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think tech away civil engagement lives here Aloha and welcome to business in Hawaii would reg Baker we broadcast live every Thursday from 2:00 to 2:30 in the downtown studios of think tech Hawaii in the Pioneer Plaza it's a beautiful sunny day here in halle-loo so if you're on the East Coast my condolences we have a returning guest here today Carl Williams he's a founding of partner or owner of one of the larger local firms here in Hawaii and very successful in being able to recruit a lot of young professionals into the profession and he's brought one of his young professionals an auto manager with him today MJ and we're going to talk a little bit about how the industry is transitioned over the years a little bit on how Millennials are fitting into the new environment and it's gonna be a very interesting conversation that last time Carl was on the show we talked a little bit about the good old days and and I think today is maybe the better days so things have changed quite a bit over the years welcome back Carl MJ good to have you on the show today thank you hey Carl um why don't you kind of set to the stage for some MJ has been with the firm for a while and you brought her on board and I did it it certainly is the better days by the way with this electronic environment yeah MJ has been with us for quite a few years and she joined us when she was a part-time student at the University of Hawaii getting her back degree so we're very proud of that and then full time after that but I'm especially proud of our relationship employer employee relationship with with MJ because embodies that I think that relationship and body is what what our firm is all about in terms of family because you know after getting her masters of Accountancy degrees he's gone on to to raise to age of six and four anyway two beautiful young children and and that's not easy it was never easy for a woman in the past and it's still not very easy these days so we're especially we're especially proud of that so and we have recently because of her personality and because of her love of the profession we have recently charged her with our recruiting being in charge of our recruiting activities because she connects so well to people and particularly young people and can tell the story of our firm of our profession it must be kind of exciting for you MJ it's kind of like gone full circle yes it has so now you you finished education you've been working for a while now you get to go back and visit with the people and tell them what kind of great firm you're working for yes so how often do you do that I do it both for firm also with the Y CPA squad so in a typical year I will go to visit not only the college students but the high school students with the Y CPA and we go to talk to high school students about our profession what it's really like we're not sitting in a cubicle 12 hours out of the day we're actually interacting with people you get to see the sunlight everyone's so nice ten very good and so are you always looking for people I mean is this a year-round effort on your part yes it is yes it is and we're always looking for people and people students especially they're in different stages of their lives so it's important that we don't close that door to them just because you know they missed the window so you you've gone through the education you started your career what do you tell people particularly when you go out to the high schools I mean people hear about becoming an accountant or being a CPA and they've got this image right you know but it's not always an accurate image so how do you get people excited to maybe consider being an accountant or CPA as a career right so Hollywood hasn't done a very good job of portraying our profession I would say so we try to connect with them by saying you know it all look like this way ya know but we try to connect with them and by saying that you know with an accounting degree especially it's so portable and you can go and work at a hotel you can go work for the government you can go into public accounting you can go into education and so they don't really know that or realize that and I know back in high school I didn't know that so my big dream was to become that counts payable clerk somewhere because that's what I thought accounting was but you know public accounting is such a great profession because you get to go to all these different companies and see how they operate and where you could potentially end up in the future see that's a very good point is that you know becoming an experienced account it opens up a lot of doors for a lot of different industries and different types of businesses as a matter of fact I have to think I mean are there any businesses out there that don't have accountants I mean everybody needs an accountant of some sort you know and so it really opens up a whole world of possibilities once you get that experience and in Carl I can know you know I know from my experience in today's environment it's really hard to find good accountants we we when I say we I mean MJ but we work very hard at finding the people but when he said go to countenance it's not just a skill set and in fact there's some really smart people out there smart accountants out there who are maybe not quote-unquote good accountants because there's MJ said it's very much a people business at least as an auditor because we are out working with business owners working with their personnel week after week day after day so takes a lot of skills beyond book skills which is part of what we love about this profession is not only the experience with different types of businesses but with different types of people we love it right and that makes you very valuable valuable to the firm but also valuable if you ever decide that you want a different career it gives you a lot of options right yep for sure that's right so how many people do you talk to and try to convince to maybe explore CW is an option for them I mean you must be pretty busy I constantly talked to students on whether it is a professional mixer with the Y CPA squad we go out to the colleges we do mock interviews we do workshops regarding interviews resume writing and it's we do the workshop but after that it's it's those 5-10 minutes after the workshop that become extremely valuable because then we can tell them about our firm answer any of their questions and that's important because if you're not part of a club like the accounting Club or Beta Alpha side you don't really get to bridge that gap between school and the professionals right as a matter of fact some of those firms will actually have like eight or you can go on and go into the firm and take a look at see what that environment is like yes and we have a firm to participate in that every semester so the students come they see where we work they meet our people they sit down and have you know a quick meal and drinks but that room and that's where you really start to find out about the person's interpersonal skill level is going to the having a meal or the maybe even the cocktails afterwards or whatever I mean it's it's where you really see the interaction and start taking place right yeah that's very good Karl how has that changed from back when we were you know I guess in our younger days we're starting out our career I think that I think the skill sent him there and the recruiting are so very similar to what what we did in the past but I think the of course the Millennials and younger people are different than they were and I and the reward system is I think somewhat different than it used to be one of one of my biggest challenges over the years has been to provide opportunities for young people to grow and succeed and to have different experiences I've been reading a lot of material on generational issues for a number of years now and you know that's one of the issues in this idea of having to rotate or move change jobs every couple of years to get new types of experiences we try so hard to overcome that sort of mentality by providing new challenges and new experiences yes it's within the public accounting frame framework but providing that in to keep our people stimulated professionally and that's that's the toughest part of my job and I dare say we've had some success mostly by collaborating with the MJ's of the firm and and others so well and I think maybe in a public accounting environment such as your firm because you've got two different companies in the different industries it allows you some opportunity that to rotate people around so they can get this intellectual challenge and get that stimulation that they're looking for right right it's very convenient MJ explain for those that are about ready to start what is a typical day for you when when you and I know today may be different than what it was a few years ago when we were starting out but when you were first starting out and like your first few and the job yes what was it like auditing is very exciting so you actually get to work in a team of at our firm three or four people you go out to the client you get to meet their accounting department you get to talk to sometimes their CFO's the first few days is really just learning about how they operate and where there could be challenges as far as the accounting side and sitting down and talking through and understanding what they do every day so that we can figure out where's the risk or where where can we make it better or where can we help them so that's what we're doing so you you document all this - yes and you use technology occasionally some of it is memo driven and then yes we do have software that helps us document our risks and the areas that we want to focus in on more just want to elaborate on that a little bit of the interesting part of being an auditor is risk assessment is a big factor in planning and the beginning part of it and what risk assess what really means is understanding the business and the people and what they do so that's what I think we had kind of alluded to earlier it's just really taking a deep dive into how businesses operate and and we again that's the exciting part of our job I think I'm very exciting because in in the best case scenario you're getting to see firsthand some of the best practices that are out there and you can see how it works yeah on the other hand sometimes you see some practices that aren't so good yeah and you get full exposure to that whole scope or range and which allows you after a few years experienced to help the client improve their internal you know processes yeah and there's no bigger compliment and I've been doing this many years probably obviously I guess but as I've you but there's no bigger car there's no bigger compliment than you know going to an anniversary I went to one recently their 25th anniversary and being singled out as an individual and firm that are more part of their success I mean it's such a wonderful feeling because we're accountants right so it's really and you know we're gonna have to go on break here in a minute but part of what I want to talk about in the second half is you know what exactly does a CPA firm do I mean there may be people out there maybe in the high school level or maybe nerves second year third year of college or thinking about accounting major but they're not sure where they want to go private public whatever so let's talk about the world of public accounting and what that's all about and we'll do that as soon as we get done with this break this is business in Hawaii would reg Baker we're here today talking with a CPA firm that's gonna be explaining a little bit more to us about what they do you know for those that don't know what a CPA firm does we'll be back in about 60 seconds hello everyone I'm DeSoto Brown the co-host of human humane architecture which is seen on think techo Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. and with the show's host Martin dis bang we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live but other aspects of our life not only here in a way but internationally as well so join us for human humane architecture every other Tuesday at four pm on think tech Hawaii Aloha I'm Keeley akina and I'm here every other week on Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. on think tech Hawaii's Hawaii together in Hawaii together we talk with some of the most fascinating people in the islands about working together working together for a better economy government and society so I invite you into our conversation every other Monday at 2 p.m. on think tech Owyhee broadcast network join us for Hawaii together I'm Keely Akina Aloha [Music] [Applause] welcome back this is Reggie Baker business in Hawaii we're here today talking with the CPA firm in town and and I realize that this is right in the middle tax season but rest assured we've got two auditors here today so they were able to sneak out of the office for a little bit Karl MJ good to have you here today thank you there's gonna be a lot of people that may be watching that don't really quite understand what a CPA firm and of course a lot of the knee-jerk reaction although they do taxes well okay they do but there's also different pieces of a CPA firm that does different things Carl can you just give us a brief outline of what that might be sure so our firm might be a little bit different just to give a little perspective about 60% roughly two-thirds of our practice is doing financial reporting auditing if you will and the other thirty forty percent of it is doing tax we kind of differentiate between what we call compliance work which is tax work that's required to do and there are some audits that are required by governmental agencies or by regulation or whatever with the what we refer to as the attest function and so the financial reporting audits and reviews we serve in the attest function we go into the clients business they give us a set of financial statements that they intend to present to the bank to the owners the stockholders to creditors or whatever and we do enough testing of that information to attest to it and give an opinion on the fairness and whether it's reasonably accurate it's not we never say it's precisely accurate but we're saying it's reasonably accurate and I've always thought you can kind of liken that a little bit to an insurance policy that if you see financial statements with our name on it and you're intending to invest or loan money to that entity or make a donation and a non-profit then you have assurance that it is reasonably accurate and that you can rely on that financial information for your decision-making so that in a nutshell is is what we do so and in that type of audit environment you're pretty much looking to see the results of what the company has put together is that as far as a set of financial statements and then you you check to see if it's in conformity with the Accounting Standards or whatever it is it's up there they got to be in compliance right yeah right and then that's where you have that opinion later saying that yeah it looks it looks okay yeah so they're really the management is really asserting that's the Third Way but they're asserting that the financial statements are accurate and we are testing those assertions by testing the underlying information and documentation so now that's the audit side and now you got the tax side which also has a compliance component to it but does your firm get into tax planning at all quite a bit that's yeah that's the the biggest the biggest part of it I think one of the biggest complaints actually about CPAs is they tend to be particularly in the tax areas they tend to be too much compliance oriented where they take information put it in a tax return and send it back and they do everything stripped ly by the code and strictly by the code why do you have to do it by the code otherwise someone will come back and get your door but but yeah the being proactive is just a huge part of what we do we know from studies that have been done for years that business owners and individuals see their attorneys or bankers and their accountants as their business advisors you know so we always tell our guys if you think of yourself as a bean-counter auditor or as a tax prepa er and limited to that there's an inherent conflict and you're gonna lose because then people will want to go to someone else who is more proactive in providing information and helping them with their decisions and getting trying to get ahead of the curve somewhat especially these days wouldn't new tax laws well and they ever changing in tax laws you know every tax right we just had the tax reform as everybody knows and they're still trying to figure out exactly what how's that gonna work but I guess getting into the tax returns that also provides a lot of opportunity to do you know a more planning you know or maybe some guidance in how to do things that would have a more positive tax of family it also helps build the relationship with the client a little bit - mm-hmm yeah so all of that and then do fine this is kind of a loaded question would you find the personalities between the two groups different I mean our auditors different and somebody was telling me earlier about how to have a good Christmas party and and my answer was you don't invite the CPA and part of it is because there's in some ways two different objectives there's two different end games here that's involved and you know that's what they're getting paid for is to move to that end game so yeah of course there's going to be different approaches but there's you know and I don't know if this has changed very much from my days but we used to have another part that was more of a consultancy piece that we would spend some time on and we would actually get involved a week we had some tax and and we probably understood the finances but we got more engaged with the client and help them go through some of their management issues do we still do that today or is that absolutely you know I think I refer to about 60% of our practice being audit about 40% or so being tax but in the middle there's probably 10% 15% of our practice is the overlap between the two and so I've always referred to as general business consulting and that can do that includes mergers and acquisitions one thing we've been doing a lot of in the recent years is business transition father to son uncle - nephew if it's not just a straight sale preparing for that becoming an esop employee stock ownership plan for example so those kinds of things and that's again that's the fun part where we get to take our auditor hat off or our tax set where we're constrained by the Internal Revenue Code or a generally accepted accounting principles say what can we do to make this to make this that's where you get a lot of the yeah you know thank-yous a client for a job well done well I guess MJ that just opens up all kinds of opportunities they get that diversified experience that you know the Millennials are known to be looking for yes you know have you been able to you know experience some of them just this past week Carl and I was talking with a client about the potential route they could be taking or it's just things to think about in the future and I starting off as a professional never thought I would get to sit with the CFO's or the CEOs or the business owners and have those conversations there was always a thought of well that's for the partners you know we're not allowed to go but our firm is really good about it come with us have this conversation with the client and to see the clients brains start to move and go oh and to see the reaction of oh yeah we should be thinking about you can actually see the lights go it's kind of a fun process to monitoring and sometimes you know from my experience you'd go in and if you were young which I used to be you'd go in and people were kind of you know yeah what's this guy gonna do you know in there but after they know you after you've been working with them after you've been you know guiding them a little bit all of a sudden did the whole dynamics of relationship change and now they're looking at you is somebody that they can rely on it's very rewarding I think you would agree MJ that when you're new or in the profession you don't realize how much you know and we have to keep reminding them because after a year or two CPAs because you have different experiences almost every day every day is an adventure I like to say almost every day you have new experiences we we know more about in the general accounting and business than most people were going to meet but when you're young you're kind of still intimidated by the old guys right so that's a very good point I mean after you've been doing it for a few years and you've seen all these best practices and worst practices you can go into almost any company and fairly quickly make an assessment as to you know where the risk areas are if a certain person knows what they're doing or maybe they don't and they can take a little advice I mean those assessments can be done them very quickly after you've been doing this for a while yeah yeah I go into companies fairly often asking for some advice and I do some virtual CFO work and I can go in and be able to identify the areas that we need to focus on and then pay attention to and they may not need audits and they may not need taxes but they're very receptive to that and that after a few years if you can't do it already which I'm sure you probably can do some of that or now but it just getting to become a very fine-tuned experience you know say and to speak to that point sometimes it's it's CPAs or the auditors who are the continuity at the client so people leave people turnover and they go I don't know what to do or how do we do this before and I said well last year we did this and we're moving towards you know a B or C and you just kind of hear of blood of relief you know coming to the client because their companies do go through turnover and sometimes the accounting department or the senior people in the accounting department there's not that there's not a lot of bench strengths there's not a lot of people there backing them up and if they're gone yeah the company all the sudden goes into a panic yeah and it's nice to have these people that's been doing this for a year to be able to step in and say hey don't worry about it you know here's you know some history and we can bring the other person off the board up to speed pretty quick yeah yeah it's there's a lot of value in building that relationship with the CPA firm and having somebody to go to when they have questions yeah you know that's another part of it is that you you may have a working relationship with clients and if it's a good one you're gonna be one of the first people they call when they have a question you know one of the things I've been doing recently kind of along those lines is because we build a database after we've been there for a while and especially with the electronic environment we're in and we have we set up templates where we can automatically compute financial ratios so in our exit meetings now when boards or management or the c-suite the you know the executive officers is to go through the ratios for five years or maybe more and then their the summary of their accounts for five or maybe even up to ten years because we're so often in business focused on this year versus last year budget versus actual and again the light goes on we look at it many businesses don't realize how far they've come in the last five years where their revenue has doubled or tripled and there they're facing new issues say because of growth or whatever and they look at that and go okay we need to start thinking differently so that it was fun to do that those trends are very revealing sometimes and sometimes unless you see it graphed out you don't realize yeah you know how important they can be you know but as usual we have really moved through this entire in 30 minutes and we're about ready to wrap up here I guess we had talked real briefly and you know a brief response because we do have to close but you're always looking for good people and if there are folks out there that are looking to get to become part of the CW team how would they go about doing it we have our website that would be the best place wwww associate dean is calm and you can learn a little bit about our company our partners the industries that we work on or give us a call at the young five-three-one 10:40 just like the tax return for you 1:40 all right and they can ask for MJ or they can ask for Carl yeah we're right in downtown Honolulu so we're very easily accessible super well thank you again both for frequent during this very busy time of the year you know and hopefully you know we'll get another update another few months and we'll see how things are going this is business in Hawaii would reg Baker we broadcast live every Thursday from 2:00 to 2:30 from the downtown studios of think tech Hawaii we focus on success stories in Hawaii and those companies that help other companies become successful and that was the topic of today's show until next week Aloha [Music]