Episode 156: You Can Do Anything You Put Your Mind To With Randy Crabtree
Cultivate a growth mindset and achieve your full potential! Join Amy Vetter in this insightful episode as she welcomes CPA and entrepreneur Randy Crabtree. The Co-Founder and Partner of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Professionals talks about his love for math and how it eventually led him to the world of tax accounting. Be inspired by his entrepreneurial journey as he shares how he navigated the challenges of building his own firm and overcoming burnout. Randy also speaks about the importance of continuous improvement for leaders, how he created a unique “team of friends,” and the power of believing that you can do anything you put your mind to.
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You Can Do Anything You Put Your Mind To With Randy Crabtree
Welcome to this episode where I interviewed Randy Crabtree. He is the Cofounder and Partner of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Professionals, a widely followed author, lecturer, and podcast host for the accounting profession. Since 2019, he has hosted the biweekly The Unique CPA Podcast, which ranks among the world's 5% most popular programs. Randy was named to Accounting Today’s 2023 Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting, and he is the Founder and Host of the Bridging the Gap Conference.
He is a frequent guest on podcasts on the Accounting Cornerstone Foundation Board and the Firm Growth Forum Advisory Board. In May 2022, Randy was appointed for a three-year term to the Intuit Tax Council, and prior to starting Trier, Crabtree was managing partner of a CPA firm in the greater Chicago area. He has more than 35 years of public accounting and tax consulting experience in a wide variety of industries, and he has worked closely with top executives to help them optimize their tax planning strategies.
During my interview with Randy, we discussed his love of math. It eventually led him to the love of being a tax accountant. What you're going to read about is his entrepreneurial journey, how he found his passion and energy in this profession, and what he learned from past employers that taught him how he wanted to lead when creating the culture at Tri-Merit, which he refers to as a team of friends.
I hope you enjoy this episode. There's so many great stories and tidbits that Randy shared during this interview. I know I always love talking to Randy. Please subscribe to this show if you find something interesting to you and you want to keep up with the latest interviews and make sure to share it with a friend or a colleague so that you can be able to share these lessons as well.
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I'm excited to have my friend here, Randy Crabtree. Randy, do you mind giving a little intro on yourself before we get started?
Early Influences And Importance Of Family
Sure. Amy, thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this ever since you and I talked about setting this up, so it should be fun. My name's Randy Crabtree, as you said. I am a CPA. My background is a generalist for many years, and then I sold my practice. Maybe we'll talk about this. I built it incorrectly and I sold it because I was getting burnt out and started another business called Tri-Merit, which is a niche specialty tax business. That has been running since 2007. I gave up man partner role years ago, so I'm out just speaking to the profession on different topics.
It's a good role to be in.
You and I cross paths often in that role.
Just to begin, maybe you can just start off by letting us know where you grew up, and what did your parents do for a living. Just a little background on yourself, young.
Sure. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs in Arlington Heights. I moved to Arlington Heights when I was four. I'm telling you this because there's a point to it in a second. I lived near Arlington Heights, within a mil,e for the first four years of my life. I'm 62 years old right now. For the first time in 62 years, I just moved out of that area, but only about 20 minutes away. For me, that was a big move. My wife and I, ever since we've been married, we lived in Arlington Heights, so that's 38 years. Before that I was there. I made a major change moving twenty minutes away, which just seems a little odd.
With all your travel.
Yeah, exactly. We're loving it. The house is great. It feels like a vacation house, but that's not what you asked. My history, my parents, they've been married for 63 years now. My parents got married very young. My mom was seventeen when I was born. The oldest child, which is actually the oldest grandchild on my mother's side of the family, which is always an interesting place to be. My dad grew up in Nebraska, one of the poorest families in one of the poorest towns in Nebraska. My dad left there at 18, joined the Army for 2 years, realized that was not for him, and ended up working at a gas station when my mom met him. He got into a business, which is Illinois Tool Works, just started in the press room running a machine, and ended up, after 38 years, in that company in an executive position.
He's been really a hero of mine. He worked hard and he made sure family was first and he did everything he could. He is around. Unfortunately, I felt he makes sacrifices that I think he wish he wouldn't have made at times because I always felt like he wanted to be an entrepreneur. I feel like you're Barbara Walters here. You've already taken me down the road of seeing where we're going with family history.
That's him. He retired at age 58. I'm very fortunate my parents are both still around. My mom was not working when we were real young, then was working in McDonald's just to make extra money. Actually, my parents used that extra money to buy a piece of land in Northern Wisconsin that they ended up building the house on. They spend their summers there are still. My mom went and became a preschool teacher for many years and loved that and then went to work with one of my uncle's businesses as running the inside office there. They both have been retired for quite a while. They do a lot of traveling still, and they're enjoying life.
How many brothers and sisters?
I forgot that. I'm the oldest of four. Two brothers after me. My sister was a little bit after the rest of us, but she's thirteen years younger than me.
Your mom was seventeen when she had you. How did she meet your dad?
Pulling into the gas station and noticing this cute guy pumping gas and then kept going back there whether she needed gas or not. He was twenty at the time and they just hit it off because my mom kept going back for gas and talking to constantly. I know the story. It's Balco was in the Northwest suburbs. My dad will actually still talk about the Balco gas station he was working at just after he got out of the Army, but then almost immediately went to ITW. That's how they met. They got married very fast, I think probably within six months of meeting. I don't even know the time.
Were they getting pressured to get married?
No, they actually eloped. The story is my grandfather was not very happy. He heard about it, but he bought in and my grandfather and my father became very close. I think it was just a short time. I never saw any of that where my grandfather was not happy with the situation. In reality, my grandfather actually helped my dad build the cabin that my parents still have in Northern Wisconsin, and my great-grandfather and me as an 8-year-old, which probably I didn't do anything but. I helped out as well.
Randy's Father's Entrepreneurial Spirit
Your dad switches and goes into this job as a tool machinist, but you said that he had an entrepreneurial side to him? What makes you say that?
It's because he would talk about it, not a lot, but there was this one restaurant and we didn't go out to eat a lot because my parents were very into saving money. There was this one restaurant that we would go to on Sunday mornings after church. Not every week. Once a month or something. I think it was a franchise model. I can remember multiple times my dad not dwelling on it and they talking about, “Maybe I should look at getting one of these franchises.” It’s that type of thing.
I just always felt he made that sacrifice for us and that's what he was all about and is all about, sacrificing for family. I honestly felt like, “Did we hold him back on that?” He doesn't care. I think maybe that's why all four of us are entrepreneurs. We all have gone into our own businesses at one way or another, one level or another. I think it's because of that maybe, “Let's do this for dad since he didn't have the opportunity to.”
Did he say that or was this an assumption?
It was an assumption. I don't know. Maybe my siblings don't feel the same way I do on that. I just always had the sense that he wanted this, but he wanted stability for the family more than that, or that was the most important thing to him.
As far as your perspective of him working at this company for all these years, because you've definitely gone a different path, you made this assumption about whether he wanted to be an entrepreneur or not. However, did you have any perception about the kind of work he was doing and whether that was the right thing for you?
I did from a standpoint. Actually, while I was in college, I worked where he was an executive at this company. He ended up being executive at Hi-Cone, which is a division of Illinois Tool Works and Hi-Cone made the plastic six-pack carriers that every single can of beer that you've ever drank is inside of these pretty much. I spent two different summers in the press room working there to get money to get through college and all that. One of the second summer there, the supervisor in the press room said, “You're really good at this. Would you consider staying?” My dad was immediately, “No, he is not going to be doing this.” Believe me, I didn't want to either because it was such monotonous work and I give people credit. They could do it, but it was every twenty minutes, you do the same thing over.
You replace the plastic, you feed it through the machine, you get it rolled up, you start the machine. People that work there forever, and I don't blame it at all. They would just sit the twenty minutes and wait and then get the machine going again, which I would probably do over time anyways, but I couldn't sit still. That's why I think they were impressed because I would be sweeping the floor. I'd go pick up the garbage. I would do anything to stay busy because just sitting still for twenty minutes, you would just stare at the clock and I couldn't do it. From that standpoint, I knew my dad went through many years of that and I'm sure that's why he made sure that's not something that I would have to endure or go through, which it wasn't going to happen anyway.
Just as a side note, the one thing that he did mention many times, and I don't mean this to be offensive or anything because it isn't, because I appreciate everybody that's in the military and who serves, but my dad was like, “Preach to us. You are not going into the military,” from an early age. I think he had a bad experience is why. I think it's also somewhat of an entrepreneurial mindset. This is the way I look at it. You can't make decisions when you're in the Army, and I think he felt too controlled and was just going to put up with it. That's why he probably often told us that. This was a mantra in my dad. “You can do anything you put your mind to.” Constantly, he would tell us that you can be anything you want.
Growth Mindset: You cannot decide who you want to be when you are in the army.
I think that's interesting, too, when we talk about belief systems and where they come from because your dad having that experience, he's giving you a belief system about what he thinks you happen to be made to want to be an entrepreneur. There are people that want the order and want the routine. It's just interesting if you have those competing messages, if you were made differently, what choices that could have made for you as well? It just worked out for you.
Yeah, I guess so. I never even thought about it that way, but that makes sense because I have to have the mindset that he was preaching for it to work out that way. As I said, all four siblings have seemed to follow that path. Somehow, I think it's a combination of ingrained and taught.
I think there is a piece of nature versus nurture, especially being an entrepreneur, anyone that is outside the confines of salary. Also, having that cheerleader behind you saying it's possible when things are hard or you just got to stick with it or put your mind to it. Even though he had that routine job where he came from, what he was doing, having a child that young and he still was able to put his mind to something and make sure that it happens. I don't know him, but his dream was probably that you guys would have this opportunity so it didn't hold him back.
It did give us all that opportunity. As I said earlier, they were savers, for sure. They’ve been able to enjoy the fruits of that savings in their retirement. As I mentioned earlier, they retired. They live in three different houses. In the winter, it's in Arizona. In the summer, it's in Wisconsin and in between seasons, it's here in the Chicago Northwest suburbs where we live.
Discovering A Passion For Math And Computers
What were your interests young? What were the things that you enjoyed doing?
Sports has always been a big part of our family in general. Everything. My dad coached a lot too, and that's probably why I ended up coaching a lot. I got addicted to basketball at about age fifteen and played. Actually, for the first time in years, I went out and played. The knees don't hold up like they used to, but the comradery and the hanging out with the people on the court and enjoying it and just the friendly trash talk and all that is so much fun.
Sports is a big part of it. It always has. Not only play in, but watching. Our family, in general, I think there are six generations of Cubs fans now in our family from my great-grandfather. Bears fans, Kathy, my wife and I and our two sons and their oldest, our oldest son's girlfriend and our youngest son's wife. The six of us with my youngest son’s mother-in-law and our niece. Eight of us went out to watch the Bears game play in London, which was a lot of fun.
On the geeky side, I’ve always loved math. I don't know why. I could remember, I don't even know what grade, but grade school, I would just sit and do the math. I don't even know what it's called anymore. The square boxes where you just do all the math equations and just fill them in and just how this work and numbers flowing. That was always something that I remember, math being super exciting to me, which I know sounds pretty weird, but I enjoyed it until I got to calculus or differential equations. Even calculus. Calculus 1, 2 and 3. I got through in college but didn't like any of it. I love algebra. Algebra, statistics. Statistics goes with the sports maybe, too, but statistics is fine. Geometry was okay. Algebra was great. Calculus was like, I got the differential equations and I said, “No.” After about three weeks, “This is it. I'm done.”
When you went to college, did you know you know you wanted to be an accountant or were you going in a different direction?
I didn't even know I wanted to be an accountant until after college.
That was the other thing. When I was in high school, computer science was just starting, computer stuff back in the late ‘70s, I was in high school. We had a computer class and nobody signed up for it except three of us. I got into that class and really loved it. I would get on the computer and I'd make games and made very rudimentary games just based on random generating, turning it into a slot machine or something like that. I started to really like computers and because of that, I went to college for computer science. The passion didn't last very long, but I ended up getting a degree in it. I went in as a double major, Math and Computer Science. I know I have enough classes to have a Math minor, but there was one I took at a junior college that I never transferred over.
All I had to do was transfer that over and I would technically have a math minor too, but I never finished the Math major. Honestly, I was not a good student from a standpoint of applying myself, I think, because the passion really wasn't there for computer science. I just needed to, “Let's just finish it up, let's get through this.” As a student in general, I was always a good student. I just never applied myself that much. That is a passion thing, which maybe we'll talk about later.
After I was out working a year as a computer programmer at a large company and it was awful because we sat at our desk and did nothing, that kind of what I was saying before, just sitting there, counting time, in my mind, it was just the management there. There was a huge billion-dollar project we were working on, but nobody knew what was going on. It just turned me off to computer science.
In fact, as a side note, this project, 5, 6, 7 years after I left, got scrapped. All the money they put into it, they just scrapped the entire project. That was probably part of it. After a year of that, I decided sales is where the money's at. I was making $22,000 and my friends in sales were making $30,000. I'm like, ‘Yes, I'm going to go into sales.” Again, no passion for the product, no passion for what I was doing, and I was terrible at sales. I was awful at it.
I’ve learned over the years, passion is important to me and I didn't realize that till many years later. It was food. I was working for a food broker. It was actually my uncle's business and he's great. My mom was actually working there at the time. My aunt was working there. Family was working there. Family is super important to me. It's just there was nothing there that I enjoyed. I’ll just go back to the passion standpoint. I like food, but it's almost like I was a Gen Z-er then. I didn't feel like I was making an impact with anything.
I don't think there's a difference in generations. I just think there's more awareness about it now.
If you don't mind, I’ll go into the story then, because to me, it's interesting. That was the year my wife and I got married. My dad had always done my tax return in the past. I did our tax return the year we got married. Again, numbers were involved, so I was enjoying it but didn't think I should be an accountant or anything. I just thought that was fun. I think it was about May of ’87. Yes, because we got married in ‘86. The end of ‘86, I did her tax return. May of ’87, I was driving down North Avenue in Chicago and all of a sudden, this light bulb went off. I'm not kidding, it was all of a sudden.
I pulled over to the side of the road. This was a long time ago. I went to a phone booth. I called my wife. This is the story I tell and I swear these are the words that came out of my mouth. I said, “I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to go back to school full time. I want to be a CPA.” She's probably, “Wait, what? What are you talking about?” “I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to go back to school full time. I'm going to be a CPA.” It didn't stop there. This was immediate. “I'm going to be out and work for four years for somebody else and then I'm going to start my own firm. This all came to me this instant.” This part I might misremember, but at least the gist of it was, “Yeah, we'll talk when we get home tonight.”
Actually, I’ll take it back. I think that was March because then I did quit in May, started summer school, went to school for three semesters the summer, the fall, the spring full-time. I got enough hours to sit for the CPA exam. In July of ’88 then, I got my first job in public accounting.
Did you pass on your first time?
I did not pass. That's good too because I had just finished school so I didn't really study. Everybody's like, “You’ve got to study. You got to study for the exam.” I shouldn't even say this. Part of the hours that I got to qualify was by taking the Becker Review Course. They gave you hours that qualify to sit for the exam but I just didn't go to many of the classes. I don't remember going to many of them, but I had enough hours. I sat for the exam. I passed two the first time. I passed the next two the second time.
I think it was May of ‘89 when I officially passed. My timing might be wrong. I think I sat for the first round in May of '88. I think I sat for the second round in November of '88 because it was only twice a year back then. It was in person, and it was at McCormick Center or our Donnelley Center in Chicago. You've probably heard this story. You're not old enough.
I did the same thing.
We were in this big giant warehouse with I don't know how many people. It was crazy but it was nice.
I worked at KPMG and you weren't allowed to miss one of the exams. You had to take it every six months at the time. I was getting married that week and that was the first time I had to take the exam. I was throwing up in the bathroom. I'm like, “This is just awful.” I was so scared. I just came off my first busy season and getting married and then I'm taking an exam and I'm overwhelmed.
That does not sound fun. Kids these days have it so easy.
This public accounting firm you went in for tax then, I'm assuming.
I had that idea. In four years, I'm going to start my own firm. I went to a small local firm and we did a little of everything. I probably shouldn't have, but I think we did a good job. I did tax, I did accounting, I did audits in the small firm. There were two partners. There was 6 or 7 of us in total. I got a wide range of knowledge. I realized early on I did not like audit at all. I don't even really like accounting in general. As me personally, I like tax. That goes back to when I did that tax return probably. Taxes has always been a thing.
What is it about tax?
I don't know what it is. I think it's just finding ways to make a difference on a tax return, and that's what we do now. It's all incentives and you could probably call it advisory, but I just remember, “What can I do? How can I save some money? What are the things out there in the tax code that are beneficial?” I think it's that over-accounting, which just accounting seems okay. I think maybe it's this. The tax is actually not accounting has to be, “We have to get down to zero. It has to balance.” With taxes, there are things we can adjust and change here. You don't necessarily ever get the complete maybe right answer. It's a correct answer, but maybe not the right.
Growth Mindset: You can adjust and change things here and there when dealing with taxes. You may find the correct answer but not necessarily the right answer.
Someone might come with a different one.
You're always constantly try striving to get to a better answer on things.
Finding The Right Fit And Culture
Did you work at the firm for four years? Did you stay on that track?
Actually, I find my stories interesting even if anybody else does.
I stayed for two years because again, I need to get more experience because how do I know what we're doing here is right? I got to go somewhere else and see how they're doing it. I know into another small firm and timing will be a little off here, but I think it was October, I went there. It was a firm that was doing audits of car dealers, which is that's one thing I was doing at the other firm. I thought at least my skills will translate, although I was doing a lot of attacks and everything else at the other firm.
I went to this new firm and I immediately realized that I had made a mistake. The culture at this first firm was so good. The people were amazing. Honestly, when I told them I was taking a new a new job, I was crying because I knew I was going to miss it. Probably deep inside, I knew I made a mistake, but I just felt I had to do this.
What was it about the culture that you're saying was so good?
The biggest thing I remember is fun. We hung out. I always felt a little guilty because we'd go out to lunch together all the time and they were buying. I'm like, “Shouldn't I buy lunch?” “No, don't worry about it. We got it.” There was two partners, one of the partners, every time we go to lunch, had this philosophy that he would eat everything on the plate he didn't like first because then he would make sure he ate everything. I'm like, “That doesn't make sense if you don't like it.”
Mom taught him that.
Things like that. They had a group of friends that played flag football together and they would invite me to go do that. It was more of a relationship organization than a boss-employee aspect to it. I think that's what I really knew I was going to miss.
Can I just relate it back? There are two things you said. I have a passion for tax, so you've come up with that. You also said what you loved about sports was the comradery. I think that's important when people are thinking about their career and what they're doing. It's not just about what you do, it's about what fuels you and gives you energy. Obviously, that relationship-based feeling like you're getting to know people matters. It's not just sports. It relates to anything in your life.
I honestly feel at some point during this recording, I'm going to have to cry. I think it's probably a necessity. We'll work on that.
I’ll bring out my Barbara Walters out.
You hit the nail on the head. I'm like, “Is she a therapist? What's going on here?” I guess those yogi skills are coming out.
It's just paying attention to those inside messages, I think it's important. Anyone reading this and reading how someone's life unfolds is important to understand. Things you're told, things you see, where you get your energy, what you love to do, all these things matter. It's not just the compensation.
Is it all right to finish up the story of me moving into this firm? I went there and this should have been a red flag right away. The partners were a dad and two sons working for family like that. It could be good, but maybe tough. I was out there and didn't feel great. The people I worked with that were at my level, it was almost an us and them if I look at it now a little bit, because the people at my level, we hung out. There were some people I stayed in touch with for a long time there. We got to a point where things came to a head for me in January. I was there just a few months. I was out at an audit with the managing partner who was the dad. We're leaving that audit, which was about 5 or 6 blocks from the office in Chicago.
I start walking back and he gets in the cab and he looks at me and he says, “What are you doing?” I go, “I'm going to walk back to the office.” “Get in the effing cab now.” This is what he says to me, serious face mad. I was in shock. I literally just went on autopilot and I got in the cab and I'm sure many people have dealt with worse things than this. For me, if we could back to my history and the controlling thing and my dad not wanted to be controlled, there we go. Now I'm going to self-analyze here.
I got in the cab, went back to the office, went through the motions, went home, talked to my wife and came up with a plan. I went to the office the next day. This will sound bad to some people, maybe because it was January the beginning of tax season. I went back to the office the next day, organized all my files, put notes on all my files, my desk was probably the cleanest it ever looked. I walked out at lunch and went home, called one of the other partners and said, “I'm not coming back. I organized all the files. If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer everything with notes, but you can reach out to me, but I can't deal with your dad.” I got the impression they understood what I was saying. I left. No job.
Did you have kids?
No kids. We were a little over a year married at that point. No kids yet. The next day, not that same day that I walked out, I called the old firm. I said, “I just want to let you know I left that other firm.” The first thing they said is, “Do you want to come back?” I was like, “I’ll be there tomorrow.” That relationship aspect of things, that friendliness, that supportive aspect is something I’ve tried to pass on over the years as well.
I think part of leadership is taking the good things over. You're like a quilt of all the people you've learned from over time and what things you want to pass on and not pass on.
Not pass on is important. You are correct.
How long did you end up staying there?
I wish I could have stayed longer. I stayed like another year and a half. My wife's uncle, who was a CPA and had his own practice, was just merging in another firm. He had some employees, but he was the only partner. He asked me to go in with him and to help manage this new larger firm that he was building. I got an interesting life when it starts with my career. That didn't last very long because the guy he bought this other practice from was, I’ll just say it nicely, not a very nice person. They started having issues where what it looked like is the guy was billing the clients himself rather than my uncle-in-law. He was stealing checks. That's what it appears.
A lot of bad stuff going on. He was going to let the deal just go. I had built some relationship with clients and so he actually said, “You go resign and whatever you do after that is up to you,” meaning, If you want to call the clients and start your own thing, go ahead and do that.” That was November of ‘91. My dates might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was November of ‘91.
My dates are a little off. Whatever it was, that's when my firm started, which was basically right at that four-year timeframe that I had given myself. I did that. I actually did have a cell phone then, which was a bag phone. I got in the car and I started calling clients and I think between the half-hour drive from the office I had just resigned to getting to my house, I think I had about $60,000 of annual business. That's how the firm started.
Starting And Selling His Own Firm
At this point, when you're explaining to your dad all your moves, what was his perspective after being at one company for most of his life?
I never remember him anything but supportive. I don't remember him questioning anything. I don't even remember advice or anything. It is just, “This is great. Keep doing what you're doing,” type of thing. That's a good question because that was it. My dad actually, when he retired, he came to work with me for a couple of tax seasons, too. He got that entrepreneurial spirit at the end of his career. He actually took the H&R block tax course so he could understand tax returns. He did a little of everything for me, just sending out returns, printing all the organizers, the things we used to do. Hopefully, everybody used to print out organizers and not still printed them out. That was it. Nothing but supportive. My dad's always been just like this super supportive person in all of our lives.
That is so important to have. It can keep you thriving and going, having that support system behind you. All right, you started your own firm and then what happened with that?
How long do we have? I’ll do a short version. You see if you want to expand on anything. Technically then, that started in ‘91. I know that for a fact. ‘91 is when I started my own firm. I ran that until ’06, so fifteen years. I was not intentional at all on how I was growing that. I didn't put any intention and I didn't even think about being an expert in a niche or concentrating just on tax. I didn't even know the word advisory at the time. As most people starting to firm are, and there's nothing wrong with it, I was taking on any client that had money that would pay me. We became a very mishmashed business. We were helping law firms, doctors, Burger Kings, construction companies, hair salons and a ton of 1040s, over 1,000 probably as well.
Looking back, I really was not an expert in any one area. I'm honest. Probably not helping the clients as much as I possibly could because there was just too many things to know. I didn't know about outsourcing. I didn't know that there was a cost seg opportunity out there. I didn't know these things existed, but it got so tax-heavy that by 2006, I just didn't know a term for it, but felt burnt out. As much as the burnout aspect of it, I knew my long hours during taxes were affecting our kids. My wife, after a year or two, she realized our kids are acting differently during tax season. Our kids were the nicest kids in the world, never acting up, get along with themselves, they're still best friends to this day, but during tax season, it was different.
That was the final straw for me. I'm not going to let this affect my kids and maybe relationships with them. In ‘06, I ended up selling my firm and had another business at the time, but sold that as well in ’06, unexpectedly. I took some time off and then realized that I probably need to still work. That's where Tri-Merit came out of. Finding a niche practice just energized me. We're a specialty tax firm. We were just dealing with R&D tax credits. When I actually saw that you could do this, you could be an expert in one area, my joy level went through the roof.
Importance Of Niche Specialization
What about it made you passionate about finding R&D credits? What was it about R&D credits versus other things?
You're right, R&D was all we did for about seven years. My friend uses the word bringing joy to accounting. We were bringing joy to clients because we were saving them money. Again, it's tax. I was enjoying the tax aspect of it without the tax season because I didn't have that and I got to stay in tax still. Everything we did put money back into businesses and to see what they were able to use that for and do with it. Also, equipping the CPA firms, the accounting firms that we work with to be the hero to their client.
We don't necessarily need the credit and want the credit. We wanted to educate. That's another aspect we could talk about. We wanted to educate the accounting firms on what these things were because not everybody even knew. Educating them to go identify opportunities and then seeing them reap the benefits of that relationship building experience they're having because they're bringing more money back into the business, everything about it was just exciting, fun and positive.
Growth Mindset: It is exciting and fun to educate accounting firms on how things work because now, everybody can identify opportunities around them.
What did you grow that team to be?
Where are we at now?
Yeah.
We're about 75 people. In 2023, we were over $20 million in revenue. It's been a nice business. We took a little bit of a drop in 2024, which we knew was coming. In 2025, I think could be our best year ever. Still, we've added it to not just be R&D, but we've got about 6, 7, 8 different services, all tax credits or incentives that we deal with. There's a lot of uniqueness to what we do, I think, in the profession that I'm very proud of. One of them is, we built, I believe, an unbelievable culture in a remote environment.
How did you do that?
Relationships. As I said, early on with the first firm that I talked about, it was not just a boss and employee relationship. It was a friend relationship. It sounds corny to me sometimes, but I say we have a team of friends. Everybody that works together. I love them all. I love to hear what they're doing outside of work. I like to get to know who they are if they want to share, but everybody does like to share their passions. On that level, it's not just, “How many jobs did you pump out?” It's, “How was your weekend? How was your kid's soccer game?”
Our head of marketing is an unbelievable artist that has art in a gallery. If I didn't build relationships, I'd never know that. Somebody I work with used to professionally race motorcycle, and somebody else plays the fiddle in bands. All this cool stuff you learn about. We have multiple people that, there's probably a name for it, but Disney-aholics. That's the name I’ll come up with. They love it. They're passionate about it. They're so excited about it. When you see that excitement that come out of them for what they love doing, that's how we build relationships. Just getting to know the people on a personal level.
Growth Mindset: We build relationships by making accountants excited and getting in love in what they are doing. This is how we get to know people on a personal level.
I don't think I’ve heard this before. I love that you built a friend culture. I always have a pet peeve with, “We're a family environment.” First of all, you never know the connotation of family. Who wants their family at work? You want to have outside people that you choose. Calling it a friend culture is a whole different connotation. I love that.
Honestly, if I think back, I think I’ve had that discussion with you in the past or I’ve heard you talk about that in the past, maybe. I don't think I would've used the family word, but I'm going to say you had an impact on me when I chose the word friends.
That's funny and now I just brought it up again.
I think I just heard you talk about it in the past. That's probably it because I actually wrote a company culture code. In there, I actually talk about how when people join our team of friends. I honestly think when I picked the word friends, it was after I heard you talk about what family can mean differently to different people.
You said you built this remotely. When you're remote, you can't go to lunch like you were talking about with your first firm and so forth. What are you doing remotely to protect the culture?
There are a few things that we do. One, it's all, again, about relationships, but the simple one, maybe it doesn't sound simple, but for us it's simple, is that we use Microsoft Teams for our meetings. At the end of a Teams meeting, and I think we don't do it on every meeting now, which I think we still should at least do it on one big monthly meeting for each group, somebody in that, if it's the marketing team or the sales team or the production team, get to spend telling us about themselves as long as they want. They can do it through a slideshow. They can do it by holding their kids in front of the camera or their pets or their artwork or whatever they're passionate about. Do a slideshow of pictures from your last vacation.
They just get to talk about themselves and who they are and what they love that is not related to tax credits and incentives. That's one thing we do. That's how I’ve learned so much from people. In addition, I still think that personal connection is one-to-one, or even many-to-many, and super important. Just the fact that they used to go to give somebody a hug and have that and tell them how much you appreciate them.
Twice a year, and I'm going to pull back from that for a second because in 2024, unfortunately, we didn't do either of these just because we knew it was a little bit tighter cashflow year. I hate so much that we didn't do them still. I'm looking forward to May, which will then be our next one. Twice a year, we do an in-person event. We fly everybody to one location. In May, it's usually Chicago because that's just where we started the business for no other reason. It's not even where we have the most people anymore.
Chicago's where we normally do in May, and then in the fall, usually the end of November, early December, we go somewhere warm. Not exotic warm, but like Orlando or Arizona, Scottsdale. We did San Diego. We get together for two and a half days and it's almost like a mini Tri-Merit conference. It's not. We're not just educating. We're just having fellowship. We're getting together, we're playing games. We're hanging out too late at times, but hanging out at night to have a few drinks and that aspect of building relationships is super important.
Sorry, I keep rambling. If you want to stop at any time, you can. This is me bragging about our culture again, but the reason that we can do that is it's expensive. Each time, I don't know, $150,000, $200,000. It's not a cheap thing. Nobody leaves Tri-Merit. We don't have turnover. That cost savings from not having to bring in new people and train new people is way more than offset by the expense that we have for this. The savings we have from not replacing people.
I think it's because of the culture. There are many aspects of the culture that is why I can equate to why we don't lose people. In many years, I think we've had nine people leave. I'm in shock a little. There are some times where people don't fit the culture. As a friend of mine says, we ask them to be successful elsewhere or even help them be successful elsewhere. If they're going to be a negative impact on the culture, it's not something that we're going to jeopardize the rest of the people with.
You have to protect your culture. I love just the comparison of yes, it's expensive, but we're having cost savings with low turnover instead of just looking at it one way. That's so important. I just could keep talking to you. I know there's so many topics we have not touched on, but I'd like to end with some rapid-fire questions. You pick a category. It's family or friends. As a category, money, spiritual or health?
That's a tough one for me because health is something that I talk about all the time, but family and friends is the most important thing to me. We've been talking family and friends, so should we convert to health this time?
Sure. Things are actions that I don't have that I want to have with my health.
For me, health is super important. We didn't even talk about this. Years ago, I had a stroke and you've known this. I am very big on mental and physical health. The one thing that I'm still not the greatest at is calorie reduction. I’ve actually lost 35 pounds in a year. I purposely am making sure that I stay at a good weight. The question was the thing I don't have that I wish I had. I still need a little more self-control with some of the things that I eat that I probably shouldn't eat. Moderation is fine and I'm doing pretty good on the moderation aspect of that.
Things are actions I do have that I want to keep.
My workout routine. I can't miss it. It's very important to me. With health, I think exercise, and obviously, I understand you will agree to this. I just get energized by my workout in the morning and I feel so much better after doing it. Even if I have that occasional late night with a drink or two too much, just the exercise gets rid of that. Every aspect of my life is better through exercise. That's something I don't think I will ever get rid of. I'm not sure if there's many people that work out as hard as me, especially at age 62. That's something I'm going to keep.
Things are actions I don't have that I don't want to have.
This would be a bad thing, then. It comes to health, and actually, this is an easy answer. I don't know why I hesitated on this. I don't want to have any mental struggles and I don't have any mental struggles. The reason I say that is that five years after my stroke, I did have mental struggles. The fact that I'm past that, every day is beautiful to me. Everything I do, I love. Every moment in my life is amazing. That's an amazing place to be. When I wasn't there, when you have gone through some mental struggles, that's one thing you want to make sure you avoid. Not having any mental health issues in my life is something that I don't want to have and I don't have.
Growth Mindset: Every day is beautiful to me. Everything I do, I love. Every moment of my life is amazing.
Last one, things or actions that I do have that I don't want.
It probably goes back to the first one. I’ve said this a couple of times, I don't overdrink, but I guess I do occasionally because I'm a big craft beer fan. I love craft beer. It's so easy to be sitting around, especially when you're hanging out with your friends and family and building relationships to have 1 or 2 more than you should. The exercise counteracts it. Maybe I should say let's just reduce one beer when I'm out drinking.
Key Takeaways And Closing Thoughts
Anything that you want to make sure to emphasize or anything you didn't say that you want to close out with?
I think we just touched on health at the end here, but what I would say is don't be afraid to make changes in your life. Even as a profession, we are so ingrained with consistency that we ignore doing things that'll make changes in our profession and our lives that will be better. Always constantly strive to find ways that are going to improve you and the people around your life. I think that's one thing I strive to do. I think that's why I feel like I'm happy all the time.
It's a purpose that if you go back and you're not feeling so great, you remember at the end of the day. I wrote down what your dad said, but that you can do anything you want you can do anything you put your mind to. Change is possible if you put your mind to it. Thank you so much for being on, Randy. I really appreciate it.
This is my highlight of 2024. Thank you so much for having me
Thank you so much.
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Now for our Mindful Moments with this interview with Randy. I think we could have kept talking probably for another hour. We got to the health part of this at the very end, and I know that part is so important for Randy. He goes around trying to help others in their mental health journey as he had his own story. Definitely follow Randy to find out more about that. What I did love about is we got to see a whole another side of Randy and learn about his journey of entrepreneurship and why it was important to him.
Some of the things that we talked about of just really going back in his past was seeing his dad be at the same job for most of his career and watching his dad and thinking that his dad would've wished to have been an entrepreneur, to take those risks. He was making sacrifices so that Randy and his brothers and sister could be able to do that in the future and be able to take those risks and have that flexibility to do that in their lives where his mom and his dad did not from their beginnings.
What was interesting about that conversation was when I asked Randy whether he knew that for sure. He didn't. That was an assumption of watching his father. I always find it interesting the things that we perceive. I didn't get to delve too deep into it, but maybe it’s where Randy could have felt some guilt for his dad, where he felt that his dad had sacrificed something of his own for him. That could be true, but if that's what brought his dad joy, to see his kids flourish and to be able to change future generations by the job that he had, we can find purpose in the things that we do, even if it's not what we imagined.
I was just doing a coaching call and one of the managers that I was coaching, I thought, was so interesting because we were talking about this very topic. We had done so much work around what things give us energy and what things don't give us energy, so she was able to start changing her perspective on the things that don't give us energy, but finding the commonalities of what in those things that she doesn't like to do. Could she find energy in that now that she knows where her energy comes from or where she could put her energy where she didn't before instead of looking at it as a negative?
I think it is important for us to communicate and really find out what it is that provides us happiness and joy, among other things. Where Randy's father probably has tons of joy watching his kids be able to do these things because of the work that he did. He still is able to have that entrepreneurial spirit. The other thing that we talked about, too was that his dad had given him advice over time.
When he was starting out in his career, his dad had given him this advice that he didn't want him to work in an assembly line or machine factory like he had. He also didn't want him to go into the military, which is interesting because you can have the complete opposite thought when someone has gone into the military and has a positive experience or felt positive about the work that they did. Those belief systems, are things that I talk about all the time that is important for us to step back and actually question whether those are our beliefs or somebody else's if they resonate with us and they may resonate with you.
When we're given advice, especially at young ages, it does pivot us and it does put us in certain directions, especially with people that we honor and respect like we do our parents. That's definitely been, for me, a lot of work that I’ve had to do in my life of making sure that the beliefs in my head are my own and monitoring it when I am talking to my children of how am I able to give them advice without putting forth my thought about it? Even if I put my thought forward, what is their thought about it and could it shift mine? Could it shift mine? Could I learn something from it? I think it's really important that we think about that as we go through life because advice can be some of the most important things that we get, but it can also put us in different directions that we don't intend as well.
The other thing that was so important about Randy's dad with giving him support as being an entrepreneur was that his dad was his cheerleader. Even as he was taking risks, finding that certain jobs were not a fit. Leaving those jobs, even though his dad had stayed in the same job for his entire career, his dad still said to him, “You can do anything you put your mind to.” When we have that cheerleader or someone behind us that believes in us, it's so important in our success because again, just like advice can push us in one direction or the other, having that positive reinforcement in our life is so important. Really understanding where we do that for others, especially as a leader, is really important so that we understand how to motivate others and allow people to take risks and do things in ways that maybe we wouldn't have done it that way ourself.
We also talked about Randy's love for sports and his family's love for sports. What we really got down to was it isn't just about the sport. It was about the comradery and the joking around that happens when you're watching a sporting event or you're a part of a team. We talked about how that has moved forward in Randy's life of the way that he created the culture in his company now, Tri-Merit, where he wanted that comradery and that relationship. Even as people were going remote, how do you still create that?
There are so many organizations that I consult with that kind of put up their hands with remote work and say, “This is what people want, but this wasn't the way the culture was,” and so forth. We allow it to control us versus us controlling how it looks and how do we create a similar experience in a hybrid world, in a remote world and not just thinking that it can't happen. What were the best things of the things in the office that you can emulate when you're remote and still be able to bring people to together for that human connection?
That connection that Randy talked about of putting that expense to bring everyone together twice a year, even though the team is remote, has paid off with almost no turnover in the years he's been in business. That's huge. When we talk about the expense of turnover and trying to train people and so forth, these things matter. It's really important that we figure out how to incorporate things into our culture and not think we have to be the only ones to come up with those ideas. We can find ideas and best practices from the people around us, from talking to staff, what are the things that they want and so forth so we can come up with the best ideas that are going to make people happy.
One of the things we ended with was the health questions. We didn't get to go deep into it, but he touched upon it of how important mental health is. When we talk about health isn't something that is just one thing. Sometimes when we think of health, we might think of diet, we might think of exercise, it's also our mind. It's also making sure that we are staying healthy and our body, our mind, our energy and how we create all the routines and habits that will protect us from that.
What Randy was talking about was when he didn't have that routine and when he went down the path that he did, that now being past it, he understands the importance of mental health and understands how have should maintain it each day and always be looking for the good and being just so appreciative of this life that we live in.
These are things that we are going to be doing in our 90-day coaching cohort coming up, and we have these 90-day coaching cohorts every quarter, and they're focused around our work-life balance or harmony pillars, which are health, finance, brand, and joy. Every 90 days, we focus on a different topic and that health topic is we expand out to really understand all the different aspects of health and make sure that we have a way for you to create the habits and the routine.
You can feel like Randy, too, and not have to go down a health issue in order to have that epiphany in your life. It takes consistency, it takes community, and that's what it's all about. I want to thank Randy so much for being a part of this episode and sharing his story. I think there were so many great stories that he shared, and if 's episode resonated with you, I would love to continue this conversation.
You can join our community BusinessBalanceBliss.com where you'll find free resources, our upcoming courses, and ways to work with me directly. Just remember that small shifts lead to major transformations and we want to do one thing at a time and not get overwhelmed. When you look back, it's amazing how these little shifts can change your life for special offers on the courses that we have, we have a special code that we put just for our audience that is on AmyVetter.com. If you go to the Breaking Beliefs Podcast, there are special discount codes for our audience. Thank you so much for reading and I look forward to our next episode and sharing their story as well.
Important Links
About Randy Crabtree
Randy Crabtree, co-founder and partner of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Professionals, is a widely followed author, lecturer and podcast host for the accounting profession. Since 2019, he has hosted the bi-weekly "The Unique CPA," podcast, which ranks among the world's 5% most popular programs (Source: Listen Score). Randy was named to Accounting Today's 2023 "Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting". Founder and host of the Bridging the Gap conference.
You can find articles from Randy in Accounting Today's Voices column, the AICPA Tax Adviser, CPA Trendlines, Intuit Accountants TaxPro Center and he is a regular presenter at conferences and training events hosted by national accounting associations, state CPA societies and other industry associations.
In May 2022 Randy was appointed, for a 3-year term, to the Intuit Tax Council. Prior to starting Tri-Merit, Crabtree was managing partner of a CPA firm in the greater Chicago area. He has more than 35 years of public accounting and tax consulting experience in a wide variety of industries and has worked closely with top executives to help them optimize their tax planning strategies.