. I mean, I think that that, and I love what you do for the, for the younger part of the profession where we really need those people desperately. And yeah, at the end of the day, they're not going to do it the way we all did it, I should say, I didn't really go the traditional route myself, I never went to a big firm, I had a small partnership with, with a couple of CPAs that were on staff. And that's where I got my experience. But you know, a lot of people, you don't have to go be owned by the man, which is what happens a lot of times in those bigger firms. Not ever, but that's not for everybody. And so having some non traditional approaches is important. Right?

Scott Scarano
increases for flex, I mean, for flexibility. And just for decision making, right? Do you? Do you guys have to have a committee to make every decision? Or like, because that's, that's a big difference. And a lot of these bigger firms is they don't ever change anything, because they have to all agree. And a lot of times, you're not very agile, if you have to, you know, it's not if one person is not at the helm, and it's one person making the decisions. And usually, they shy away from that, because who knows why, and it's just typically done by committee, when it's a bigger, you know, under one umbrella. Now, do you guys operate as different firms? Or do you?

Dawn Brolin
Yes, well, we have a firm rolling in Koba. Yeah. You know, so we have our E fin and all of our, we have insurance together, everything's all together, we just build separate. So really, at the end of the day, we file is Anderson Brolin, and Koba, but then when it comes to the bill is powerful accounting. It's a powerful accounting. So you know, and so we just cut checks to pay for the, you know, that, like I said, the insurance and our website and that kind of stuff. And really, at the end...

Scott Scarano
And then it just goes to your management company, almost like that's, your your you pay a management fee to powerful accounting to handle the rest of it, and then your tax return is separate. Okay.

Dawn Brolin
Yeah. So we just, you know, we kind of took a different approach. And I think that again, like you said, for the Son of CPAs, for those younger entrepreneur minded CPAs, who don't, or are going to be CPAs, who maybe don't want to take a traditional approach is really great to have, you know, resources such as your podcast to say, Hey, what are other people doing out there? That may be different that I may be interested in, right?

Scott Scarano
We gotta go plural with that sons of CPAs because it's not just me. I'm not just the son of a CPA. He's also Yeah. And, you know, we kind of, we have different firms too. And we don't even take that kind of approach where we don't really work together in a firm, but we, we see eye to eye on a lot of things. So we both said, you know, I think in different conversations was just like, let's eventually do a podcast. And this year was the year we eventually did it. And we have sons were both sons of CPAs. And so the name came by accident, actually, it was just during the third episode, it was another son of a CPA, we were all on one call. And it was just like I said, as a joke that they were the sons of CPAs. And he was like, that's pretty good title...

Dawn Brolin
That's kind of a good name. And yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's like, we have this ability, especially, and I see this a lot of social media, where they're solopreneurs. Like, they're only they're one practitioner. And at the end of the day, those practitioners, the more you can band together, like you are with other CPAs, or with other sons of CPAs. And be able to have that collaboration is so important, when you're on your own. Right, because you are the one making all the decisions, you are the one you're relying on yourself 100%. And so if you can get that collaboration and find those mentors, like Scott and his co host and other people that are coming on to his podcast, now you have some some ability to relate and ability to you know, I'm sure that you guys answer questions, you can, you know, send in questions and things that you are interested in learning more about...

Scott Scarano
I gotta start doing that. That's, that's a good idea. Yeah, I would like to create a type form one day and just have send, you know, send listeners submit a question. Yes. Questions.

Dawn Brolin
Yeah. And, you know, a lot of times I what I find myself doing is if I'm either giving a webinar, or attending a webinar, being able to watch the questions that are coming in from the audience will also help you see, hey, what are the questions people are asking? They're not just on social media, but even when you're in those events to pay attention that stuff? Because that's what people need, they need answers, they need answers, they need, you know, whatever kind of support that they can get. And that's, that's what's awesome about what you're doing what we're doing here at theme disruption, just trying to help and give back and you were saying that before me, that's what we do. We're people pleasers, we work a lot because we want to please a lot more than anything, right?

Scott Scarano
Yeah. And to scope it out and scope it back in, like, I'm part of a franchise. So Paget Business Services is a alpha is traditionally speaking, it's a very old franchise. They're going through a lot of change management internally, and we're, you know, they just hadn't hired a new CEO, you know, a little over a year ago, we've got a new COO, and, you know, are off my office in particular has been upside down, compared to the model and the traditional model of how things were usually done, and I was making decisions on my own. And it was like, Am I doing the right thing or not. And I looked to the community outside of Padget, to kind of get some guidance, so now looking back in, things are changing, there's Domino's, and there's different, you know, apps being adopted, there's different processes being adopted, there's different ways of doing things that have been adopted in this change management. And it's a big deal, because we've always done it the same way. There's a lot of Boomer owner, you know, franchise owners, that are doing things the same way for you know, 20 plus years, 25 plus years. They don't want to do any differently. They're about to be out the door. So then how do they pass that baton, and make it easier for the next generation?

Dawn Brolin
So I love that because that's exactly it. So in the second book that I've got going right now, we talk about succession planning. And for those people who are not changing and not adopting and not making shifts in their practice, got to start thinking about succession planning, you know, I here's what I'm gonna do. Here's my password to LastPass all my passwords are in there, all the secret sauce is all that stuff is in there. There's no files for you to get to go to smart vault, get all your documents, you know, everything you need, is a turnkey, here you go recover 360s are hosting solution. All you got...

Scott Scarano
Take the clients and go yeah, take them. That's your plan. Yeah, I can the keys over here you go have fun. Yeah. Well...

Dawn Brolin
And talk about value of your firm when you can do something like that, as opposed to oh, come on in. I got 300 clients, here's all the file cabinets. No, you're gonna have to come here and get all that it's like, no, here, done. We're done. And the value that that provides. So sometimes people think of okay, yeah, we're going to bring up that next generation. But let's bring them up in the way they should be brought up. And without as many obstacles as possible, right. So we go through tax season, we're making notes all through tax what was painful, what was not painful, we should change the organizer to say this say that. And we do that throughout tax season. And then we make changes like this year, our big change was liscio. Adding liscio on so we had better communications with our clients. We needed to do that we need to streamline it. So there's always room for improvement. And that's what I think, like you're saying...

Scott Scarano
My runway for adding liscio is eventually like, right now we're actually trying to utilize the most we can out of carbon two, biggest change this tax season, or at least this past year was adding client tasks. And just, you know, the auto reminder that you have embedded in there and no huge carbon to like, oh, you know, that that one thing, they think we're emailing and they're apologizing, we'll get it to you. And it's effortless for the team to have, you know, okay, they're preparing this number of tax returns, they don't want to always have to hound anybody down. So it usually builds up till the end, you turn that auto reminder on, it seems like a very simple thing, but it's just part of the process part of the task list. And that's the next one to come in. Just, you know, rig that up. Have that go. And then now I was on coast. Like, I don't know, it just seems like it changes the mindset of everybody too.

Dawn Brolin
And it's just so and it was something that was simple to implement, right. And so I love Ian over at carbon. Ian's doing a phenomenal job. And yeah, we use Karbon,

Scott Scarano
Ian's on the next episode of our podcast that I actually recorded it like two and a half months ago, but finally releasing it this next week. Yeah...

Dawn Brolin
That's awesome. And Ian's great. I mean, even I've met Ian Intuit Right? He was into my one of my Intuit bet buddies, just like Andy Anchetta was was actually my first introduction, pretty much my first introduction to intuit outside of Lesley cap jetty. And so, you know, they're doing great things because they've...

Scott Scarano
Your team green, right? That's like, I'm a team blue. Like, I've got my blue shirt on. But you know, you don't see the all the zeros stuff behind me right now. Right? Yeah. Like, it's really just for like, and I think you agree to most, you know, you choose a one, stick with it. And that's the one that you typically are going to use at your firm, you know, give or take.

Dawn Brolin
And that's what I tell people like, listen, they're like, what, what accounting software do you use? I'm like, I use QuickBooks because it's what I know. It's what I'm best at. And that's what worked for me. I don't I don't need to support any other accounting software, because I'm just not an expert in anything else. And so, and, you know, I think a lot of times, too, when we get to that point of acceptance, maybe we're like, you know what, I don't want to do payroll anymore. That's what I got to a point. I was like, Oh, my goodness, I have. And I did two years.

Scott Scarano
And I was like, Okay, get as much of it on run as we can and then send payroll, and then now now it's a split between those and payroll turned to gussto. Now, it's like half, you know, actually, now the majority is on gussto. But most of the larger clients, all ADP, and that's just we can't do after the fact I'm sure we probably were doing after the fact payroll at some point. That's that's just a headache to think about.

Dawn Brolin
Yeah, I had a client this morning. I so I sent him his tax return any questions? You sent me this book of questions, which is fine. Some of them are pretty funny. But he said in there, he's like, oh, so I do I really have to pay $600 a year to have my payroll done. Can I just do it myself? Like I said, bro, listen, that's nothing.

Scott Scarano
You're only charging six. Oh, man!

Dawn Brolin
Whatever solution he was looking at. And I said, dude, spend the $600. Like, do it yourself, I can promise you, you might as well just cut a check to me for 10 grand for all the problems you're gonna create. Yeah, that's what's gonna happen. And so it was it's just a no brainer. And then we just I didn't want to deal with deadlines anymore. I don't want to deal with notices like, I don't make that's for me. It's not a moneymaker. Some people may bank on payroll!

Scott Scarano
Well, now I'm trying to you know, I'm trying to reverse engineer, like, Okay, we went from making money on payroll now. It's like, I would much rather just hand it off to gusto, have gusto, handle almost all of it. And we just support right now. Now I'm like, we're leaving money on the table. Now, if like we're acting as a middleman for gussto support. It's like now let's call it, like, gusto is calling it people advisory. And now we can start branding things in this other payroll arm that we're calling, you know, it's more of like a showmanship like we're not necessarily doing payroll, but there's a lot of, you know, things that we can do to help them with their picture.

Dawn Brolin
Yeah, and I so I do ADP. And I, one of the biggest reason well, there's two reasons really, the accountant connect functionality. And I'm sure you because you're using run as well..

Scott Scarano
Our ADP is our personally, like, I love the new updates, they just came out with like the AI that's giving you ideas of what could be wrong on there and just giving you the tips there. And then the the notice notices from the IRS, or any state all being in that queue of just maybe update their service line and update the I just really had a couple issues with that. But I love that they're in there and they're not mailing them to us, like we would get those in the mail all the time. It was just back and forth can't keep so

Dawn Brolin
It's beautiful. And I love the commission, honestly because like you're right, you're 100% Correct. We are the middleman. Regardless if you're doing the payroll, you're outsourcing the payroll whether it's ADP gussto doesn't matter.

Scott Scarano
They get to notice this further taxes like everything. Right, they see a notice from the state. I got a notice from the IRS, they see that notice and say, Oh, that could be payroll related. We're not really doing your payroll. Yeah, it's an Notice for my taxes, right? And they just, all right, well, we're gonna have to support this now to do so.

Dawn Brolin
And so that's why I try to tell people like it's, it's we're not making money from the client on that we're making money from ADP. And because they pay commission, it makes up for that time we do spend, I'll say scanning and uploading that document service request, but but it does compensate us for setting up payroll, you know, the clients don't set the payroll up, we set the payroll up, meaning entering all the EIA ends, and the withholdings and the Department of Labor, and the employees and doing all this stuff...

Scott Scarano
You facilitate a lot, we still make sure it's correctly done. Because if they did it on their own, they may not even know the first thing about it. And they're, you know, at the level of what they're gonna get with ADP, they don't have that full 360 view of the client, you know, what they should do? And what's the runway and you know, what are they? How many employees? Are they going to, you know, in any kind of situation? Or where, which dates are they going to need?

Dawn Brolin
Exactly. So, that's a good thing that we can we can be in on those types of conversations. So I want to shift now, Scott, we're going to shift a little bit. Sure, I want to shift I want to hear, like, one of your motivation moments or a time in your career, at one point where you found so and so really helped lift me up or, or you in the work that you're doing, when you were able to pick somebody up and help them through a situation. Give me let's give me some kind of an example of that for you.

Scott Scarano
A situation. So we were just talking recently we talked because, now whenever,

Dawn Brolin
When you were five? Sure, so about Scott!

Scott Scarano
so a situation where somebody's really helped me out, like kind of move forward. So I think, I think to a certain degree, obviously, it's my wife, right, that's the first thing that's going to come to mind. And I think that she saved me as a person, like I, I went got a pretty deep area to look at, but it's like, I went through some issues in college, you know, I was at UNC I was at Carolina, I, I started doing things that I may not be proud of now, got the trouble with the law, got kicked out of Carolina, and then ended up and really, just to be clear, I don't really don't shy away from talking about it, but I was selling drugs. That's all it was. So I'm in school, you know, I was I was I was actually doing three price options, too, it was a lot of a lot of threading the needle of what we do now, and giving value, you know, actually delivering, you know, I love it. Okay, not, you know, that's, that's a dark. So I know, to a certain degree, though, it's like, so then I ended up going from there to, I'm working at three restaurants, I'm finishing up school on my own, and, you know, trying to pay off other debts. And just, I was in a, I was in a place where it's like, okay, now I'm trying to reroute things back to the track that they were on. And then I find her, she didn't even speak any English at the time, too. And we were working together. And we just worked very well to get out of one of the restaurants. I was working at Maggio's and it was a just a very good relationship. And so, you know, this speaks to somebody being of assistance and helping without even the language to it was just wow, you know, we had this connection. And it went deeper than just talking about the weather or talking about what was going on. We did communicate, and we did talk she you know, she knew enough English, I knew enough Spanish. We you know, and that's sort of what was the foundation of our relationship still. And that was like 17 years ago. So that's awesome. You know, and that's it to metaphorically, I guess, well, or however you want to use a metaphor, but it's like, yeah, the the way that our relationship did you know start was she, she is a helper, she helps people. And that's what she does. And that's how it's always been in our life. And I think that she brings out the better in me to it to a lot of degrees. Like it was before that it was always me trying to help myself. And now I see, you know, I have a lot more empathy. And I can really relate to anybody in any situation because of, you know, what, she's, what she's brought that other level of, I think that changed my whole life, obviously, you know, and, you know, to all other aspects of it. I didn't really plan on talking about that. But you were asked, and I brought it up.

Dawn Brolin
Yeah. So I love that. And I love that, you know, and I think there just does come a time in everyone's life at some point where you're like, man am I really like doing what I should be doing or whatever the case may be, and you have that person, whoever it is that just comes into your life and like, changes you for the better. Right? And, you know, sometimes it's hard. It's hard to accept that help, right? Because you're you're wanting to help yourself. You're like, I got this I'm in control. You know, I'm a type personality. I'm the boss of everything.

Scott Scarano
Oh, yeah. Well, it took me falling off of all that to be able to accept help, right? Like, at that point and I know that mindset to like that was the mindset that I always had. I don't need anybody to know everything. But I you know, I kind of forced myself into that role of I need assistance anywhere I can, you know, I can get and I think that that kind of helped. Moving forward to, that's awesome.

Dawn Brolin
And I'm sure like, as you watch her with your kids, like, that's probably one of the most beautiful moments in your life is to watch your significant other for you. It's your wife to, you know, be caring for those kids. And we were kind of joking before about how they live this long, right? Yeah, I know, you give her all the credit, but I'm sure that, you know, I'm sure that you are showing your children, which I think is part of what my role was in our family, just like you as the as the breadwinners, and things like that, that they want your work ethic. And then what's your commitment, right?

Scott Scarano
It's the actions, right, like, you know, I can't really speak to what I tell them to do, but they can, they can model their behaviors off of mine. And I think I'm a good enough example and example of somebody who maybe learned from past mistakes, or somebody who currently is trying to do the right thing in most cases, right. And so I think I see that my daughter, she has a really good work ethic. And she's, you know, she worked really hard. She's studying at night. And most people might say, you know, ease up on the study and things like that. But she's, she's, you know, exactly. And it's not just that she loves it, she likes the reward tiers, like, she's, she's showing us her grades. And she's, like, pretty proud of herself there. And it's like, you should be very proud of yourself, because you worked hard. You know, that's great. So we're not even telling you like you have to do your work or trying to stay on top of any of that. We're just letting it go. And I think it's the actions, right, it's the shore that they model off of that behavior. So yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I had a lot to be grateful for. And sometimes when I feel down, I gotta kind of think of what are the good things that are going on and everything too.

Dawn Brolin
Yep. Yeah. And it's, it's that glass half full mentality. And it's not every day, the glasses glass is not half full every time I'm just overflowing. Right? Like, sometimes you're like, Whoa, yeah, what is going on? But

Scott Scarano
Or its fully empty? Yeah. And you need some something to drop in there somebody else to drop some stuff.

Dawn Brolin
Somebody throw something in my glass, I need it. Right. So, you know, and that's really what it's about. Yep. And that's what it's about as all of us being able to help each other and help others through the journey of life. And the journey of you know, the accounting industry,

Scott Scarano
Drives this metaphor to like the refill and pouring into the glass. So she was a, she was bussing the tables. And one thing that was really, you know, just impressed me it was, there was never any other bus or at any other restaurant that would actually make sure that table was without them saying anything. waters were always full tick plates that were empty, were always clear. And it was just anticipating the needs of the end and always got better tips when I was working with her too. So it was like, you know, we both worked very well together to anticipate that without a lot of talking. And no excuses. There's never an excuse for anything if you just do it. Right. So that's right. I think that's, that's with our life, too, you know, to a certain degree, you know, when the glass is half full, somebody else could fill it up, or you can get up and fill it up yourself. But if you're at a restaurant, you're not expecting to get up vote yourself. So

Dawn Brolin
Exactly, exactly. Exactly. Well, Scott, listen, we try to keep these to about 20 minutes keeps people happy that way. But other than that, yeah, no, you're awesome. This was a great conversation. And, you know, just keep on doing what you're doing Scott, and, you know, go out there, go hug your kids, hug your wife, and, you know, stay positive, and keep on helping people. And I want to thank you on behalf of those that you have helped. And those that you will help. Because really, at the end of the day, we're all in this together. And I appreciate you and thanks. Thanks again for coming. Any last words anything you want to throw out there?

Scott Scarano
Oh, no, I just want to work on you know, work on being more like you on this because I think I could you know, I only really take that mindset approach of really helping people it's just more of a commerce getting the conversation started. But then you know what kind of other advice can be given without interruptions so it's like I brought up earlier that the DEM disruption in ours is the sons interruption because that's all I do is interrupt people on the podcast. I get to work on that. So

Dawn Brolin
it's all good, Scott. Well, you're doing great things. And thanks again, we appreciate your comments. Thanks, everybody for listening to the DM disruption. We look forward to seeing you next time. Take care