Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this podcast series, Derek Distin, Vice President of Community at Rightworks, sits down with several of our RightNOW sponsors to discuss the state of the accounting profession and its future.
The RightNOW 2025 is the ultimate mid-year conference for accounting and tax pros. It will be held May 19-21 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Register today at www.rightworks.com/rightnow2025.
CPA firms who embrace automation and AI will thrive,
but the rest would really struggle
to be relevant to the market.
Hello and welcome back to the RightNow podcast.
My name is Derek Distin, vice President
of community here at Rightworks.
You've heard me say this before.
The accounting profession can trace its roots back well over
7,000 years.
I mean, we're talking ancient Mesopotamia.
We're talking shortly
after the introduction of agriculture, when people began
to settle down, they discovered there was a need to,
to keep an accounting of whatever the crops were.
That became a need to keep accounting of debts.
That became what we have today
with the accounting profession throughout the last seven,
eight millennia.
There have been many changes to this industry,
to this profession, and I would venture to say that the rate
of change has evolved more
and more rapidly, maybe even in the last 20 years
than at any point in time before this.
We at Rightworks are committed to partnering with you
to help you see through this evolution,
and we can't do this alone.
Joining me today as we talk about the evolution
of the industry past, present,
and future is DeBaker Vassar, founder
and CEO of DVS Advisory Group.
They are a growth partner for firms
and for investors, thinking about
or approaching the next level of their practice.
Dakkar, thanks for joining me today.
Oh, pleasure, Eric. Thanks for having me around.
So let's get a, uh, let's set the table real quick
and let's just begin with, tell me a little bit about DVS.
Okay. So DVS started, uh, in 2007.
The focus was to be an international tax firm
where we would help, uh, Indian entrepreneurs expand
to the world or overseas.
Uh, investors get into India. So we were acting as a bridge.
So over time, from tax structuring,
we evolved into implementation,
implementation to management.
We did the entire lifecycle of what it takes
to do business across countries,
and we grew by acquiring skillsets.
We didn't build, we acquired firms.
So we've, we've done about 80 in acquisitions across
multiple practices so far.
Some have failed, many have succeeded.
We've understood what the playbook is.
And, uh, today we are there a wide variety of, uh,
practices, pro tax, virtual CCFO, accounting,
real estate broking, wealth management, private equity,
secondaries, so you name it.
So what we realized is for this profession to scale, right,
uh, uh, the firm mindset needs to take a back backseat.
It will be a platform mindset
and professionals start looking at possibilities
rather than services as the only source of sustenance.
So this is where when we started to reimagine the industry,
I think just opened up dimensions,
which we never knew even existed.
And that's the journey we are in.
We are building a scalable, professional
and business services platform evolving into
a FinTech ecosystem.
That's what DiUS is about.
You said something here that I wrote down.
You said the firm mindset, great. Needs to take a back seat.
I want to unpack that a little bit.
Can you break that down a little bit more for me?
When you say the firm mindset, what is a firm mindset?
So typically, uh, a firm mindset is something
where you look at people as your lever and not process.
That's the first challenge where you sell time
and not expertise.
And where the promoter is the key lever being
the mar is the key marketable commodity
being sold to the market.
Now, these are the challenges of being a firm mindset.
Imagine, uh, a CP
and a firm is doing 1, 2, 3, 4, $5 million revenues, right?
He or she is the head of finance, head of hr, head
of operations, head of technology, head of automation.
You, I mean C-E-O-C-F-O-C-O-O.
You roll up all the profiles into
one, they won't have a board.
So they act as their own council.
I mean, that's like a zillion profiles on a
single pair of shoulders.
I mean, that's impossible to manage.
And this is a firm mindset, right?
Where you look at you being the whole
and soul of the journey from engagement to execution.
So this is really where DVS comes in.
You guys are helping others to
transition from that.
Yes. Sort of that firm mindset into a more, uh, uh,
entrepreneurial mindset
or find other ways whether
people who can help partner with you.
So what we typically do is we liberate CP firms
To be very honest, and that's how I felt.
There was a phase 2011
and I was like, at the peak
of my career, I just felt the burnout.
We realized, yes, what are we trying to build?
Are we here to just serve and make some money?
Or are we here to build an enterprise?
So the moment we desired, we need to build something.
And then I had to take a backseat,
and it was the toughest decision
because I took a backseat when I was at the prime
of my career, absolute prime of my career.
I was the youngest to be represented on a national stage.
All those things happened, but I was getting burnt out.
Yeah. And then when it came back, it was,
there were tough decisions you had to delegate.
We lost some clients initially
because they wanted to see your face,
and then you bring someone else, they put up as an issue
of disrespect and all.
Uh, you had to go through that churn phase,
but it was a couple of years of pain.
But from there, we realized every function we added
after that into the platform, how we were seamlessly able
to scale up our venture.
So today, the last acquisition which we did, uh,
substantial acquisition, we grew that practice 10 times, two
and a half years, because we clearly knew what was missing.
And we, we just didn't do any rocket science that,
that the guy was a phenomenal partner who joined us.
He was in a system where he had to do 10 different things.
We said, like, you just do the one thing
you are great at doing.
Mm-hmm. The other nine things which you're good at doing,
which can also be done by someone else.
Just forget it. It was absolute liberation moment.
You, you see that nirvana moment right?
In life where, uh, you just want to do
what you, you are born to do.
That's what we help CPAs.
We, we don't just buy out a firm, we engage with a partner.
We try to understand what he
or she actually wants to do in life.
We literally liberate CPAs from their practice
and help them thrive to become the best version
of themselves by giving them leadership capital
and above all execution support.
Taking a look at the next
12 to 18 months,
what do you see changing in the industry?
CPA firms who embrace automation and AI will thrive.
Mm-hmm. But the rest would really struggle
to be relevant to the market.
I want you to imagine that we have a time machine right
here with us, and we're going to step into it.
It's gonna take us back in time, 10 years,
and you are going to come out of that face-to-face
with yourself 10 years ago.
Now, the time machine is tricky.
It's only giving you 60 seconds to stand there.
You get to give one piece of advice to your younger self.
What advice are you going to give to yourself 10 years ago,
I'm 44 now.
When I was 34, I was like a headless chicken trying
to literally try to understand how, how the hell can I say,
can I scale the, the services industry?
I was just coming out of my second bankruptcy in life at
that, at that phase, if you were to look back in life
and tell that gentleman on what he should have done,
focus your energies on understanding human beings
rather than trying to understand business
because it's, it's, it's only a, a symptom and not the cost.
So I think that that would've been my
understanding human beings better.
Interesting. Because you and I are the same age,
and 10 years ago I was also 34.
Okay. And I would say that
what I have learned the most in the last 10 years,
I've learned from my wife,
and it's very similar, understand yourself
and what drives you and understand other people
and what drives and motivates them.
Because I think you said it earlier, getting people
to get work done is a serious art.
Oh, seriously? Yeah.
And that's, and one, um, quote,
which really stuck with me, so one
of the earliest books I read about the US is
Democracy in America.
Mm-hmm. By Alexis de Toque, French philosopher.
He writes, uh, the art of association
is the mother of all action.
Mm-hmm. And one of the most important, uh,
for accounting and accountants in general is
we've not been trained in the art of association.
It's not been a collaborative journey to get
to where they've become.
Right. And America is all about the art of association,
how multiple stakeholders is such diverse in, uh, outlooks,
but all united in spirit,
the nation found itself the best possible.
They keep seeing American experiment.
It's 2 60, 2 70 years old
and it's still so successful in thriving.
It's primarily, and this is an observation of him, right?
This is the only nation and the French government sent him
after the French Revolution to figure out
what could be the best possible system to govern and exist.
There's the only country in the world
where you can see someone could be a carpenter,
someone could be an artist, a plumber,
and a doctor all in one lifetime and still thrive.
Right? I mean, this is
that nation which has allowed free spirit to thrive
and has also cracked the structure for people to
collaborate and thrive.
I think that's one message
with accountants can get that loud and clear.
And we keep fear aside for collaboration.
I think it'll do wonderfully well for the entire,
uh, profession as a whole.
Okay, let's step back in the time machine
and now we are going to go to
10 years from today's current date.
We're gonna go 10 years into our future.
Right now, same thing.
That door's gonna open up 60 seconds
and you're gonna be face-to-face
with yourself 10 years from now.
What question? What one piece of advice are you going to ask
of yourself 10 years from now?
What is it that I should not be doing?
It's a very simple question, and it's so complex,
but it can really sharpen every
to back to your quote from earlier.
And I think that this was a, a Lincoln,
an Abraham Lincoln quote or a Washington quote,
but, you know, give me an hour to chop down a tree
and I'll spend 55 minutes sharpening my ax.
Exactly. Everybody wants to know the secret to success,
and I feel like it's all come down to, you just have to
refine and reiterate on what it is
that you want to accomplish.
Don't allow yourself to be distracted.
Seriously. No, seriously.
Oh, Devo, I have had a fantastic time speaking with you,
and I'm really, I, and I mean this sincerely.
Looking forward to getting more opportunities for us
to speak in person, uh, when we're in Nashville.
I so look forward to it. Amazing.
Yep. And I'm, I'm gonna invite everybody who's listening
now, um, come join us.
Come sit down. Let's have some great conversations
as it relates to either specifically your firm
and your business and what you're looking to do
and how DVS might be able to help you.
Or as you've heard us talk here, we can go much broader
and more general on these things.
Oh, yes. I mean, DVS is an expert.
I keep saying, this is my research laboratory, right?
It's about trying to figure out, figure out how we
as professionals can associate better and create value.
And our mantra is very simple.
Aggregate, enable and unlock. That's what we do.
I'm gonna remind everybody, you can join us in Nashville
from May 19th through the 21st for right now, 2025.
This is the Accounting Profession's Premier Midyear event.
We really hope that you come join us.
As a reminder, if you've not registered yet, if you go
to rightworks.com/rightnow2025,
and you use the offer code POD 300, that's POD 300,
you'll receive $300 off your registration.
There is an ancient Chinese proverb
that states the best time
to have planted a tree was many years ago.
The second best time is right now.
Um, I'm going to encourage you to come
and look for ways that you can plant your tree right now,
at, right now, talk with DVS talk, with Rightworks.
We'd love to help you on this.
Keep aggregating, keep enabling,
and I promise you'll find the way
to unlock more success for you and your firms.
Thank you, DeBaker.
Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank
You. Thank you for having
me. It was
a pleasure engaging with you.
It was indeed. Thank you.