CPA Site Solutions is fortunate enough to have a guest interview for today’s blog post. Nick Hodges is known online as “The Lazy CPA.” Nick has had a website with CPA Site Solutions since 2007. Although this post is much longer than usual, we are thankful that Nick has taken time out of a busy season to share with our readers. Want to share your own story on the CPA Site Solutions blog? Send an email to blog@cpasitesolutions.com.
Brian: How did you come up with the name The Lazy CPA?
Nick: When my wife became seriously ill in 1998, what I needed most was time to facilitate her recovery. Part of that care was to move my family from California to Mississippi to be closer to our extended family for support.
I was the managing partner of a thriving tax practice in California, and could not take a sabbatical; I needed to find a way to free up my time while staying involved in the business and continuing to take exceptional care of my clients.
Necessity is truly the mother of invention. Every activity on my plate was analyzed for value and I discarded many of the old legacy practices associated with our industry. What I came up with was a new perspective of the value of systems and team-based services that kept me in the role of decision-maker and client manager. My top clients and partners had direct access to me by cell phone, and all decisions were implemented by my on-site team.
When my wife recovered from her illness, I found I had more free time than ever before and focused on bringing expanded services to my clients. The cycle of free time and new services helped me create a unique and profitable lifestyle within the tax professional community.
I worked with my broker-dealer, Money Concepts Capital Corporation to help develop a series of educational seminars that would help CPAs add financial services to their tax practices the way I had.
Nick Hodges is The Lazy CPA
I spent about five years presenting new methods and concepts to an average of 3,000 tax professionals per year. At one of the early seminars, I was jokingly introduced by Denis Walsh, the President of Money Concepts, as a lazy CPA – because I lived in Mississippi, worked five weeks a year in my tax practice in California, and took at least three family vacations a year while earning substantial amounts of money throughout the year. As I looked over that group of CPAs sipping their coffee and staring casually out the window, and knowing that CPAs are some of the most over-worked and under-loved professionals, I thought that I needed to catch their attention in a new way.
I responded to Denis’s introduction by saying that I was not just A lazy CPA, but I was THE Lazy CPA! We had such a great reaction to it that we just continued introducing me that way. Many times an attendee would call my office and ask for “that Lazy CPA guy” because they couldn’t remember my name.
Brian: What sort of responses did you initially get from the name?
Nick: Continuing education courses are typically an opportunity for tax professionals to be out of the office and kick back for the day, detached from the presentation. After being introduced as THE lazy CPA, all eyes would be on me, suspicious and looking for any mistakes I might make in the presentation.
The point is, the moniker worked: everyone in the room was engaged, albeit angry at first. That involvement created discussions that were lively and honest, with the attendees thinking about how my systems might work for them.
By the end of the presentations, many would come up and ask how we might create some sort of partnership. This was, of course, impossible due to time constraints, but I felt good about being able to deliver new concepts and systems to them that would help them create better lives.
Brian: How have things changed (in the industry) since you started?
Nick: I’ve been sharing my story nationwide for about 10 years now. When we first started providing seminars for adding financial services to the tax practice, we used to spend an hour or more on the question of the conflict of interests.
Since the AICPA has clarified this position, there is very little conversation on this topic any more. Five years ago, the questions were about how to manage a tax practice to create more time; the result was my tax practice manual and training programs. Now, we are hearing directed questions about the practical application of HOW to add financial services to the tax practice. We are seeing more and more CPAs adding financial services as a way to retain clients and improve their firm’s profitability.
At present, I am spending more of my time mentoring young CPAs in how to seamlessly provide tax, accounting, and financial services to our clients in line with what I’ve learned over the past decade.
Brian: What are some of the best tools you use for your practice?
Nick: Of course, I LOVE the tools provided by CPA Site Solutions! I am happy with my website options, and have received positive comments of the professional look of the pages.
My clients use the calculators and enjoy reading the professionally prepared articles. We have been delivering our clients’ tax returns electronically through the on-line vault for years. This means that we no longer print tax returns and we use a fraction of the toner, paper, and labor costs during tax season.
With the newsletter feature, I keep in touch with each and every client monthly. In addition, during the recent economic downturn, I was able to create and send a personal messages to them each week at no extra cost. My clients loved it.
We also use their online Quickbooks and Payroll for many of my small business clients. It has substantially streamlined how we deliver our bookkeeping services.
Other tools I use are Emoney Advisor as the platform for my financial planning operation. I use Jennings Seminars live and streaming continuing education. Money Concepts is my broker-dealer and delivers key online resources and other training in delivering financial planning to my clients. In addition, I have an internal operations manual that we keep in a constant state of update and revision as we refine our methods and systems.
Brian: Advice you would give a fellow CPA?
Nick: I am reminded of the scene from Alice in Wonderland when she meets the Cheshire Cat at a fork in the road. She asks, “Which road do I take?” He responds, “Where do you want to go?” When Alice answers, “I don’t know,” the cat replies, “Then, it doesn’t matter.”
My advice to my fellow CPA is to have a bold vision for not just your practice, but also for your lifestyle. To challenge you to understand that the only one preventing you from living the lifestyle you truly want is you – trapped in old ways of thinking. That there is always room for improvement in your systems and methodologies. I’m hoping that like my moniker, The Lazy CPA, that readers will be upset and engaged enough after reading this to rethink what they’re doing and why.
