Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Cool Careers in Accounting Ep. 21 - Beyond Billable Hours: A Formula for Success in Accounting with Mike Maksymiw
331 Plays7 days ago
Mike Maksymiw takes us through his inspiring career journey, blending his passion for accounting, mentorship, and innovation. From his days as a college baseball pitcher to his leadership role at Aprio, Mike shares insights on work-life harmony, the evolving role of technology in accounting, and the value of questioning norms and building meaningful professional relationships. Packed with practical advice and personal anecdotes, this interview is a must-listen for anyone looking to make a lasting impact in the accounting profession.
Earn CPE by listening to this podcast through a Becker Prime CPE subscription.
Listen to this episode through your Becker LMS platform to complete practice questions, pass the final exam, and earn CPE credit.
Already a Becker Prime CPE customer? Login here.
Have access to Becker CPE through your employer? Earn CPE credit for this podcast however you consume Becker CPE, either through your company’s LMS or via the Becker platform. Not sure where to log in? Check with your CPE admin.
Learn more about CPE Podcasts from Becker: https://www.becker.com/cpe/becker-podcasts
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Mike Max and Career Overview
00:00:09
Speaker
Hey everyone, Mike Potenza here. Welcome to another Becker Cool Careers in Accounting podcast. Today, I have a really interesting guest. His name is Mike Maximue, but we're just going to call him Mike Max, all right?
00:00:22
Speaker
And he's really done a lot of interesting things in different firms and organizations within the field of accounting. I think you're going to find his ideas on accounting and even some of the sayings he comes up with really interesting. So what I'd like to do now is introduce our guest,
00:00:39
Speaker
Mike, thanks for coming to the show. You're welcome, Mike. Great to be here. I'm really happy that you invited me and really excited to share what's going on in my career with others who are interested or in this profession already. Well, we appreciate it I think that there's going lot of people out here listening to your story and really be interested by it. So let's let's just start. I always like to start you know at the beginning. Tell me, ah you know what part of the country are you from? Where'd you grow up?
00:01:01
Speaker
I live in Connecticut. I lived there my whole life, except for the four years that I went off to college. And where was that? Where'd you go to college? Bryant in Rhode Island. Oh, not too far away. Not too far. I got to play baseball there and do accounting.
00:01:12
Speaker
Oh, really? You played baseball in college? I did. All four years. It was a ton of fun. I actually wore my college jersey yesterday to ninety s night here. Oh, nice. So um I'm trying to see if I can guess what position. I'm going to guess you were a third baseman.
00:01:26
Speaker
Pitcher. but Oh, really? Pitcher. Were you a fastball pitcher or junk pitch pitcher? i I could throw about 90, but the go-to pitch was I had a 66-mile-an-hour changeup. Yeah, I wouldn't want to face one of those. You know you'd take a hard swing like Charlie Brown, your clothes fall off and everything.
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Well, that's interesting. i didn't know. They D1, D2, D3? They were Division II when I played there. The year after, our team went to the Division II World Series, and a couple years after that, the school went to Division I athletics. Oh, you put them on the map. You had a nice jump with
Influences and Early Career Challenges
00:01:54
Speaker
your team. We were part of the crew that you know helped get to Bryant on the map, and then we were we're successful while we were playing after I was done and it was really fun to watch them in the first Division one College World Series after they won the conference championship and they actually went down to think the LSU Regional and beat Arkansas in their first game interesting not many accountants can say they played D2 or D1 baseball that is for sure Yeah, it's a ton of fun. Did you win the World Series at d two No, but the team that went there, they because it was one year after I graduated, okay but I still knew a lot of the guys because I had played with them for two or three years, and it was really exciting to keep up and keep track with them.
00:02:29
Speaker
If I would have known this, I would have set this up like on a you know baseball field somewhere. We could have done a little batting practice afterwards. yeah Well, anyway, so just, you know, not to digress too much. So what made you stay so close to home and go to Rhode Island for school as opposed to say, hey, i want to go cross country. Like why Brian just for baseball specifically?
00:02:48
Speaker
No, I was I wanted to go into accounting. I had taken a high school class and my dad is an accountant. So I watched him do it. He actually told me I didn't have to do accounting, which was great that I could go do whatever I wanted. Yeah.
00:02:59
Speaker
But when I was looking at schools, I said, I'm going to see if I can play baseball there, too. So Bryant had a great campus. We got a nice private tour of the place. Got a little bit of scholarship money that really helped out with the finance part.
00:03:11
Speaker
And I wanted to be out of Connecticut because I lived there my whole life. So I would know if I should come back or stay out. And I came back and I've been there ever since. Wow, interesting. So you actually knew you're going to do accounting before you went to school. Not a lot of people who are playing baseball have that mindset, but I guess it's, you know, we'll talk about mentors. And I assume your dad was the one who really guided you there.
00:03:33
Speaker
He guided me in that he let me work with him when I told him that I was interested after he said, you don't have to, if you don't like it, no ill will, like, don't go do whatever you want. I also had this great accounting professor in high school, took accounting one. We became friends.
00:03:48
Speaker
She just won her lifetime achievement award from the high school. And we actually created ah an honors level accounting two class that used a computer instead of paper. And it's still offered at the high school, which is pretty cool.
00:04:00
Speaker
That's interesting. You know, one of the things we're trying to do, too, is we work with organizations with respect to high schools and trying to bring accounting there because there's so many high schools today that still don't have accounting. And the fact that when you went way back when that they had it and then you even had an honors program, that's ah pretty impressive for your high school.
00:04:17
Speaker
Yeah, it was really great. The woman was really passionate about accounting. She was also our technology teacher. So when we co-created this course that it still exists 20 plus years later, wow, that makes me sound old. Yeah, we're all there. Don't worry. It's it's fun because it's you want to leave a little bit of a legacy and you never quite know what you do that's going to have which impact.
00:04:37
Speaker
You just have to wait to see what mattered the most. So you try a lot of different things that matter to you and maybe a couple of them stick. Right. And you're fortunate to have that, you know, teacher instructor back
Career Transitions and Values Alignment
00:04:48
Speaker
in high school, because that's the problem with a lot of these high schools today.
00:04:50
Speaker
They don't even have anyone really that can understand accounting to the point to teach it. And that's one of the things we're hoping, I mean, as a profession that we could, you know, grow the pipeline by introducing it at that younger age.
00:05:03
Speaker
Yeah, totally agree. the The number of students I've spoken to at high schools as a part of the state society, I always like going in and asking, what do you want to do? Because accounting will probably touch your life in some way.
00:05:15
Speaker
And what I can really do to get teenagers attention in this works is I tell them the Al Capone story. And that really like snaps their heads in and they you know take the AirPods out and they're like, really? Like Capone went to jail for tax fraud and not for the other crimes that he committed and allegedly?
00:05:31
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. You know, it's very interesting. So then you went to school, went to Bryant and you started your accounting career, you know, your major in Bryant. How would you say those professors were? I mean, it kept you interested that you're like, hey, this is definitely something I can see myself doing for the long term.
00:05:48
Speaker
Yeah, I really could. We had three or four different professors at various levels that that taught us courses. I still remember some of their names, especially ah especially after like, you know a little bit of prep work for today. And, you know, they had a positive impact at Bryant. And then I went to a master's program and met a lot of other great professors there, too, that I still kept in touch with for many years after finishing that program.
00:06:09
Speaker
so then you know you graduate and did you just right away turn down all the major league baseball offers for pitching and go right into accounting or what'd you do after graduation oh if i could have ridden a bus and podunk and pitched for a couple years i definitely would have and then started the accounting career a couple years later uh but ah my original job offer was from arthur anderson And then Enron happened and then WorldCom happened.
00:06:33
Speaker
And then I got a phone call that the job offer was being rescinded in the spring. And there aren't a lot of accounting jobs to find in the spring. yeah But i was all situation I was already enrolled in UConn's grad program. And I thought, well, now I have two schools that can help me get a job. I have UConn and I have Bryant. So I pinged them both. And I was like, so now I need a job. um Any ideas like leads, people that are looking that contacted you?
00:06:57
Speaker
And there was a firm in Connecticut that was near UConn that had a couple of graduates from there. And they had asked UConn, hey, if any students are looking for roles, we'd like to interview them. So I interviewed there. Then that was how I got my first job a little bit outside of UConn, which was about an hour away from where I lived in Connecticut.
00:07:15
Speaker
Not too bad. So is that like a small midsize company and what kind of work to do there? It was a three-partner accounting firm. There was about 20 of us that worked there. And as a new staff accountant, I did a little bit of everything.
00:07:28
Speaker
As a 20-year-old in the office, I got to be our IT guy in the early 2000s. I did taxes. I did employee benefit plan audits, nonprofit audits, reviews, write-up work.
00:07:39
Speaker
ah So I got my fingers in a little bit of everything in accounting, which I really enjoy about the local firms because then I knew the areas that I might want to go pursue further, and I knew the ones that I didn't.
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. So you're in the graduate program, you're working, or was it after the graduate program? And when did the CPA exam come in? So college in 2002, finished grad program in 2005, passed the CPA exam in November of 2003, the last paper and pencil one. Mm-hmm.
00:08:09
Speaker
And so after I got to finish the two years of experience, I was able to apply for my license. Perfect. So that worked out well. And then how long do you stay at that first job? It was somewhere like four to five years, I think, that we stayed there.
00:08:22
Speaker
ah And then just kind of got to the point that What they wanted me to do and what I wanted to do started to become misaligned. And we were also pregnant with our second child and we wanted to move a little bit closer to family because we were an hour away from them.
00:08:38
Speaker
So couple of things in
Joining Aprio and Mentorship Role
00:08:39
Speaker
personal and work life led to looking for a role closer to where some more family was. So, you know, as I was preparing to, you know, meet you and ah yeah ask some questions, you know, looking at online, some of the things that you posted, I noticed that you have a lot of sayings, like you always have these sayings. And I'm a sayings guy, too. So I really appreciate that. So as we're going through this, I'm going to just kind of bring up some of these things and say, hey, tell me what this means. Like the first one that I saw, you said, it's better to chase experience, not title. So when did you say that? And what do you mean by that?
00:09:12
Speaker
So one of the things about working at a local firm is you you don't have all the titles to move up because there's just not that many people to have, you know, staff, senior, supervisor, manager, senior manager, partner.
00:09:23
Speaker
It was pretty much you're a partner or you're an accountant. So I thought, okay, where can I go get some managerial skills? Because there's not a lot for me to manage at this firm at my level. That's something that I'll eventually have to do.
00:09:36
Speaker
So I started volunteering with the Greater Art for JC's at the what is now the Travelers Championship. And um honestly, failing a lot at trying to manage big projects.
00:09:47
Speaker
You know, the passion was there to do it well, but I tried to do everything myself. I didn't ask for help, made all the classic mistakes, but in a really safe environment at a nonprofit organization that was happy to have somebody that wanted to help out.
00:10:00
Speaker
So that when I finally got some opportunities to manage some things, I wasn't making those rookie mistakes on something that might matter for a company. Right. that That makes sense. and And I really love that phrase because like you said, not everybody works for a very large firm. So a title is not everything, but what you learn just helps you build your career.
00:10:20
Speaker
So talk to me about walking through your career. You went from this first firm, I believe the name was Carney, and then you went to a couple more firms before you landed where you are now at Aprio. So we're going to talk about Aprio in a moment, and but just walk me through the different firms you went to and about how long you were there and why you decided to keep making the changes.
00:10:38
Speaker
So the second firm I went to was Carney and I was pretty much their tax department because they had a really high concentration in a specific type of audit. And there was one other tax partner too.
00:10:49
Speaker
so I was like, okay, I get to be the tax manager. I can help with the policies, the operations. I could try to make how we do returns better. And I had a little bit more say in how we would do things. So some more experiences, even though
Personal Life and Work-Life Balance
00:11:01
Speaker
my title was still accountant.
00:11:02
Speaker
And then one year I got a review and I pretty much got yelled at for half an hour for something that happened two weeks ago that nobody told me I didn't do right then.
00:11:13
Speaker
And I was just sitting there like, That just seems unfair. I mean, if I messed it up two weeks ago, call me in your office, sit me down and say, dude, you totally messed this up. Like, what could we do to help you fix it next time versus you're frustrated today and you're taking it out on me. And I thought, well, i don't know. It's not the kind of person that I want to be a partner with.
00:11:31
Speaker
So if I'm not going to be a partner at your place, I'm out. Right. So then I started looking around for a next gig. I actually talked to my dad about joining him and being a potential succession plan.
00:11:42
Speaker
He was, again, very gracious, said, you you don't have to do this, but we can talk through it. And right around the same time, I met Tom Filomino and interviewed there as one of their tax managers. And it was the exact right place for me to land at that point in my career.
00:11:57
Speaker
So you're there doing taxes at Filmino for about how long? It was seven years that we were there. i went from manager up to partner, and then we merged our firm into Markham in 2018.
00:12:08
Speaker
And then in 2021, I left being a partner at Markham to go find what I wanted to do next. So Markham, that was a ah probably much larger firm at that point, right?
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah, when we merged in, they were roughly $400 million in revenue, I think a top 15 firm. Our firm at Filmino was, I think, five partners, $4 to $5 million of revenue. So 100x times jump into you know into a larger organization.
00:12:36
Speaker
But the way that I looked at it was I've never worked at a large firm, so I really don't have anything of my own experience. I'm going to give it everything I've got, but I'm not going to compromise my value system.
00:12:48
Speaker
And we're going to see real fast if we're aligned. Yeah, that's very respectable and noble because staying true to, you know, what you believe. I mean, that's what you know makes us who we are. So I could definitely appreciate that.
00:13:00
Speaker
So you're now Markham and you felt that that had run its course. So do you go directly to Aprio at that point or is there any gigs in between? No, I've got a three month resume gap on purpose. Okay. When I put my notice in at Markham, it was interesting. People kept asking, so where are you going?
00:13:17
Speaker
And my answer was Hawaii. And they go, no, are going to work? i was like, I'm not yet. I'm going to Hawaii. I've been doing this for 20 years. I need to break. I'm going to sit on a beach for two weeks. That's great.
00:13:28
Speaker
And was it worthwhile? did you It was perfect. I mean, I was walking down the beach. I have no work email on my phone anymore. I'm deleting six junk emails from my personal email. Zero like attachments to anything because else because was just me and my wife and my two daughters having fun in Hawaii together with no other obligations in the real world.
00:13:49
Speaker
That's great. We should all be so fortunate to have a nice trip like that where when you say unplugged, you mean unplugged. Yeah, we we chased sunrises in the morning, and then we chased sunsets at night, and then rinse, wash, and repeat. OK, so now you take a couple of months. You're in Hawaii. You're just kind of decompressing, for lack of a better word.
00:14:09
Speaker
You're feeling good. Now you're like, all right, time for me to kind of get back into the game. So how do you come about Aprio and not even a partner role anymore? Now you're the executive director of Affirm Alliance. So tell me how that all gets together and transpires.
00:14:24
Speaker
Yeah. So the the story there is really great. I'm a 2010 AICPA Leadership Academy alumnus. I've stayed in touch with all of the other classes since mine and the one before. And it's a great group of, I think, over a thousand graduates now around the country, super talented leaders in the profession, comers, great thinkers and disruptors.
00:14:45
Speaker
So I told him my story I said, i want to go make an impact in the profession. We've had a lot of the same problems for a long time, and there's not someone that's doing something about them. And I want to go be one of those people.
00:14:57
Speaker
I have no idea what the job title is. I have no idea what I'd get paid to do it, where I would do it. But all I know is I only need one job and I just have to get connected with somebody that has that type
Innovations in Accounting Practices
00:15:09
Speaker
of role where I could have this impact.
00:15:11
Speaker
One of my friends from my class knows John Bly at Aprio. John was acquiring the firm foundation from RSM around the same time and needed somebody to run it.
00:15:22
Speaker
So my friend Jason Deshaies goes, hey, John, i I got the guy. Mike was just a partner at Markham. He quit. He has no job right now. He's looking to make an impact. This sounds exactly like what Mike should do. And it looks like you're looking for Mike.
00:15:34
Speaker
So I interviewed with John and a handful of other people at Aprio, including Richard Koppelman, our CEO, and ah One, the interview process, and now I've been running our firm alliance there for three and a half years, and it's the exact perfect thing I should be doing.
00:15:49
Speaker
The saying that I have for this one is I'm doing exactly what I should be doing, exactly where I should be doing it. Well, that's great. That's that's what... Everybody, i think their goal is to be able to say what you just said.
00:16:01
Speaker
But before even even ask a little bit more about Aprio, I got to unpack a few things you said, because you said a couple of really good things. First, you alluded to the AICPA leadership. um panel where you were a graduate. i You graduated, I think, in 2010 from that. I think the first class might have been 2009, if I remember.
00:16:19
Speaker
And you know I don't know that the audience really understands what that is, but I've met so many people that have gone through this. And they are, just like you said, great leaders, great thinkers, people that want to make a difference in the profession. And the AICPA really helps give you the resources to do that. So maybe in just a minute or so, you could just explain to the audience, what exactly is it? And how do you become involved with that?
00:16:41
Speaker
So it's ah it's an application type program. They take 36 people from around the country and it's a cross section of the profession. And young people though, right? Young people. i believe it's CPAs between 25 and 35 on the application date, which is a very important technical detail for accountants because there are several who have put their application date in the day before their 36th birthday.
00:17:04
Speaker
So they could attend later on in the year when they were 36. So like the details can be important and us accountants are really good at that. Yeah. So a great cross-section, they take 18 men, 18 women, 18 public accountants, 18 non-public accountants, geographically diverse.
00:17:18
Speaker
And I've helped coach a couple friends through it as well in Connecticut. And if there's two people from ah a small state or maybe even New England that have a similar background, They'll pick one because they want a cross section for each class.
00:17:31
Speaker
So not getting in a year doesn't mean you're not good enough. It just means, hey, we need the right group of people because this is what we create every year. Continue to apply because you will probably get in next year or the year after.
00:17:44
Speaker
And the age thing could matter because maybe the person in Connecticut is 35. So it's her last year. So she gets chosen this year and the 32 year old can go next year when she's 33. Yeah.
00:17:55
Speaker
yeah So if there's any young CPAs out there, that is definitely something you should look into because these are people that they choose for a young age because they know that they're going to be around working in the profession and they want people that want to make an impact just like you're doing.
00:18:10
Speaker
So that was the first thing I want to unpack. The second thing is you were talking about getting the job at Aprio and you were talking about dropping some names on who said this and recommended this. I don't know that our audience even understands how important those relationships are because who you meet today may be the person that 10 years from now is going to give you the job that you have. So what's what's your whole process on staying in touch with people and, you know, developing these relationships?
00:18:34
Speaker
The great part about the technology that we have now is we've created Facebook groups in a Slack channel, and we can all stay in touch with each other around the the country when when we need it.
00:18:46
Speaker
So I've got the Slack channel notification not all the time. If somebody posts something, I'll read it. There's always someone that is saying, hey, so I'm looking for a next gig, or I'm looking for somebody to hire at my company, or I've got this kind of crazy idea i want to kick around with some people.
00:19:00
Speaker
you know Would you be open to that? so we just we stay engaged in that way and each person is opting into that level of engagement i don't have to go chase down people from each class because as they get welcomed into these virtual groups we welcome them i'll send them all an email i connect with them on linkedin i'll get the list after for each leadership Academy class, because I'm, I follow it on LinkedIn. It's, I see the 36 people and I ping them. I'm like, I'm class of 2010. Welcome to the club. Love it. Love to have you.
00:19:28
Speaker
And i said, we're here as resources. You, I can't
Future Aspirations and Professional Growth
00:19:32
Speaker
overestimate how much I've used these resources in my career. And to your point, Jason connected to me with Aprio 12 years after we went through Leadership Academy together.
00:19:43
Speaker
That's great. I mean, it really is great. It's great to hear. So I'm going to dive into Aprio in a little more detail in just a moment, but I'm sure that, you know, you would you You alluded to your father a couple of times and you know he was a sole practitioner giving you advice but not forcing you to do anything.
00:19:58
Speaker
I did read something about you know you and your dad and you know you share this love. You played baseball. I guess he's a big baseball fan. But what what would you do? You do trips together to ballparks or what was like the big baseball thing?
00:20:10
Speaker
When I was a teenager, have two brothers. He would say, want to take you guys on trips. And if you want a solo trip, they'll be able to know what you want to do. you want to something with one your brothers, let me know. And I said, let's go visit baseball stadiums.
00:20:22
Speaker
And he goes, that sounds fun. So we'd get in the car in Connecticut and we'd go drive to, I think the first ones we might have been Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Baltimore. We had been to Shea a lot in Old Yankee Stadium. We might have gone to Fenway too. And we just kind of did a little mini tour and we both had a lot of fun on it.
00:20:39
Speaker
So the next summer, well, let's go drive out to Detroit and then we'll hit St. Louis and Cincinnati and and go through that loop. And we brought his dad with us on that one, too, which was a lot of fun. Sure.
00:20:50
Speaker
ah The best trip that we did is a Memorial Day weekend. All the schedules lined up. We flew to Phoenix, watched the Diamondbacks game, flew to l L.A. and watched over the time, seven games in five stadiums, in four stadiums in five days, and we did Universal and Disney. We had doubleheaders in San Diego, Anaheim, and LA twice. Oh my God.
00:21:12
Speaker
i'm I'm exhausted listening to that. God bless you. I fell asleep on the plane before I took off. So, you know as a baseball guy with your dad, do you and your dad like share, like had the same favorite team or you root for different teams? What's the story there? Totally different teams. I'm a Dodgers fan from Connecticut, and he's a Tigers fan from Connecticut.
00:21:29
Speaker
He got on a bus with his dad when he was a kid to go to Yankee Stadium, and the bus driver was a Tiger fan. That's who the Yankees were playing. His dad was a Yankee fan. My dad picked the other team, has loved him ever since.
00:21:40
Speaker
Wow. All right. So your grandfather was a Yankee fan. Yes. All right. i like your grandfather. i like your grandfather. So, i'm ah you know, 2024 World Series is still stinging a bit with the Dodgers. So congratulations. I'll be the bigger man here. Congratulations, even though it it hurts to a degree. So, I mean, honestly, that sounds really like such a great family bonding experience and doing all of that.
00:22:02
Speaker
So now I know you mentioned you have two daughters. I myself, I have three daughters, so I'm a dad daughter too. um Do you do anything like that with your kids or have you started anything like that? Yeah, our family likes doing experiences and not stuff. So we have a scratch off map of the US and our goal is for all four of us to go visit the 50 states together.
00:22:20
Speaker
So as as we go to states, we come home and we we scratch them off the map and our family rules are we have to sleep in this state and do something there in order for to count. Right, right. Driving through doesn't count. Airports don't count. We have to go have an experience in that state for it to count.
00:22:35
Speaker
How about how many are you down to? How many have you done so far? The family's done 32. Okay. Wow. Does it get like you have to have the whole four all four together to count? Yes. Okay. That makes sense. I like that. That's a good rule. don't want to exclude anybody, right? Make me feel bad. Good. Good.
00:22:49
Speaker
All right. um Now, this sounds like a lot, right? Taking trips to go to baseball stadiums, 50 states and everything. And you know you still have a job, right? You still have to work. Now, it's one of the big things in the profession, you know trying to avoid burnout, trying to avoid 100-hour work weeks and things like that. So,
00:23:07
Speaker
How are you handling work-life balance and really being able to do all of the things you want to do, but at the same time, you know, spend the time with your family and have all of these experiences? It's really good question. A lot of folks asked it to me, and I like the phrase that I learned from Amy Vedder, work-life harmony, where you get energy from your work and your life and when you want and need it. So balance is very difficult because you have to look at a longer time horizon and sometimes to feel balanced.
00:23:33
Speaker
And that can be a lot of mental work when you're already mentally strained. Whereas harmony is if what I'm doing at work is energizing me, that feels good. It doesn't feel like I have to count my hours. I've never filled out a time sheet at Aprio. I don't intend to. And I have no idea how much I work, but it feels right.
00:23:50
Speaker
Mm hmm. And the performance metrics that I have, meeting. So the things I'm supposed to be doing are getting done, which that gives me the energy to go home and be a dad to my kids and be a husband to my wife and be a friend to my friends.
00:24:05
Speaker
So a nice part about the role is I get to travel, which is kind of helpful for one of the things that our family wants. Sometimes the the wife and kids come with me to a trip. Okay, so you have work, you have your trips and your family and time and all that, and that's great. But now on top of it, you throw in, hey, why don't I chair the you know Connecticut Society of CPAs, right? So you just add that whole, and I know that takes time as well.
00:24:30
Speaker
So just talk to me about your experience there with the CTCPA and what you've done and you know how much time commitment, how'd you balance all of that? Yeah. So conceptually for me, if I'm taking on and a volunteer role over and above my family commitments and over and above my work commitments, I ask myself, if I woke up on Saturday morning, would I go do this?
00:24:50
Speaker
And to have the kind of impact I can have in in my state, being on the board of directors of the state society and eventually being the chair, that's definitely something I would wake up on a Saturday and go do. So that's something I would want to use my personal time for.
00:25:03
Speaker
Now, yes, a lot of those meetings end up during a work week. So maybe sometimes on Saturday morning, I'm technically doing work work, but it's because on Tuesday afternoon, I was in a board meeting for four hours. And I ah got really good at calendaring the tasks that I have in my job.
00:25:18
Speaker
So I could tell about how long things would take, how much time I had committed to things, And my my little trick and tip was i left Friday open because no plan gets executed the way that you make it on Monday morning at 8 a.m. m So Friday was the catch-up day and also an internal meeting day. So if somebody wanted to say, hey, Mike, can i get 20 minutes on your calendar? Sure. Friday afternoon sounds great. And they're like, oh, wanted to go play golf. I'm like, if you want me, it's Friday.
00:25:45
Speaker
see So then let's let's go back to Aprio right now, your current gig that's probably taking on most of your work time at this point. So you are running a um firm alliance.
00:25:57
Speaker
So can you just kind of explain to people that might not be familiar with what that means and you know what do you really need to do with being in charge of a firm alliance? So I went from servicing regular business and individual clients as a CPA and tax partner to now my clients are other accounting firms.
00:26:13
Speaker
And what we do is we provide local accounting firms, Aprio level resources as a top 25 firm that local firms may not have access to, but that they definitely need to continue to serve the businesses and people in their community.
00:26:27
Speaker
Because those people need a local CPA most of the time. Aprio doesn't have to do everything for everybody. And it's great that the company understands our entire ecosystem, that we need to support the local accounting firms and the regional accounting firms so that they can help the businesses that are are in their purview.
00:26:45
Speaker
And we help the ones that are in ours. And everything can gel and work together as opposed to we want everything. It's it's such a great like attitude to walk into work every day that that's what leadership feels like.
00:26:58
Speaker
I'm not saying we're not competitive. We don't want to go win and grow. ao clearly is a very high growth company. But at the same time, they get that they don't have to buy everything and do everything. They can help others along the way.
00:27:11
Speaker
And you brought up about Aprio is like you're not filling out a timesheet. Like what's the whole thought process? And and I know you've you've spoken out about this, you know, billable hours versus, you know, charging a fee for service. Right. I find that very interesting. I think that that's probably a wave of the future.
00:27:29
Speaker
But what's your whole um you know thought process behind that? So I think that charge hours are the worst way to determine value for our clients. And it's even worse as a way to evaluate our employees.
00:27:39
Speaker
But I also believe it's essential for capacity management. Mm-hmm. We have a lot of work to do. There's not enough people to do it. Some things take a long time. Some things technology has made more efficient.
00:27:50
Speaker
But ultimately, when we're delivering something to a client, what they're willing to pay for us is what we should go bill them. And if a client says, well, that's worth $1,000, and you go, well, that would take me 20 hours of capacity, I can make more than $1,000 in that 20 hours doing something else, so I'm not going to take that project.
00:28:08
Speaker
Conversely, if I have a fantastic idea, but I can execute it in four hours, and it generates i'll make it up a million dollars of savings to you is that worth twenty thousand dollars right i'm pretty sure everybody would pay twenty thousand dollars to get a million dollars back Sign me up. Right? So that's to me, that's the the crux of the argument. I have some ideas on how to actually implement it because we we track utilization, we track realization, we track charge hours, we have charge rates.
00:28:37
Speaker
Well, if we take someone's charge rate times their realization, times the hours they worked, that's how much revenue they generated. what if instead mike i said your job this year is to generate two hundred thousand dollars of revenue for the firm you should be able to do it in 1300 hours of work which gives you enough time to have a life outside of this place and get the training that you need and maybe pick up an extra project or two if you're you know interested in getting to your next career level faster And for the anybody who's in the, I like charge hours better, it's much more finite for me.
00:29:11
Speaker
Well, if you hit 1300 charge hours, you're going to generate $1,200,000 of revenue. So whichever way it makes sense for you to look at it as the employee, you can still go attack that the way that makes sense to you.
00:29:25
Speaker
What I found is it finds and unlocks those superstars in your company that go, oh, well, if my job is to generate revenue instead of sit at my desk, like I'm incented to go be more efficient. right I'm incented to be innovative versus I'm incented to be mediocre because I can do this in eight hours, but the budget's 20. And the last time I did that, they gave me 12 more hours work.
00:29:48
Speaker
I'm just going to stretch it out and make 20. but now I'm not fully engaged in my role. I'm not incented to go be innovative and creative. right I would rather go find that person and then say, Tori, this is fantastic.
00:30:03
Speaker
Can you teach Mike how to go be this efficient? If you wanna work for us more, like we'll give you bonuses because you've already paid for yourself and your overhead and the partner salary.
00:30:13
Speaker
You can give people options of what they can do with the time, that extra 12 hours in my scenario. compound that over a couple of years within a career when somebody is really growing, man, the impact that she can have on your firm, you might've just found a future leader, one of your next partners who might've just been sitting a corner at her desk if you gave her a charge hour goal.
00:30:32
Speaker
It makes total sense, right? You know, you're ah you're a numbers person, the numbers speak for themselves. So it'll be really interesting to, you know, see how the potential implementation of the model works, so to speak.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah, I had this idea and I was talking with some of my leadership academy friends with it. And i still remember the conversation with Liz Mason. And she goes, I love the concept, except every single operational construct we have is built around charge hours. So you need to evolve your idea to fit within the systems that exist.
00:31:01
Speaker
and I said, wow, that's a fantastic sentence. Let me go sit down and think about that for a while. and That's how I came up with, well, we have all the data through the math. We just aren't doing the math.
00:31:12
Speaker
We can do math. We're accountants. We might need a 10 key to do it, but we can do it. Yeah, without a doubt. and i mean I think the sentiment is growing. like I've had a few conversations with other people um you know recently just along those same lines. so you know I applaud that. and It's innovative. right and That's what we're all looking to do for the industry to be innovative.
00:31:30
Speaker
Now, and speaking about Aprio and being innovative, you also, you know, I think kind of wear a hat as something known as like a brand ambassador, right? And this was a great story. I don't know the story. I just heard about it. So I'm hoping you could give a little more details.
00:31:44
Speaker
Talk to me about sneakers. What do you have with custom sneakers? And how do you use that to, you know, give some of your talks and presentations? Well, you're a New Yorker, so I know a guy.
00:31:54
Speaker
Yeah, you you do. You know a guy. I love that. um it It goes back to... the The networking, you never know when something might matter. So my college teammate, i his sister, married someone who lives one town over from me.
00:32:07
Speaker
And I've followed my teammate and then got connected to his sister on social media. And I've seen him paint cleats for his kid to play Little League. So I won a fantasy football league and I go to a lot of conferences.
00:32:19
Speaker
Black shoes are comfortable for a day, but not five. And I thought, man, I would really like some comfortable sneakers. I bet I could wear them if I put my company logo on them. So I ping this guy, I'm like, hey, I know your wife.
00:32:31
Speaker
ah Could you take this logo that's in my email and put them on a pair of white Air Maxes for me? And the only other thing is you got to write Mike Max on them in the same font as the Air Max on a sneaker. And he was like, done.
00:32:43
Speaker
you want a mostly white or mostly orange? I said, oh, mostly white. I want them crispy. And so I've had those sneakers for about a year. And one, I get to walk around conferences all day in sneakers, which is fantastic. But now i it's part of my work attire and talk about impact.
00:32:57
Speaker
16 other people at Aprio have since ordered these sneakers. Wow. So now there's, I started doing it as an idea. And now one of the brand ambassador things at Aprio is, do you have your Aprio sneakers?
00:33:09
Speaker
So I may have to place an order after this while I'm talking to you on the side. So Mike Maximu, when does it become Mike Max? Is that from a kid? Is that something new? When did you coin that nickname?
00:33:20
Speaker
it's It started on baseball fields. They're born in the 80s. Lots of Mikes, lots of Jens, and that's my wife's name. So with my last name having so many consonants, Max became a common nickname wherever I was.
00:33:32
Speaker
And the Mike Max came because when I started working at Filmino, there were four Mikes that were working there. One was a Mike M. So I couldn't be Mike M. So like, how do we differentiate you? i was like, Mike Max will work. I've been called Max on a baseball field forever.
00:33:47
Speaker
So it was really just like telephone directory because there was another Mike M at the firm and it has evolved from there. I get it. As a Mike, as a fellow Mike, I totally get that. Grew up in the same problems.
00:34:00
Speaker
So, um you know, going back to some of the taglines you have, here's another one that I found that I believe you said. Pot stirrer, questioner, dreamer of what's possible. What is that all about? Talk to me.
00:34:13
Speaker
So, We inherited everything that we have in our profession. Someone did it before us, and we've just kept doing it the same way. The world has evolved, and it has evolved at faster pace every year than the year before.
00:34:26
Speaker
And as fast as it's going now, it's the slowest it will ever be from now on. So by pot stirring, it's, hey, should we keep doing that? And I mean it as a question. Like, let's go look and see so that we know we should keep doing that and like keep questioning it.
00:34:42
Speaker
Why do we do that? Why do we insist on charge hours? Why do we insist on 80 hour work weeks? Why can't accountants work 40 hours the entire year and get all the work done? I sit on stage with our firms and our alliance and I tell them, my goal is for you to have an average of less than 40 hours worth a week and make more money than you're making right now.
00:35:01
Speaker
And they go, that's crazy. I go, but it's not impossible. There's a lot of things to do to get there. But if we have to start taking the steps now. Yeah. So that's where the questionnaire comes. And what was the third one in that? Podstora, questionnaire, dreamer of what's possible.
00:35:16
Speaker
So I learned this other concept from Sarah Elliott about what's possible is ah every construct that we operate in as humans, a human has created, which also means we can create a different one if we want to.
00:35:28
Speaker
So if we have an accounting pyramid of a traditional firm model, do we have to do that? Or can we ask if I start an accounting firm today with all the tech available, the automations, a focus on a person as a human serving clients well,
00:35:44
Speaker
what would that look like would it look like a triangle maybe it would but maybe it wouldn't maybe it would look more like a 12-sided dodecahedron of putting everybody in the best seat on the bus and if your particular skill set for that client is perfect your title is irrelevant because your experience is what the client needs yeah so it's basically really thinking outside the box and just questioning everything which we should do because that's how we find efficiencies and improvements and innovation Yes. And if you're one of the leaders at your organization, those ideas can come from other people that aren't quote unquote leaders.
00:36:21
Speaker
And what i like about the leader title is you can't give it to yourself. Someone else has to give you that title, which means it's not part of a hierarchy that you can go achieve. It's how do you show up?
00:36:32
Speaker
Are you leading yourself? Well, are you are you leading people above you because of of how you show up in a meeting when you get invited into the room? Do you listen? Do you participate? Early on, you have to do a lot more listening than talking.
00:36:45
Speaker
But if your brain starts connecting a couple of dots, it's totally fine to say, hey Mike, Steve said this, and Amanda said that, and Jerry said this. If we put it all together, doesn't it mean?
00:36:58
Speaker
and someone goes, it could. But the fact that you're open to that younger person being in the room and you make them feel welcome, the sense of belonging they have at your company, that's how you get the ideas out of them.
00:37:12
Speaker
Sure. So you're you're thinking about you know questioning everything and thinking outside the box. You're listening to everyone. I'm sure there's so points where you know you're sitting around a table and you have your opinion, but somebody does not like your opinion and you know maybe tempers flare or you know emotions rise. I know one of the other statements you say is composure is key.
00:37:33
Speaker
Right. So talk to me about the you know leadership conversations where things aren't going the way you want or people aren't really seeing eye to eye. How are you keeping that composure? And have you had a lot of situations like this?
00:37:45
Speaker
Not a lot of situations like that. But one of the lessons that I learned from my parents was raise the quality of your argument, not the volume of your voice. Mm So if somebody is like starting to raise their voice and they're getting upset, it's okay. I understand that you're upset. Like, let's, let's take a breath because if you're upset, you're not going to hear anything I say.
00:38:06
Speaker
So no matter how good my argument is, it's wasted in this moment, right? Not forever, but in this moment. So to coach you through when we're going to have the next conversation, if I could say, let's take it down a notch, let's We're not going to get a lot done in this dis talk. Let's meet tomorrow.
00:38:28
Speaker
So I'm i getting all your taglines. Now you just threw another one at me, right? Raise the quality of your argument, not your voice. Okay, so I got to go write that one down afterwards. All right. So, you you know, these these are great words of wisdom, I'll call them. Great advice.
00:38:42
Speaker
Something else I know you're a big advocate for is mentorship, right? And you talked about bringing young people into the conversation, into the meeting. So do you have a particular mentorship program or model that you use at Aprio?
00:38:55
Speaker
Aprio does. And I've mentored a couple of people at Aprio. ah Really exciting. After our conference a couple of weeks ago, one of the Aprio folks that was there asked me if I would mentor her.
00:39:06
Speaker
And she starts it with, I know you're really busy, but you know will you mentor me in this area? I think you're really good at it. I said, I will always make the time for that because I have so much karma to go repay back into the profession for everything that's been given to me willingly by other mentors.
00:39:22
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And your mentors change throughout your career. I remember talking to my accounting professor when I wanted to leave my first job and the value I thought I should be paid. And was I right or wrong? Was I missing something? Because I knew I didn't have the complete picture and someone with that much experience that I respected as a professor.
00:39:40
Speaker
he I knew he would speak straight to me and tell me what the real things were. And then i just tried to keep paying it forward as much as I could with what I have received. And I always think I can learn from anybody.
00:39:52
Speaker
If I'm having a conversation with a 24-year-old staff or senior accountant at Aprio, I listen to what she's telling me and her experience. And I believe her. Because i I didn't live her life.
00:40:05
Speaker
So instead of saying, oh, well, my experience was X. Oh, that's that's a really interesting experience. i I didn't ever think of that. Thanks for adding that into the cadre of things I haven't stuck in the back of my head that I can go reference sometime in the future when I need it.
00:40:20
Speaker
It's great to hear you know that you had yourself the positive experience with mentors and how you're giving that back now. And you know you use the term karma, right? So that's, ah you know as as a girl, dad, I hear karma now. I just think of ah Taylor Swift. That's about it.
00:40:34
Speaker
It's ruined that word for me forever. But no, we're we're Taylor Swift fans here. So no don't hate on us for that. um All right, next thing I want to talk about with Aprio, and this is big across all firms right now. There's a ah big fear of um certain people trying to make a choice on what profession to go into with respect to technology, AI. Am I going to be replaced? Are they going to need accountants anymore?
00:40:57
Speaker
Talk to me about how you look at this at Aprio with respect to embracing AI, but at the same time, making sure we're valuing the human person. so I think that if we look back through the history of accounting, there have consistently been technologies that have threatened to replace accountants.
00:41:18
Speaker
As simple as Excel from Green Bar, QuickBooks from Excel, i tax software that with punch cards, and everything was going to replace the accountant.
00:41:30
Speaker
And every time accountants have embraced the technology to make their lives better, more efficient, improve their operations. So i whether it's automations, RPAs, ai when accountants learn to use those to make the parts of the job that we don't like, that 20%, right? 80-20 rule, I like 80% of my job, I've got to do 20% of it.
00:41:58
Speaker
If we can take the 20% and make it more efficient or automated so I don't have to spend my human time there, it frees up my human time to go be more human. And there's lots of tasks in accounting that are repetitive or rote.
00:42:12
Speaker
My staff accountant doesn't need to do 400 tax returns to know how to do a tax return. She probably has to do 40. Okay, so if I can automate 60% of the work, keep 40% of it in-house as teaching, look at my practice not as, oh, that's a bad client, my realization is off.
00:42:29
Speaker
Well, no, that was the in-house training one. Of the 400, we're way more efficient. That's if we look at it that way, so change the view on the metrics as well. We can train our people using things, get them to senior level where they can be reviewers faster because they've done it. Now they know what the computer is supposed to spit out at them.
00:42:47
Speaker
And we can get them to that next phase, the bounce in their career of now I'm going to be managing people and projects and get to that personal development and management training sooner so that it doesn't take 25 years to be partner.
00:43:01
Speaker
It takes 10. so that you have a level of experience with seeing a lot of things, working with a lot of people, trying technology, failing, trying again, learning.
00:43:14
Speaker
I think that's really where whatever we want to call it, technology. In three years, we'll replace your question with some new technology and we'll probably have the same answer. Just like we do with the AI and automation. This is how we've used them the last few years. That's what we're going do with quantum computing.
00:43:28
Speaker
moving It's been the same thing. I was a history minor in college too. like History repeats itself. And if we pay attention, we can lower our anxiety and fears around things that we've seen before.
00:43:41
Speaker
And we can avoid things that we've seen in the past that we definitely don't want to do again. makes total sense. So I'm of the same mindset. You know, you're always going to need those people as the reviewers, as the decision makers, as the planners and, and that experience that you're giving them to develop their skillset, you know, that makes all the difference in the world.
00:44:01
Speaker
And it it kind of leads me into the next question. Another tagline you love is, you know, what's next, right? Whether you're at a meeting, what's next, or maybe I'll ask you what's next for Mike Mack. So, you know, talk to me about using that line and how you handle that with your staff.
00:44:15
Speaker
So part of being brand ambassador for Aprio is our tagline at Aprio is passionate for what's next. What got us here was great. What do we need to get us where we want to go? Maybe we have it. Maybe we don't.
00:44:27
Speaker
So to me, what's next is all about what's possible. Let's think through things a little bit differently. Question what we did. So what's next for Mike Max right now is Aprio just acquired the Professional Services Plus team and firms from RSM.
00:44:42
Speaker
So as of May 1, our firms and team went from three people servicing roughly 38 firms to 41 people servicing roughly 100 firms. Mm-hmm. So this is big.
00:44:53
Speaker
sure There's a lot there. There's integration. There's new teammates. There's helping them land well. There's more firms we can have an impact on. There are firms that are now maybe looking at a hundred member alliance and going, wow, like there's so much knowledge among those firm leaders and firm employees. Like maybe I want access to it.
00:45:14
Speaker
And it's so fun and exciting for what we might be able to do. So I have no idea exactly what it is, but it's going to be fun and exciting and have an impact and make the profession better tomorrow than it was yesterday.
00:45:26
Speaker
the fact that you just grew that much, I don't even know how you're here sitting with me right now. You have work to do. What are you doing? So, um all right. Well, listen, this this has all been just so fascinating. And I want to, you know, we talked about some things outside of accounting with your family and trips and things like that. One more thing I want to ask you about personally that you do is something related to volunteering at the Travelers, a big PGA event.
00:45:50
Speaker
Is that something that you're still doing right now? How'd you get involved with that? It is something I'm still doing. I got involved because my first day of work at my very first job, the partner took me out to lunch and the other person happened to be a financial advisor who was volunteering at then the Greater Hartford Open.
00:46:06
Speaker
And he goes, Mike, do you like golf? I said, yes, I like sports and golf. He goes, well, I need volunteers on my committee in the skyboxes. Would you volunteer? Yes. Let me go get involved. I always wanted to go figure out how to get to the golf tournament that's in Connecticut.
00:46:20
Speaker
So I started in 2003 doing that. I was Skybox chair a couple of years later. i chaired five other committees and chair is organizing the volunteers around them. And I've been the pro-am chair for the last 13 or so years. I have a co-chair, Tom Kim, and actually on Monday and Wednesday is the Travelers Pro-ams. And when I leave here in Las Vegas, I will be spending the days on the golf course, organizing the volunteers and making all of our sponsors feel like they're pros for those two days.
00:46:48
Speaker
So if you could just connect me with Scotty Scheffler, I'm happy to play with him. No problem whatsoever. Perhaps if Becker wanted to be one of the sponsors of the Travelers, you could get to sha mike max toche into the Wednesday Pro-Am with the pros. All right. I love that. I'm going to go talk to my boss after this.
00:47:04
Speaker
All right. Well, listen, last thing I want to ask you, you know, you've had a career in accounting, very diverse in all the different roles that you've held. So there are people, high school students, some high school students that don't have the opportunity you did to sit in an accounting class. So what's some advice you can give to them? Is this still a profession you think that they should go into? And, you know, what what would you tell them or what would you tell yourself as you are going from high school college with respect to accounting?
00:47:29
Speaker
i would I would tell my kids and any other kids that accounting is the backbone of entrepreneurship. I've had a lot of clients in a lot of areas, and I've been surprised to hear that they had CPA backgrounds.
00:47:42
Speaker
C-suite level at Fortune 50 companies, passed a CPA exam and earlier in their career, and then became COO, CIO, CTO, CFOs. There's so many things that you can do.
00:47:54
Speaker
um Don't limit what you think is possible to yourself based on only one person's story, right? There's a lot on social media, depending on where you go look, and you can find some stories that don't sound great.
00:48:05
Speaker
80 hour work weeks, auditing cash for the same company for nine months. Yeah, that's the thing in accounting. But there's a lot of other things in accounting. There's local firms where you get your hands on everything.
00:48:16
Speaker
There's boutique business valuation firms. There's financial advising. There's accounting with financial planning and analysis. Like there's so many things. And businesses and people want their accountant in the room when they're making finance decisions.
00:48:31
Speaker
We're the most trusted advisors, the most trusted profession. If you want to be in those rooms, the rooms where it happens, Accounting is a great way to go get yourself into those rooms to go have an impact with things that you enjoy.
00:48:44
Speaker
It doesn't mean that you're going fill out tax forms. It doesn't mean you're goingnna assign audit reports. You can, but those are just a couple of things that we do. We talked about all the different things that I've done in my career. I'm not even doing anything that existed when I graduated college.
00:48:59
Speaker
So how about that for any of the the younger people looking into accounting? what's next might be undefined but it's probably going to be amazing what if you got to write your job description in 12 years that seems like a really fun thing when you're going into college and choosing accounting as your major to say yeah i'm going to get my experience and the things that exist but i bet before i retire i'm going to do something that doesn't exist right now that's really fun it's giving me goosebumps Well, it's true. And you know put on top of that, you can make a financially a great living in the security that everybody needs accountants, right? It's the language of business. Like you said, it's the backbone of everything we do.
00:49:39
Speaker
So I love those words. And I think those are great parting words. So what I'd like to do is really just say thank you so much for taking the time and sharing all your experiences and all your insights into the profession with the audience.
00:49:51
Speaker
Because I just think if I'm a young person listening to this, sign me up. Where do I sign on the line? So thanks so much for coming. You're welcome. I really appreciate the invitation and the opportunity. Well, hopefully we'll be able to do this again and hear what other the great things Mike Max has been up to and you know what new your new sneakers look like. Sounds great. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you'll see all the pictures. I love that. I love that. All right.
00:50:10
Speaker
So everyone, that's what we have today with my good friend here, Mike Max. And I just want to make sure that everybody is aware that you can earn CPE credits for listening to this. All you have to do is visit the link in the show notes, follow that link,
00:50:23
Speaker
and you could finalize it. And you also, if you are a Prime CPE subscriber, there's no extra cost to get CPE credits. All you need to do is sign into your account and finalize this. So thanks again for coming. And hopefully we'll see you at another Becker Cool Careers in Accounting podcast in the future. Have a great day.