Introduction to Tyler Bidwell, CPA and EWA’s Tax Services

Welcome to EWA’s FinLit podcast. EWA is a fee only RIA based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We hope all listeners of this podcast will benefit as we deep dive into complex financial topics that we will make simplified for you. And we hope that this really serves as a catalyst so that you can make the best financial planning decisions for your family and also save time. Welcome everyone on this week’s episode. Probably the episode I’m most looking forward to, although Tyler wasn’t excited to get on the camera. So yeah, introducing Tyler Bidwell. He’s a new CPA Director of Tax planning here at ewa. Also, you know, equity partner in ewa had to do a lot to recruit him, how talented he is or can’t be more excited to have him on board.
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Speaker 1
00:53
So yeah, I guess the purpose of this episode, Tyler wanted clients to get to know you and then also talk about you. And I had like a three day business planning retreat we did after we agreed you were going to come on board and we talked about all the pain points that you think and your experiences. How long have you been doing this? Taxes?
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Speaker 2
01:13
Let’s see, I was licensed in 2012, but I had two years of practicing before I was licensed. Okay, what’s that make? 14 years?
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Speaker 1
01:23
Yeah, 14 years. So yeah, So I remember we talked through a lot of pain points that you believe clients that you know, that CPAs deal with and how do we solve that and make the best experience for taxes in the context of a financial plan and really holistically providing everything in one house. So yeah, we’ll uncover that later. But Tyler, other than being the best golfer on the team now just give, yeah, give us the background. Like where’d you grow up? Where’d you go to school? How’d you get to where you are today?
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Speaker 2
01:56
Sure, I went to. I grew up in a small town, northwestern PA called Segertown, Pennsylvania. Graduated with 86 kids from my high school. So very small rural town. Grew up, loved playing sports, played basketball, played golf, went to Mercyhurst College for my undergrad. And when I started, you know, I wasn’t 100% sure what I wanted to do as of most 18 year olds aren’t. I was really good with numbers. I didn’t have any accounting classes in high school, but the numbers kind of shifted me towards starting in accounting. And from my first accounting class it just kind of clicked. I was able to pick it up pretty easily. I enjoyed the tax side of things. I got along well with my professors and so it was history from there. After My undergrad at Mercyhurst, I went.
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Speaker 2
02:51
The job market in my area wasn’t great, it wasn’t strong. So I decided, hey, while I’m still in the school mode, I’m going to go to Clarion university. Had an 11 month MBA program, so went down there, got my master’s in business administration. Took 11 months. Learned from that. Really good time management, I thought, because I was working half the week, taking classes half the week. So that was something that I got from that. After I graduated with my master’s In July of 2011, I had already had a position lined up for my first accounting job. And it actually happened to be in Pittsburgh. Worked for a pretty sizable regional firm downtown. Started out in auditing, so was doing traveling a lot. Yeah, traveling a lot. Doing the, I guess the grunt work that the staff do, the inventory counts and things like that.
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Speaker 2
04:02
And after a year and a half, two years, I was able to get some tax experience. They allowed their staff to kind of do both, to see what they liked. And the tax was way above my experience with auditing in terms of enjoyment and understanding it and things like that.
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Speaker 1
04:21
So.
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Speaker 2
04:24
Started doing tax work and never looked back. And so I worked there for two or three years. Changed to another firm in the Pittsburgh area, and they actually happen to have an office up in Erie, where I grew up. And I’m close to family. I still got friends in that area. It was kind of always the big city. Life was fun. But I’m also. I like the dirt roads and the corn fields. And so the office at the firm I was working for had an opportunity and I shifted up there. And I was with that firm for eight or nine years doing tax work, doing financial statement work. And then an opportunity came up to work actually for a firm, a rapidly growing firm out on the west coast in Washington state. And so worked remotely for three years.
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Speaker 2
05:26
And this whole time, you and I have had such a long relationship. We’ve always had clients together. And, you know, we’ve always, you know, we’ve been talking. And after that, real quick, in between.
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Speaker 1
05:37
Those opportunities, you actually had approached me before.
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Speaker 2
05:39
Yeah.
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Speaker 1
05:40
Because you weren’t happy where you’re at. And we had referred you probably like a hundred clients at that point. Our clients loved you. It was the best experience. You know, we had. We had gone through three or four CPAs, all kind of complaints. And then to Tyler, there’s not only was there zero complaints, there was raving reviews. So at that point we kind of were talking, collaborating, and you’re like, could this. We have so many clients together, it makes sense for me to. Come on. I was like, I wasn’t ready. Or maybe I was just a wimp and wasn’t ready to pull the trigger.
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Speaker 2
06:08
It’s a big move.
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Speaker 1
06:09
Yeah. So then. Yeah, anyways, not to interrupt. You go. You go into this opportunity, and then after that, a year later, I was ready. Then I was like, I had to really come after you to convince you to make this move.
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Speaker 2
06:21
Yeah, it was tough. The firm I was working for, I really enjoyed the people, enjoyed the work, enjoyed the clients. It was a little tough working over different time zones, but, yeah, the convincing finally worked to me. It. You know, I kind of always knew. I mean, it just. It made sense with our relationship and the clients that we shared. And it’s just in public accounting, as in financial services, I’m sure when you kind of get your roots settled and you understand your clients and you grow your book, changing anything is. Is difficult. You kind of have to start over and, you know, do your best to grow it again.
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Speaker 1
07:04
No question. Well, family? Kids?
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Speaker 2
07:09
Yep. I was married in 2014. I have two girls, 8 year old and 4 year old. Keep us very busy, but we love it.
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Speaker 1
07:20
Quick side note, Tyler’s wife is awesome. I’m a little bit upset, though. When I first met her, my girlfriend and I went up to Erie as part of our business planning. We played golf. And your wife, she played college golf as well?
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Speaker 2
07:34
Yeah, that’s where we met. We met at Mercer’s college. We were both on the golf team.
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Speaker 1
07:37
Anyway, so she beat me in golf. I just. Yeah, I was not happy about it. I. I want a rematch. It’s gonna happen sometime in 2025. We need the handicap maybe to be a little bit fairer at the time, but we. She beat both of us because we. What was the setup? We gave them a stroke, A hole.
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Speaker 2
07:51
Yeah.
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Speaker 1
07:52
I was counting on you to just. You play well. But she’s good.
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Speaker 2
07:55
I told you from the beginning it wasn’t.
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Speaker 1
07:57
She is very good. But anyways, we’re gonna. We’ll. We’ll get it in 2025. Agreed.
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Speaker 2
08:03
We will.
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Speaker 1
08:04
She’s.
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Speaker 2
08:05
She’s very competitive, which is one thing I like about her. But you’re also very competitive, so I think the head’s.
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Speaker 1
08:10
But it’s in my. It’s been stuck in my mind ever since. So.
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Speaker 2
08:13
She’s notorious around the. Around the course for being.
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Speaker 1
08:16
Yeah, she’s got a good competitive game. But anyway, so. All right, so thanks for that background. I didn’t know you played hoops high school and then college, not golf.
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Speaker 2
08:31
Yeah, right.
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Speaker 1
08:32
Okay. What position did you play?
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Speaker 2
08:34
Shooting guard.
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Speaker 1
08:35
Shooting guard. Okay. All right. We have to go. Go on the court at some point. You still got height.
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Speaker 2
08:41
I don’t know about that.
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Speaker 1
08:42
I’m a. Was quicker.
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Speaker 2
08:44
I’m probably quicker.
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Speaker 1
08:45
You are, but it’s ok. Okay, so worst inventory story, real quick, when you were on the auditing side, because I remember getting sent. I think they figured out I was like, I was. My heart wasn’t in accounting. So they’re like, what does make them do all these inventories? I remember, like, Christmas Day. I was sent to, like, go, like, dip yardsticks and oil. Like, you know, I had to count to make sure, like, the inventory on the books was, like, truthful, I guess, to these publicly traded companies. But, yeah, that was my Christmas Day.
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Speaker 2
09:17
Yeah.
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Speaker 1
09:18
So anyways, what was your worst?
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Speaker 2
09:20
I think my worst. And, you know, you think about auditing and you get to travel and you get to stay in these luxurious hotels. No, my clients were regional. Pittsburgh. So my travel was. I wasn’t staying in hotels. I was driving an hour and a half back and forth every day. But the one that I always remember is I drove. It was over an hour that I had to go. And it was. I can’t remember the client name, steel manufacturer, but I had to go to this warehouse that they warned us ahead of time. It was middle of winter. Hey, it’s cold. Dress warm. We don’t have heating in the warehouse. The warehouse had dirt floors. So I had all my old clothes on. And we had to go into this warehouse and physically count these long steel beams.
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Speaker 2
10:05
And in order to just weren’t organized. So were crawling on our knees to try to, you know, touch the. The beams. And that. That was. I think at that point, I’m like, no, I’m out.
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Speaker 1
10:22
That’s. That sounds awful. But, yeah. Anyway, so auditing. I just want to be clear, like, auditing is such a necessity in the US Economy because it. It keeps public, you know, companies accountable to make sure that their books are what they say they are. Right. But.
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Speaker 2
10:39
And I learned a lot with auditing and preparing financial statements, the debits and credits of accounting. You see. You see a lot of tax accounts who are really good with tax knowledge and preparing returns. But if. When it comes to bookkeeping questions, accounting questions, okay, the debit went here. Where’s the credit going? That’s something that was really valuable. I thought that I learned from doing that side of.
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Speaker 1
11:04
Listen, I did it for a little Less under a year. I think I was the shortest stint at that big public for that big four accounting firm. And everyone was kind of upset at me because they’re like, there’s so many good accounting majors that wanted that job. And I just kind of. I interviewed well, I guess, or made a couple jokes.
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Speaker 2
11:20
I don’t ever see you being any type of accountant.
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Speaker 1
11:23
I was bad, but it helped so much. Like now like my Excel spread. My nerdiness is like 10 time, 10x that of like I think a normal advisor. So like it. It. Yeah. I can audit someone’s financial life, like very quickly, I feel like. And that experience helped so much. Another experience that really helped for me. This isn’t about me, but I’m going to share the story. Was door to door cable sales. In between graduating college and my first job at the big four accounting firm. I was like, I’m not signing for the cpa. And it was just too much. I’m gonna go make money, pay off my school loans. I went door to door and yeah, it was like, you know, you get told off by every other door. But you had to learn people skills.
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Speaker 1
12:09
So I think auditing really helped and then cable sales really helped me because you had to learn to relate to people very quickly.
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Speaker 2
12:14
Yeah, you think about financial services, whether it’s, you know, your side of work or accounting. And one of the reasons why I got into accounting was I was kind of a numbers nerd. I didn’t like sales. I have family members that do sales. But then as you kind of grow in your career, sales is such. And people interacting with people is such a huge part of it that you need them.
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Speaker 1
12:36
I agree. Well, I think you’re a great. Not sales, you just you, you relate to people well and people feel comfortable with you. I feel comfortable and I know clients feel comfortable. So it’s. You’re not a normal. You’re not normal. You’re not a normal accountant. Which is a good compliment, I think. Yeah, that’s a compliment. So pain points. So pain points. For us at DWA working with some CPAs, you know, we would go. We do a lot of tax planning as you know, as far as like Roth conversions. And we’ll do estimates for taxes for our clients that get big bonuses or, you know, we hate when clients have like a $20,000 tax rise at the end of the year because it throws their financial plan off. Every dollar counts and maybe that was going to be invested or whatever.
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Speaker 1
13:20
And it really stresses clients out because no one wants to have that Surprises. So over the last like five or six years we’ve become really proactive of all the advisors, like do these tax estimates, keep detailed notes of like Roth conversions and recommend tax strategies. And so we basically over the last five or six years and you know this but half our clients don’t. You don’t. Didn’t use you before. We noticed with other CPAs, we would compile all this information, send this info and they would basically, you know, ignore it until like last second deadline. And then they’d email us again for all this information that we already sent. So we’re like, this is a pretty big pain and a waste of time to communicate. We know most of the tax information.
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Speaker 1
14:02
Meanwhile the client’s getting this like 200 question survey that probably only 10 questions matter and wasting their time filling this out that they just blanket send the infamous organizers the organizer sheet. I just throw like literally like the prior firm I used sent me, I would immediately just throw it out.
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Speaker 2
14:20
Yeah.
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Speaker 1
14:20
And say most people do. Here’s what I did.
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Speaker 2
14:23
And it’s usually sent around the holidays. So that’s even more reason than to ignore it because year end you got, you know, the holidays to deal with and.
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Speaker 1
14:30
Yeah. So our experience with you though is you were one of the, you know, let’s say we work with like 50 different CPAs. But you would send you the information and you were like this is awesome. And you’ve never asked any question. It was like highly organized, it was highly efficient. And so that’s where like it clicked to my mind. I was like, what if we brought this all in house? It kind of felt like you were already in house to be hon sure because of how good the communication was. But yes, I guess share from your perspective like prior at it, what were the pain points that you. And how are we going to solve those moving forward?
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Speaker 2
15:00
Yeah, one of the things that I think the reason why, one of the reasons why you and I stayed so close over the years is because I was like stunned with how tax knowledgeable you and your team are with the projections you put together and helping people pay estimates with the other outside financial advisors. A lot of times I didn’t see that kind of fell on the CPA to do. So when you guys, I saw some of the projection work that you guys do and always kind of thinking about taxes along with the financial advisory. That was something that was really attractive to me. And also yeah, the year end kind of summary that shows all the activity that the client had going on. It saved so much Time just to have that.
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Speaker 2
15:56
And I’m sure it took a lot of time on your end to do that. But those type of things, that’s where you run into pain points. When you’re working with 4, 5, 6 outside advisors, you kind of, you know, if you don’t talk to the client for a few months, you don’t talk to the financial advisor, you don’t really know what’s going on. And then tax season comes and you get, you know, three or four different 1099s and you got to kind of put all the pieces together and that’s when you got to reach out, okay, who’s this person’s financial advisor? Reach out to the client. Okay, what’s this form all about? So that’s one thing that really was huge time saver.
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Speaker 2
16:40
Kind of alleviated a lot of those, I guess a lot of the time that it took to communicate with various people. That was a big pain point that was alleviated.
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Speaker 1
16:51
So awesome. Well, thanks for the compliment. We feel the same about you, Tyler. But so from my perspective, what I experience with other CPAs and not yours, so I can just, I mean, I could go on and on, but I think, you know, one of them would be the extremely reactive mindset. They would, their job is just to file the tax return. When we found clients are looking for proactive advice. How can I save taxes? What do I need to do during the year before it’s too late?
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Speaker 1
17:20
And so the advice that we’ve been able to collaborate on, get you know, on the phone with clients and talk about different tax savings, whether it’s through vehicles or, you know, kids being on payroll or depreciation on real estate, whatever it is, partnership versus S Corp, you know, how to structure wages to save Medicare taxes, the list goes on and on. The proactive nature, that’s what we embody the wa. And you already embodied that, you know, when were working with you as a outside partnership. And now that you’re in, I think we can go put that on steroids, to be honest. But some of the things we, the pain points I see is those tax surprise accounts normally didn’t care about. Like, let’s figure out those tax surprises when you get that bonus. Where are the withholdings withheld correctly.
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Speaker 1
18:07
And then the biggest thing I see is like, let’s say a client had a tax price and it was a one off thing. Well, they’ll then create this like safe harbor thing where you have to pay every quarter this much so first of all, wait a second. Like writing a check every quarter, the chances the client’s gonna remember that. Some do, most don’t. Secondly, that’s nonsense for two reasons. One, if it was a one off, let’s do the estimate for next year. They may not owe that safe harp. Maybe that was a one time thing. Or secondly, why not automate this out of your paycheck? We can just make a little adjustment in your paycheck and avoid having to write those manual checks.
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Speaker 1
18:52
So those are just very simple things that bother me as a client of a CPA previously that we fixed when I established my relationship with you. But all those little, the pain points that you as a client can think of, that’s our goal is to figure those out and to solve them permanently.
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Speaker 2
19:09
Yeah, I think as CPAs and tax preparers specifically, you kind of fall into this reactive environment just because, you know, people don’t like thinking about taxes. It’s weird because it’s like your biggest expense in life is taxes. But people don’t like to think about them. They, you know, they wait till last minute. And as a tax preparer, it’s one of the hardest things to deal with because you know, that’s when surprises happen. And I hate nothing more than having a big tax surprise and telling a client they owe a ton of money.
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Speaker 2
19:45
But the reactive nature, if you get your, first of all, the documents are getting issued later and then when you collect those documents and get them to prepare and the preparer only has a week to prepare an accurate return and get it done, we can’t think about other things. Planning for the year to come and we’re just kind of grinding away trying to get the thing filed in time. So yeah, you kind of fall into that reactive environment which, and I’m guilty of it too. I’ve done it. It’s just the nature of it. But yeah, I think that’s one thing bringing everything together, both sides. We’re constant communication. We have access to everyone’s. Everything that’s going on. That’s something that we’re going to better at.
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Speaker 1
20:43
Absolutely. Well, something we’ve agreed to during our planning retreat, which I need to do more of. Somebody cut the screens off. You can really think was, you know, you brought the perspective of like, what are all the pain points? And you mentioned like accountants pick up and down tax returns. How many times do you think like one tax return throughout the, throughout that season. The tax season.
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Speaker 2
21:04
Yeah. It depends on the complexity, but I mean, it can get into the double digits where you’re picking up, putting down, trying to find answers. Absolutely.
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Speaker 1
21:12
So I think that’s, I think it. There’s some inefficiencies that exist and the disruption we wanted to cause is, well, what if we had all the information? What if we knew the client so intimately well that we knew everything that we needed to ask. We wouldn’t have to go back and forth at times. We know what we need. We’re going to make a request list, we’re going to pick it up, get it 90% done. Now, not all this stuff’s going to be available. So then we’re going to do a second wave and make sure we gather information and be proactive as possible. We’re going to do a customized list per client Instead of a 200 page nonsense organizer of did you buy a farm? And meanwhile you live downtown Pittsburgh. Like, what?
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Speaker 1
21:48
And so, yeah, we want to make this experience as great as possible for our clients. We also want to be efficient on our end and save time. And I think we can accomplish all of those things for sure. So the other thing too that we’re going to do to make. So one thing that happened to me is 2020. This is right when we formed DWA. This was the year before. This was the year before we officially, I think, switched to you. Right. It was 2019. I can’t remember a prior CPA before I started using Tyler. I think I’ve been using you for four or five years now. They completely missed a. A K1 for me. Right. So it was a huge. So not.
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Speaker 2
22:44
So this is your main source of it?
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Speaker 1
22:45
Yeah, it’s my main source of income. They just missed it. And like I’m at that point, I’m running 100 miles now. It’s my fault. I should have looked through it, but I’m like, I paid this person a lot. I just trusted that they. So here’s why I trusted it. They created the K1, they did the entire books, plus they filed my taxes. I was trusting them that, like they had all the information. This wasn’t like a K1. I need to provide them. They prepared the K1 and then just missed it. So what happened three years later was I owed the money due that K1, which I was happy to pay because, like, yeah, I owed it. And there was significant interest in penalties though. Like, significant. I think it was, yeah, anyways, like 10, 20,000.
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Speaker 1
23:30
But that was frustrating me as a client and so that is a crazy example. Should have never been missed. But a lot of our affluent clients, like, they’re going to have K1, some private investments they’re going to have. And so a system. And Tyler, kudos to you. You had this idea is we can get what’s called a power of attorney and when we file the tax return, you can go in and basically you have eyes into what the IRS is. So you can see everything the IRS is expecting on the tax return. So before you file it, you can match that up. I don’t know any other CPA that does that. And you didn’t even do that at your prior firm. You had that idea to do here. And I think that’s genius because it’s going to those little one.
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Speaker 1
24:12
Those little stupid miscommunications. Like, we can eliminate that by taking that extra proactive step. Yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 2
24:18
A lot of CPAs don’t get those until they’re necessary. So if client gets a notice or reactive versus proactive. Yeah, yeah. So the IRS produces a transcript for every taxpayer out there. So if a company issues a 1099 with their name and social on it, or a K1 with their name and social, it gets populated in there. So yeah, when you’re preparing a tax return, you can go in there, look at the transcript, make sure you’re not missing anything. Yeah.
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Speaker 1
24:45
So if you are missing something, it’s a guaranteed notice from the irs. Guaranteed. Like if you say, how do I not be audited?
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Speaker 2
24:52
Yeah.
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Speaker 1
24:53
Don’t miss a document that the IRS is expecting you to pay taxes on. That’s number one. So. Yeah. And other than that, you know, Tyler, what I’ve appreciated about you is like, I’ve asked you to do some pretty crazy stuff. You know, like we have clients like tick tock videos and all these kind of like, I do this and save this taxes, Airbnb this and this. And so like, I always get these questions I ask you and you just kind of like, I, I don’t. I’m imagining you’re just like. Because we’re on the phone. I’m imagining you just have like the biggest eye roll of your life. I’m like, here we go again. And. But what I appreciate about you is if something’s legitimate, like you’ll.
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Speaker 1
25:35
You’ll let me be professionally aggressive, but you’re gonna make sure I always stay outta trouble. Like, we’re not doing any. There’s a Dirty Dozen list the IRS publishes. We stay clear of that. There’s simple, like there’s a difference between I think being a professionally aggressive versus like tax evasion or like schemes or. And you’ll, you’ve never let me, a client of EWA or anyone else that I know of ever steer down that path because one, you want to provide good, honest advice and also keep people out of trouble. So. Any comments on that?
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Speaker 2
26:10
Yeah, I mean, you know, the rules are the rules and I always tell people stay away from the TikTok videos. I mean if you have any for.
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Speaker 1
26:20
Taxes, you can, I’m not on TikTok.
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Speaker 2
26:23
You can use it as a means to start having a conversation. But if you’re hearing these things on TikTok, get an expert’s opinion on it, whether it’s your current CPA and financial advisor or us. Don’t rely too much on those things because you never know how people are interpreting the rules. But yeah, I mean I try to be fair with my clients with you. You kind of, as you grow and get the experience, you know where the red flags are going to come out. But you know, selfishly, if a client does something that’s kind of skirting the rules a little bit, that falls back on me. Right. So I’m signing the tax return. You know, I’m taking that tax position.
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Speaker 2
27:17
And then down the road if the client were to get audited or a notice, that’s just a ton of additional work that we have to do together to try to get them out of it. So I, I don’t.
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Speaker 1
27:28
Yeah, I guess the good news, bad news, like the bad news for clients at traditional CPA firm, you’re probably getting billed hourly for that work. So it’s kind of like an attorney like divorce. Like they want you to have a huge fight and a huge court system and all this because they’re going to make. And I’ve witnessed this a million times and I warned a client that we recently went through divorces like we can settle this and you’re. Here’s what’s going to happen basically 99 and you can do it now or you can, your attorneys want. You go through this process. You can pay them each 50,000 and then get 50,000 less each of you. And they both agreed to it and their attorneys came up with. And anyways it was 99% accurate. What the assets what was.
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Speaker 1
28:05
And their attorneys got way over 50. That was like 70 something thousand they each got. So, so we’re not billing hourly. We have this, we’re wrapping this in our advisory fee. We’re locking in our, for our existing clients, the CPA aspect of this, we’re blending. We believe we can be so efficient and we can eliminate so many mistakes that clients see other CPAs or self inflicted mistakes, those power of attorney documents. We believe we can make this efficient to give clients a deal of a lifetime in their taxes. But the caveat is you have to be an EWA client. And so our clients we have very good relationships with, we have very good communication with and so we believe we can eliminate a lot of those costs, hours and lost efficiency.
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Speaker 1
28:50
So not saying it’s going to work perfectly all the time, there’s always going to be, you know, one offs. But yeah, we’re excited to get after it. But the way we’re set up, you know, we’re fiduciaries at ewa, we’re an raa, which legally means we’re a fiduciary. We always have to do what’s in the best interest of our clients on an ongoing basis. And so we have this tax arm now it’s a separate LLC just due to how Pennsylvania has it set up and it all flows to ewa. And so you know, you’re that fiduciary standard from a tax advice standpoint from Tyler being a licensed cpa, that’s going to continue on.
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Speaker 1
29:22
So we’re always going to do what’s in your best interest and give you advice for what we believe is in your best interest and what we would do if were in your shoes. So yeah, we’re very excited to have Tyler. For those of you that have opted in, want to give you the insight. Tyler is going to be working with all of our advisors on the team. So you’ll still communicate with your main advisor. You’ll also have some facetime with Tyler. But first year it’s going to be all hand on deck. So a lot of those document retrievals and advice, you’re going to still be able to communicate directly with your advisor and pull Tyler in is going to be kind of high level overseeing everything. So we’re really excited about it.
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Speaker 1
29:54
But Tyler, any closing remarks or advice to make sure this first tax season is a tremendous success for our clients?
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Speaker 2
30:01
I don’t think so. I’m excited. I appreciate the opportunity and I think it’s going to be a great time saver and beneficial for all of our clients to kind of have everything done under one roof. And I’m excited to get after it.
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Speaker 1
30:18
Oh, we have to end with this. So during. So Tyler initially asked like, are you ready? I said, no. And then a couple years later, I was like, I’m ready. Let’s go. And you’re like, well, you’re getting offered like equity and partner and this like national, like huge growth. I’m like, this is gonna really cost me. I should have done it three years ago, which it did, but it’s all good. But you were really, you know, and you rightfully. So you’re like, do I take this? I don’t know if it’s a higher risk. I feel like we have very. Our retention rate, some ways possible, is 99.9%. Rarely, sometimes it’s mutual. We’re not a good fit. But like, we know our clients are going to take advantage of this. No question. The long term is the first shot.
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Speaker 1
31:05
But for you, it’s probably a bigger risk. Like, because not, I don’t know, 1% of firms like us probably have done this. So we appreciate you taking the risk, but. And then you’re getting this attractive. I know. Like, there’s a lot of pain points that we’re trying to solve for you as a tax professional by being here and having a more normal life and whatnot, but. And being around really awesome people. No, I’m just kidding. I’m sure your colleagues at your other place were awesome too, but you were on the fence. So I was like, tyler, let’s settle for this. You’re a. You’re a scratch off. You hate when I say you’re. What are you, a two handicap?
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Speaker 2
31:41
I think I’m up to a three or four now.
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Speaker 1
31:43
Yeah, that would have been nice a couple months ago. So I was like a 8, I think. Fresh off of hip surgery. No excuses though. But I was like, tyler, you know what? Come to New York. Girlfriend’s running this non for profit event. We got access to a couple awesome courses and how about we just play straight up? No. No strokes. If I beat you one of these three rounds, the decision’s made. We had already kind of worked out the financials, everything like that. And you would agree to that? So then work out in your favor what was replay. So what was the first course? The first course was Beth Page Black, where they’re playing the, the Ryder cup next year.
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Speaker 2
32:27
Yes.
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Speaker 1
32:28
And so we played like the championship.
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Speaker 2
32:30
Course, which, by the way, we didn’t. We didn’t play together that day. You could have paid off your group’s mates and said, hey, cut my stroke, cut my score by five or six and tell them I shot.
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Speaker 1
32:42
We operate with integrity. Tyler, what did you shoot that day? Do you remember? Because that rough was so high. That was. It looks like it should be such an easy course. It’s relatively. I mean, there’s tree line, but, like, that was hard.
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Speaker 2
32:52
The greens were flat. If you could get to the greens, if you could get to the green, you could make some putts. Yeah, but the problem is, if you missed the fairway even by an inch, you couldn’t go with the green. I mean, anything outside of 100 yards, you had to chip out into the fairway and then go after it.
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Speaker 1
33:08
I think I shot at 84 that day. And we.
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Speaker 2
33:10
I was like, 82. Island beach by a couple.
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Speaker 1
33:13
I remember it was close. I was like, I got this in the bag. I was like that. Next course was the Bridge, which is an awesome private course in. Out in Montauk, I believe, in the Montauk area. And really cool spot. I. I think you’d be closed out with, like, 11.
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Speaker 2
33:32
I shot well that day. I think I should 74. 75 that day. I think that was my better.
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Speaker 1
33:37
Yeah, 85, probably. Oh, and then. Then there was Sabonic. I wasn’t close that day.
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Speaker 2
33:46
Well, you kind of were, but I remember you played really well most of the day, and, like, the last two or three, you really messed up. I think I shot 75 that day. And you shot. You had a good shot. I think I shot 80. I think you shot 80 even. But you finished with, like, two doubles or something.
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Speaker 1
34:01
Two doubles in a row.
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Speaker 2
34:02
Yeah.
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Speaker 1
34:05
So then went to National Golf Links, and this. I actually took it to the 18th hole.
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Speaker 2
34:13
I was a little gassed by that.
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Speaker 1
34:14
Yeah, I think you had your worst round probably of the year. Probably like an 82 or something. And I shot like, an 83. But that was a hard course. That’s ranked in the top five in the world. But awesome course I thought I had. Yeah. But nope, still worked out. So anyways, didn’t win the bet. I had four chances at it, thanks to Tyler being so generous, so confident. His own golf game. And that I stunk so bad, which he was correct. Next year, it’ll be a different story. Tyler, I’m just saying I’m scared.
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Speaker 2
34:42
I am scared that you and some others are coming after my handicap. I don’t know who’s the lowest.
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Speaker 1
34:49
Chris got lower for me than, like, for a month. He got, like, to. I went up to, like, an eight and a half. He went down like, an 8.3. He was chirping daily about it, sending me screen prints of the gin, you know, but yeah, so that didn’t work out. So Tyler actually, by choice, was not forced to be. I just want to go on record. He chose to be here. We’re excited to have him. It didn’t happen over in the golf course, unfortunately. It happened.
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Speaker 2
35:15
No.
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Speaker 1
35:16
We thought this was going to be a tremendous partnership. So I think that’s good news for clients because I think if I had beat you in golf, then you’re like, we should probably shouldn’t, like, yeah, he.
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Speaker 2
35:26
Had to come work. Work for us because probably not golf. Yeah. So you’re getting your taxes done by this guy now. Had a bad day on the golf course.
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Speaker 1
35:34
It’s a funny story, though, but that’s. It’s. I realized you were such at a crossroads. It was so stressful, so I was like. That was like my suggestion you agreed to. I was like, that’s. This will be an awesome story regardless. So.
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Speaker 2
35:45
Yeah.
S
Speaker 1
35:45
But yeah, glad to have you here.
S
Speaker 2
35:46
Me too. Looking forward to it.
S
Speaker 1
35:48
Thanks for tuning in to our podcast. Hopefully you found this helpful. Really hope this is as beneficial and impactful to as many people across the nation as possible. So hit the follow button, make sure to rate the podcast and please share with any friends or family members that would also find this beneficial. Thank you very much.