Despite what many people believe about distributed teams, they can be both efficient and scalable. There are nuances that one must take into account, such as technology and having a dedicated workspace, but the benefits far outweigh the costs. In this episode, Jamie Nau sits down with CEO Jody Grunden and COO, Adam Hale, for a chat about how Summit CPA developed into a distributed team, the technology they use, and why the model continues to work.
“If they’re not willing to get on camera, then they likely won’t be a good prospect.” - Jody Grunden
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Jamie Nau: Welcome to episode two of the Modern CPA Success Show. I'm your host Jamie Nau the Director of Accounting at Summit CPA. Today I'm joined by Jody Grunden and Adam Hill the two partners of Summit CPA. In last week's episode we discussed the start of Summit CPA and how we went down the CPA path. Today we're going to talk about the distributed model.
Jamie Nau: So before we get started let's go into the basics of distributed model and the terms that are used. Adam can you go into that for us a little bit?
Adam Hale: I mean it gets called a lot. So I think the most widely used term is remote employees we hear that a lot. I mean back in the day you'd hear telecommuting both kind of mean the same thing. It's a little bit of semantics in terms of also using the terms distributed but telecommuting is just meaning that you're phoning in or these days you're videoconferencing into the office remote employees same thing. So early on in Summit CPA we had remote employees so people that would work from home for a day or a week or we even had people that moved away and they were true remote employees at that point. We had a brick and mortar office and then they lived in another state. So they were remote employees. The term distributed was introduced to us whenever we went to a conference that was focused on companies that didn't have an office. That's really where we learned and started using the term distributed because whenever we got rid of our physical brick and mortar in terms of the entire team coming there that's whenever we went distributed as opposed to remote.
Jamie Nau: Great. So, Summit like you said is a distributed model and so a lot of CPA firms will do the remote to have someone work from home one or two days a week, but we are a true distributed model. So that's just to clear that up.
Jody Grunden: To kind of add to that we weren't virtual with our clients so virtual is another term that's often used in virtual meaning that we're using technology to work with clients like we're doing great today or through a Go to Meeting or a webinar or a Zoom meeting you. That type of things we’re using technology to actually meet with the client versus the face to face handshake type meetings. I see virtual use a lot.
Adam Hale: Clients are super bummed because they think that means hologram and we're going to be there. No it just means Zoom or Go to Meeting.
Jamie Nau: Okay great. So that's clear now. Thanks. Let's go into a little bit about how Summit became distributed and kind of the story behind that. So, Jody I know you have a pretty good story there.
Jody Grunden: The story was that we were looking into it back in 2011 we had a client that we brought on that was a distributing company at that time distributed there is maybe twenty-five companies across the US that were distributed so not many at all. Again, not having an office they started without having an office so it it's kind of a cool thing. We learned a lot from them over a period of two years before we actually made that jump. We learned what went right what went wrong. You know what to do when not to do that type of thing. Then we decided to venture off with it a little bit and we had our first employee work remotely. They moved out of the office and actually moved to a state far away. With that we're like well how are we going to make this work. So, we thought well let's toy with this idea a little bit. So, we went to a conference with only distributed companies. There's probably 20 or 30 companies there from all different types of companies from a kickball company to design shops to all these different types of companies and we thought you know this could be something we really want to do.
However, we didn't have really a lot of buy in the accounting team who really loves change. I brought this back and they're like no way we're not go in that direction. We can't be distributed. We can't work remotely how are we going to collaborate? What about the clients meeting them face to face, that's so important in what we do? Then I had to kind of remind them well, that's what we do with our clients we're you know we're virtual with our clients we don't meet with them. So why would they know what are the different issues or different aches are and pains they might have and it was just more of a change situation they just don’t really want to change you know because again the accountant personality does not want to change they love to do the exact same thing type of thing
Adam Hale: It doesn't look like he's looking at me but what he really means is Adam didn't want to work from home and I have a bunch of kids and I did want to work from home and it was a it was a different deal. So I mean like Jody mentioned you know working with clients virtually, it felt natural and it was something that you know, took a little bit getting behind the camera and looking at the camera and doing those kind of things and learning camera etiquette which is a totally different podcast but I have some blooper reels on that one. But you know whenever you're looking at it it's like you know working from home was like for me whenever I'd work remote it just felt super unnatural like I wasn't nested meaning my machines weren't set up properly I was working off of a kitchen table you know just different things like that. So, it didn't feel comfortable but one day that all changed Jody, right? Whenever we had to.
Jody Grunden: We're at the point where they're building because I own the building and saw at the point in the building where we had to either expand the building so that we could eventually grow into it because at that time we had 18 employees and the building is only good for maybe 20 employees. So it needed some remodeling. So we decided to go ahead and remodel because I think only one or two people decided hey I'd love to work remotely everybody else is like absolutely no way. And so, we put a hundred grand in the building. We put a hundred thousand dollars in the building kicked everybody outinitially for four weeks. Four weeks turned into six weeks and six weeks maybe turned in about eight weeks that we're actually truly outside of this office because we gutted the entire thing took all the walls everything out and really made it a really cool office. We put this really cool fish tank right out in front lobby there with saltwater fish. It was really neat having my office in there. Adam had a really nice corner office in the back. We made a really cool conference room. We put these really nice small cubicles but really nice cubicles. We put offices with TV is in it. It was really cool. We were pretty excited about it. And throughout that construction period I stayed in the office with all the hammering and everything and answered the door and people coming in thinking you know what's going on with this accounting firm? And so eventually it got to a point where the office is really neat. I hadn't yet put the sign out front on the building yet. We'll do that the real last thing and started asking everybody to come back and Adam?
Adam Hale: We didn't come back. So we didn't want to leave the nest. So yeah it became like I think what it was for me was finding a defined space and we talk about this a lot. Being distributed in order to be kind of successful it's about that divide because people are often worried about you know how do I separate work from home. And for us it's simple get a door so I know a lot of big companies talk about that as well. But that's really helped me. I have a defined space I was able to set everything up that I had at the work and now at home and I mean the commute is killer. You know I go from the bedroom to the office so don't forget about the cup of coffee in the kitchen. Yeah. It's just so nice. I mean you just like and it's not hard for me to shut it off. I mean the second I walk through those doors I don't know about you two but I mean we've talked about this before and we talk about it with our team a lot. But once you shut those doors, I don't really have any like no more than I do already looking at my phone for other things.
Jody Grunden: You know it creates that big I think it's a must, it's a requirement you've got to have that divide like Adam saying if you're just working on the kitchen table the entire time I just don't see that working long term for anybody. I mean I really don't I mean short term yeah. You can do it for a month you can do it for a few weeks or a year. That would be really tough. You got to have that wall in office. I think in order for it to really work really well. But everybody figured it out. You know everybody came back and said hey this is a lot easier than I thought. You know they figured out all their issues. Internet was a big issue for a lot of people they upgraded some people they couldn't you know so that those people had to stay back at this really cool office I built for 30 people that has now four people and it really was really tough.
Adam Hale: Yeah I mean and you know there's a lot that goes into that. And I mean not everybody has a golf course behind their house like I do you know. So, it's like you know it's one of those things where you have to be super careful it's a total mind shift because like you said Internet was huge. Everybody's like, oh my Internet's great. And it's like, yeah but it doesn't like support video streaming all day long, so you sound like a robot you're cutting in and out. That was a big thing. Like I said making sure that your background was clean, you know, you don't want to like a full view of your living room and your laundry sitting over in the corner. You know you only have to dress up from the neck up which is super awesome.
Jody Grunden: Unless you have to get up of course. Stories about that right.
Adam Hale: Yeah. In the wintertime my wife calls them my give up pants. So, I'm always like walking around in sweats and like a nice shirt or whatever and it's just like that takes a little bit. But I think the other thing that's important to mention is like that transition period. So, there was a time like right when we built the office like Jodi said I had this nice corner office. So, I went in there for a little while and we did have some teammates that were still there. We had a handful of people that were in and it created this weird cultural divide because what we also started doing that we never did before which is a huge advantage of working distributed is we were able to open up hiring throughout the entire United States. So, we started hiring people outside of our area but we still had a good concentration of people that lived in the area that would come to the office. So, there was this thing in our first remote employee actually called our attention to it the most. But it seemed like there was this big cultural divide where we communicated like this all the time with them but then internally you know you'd shift into the conference room or you'd go out and talk to people. So that was a little bit of a that was a little bit of a thing and how we solve for that. While we were kind of in that transition phase is Jody hooked up with the software that we still use for our virtual office right now which is called Sococo. It’s amazing. I don't know how really, we would do without it but we shifted all of our meetings to that. So even though somebody is right outside my door, 10 feet away. I say, nope if you want to talk jump on in the virtual office that way everybody can see that you're in my office and we're communicating the same way that I would with anybody else. And it really helped the transition and eventually push some of those people that were staying in the office. They're like well hell I guess I may as well go home because they didn't quit coming in because of that issue.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, I think I've talked to a lot of companies about this and I think the mixed offices are the most difficult. The companies that are all in one office are a little bit easier. The ones that are distributed are a little more complicated, but once they get it figured out it works really well. Those next offices like everybody's been on that conference call where three people are in a room and you're sitting there on the phone and you're just like multitasking because no one even knows you're there. And so those are the more difficult situations I think from my experience.
Jody Grunden: Well we find out with clients as well because again we work virtual with the clients. So, the ideal scenario is for the client not to all be a one conference show where we're talking to him but actually be by their own computer you know. And then you don't get those side talks where it's so distracting, or you know everybody has an opportunity to talk and talk to and their paying attention. So yeah working virtually with clients is the same thing I think working with the industry environment of the team. But you know once we force everybody to work inside of Sococo like Adam, said it made a night and day different. Now everybody communicates in the same manner, share screens the same manner and they get used to it. There were never these side conversations. And like Adam said the team just eventually was like six maybe at that time. So a third of our office stayed home and after that I'd say maybe two or three people you know are technically in the office you know we have three people in the office right now and ones because they live with their mother and then another one just decided they want to come in for whatever reason. But we never technically kicked everybody out, but they all communicate again in the exact same way. So, the cool thing about that was that we remodeled the building for 30 people and we thought you know, hey 30 people, 10 years now will probably need to expand. It was bad forecasting on our part. It was like three years later where we have more than 30 people. Now it's what five years later you know and we're pushing 50 people here at the next probably year so that model or that thinking that hey this is brick and mortar thing there's going to be a great thing with really just stifled our growth. It would not enable us to grow at the speed that we were not only for the size of the building like Adam was saying earlier but the call-in people. It's pretty amazing when you can get you know two thousand plus resumes coming in a really super quality people because of the type of environment you work in. So, it puts us basically competing with the big boys in that regard to the type of people that we can attract for these positions which is which is really cool.
Adam Hale: And Sococo I mean it's a little basic but at first glance it looks a little voyeuristic because you can kind of see where everybody is. But I can tell you also working distributed from an efficiency standpoint what would happen in the office is people would helicopter. So, my door would be shut and they'd want to talk to me and they'd just helicopter around the office Get up you know a half hour later see if I'm at my door still shut people would be waiting in line. That kind of thing. Well sometimes maybe I'm on a call and I just forget you know I forgot to open my door. And so, what people didn't want to disturb me that kind of thing inside of the Sococo the cool thing is people can tell whenever I'm in a meeting or not in a meeting and it's really easy. You still get the watercooler talk like when somebody comes into my office, you know we shoot the breeze for the first few minutes anyway but you don't get all the lingering and then whenever you do have to be collaborative and work together instead of something being on your machine and something being on my machine we got to walk back and forth. It's like you can pull up your screen and I can pull up my screen and then we can call somebody else in and they can pull their monitor and we're looking at all three things all in the same room and it just makes it super convenient and very collaborative.
Jody Grunden: Yeah, it's much more collaborative than actually being in person because not very often you can have three people looking at three different things at the same time when you're in person. I just don't see that happening very often is more like do this do this and come back later. Now it’s like let's do it now and you can visually see everything.
Adam Hale: We have cool tools. I mean you can draw right on the screen if you want to. I mean if that's your thing. I mean that's the thing is there's still people worrying about culture and you know that's not been a problem for us in fact, there's tradeoffs. Don't get me wrong and that's why we do a team retreat. You know that's one of the other things that we kind of you know lead into in order to create that that culture. But I think the team does a great job of giving each other kudos. We have a core values channel where we talk about, you know we're always trying to live out our core values anytime we do anything, and so when we see somebody on the team doing something that kind of supports one of those we have a channel inside of slack that's also integrated with our cocoa and we just shout out at that person and let them know hey you did a great job you know that kind of thing. So, it really you know you probably get a little bit more praise you know being distributed because you have to be so deliberate with your communication.
Jamie Nau: Yeah there's less bumping into. That's the thing I noticed like you have those social conversations and a lot of times they're more intentional like I'm going to I'm just going to hop in his office and ask him about how his trip was and stuff like that. It's not like a upside so I jumped in Jody was getting lunch we're going to talk for 45 minutes about something, so you definitely have to be more intentional about it.
Jamie Nau: You mentioned Slack you mentioned Sococo. Any other tools or things that really helped change the way Summit did things for the distributed model?
Jody Grunden: Well it's kind of funny because you never mentioned the telephone. We don't use the telephone a whole lot. I would say maybe 5 to 10 percent of our communication would be by the telephone, tops.
Adam Hale: Mines not even close to that. So, I have a soft phone and it probably rings a couple of times a month and they're always like garbage. Everybody's usually either slacking or they're emailing and then we do a ton of video conferencing and that's even way better. I mean if we weren't virtual, we would probably be on the telephone talking to our clients a lot more than we would be you know like whenever you're not having those in-person meetings you'd probably be more on the telephone than you would be in video conferencing. I think video conferencing is just as powerful as being in front of somebody because you can see what they're doing and thinking and so anyway,
Jody Grunden: it's the eye contact right. You can see the eye contact whether they really understand what you're saying or not and finance and accounting is not an easy thing for everyone to understand. It's very important to have that visual contact there and the kind of cool thing that they add to it as we meet with our clients for the first time ever it's kind of funny because sometimes we'll have a client for a year or two years and never have met him personally ever and where they're go to finance person which is kind of a kind of fun kind of funny kind of fun and a lot of people say well how could they ever do that? It's through the video conferencing it's through the eye contact you know the visual, being able see people all the time. Then when we do meet with them for maybe at a company or retreat where they invite us to come out you know hang out with them for a week it's not awkward because you know the person really well you know they're family you know their eyesight know what they look like. The only thing you don't know is how tall they are.
Jamie Nau: Right. Jody’s six-four in case you're wondering.
Adam Hale: I’m four-eleven. That's the thing is everybody's always like dang I didn't realize you're that tall or that short or whatever. But how important is video to Jody? Jody is like one of the most passive people like he avoids confrontation at all costs like that's how he is and I just remember one day because he like flipped the crew out. We were kind of like trying to figure out, this was whenever we were more on break we were still in the office but we were embracing the virtual concept with our clients and like Jody said it's the presence it's like the eye contact and making sure you understand is super important. Half the team, because we're accountants we were a little like late adopters there in terms of trying to do that. And I just remember coming into the office one morning and Jody had like everybody's camera that didn't have theirs on, on their chair and said, hey if you plan on working here tomorrow this better be connected.
Jamie Nau: So yeah I do the same thing with potential clients you're going on the meeting to talk to a new client the first thing Jody says “what are you afraid of showing your camera?” So, it's a big deal and I get it because again when I went to my first company retreat I feel like I knew everybody. There was no like breaking the ice as you walked right in. You were doing hugs you started drinking beers with people right away. There was no like awkward period because we're so used to seeing each other on camera. So, I totally get why Jody’s passionate about that.
Jody Grunden: It’s kind of funny because I was being interviewed at the time. The big thing was I thought people already use their cameras and unbeknownst to me they weren't using their cameras only with me. And so then they'd be like, oh my cameras not working today or whatever it's like well whatever. But at that time I was like, OK fine again it's not working today I don't talk to you very often. But it was one of those things that I got interviewed through a video so the day I was being interviewed I was proud about how everybody is on camera and everything so, I going one by one to everybody in office to show this person how great everybody was and nobody’s camera was working. I went through ten people. It was it was really comical, and I was kind of getting pretty upset. And that's when I said, don't come in tomorrow unless you get your camera to work. It was amazing, everybody had their camera working and magically everyone has an eye for their next little while. Oh and it still burns me ever time I'll see people than aren’t on camera I'll just pop in and say what's going on with the camera? They pop on. Oh yeah. OK. Great. So yeah. So accountants will probably be the least of any profession to embrace being on a camera. But we definitely do for sure. And so, it's a requirement. It's really a must. When we interview people they can’t get their camera to work. You know that's not a good sign that they're going to be a good employee you know with our company and the same thing with prospects you know when I make fun of prospects when they come on because if they're not going to be willing to get on a camera to converse with us here they're probably not going to a good prospect for us. So they are not going to really work well because again telephone is pretty antiquated nowadays which is kind of funny but the way we work it just does not work well by just being on the phone or very few opportunities which I think could ever succeed by just the telephone.
Jamie Nau: Well I think I know this this area will go into a lot of other topics were going to cover in future podcasts. So for example hiring is really important. I think people have to have the right personality and then also our meeting structure. I think our meeting structure has changed and evolved because of our being distributed. But I think we'll save those for future podcasts, and I think the less you guys have anything else to add we will end this podcast. Anything we missed, Adam?
Adam Hale: Yeah. The only thing that I think is important to mention is even though we don't have a physical office there's still a cost associated with that. So, some of the things that we do is we have a tech stipend that we give top. We give them a prepaid Pax card. We load a couple hundred bucks a month on them for them and they can buy monitors and they're responsible for keeping up with their technology if they want a printer or a different chair or standing desk, those kinds of things. So that's one thing we do.
We also because we're not in the office we do internal education CPE for us, but we also give them an education stipend card. So that's another spiff that they kind of get that they self-manage and regulate. And then on the facility side as well as the team retreat team retreats pretty expensive super important you know typically on the low end like fifteen hundred bucks per person. It can be as high as like twenty five hundred bucks per person but it is important to still get that like physical presence at least once a year although we really push people on the education stipend to break into small groups and instead of spending a ton of money on an online class save your money and get cheap CPE and then spend the rest of that education stipend on travel and connect somewhere cool like you know Vegas or Miami or somewhere where they're having a CPE event and you can hang out for a couple of days with people on your team. So that's I think super important.
Jody Grunden: Yeah that's huge and it's kind of amazing when we go to these things because I've been to many different retreats with different companies that I worked with prior to and it's like everybody is excited to be around each other, but really couldn't wait to leave the retreat to do their own thing. You know it's like I can't wait till four o'clock to head out so that I can get us out of here and then you know do whatever you know by myself with my spouse or whatever. It's amazing that when we go when we have these retreats that that's not the case. People don't want to leave each other and you know they get done with the retreat part of it and they want to hang out with each other till 2:00 3:00 in the morning if they can because they don't get a chance ever seeing each other in person so they just want to take advantage of it and it's kind of an amazing it's me. It's really hard to believe but it's amazing to see people wanting to be around each other so much and I think that just simply goes to the culture that we've developed within the firm you know how strong the culture really is and I really truly don't think it would be as strong if it was a brick and mortar office. I don't think you have more divisions I think you'd have more issues being distributed. We find that's just the opposite which is pretty good testimony of the team that we have.
Adam Hale: When they come back from the retreat, just the momentum that they come back with and the comfort level with one another. In terms of one of our core values, which is collaboration like we just see a huge spike in that because they're all super comfortable with one another and they you know people that normally might not have talked to one another are now connecting and so it's really cool and you see them start to feel like oh wow those three are going on a CPE event together it's like you know they talk to each other but they connect to the team retreat and kind of built around that. So anyway, those are super important to a distributed culture I think.
Jamie Nau: I think the trainings are really important. I mean that's something where you get to see who you're going with and go with Jodi tonight. Let's go to an LA training and get together and hang out and see you get those opportunities and to have that opportunity is amazing. But also, on the left side like you didn't just want for technology you like how many times have you worked in a big office? You know I kind of love to have a standing desk, but you can't really ask for it. We're here it's like oh I have the money for, I’ll buy a standing desk you know they give me money to do things like that. So, it's like you have you have the freedom to make your office look like and feel like whatever you want and they give you the money to do that. I think that’s huge and helps the working environment and everybody feels very comfortable. I think that's definitely two very positive things that you've brought up there.
Jamie Nau: Thank you, guys, for joining us today. And I think it was a good conversation and the next episode we're going to talk more about hiring definitely for the distributed model, so I appreciate you guys known. Thanks for coming in.