The Unique CPA

Rob Brown returns on Episode 292 of The Unique CPA to unpack, among many other things, what he calls the "alignment gap," the chasm between decisions made behind closed doors and what the rest of the firm actually sees, feels, and hears. When partners spend months absorbing a deal or preparing for a big change, and all staff get is a 30-minute town hall, panic sets in. Rob identifies three breaks: a time gap, a language gap, and a channel gap. Partners talk capital and succession, but staff rightly ask one question: "What happens to me?" Randy connects this to survey data showing that middle managers have been hit hardest by stress during periods of change, particularly the current one where that change is so rapid. Rob also lays out red flags that leaders miss when managing change: quiet town halls, the "meeting after the meeting," the subtle shift from "we decided" to "leadership has decided," indicating a lack of ownership, and discretionary effort quietly disappearing. And the biggest indicator, turnover, is a lagging indicator, because by the time someone resigns, they lost faith six months ago or a year ago. The fix starts with honesty and goes from there. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

After 25 years in accounting and finance, Lisa Poslusny discovered that switching careers didn't switch off the pressure. The same overwhelm she felt juggling deadlines and deliverables followed her right into health coaching, which led her to mental fitness. On Episode 290 of The Unique CPA, she explains that mental fitness is not mere positive thinking, but rather, the ability to catch the unhelpful thought patterns that drive automatic reactions. Randy and Lisa dig into how the strengths that make accountants great, like high standards, analytical thinking, having answers for clients, being a trusted advisor, and so forth, can spill over into perfectionism and self-judgment that drain energy without producing better work. Lisa walks through what those patterns look like in real moments, like the accountant who glances at a client email at eight o'clock and feels compelled to respond instantly. But there is a simple alternative: ten seconds of focused attention to shift your brain out of stress mode. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

Okorie Ramsey built a legacy statement around six words: "To live a life that mattered." As Vice President of Sarbanes-Oxley at Kaiser Permanente and the first African American male to chair the AICPA, he's spent his career turning that philosophy into action. He launched the National Pipeline Advisory Group, grew accounting enrollment for three straight years, and brought HBCU students into the profession through the Balance Sheet Bash, among many, many other contributions. On Episode 288 of The Unique CPA, Randy and Okorie dig into the AI governance gap threatening the profession's role as trusted advisors, why the next generation of accountants needs more than technical skills to thrive, and what it means for seasoned leaders to shift from doing the work to pouring knowledge into those coming behind them. Okorie is also blunt about leaders who treat AI as someone else's problem, as well as about the point where staying in a role you've outgrown becomes its own kind of comfort and complacency. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

Most firms measure AI adoption by efficiency gains and dashboards full of green checkmarks. Jennifer Harrity, author of The Human Cost of AI, argues on Episode 286 of The Unique CPA that the real numbers worth tracking are psychological safety and burnout. Associates who once learned judgment through repetition now babysit AI agents instead, quietly losing the muscle memory that built professional skepticism in the first place. Managers absorb the overflow, catching hallucinated outputs while their own workloads climb 40% or more. Jennifer traces how polished corporate messaging about "freeing up time for higher-level work" collides with a workforce doing more, understanding less, and afraid to say so. Randy then connects this to survey data showing rising dissatisfaction even as productivity climbs, and together they map out what leadership grounded in honesty and psychological safety could look like, and why firms that teach fundamentals before automation will be the ones still standing when the dust settles. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

Matt Armanino traded a law career and a stint at PeopleSoft for the CEO seat at Armanino, a top-20 firm he once never imagined joining. He tells Randy on Episode 284 of The Unique CPA that nearly two decades later, he's steering almost 3,000 people through what he considers the largest technology shift of his lifetime. Focusing on AI's effect on billable hours, Matt explains why his firm shifting to value billing years ago, long before generative AI made it an absolute necessity. Culture, he says, is the real differentiator once technical knowledge becomes cheap, and Matt traces Armanino's "build anything" philosophy back to a Peter Drucker quote and a Pat Lencioni exercise that took a full day to answer one question: "Why does Armanino exist?" Curiosity as a career advantage and a firm-wide bet on becoming indispensable rather than replaceable round out a discussion about what accounting looks like once knowledge stops being scarce and you have to differentiate yourself more than ever. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

Randy Crabtree sits down with Justine Lackey, founder of The Incubator, on Episode 282 of The Unique CPA. Justine originally built one of the earliest virtual bookkeeping firms out of necessity, long before "remote," or even anything besides QuickBooks Desktop, became standard practice. Their conversation moves from the mechanics of scaling and selling a firm to the grief that follows a successful exit, and the anxiety that lingers even when everything goes right. Justine breaks down her four-S framework – systems, service, sales, skills – and makes the case for choosing the "right size firm" instead of chasing growth for its own sake. Threaded through it all is a shared conviction that accounting's stress gets ignored far too often, and that the profession's future depends less on compliance work than on the relationships built along the way. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

Randy Crabtree sits down with Luke Frye, who's gone from hand-stamping journal entries as a small-town government accountant to scaling Bench to thousands of customers, running his own firm through a messy business divorce, and now advising practices at Canopy. Their conversation on Episode 280 of The Unique CPA keeps circling back to a single, uncomfortable question: What actually makes a firm valuable, as opposed to just busy? Luke argues that key man risk, not revenue, is the real threat to most practices, and that hourly billing quietly rewards inefficiency while punishing the AI tools meant to help. He pushes clients to charge what they're worth instead of discounting out of fear, and to build systems, like a real CRM, that let a firm run without its owner chained to it. Randy's own transition out of the company he built nineteen years ago and into advisory adds real-world weight to the discussion. It's a candid look at pricing, succession, and the mindset shifts firm owners tend to avoid until it's too late. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

Recorded live at Bridging the Gap 2025 in Denver, Terrell Turner sits down with wealth advisor and speaker Rory Henry on Episode 268 of The Unique CPA to talk about what he calls "return on relationship." "ROR" is the idea that when you genuinely invest in understanding the people you serve, the ROI takes care of itself. Rory makes a compelling case that the real work of financial professionals isn't in the numbers at all, but in the questions: What are your best hopes? What does your ideal life actually look like? Drawing on behavioral finance and values-based planning, he argues that money is rarely the point, but rather, meaning and wellbeing are. The conversation also takes in the energy of BTG 2025 itself, the growing wave of new talent in the profession, and why Rory is convinced that in-person connection remains one of the most underrated growth strategies available to any practice. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com