Episode Transcript
Speaker A: 00:00:30
Hello, everyone.
Speaker A: 00:00:30
Welcome to another edition of the Empowering Entrepreneurs Podcast.
Speaker A: 00:00:33
I’m Glenn Harper.
Speaker B: 00:00:34
Julie Smith.
Speaker A: 00:00:34
You know, as our next guest can attest to, it’s the greatest time of the year.
Speaker A: 00:00:37
Who doesn’t love a little tax season action?
Speaker A: 00:00:40
So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce Tyler Davis, founder of DAT Finance and co host of the Next Gen Strategies podcast.
Speaker A: 00:00:48
He’s an entrepreneur extraordinaire and a fellow bean counter.
Speaker A: 00:00:51
He found a niche that lets him take his practical experience and educate his clients to find the real issues behind what’s holding them back.
Speaker A: 00:00:57
Tyler had so much to say, and his staff was so tired of him talking to him, he started the Next Gen podcast so he can control the mic and say whatever he wanted to.
Speaker A: 00:01:04
Tyler’s passion to help his clients is contagious.
Speaker A: 00:01:07
He breaks the issues down and exploits the different opinions options that his clients didn’t even know existed.
Speaker A: 00:01:12
Tyler loves accounting so much.
Speaker A: 00:01:14
After his bsba, he went back to get his master’s in accounting.
Speaker A: 00:01:17
That’s someone who loves to torture themselves.
Speaker A: 00:01:19
Tyler’s managed to gain a lot of wisdom in his short career.
Speaker A: 00:01:22
I hope you’ll all welcome Tyler to the Empowering Entrepreneurs Podcast.
Speaker A: 00:01:25
Thanks, Tyler, for being on the show.
Speaker C: 00:01:27
Absolutely.
Speaker C: 00:01:27
Thanks for having me.
Speaker B: 00:01:29
Well, goodness, I really think that part about the mic and the podcast was really about you.
Speaker A: 00:01:34
I mean, we’re both living vicariously as a fellow accountants.
Speaker A: 00:01:37
I mean, that’s the deal, right?
Speaker A: 00:01:38
I mean, that’s how you roll, right, Tyler?
Speaker C: 00:01:40
Absolutely.
Speaker A: 00:01:41
All right, well, I used to, like, stalk you a little bit and find a little bit of controversial content out there.
Speaker A: 00:01:48
And you just gotta love the web out there.
Speaker A: 00:01:51
But it says here, as we’re trying to get to know you a little bit, because our listeners want to see where you’re at in your journey and give them hope or inspiration.
Speaker A: 00:01:59
And so one of the things is it says you grew up in Sydney, Ohio, in the shadows of Campbell Hill, the highest point in Ohio.
Speaker A: 00:02:06
And for all our big city listeners, can you tell them how much action goes on in a small town? Speaker A: 00:02:11
Is it as exciting as they say the action is?
Speaker C: 00:02:14
Small town drama.
Speaker C: 00:02:16
I actually have a another meeting later today where the city’s going to give us some updates because I’m a part of a chamber of commerce young professionals group and we have a data center coming here to my small town.
Speaker C: 00:02:27
It might be a heated conversation in our community here today.
Speaker A: 00:02:32
Controversy abounds.
Speaker B: 00:02:34
Oh, man, a data center.
Speaker B: 00:02:36
Did you.
Speaker B: 00:02:36
And so is that where you are?
Speaker B: 00:02:38
Where you are?
Speaker B: 00:02:39
Is that where you grew up?
Speaker C: 00:02:41
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A: 00:02:43
So talk to me about your parents.
Speaker A: 00:02:45
Were they entrepreneurs or they worked for the man or how did that work?
Speaker A: 00:02:49
Because we want to get to figure out a little history to see how you got started.
Speaker C: 00:02:53
Yeah.
Speaker C: 00:02:53
So I’m a first time or like first generation college grad, first generation entrepreneur.
Speaker C: 00:03:01
There might have been a few entrepreneurs down the lineage, but it was mainly like, you know, picking up pop cans and selling scrap metal for the most part.
Speaker C: 00:03:11
So my dad was a, or still is a machinist.
Speaker C: 00:03:14
He’s worked at the same place for over 30 years.
Speaker C: 00:03:16
Mom was a stay at home mom and did odd jobs here and there.
Speaker C: 00:03:20
So it’s all brand new for me and it’s been a fun, fun journey.
Speaker B: 00:03:25
Any siblings?
Speaker C: 00:03:27
Yes, one.
Speaker C: 00:03:28
One sibling who’s three years younger than me that is not an entrepreneur either.
Speaker C: 00:03:34
Just a normal day to day for her.
Speaker B: 00:03:36
She’s still in the same town as well.
Speaker C: 00:03:39
She actually moved about 40 minutes away.
Speaker B: 00:03:42
Okay.
Speaker A: 00:03:43
I tell you, the black sheep, the family.
Speaker A: 00:03:45
Once you break the mold and go out as an entrepreneur, because literally when you’re an entrepreneur, nobody can understand what the heck you do and why you do it.
Speaker A: 00:03:52
It’s impossible.
Speaker A: 00:03:54
But if you had said, oh, I’m a doctor, I’m a nurse, I’m a machinist, people are like, oh yeah, I know what that is.
Speaker A: 00:04:00
Entrepreneur.
Speaker A: 00:04:00
They’ll look at you like you got three heads and nobody understands it.
Speaker A: 00:04:03
So it’s a very lonely place to be, is it not?
Speaker B: 00:04:05
Well, sometimes I don’t even think we understand it.
Speaker B: 00:04:07
Right.
Speaker B: 00:04:08
We’re over here trying to navigate that as well.
Speaker C: 00:04:12
Oh gosh.
Speaker C: 00:04:12
Yeah.
Speaker C: 00:04:12
That’s what’s been super nice.
Speaker C: 00:04:14
One of my good and best friends that I actually met in school kind of started his journey with entrepreneurship at the same time as me.
Speaker C: 00:04:22
And we’re actually neighbors in the same office complex.
Speaker C: 00:04:26
So he’s my co host on the other podcast.
Speaker C: 00:04:28
He’s a marketing guy, so go rounds all the time and that’s super helpful because you could just get all up in here as an entrepreneur and it’s always nice to have somebody to bounce things off of.
Speaker A: 00:04:39
There’s unlimited doors to open up there and it just takes a little bit of, you know, what to courage I guess, to open those and see what it can, can entertain.
Speaker A: 00:04:49
It’s not as scary as everybody thinks, but it’s terrifying at the same time.
Speaker B: 00:04:54
So did you play sports growing up or what did your childhood look like?
Speaker C: 00:04:58
Yeah, big, big into sports.
Speaker C: 00:04:59
I was the kid that kind of just did all the sports.
Speaker C: 00:05:03
The school had to offer and we were a small school so it was like everybody did everything but grew pretty close to track and field.
Speaker C: 00:05:11
Ended up pole voting and then I pole voted for a year in college as well until I decided I wanted to get some internships and I couldn’t do both at the same time so I started picking work over that.
Speaker C: 00:05:23
But lots of fun stories from the poll voting.
Speaker A: 00:05:26
What’s your highest?
Speaker C: 00:05:28
About 14ft.
Speaker C: 00:05:29
Wow, that’s nothing these days.
Speaker B: 00:05:32
I know, I have no concept.
Speaker B: 00:05:34
That’s not.
Speaker A: 00:05:34
It was like 20ft is the record these days.
Speaker A: 00:05:36
21ft, yeah, give or take.
Speaker A: 00:05:39
But still, that’s no joke.
Speaker B: 00:05:41
Did you sell rocks, have a newspaper route or anything of the sorts?
Speaker C: 00:05:45
Growing up I was, I made fishing lures.
Speaker C: 00:05:50
That was my thing.
Speaker C: 00:05:51
So I got into making like the little plastic baits and I would sell them to bait shops.
Speaker A: 00:05:56
Now how did you get involved in that?
Speaker A: 00:05:58
I mean that’s a pretty.
Speaker B: 00:05:59
He liked to fish, I’m guessing.
Speaker C: 00:06:01
Yeah, yeah, I love to fish.
Speaker C: 00:06:02
My dad actually did it.
Speaker C: 00:06:03
He made his own and had a relationship with a bait shop and he just did hit for a little bit of, you know, gas money here and there and then so copying my dad.
Speaker C: 00:06:13
Everything your dad does is cool when you’re that age.
Speaker C: 00:06:15
I started doing it myself.
Speaker A: 00:06:17
How about that?
Speaker A: 00:06:19
So, you know, it’s funny, you know, some people, you know, you’re doing this side hustle to make some money and you’re like, ah, you know, I got to go to college and you looks like you went right next door there at Bluffton University and then you ended up at Wright State.
Speaker A: 00:06:35
But how did, did you want to stay local?
Speaker A: 00:06:38
Was it because there was a sports scholarship or you just wanted to stay close to home or the size of the college.
Speaker A: 00:06:42
What made you chose those two universities?
Speaker A: 00:06:44
They’re really literally next door to you.
Speaker C: 00:06:47
Yeah, so I got recruited by Bluffton to pole vault up there and like many 18 year old guys, that was like the number one priority to me is to keep doing sports.
Speaker C: 00:07:00
So that’s what made me run up there.
Speaker C: 00:07:02
Plus it was an added advantage.
Speaker C: 00:07:03
It was local, I could still come home and work.
Speaker C: 00:07:07
You know, I was big on not trying to be insanely into debt and wanted to kind of finance my way through.
Speaker C: 00:07:12
So kind of all the stars aligned for that to work out.
Speaker C: 00:07:15
I had some friends I knew that were going there, so I was a little bit of a, an introvert back in those days.
Speaker C: 00:07:21
So I was really nervous about just leaving the nest, so to say.
Speaker C: 00:07:26
Then Wright State was right down the road as well, to the South.
Speaker C: 00:07:29
And that worked out really well because I got a scholarship for that graduate program and I had a job down that way too.
Speaker C: 00:07:36
It was one of my first real accounting jobs at the time.
Speaker A: 00:07:42
You know, it’s funny, you know, you described all the characteristics of a stereotypical accountant, and then all of a sudden, what the hell happened?
Speaker A: 00:07:49
How did you all of a sudden break those chains and become something different?
Speaker C: 00:07:54
Yeah, it’s really funny.
Speaker C: 00:07:56
I think college changed me a lot.
Speaker C: 00:07:57
Like I said, kind of an introvert, kind of backwards.
Speaker C: 00:08:00
Had some real critical.
Speaker B: 00:08:03
Let’s not be very stereotypical.
Speaker A: 00:08:05
Let’s not beat down the accountants too much.
Speaker A: 00:08:07
Come on now.
Speaker C: 00:08:09
But we can change because I am one of those people.
Speaker C: 00:08:12
But I had some friends that were like extreme extroverts and they just forced it out of me.
Speaker C: 00:08:16
They wouldn’t let me be quiet and weird, you know, and in my own corner, they, they beat it out of me.
Speaker C: 00:08:21
And then that kind of continued into my professional career.
Speaker C: 00:08:25
And I quickly found myself in a financial leadership position at a very young age too.
Speaker C: 00:08:30
And that, that kind of broke me into leadership conversations and, and really happened to speak my mind.
Speaker C: 00:08:38
But now, you know, I’m not afraid to be in front of a camera.
Speaker C: 00:08:42
Love to, you know, you know, speak, love to go to different meetings.
Speaker C: 00:08:46
You know, the entrepreneurship on top of that, it just, I don’t know, maybe that full frontal development of the cortex for a young man helped too.
Speaker A: 00:08:53
Nah, that can’t be it.
Speaker A: 00:08:54
That can’t be it.
Speaker A: 00:08:56
Do you, you know when you do an, you know, the.
Speaker A: 00:08:59
Get your bachelor’s and then you go and do the advanced degree?
Speaker A: 00:09:01
The advanced degree, did that, did that propel you into that first job?
Speaker A: 00:09:05
Like, was it already the grease, the skids greased to get into that, or is that something that they placed you, or was that on your path to get the, your first position that you got, you know, the main one here?
Speaker C: 00:09:16
Yeah.
Speaker C: 00:09:16
Primarily the master’s degree was designed around qualifying for the CPA licensure.
Speaker C: 00:09:23
So I think it’s different now depending on your state.
Speaker C: 00:09:26
But back when I needed the CPA, you needed 150 credit hours of education to sit for the exam.
Speaker C: 00:09:33
And your standard bachelor’s degree only gives you, I think, like 130 somewhere in that range.
Speaker C: 00:09:39
So they designed that entire master’s program around the CPA exam.
Speaker C: 00:09:44
So a lot of the content was around that.
Speaker C: 00:09:45
So that was primarily my motivation, was that I wanted to sit and pass the CPA exam.
Speaker C: 00:09:52
And then I actually looked for work near that school because they Offered me a scholarship, and I was trying to be cheap, you know.
Speaker A: 00:10:00
Yeah.
Speaker A: 00:10:00
Back when I took cpa, we had.
Speaker A: 00:10:01
We didn’t have to have hours.
Speaker A: 00:10:03
We had to give, like, a kidney.
Speaker A: 00:10:04
And it was really hard back then.
Speaker C: 00:10:06
You probably had to take it all in one day.
Speaker A: 00:10:08
Two and a half days, actually.
Speaker A: 00:10:10
Yes.
Speaker C: 00:10:10
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker A: 00:10:11
No joke.
Speaker A: 00:10:13
So, you know, you’re working for the man.
Speaker A: 00:10:15
You have a real job.
Speaker A: 00:10:16
You’re doing your thing, obviously in a good leadership position in the company, doing your thing.
Speaker A: 00:10:22
And then all of a sudden you’re like, you know what I want to do?
Speaker A: 00:10:25
What.
Speaker A: 00:10:25
How do you change that?
Speaker A: 00:10:27
Because now you got the cushy corporate job, you’re telling people what to do, you got great structure, and you’re like, nah, I don’t mind that.
Speaker C: 00:10:34
Yeah, it all started as a side hustle.
Speaker C: 00:10:37
Couple extra bucks for fun stuff.
Speaker C: 00:10:41
I had really just did the little friends and family and a couple local people I know, you know, tax things at first.
Speaker C: 00:10:49
Then that slowly turned into just advice because I was a finance director.
Speaker C: 00:10:53
Right.
Speaker C: 00:10:53
So just give me advice about, you know, finance in general, for business.
Speaker C: 00:10:58
And it just kind of kept growing to the point that I had to make a decision because I’m like, I don’t want to be a disservice to the employer that I was with.
Speaker C: 00:11:08
Great relationship with them still to this day.
Speaker C: 00:11:12
And I also don’t want to, you know, I got to pick one.
Speaker C: 00:11:15
And I, you know, actually spent time talking to a therapist over.
Speaker C: 00:11:20
I had a couple sessions where I’m like, I need help figuring out what it is that I’m doing and pick a path and give myself kind of a timeline for it, because it was a big decision, especially as someone who has a young family, have two kids going on a third.
Speaker C: 00:11:36
The health insurance, the benefits, all of the things.
Speaker C: 00:11:39
And I really just pushed myself until I felt really comfortable with the leap and then went that way.
Speaker A: 00:11:46
When I looked up little on your bio, you worked for the state of Ohio.
Speaker A: 00:11:50
Was that in a tax capacity for the tax department or.
Speaker A: 00:11:55
And then you jumped to this other role.
Speaker A: 00:11:56
What.
Speaker A: 00:11:56
What was the capacity of that?
Speaker C: 00:11:58
That initial one was an audit capacity.
Speaker C: 00:12:01
So we basically audited any publicly funded entity or quasi.
Speaker C: 00:12:05
Publicly funded entity in the state of Ohio.
Speaker C: 00:12:07
And I traveled all over for that.
Speaker C: 00:12:10
Most of my tax experience started from some internships in college, and I just kind of kept doing them.
Speaker C: 00:12:17
Like I said, with that friends and family and kind of small, you know, 10, 20 returns.
Speaker C: 00:12:23
I actually went and passed the EA exam, too, because I wanted to kind of beef up my tax knowledge simultaneously with the cpa.
Speaker A: 00:12:33
You know, it’s kind of funny is the.
Speaker A: 00:12:38
When you start on that path, you get to see how the government works.
Speaker A: 00:12:42
You’re in there a little bit and you’re like, well, this is the dumbest thing in the world.
Speaker A: 00:12:45
And then ask him his opinion, he’ll say that.
Speaker A: 00:12:49
But you know how it works, right?
Speaker A: 00:12:50
And in our roles today, it’s just understanding that system and how to navigate it really is the key, right?
Speaker A: 00:12:57
It’s most of the people that work there are really just trying to do a good job.
Speaker A: 00:13:01
They’re overwhelmed and it’s just so hard.
Speaker A: 00:13:03
So you and I get that clients don’t.
Speaker A: 00:13:06
They’re like, ah, you know, but it’s really more about just understanding the system and manage expectation with the clients.
Speaker A: 00:13:12
And then again, you work for the private company and you’re like, all right, this is cool.
Speaker B: 00:13:15
And.
Speaker A: 00:13:15
And then now when you start on your own, you got a little bit more of a. I call it a well rounded piece of what that looks like.
Speaker A: 00:13:21
When you jumped in, were you able to.
Speaker A: 00:13:25
Did you like, immediately you were at the revenue, you wanted, the profit that you wanted, the hours that you wanted, or was it like, kind of scary at first when you jump?
Speaker A: 00:13:33
Because we always try to figure out our guests, like, when do they make the jump?
Speaker A: 00:13:37
When it’s so safe or just walking through the puddle or are we jumping off a high dive here?
Speaker A: 00:13:41
Where was it for you?
Speaker C: 00:13:43
It was kind of crazy because by bounce back and forth between, is this a side hustle or is this going to be what my career is?
Speaker C: 00:13:52
And we were going on having our child and he was going to be born in April, and I’m like, ooh, it’s a problem.
Speaker C: 00:14:01
And I, yeah.
Speaker C: 00:14:02
So I said, you know what?
Speaker C: 00:14:03
I’m going to fire like half of my clients because, like, this is.
Speaker C: 00:14:07
This is going to be too much and I don’t want to let anybody down in that critical part of time.
Speaker C: 00:14:11
And then after we had the baby, I said, no, I want to jump all in.
Speaker C: 00:14:15
So I decided to jump all in after firing a bunch of clients.
Speaker C: 00:14:19
But this time I really made a major pivot in what my business was and how I worked with clients.
Speaker C: 00:14:26
That led to me working with a lot less clients and higher fee arrangements so I could go deeper with them.
Speaker C: 00:14:35
So I did pick up a few clients at that time.
Speaker C: 00:14:39
So it was a little bit of both, I guess, where I panicked and then didn’t panic.
Speaker C: 00:14:43
And even now, even today, you know, you can.
Speaker C: 00:14:49
There are weeks where I feel like I’m on top of the world and I could, I could, the sky’s the limit.
Speaker C: 00:14:55
And then the following week I’m like, I don’t know if I can pay my health insurance bill.
Speaker C: 00:14:59
Like, it’s just in your brain.
Speaker B: 00:15:01
We call those the peaks in the valleys.
Speaker B: 00:15:02
They’re normal.
Speaker C: 00:15:03
Yes.
Speaker B: 00:15:04
So thinking through your journey, what are some valleys that you’ve been through but have, you know, maybe given you the most resolve through your, your journey?
Speaker C: 00:15:15
Yeah, I had early on lost my largest, single largest revenue client by no bad reason.
Speaker C: 00:15:25
I, I do a lot of, you know, fractional controller, CFO type services at times and they, they were at the point they needed to hire a full time controller.
Speaker C: 00:15:35
So it was just made sense.
Speaker C: 00:15:37
So, you know, I training the, you know, the replacement and that, that set some panic and because, you know, when you do make a shift in your business to have less, you know, clients, but go deeper with them, you get a little bit of concentration risk because if you lose one or the largest, that’s a, that can be 25% of your revenue, you know, but funny enough, you know, good, positive relationships with that client.
Speaker C: 00:16:05
They had a sister company who was just on the, you know, found out and was in my inbox saying, hey, we need some help too, you know, so you go that week of the bottom of like, oh gosh, what did I do?
Speaker C: 00:16:16
And then the next week you are, you know, finding other revenue sources.
Speaker A: 00:16:21
You know, it’s the, the plight of the cpa.
Speaker A: 00:16:25
The account is just, it’s a, it’s, it’s a thankless job, but it is appreciated.
Speaker A: 00:16:29
But again, you made what I think I do, and I know you do, is you’ve got to do what’s best for your client.
Speaker A: 00:16:38
And if it’s best for your client to hire somebody in house, we’ll gladly acquiesce, we’ll gladly help them out because that’s our core values to help.
Speaker A: 00:16:46
And that’s probably not probably.
Speaker A: 00:16:49
It is the thing that probably through your whole career has the desire to help and you do it the right way.
Speaker A: 00:16:55
Clients can respect that and they’ll come and go and whatever and staff come and go, but you can hold your head high knowing that you have the standards and like your core values, how you do it.
Speaker A: 00:17:05
And that’s a good thing to have and you can’t get depressed about it because if you do the right thing, the next opportunity comes by.
Speaker A: 00:17:11
Right?
Speaker C: 00:17:12
Yeah, that’s always been my motto.
Speaker C: 00:17:14
And me and one of my colleagues for our podcast, we say it all the time.
Speaker C: 00:17:20
It’s sometimes not that relationship or, you know, losing that can, can be painful, but it’s who they know and who they may refer you because you did the right thing that can be more valuable than that relationship you had.
Speaker C: 00:17:36
Because it, because it could be this one client that you did a bang up job for, didn’t leave them hanging, even though they were essentially firing you, but might feed you four really great relationships that down the road because of how well you did.
Speaker A: 00:17:50
Now in your.
Speaker A: 00:17:51
Oh, you were gonna say something.
Speaker A: 00:17:52
No, go ahead.
Speaker A: 00:17:54
In your current role of what you do and how you do it again, we.
Speaker A: 00:17:57
I was making a little joke on the podcast thing because it’s kind of a fun thing to do, but is it something that is your goal, you know, as an entrepreneur?
Speaker A: 00:18:05
It’s, are you gonna milk your business?
Speaker A: 00:18:06
Are you gonna try to grow it?
Speaker A: 00:18:08
Are you gonna be an owner, investor?
Speaker A: 00:18:09
What are your, what are your goals with that?
Speaker A: 00:18:12
Or do you even know that yet?
Speaker C: 00:18:14
You’re saying with the podcast.
Speaker A: 00:18:15
Well, I’m saying with your business here with the podcast is going to be a, it’s going to do what it does.
Speaker B: 00:18:20
Yeah. Speaker A: 00:18:20
Right. Speaker A: 00:18:20
It’s, it’s. Speaker C: 00:18:21
Yeah. Speaker C: 00:18:22
I think I, I have this conversation in my head probably every three days of what I want this to be.
Speaker C: 00:18:27
You know, I’m a, I’m a sole operator now, right.
Speaker C: 00:18:30
I have a few contractors that help when I need it and I like that.
Speaker C: 00:18:36
That’s nice.
Speaker C: 00:18:37
Right?
Speaker C: 00:18:37
That’s.
Speaker C: 00:18:38
I’m in kind of command of what I do every day and who I work with.
Speaker C: 00:18:42
But at the same time, I don’t think I’m cut out for that forever.
Speaker C: 00:18:45
So, you know, I would love to get to the point that I hire the next me and then maybe that funnels into the next me after that.
Speaker C: 00:18:55
You know, in my line of business, you know, there are so many different niches or how you do business.
Speaker C: 00:19:04
You know, you could be, you know, a firm that does lots of tax returns.
Speaker C: 00:19:07
You, a firm that does fractional cfo.
Speaker C: 00:19:09
You could be a firm that works with only beekeeper.
Speaker C: 00:19:11
You know, so I think there’s a lot of opportunity and I think I’m still developing what I want this to be long term.
Speaker B: 00:19:19
So talk to me.
Speaker B: 00:19:20
How did your podcast come about and how did you move into your.
Speaker B: 00:19:24
Someone who you went to college with?
Speaker B: 00:19:26
Like, that’s.
Speaker C: 00:19:26
Yes.
Speaker C: 00:19:28
We actually became neighbors when we got our offices and we’re, you know, we hang out all the time anyhow.
Speaker B: 00:19:35
But so it was planned.
Speaker B: 00:19:36
So like you knew you guys were going to move in together.
Speaker B: 00:19:39
It wasn’t like you moved in and you’re like, hey wait, I know you.
Speaker C: 00:19:42
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker C: 00:19:44
Um, we were actually looking for space together.
Speaker C: 00:19:46
We were going to lease something and then just split it.
Speaker C: 00:19:48
But then this.
Speaker C: 00:19:49
We’re essentially kind of like in a cowork type situation and both got private offices here essentially.
Speaker C: 00:19:58
But you know, over drinking beers or hanging out or whatever, we have all of these conversations just about business.
Speaker C: 00:20:04
He, you know, clearly has the perspective of a marketing person and I have the perspective as an accountant.
Speaker C: 00:20:09
And we thought, well, why don’t we start recording it?
Speaker C: 00:20:12
You know.
Speaker C: 00:20:13
And then that started to blossom into kind of like what you guys are doing here where let’s interview business owners and talk to them about their stories and try to bring something to kind of the market that’s unique because you have a marketing guy and a finance guy and you know, we beat each other up a little bit, you know, so what?
Speaker B: 00:20:33
So talk to me a little bit more.
Speaker B: 00:20:35
Tell me about, you know, for our listeners.
Speaker B: 00:20:37
What is your podcast?
Speaker B: 00:20:38
Obviously marketing accounting.
Speaker B: 00:20:39
But like do you focus on anything or is it just super organic?
Speaker B: 00:20:43
You pick up a microphone and it’s whatever’s on your guys mind that day, that time.
Speaker C: 00:20:48
Yeah, the core of it is since it’s the next gen strategies podcast kind of came from, there are a slew of business owners who are coming in the business or as their own, like they created their business or they are the next generation of a, of a legacy business.
Speaker C: 00:21:08
They’re the, you know, 33 year old son of a retiring business owner.
Speaker C: 00:21:12
And the idea there is kind of coming at this as business advice and strategy coming from, you know, both my grant seat grants that the co host of younger entrepreneurs that have worked with a lot of different business owners and what we’re seeing, you know, for me it’s a lot of times the, you know, we have brand new software that’s available that your business has never probably seen before because you’re doing stuff on clipboards and pens still, you know, for him it’s, you know, his strategy with marketing is a lot about what we’re doing today in video content and it’s not necessarily about billboards and newspaper ads.
Speaker C: 00:21:49
You know, it’s, it’s that what’s fundamentally different for the next generation.
Speaker B: 00:21:54
Gotcha.
Speaker B: 00:21:54
It’s interesting.
Speaker B: 00:21:55
So I want to kind of take a step back.
Speaker B: 00:21:57
I’m going to take a slight hard pivot here.
Speaker B: 00:21:59
But growing up, going through college, you know, your internships, your experience before, did you have any mentors that stood out to you, that kind of shaped and helped guide you to where you are today?
Speaker C: 00:22:16
That’s a really good question.
Speaker C: 00:22:17
I don’t think I had any in undergrad.
Speaker C: 00:22:21
I did a variety of internships in undergrad from tax to.
Speaker C: 00:22:24
I did some like cost accounting in a manufacturing setting.
Speaker C: 00:22:28
I really wasn’t in love with the accounting industry at that time because there was just a lot of people who seemed like they were overworked and underpaid like.
Speaker C: 00:22:36
And Glenn, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.
Speaker A: 00:22:39
The long hours stereotypes are real.
Speaker A: 00:22:42
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C: 00:22:44
But when I, when I got to grad school, the professors there I really connected well with.
Speaker C: 00:22:50
And I don’t know if the difference with grad school is that, you know, everyone that’s there is probably there for a pretty important reason.
Speaker C: 00:22:58
It’s not really about drinking beer and parties and football games as much.
Speaker C: 00:23:01
It is about trying to really advance my career.
Speaker C: 00:23:04
Because you have people there that are 23 years old.
Speaker C: 00:23:06
You have people there are 35 years old.
Speaker C: 00:23:09
And the relationships I made with the, the people in my class and the professors was really eye opening and helpful for me.
Speaker C: 00:23:16
Because you had, you know, at that time, people who really wanted to get into like the big four accounting firms, you know, your Deloitte, things of that nature, that kind of big consulting and corporate, you know, kind of launch pad.
Speaker C: 00:23:30
You had people that were working for small businesses that kind of wanted to get the next edge.
Speaker C: 00:23:34
And you had these professors that had all these relationships in my region with all the different employers.
Speaker C: 00:23:41
So I found that incredibly helpful.
Speaker C: 00:23:44
Use them for recommendations and referrals later on.
Speaker C: 00:23:47
But that was a big piece.
Speaker C: 00:23:50
But I will say most of my mentorship now, especially as I entered this space as an entrepreneur, I found in online communities of other professionals like me.
Speaker C: 00:24:00
And it is unbelievable how many people out there who do exactly what you do, are willing to share advice and will talk to you and don’t really see you as a competitor because you might be 10 states away from them,
Speaker A: 00:24:19
Your classmates.
Speaker A: 00:24:20
I just had a thought.
Speaker A: 00:24:21
I was wondering when you took the master’s degree, let’s say you had a class of making up a number, 50 people.
Speaker C: 00:24:28
How.
Speaker A: 00:24:29
How many of those went on to become entrepreneurs and how many are climbing the corporate ladder?
Speaker A: 00:24:35
Do you know what that stat is off the top of your head?
Speaker C: 00:24:39
As of right now, in that core group of people, like I’m probably missing some just cause I don’t see them as often.
Speaker C: 00:24:45
Most of them are not entrepreneurs.
Speaker C: 00:24:47
I might be the only that is an entrepreneur.
Speaker C: 00:24:51
There’s such a wide range.
Speaker C: 00:24:52
Like one’s got his PhD is now a professor.
Speaker C: 00:24:57
Others are working for some very large CPA firms.
Speaker C: 00:25:00
Others are in manufacturing because Ohio is a huge.
Speaker C: 00:25:05
Our area is a big manufacturing area.
Speaker C: 00:25:06
But I think I may be one of the only ones that went into entrepreneurship at this point.
Speaker B: 00:25:13
Have you ever thought about going back and being an adjunct professor?
Speaker C: 00:25:18
I think that’s my retirement job.
Speaker C: 00:25:21
That’s what I always think.
Speaker A: 00:25:22
Give back a little.
Speaker A: 00:25:24
Yeah, you know, it’s.
Speaker A: 00:25:26
So when you’re trying to, you know, we deal with primarily entrepreneurs all day long, so we just think everybody’s entrepreneurs.
Speaker A: 00:25:34
And then when you do see somebody who’s not, you’re like, whoa, wait, what?
Speaker A: 00:25:38
This is a whole different conversation, neither better nor worse.
Speaker A: 00:25:41
It’s just a different perspective that you’re trying to solve different algorithms for.
Speaker A: 00:25:44
But it’s just.
Speaker A: 00:25:46
It was just curious, you know, is the school teaching you how to plug into a system, or is it school teaching you how to have the.
Speaker A: 00:25:53
The skills to go out and hang your shingle?
Speaker A: 00:25:55
And that is just.
Speaker A: 00:25:56
That was what.
Speaker B: 00:25:57
That was that question given him his life purpose.
Speaker C: 00:26:00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker C: 00:26:03
No, this is a really critical piece, and I hate to talk too much about accounting, but I think it’s the same for many professional degrees, is that we very much are not teaching at a level of not only entrepreneurship, but small business.
Speaker C: 00:26:21
Most of, take it, marketing, law, accounting, it, you name it, is a funnel to major corporations, large employers.
Speaker C: 00:26:31
And a lot of that’s because that’s who’s hiring the most and where the recruiting is.
Speaker C: 00:26:35
But, you know, I think you can do both.
Speaker C: 00:26:37
Like there should be sections about small business because especially as an accountant, if you understand how to do account and how to help people at small business level, that’s.
Speaker C: 00:26:47
That’s basically like kind with entrepreneurship.
Speaker C: 00:26:49
If you’re working for a small firm, what you’re doing day to day would be kind of what you’d be doing as an owner as well.
Speaker C: 00:26:56
And none of that really exists.
Speaker C: 00:26:57
I mean, we Maybe touched on QuickBooks for one class, one time, you know, and that is like everything I do every day anymore.
Speaker B: 00:27:09
You know, I mean, I have a master’s degree and never once did we talk about QuickBooks.
Speaker B: 00:27:13
Not in accounting, but still, you would think if I want to go run a business, I should have some background in that.
Speaker B: 00:27:18
So that’s ironic that you say that.
Speaker A: 00:27:20
Well, we didn’t even have computers when.
Speaker A: 00:27:22
I’m totally kidding.
Speaker A: 00:27:23
But no, it’s unique that the marketplace or the skill set is they’re not teaching how to apply what they’re teaching in the real world.
Speaker A: 00:27:38
They’re kind of teaching how to plug into something.
Speaker A: 00:27:40
And it’s just, again, it takes a lot of.
Speaker A: 00:27:43
For somebody to get outside of that, which obviously is what you’ve done.
Speaker A: 00:27:47
And again, the thing which you said, which is again, kind of what we do.
Speaker A: 00:27:51
And anybody that’s been in this business long enough or is smart enough to figure it out, it’s not the bookkeeping accounting thing that’s a task that needs to be done.
Speaker A: 00:28:01
It’s the advice.
Speaker A: 00:28:02
People want the advice.
Speaker A: 00:28:03
And that’s where your fractional CFO thing is going on.
Speaker A: 00:28:06
Because you’re right, a small company doesn’t need a full time cfo.
Speaker A: 00:28:11
They just need somebody to come in and spend a few hours a week and tell them what to do, or they just need some tax advice or whatever.
Speaker A: 00:28:17
But the task of typing the data, it’s just, it’s a horrible task.
Speaker A: 00:28:22
But, you know, most people can get that done.
Speaker A: 00:28:24
And QuickBooks makes it real easy for the smaller company.
Speaker A: 00:28:26
But yeah, I think that’s probably what you’re trying to say.
Speaker A: 00:28:28
Like, you got, you, you saw the, the writing on the wall and like, you can’t compete with Sally down the street typing in her basement the, the data.
Speaker A: 00:28:36
So you might as well go ahead and give some advice and bring some value, right?
Speaker C: 00:28:40
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker C: 00:28:41
And it’s really what I seen kind of in, in our industry is that I think a lot of CPAs and accountants want to give advice.
Speaker C: 00:28:50
And it comes back to some of the stereotypes.
Speaker C: 00:28:52
Like, we’re so busy.
Speaker A: 00:28:53
Yep.
Speaker C: 00:28:53
Like the average firm has from that you can’t talk to them from January until May.
Speaker C: 00:28:59
It’s just, it’s.
Speaker C: 00:29:00
They’re doing everything they can to get all the volume out, you know, that they promise.
Speaker C: 00:29:06
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C: 00:29:07
And it’s hard.
Speaker C: 00:29:08
That’s the feedback I hear a lot from clients.
Speaker C: 00:29:10
They’re like, well, I didn’t hear back.
Speaker C: 00:29:11
And I want this and this and this and that, you know, and that’s where I’m like, okay, I want to quickly kind of make a pivot here and see if I want to go that direction with my firm to say, yeah, I mean, this is completely different.
Speaker C: 00:29:23
This is not a, you know, in and out tax return or, you know, books getting done.
Speaker C: 00:29:28
And that’s it.
Speaker C: 00:29:29
This is, this is a very much a relationship where I really understand your business and give you that advice that you’re craving, you know, But I’m setting up my business to where I can actually do that.
Speaker B: 00:29:41
So I’m curious, as we get closer here to the end, what is one of the advice that you could give to our listeners who are thinking about jumping off the cliff or putting a toe in the lake or whatever analogy you used earlier?
Speaker C: 00:29:55
Oh, man, this is a good one, I think, because I have friends, I have people I know that are.
Speaker C: 00:30:02
You wouldn’t believe how many of their.
Speaker C: 00:30:03
These called them like the golden handcuffs they have that corporate job they make.
Speaker C: 00:30:08
You know, maybe they’re not ecstatic of their pay, but, like, between that and they’re working from home and they have good health insurance and a good 401k match.
Speaker C: 00:30:17
To break out of those chains is so hard, terrifying.
Speaker C: 00:30:24
And.
Speaker C: 00:30:24
And I can’t go back in time and tell people to fix things from prior.
Speaker C: 00:30:28
But, like, if you’re a young person is trying to set up your lifestyle and not needing that, that’s huge, right?
Speaker C: 00:30:35
Because if you’re at the point where you have to have every single dollar that’s afforded to you from that corporate job, how do you make the leap?
Speaker C: 00:30:44
Unless you get to the point where you can save up, you know, a year’s Runway and expenses, because that’s basically what you need.
Speaker C: 00:30:53
Unless you’ve really kept your lifestyle so minimal.
Speaker C: 00:30:57
Right.
Speaker C: 00:30:57
That you don’t need everything that that job’s providing to you.
Speaker C: 00:31:01
I think that’s.
Speaker C: 00:31:03
I talk about this with some of my other entrepreneurial friends all the time.
Speaker C: 00:31:05
I’m like, this is why we don’t have new business owners.
Speaker C: 00:31:07
It’s almost impossible.
Speaker C: 00:31:09
It feels so hard because if you have the family, you got to go get that Marketplace health insurance plan that probably costs you $1,000 a month and has a $15,000 deductible.
Speaker C: 00:31:19
You had to kind of pause your retirement.
Speaker C: 00:31:21
You have to put that on hold.
Speaker C: 00:31:23
All these things that this work isn’t easy as an entrepreneur.
Speaker C: 00:31:27
Harder to sleep at night.
Speaker C: 00:31:28
You know, I. I worry about it just because I, you know, I put in the discipline and built up, you know, you know, a Runway and took a leap.
Speaker C: 00:31:39
I do feel like my industry is an easier industry to break into as an entrepreneur, you know, it’s just because there’s so much demand for the services.
Speaker C: 00:31:47
But the end of the day, it is me about personal finance, you know, is really having ownership of personal finance and being able to put yourself in a good, comfortable position from an emergency fund standpoint, to be able to take the leap if you want to do.
Speaker A: 00:32:03
Seems like the American way of life is we always spend a little more than we make.
Speaker A: 00:32:13
And if you have steady income, you will constantly be ahead of that and spending more than you make. Speaker A: 00:32:19
And it doesn’t matter what the number is.
Speaker A: 00:32:21
You make 1,000amonth, 100 million a month, you’re going to spend more than you make.
Speaker A: 00:32:24
So when you start to make that decision that you’d like to go on your own, it is really hard when you are caught up in it, where your lifestyle, there’s nothing to cut like it.
Speaker A: 00:32:34
It’s equally terrifying if you lose your job, and it’s equally terrifying to quit and go start something and.
Speaker A: 00:32:40
And it’s just hard to do.
Speaker A: 00:32:42
So I think the, the premise is.
Speaker A: 00:32:44
I think what you’re trying to say is, what I think we figure out is, you know, if you’re going to do it, just do it.
Speaker A: 00:32:49
The longer you wait, the worse.
Speaker A: 00:32:52
It’s not the worst, it’s just the harder it’s going to be because of all those other pressures that are on you.
Speaker A: 00:32:57
It makes it harder to do.
Speaker C: 00:32:59
Yeah.
Speaker C: 00:33:00
And if, if anything, you know, if you’re getting raises and you’re.
Speaker C: 00:33:05
You’re getting compensated really well, but you know that you want an exit is.
Speaker C: 00:33:08
You gotta.
Speaker C: 00:33:08
You gotta live on less than you make.
Speaker B: 00:33:11
And that’s the discipline is all I’m hearing is discipline.
Speaker A: 00:33:14
Well, it’s.
Speaker A: 00:33:15
Because as you know, with your clients and everything, it’s like without it, you gotta have a plan.
Speaker A: 00:33:19
What’s the plan?
Speaker A: 00:33:19
If the plan’s gonna make what we spend, what we make, that’s fine.
Speaker A: 00:33:22
If your plan to spend a little bit and set it aside to do this other goal, most people can do it if they set it up and plan for it.
Speaker A: 00:33:28
It’s just without the plan, it’s impossible.
Speaker A: 00:33:31
And then they look at us as the CPAs and accountants, and we’re like, well, you’re giving me nothing here, Bob.
Speaker A: 00:33:37
You took all your money.
Speaker A: 00:33:38
What do you want me to do for you?
Speaker A: 00:33:39
Yeah.
Speaker C: 00:33:39
Yeah.
Speaker C: 00:33:40
And the other thing I did too, was I said, okay, what metrics can I.
Speaker C: 00:33:44
That I can measure are my target, that gives me permission to, you know, take the leap.
Speaker C: 00:33:51
So I sat with it.
Speaker C: 00:33:52
I said, okay, if my.
Speaker C: 00:33:53
I feel like if my revenue, because I was doing it as a side hustle, right?
Speaker C: 00:33:57
Hits this and my savings is this.
Speaker C: 00:34:00
That’s my immediate.
Speaker C: 00:34:01
Put my notice in and.
Speaker C: 00:34:03
Because you’ll.
Speaker C: 00:34:04
You’ll move the goalposts on yourself.
Speaker A: 00:34:05
Oh, yeah.
Speaker C: 00:34:06
Every single month, you know.
Speaker C: 00:34:07
So I eventually sat down, said, that’s what it’s going to be.
Speaker C: 00:34:10
And it was one of the hardest decisions of my life.
Speaker C: 00:34:12
I mean, I even loved my job at the same time, but I knew I wanted to kind of provide more opportunity for my family and my kids and kind of make this, like, generational switch into entrepreneurship, because now that I’m in it, I’m like, I want to teach my kids about this.
Speaker C: 00:34:27
Like, this is amazing.
Speaker C: 00:34:28
I mean, it’s not for.
Speaker C: 00:34:30
It’s not easy, don’t get me wrong.
Speaker C: 00:34:31
But it’s so much different of a mindset than the 9 to 5.
Speaker A: 00:34:36
I’ll tell you, it’s helpful when you have a supportive spouse when they’re knocked up, ready to give birth, and you’re like, you know, I’m going to do a whole hard pivot here.
Speaker A: 00:34:44
You go with that, and you’re like, oh, yeah, have at it.
Speaker A: 00:34:46
Thanks.
Speaker A: 00:34:47
And then you just go do it.
Speaker A: 00:34:48
That. Speaker A: 00:34:48
That. Speaker A: 00:34:48
That makes it a challenge sometimes if you don’t have that.
Speaker C: 00:34:52
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker C: 00:34:53
I can’t. Speaker C: 00:34:53
I can’t not give props to my wife because she’s like, dude, you change your mind every other day.
Speaker C: 00:34:58
You’re driving me crazy.
Speaker C: 00:35:00
And she’s.
Speaker C: 00:35:01
She’s just like, home base and, like, here’s all my craziness, and then you know, bumps me on the head and, you know, and has an immense amount of trust in me, you know, too.
Speaker C: 00:35:12
So that’s.
Speaker C: 00:35:13
There have been no arguments about it, more or less her just bunking me in the head and being like, you know, get out of your own head.
Speaker A: 00:35:21
Well, we all know that, you know, the F word.
Speaker A: 00:35:24
Failure is not an option.
Speaker A: 00:35:25
Once you’re on the path, you got to make it work, because you can never go work for somebody again.
Speaker A: 00:35:31
You’re done with that.
Speaker A: 00:35:32
You’ve been tainted, so you have to make this one work.
Speaker B: 00:35:35
So we have one last question for you, and it’s the hardest question of the whole podcast.
Speaker B: 00:35:39
So get ready.
Speaker B: 00:35:41
What is your end game?
Speaker C: 00:35:45
That’s a great question.
Speaker C: 00:35:47
I would love to be in a position that either my business is built to the point where it can operate without me enough, or I, you know, save enough, invest enough that I can make hopefully, some level of early retirement.
Speaker C: 00:36:04
I don’t think I’ll want to not work.
Speaker C: 00:36:07
I think I.
Speaker C: 00:36:08
Now that I have this bug, I’m going to want to do things, but I think it comes back to, like, what would I want to do?
Speaker C: 00:36:13
And things we’ve said on here, like, being an adjunct professor would be really cool.
Speaker C: 00:36:17
Talking to kids, right?
Speaker C: 00:36:19
Maybe board seats, whether nonprofit boards or, you know, for profit.
Speaker C: 00:36:25
Being around business, I think would be great.
Speaker C: 00:36:29
Getting out of the day to day grind.
Speaker C: 00:36:31
I think that’s the end game, but still kind of having a taste of it.
Speaker B: 00:36:36
You answered it perfectly.
Speaker A: 00:36:37
He passed.
Speaker B: 00:36:38
There is no end game.
Speaker B: 00:36:39
You just walk right around what it would be.
Speaker B: 00:36:43
So you answered it perfectly.
Speaker A: 00:36:45
Yeah.
Speaker A: 00:36:45
Because you know too much.
Speaker A: 00:36:46
Why would you stop?
Speaker A: 00:36:47
Right.
Speaker A: 00:36:48
And if you can help others, which is obviously a core values, like why would you ever give it up?
Speaker A: 00:36:53
So, yeah, you’re just really trying to make the business so it can support you to do the things you really love to do.
Speaker A: 00:36:58
And that would be one of them, I’m guessing, for our listeners.
Speaker A: 00:37:02
How would they get a hold of you from a advice standpoint?
Speaker A: 00:37:06
And how would they get ahold of you on your podcast?
Speaker A: 00:37:07
Where would they go to find this?
Speaker C: 00:37:10
Yeah, so easiest to find me and I’m pretty active there is LinkedIn.
Speaker C: 00:37:14
So if you look up Tyler Davis on LinkedIn, you’ll see a bald guy.
Speaker C: 00:37:18
That would be a good one.
Speaker C: 00:37:21
The podcast is on basically every single platform.
Speaker C: 00:37:25
YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and it’s Next Gen Strategies podcast.
Speaker C: 00:37:31
It’s all linked in my LinkedIn.
Speaker C: 00:37:33
So that’s why I always tell people to go there.
Speaker C: 00:37:35
That’ll give you the whole my whole life story and what I think.
Speaker B: 00:37:38
Perfect.
Speaker A: 00:37:40
Well, I appreciate that.
Speaker A: 00:37:41
Well, Tyler, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show.
Speaker A: 00:37:43
And it sounds like you’re getting things squared away and figured out.
Speaker A: 00:37:45
And you look really relaxed in the middle of tax season, so congrats on that.
Speaker A: 00:37:50
This is.
Speaker C: 00:37:50
We got a stack of them here I got to get through.
Speaker A: 00:37:53
But no, no, those are planning things.
Speaker A: 00:37:55
That’s not tax returns.
Speaker A: 00:37:56
There’s no way you’d have that in your office right now.
Speaker A: 00:37:59
Well, again, I appreciate you being on the show and with thanks to all our listeners.
Speaker A: 00:38:03
This is the Empowering Entrepreneurs Podcast.
Speaker A: 00:38:05
I’m Glenn Harper.
Speaker B: 00:38:06
Julie Smith.
