.jpg)
The Wize Way
Feeling stuck in your firm or on the edge of rapid growth but don't know how to build the business so that it’s not reliant on you?
Join the Wize team as they share the insights, stories, strategies and tools that have helped transform the businesses and lives of our Wize Guys and hundreds of Accounting, CPA and bookkeeping firm owners around the world.
In each episode, we dive into the leadership, marketing, sales, systems and mindset tactics that'll get you to your goals without burning out.
Subscribe to transform your challenges into opportunities and build a business that can run without you.
The Wize Way
Episode 201: The Power of Proven Systems and Accountability with Jeremy Eckert from Trail CPA.
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
From 3 people to 18. From one city to 10 states. From doing all the work to building a team that runs without you. Jeremy Eckert from Trail CPA has done what most firm owners are still trying to figure out, and in this episode, he breaks down exactly how it happened.
In this conversation, Jeremy sits down with us for an honest reflection on what it really takes to grow a remote accounting firm at speed, make the right hires at the right time, and gradually step back from the day-to-day without the wheels falling off.
✅ Why building remote from day one gave Trail CPA an edge most firms are still chasing
✅ What nearly doubling in size two years in a row actually feels like from the inside
✅ The hiring decision that changed everything and why they almost didn't make it
✅ Why getting both partners aligned was the real turning point in their growth journey
✅ How following a proven framework saved them from years of costly trial and error
✅ What work-life balance actually looks like when you stop being the one holding everything together
If you have been grinding through tax season after tax season, wondering when things will get easier, this episode is your reminder that the right system and the right support can change the trajectory of your firm faster than you think.
________________
PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm:
1. Download our famous Wize Freedom Map for FREE - Find out the 101 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here
2. Need to hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here
3. Work with Jamie and our mentors for 8 weeks - Build a custom business plan for your firm - Apply here
Welcome And Show Purpose
SPEAKER_00Welcome to The Wise Way, the show for accounting and bookkeeping firm owners who want more time, profit and freedom, and a business that can run without them. I'm Bren Ward, your host, and each week we deep dive into the real stories, proven strategies, and battle-tested tools from successful firm owners just like you. Our wise mentors want to share their journey of how they've scaled and systemized their way to freedom so you can too. If you're stuck in the grind or you're ready to scale smarter, this is your blueprint. Let's get into the episode.
Meeting Jeremy From Trail CPA
SPEAKER_02Hi everyone, I'm here sitting with Jeremy from Trail CBA. I'm so excited for this conversation because all the mentors asked me to have a conversation with you. Um, of course, it would have been better with you and Trent, but we know that we're just coming through off the back of tax season. So that's a lot to ask for. Have the two owners in person, but we'll be happy with you, Jeremy, answering the questions today. So thank you for making the time. The mentors nominated you because they think you have the wise factor, which is rare amongst all of our members who go through the process. You've recently finished your wise journey, but I'm sure that you carry a lot of things that you've learned with you. So I'm excited to dive in and learn what were some of those. But before we dive in, we'll go from the beginning. And it's when did your business start? When did Trail CPA start?
Building A Fully Remote Firm
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we started in about mid-2019. So we've been at it for uh coming up on seven years now.
SPEAKER_02Yes, nice. And just right before the pandemic, did it impact you? Like I guess it did.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we we were pretty small through the pandemic, uh or the start of the pandemic at least. Uh there was just someone say three of us at that point. Uh, we were still growing rapidly. Um, we intended to build it remote, so um we went full remote during the pandemic and kind of never looked back. Um, we have an office in four different cities, but it's basically just one person's workspace where they uh can meet with clients if we have any local clients that want to meet uh and just be productive. And otherwise, everyone else on the team, we're up to about 18 on the team now. Uh, and we are all full remote at this point.
SPEAKER_02Incredible. Um, what's the do you think there are some perks or benefits of being fully remote, or do you miss anything from being all in the same place or anything like that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's there's there's pros and cons for sure. Uh, I think generally speaking, we prefer the remote uh model. We've seen a lot of benefits uh from a hiring perspective and from uh uh finding uh um more of a a work-life balance. We've we've seen a lot of benefits there for the team um and finding people across the country. Uh out of our 18 people, I think we're in probably 10 different states at this point, which is a little bit of a payroll uh payroll headache, but otherwise uh has been great that we can uh just find good talent regardless of where where they're at. And we've found that our retention rates of our team also has been uh definitely positively impacted from from being remote.
SPEAKER_02So incredible. I'm so glad that you had that impact. And and it was kind of a less less hard when you entered the pandemic because I feel like that was such a a hard time for everyone who wasn't working remotely. So the fact that you were already kind of open to that, because there's a lot of people, especially in the accounting field, that are like close off on people working remotely. But I think that's why you pull through.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, I really think that if you're coming into the pandemic and you've always been an in-person firm and all of your clients are used to in-person and and and like, or just you're just thinking about switching over to remote, like that is a that's a big lift. Uh that's a lot of change of how things are done and whatnot. But um, if you are starting from scratch and have no existing processes, have no existing team, don't have uh all those pieces in place already, uh, it definitely I think I think we definitely have some advantages uh compared to firms that are trying to transition to remote or are partially remote or their team works from home three or four days a week or different things like that, because uh we just built it 100% to be remote.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, I agree. You have that up your
When Growth Forces Outside Help
SPEAKER_02sleeve. Um, so going down the line, you started back in 2019. Um seven years is a long time, so I'm sure a lot has happened since then. I want to go to that minute when you thought, um, we need help, guys. Uh, we need handout here. What was keeping you up at night at that time? What were the challenges you were facing as a firm owner?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, my uh my role on the firm has evolved to be much more on the the business process, the the systems um managing the team, that side of things. My business partner's very good at business development and and sales calls and bringing in new work and all that good stuff. So I've always been uh my my approach to this has always been hey, we we shouldn't be uh reinventing the wheel in this in this process. Other people have ran accounting firms and businesses. And uh why would we why would we start from scratch and try to relearn every uh mistake ourselves rather than starting with a framework that works and is proven and uh can get us over so many issues and mistakes uh that we would have to learn ourselves. So that was where I initially started. Um I started with the the wise vault where there's the video I think it's the vault uh where the videos, there's lots of video content and lots of help yourself uh opportunities in there, and you can start to implement um a lot of the wise uh learnings or information or whatnot. Um but I
Why Coaching Beats Self-Study
SPEAKER_01I would say we struggled with getting uh my business partner on board, and I think that was more an issue of I didn't really understand wise nearly as well as I needed to. So for me to go and convince somebody and teach them how to do it as well, uh just wasn't working very well for us. So it made a lot of sense to bring in uh Thomas was our coach, uh Thomas, and have regular meetings with him and build uh have him teach the both of us and get the buy-in and work on it together uh through the coaching uh program rather than just the help yourself option.
SPEAKER_02Yes, that's incredible. I I feel like there was a lot of you being also like envisioning that in the future that you could be a lot better, um, from what I'm hearing. Um and yeah, it's like uh a scaling problem. It's when it starts to be more obvious that you need to go next level and that you need all this, the things that you probably learned. So there's uh there's also a leap from the going through the Weiss vault and going into working with Thomas directly. So what was that was happening that you felt or what did you see about working through yourself through the videos? Um, what was that you saw that made you think, I think I need to work one-on-one, I think I need the accountability to move forward.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um for for for us, it was we saw, or at least myself especially, um, I saw the benefits. I saw I saw them demonstrating the system worked, but I didn't have a lot of success uh with the implementation. Just trying to trying to watch a video and make some some major systemic changes in your in your firm. Uh I think it was doable. I think there was definitely potential. I think uh I think if I was a solo practitioner, I probably would have had more success with self-implementation. Still in respect would get the coach, but um, but when yeah, just overall trying to get um my business partner on board and trying to make some pretty major changes in our company as we were growing quite rapidly through through the this process uh was it it was very beneficial that a coach uh that has solved a lot of these issues. Uh we've we've worked with coaches before that are more of a generic business coach, and uh I think there's value in that. And I also think there's value in uh much more value in uh somebody who's ran an accounting firm before and has solved the exact same problems that you've solved and just be like, no, just go this route. You don't have to spend three weeks trying to come up with the right solution or reinvent the wheel. Here's the answer. Run with it.
SPEAKER_02I agree. Um, and you said something very interesting, which is if you were a solo entrepreneur, you would probably um implement it uh faster, everything. But of course, when you have a partner, you have to have get them on the same boat as you are. And it sounds like you were pretty much in the same mindset as the teachings from WISE. Uh, do you feel like when you started working with Thomas, there was a bigger mindship for yourself and for your business partner as well? Based on culture, on leadership,
Getting Partner Buy-In On Change
SPEAKER_02on many of the learnings that you know we teach are very different from traditional accounting firms. So do you feel like there was a mindset play into all of this?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I definitely think so. Um I would say Trent and I Trent and I came from a public accounting firm that did similar things to what we did, but I would say uh we weren't there for a super long time and we um a lot of what we wanted to do uh we didn't learn from that firm. So I would say in a lot of ways we were quote unquote starting from scratch and um didn't come in with a bunch of really good habits and processes and assistance and stuff that we just intended to implement. It was more of a hey, how can we how can we build this thing more from scratch? Um and so with that mindset of how do we build this um this firm, um the having again, having a a coach or somebody that can uh coach you through those decisions really uh and get us both on the same page was was a huge one. That was probably a big piece of it that I didn't emphasize enough, but just having Trent and I both in the in the in the meeting with Thomas and both like if I'm if I go and watch a a wise video myself and get all amped up about the change I want to make, uh getting uh Trent as amped up about it and as as as excited about it. Um it's a pretty big challenge versus hey, we're both in a monthly meeting with Thomas and we both get excited about the same things and we both know what next starts are because we've talked through with the coach.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, and Thomas is so good at getting people excited about they were doing and motivated because he's so motivated yourself. So I feel like he was spot on um the coach for you guys.
Building A Business That Runs
SPEAKER_02I have a question that I asked uh all the Y Spector Chat guests, and it's that you know that we talk about building a business that runs without you, we talk about this very often, and we kind of want to teach that into you. But we know that, and I've sat with lots of firm owners who are not interested in that and who see it in another way. So I want to ask you personally what that means for you, and if you're excited about it, if you're scared about it, if you're already um your mindset is up to working towards that, how does us outlook for you? A business that runs without you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh I would say that's definitely the path that we were interested in. Um both Trent and I have young young kiddos at home. Um and when you have a a spouse and a young kiddos that also want your attention, and you could work uh 24 hours a day during tax season and and not get it all done. Uh there has to be there has to be some balance and there has to be uh you you have to build the skill of delegating and building a team um to make that all work. So yeah, we definitely we value uh our time highly and um think that the uh for us that is the right goal. We we're not here to build a $50 million firm and go as big as humanly possible and grow as fast as humanly possible. Uh we are looking for, again, especially since the phase we're in with our families and our lives, but we if we could um hand off a lot of the day-to-day, hand off a lot of the stress, not need to work as many hours during tax season, and um and at that point it's hey, are we gonna work two or three days a week? Are we gonna fill our time with some of the projects that we're more excited about that um maybe aren't at the top of the list? Like there's a lot of options at that point. So building building towards that gives you options.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I agree. I uh in that journey, where do you see yourself in, like in percentage, if you will? Like where do you think you are in that line from not being in the business to being very overworked and a 12-hour workday? Where do you think you are at?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh it's a good question. So we uh I would say we did a quite good job of it of building the team and getting out of a lot of the day-to-day and the doing the taxes and doing the accounting work. Um, the problem we ran into is we were growing so fast that the next set of responsibilities and things that landed on our plate were coming at us very quickly. So um through 21, 22, 23, we were growing,
Fast Growth And Hiring Managers
SPEAKER_01we were almost doubling in size every year, um, which was uh very good timing to be working with WISE. I think we started in 22 with WISE, if I'm not mistaken. So when you're growing 22, you were 70, yeah, we're 72% in 22 and 97 in 23. And uh uh we without WISE telling us, hey, you need to go hire two senior tax managers yesterday, uh we would not have hired as aggressively. Those were the first um on the tax side, those were the first managers, reviewers that we had brought on the team. And that was obviously uh a big commitment to bring on two of them at the same time. And uh it it worked out extremely well, and we would we would have been in pretty rough shape if we didn't have all that extra capacity and and uh on the team.
SPEAKER_02So I'm so glad to hear that, that it has evolved ever since you started because that's ultimately what we want to happen. Um, and I have one more question for you, Jeremy. And it's that before you jump to that.
SPEAKER_01I realize I didn't answer your question about where am I on the spectrum at this point. But I got it. I got it. Yeah. But yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would say probably uh I mean during tax season, we're intentional that we want to jump in and help out. We don't want to continue a more of a laid-back uh approach. So during tax season, we definitely uh step up our hours, but off off of tax season, we're not working 40 hours a week anymore. Uh close, but we're not working 40 hours a week anymore. And I would say our uh work life life balance is quite a bit better than uh than a few years ago for sure.
SPEAKER_02I'd say that's all already a huge success because most of our of our firm owners, when they start, they work 60 hours a week. So I know that's a huge pat on the back to yourself that you feel like, okay, I get to go home at 5 p.m. and just, you know, relax and step back. Um, but yeah, thank you for answering that. Uh my last question is related to
More Time For Family And Hobbies
SPEAKER_02what you're able to do with the time that you are freeing up gradually, I guess. So um is there any hobbies or any activities that you enjoy doing outside of accounting that you are able to do more so now that you are stepping away from the business? And that when you have a 20-hour work week, seven-hour work week, hopefully, um, you get to do more of that.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. I I wouldn't say I've uh um necessarily figured out exactly what I'll do with all my spare time at some point when I when I get there, but uh every year it gets uh a little bit less stressful and a little bit more reasonable with our hours. And uh yeah, it gives us more time. I mean, again, kids is the big one, family is a big one. Um, I have got into car racing a little bit, so I do enjoy that. Uh and I mean everything from I mean, with more time you can you can do whatever you want. So it gives you options.
SPEAKER_02Learning learning a new something new like playing uh new sport or anything like that.
SPEAKER_01Uh the one I've been playing with lately has been AI and programming and stuff a little bit, which does help with the firm uh if I can do it well as well. Also uh playing with that right now.
SPEAKER_02Incredible. That tells me you've been spending some time with Thomas as well.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, he is also in that as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's that. Well, Jeremy, those were all my questions from today. I'm so happy that we had this talk. Thank you so much for answering and for showing up. I know that during a busy workday, this is a huge thing for me. So thank you so much. And I hope that you get to that to that 30-hour work week and then 20-hour work week progressively. Um, but yeah, thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Claudia.
Reviews Newsletter And Goodbye
SPEAKER_00Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Wise Way. If today's episode sparked an idea or helped you see things differently, please don't forget to leave us a review. And if you haven't subscribed to the podcast on your favourite platform yet, please go ahead and do that as well. Let's continue the conversation here through YouTube or any other social platforms that you can find us on. And just remember, if you're not a subscriber of our weekly Friday tip newsletter, you can get that to your inbox every week going forward. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, you don't have to do it alone. Let's build a business that works for you, the wise way. We'll see you in the next episode.