Episode Transcript

Anika Jackson 00:01

Welcome to your Brand Amplified, the podcast where we interview marketers, publicists and brands to learn their stories, what makes them tick and tips and tricks that make a difference. This is Anika Jackson with your Brand Amplified, and today I have Chris Papin, of both a law firm and a CPA firm, with his name. Chris, thank you for being here. 

Chris Papin 00:27

Happy to do it, thank you. 

Anika Jackson 00:29

We were talking a little bit Midwestern-er. I always love meeting people from my geographic region of origin, shall we say, and I used to go to Oklahoma on weekends sometimes to just enjoy getting out of Kansas for a little bit. So you’re based in Oklahoma. I’d love to hear your journey into how you got into being a licensed attorney and a CPA, and you also are an insurance producer, so those are similar but different industries. What was that journey like for you? 

Chris Papin 01:01

So it boils down to mom and dad were small business owners and had an entrepreneurial spirit. They taught at our local university, had their own businesses and I kind of don’t know any other way. Then through my education I gravitated towards business and there kind of became a point, particularly in my accounting education, where we would study topics and then there is this kind of pause and it’s like, oh, the attorneys do that. Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Why do you need two people to do one thing? 

01:33

So we went from CPA to law school and then, as we started working with clients and helping build some of the advisory-based plans the insurance license were born out of helping folks build an estate plan. Then we go down a road and the best story ever a client flat looks at me and says, hey, can you do that too? I’m like not yet, but give me a few weeks. So we picked that license up. But it really boils all back down to how can we serve our client base, how can we serve the small businesses and small business owners in our community and surrounding areas? If there’s something else we can pick up and do, we’re going to go do that. 

Anika Jackson 02:11

Well, and these are things that for me personally, I think as entrepreneurs and small businesses, we get overwhelmed by all of these areas that you’re now helping cover for people. So I love the fact that you took senior parents’ journey. Okay, what could I do? What would I want to help with? You went through all of this training still getting training, I’m sure and started your businesses to fill those gaps for small businesses and entrepreneurs and keep adding services. So those kind of stories are always so heartwarming to hear why you decided to do this. 

Chris Papin 02:45

And it’s rewarding on the other side because you can help people where there’s a need and it’s not always charitable. Sometimes Hear all the warm and fuzzy stories when you’re attached to 501C3s, but this is a legitimate hey. I need to find somebody who knows about this thing and fortunately we know probably the next 18 steps for a lot of new entrepreneurs and love holding their hand right through. 

Anika Jackson 03:10

Yeah, amazing, and so does your work primarily focus on people who live in your surrounding area in Oklahoma. Are you able to help people all over the country? 

Chris Papin 03:21

I do have some boundary. This licensing kind of limits me a little bit. But with my CPA license I can go all over the United States my law license. If I practice law in a state there’s some boundaries, but the way we work around that is, we usually find co-counsel. So over the years I’ve had clients move. I’ve had law school and accounting school classmates that are everywhere in the US. So it works out where we have some kind of bubbles of influence Oklahoma, colorado, california, new York, florida but we’ve got folks all over the place and at the end of the day it’s kind of a personality and style-based thing. Sometimes you don’t find a personality in your local community that fits. So if we speak to you, let’s have a conversation, let’s see if we can work together. If it’s forever, that’s ideal. If it’s just for a time, that’s OK too. 

Anika Jackson 04:18

What is the process when somebody comes to you? Do they usually come through one side or the other, or do they go? Ooh, they can offer me all of these things. 

Chris Papin 04:27

Tax is by far the most popular topic. Everybody feels a pain point at least a couple of times a year. So typically it’s someone that is maybe starting their own business, or there’s tax-driven need. We do get some things. Or hey, I need a new business entity, or my family needs an estate plan, something like that. So it’s very singular on the introduction and then we start having conversations and just kind of sharing stories and talk through what we call our advisory process. We want to look forward with folks, whereas a lot of compliance-based firms are doing what happened yesterday. When I file a tax return in April, it’s what happened last year. 

Anika Jackson 05:08

Yeah. 

Chris Papin 05:08

Great, I already know that. So as we start to tell that story, people’s ears kind of work up and they say, oh, I didn’t really know how to ask for this service, but you’re speaking to me, these are things we want. We just didn’t know what they were and, as we all have in our different specialties, you scratch the surface with the marketing buzzword but you can go in such a deep rabbit hole. Yeah, that’s where I think we really shine, because we can sit down as in-house counsel, as CPA, over-record filing returns, doing tax planning. There’s a lot of things I can do, but by virtue of relationships, I can help connect people when there’s a need so they don’t have to have a relationship with a litigator, because who gets sued every day? No one. But when they need it, we have those relationships to help folks out. 

Anika Jackson 05:59

Yeah, it’s funny, I think about the same thing in my own business. I might not do XYZ, but I know somebody else who does that area of marketing or advertising or crisis communications or whatever it is that somebody might need help with. That’s not my specialty, but sometimes we talk about scope creep when it comes to our businesses. Yours is a positive scope creep. I can see how everything works together and how it’s much easier for somebody who trusts you with their business and all of their information to be able to utilize your different services under one house. 

Chris Papin 06:34

It’s still a dirty word, though, because if you’re hired to do one thing, it’s really hard to start to do the other ones if no one tells you right. Or on the other side, we all have experiences where, well, if you could just, and you’re kind of going, but normally I charge somebody for that, so you do have to have real conversations around it, but you’re onto something with that relationship of trust. You’re not out to nickel and dime anyway I don’t think any entrepreneur that I’ve ever worked with is but it is very concise and task based. I’m either hired to do the task or I’m not. With professional licensing, I have to meet a certain standard or I cannot do it, and those are the types of things Once you get over that initial, I’m going to call it a road bump, not the full curve, just a little bump Once you get off a little bit. 

07:30

We want the scope creek to a certain extent, because we can cross over, but there is a healthy boundary that everybody has to maintain. You’ve got engagement letters in terms and conditions and all of those things the attorney in me is always paying attention to. Is this something we’re asked to do? Does it make sense? Is it a client choice. Who has discretion of that decision? Where are we? And we always are on the side of communication. Let’s talk it out, figure it out. That way nobody gets burned. 

Anika Jackson 07:58

Yeah, that’s fantastic. You already knew small business entrepreneurship, so you knew that that’s who you wanted to help. Do you see differences with some of your colleagues who might work with bigger corporations, bigger businesses and the issues that face small business owners and entrepreneurs? 

Chris Papin 08:17

It’s interesting, even on our own client base, we’ve got big by a small business definition, but SBA definition of small business is vastly different. Yeah, that’s true. When you’re in startup mode, the way we like to talk about it are phases. There’s startup mode. 

08:35

There’s growth mode, there’s a maintenance mode. Sometimes folks will go into mergers and acquisitions or other different paths. Sometimes folks just they ramp up to a point I’m happy and we leave it alone as you look through those different phases. You’re absolutely right, there’s lots of different common hurdles. To say to a startup business owner, you need to think green. And they’re saying, man, I’m just scrapping to pay the rent. 

09:05

It’s hard, but if you instill the right I’m going to call it true north, pillars of true north to stay neutral for everybody here. If we’re all looking at that true north, we can come together and we know what makes sense to build towards. In that true north, compass helps. We speak freely to our folks. We don’t lie, we don’t cheat, we don’t steal. That’s pretty straightforward, right? Yeah, side of there, where is gray? What does lion cheat and steal mean to people? Sometimes just being aggressive with the tax code provision feels like cheating when in fact you’re not at all being aggressive. That’s just the way they see it. All of those different components I know I’m giving you a half answer on this, but it really does depend and then meet people where they are. That’s the biggest piece of this. Some instances I can’t help some instances I can’t. I’ll be the first to say it. 

Anika Jackson 10:00

Yeah, well, that was one of my next questions is who do you typically like to work with in terms of I mean, there is a range, you said in small. Do you like to work with the startups, the growth phase, the people who are already past that? Is there a specific industry you’d like to work with? 

Chris Papin 10:16

The demographic we usually try to target are service-based professionals that are kind of like we are leveraging some level of trust, and whether they’re in startup mode or they’re established in down the road it depends on do we have an alignment of value that starts to play to our strengths and their needs? If you will, if I’m able to help, let’s start that engagement. If you have everything that I can offer in-house, you don’t need me. So sometimes a startup you know they’re brand new, they need everything, but they’re not in a position to work with us yet. Sometimes they’ve got to get started and vice versa. Sometimes we get the most sophisticated companies but they’ve already got all the resources that I offer, so they don’t need me either. 

11:01

But we really want to spend inside of that value proposition. What is the need? How can I make your day easier, your life better? How can I help your family have another moment together? Sometimes it’s about time building efficiency so I can go home at five o’clock instead of seven o’clock, and you know it’s tough to do. But there’s all kinds of different tools and mechanisms. Sometimes I’m not just a professional, Sometimes I’m more of just a consultant. Help people think through their systems, their ideas, their structure so that they can reclaim their version of happy. 

Anika Jackson 11:37

Right, yeah, thank you for sharing that. So it’s like almost a peek into the operational side of them in full, not just the financial side or the legal side. 

Chris Papin 11:46

Yep, there’s a relationship that always starts with the tax need or the legal need. So we can illustrate trust first, then we can start to kind of get into other scenarios. We do have a lot of, you know, we’re lucky where we have referrals. So there’s folks that, hey, you did this for so and so out in California, can you do it for so and so over in Florida. Sure, be happy to. Let’s have a conversation and see if everything lines up. So sometimes it’s not always about that maintenance item, it’s more about we heard good news. So, just like a lot of people, if you please someone, they usually tell a good story about it and that takes care of itself. 

Anika Jackson 12:22

Now this is going to be a question that I wasn’t even thinking about, but as we’re having this conversation, I’m remembering a friend of mine who was a lawyer based in Houston and what was? He did a lot of patents and trademarks and like that, and one of his competitive advantages was that it cost a lot less for his firm to execute the work than somebody who had a paper and office and a whole team in New York or California. So that was one of his competitive advantages and also the way he created his business. It was very much about helping creatives realize that their work had merit and that they needed to protect it. So I’d love to hear, as we’re talking about this trust factor, building up trust, thinking about your personas and your true north what would you say are some of the competitive advantages that you offer to your clients, especially because you said, oh, new York, florida, you know, or California, florida. 

Chris Papin 13:12

So a couple of the things mean just with the multiple licenses, I have a very different perspective. There’s a few folks over the years who have had experiences working with an attorney on the right and a CPA on the left and a financial planner on the top and some sort of insurance agent over on the bottom somewhere and getting everybody I mean especially in today’s world just getting a calendar invitation that everybody can show up to as a nightmare. So we can bring a lot of that in-house. And the way I try to approach it is I’m going to give you two or three paths. I cannot make the decision on what’s best, but I can at least narrow the thing down to say here’s one, two, three and four Clients will say I want one and three. Cool, I can help you do one. This person over here can help you do three. That streamlines because you’re not going through marketing pages, you’re not interviewing folks, you’re not having to go through sales pitches. Sometimes, you know, in my world, in order for a professional to really do their job and be able to offer anything, they have to get to another client, which is time and information that you can send. So that’s one of our big differentiators as we go. 

14:23

Another one is I’ve heavily invested in technology. I’ve got a team that’s in Oklahoma City with me, I’ve got folks in New York, I’ve got folks in India, I’ve got folks in California, We’ve. You know, sometimes people turn on as part-timers and turn off whenever they’re doing other things. I don’t look at the workplace like a traditional brick and mortar workplace, so it does give some flexibility in perspective and resources and, good or bad, Right now it’s working really well for us because we are able to reach out. And my running joke with Chris Lagruta in New York is you know, he’s New York Chris, I get to be Oklahoma Chris, but he speaks New York. I’m not real good getting to the point he is. So if we’ve got to go into Northeast mode, we’ll pull him in and kind of let him speak the same language as you get to west of the Mississippi, we slow down a little bit. We kind of have the rah-rah moments, as I like to call them. 

15:20

Yeah, and that’s a different relational piece. So just small example. But you know, at the end of the day I see it’s about the relationship with people. People make or break all deals. Do I like you? Do we see ourselves working together. Does it make sense? Is there a need and is there an ability? You can kind of hit those big checkboxes. Usually the rest takes care of itself. 

Anika Jackson 15:44

Did you design your company that way intentionally? Did it happen during the pandemic? Were you already living in this hybrid? You know some people in the office, some people in remote offices world. 

Chris Papin 15:55

The two things that popped out when I set up my firm. I was investing in technology. Some of it is it’s you know, the dorky weekend passion, right, but I recognized the firms of tomorrow. We needed a platform where, if I had to work from home tomorrow, I can. Yeah, so when COVID hit, although it was a disruption for everyone, my team was already remote. It is literally just pick up your laptop and go to work, which helped immensely, I’m sure. The other piece around it is I look at people sometimes differently than most Hmm, accounting law how many hours can you put in? How many billables can you achieve? Right, and I realized early on there are some really talented mothers that can give between 10 and two. 

Anika Jackson 16:44

Hmm, mm-hmm. 

Chris Papin 16:46

They got kids where they got school, bus, studio, whatever it may be. Like a game between 10 and two is better than half a game between eight and five, yeah. So when you look through that slightly different lens, let’s go get folks. If we have a need and they have a skill set, let’s match up. I mean, my peers will tease me because they’ll be like, aren’t you reviewing like nine or 10 different people stuff when it could be three? Yeah, but if you’ve got a standard and everybody meets the standard, you’re reviewing the same stuff across the board. So I kind of get it because there’s different personalities, but in reality I just see it differently that way. 

17:20

And the other, chris, on the team in New York, he was one of the first people I met in my firm. I had worked at some other places but he was always the relief valve during busy seasons and kind of worked behind the scenes. And you know we were like two elementary school kids that liked each other at some point. We’re all right, I don’t want to screw up what we’ve got, but what if we did this full time together? So you know, because of the respect and health of what we had, it was so good, we liked it but we didn’t want to ruin it. But it’s so much better now. So I know it’s a different view and sometimes it’s really hard to embrace, especially inside of traditional suit-like professions. But you can do it if you’ll invest in the right infrastructure and mindset to do it. 

Anika Jackson 18:07

Well, there’s so many things that I love about what you just said the fact that you invest in technology, so you were able to pivot really quickly. The fact that you recognize that I’m a mom, so it’s a fact that you recognize that moms still have skill sets that can apply to a lot of businesses, even if we have kids and can’t work traditional hours. I feel like both of those things are huge parts of the future of work and you’re a trendsetter. And then the fact that you’ve created this ecosystem where people can come to you, yes, for their businesses, but you’re really looking at everything holistically and saying, all right, but what do you really want to get out of your business and your life outside of business, so that I can help you put those strategies into place. On your legal side, make sure everything’s really buttoned up with all of your accounting processes and then also with the insurance side, which is very personal. 

Chris Papin 18:59

It can be. Yeah, we have a larger group of dentists on our client list as well, so take this sarcasm however you like. We talk about the three things everybody loves death, taxes and dentistry. 

Anika Jackson 19:11

So public speaking. I’d say it’s. 

Chris Papin 19:14

Well, yeah, there you go, folks. Yeah, let’s put everybody in front of the camera and we may just have the listeners freak out already. But I very much appreciate your feedback here, because we have tried to be different. We have tried to embrace and look through a different lens, because we’re all at a different place than it was. Covid shook it up very, very much. But it’s going to continue to be different. Your forces are different, flexibilities are different and, to your point, we’re focused on that value proposition. How can we make your life better? The rest takes care of itself. I know I’ve said it more than once, but it really does. 

Anika Jackson 19:52

And when you set out to build this company and you started very intentionally, it sounds like with some of these you already do your values. You knew your value proposition and I imagine it took a little bit of time to go. Oh wait, but we can pull from this country, or we can pull from this set of people who are skilled workers but only have a finite amount of time every day. So how long did it take you to really come up with your secret sauce? 

Chris Papin 20:18

Oh, it’s still in the works, as any good secret sauce. You’re taking with the recipe as you go. The easy part as I speak to people about representing clients differently, whether it is clients or team members or bankers, whatever it may be. When we go back to the people proposition and folks realize, okay, there’s just a focus there, we start to recognize how lost is the way I will say it Some other businesses have been. We all struggled through COVID and there’s been changes. 

20:54

But I like to use a restaurant example. I don’t represent restaurants, but we have three. Okay, there are dear friends and of course there’s always an exception. But these folks relied on brick and mortar, right. So within a couple of weeks had to reinvent themselves in kind of a Grubhub delivery style environment because they had to. So I look through the lens in the exact same way. But it’s a people component. Where are skill sets? What matches? If I have a bartender on my team, they need to do client service Right, because what are bartenders good at? They’re great at talking to people. So I think when you start to look at that match, that is really the secret sauce how we execute on the rest. You’ve got to have systems, you’ve got to meet standards and things like that. But matching the strengths of people to their jobs, they’re inherently going to succeed at that point. 

Anika Jackson 21:51

Yes, that is something that I think is sorely missing from a lot of companies. We try to put people in boxes based on what we need, not based on where they fit best in our company. 

Chris Papin 22:02

Yeah, sometimes it’s hard. I need A, b and C and I’ve got a person that comes in and they said they can do A, b and C that they can’t In business. A plumbing company can’t do electrical work. I get that you can’t hire an electrician. It’s just a mismatch. But I do think sometimes we don’t slow down. I’m a big advocate of different tools. My mom’s a counselor and therapist. I’m very Emojis, like the happy face chart. She was into emojis Before they were called emojis. All of that stuff is ingrained in me. But they’re also just super quick tools. I mean, go Google something to do a quick team assessment, not hard. When it spits something out, there is some truth to it. It is not the end, all be all, but have the conversation with your team. If they say they like talking to people and you’ve got them locked in a room and they never talk to people, that’s not a recipe for success. Little easy stuff. I mean five, 10 minutes, not overwhelming. 

Anika Jackson 23:01

Yeah, and when it came to your marketing because you can cover the entire country what did that look like? I’m expecting you to say something like that. You had a new strategy or something unique that you did, since everything else in your business is so unique. 

Chris Papin 23:17

So the big differentiator in that sense and when you go kind of nationwide big brand, it’s web-based. You know your typical SEOs and marketing campaigns online, but our differentiator really revolves around advisory. If you were to go look at tax and accounting firm A and tax and accounting firm B and then Pap and CPA, if you will, it’s about being that advisor. It’s about looking forward. I don’t have to look at our new client queue. I can tell you the story of at least 80% of them because they will say something like our prior person did a great job, they were nice. We’re not leaving them because we don’t like them. We just felt like there was something more and that’s why we reached out to have a conversation and that’s exactly why we lead with advisory. That’s kind of that forward-looking piece. 

24:06

Tax and accounting is easy for me to lead with because people understand it. We go over to consulting or speaking engagements, training stuff like that. That’s kind of this soft squishy and like no, no, what do you do? But by virtue of representing businesses and working with all these different people, there’s a lot of other things we can reach out and help people with or tell stories on. Lagruta today told the team we’ve been using this concept that our trainings should be like a fable so simple a child could tell it, but so deep. Everybody in the world gets something out of it. So it’s hard to do, but there’s some reality inside of that and that’s kind of where our mission is. Inside of this advisory, forward-looking bubble, how can we distill it down so it’s easily consumed but really meaningful? 

Anika Jackson 24:53

Very nice. Are you ready to take your brand to new heights? Join the Brand Amplifier for Entrepreneurs Program. Learn how to build, elevate and amplify your brand with a comprehensive 10-model course. Learn more about it and other ways to implement our strategies at fullcapacitymarketingcom. Click on EFCM Learning Hub for more information. Can’t wait to help you amplify your brand Now. I know one thing that you have shared with people in past interviews is also the topic of personal finance, and so I wanted to explore that a little bit, because I know usually when people start businesses, they might not know about business credit and they might not realize you use your personal credit to build and then you build up your business credit. But there are some things that are woven into the two, depending on what your structure is for your company. But how do personal finance goals and how does personal financing fit into top-line revenue, into your business cycles? 

Chris Papin 25:56

So we will take an approach. We can start at the top, go to the bottom, start at the bottom, go to the top. If they don’t match, you got to change your game and a lot of what is driven. What we find is people have a pretty good understanding of their numbers, but a misconception about where they’re supposed to fit. So, from our perspective, if you’re a one-person business and you don’t have an entity no tax types you’re just going to start up and start doing some things on the side while you’re working somewhere else. It’s probably all in one checking account. That’s how people see it. Irs does not see it that way. We see it in two different boxes and then how that math plays out is on one tax return. It’s not two different tax returns. So I’ve already complicated this thing. I’ve said three things and we’ve got three models. But getting that distilled back down and we start with what we call a base level advisory package for folks that are going through this, where we will walk people through what I can consider a life cycle of a business. 

27:04

Every new entrepreneur wants to know how they can ride off their car. Great, don’t give it in, doesn’t matter. If you don’t have revenue, you don’t have a car. Let’s start with revenue. How do we generate that? What types of revenue? How does it come in? How do you track it? And you start to go through. That’s why I say we start top down. That should yield a result. The last thing we do is go back to a personal budget and say, okay, you’ve told me what your ambitions are, we’ve figured out what maybe reality could look like. Does that sustain your goals and ambitions today, tomorrow, down the road? 

27:41

Oftentimes, entrepreneurs intentionally live slim so that they can grow their business, and sometimes they don’t have to. They just don’t know any better. Yeah, but that’s true. Professionals that can get licenses. I mean, I’m going to pick on my doctors. They do this, they know this, so I’m going to pick on them. But they leave medical school, they’ve got a mortgage in student loan debt, and they’ve got a mortgage before they start work. They may have a million dollars in debt and no revenue. Yet that’s scary, yeah, so you can see the two different extremes that you’ve got to play with then. 

28:15

But getting it down to where, if I earn $1,000, how much is mine? That’s going to get 10,000 dollars at home now. So go ahead, adults, and do that? Lo igniting, lo admiting, lo admiting biz lookingƷ Bro batta Goे m inspired Н, which is in what kind of set of years? I mean, your little world is about helping folks connect with other folks, but once you connect, you can’t force a customer to engage me. If we’re going through those struggles and that’s where I think people really need to understand what is your business model? What do you do? How do you help people? You can be the person flipping the sign on the side of the road all day long. If they don’t want what you’re flipping the sign on, or they can’t read the sign, they’re not going to stop. 

Anika Jackson 29:18

Yeah, true, it’s such a common sense approach, but it’s something I just think a lot of people don’t think about. 

Chris Papin 29:26

We’re still a magic bullet in it and there’s so many apps and these and that and then in between and it’s hard to figure it out. It’s great. The number one question we get is you know, we’re like, hey, we need your personal budget. I’m like, will you give me a template or what do you want in the budget? I refuse to give it because if I give a template, you’re going to take your world and put it into mine, right, and you’re going to miss stuff. I need to know what your world is. Let me flip it into mine. I’m better suited to do that. 

Anika Jackson 29:51

Yeah, because I think and I do. I have my Excel spreadsheets and I put in my income and then what I pay out and I always say to myself you have to put everything, every take a gas right, every dog treat, whatever it is, has to go into. That is so that it’s a realistic view and a realistic lens, not just but yeah, I spent this about this much money on this thing. Well, no, unless it’s in there, you don’t know exactly how much you’re spending, and I think people can get surprised when they go through those exercises. 

Chris Papin 30:22

It’s funny. We have folks self admit when they go through the budgetary exercise. I didn’t want to tell you about the most fun one. There’s somebody who bought a $600 grill. He was so ashamed to tell us about $600 grill because he was on a mission to fund his kids education accounts and guilty. And we’re staring at him like, hey dad, take a minute here, recognize all of these family moments that are coming from this grill you can’t put a price on. And it was the first time he quit being so hard on himself for indulging a little bit. She deserved it, yeah, but you’re absolutely right, sometimes there’s a psychology that plays, sometimes we just don’t know. But if nobody takes anything out of this conversation at all, number one, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Number two, nobody cares. And number three, it’s going to change tomorrow. Start somewhere. You need to start on that right path. 

Anika Jackson 31:15

Yeah, I’m really interested. You mentioned your mom and psychology and how that was always part of your life and that you infused some of that into the way that you work. And I think that’s pretty clear because you just seem so much more of a servant leader in the space and very purpose and mission driven in how you want to show up for the people that you work with and how invested you are in their success and helping them figure out the road to that success. So I’d love to hear what other lessons did your parents instill in you that you use today? 

Chris Papin 31:47

So in mom’s case, she’s in her 80s and still a practicing counselor oh my gosh. So I have a really good person to emulate for diligence and health and all kinds of stuff. She still does it. And kind of the fun part you know nobody I don’t know if you can see or not see they go 50 feet to my left. That’s her. We still office in a family space. We see each other very regularly, so all of those things. 

32:12

That’s kind of where that small business family owned business, but I literally do not know any other way. It sounds like a marketing pitch, but it is absolutely not. When you come see it, everybody’s like oh, I get it now. So in that bubble, though, dad started his own business. It was an auto repair business. 

32:29

One of the things we do for folks is succession planning. This is never a fun story, because I lost my dad when I was in my 20s. My brother took over the automotive repair business. There were worse lessons from that. Without his presence that I can’t explain the value of, because unless you live something like that, you just don’t always understand. But being able to help folks, kind of anticipate and see and know and dad was always the hands on, I can fix anything. So I got a lot of the I’m invincible personality from him. But he was so grounded I know I’m not invincible. I just know that if I’m willing to lean into problems I’m going to get a different result than if I find out. So I always kind of blend those two personalities as we go through and think about things. 

33:19

But the analogy and the equip that I give to everybody is finance is driven by emotion. Sometimes it’s the kind of emotion where somebody kicked me in the shins and took my lunch money at age seven, and sometimes it’s driven by emotion of oh my gosh, I opened my birthday card and I got all these things. I can’t predict which version of it it’s going to be, but if you recognize those pieces and again go back and study, people pay attention when you’re talking. When we go in tax mode, I can watch eyes glaze over. If I ever want people to quit listening to me, all I’ve got to do is say tax and turn over revenue code and you’re about to owe some money. They quit listening Easy, but it’s a natural reaction. So, knowing mounts, I could just say the words and say I don’t understand what you don’t understand. I told you or we can embrace it. And when you start to watch people squirm or when you hang on, how can I help you? Say this to your spouse or kids, or if you can get them to repeat it. There’s an element there. And again all of that plays back to. 

34:21

I’ve watched small businesses grow and do things and emulate mom and dad and the conversations they’ve had. There’s an art to all of this stuff and I don’t know if you’re familiar with the book, the entrepreneurial email. But there’s a technician, there’s a manager and there’s an entrepreneur. Most entrepreneurs are technicians that great at their craft and they’re trying to be an entrepreneur, but they need that manager. So it’s that three-legged stool. You need all three, otherwise it’s not going to work. But those are the things that business owners can recognize them sooner rather than later. 

34:57

Hey, I’ve got to be three legs to the stool and if I don’t serve all three legs of those stool, I need to hire somebody to be one of those legs. I don’t hire all, because the typical things we see are we didn’t serve one of those interests. I was too busy being a technician and completing the work. I didn’t go out and market, so I don’t have more work to do. It happens. People have lived it and we overcome that and we talk about ways to overcome that. But I think it’s a good, easy way for folks to kind of look in and see okay, how do mom and dad’s influence really play the role here? And then all day, every day, I love making fun of the emojis and happy face charts and red cards and green cards. They’re really powerful tools, but when mom brought them home and made me do them, I hated it. Yeah, of course. What kid loves that? 

Anika Jackson 35:45

Oh my gosh, it’s funny I see that in my father also has passed many years ago, about 14 years ago, and he was a college professor, and so I’d always say, oh yeah, I didn’t grow up, I grew up in the car. I would say something, and he was a philosophy major and a philosophy professor. So he’d say that reminds me of a time like Nietzsche did blah, blah, blah. Or Plato would say, or soccer to Ida, like he would give me lessons instead of just talking to me about whatever the situation was with his viewpoint. And then, ironically, now I am also a college professor and I talk about marketing and PR and branding, which is obviously something I love and the comfort zone of mine, so I feel like I do the same thing instead of philosophy. But it’s great when we can take those lessons from our parents and honor them with the way that we move forward in the world. 

Chris Papin 36:35

That’s a really great way to put it. 

Anika Jackson 36:38

Yeah, I am really excited to learn more about things that you have coming up, because I believe that you have a free workshop coming up in 2024. So I’d love to hear a little bit about that what people can learn. 

Chris Papin 36:52

Yeah. So a lot of kind of my personality based things. I’m sure you figured out. I like to laugh, I like to have fun. I’ll poke fun even of myself along the way. I mean I always say I’m the consummate suit because clients will be so invested in telling me the story. I miss the joke because I’m trying to serve them. But I think at the end of the day, what we’re trying to build is kind of a base level, beginners level workshop to help folks with core pillars of the business. 

37:23

I don’t want to give away too much, Primarily because we’re still massaging what we want that to look like. But finance and accounting, marketing, legal structure, technology, security all of those kinds of things are relevant to business in lots of different forms. And the beauty of this is we’re not going to go so deep that we’re going to lose people. Somebody may be really strong in, say, an online presence and website marketing. They may have a deficiency in referral networks. So we’re going to try to generalize it and again make it intro level, but give it enough substance to where there is a takeaway for everybody. It’s going to be a virtual deal that we’re trying to put together, but the idea is really to give it back to the community to say here’s some things you can take tomorrow and go be successful with. 

38:10

Thanks, Hint, hint, asterisk. Work is involved. At the end you can’t go do that for you. But yeah, Small business owners know that. Entrepreneurs know that they’re not afraid of the work. But sometimes having clarity of what should I do tomorrow is hard. I got two or three options and if we can narrow that down to give it one and give them a task to go after, that’s our mission. 

Anika Jackson 38:34

Yeah, I love that. Gaining clarity. It’s something that can be really difficult when you’re trying to start your business. You’re working on the business and in the business and figuring out who do you need to hire, who do you need to work with or how do I move forward. In this way or that way, you can get analysis, paralysis. You can get stuck in this cycle of not making decisions because you don’t know what to do. Having somebody you can help walk you through some of the basics and then get to the point where you can walk away and know that you need to focus on one thing is fantastic, and so that’ll be at pappincpacom. Forward slash listener. 

Chris Papin 39:11

We will. We have some other materials out there. When we get the information there’s a place for folks can sign up. Okay, and as soon as we make that information available, if they’ve signed up they’ll be the first to know. We’re targeting Q one kind of right before that tax busy season. So a lot of this stuff is fresh on folks minds. 

Anika Jackson 39:28

Yeah. 

Chris Papin 39:28

February is the ideal time right now. 

Anika Jackson 39:31

Okay, all right. Well, I’ll be getting on your list so that I can come to your work and for those people who maybe are ready, they’re looking for somebody new to work with, you talked about your process, so is that is step one? They fill out your information, you know your form. You do an assessment with them. Is that? Do they pay for the assessment and then you give them a plan of like. Here are the things that we could do, or you know? No, we can’t help you. 

Chris Papin 39:57

It’s sorry to interrupt there. The short of it is we are very digital, so there’s a lot of front end information to kind of get things in the queue. But yes, there’s an info gathering process. Depending kind of on where this skill set may lie within the different firms, we may slightly adjust. But there’s generally two meetings. There’s a get to know you, there’s an info gather that goes with that, and then in the second meeting there is some sort of delivery of a proposed plan. 

40:24

Until we have information in the door, this is the hard part of professional services. I don’t know what I’m doing for you. If you call me right now and say hey, chris, can you do X, y and Z? How much is it going to be? I don’t know, because I literally don’t know what I’m doing yeah, right, so we go through that. But in the second meeting we clarify cost, we clarify timelines, we make sure that everybody has an understanding about what we’re going to do next. 

40:45

Sometimes we have to adjust the conversation or we would do that in a second meeting. And that is kind of the magical point Either you sign up and the payment plan starts, or sometimes it’s not a fit, or sometimes the timing is all. Sometimes we get requests to take on projects that we can’t take on. We’re still a relatively small shop in comparison to a lot of the bigs and if you’ve got too much again I’ll be the first to say it and place you with some cooks that we know can step into that. But any service we offer we try to follow that model risk-free. We want to meet new people. Sometimes we don’t end up working with them, but they end up a vendor of ours or over four partner and that’s the beauty of kind of creating this space up front to have the conversation. 

Anika Jackson 41:26

Exactly, and I like the fact that you’re not cookie cutter, you really customize and you’re again. It goes back to the intentionality and the value proposition that you’re trying to bring to your clients. Is you’re not going to say, yeah, for this amount of money you get XYZ, Like you’re really trying to customize based on their own individual needs. 

Chris Papin 41:45

Yeah, I wish you were that simple. The IRS wants everything on seven forms and then they add seven more right before the end of the year. But all the moving pieces in between are better served if we partner together and with that plan and there’s too many other options on the table that fitted their first model and just just not us. 

Anika Jackson 42:05

Chris, is there anything we haven’t covered that you really want people to know about your company or about when it’s when you need to hire somebody for legal advice or accounting? Cpa, work insurance all of those factors. 

Chris Papin 42:21

So a couple of things that I always want people to kind of take with them. Number one you can do this. We have natural fears inside of us and I know sometimes when I speak to entrepreneurs the fear of what’s next can be alleviated with the right strategic partnerships. And I’m a small business owner done this a while. And where are the clients going to come from is always a question. But again, when you go back to kind of take care of people, they’ll take care of you. That’s an easy paradigm. And then if you think you need help, you do. 

42:54

Because we always get into this and I listen to clients all the time. They’re scared to call an attorney because they don’t know what the cost is going to be and they’re scared of a billable hour. Make the phone call interview. Folks start going through that process because after the fact it’s more expensive to fix than it is to set it up and do it right the first time. And it’s not just that you’re just going to have to do it, You’re just going to have to take care of the client. 

43:19

And that is by far the most common thing we run into. We get the phone call too late and you know the art goal is to get folks to say I wish I’d have known that sooner. The struggle is that sometimes folks are going man, I really wish I’d have known you five years ago and you’re going, man, keep me too. The government got a lot of money over the last five years because we didn’t have the right structure in place. So those are free advice of the day, but when in doubt, start interviewing people, we’d be happy to hear from you if it works. We are a fit great, but there’s lots of great people that do things similar to what I do. Reach out to them, have conversations, find that fit that meets your need. That’s probably the biggest thing I can say, because I can’t tell you how many phone calls we’re going to get in January and they’re all going to say hey, can you fix 2023? No, it’s over. I can’t go back in time. I haven’t invented the time machine yet. 

Anika Jackson 44:08

I’m trying, but I don’t know how, and I always love to be able to talk to people, and I always love to end with asking if you have a favorite quote, family motto, words of wisdom that you’d like to share with us, that you live by. 

Chris Papin 44:24

There is an earnest himmingway quotes and I’m pulling it up because I never want to butcher it, because it means so much to me but it says there’s nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self. 

Anika Jackson 44:40

That’s so power. 

Chris Papin 44:42

Sometimes in business, people start to get a little too competitive. So oftentimes the game is how can you improve your firm, your systems, Just be better than yesterday. 1% every day goes a long stinking way if you’re really intentional about it. So that would probably be the one. Thank you for the forewarning that you might ask, so I couldn’t screw it up that way. It’s a fun and meaningful one. The other side of it is that you really think about it. You’ll get lost in your head for a long time. Sometimes it’s great because you forget about work. Yeah. 

Anika Jackson 45:14

But it’s such a good point. If you just compete against yourself, you’re going to show up better than if you’re worried about what everybody else is doing, because you are unique and what you do and what you put into the world is only something that you can do, even if other people might do similar work. And that’s what I’m really learning about Eucrith and your law firm and the way that you’re moving forward in the business. I think the way you approach this is so different than other people I’ve spoken to who do similar work. So thank you for bringing that to us. Thank you for bringing that to my show, because I know this is one of those episodes I’m going to be going back through and taking notes, listening and signing up for your workshops, because this is definitely not my forte. I’m going to have to be an entrepreneur and I know that my audience is going to get a lot of value out of this conversation, so I appreciate you being here so much. Thank you for the opportunity. 

Chris Papin 46:05

Thanks for all of the kind words along the way. You’ve said some things that are incredibly meaningful because they line up to mission, vision, value statements, and you didn’t have the luxury of getting all of those prompts in advance, so you’re pretty good at what you do. You’re seeing that other side, so we really appreciate the opportunity to share that. 

Anika Jackson 46:24

Well, you’re also showing up that way, right? So you’re living in let’s hope so. Oh, you know, clapping my hands for you and the fact that you are really living and embodying your purpose, mission, vision, values and every conversation you have, because this is our first conversation, as you said. So thank you again and thank you to my audience for listening or watching this episode. If you’re a brand amplified, I’ll be back again in a few days with another amazing expert to share some wisdom. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, send us a comment if you liked this episode. You can also look at the transcripts. You can get all the show notes. Make sure to take note of papandcpa.com forward slash listener to get those resources and sign up for that Q1 workshop that Chris will be having and with that, I’ll be back again in a few days with another amazing expert story. Want more? Check out amplifywithanika.com or follow me on socials at @amplifywithanika.