CEO Joe Woodard: de los CPA de tareas rutinarias a asesores de confianza

Gene Marks (00:00)

Hey, everybody, it's Gene Marks. And welcome to this episode of the Paychex THRIVE Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. I spoke today to Joe Woodard. Joe is the CEO of Woodard. It is a consulting firm that provides not only consulting, but content services to CPAs and accountants to help them evolve their practice into client advisory services practices. And that is a very, very important thing for both accountants and also for business owners. If you're an accountant looking to evolve your practice and grow and make sure that you are staying ahead of the technology game, client advisory services, or CAS, is the way to go. And if you're a business owner, there are a lot of services that your CPA or accountant should be providing to you well and above just tax return preparation or financial statement preparation. I'm going to talk to Joe about all of those things. You'll get a lot of great information, things to know if you're an accountant, and things to ask your accountant as well when it comes to client advisory services. So stay tuned. Let's hear what Joe has to say.

Announcer (01:02)

Welcome to THRIVE, a Paychex Business Podcast. Your blueprint for navigating everything from people to policies to profits. And now your host, Gene Marks.

Gene Marks (01:12)

Okay, so, Joe, I've, you know, for years I've been wanting to talk to you. Like, I have, like a, like a bit of a reverse. Usually you're interviewing me, and I want to be interviewing you because I find you, you're one of my heroes in the accounting profession. So, it's an honor to have you on.

Joe Woodard (01:25)

Thank you.

Gene Marks (01:26)

Well, thank you for being on. First of all, give us a little background about yourself, who you are, and where you, you know, how you've gotten to be. Where you've gotten to be.

Joe Woodard (01:33)

Yeah, so I, I was a practitioner for a couple of decades. I'm, I'm non-credentialed. I'm not a CPA, even though accounting today seems to think I'm one of the most influential people in the profession. I'm not a CPA, but I have been working in CPA firms or supporting CPA firms or working as a standalone CAS practice they call them now. That term didn't exist whenever I was operating. They just called you a bookkeeper or a QuickBooks consultant or maybe an outsourced controller services provider, but we'll kind of break down that client advisory services together right now. But I was a standalone or non-credentialed cash practice owner for about 20 years. We focused on manufacturing, wholesale distribution primarily. Even did warehouse transformation and systems for companies like Big Green Egg, Elf on the Shelf, some very prominent names, a lot of companies nobody's ever heard of, they're actually bigger than those two at the time.

Gene Marks (02:28)

Right.

Joe Woodard (02:29)

And so we were doing not ERP because we were supporting QuickBooks users, but I kind of nicknamed it SMB RP because we were going in and really doing all the same resource planning. But then I found that my peers were not supported that well.

Gene Marks (02:46)

Right.

Joe Woodard (02:47)

In doing what I did. They didn't know how to follow the path that I'd built. So I started training more of them, coaching more of them. One thing led to another, and the coaching program, the education program for accountants, bookkeepers, tax preparers that we do, ended up becoming the primary business model here. And, just two years ago, we sold off what remained of our SMB RP consulting practice and standalone CAS. And now we just educate and coach.

Gene Marks (03:17)

Yeah, it's fascinating how CAS, and for those of you guys watching, whether you're, you know, you're in the accounting world or not, that's client advisory services. And I think the whole theme of it is that CPAs and accountants can be doing a lot more for their clients than just their tax returns or preparing financials. I remember that was a big deal. I was at KPMG for like nine years, and this was a thousand years ago. And I even remember back then, you know, client advisory services was a big deal for the big firms, you know, at the time was the big six, you know, and, you know, and much larger, larger companies. And yet it's the small businesses that need the most, I think, from their accountants. And I got to tell you, Joe, and I'm curious your comments. For years as a CPA myself, and also on the top 100 influencers or whatever, like, I, I've always been frustrated oftentimes with our profession because I feel like a lot of CPAs I meet are under, what's the word for it? They're underserving their clients, and they don't truly understand all the opportunities that they have. They have clients that love them and respect them for their financial acumen. And there's so much more that a CPA or an accountant can be doing for their clients that they're not. And I guess that's why you got into what you're doing. How do you tell a CPA or an accountant that's just a tax person or just does financial statements, how do you, how do you explain to them that they can be doing a lot more, you know?

Joe Woodard (04:54)

Yeah, that's a great question because it's always the question that comes up first. And they come in the door knowing they could be doing a lot more. The question that they have when they walk in the door is a chicken-and-egg question. I can't, I cannot have the kind of pricing, the kind of revenue, and the kind of capacity to serve these kinds of clients until I have the associated profits and revenue that come from servicing these clients. In other words, they're in this treadmill of tax preparation or they're in this treadmill of seasonal outputs. If you're a non-credentialed CAS practice, you've got the 1099s coming around every January, and you've got the payroll coming around every quarter. Sales tax returns. You might be helping on the compliance with payroll every two weeks. There's just this treadmill of constant outputs where if you stop doing that work, if Atlas stops holding up the world, right, then the world for that client falls apart. So, so I just mixed metaphors, but imagine Atlas on a treadmill holding up the world. That's the way accountants feel inside. Right, with that mixed metaphor. So how do you break the wheel? And I found, Gene, the first thing we focus on, of course we do discovery. We don't just, you know, we don't prescribe without a diagnosis. But almost every time that we diagnose a client situation like this, clients being accounting firms for us, we find that it's a pricing problem.

Gene Marks (06:30)

Sí.

Joe Woodard (06:30)

And so we fix the pricing problem first.

Gene Marks (06:33)

Right.

Joe Woodard (06:33)

Which solves a lot of downstream problems. First, it gives them some additional operating capitals to staff differently, to resource up with technology to make some changes they need to make there. But as they're increasing their operating capital to lean into CAS and develop CAS, they're also culling or purging or whatever word you want to use, about 20% of their client base who leave because of the increased price. Now, we don't have everything's across the spectrum. Some clients, it's 5% who leave. Some of our firms, 5% leave on a price increase. Some firms, 30%, 40% leave on a price increase. You don't increase price across the board. Out of the gates. Too risky. You do it incrementally, you get learnings, and then you lean in. But what we're seeing across the board is the Pareto Principle kind of kicks in, only this time kind of in the reverse. 80% are good and stay 20% or maybe it's the bottom 20% of the 80% in the Pareto Principle that leave, if you want to look at it that way, and then you get this 20% capacity back while getting an increase in profits. It all starts with price.

Gene Marks (07:44)

So let me make sure I understand that.

Joe Woodard (07:47)

Sorry, I know I talked a lot, but...

Gene Marks (07:48)

No, no, no, this is good. And it's such an important point. Yeah, I just want to make like if you have a typical accounting practice and they're doing financial and tax work and say they're just for argument save, they're billing 150 bucks an hour, what you're saying is you would come in and you would advise that client to increase their rates and by doing so, one more profits for the clients that do accept that increase rate. But then number two is that for those 20% of their clients who may leave the practice, that gives more bandwidth for the owners of the practice to do what they got to do with.

Joe Woodard (08:22)

One qualification is I don't believe it should be an hourly rate. Right. So.

Gene Marks (08:26)

Yeah, good.

Joe Woodard (08:27)

So in a perfect world I would, I would use this as an opportunity to go from, from hourly into, you know, flat rate pricing per month, and that, that appropriately, not in a bad way, lack of transparency, but in an appropriate way with full transparency. It softens, I was going to say masks, but that seems deceptive. It softens the, the blow of the price increase.

Gene Marks (08:51)

Sí.

Joe Woodard (08:51)

And it puts the emphasis back on what we're providing for you. So, I would tell tax preparers who want to build this capacity, don't just go from A to B and change pricing models. Add something to B like add, add an incremental mid-year touch point. They pay for use it or lose it. And now they're getting a little something. If they were to do the reverse math and go, yeah, but you're charging me 20% more than the last three tax returns combined. Probably they're never going to notice. But if they do, say yes, but we're adding this mid-year tax meeting to it.

Gene Marks (09:22)

Got it. Yeah, that makes, that makes complete sense. And again, back in the day it was called value-added pricing. You know, it was like a. Right, but you're right, it's a fixed fee. And, and everybody seems to break down services, you know, to hours and rates per hour. But in the end, you know, the, the profession is turning into something that just delivers a service like a product, you know, a deliverable. And that, like you just said, can be a tax return, a financial statement, but for a, a fixed fee, which would also include some other value added services that people weren't getting before. And I guess the other way to position it. If you're an accountant watching or even if you're a business owner that's watching, this is, it's, you don't have to be nickeled and dimed like, you know, you've got the package, you're, you've, you've got this deliverable. It includes additional services. So if you have to pick up the phone and call your, you know, accountant about a question or you want some advice or whatever, theoretically, if that's the way it's been positioned, that's all part of the package. Rather than you being billed for every 15 minutes of time, which turns off a lot of clients. Right?

Joe Woodard (10:18)

It does. It actually makes them not call you until the very last minute. So, if you're always wondering, tax preparers are appropriate to the to the host and provider of this podcast, payroll tax compliance people. If you're always wondering why you never hear about a notice from the IRS or estate until the client gets some sort of an intention to levy or some, some sort of escalated, it's because they did not want to call you and incur your billable rate. They were hoping the problem would go away without, without having to call you. If you inverse that polarity and say this is, this is what we charge per month and it includes. Please don't turn off your. I almost said radios now, but that really dates me. Please don't, don't turn off the podcast now.

Gene Marks (11:04)

Right.

Joe Woodard (11:05)

You know what I'm going to say. Unlimited issues handling. Right. If you get a payroll tax notice, you get a sales tax notice, you get a notice from the IRS or estate, send it to us, we'll handle it as part of this rate. Unlimited notices, then, then they're always going to send them as soon as they get them because they know they're going to pay. They've already paid for this included.

Gene Marks (11:25)

Sure.

Joe Woodard (11:26)

The peace of mind kicks in for those that never send you anything.

Gene Marks (11:30)

Right.

Joe Woodard (11:30)

And then you get it on the very first time. If you don't already have a power of attorney where you're mailed these notices, which is the best way that the client will send it to you. Now that just becomes then a game you play of like actuary tables for an insurance company. Right. But only gets the assurance. That's a scary word in the accounting. So we're going to say esurance. We are ensuring that the client is getting their, their needs taken care of. But look at last year, you can analyze your client base. How many people got income tax notices from this state or that, that or from the feds, and put it across your entire client base. And then you get 100% of them paying a subscription for their taxes that include unlimited issues handling. You're not going to go upside down. You're going to actually have net gain on this thing and the clients are going to feel so much better.

Gene Marks (12:20)

It's funny that you say that. The same example I use when we have clients that talk about passing down their retail stores, I want to pass down like the credit card fees to their customers. And they charge like an additional fee, you know, like on the, you know, on the check at the restaurant. And I'm always like, you know, if you just spread that fee across all of your products and then just increase, somebody will happily pay an extra 50 cents for their hamburger. They won't even, even know the difference of it. But when you put that line item on the, you know, on your check, it, sometimes it bothers people. You know what I mean? This is a similar thing. Like, you know, you're just including it. If you spread out the, you know, these, you know, these fees among all of your clients and you really think about how many clients are actually asking for this stuff. I mean, it, you make it work. You're an accountant. It's a math, you know, puzzle that you need to solve that.

Joe Woodard (13:07)

You mentioned the merchant fees, because that's part of it. I mean, we, we end up with bad debt situations which are in excess of what we would have paid if we'd paid the merchant fees. I see it all the time because we, because... And I say we because I'm servicing the, the profession, because the profession refuses to pay the merchant fees. When in truth, you could just make it all part of the pricing model, all part of the costing model, spread it around between those clients that do ACH and credit card, and then just beat up the whole process. But as soon as you say it's going to be a 3.5 convenience fee or whatever, and then they go out to your, whatever solution you're using, they're going to take that credit card, put it back in their pocket and say, well, I'll get them a check eventually and it could come in six months, they could forget. And then you have to burn sweat trying to collect it. All of that's more expensive. Put it in the rate.

Gene Marks (13:58)

Who do you find from your client base, and again, we're talking about accountants and CPA firms that are most open to your strategy? Do you have demographic issues? Do you run into problems with your older clients versus younger clients? Or, you know, what do you generally find?

Joe Woodard (14:15)

Well, I generally find small is faster and more nimble, regardless of whether they're credentialed or not credentialed. And of course that would make sense, but there are some factors that are not right on the surface of that. I mean, smaller client base, it's like a speedboat turns faster. Yes, but you typically have fewer owners involved. And if you want to look for the real blocker to change, it's how many people have an ownership stake in the firm. The more partners you have, the slower the ship turns or the better chance it could hit the rocks. Trying to go into a client advisory services model, which I think just very quickly for the listeners, I would just to kind of lay it out, we're talking about not just super bookkeeping, we're talking about regulatory compliance, managerial compliance, risk mitigation, financial planning and analysis services, back office process outsourcing, maybe for some people, a little bit of, you know, virtual or fractional CFO services. Most of the time you see it kind of cap out at the financial planning advisory. So it's a, it's a hefty package.

Gene Marks (15:16)

Sí.

Joe Woodard (15:17)

And it is not tax.

Gene Marks (15:20)

Right.

Joe Woodard (15:20)

And though that's obvious, I have to say, from a political standpoint, it's not tax. And right now, tax portfolios, and the partners who own those tax portfolios they own the CPA firms, they drive all the decisions. They're the major revenue arm. And what you're going to start seeing, Gene, is an opportunity to, for CAS to overtake tax on revenues. While that opportunity is a paradigm shift, a mindset shift. So now you kind of get into the older school partners that say yes, but that's down there on the totem pole. The totem pole is CAS at the bottom, which they might still call those, and this is not my words, but I've heard it said in the last two weeks, those gals in the bookkeeping department. Right. That's the way they'd phrase it, you know, at the bottom of the totem pole. And then you've got the middle of the totem pole being tax, and you got the top of the totem pole being audit. That's the traditional poll. Well, now everything's flipping and CAS shows to be a greater profit center, a greater revenue center. You're delivering 12 times a year, sometimes even if you're, if you're advising the client on a weekly basis, processing payroll Weekly or whatever it is, and not because of who we're with today, but just in general, I say don't try to do that without the help of a payroll service. So you're going to have a payroll partner like Paychex, but you're still involved in it. You're touching it every week. Well, that... Those kind of high touches versus once a year for a tax return. CAs being value added, a tax return being. Sorry, tax preparers, a utility in the mindset of the client.

Gene Marks (17:01)

Yep.

Joe Woodard (17:02)

Right. An audit being a utility in the mindset of the client, CAS will overtake it. It's just a matter of time. And the AICPA has been projecting that CAS will become king in the next five to 10 years. So, tax partners, if you're listening to me, this is an opportunity. It is not a threat. You need to expand your portfolios for your corporate tax book to include CAS. Support it not as a bookkeeping arm. Definitely don't support it just as an annual compilation. So, your tax returns go more smoothly, though, you'll get that support it as an entirely new portfolio that will drive up the revenues on your P&L and everybody wins.

Gene Marks (17:40)

Joe, don't you feel that technology and AI is just driving this? I mean, don't you think it's inevitable that tax returns will be prepared by an AI platform? I know there are already a bunch of startup bookkeeping AI platforms that are doing a lot of things. Matching invoices, entering invoices, agentic AI that's able to do a lot of the transactional work. Not that the accountant will be not involved at all, but just that their work will be cut down so much that I think there will be an inevitable perception by clients saying, like, why are you charging us all this to do our tax returns? When I know for a fact that there's AI platforms out there that can do this, you know, very quickly. I'm not saying today, but soon.

Joe Woodard (18:26)

No, I get exactly what you're saying. And, and the. The actual preparation of the tax return, you know, it's a very short horizon before the bots have taken that over. Bookkeeping is going to be a bigger bite because with, with AI, as you know, Gene, it's all about the variables.

Gene Marks (18:41)

Sure.

Joe Woodard (18:42)

And what's missing in the equations. Because AI without data is like a brain on a coma. Right. It just, it doesn't. It doesn't function. So the more data gaps there are, and we'll call those variables in an equation in a series of maybe extremely complex conditional statements. The more the humans have to get involved. Well, the thing with tax is, yes, once you get all the data, you still have to do data collection, but once you get all the data, the tax code is complicated, but it is not complex. And the distinction being complicated is finite, and complex is variable. And you know, so finite or static versus variable. Well, AI is even now facilitating 80%, 90% of the month in close once you teach it about a given client. So even the bookkeeping cycles are happening a lot faster now. So, what is the role of the accountant? The role of the accountant is to provide the, the governance of the AI, to monitor it and to make sure that that other 10% or other 20% is accurate. To give peace of mind to the, to, to the client. So really quick, funny, funny, not funny story is I just went, got back from Italy, I asked ChatGPT where's the Sky Club? At the Rome airport. And it told me. And, and so I had to get on a little airport tram which was behind security, to go to a completely separate building. Nice, pretty new building. And I was excited about the Sky Club only to go to between gates, whatever and whatever it told me to go to. And there was no Sky Club.

Gene Marks (20:29)

Right.

Joe Woodard (20:30)

So then I got back on the little train to go back and found out that to go back there's only one way, and that's the other end of security. Now you're going into Rome. I had already gotten there, my passport stamped, gone through all of the, the steps, and then I went back to Italy. So on that trip I actually went to Italy twice in a day. Now, GPT was very confident there was a Sky Club there. So then, when I got back in, and thank goodness I was able to do it all fairly quickly, not miss my flight. I went back and I was like, you're wrong, there is no Sky Club at this. And then ChatGPT came out without missing a beat, goes, you know, you're right. Yeah, you know you're right. But Delta has partnered with this club. You can go there. And it was the one that I'd walked past an hour before.

Gene Marks (21:25)

Right, right. All right, yeah, I've had similar experience when I do research. You know, I'll call out ChatGPT on a reference it gives it. Can you give me the actual event? I'll be like, you know, actually that I wasn't right about this. You know what I mean? There wasn't a reference for it. So.

Joe Woodard (21:38)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, now that you point and you've gone through customs twice.

Gene Marks (21:42)

Yeah, so that's what it is now, though. But I mean, like, I, I don't think there's, there's any doubt that, you know, these, these models will get smarter and more accurate and more complete.

Joe Woodard (21:52)

Yes, we will trust them more without human involvement. Absolutely, we will. Right, so my next part of the story then, to kind of give everybody some confidence here, completely different story. I'm sitting here having a meal at the bar at this restaurant in Vegas last week. Sitting next to me is a guy he's in his late 70s. We strike up a conversation because he's got the badge on. All right? He's a semi-retired partner of a firm out of Pennsylvania.

Gene Marks (22:17)

Okay.

Joe Woodard (22:18)

And I said, well, what do you do these days? He goes, well, I sold all my ownership stake back at 70. That's part of our partnership agreement. And then I'm just available. And I said, available for what? He goes for about five or 10 phone calls a week where one of my clients calls me and, and says that they think something's wrong. And then I go, I make a phone call, I find out of course it's right, and I call them back. That's what I do. So, the point is he spent three decades.

Gene Marks (22:51)

Sí.

Joe Woodard (22:51)

Earning trust.

Gene Marks (22:52)

Sí.

Joe Woodard (22:53)

And even when human beings who are not him.

Gene Marks (22:57)

Sí.

Joe Woodard (22:57)

Are involved in the equation, he still gets phone calls to talk people off the ledge to say, everything's okay, I've checked it. Everything's okay, I've checked it.

Gene Marks (23:05)

Sí.

Joe Woodard (23:05)

Because you may trust the information of an AI, but you don't trust an AI.

Gene Marks (23:11)

Even Sam Altman said, you know, he's the CEO of OpenAI, said that humans will always, always be needed because people like to talk to other humans and they like to get it validated. It's like bots are... Bots will certainly provide more productivity. Let's get back to only because I just want to make sure that I get to some of my most important. I'm getting like 10% of the questions I want to ask you, but like.

Joe Woodard (23:32)

I'm always...I can come back.

Gene Marks (23:33)

Fine. But it's fine. It's fine. Importantly, though, you've talked about like, okay, you know, raising rates, doing value added pricing, you know, for your services, recognizing the fact that you need to go out of the box and provide more client advisory services because that's where the money is and that's how you can grow your practice. That's great. You also mentioned that there are some, you know, there's a whole list of things, you know, compliance-type services that can be provided. But I want to go back into that. Okay, what services do you think, what are you seeing as being most popular for accountants and CPAs to provide to their clients? Where do you see the demand being?

Joe Woodard (24:10)

Yeah, so what I see is most popular among accountants is financial planning and analysis. They think that that's, you know, the promised land, the end of the rainbow.

Gene Marks (24:19)

Financial planning, personal or business?

Joe Woodard (24:22)

Yeah, I need to clarify that. It's the FPNA term.

Gene Marks (24:26)

Okay.

Joe Woodard (24:26)

It's financial planning and analysis as broken down, that acronym broken down, not personal financial planning. So, thank you for letting me delineate. It means business financial planning and analysis, dashboarding, analytics, key performance indicators, cash flow projections, that, that sort of thing. So that is part of what we need to offer with CAS, the accountant, the CPA, they think that's what the clients are demanding. Ironically, the clients don't care as much about that. Maybe the cash flow they do. What the clients care most about is controllership services. That's what they want. And so, controllership services would be regulatory compliance, which would include what Paychex offers, that's HR and all the state compliance on payroll, but also sales tax, so state and local tax compliance, business licenses, all that, that stuff that you have to do to comply with jurisdictions. ABC, local, all the way to federal. They want that, they need that. They are always scared that they're not offering or they're not being compliant as they need to be with, with those different jurisdictions. And then you've got risk mitigation and businesses are at risk of fraud and embezzlement. Those sorts of stories happen all the time. Everybody thinks it won't happen to them, so they need internal controls, and they need monitoring. But the one that everybody forgets about is managerial compliance, spend management, for example, with traveling employees or purchase order handling for proper procurement processes. Companies are bleeding out money right now, either through expense report fraud or more likely expense reporting errors or out-of-compliance travel. People are staying at the Ritz Carlton, they're supposed to be staying at the Holiday Inn. They don't even know. They don't even think about it. Maybe that extreme they would catch it. But the Marriott versus a Courtyard. They may not catch the policy, may not read the handbook.

Gene Marks (26:18)

Sure.

Joe Woodard (26:19)

So, it's a business's, I call that Gene, journey protection.

Gene Marks (26:23)

Okay.

Joe Woodard (26:23)

It's a part of client advisory services where we protect the client's journey with risk mitigation, regulatory compliance and managerial compliance.

Gene Marks (26:32)

Got it.

Joe Woodard (26:32)

Now, if we will go there first, especially on spend management could reduce your expense overruns. You've got them at hello, put it in Jerry Maguire terms, right? You've got them from hello, then you can upsell them to FPNA. Once you kind of stop the bleed on all of those other compliance problems.

Gene Marks (26:52)

It sounds like a lot of work though. I mean, like this is a controller's job, is like a full-time job. So, if you're going to get into spend management, for example, and that kind of compliance stuff, I mean, does that mean that the accountant needs to be, you know, on site at their clients, like, you know, twice a week? Or is that something that can be handled remotely and never on-site?

Joe Woodard (27:14)

Yeah, never go on site. It's all virtual. And it used to be a model that was not scalable, but now it is scalable because you've got providers like Paychex that you can partner with that cover comprehensively all the way through to every HR... I mean, if you've got a client that's in more than three or four states, go PEO. Right? Then you have all the HR plans, the benefits plans, the point you can outsource so much of that through the technology. And then you've got sales tax solutions. You just pick one that you partner with. And by leveraging the technology and the human monitoring of the technology, a concierge or white glove experience with the technology, you can scale controllership.

Gene Marks (27:58)

You can, and it makes sense that you position yourself as an accountant to be the single point of contact on these issues. Right? So, any documentation comes in, any notices from the IRS or from wherever, any expense reports that gets submitted. I mean, there are certain things like forward them to me, you know, scan them, email them over to me. I'm the person, I will handle it for you. And that person, that CPA or that accountant can work with a Paychex, or work with the insurance firm, or work with, you know, a labor attorney, whatever. But there's a single point of contact for the business to just say, you know, for the business owner, say, you know, my CPA is handling that stuff as part of their controller services. It makes absolutely, it makes a lot of sense.

Joe Woodard (28:37)

And then this could be a whole other topic another day. But you got to make yourself super accessible.

Gene Marks (28:41)

Sí.

Joe Woodard (28:42)

So that the document doesn't sit on their desk too long. You know, this may sound crazy, but just get them a scanner.

Gene Marks (28:49)

Sí.

Joe Woodard (28:49)

Have the scanner automatically hooked up to wherever you receive documents, which can be done to whatever cloud system.

Gene Marks (28:56)

Sí.

Joe Woodard (28:56)

And if you want to have fun with it, do a face cut out of your face and put it on the scanner, put it on their desk. Right. So just that, you know, just have fun with it. If that was too whimsical, just make it the dedicated scanner.

Gene Marks (29:09)

Yeah. And once somebody gets in the mode of doing it, they get in the routine and they realize, you know, it's fine for them to do. I love it. Joe, we're like. I mean, we're almost out of time and it's a shame because I was going to ask you about opportunities for consulting, as well. We'll do this another time, I promise. But before I let you go. So, great services. We're touching just a small portion, like tip of the iceberg or the kind of CAS work that CPAs and accounting firms can be doing. You've got a conference coming up in June that's going to be addressing a lot of the stuff and providing advice. Tell us more about that.

Joe Woodard (29:43)

Yes, well, it is a client advisory services-focused conference. We have one tax track and we have eight simultaneous tracks going on. CAS focuses on everything from business leadership and firm development to the actual CAS structures like we broke down here. Our tax track focuses on tax representation mostly. No trade yet. We assume you know how to prepare a tax return when you walk in the door.

Gene Marks (30:07)

Right.

Joe Woodard (30:08)

There'll be about 2,000 people that will join us in Orlando at Marriott's largest conference center in the world, right across the street from Disney World. So if you don't want all of the, you know, stuff that comes with Disney World, just pretend it's not there. If you want to be 5 minutes from Disney World by Uber, go there in the evenings. You get to take your pick. But it is right across the interstate. It's June 22nd through 25th in Orlando, and it's called Scaling New Heights. And if you just type that into your browser, scalingnewheights.com it'll take you right there.

Gene Marks (30:42)

Joe Woodard is the CEO of Woodard. Woodard provides consulting services to help accounting firms and CPAs really change their firms around to provide client advisory services. And Joe does this through not only consulting, but a whole bunch of content and conferences that helps the community do this. If you're an accountant, this is absolutely something that you should be looking into. And if you're a business owner, it's the kind of thing you need to be asking your accountant about. And frankly, if you're not getting the right answers, you know, you need to be looking at other professionals in this profession that are providing those kinds of advisory services, because I think that's where the future is and that's what best for your business. Joe, thank you so much for joining. It was a really fun conversation. Do you have a topic or a guest that you would like to hear on THRIVE? Please let us know. Visit payx.me/ThriveTopics and send us your ideas or matters of interest. Also, if your business is looking to simplify your hr, payroll, benefits or insurance services, see how Paychex can help. Visit the resource hub at paychex.com/worx. That's W-O-R-X. Paychex can help manage those complexities while you focus on all the ways you want your business to thrive. I'm your host Gene Marks, and thanks for joining us.

Announcer (31:58)

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