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Andrew Hunzicker is the Founder of Dope CFO, a comprehensive cannabis accounting and tax training program, which helps firms in over 25 states unlock a new world of clients. In this episode, Andrew shares his professional journey, how he started working in the cannabis industry, and what cannabis accounting looks like. Stuart and Andrew also discuss the complexities that he faces in his work, and how the government treats cannabis businesses.
Join Stuart McLeod as he interviews the world's top accounting leaders to understand their story, how they operate, their goals, mission, and top advice to help you run your accounting firm.
Stuart McLeod 00:00:05.846 [music] Hi, I'm Stuart McLeod, CEO and co-founder of Karbon. Welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast, the show where I go behind the scenes with the world's top accounting leaders. [music] Today I'm joined by Andrew Hunzicker, the founder and partner of DOPE CFO, a comprehensive cannabis accounting and tax training program with executive and business council experience across industries, retail, manufacturing, energy, medical, bio, and tech. Andrew has built up a national cannabis accounting and bookkeeping training program to help students in over 25 states unlock a new world of clients. He is an expert in cannabis [stops?], CFO services, turnaround and high-growth strategies, capital sourcing, mergers, exits, acquisitions, and wealth protection. It's my pleasure to welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast, Andrew Hunzicker. Tell me about your journey.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:01:02.409 Yeah. So the first thing we tell people-- and by the way, I'm speaking at the AICPA Cannabis Conference on Monday, [really?] kicking it off. And the first thing I'll tell them is, "This is not a niche. This is the birth of an industry." And so what niches are within the industry? You mentioned one of them. Just one, dispensaries. That's the retail side. But way before dispensaries, we have farms. We have chemical processing plants. We have product manufacturers. We have distributors and wholesalers. We have testing labs. We have dispensaries. And then we have delivery companies. So we have about seven or eight different verticals. Each are their own niche within the industry. But it's the fastest growing industry in the US and a great time for accountants to get in early to an industry.
Stuart McLeod 00:01:47.344 And how did you find your way in there in servicing that in the cannabis industry?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:01:52.886 Complete accident. Kind of the very short story is I was at Price Waterhouse in the '90s. Like many people, I was working in oil and gas. I took a CFO job literally on the first day of the century, 2000, in oil and gas. I spent exactly 10 years there. I basically quit at Christmas in 2010, right before year end. My boss and I co-founded an entity in 2006, a pretty big startup. We raised 40 million. We sold that startup to Chesapeake Energy in 2010, right before Christmas. And guess what I did. I said, "Honey, we're moving to Oregon. I'm moving to where I vacation. I'm out of Oklahoma." And so we moved to Oregon, and I was like, "Oh, I'm just kind of semi-retired." This was back in 2010. I did some CFO stuff. I worked in the startup world, but I was mostly doing my passion of rock climbing, having fun, raising kids, and doing CFO work.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:02:46.963 And along about 2015, cannabis kind of hit Oregon pretty big right after Colorado. And it hit my hometown. And I just accidentally ran into a guy. And they're like, "Hey, could you help us do due diligence on--" they were acquiring testing labs. I was like, "Okay. Yeah. I don't know anything about cannabis, but I'll go help you out." And I got into it. And that led me to meeting this pretty sizable farm that was very early startup in this space, hi-fi farms, and they needed a CFO. I was like, "Oh, that sounds kind of fun." They were backed by pretty big money, investors out of Home Depot off the East Coast and some of the big names you'd recognize. And it was a lot of fun. So it was just a total accident how I got into cannabis, but I had a ball early on. I was like, "Oh, these people are fun to work with. They're all young and hip." I'd been working with-- you mentioned San Francisco. I'd been working with some of those high-tech startups. I was like, "I can't stand that industry." The first thing any high-tech CEO tells me is they're smarter than me on accounting. And certainly on software and IT, but oh, by the way, they know more about accounting and tax than I do too, and they don't need my services. So I was like, "Oh, it's great to go into cannabis and work with CEOs that actually value what we're bringing to the table.
Stuart McLeod 00:04:05.927 And Bend, Oregon, has taken off in the industry. You want to talk a bit about that, Andrew?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:04:12.574 So Bend, yeah. It was a very sleepy town 10, 20, 30 years ago. It's just absolutely booming. I think part of it was, again, high tech. People in the Silicon Valley that became very wealthy, where did they vacation? Well, they could just take a quick flight on their private jet over to Bend, Oregon. And they've got skiing and mountain biking and rock climbing and rivers. And so quickly this developed into not just having all that outdoor stuff. We just have a gazillion breweries and restaurants and music and concerts and everything you would ever want but without all the traffic. You can drive from one end to the town to the other in about five minutes. And so there's about 100,000 of us now. We have a lot of high-tech startups here. Even one in cannabis. Dutchie is out of Bend, Oregon. They're a $4 billion company last time I checked, started by a very young guy, grew really rapidly. And then we have all kinds of traditional cannabis companies here, too, farms and dispensaries. And so it's kind of a fun location to live. And you can kind of live and play all in one place.
Stuart McLeod 00:05:17.573 So it doesn't sound like you stayed semi-retired for very long.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:05:21.234 I know. And basically I've come full circle. I mean, when I was in my full-time job, CFO in Oklahoma, I didn't like actually where I was living. I didn't really like my job. It was really stressful. And where I've come now-- when I moved out here, that was probably my little mini-retirement. I basically played for two or three years and didn't do much. And then I started getting back into it. Where I am now is, I actually love what I'm doing right now. I can tend to work at least until I'm 70. I can do my own schedule. I can do what I want. I've got my group of rock climbers. We go every Wednesday afternoon and every Saturday. So we just kind of do our own schedule, have a good time. The industry is super fun. And yeah, my wife, she says, "What on earth would you do if you had no job?" Because climbing is my passion, what I like to do for my hobby. But my body can't take more than six, seven hours a week of that. So I'd be bugging her. And so she's glad I'm still working.
Stuart McLeod 00:06:22.689 The cannabis industry is a bit bigger for accountants than, say, mountain climbing, right?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:06:28.359 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Climbing is not a great industry. I spent my 20s trying to make it into climbing. And I tease my dad. I maybe had the first ever-- I actually owned with my brother. I was like 23. And I'm almost 60 now, but I owned an indoor rock climbing gym in Oklahoma City. And it went bankrupt when my dad, who was also my banker, pulled the plug. He said, "Nobody will ever indoor rock climbing. It's a bad idea." Now, here we are later. It's a multibillion-dollar industry, but we were just too early.
Stuart McLeod 00:07:04.575 Early can be wrong, unfortunately.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:07:07.108 Yeah. We were too early. And so we missed the bigger place. But yeah. And I have a lot of buddies that work in the climbing industry. It's actually a decent industry now for jobs. But accounting, we're in an interesting place in the world just with the economy and jobs right now. I'm sure you see this, too. Whether you go to Starbucks or McDonald's or Panda Express or whatever, they're all understaffed. They can't find people. Then you go to the other end of the spectrum, doctors, airline pilots, accountants, lawyers, we're all short on people.
Stuart McLeod 00:07:41.315 Where are all the workers? Are they in Bend, Oregon?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:07:44.443 Well, I think, yeah. And I think some of it is it goes back to demographics and the baby boomers. Because I remember they've been talking about this for accounting side for 10, 15 years that we're going to hit this peak where all these old accountants are aging out. And there's still a bunch of them in their 60s and early 70s. And they're aging out quicker than new people are coming in. And so it's kind of an unsolvable problem for quite some time. Well, I have sons thinking about college, etc. And we're looking at different industries. And it's like, yeah, whether you're talking about nurses or doctors or anything, they're having trouble. So it's weird. We're having a potential recession with interest rates going up. Inflation is crazy. But normally in recessions, you have people out of work.
Stuart McLeod 00:08:33.876 Yeah. That's right. It's the weird part of it, isn't it?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:08:37.397 Oh, and by the way, even dispensaries. So my buddies at dispensaries and pharmacies, they're having trouble keeping people coming in. They have really high turnover. People come, be a bartender or whatever or work on the farm. And it's a tricky world right now. Maybe it's just the young people figured out, "I don't want to work for 40 years and retire." They don't want to go that traditional route that a lot of us older people did.
Stuart McLeod 00:09:02.551 Well, particularly in accounting, right? The one thing that we sort of uncovered early is the typical journey of sort of joining your dad's accounting firm and working there for 35 years before he lets you to become-- or at somebody else's. Or even going to college and getting a job at PwC and becoming part of-- why or whatever, right? That journey has come under a fair bit of criticism. And it's no longer a model that people find appealing in terms of balancing their family life, their work life, their desires for travel, and doing interesting things. I mean, I think people look for purpose more than anything in their work life at the moment. Well, generally speaking.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:09:52.655 Yeah. No. I think that's a great point. And I see some of the big firms, and even on their Instagram account, they're posting, "Look, we had pizza night. And now we're doing miniature golf." And I was like, "So if I'm working with you for 60 hours a week, I'm not going to want to spend another 5 [crosstalk] playing miniature golf.
Stuart McLeod 00:10:11.008 But miniature golf [are?] billable, is it?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:10:13.130 Yeah. And people do want that purpose. And it is true. I've actually enjoyed that. In the cannabis industry, it's closely tied to the social justice movement, and many states are trying to bring in social equity applicants. Those people need a ton of our accounting help. So they're taking people-- I got off the phone with one of them today. They got a license in Chicago. It's a husband and wife. She's a nurse and he's a weight trainer. And they've got a license to be the CEO of a probably 10-to-20-million-dollar dispensary. They don't have the skills to be a CEO. So it's been very rewarding to help work with some of these people, that they're great people, and they're hard workers. They want to build their dispensary or whatever, but they need a lot of help because they've never been trained or even took any kind of track to know about running a business.
Stuart McLeod 00:11:03.199 What's the licensing process? It sounds like perhaps in some states it's pretty straightforward then.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:11:09.508 Yeah. It's all over the place. So my two home states - I live in Oregon, now I'm in Oklahoma - both of those states went all in free market. Anyone, everyone, just fill out a form, we'll give you a license. And so that leads to wild price swings of the commodity. It leads to lots of bankruptcies because there's too many companies, but it's the free market, which I actually prefer. I think it's better. Go to Illinois. It's a great example. They're like, "Oh, no, no, no. We're only going to give a few licenses to these people." They started out by giving some to social equity applicants. I think there was 100 of them, but they give them-- two years ago, these people awarded these licenses. What happened after they did that? Lawsuits. Everyone starts suing each other. Nobody opened any dispensaries. And so some of these states like Florida has gone real slow, or they only let in the big players. And I equate it to beer. It's like, that was the old days when I grew up. What if your state, they said, "You can only buy Coors and Budweiser?" Forget all those nice, craft brands. We would be in uproar. We'd be like, "No. We want the small players."
Stuart McLeod 00:12:15.937 Without all its 740 craft beers breweries, right?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:12:20.194 It wouldn't go over. And so I think we'll get there with cannabis. It'll be very similar to craft brew industry, but it's going to be very bumpy until we get there. And every state does it their own way.
Stuart McLeod 00:12:32.858 Yeah. No. I get it. What states are more progressive? Where's the industry up to in your eyes across America? And do you have a look at sort of some of the other countries and which countries are more progressive and which are falling behind? What do you think the industry is up to?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:12:47.961 I follow the global movement enough to know that, oh, it's going everywhere, whether it's Germany or Israel. I know over in Israel is a good example. They're doing a ton of research. So first and foremost, this global phenomenon is not just because we want to party on pot. It's really pushed by the medical movement. And cannabis has been used probably for centuries for health benefits, definitely for the last 50 or 60 years, whether it's cancer patients smoking pot 50 years ago. But the science has finally caught up. So we've got our government, other governments, we've got hospitals, universities, all studying all kinds of studies on all kinds of ailments. And they're finding out, "Oh, there's lots of good benefits of THC, CBD, CBN, other chemicals, a mixture of chemicals." So we're just getting started. Big pharma is coming into the space. So Pfizer did a pretty sizable acquisition earlier this year.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:13:43.562 So I think we're going to see, 10 years out, you're going to go to your doctor to get prescribed a medicine for something, there's very likely going to be different chemicals from the cannabis and hemp plant in those medicines. So that will keep pushing this industry forward. So what I tell people, I say, "So the West Coast, we've been very saturated now for over 10 years. Things have been going great. And even before 10 years there was so much illegal activity out here. It's been around a long time. So now the next big growth area is the East Coast." But I tell people, "What do I mean by the East Coast?" I say, "Everything east of the Mississippi, but throw in Texas and a few states above Texas, and that's the East Coast." So all those states that are now dipping their toes in the water. There's a massive amount of population. So we're going to have big growth there. There's very few states where it's totally illegal, but even this coming election, we're going to see changes there. So a great example is Nebraska. Nebraska was just like Oklahoma. What happened when Colorado legalized in 2012? Nebraska and Oklahoma got together and they sued Colorado, which is very odd for two states to sue another state. They lost. And Oklahoma finally said, "Oh, you're right. Let's do cannabis. Let's go all in." And Nebraska is in the same place right now. They did a gallup survey there. 83% of people that live in Nebraska, almost 9 out of 10, want medical cannabis. And so that's just crazy.
Stuart McLeod 00:15:10.028 Am I generalizing too much when I say they're all on the back half of their life and might want some easy way [crosstalk]?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:15:17.639 Yeah. You layer that over the opiate crisis where people have been taking pain killers for 30 years and died on that. So I'm in that perfect category. I'm almost 60. Yes, as I get older, I'm going to have arthritis. Dementia runs in my family. I've got some anxiety. Sleep is always an issue. Yeah, I want some good medicines. Don't give me Valium or whatever. That doesn't work. So I want better access to good things while we get older. We'll see it keep moving forward. I tell people, "It doesn't matter who's the president, doesn't matter if your state's red, doesn't matter if your state's blue, every year, it just moves forward." It never goes backward. It just goes like this. And we're pretty much over the hump of going backwards to this industry.
Stuart McLeod 00:16:03.410 And what are the complexities in this particular industry that you've learned that probably might have it stand out from an accounting perspective or from at least perhaps a skills perspective? Talk about that because you are talking at the cannabis conference [that?] CPA is putting on next week I think.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:16:22.493 One of my talks is on startups. Another one's on how to get in the niche. Another one is on regulation. So there's many issues unique about this niche. One is we have to do cost accounting. Some accountants, when they hear that word, they're like, "Oh, that reminds me at college. I don't want to think about cost accounting." And so we have to think about, how much does it cost to grow up a pound of weed? I've had farmers tell me, "It doesn't cost anything. I took a little seed that I found over here from this plant, and I put it in a teeny little pot with a little dirt from my garden. And that's free." Well, actually, over the six months to grow that, we need to allocate some rent and water and utilities and labor that will go into that pot as it grows. And so it may end up costing $1000 for a pound. But we've got to do the cost accounting. To do that we need to be aware of the state compliance regulations. Also FDA and USDA are heavily involved, especially with CBD. Cannabis will fall under that as well because FDA is treating both cannabis and CBD as medicine because that's what people are using it for. And so that means lots and lots of regulation. On top of that, we've got banking issues. It's hard to get bank accounts. We have tons of cash flying around. We've got merchant services issues. You can't use PayPal, Stripe, Square. Facebook is down. All these big players are down on the space. So there's lots of interesting issues. And then you couple that with-- there's many CEOs that are literally social equity applicants that may be 25 years old and never run a business in their life, and all of a sudden they're running a multimillion-dollar business. Those people need advice.
Stuart McLeod 00:18:02.227 Yep. Yep. In terms of the technology, I mean, you mentioned Dutchie before. It's a fellow Tidemark portfolio company, and they've done extremely well. What is the technology that you see coming into the industry, and are the payments processes that are supportive of the industry now?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:18:18.042 Yeah. So I'm doing my podcast, and tomorrow-- or no, Thursday, with one of the guys in our group. That is his specialty. So so many of the payment processors that have come in to fill the gap, they've been doing things that weren't always right, and they've gotten in a lot of trouble. It comes around to, "Are you trying to fool the bank or not?" Even the Dutchie system, it's kind of a complex game because it's a really fine line on what is money laundering and what is fraud and are we trying to trick the bank. And so some of these payments of sums are kind of like, "Okay. Here's a cannabis--" so there are cannabis banks. So here's a cannabis bank. So it's almost like maybe my bank is Wells Fargo and they're not a cannabis bank, but I go in to buy some pot. And so I'm going to pay Dutchie. They're going to pay the cannabis bank. And the cannabis bank is going to pay my bank, which sounds a little bit, "Okay. That's pushing the envelope a little bit." So I think it's still an area you have to be really careful with. Are they actually doing something legit and it's above board that works for a payment system? Now, on the banking side itself, luckily there are plenty of banks. In Oregon, we have Maps Credit Union that has 14 locations. And they'll bank cannabis farms and accountants, etc. So there is banking there. On the software side, though, we see many POS systems. That's actually where Dutchie-- Dutchie started delivery, but then they bought Greenbits, which was a huge POS system. So we saw hundreds of POS systems. So what's funny is, if you went outside cannabis, QuickBooks absolutely owned POS. You could go into any small shop in the US, it's going to be QuickBooks POS, but they said, "Nope, we don't want to do cannabis." So what happened? We had 100 software start-up for POS.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:20:11.766 And so what happens when-- and I learned this from my high-tech days. Whenever someone starts any kind of software company as a service, what happens? You get lots of bugs, don't work right. It takes years and years and years to get things right. I say the world's best accounting software ever invented was Excel. And that works every time. I've never seen a bug. It doesn't need updates. I don't have to pay them a fortune. It just works. But I don't trust still today, many of these software. So we do lots of reconciliations, inventory counts. We check. And they're [required to?] you see the sale system, like Metrc or BioTrack. Again, really crappy software. We have to do lots of tie-ups and compare these different systems to each other to make sure the numbers are right, because until I'm proven otherwise, I just don't trust a lot of these systems still today.
Stuart McLeod 00:21:02.674 I mean, Dutchie is obviously one that's doing really well. Is there some other entrance into the space that are making your life easier?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:21:12.695 Yeah. They're coming every day, but they don't really make our life easier because first off, every state has a required seed-to-sale software. You get no choice. And there's only three: Metrc, BioTrack, and MJ Freeway. They're all bad. So that's one piece of software. Then you got your accounting system. More than likely, if I just went to a random company, it's either QBO, Xero, AccountingSuite, maybe Sage. And so we got to deal with that. Then we got to deal with the POS system. But since there's hundreds of them, there's never going to be a system we're using all the same. We got to be able to deal with all of them. And then they may have a CRM or Leaflogix or something. And so we got to deal with a lot of these systems, and you just don't know who to trust or which is going to be the winner at the end of the day. And even Dutchie had huge growth, but they just laid off, I think, 10% of their workforce. That was just in the news last week.
Stuart McLeod 00:22:04.540 There's plenty of companies laying off at the moment and just trying to consolidate cash. The market conditions have changed. It's a pretty normal thing going on at the moment.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:22:13.331 Yeah. And in cannabis, we like to tell people cannabis is pretty recession proof. It definitely is COVID proof and sales will boom. And I think, yeah, we're going to grow no matter what. And so since cannabis is going to keep growing whether we have a recession or not, that means, yeah, the software will grow and the accounting services will grow. And so it should be a pretty good niche for quite some time.
Stuart McLeod 00:22:36.300 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's talk about mountain climbing. How did you get into that? Ready for this? See what I'm going to do here? It seems like you've climbed a mountain or two in your career.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:22:49.456 That's probably the only thing I've done for over 40 years. And like I said, if I ever done one single thing that's been the most-- and it is kind of odd because climbing was-- if you go back 40 years, anywhere in the US, climbing was very, very small. Hardly anyone did it. But I was in Oklahoma, where really nobody did it back in the '70s. And so I got into it. I mean, literally, my mom gave me a National Geographic Magazine that had a photo of Doug Robinson climbing Half Dome, one of the first ascents. And I saw that, and I lived in Flat, Oklahoma. And I was like 14. I was like, "I want to do that one day." And I did do it one day when I was 18 or 19. And just I got into it. I loved it. It really affected my whole life. Where did I go to college? In Boulder, Colorado. That was back in the '80s. And then I lived in the west for much of my life. And I owned a climbing gym briefly until that went under. And actually the irony of all that is when my dad kind of pulled the plug on that, when - I don't know - I was 28 or something, that's when I decided like, "Oh, I need a real job." And that's when I went back to-- I actually had not a real job. I had a crappy job working in a warehouse. But I went to night school for two years to take all the accounting that I should've taken in college the first time around. I needed 20 hours of accounting to get my CPA. So I went to night school. I got my CPA and I got a job. I worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Dallas in the '90s. But it was kind of like if the climbing deal worked out, I might not have ever gotten into accounting.
Stuart McLeod 00:24:25.639 Yeah. PwC in Dallas in the '90s I mean, it would be oil and gas and oil and gas and oil and gas, I imagine.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:24:33.091 Yeah. Well, and you know what's funny? One of my first big jobs I worked on both-- my first two years was Nokia-- do you remember Nokia mobile phones?
Stuart McLeod 00:24:42.801 Of course I do. I remember playing--
Andrew Hunzicker 00:24:44.307 They had a huge facility in Dallas with their North America operations, and we worked on that. And actually my boss-- I was in year one. He was in year two. The senior, [Pierre?], he was from Paris. And he was living in Dallas. And he just reached out to me on LinkedIn. I hadn't seen him in 20 years. He said, "Hey, Andrew. I'm a partner at PwC." He didn't leave.
Stuart McLeod 00:25:06.787 [inaudible] to get out, did he?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:25:08.718 And not only that, he was in New York City. But he told me, he's like, "We're looking at the cannabis niche. I want to pick your brains." And he was still-- I was like, "Oh, my gosh, you're still there." So we got to see Nokia mobile phones fall apart.
Stuart McLeod 00:25:22.729 Yeah. Yeah. You know that you can still buy - what is it? - the 3310 or something? And pretty popular with parents giving them to their kids. All they can do is ring. You can't do [crosstalk].
Andrew Hunzicker 00:25:35.015 Is that it? So they're still in existence. Okay. Good.
Stuart McLeod 00:25:37.082 [crosstalk] maybe somebody bought the like. I don't know who's making them, but it's kind of funny. It was early '90s, perhaps mid '90s. '94 I left high school. '97, I joined Oracle. So yeah. I reckon it was like mid-to-late '90s where playing Snake was kind of the thing that passed the time, right? And all you could do is text or ring.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:26:02.678 Oh, I know with today's-- as a matter of fact, I'm sure we all get tired of it. It's like, how did this happen? It's like I have messages coming on my phone and Instagram and Facebook and all of our different pages because we have various pages and my personal pages on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram. It's like I got to check like 12 different places to get all my messages once a day. And I don't love it.
Stuart McLeod 00:26:32.200 No, no. No, I get it. Look, a producer of mine has just confirmed that Snake is now in color and the 3310 is available to buy. So there you go. You can relive the mid '90s. And--
Andrew Hunzicker 00:26:46.915 Go relive and [crosstalk].
Stuart McLeod 00:26:48.609 [crosstalk] the time. Yes. I mean--
Andrew Hunzicker 00:26:52.502 I give one to my kids, I don't think they would go for it.
Stuart McLeod 00:26:56.301 You can't FaceTime message on those. But no. The kids spend an enormous amount of time on their Apple devices or Android devices. And sometimes you crave the simplicity of no apps, right?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:27:11.112 Yes.
Stuart McLeod 00:27:12.435 So through mountain climbing, you would've experienced many kinds of different challenges. What's the story that comes to mind that you've got yourself into a situation where you perhaps you shouldn't have or went on a wonderful adventure, something like that?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:27:27.573 Yeah. I just had one with my 16-year-old son like a month ago. So we have this big thing called the Monkey, which is a 600-foot tower that overhangs basically on every side. So you get to the top, and it's quite an exciting-- probably the most exciting part is getting down. But we went up there. So normally, I actually stay much lower to the-- my younger days, yes, I would go climb on El Capitan or Half Dome or these big huge walls, but nowadays we just go out. We stay close to the ground. We go up 80 feet, come back down. But me and my son went up on this climb, and we had to do two repels. And we got over the edge. And we got on this little ledge. It was like two feet by two feet. We were standing there just barely on this ledge. And I pulled the rope down, and I threw one end off thinking in my head I was still tied in, but I wasn't tied in. And my friends kid me. He's like, "Oh, you almost threw your rope off the top, which isn't a good idea because then you can't get down." And so I threw it off the-- it was on the edge, and I was standing there. It was just zipping down. I was watching it. And I just kind of reached out to grab it because I was like-- I wasn't really thinking. I just reached out. But when I reached out and grabbed this rope, that was very quickly going off the edge. When I grabbed it, it looked like there was 30 feet left. But when I looked at my hand, the end was right here and it was off the edge.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:28:53.621 And so we would've been okay, but we would've had to be rescued, which would have been very embarrassing. And we were stuck in the absolute scorching sun of Central Oregon desert. We probably would've been fried. So there's been many adventures over the years, but I try to keep it much safer these days. But one word you mentioned, challenge. I was actually thinking about this the other day. My wife and I were talking about this. Because the three big areas of my life, work, family and parenting, and climbing, all three of them are filled with challenges and obstacles. And I started thinking maybe I need a more laid-back hobby like snorkeling or something. It's like, "Oh, my whole life from morning to end is overcoming challenges. Even my hobby. Maybe I need to just float on the river or something."
Stuart McLeod 00:29:43.253 Yeah. Smoke a joint and float down the Bend river. There you go. There's a challenge for this week.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:29:49.638 I need an easier challenge. Yeah. That is for sure. And so maybe as I'm getting older now, finally figure that out.
Stuart McLeod 00:29:57.936 Your kids are into climbing then. Sounds like it runs in the family and they don't have a choice. Is that what they would say?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:30:04.123 Yeah. Actually, my two older boys, I have a 26 year old and an 18 year old, they do not like climbing at all. Never did. And actually my youngest, William, is really good. I climbed 40 years. It only took him 2 to pass me by a long shot.
Stuart McLeod 00:30:20.688 Makes you proud [crosstalk] ones, right?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:30:22.740 Yeah. It's fun to watch him climb. He just blows me away. But yeah. He didn't even climb. He refused to climb till he was 12 or 13. And I tease him about that. I was like, "William, if you had started climbing when I wanted you to start climbing, you'd be on winning competitions around the globe right now."
Stuart McLeod 00:30:39.013 What do the others do? Are you a skier and mountain biker and all that as well?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:30:43.841 Yeah. They like to do outdoor stuff. And actually my oldest son makes CBD as well. So he's kind of a chemist. He kind of, yeah, indirectly got me more passionate about it because he's been really big even since he was 16 or 17 on the science of the product. And so kind of got me onto the medical benefits early on as well. Now, came to mind. You can delete this one out. One other--
Stuart McLeod 00:31:11.664 No, no, no. We don't delete much.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:31:14.644 You mentioned adventure. This is about, let me think-- it must've been two years ago. William was just starting to climb because it was before COVID. We took a trip to Austria, and we drove kind of through down from Prague through Austria to Italy, and we ended up at Lake Lugano. And we did some different climbs along the way, and we actually had some pretty exciting adventures. But they have this thing called Via Ferrata over there. And so that's where they put metal rungs. And so you can go climb a 1000-foot cliff without any ropes. You just grab these rungs, and you have these clips to your body. So you're still safe, kind of. But me and my son, we saw this huge wall where my wife was across the lake, and we went over and we climbed. We got caught in a thunderstorm and duck beneath the wall. And then my son's like, "Let's just go for it." And so we climbed this 1000-foot wall in like 30 minutes with these ladders. And we got up to the top. And then we got to the top. We hiked up this hill. And then we were like, "Oh wow. There's a church up here." And there was like a 500-year-old little chapel. And we went through that. And then we went around the corner after our grand adventure-- and this is what we need more of in America. We go around the corner and sure enough, there's a French cafe up there. And we were able to get lattes. And so that's the kind of adventure I like. I was like, "What the heck? There's a restaurant up here."
Stuart McLeod 00:32:38.872 That's what you want. Yes. Yes. There's some famous even Swiss restaurants at the top of ski resorts. And to get a nice [beer?] after all that effort is a wonderful thing, right?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:32:50.167 Yeah. It's a great idea. I was exhausted. I was like, "Oh, we'll have a latte." And then by the way, they've got one of those cable cars that takes us back down. Yeah. It got very easy all of a sudden. I was like, "This is the way it should be."
Stuart McLeod 00:33:04.680 So what's next for the accounting firm? And what's next? You got more travel planning this year?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:33:11.372 Yeah. I'm going to AICPA three days next week in August. I fly home for one day. And then - we actually planned this a year ago - we are going to London - I've never been to London - for a week. Family vacation. So I'm super excited about that. Go see all the sites there. It's just a sightseeing trip. And then we've got some more speaking events. And we just launched DOPE CFO Certified Advisor. And so it's an actual franchise. So it's an actual-- you have the accountant or CPA can come by a franchise and go through training and become a DOPE CFO Certified Advisor. And we're going to have these around the US this fall.
Stuart McLeod 00:33:54.492 Congratulations. There's plenty to do and see in London, obviously. What are you looking forward to most?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:34:00.948 My wife's already plotted. I was like, "Okay. We're going to Westminster Abbey and the palace and the Tower of London and the museum."
Stuart McLeod 00:34:09.829 It's a [crosstalk] as well. [You?] could be in [vacation?] all over again.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:34:13.441 Oh, I know I'll have to hold her down. She wants to hit every church. And I was like, "Okay. We got to do some walking around." And really what I see-- so we're right there kind of by Buckingham Palace with those parks, Hyde Park and whatever the other-- Green Park. I was like, "That's what I want to do. I want to just grab a latte and you say smoke a puff and walk around the park and chill out."
Stuart McLeod 00:34:38.978 Well, your holiday has gotten cheaper this year because with [parody?].
Andrew Hunzicker 00:34:43.826 So we can go just, yeah, float down the river.
Stuart McLeod 00:34:48.790 You'll have to pick out some pubs. There's no shortage of pubs to go and have a [beer?].
Andrew Hunzicker 00:34:52.401 Yeah. You got all the pubs and fish and chips and the whole deal. And my son and I-- and I didn't even realize this. Last week we were in a restaurant. We saw the English women won the football--
Stuart McLeod 00:35:06.199 Oh, yeah. They're good.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:35:06.576 --cup. And it was pretty exciting. And I guess they'd never won it before. So everyone's excited over there right now.
Stuart McLeod 00:35:13.310 Well, I think they're still coming to terms with Brexit. But over summer they seem to get 52 weeks of drinking just crammed into 12 while the sun's out.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:35:26.523 12 weeks. And well, then I asked my wife today. I was like, "Do I need to buy some pounds or do I just take our dollars over there?"
Stuart McLeod 00:35:34.648 No. You might offend them with your dollars, but the ATMs work. There's no problem with that. Just make sure you don't let your bank do the currency. They'll get stuck in there. But I mean, it's pretty easy to travel around these days. Although yeah, Brexit has made the entry and exit a little bit more painful. I saw recently there was a queue to get into France for like seven hours or something there. The English got the [shits?]. At that point they wish they'd voted the other way.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:36:05.480 Yeah. What a nightmare. Yeah.
Stuart McLeod 00:36:09.833 Yep. Yep. And so how many staff in the company and all remote and growth plans, etc., or just happy with where things are at?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:36:19.262 Oh, it's been super excited. So this totally started out as a side hustle. I was just serving clients, and I get these calls from accountants, "Hey, Andrew, I heard you had a dispensary chart of accounts. Can I buy it?" Or, "Do you have a cost accounting template?" And where we come today with launching this franchise, I've got four of us full time. There actually will be employees. We're all CPA's, accountants. But then I've got my main marketing team. They're out of LA and [inaudible] and her team. They're contract, but she has 10 people working for on our account. I've got a PR guy out of New York. And Bryce who does all our paid ads, is out of Barcelona and his team. And then who else do we have? Oh, Rick Grossmann, my franchise consultant. He wrote the franchise Bible. And so he's on the team helping us launch the franchise. And so we've got his team. He's in Texas. So we're all over the place. We do a lot of Zoom and Slack. And even my core team, Ray lives in Milwaukee. David Lewis is in Salt Lake CPA. And then [Christie?] is in both California and New York, back and forth. So we're just all over the place. And we have to check in and find out who's where to get things done.
Stuart McLeod 00:37:27.772 Sounds exciting. Well, there's certainly no offices in Bend, Oregon, that would hold all those people anyway, right?
Andrew Hunzicker 00:37:34.933 Yeah. It's funny. Yeah. I was glad to see the Hydro Flask. I don't know if you know that water bottle company. They have a huge location here. Pre-pandemic they built this massive, beautiful facility. And then COVID hit. And it was empty for two years. I get my coffee next door. I finally last week saw some people back in the building. I was like, "Did these people abandon this $100 million building?"
Stuart McLeod 00:38:00.504 Yeah. Well, everybody has struggled with flexing and work arrangements during COVID and working out what's best for each business. It's not that easy, but everybody will find their way. It hopefully, touch wood, settles down.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:38:14.817 Yeah. And in the accounting profession, we can luckily do a hybrid model. If we need to go in, we can, but we can do everything remote. So it definitely saves time and productivity. That's for certain, which people like as long as you have a way to connect with others. You don't want to just be hiding in your bedroom all day and night every day.
Stuart McLeod 00:38:35.739 Yeah. No, I get it. Well, Andrew, this has been an absolute pleasure finding out more about DOPE CFO and everything that you're up to in cannabis industry. Good luck with your talks at the AICPA conference next week, and thank you for all your efforts in the industry. We look forward to working with you and getting an update on how you go in your pub tour of the UK.
Andrew Hunzicker 00:38:59.747 Well, awesome. Yeah. This has been great. This has been a super fun one. Talk about everything from pubs to climbing to accounting. So definitely a ton of fun. I appreciate you all having me on here.
Stuart McLeod 00:39:10.321 Pleasure, Andrew. You have a great afternoon. [music] Thanks for listening to this episode. If you found this discussion interesting, fun, you'll find lots more to help you run a successful accounting firm at Karbon Magazine. There are more than 1000 free resources there, including guides, articles, templates, webinars and more. Just head to karbonhq.com/resources. [music] I'd also love it if you could leave us a five-star review wherever you listen to this podcast. Let us know you liked this session. We'll be able to keep bringing you more guests for you to learn from and get inspired by. Thanks for joining, and see you on the next episode of The Accounting Leaders Podcast.