Today our guest is Logan Graf. Logan is the owner of Graf Tax, ironically named Graf Tax. He is also the founder and owner of a new community for the accounting profession called Counter, which we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about. He’s very passionate about the accounting profession. He and I—at least I enjoy talking to him, hopefully it’s reciprocal—we run into each other at a lot of different places, and we’ll get into, I think, a fun conversation today. Logan, welcome to The Unique CPA, or welcome back to The Unique CPA. This is a repeat visit for you.

It’s good to be back. Thank you so much, Randy. It’s always fun to run into you at conferences and hang out. Remember our last time in Vegas? 

Was that the last one was Vegas, I guess, oh yeah, that’s right. We went to dinner. That was a good time. And then before that we were at Tax Twitter. Was that the, or was there something in between?

Chicago? Was it Chicago? Yeah, I think so. So we saw each other a bunch last year.

Right. And I did actually, funny, I was watching, you know, because one thing I didn’t mention is you’ve got a heck of a large YouTube channel, a nicely attended YouTube channel.

It’s a little, baby channel. It’s growing. 

Yeah, it’s doing well. I think you’re what? Close to 10,000 subscribers now?

I’m hoping to hit 10K by the end of the year, and it’s looking like it’s going to happen, which is really cool because a year ago I probably only had about 3,000 or so, maybe a little over 3,000? So it’s crazy how much it’s grown.

Well, let’s go on a tangent right away so that the point of the YouTube channel is what?

Yeah, first, I created a YouTube channel, I was going to talk about taxes. And I was like, this is going to be a tax channel and I’m going to kind of talk about what I talk about on Twitter/X and just here’s my firm, here are some, here are my thoughts on the industry. Kind of shake things up a little bit, throw some grenades here and there with how the industry thinks of itself. And then I posted a video where I went over my financials for the year, 2021 was my first full year as a CPA firm owner. And I posted in 2022, and I got more views in an hour than all the other views in the past for all my other videos. So I was like, “I don’t think people want to watch me talk about taxes. I think people want to watch me talk about my firm and how I run it.”

And so that’s kind of been the theme now is I talk about what’s going on with my firm and how I run it, my thoughts around running firms. And that’s evolved into, now I have a community called Counter, where basically it’s almost another extension of my YouTube channel—I’d get a bunch of people reaching out to me like, “Hey Logan, I’m very inspired”—I’m not trying to just say this, but people are like, “I’m inspired by your numbers, your transparency. I’d love to run a firm like yours one day. Can we talk and meet and discuss it and can you help me out?” And I would just get a lot of those messages. 

And I’m running a firm and I’m pretty busy running a firm, and if it was just one person here and there, I’d love to talk to them. But it was like, very consistent and I was like, man, I can’t just say yes to random people and no to other people. So I was like, you know, I’m sorry I can’t talk with you right now, but just hold on, I think I may be able to help you in the future, and so that’s kind of like the idea of the community was born for Counter. People that want to start their firm are looking for help, and so instead of me trying to help one person at a time, I think I can try to help a bunch of people at a time. And it’s been great, it’s a community geared for new and aspiring accounting firm owners. You don’t have to be solely tax, you don’t have to be only bookkeeping, you can be a mix of things. We’ve got a whole diverse membership.

Nice. I want to dig into Counter more because it’s pretty cool. The idea of community and bringing people together and helping is important, and that’s a passion of mine, obviously a passion of yours. And let’s kind of delve into how you know you, the YouTube channel, and people connected and all that. But let’s start with you starting your firm back in 2020. I’m guessing there were a lot of questions you had going in, there was like, you wanted to find resources, I’m putting words in your mouth, but resources and that. And let’s talk about that journey before you even started, then YouTube or started the Counter. How were you educating yourself to be a firm owner?

Yeah, let’s rewind it back to 2020. I was on Twitter pretty heavily, now known as X. Sorry, I just can’t get rid of the Twitter. 

I have the same issue. 

Yep. It’s just easier to say for some reason, even though it’s more letters.

Yeah it is, you’re right. 

So I was on Twitter and I would just, you know, basically hang out virtually with a bunch of other accountants and firm owners and just absorb kind of what they’re discussing. And I would listen to a bunch of podcasts about running firms and just try to figure it out. I would interview different accounting firm owners, so I owe a lot to back in 2020, maybe even 2019, where I’d interview people I found on Twitter, like, “Hey, how are you doing this? What have you learned running your own firm?” If they’re listening, thank you so much to those people. Because I interviewed like five different people because I was like, “I have no idea what I’m doing. I need some help.”

Really? That’s pretty cool.

Yeah, it was super cool. Really appreciated people giving me their time so long ago. And 2020, Jason Staats. We can’t get away from him, but…

Oh, we don’t talk about him. Alright, you can talk about him.

Sorry. I’m sure he is mentioned every podcast, but he reached out to me and so like, I “CAS fished” him. We’re calling it “CAS fished” instead of catfished him. He thought I was all in the CAS and he was running CAS like a CAS firm.

Right.

He’s like, “What’s up? Let’s hang out and talk about CAS stuff.” I was like, “Yeah, I’m kind of just more of like an accounting firm, but I’ll fake it.” But I don’t know, got to know Jason over tweeting essentially, and we would do little virtual meetings here and there. And he was just thinking about launching his community called Realize, and he was like, “Man, I’m running a firm and I need help as well. I think I’m gonna launch a community and leverage everybody else and do things together versus everyone doing things on their own.” And so Realize was launched, you know, later that fall, 2020, and I was a founding member, and I got in really early and I’m still in it. And he kind of showed the blueprint of what the accounting community is. I wouldn’t have Counter without there being a Realize. And so to think like what Jason has done is cause many other people as well. There’s other communities that are probably from Jason’s Realize. It’s an amazing ripple effect that he’s created.

Oh yeah, it is. But you’re taking that and you’re paying it forward now too, and you’re helping others. So let’s get into Counter a little bit. So, I mean, I think we already mentioned the ideas of why it came about because of, you know, people reaching out to you and looking for knowledge and you sharing, you being open and being transparent with the knowledge you’re sharing, which was pretty cool. In fact, I think I knew you before I knew about that revenue sharing or your financial sharing on YouTube. And someone mentioned to me, “Hey, have you ever seen his videos on this?” I’m like no, and then I immediately went and watched it, and I think it was the 2022 version maybe that I saw first. And that was pretty cool to share because people have no idea. I mean, they start a firm, they don’t know what to expect. What’s my revenue? What’s my client base look like? And so then out of that knowledge sharing, your passion for the profession, your passion for helping and sharing the knowledge and creating community, that’s where Counter came out of. And so kind of give us the, I guess, the charter of Counter or the vision, the mission?

It’s all about the name for me because I’m absolutely obsessed with the name Counter, because it’s got a double meaning: We’re counters—we count things, so we’re counters—and then we’re counter to traditional ways of running firms. So my whole goal for Counter is to help accountants and accounting firm owners think outside the box in a way when it comes to running the firm. So trying to cut the cycle of the past 40 years of how accounting firms have been run, is not a bad thing. I get critiqued a lot about like, “Logan, your way is not the best way.” And I’m definitely not saying that. It’s more of like, “Why aren’t things different? Why have we been doing this the same way for so many years? Why is public accounting in this really bad spot when it comes to people wanting to join the profession? And why are we not getting really paid that much compared to 30 years ago?”

So it’s all about kind of questioning things. And I’m hoping that Counter helps other firm owners see something different and to help each other, encourage each other to break the mold. Because it’s really easy to fall in the footsteps of previous firm owners—it’s easy because they saw what was hard to do when running their firms, and so they stuck to the tradition, the same path everybody else took. And so in my own firm, I’m trying to break that myself and not have a busy season, which is absolutely ludicrous, people will go crazy when you start saying like, “Oh, you want to work 40 hours a week, or you want to work during the summer? Why? We do all of our returns between January and April so we can have a life outside of busy season.”

And so it’s really, I’m just trying to like, is there a better way? Can things be better? And so I’m trying it out myself and I’m hoping to encourage other people and just share my experience. And if people see that and they’re like, “I want that,” then great. If they don’t want that, cool. But we need something different in this industry.

Nope. I agree with you completely. You and I are on the same page with that. You said 40 years, I say 80 years that we’ve been doing the same thing. You see, that’s because you’re much younger than me. 

So back when you were my age, you were like, “Man, this has been going on for 40 years.”

Exactly! Exactly. But there are a couple reasons for this. I’m gonna go on my rant now for a second, but there are a few reasons. It’s our mindset somewhat. We’re a consistency-based profession. Consistency is part of what we have to look at when we’re looking at certain things. But it’s also, “Hey, it’s been done this way forever and we’re doing well.” You know, I mean, a startup firm is going to be making decent money, but if you’re a partner in a mid-size firm, I mean, you’re making $5-700,000 a year, why am I going to change anything? Well, you’re going to change things because there’s a much better way to do it. There’s more efficiencies that you can build in technology. You can build in the automation, you can delegate, automate, eliminate, collaborate, and that, I love to see what you’re doing there. So not to take your time, let’s go back to what you’re talking about. So from Counter then, you know, we got the reasons and all that. What are the types of activities happening with Counter where people are going to be able to gain and share knowledge?

So we have at least two events every month guaranteed. One is where we have a kind of a veteran, if you say, you know, someone that’s been running their firm for a good chunk and have—

[laughter]

—Randy, we’ve got to have you on, right? 

Yes!

Put you on the schedule.

If anybody didn’t know, you couldn’t see us, I was pointing at myself. Sorry. Put pressure on Logan there. Sorry. Go ahead.

Absolutely, absolutely we’d love to have you. So we’ll get people like Randy who’ve been there and done that and learned from their mistakes. Basically, it’s about an hour of conversation type discussion with me on, you know, here’s what was pivotal in running my firm, and here’s something that I did that completely changed the way I run my firm, or here’s something that I wish I didn’t do, because it impacted the trajectory of my firm. So basically it’s imparting, we call it the “One Thing Series,” although we talk about many things—it’s like, here’s one thing that you should hear from me that completely changed the way I run my firm for the better. So I’m hoping that members will hear these things and be like, “Okay, this is, I’m going to take this so I know what to expect and how to react to certain things based on other people’s experiences.”

And the next session we do is called “Outside Experts,” where we bring in people that aren’t in the accounting industry, or we try not to have them in the accounting industry, but people who are experts in kind of their own field and are able to teach accountants, firm owners, better ways of running their firm, essentially. So trying to get people outside of our own bubble to teach us how to run a business better, that’s not like an accounting firm. So really trying to get outside thoughts. We just see all our own accounting buddies talk about accounting all the time, and it’s kind of just, we’re hearing the same stuff. So trying to get some outside thoughts in there, and experiences, and to hopefully upskill these firm owners. 

And then we have a book club going on, we have mastermind groups that just started, so groups of five or six members that meet up once a month to share experiences that they’re going through. And we’ll have those probably at least twice a year, like a different cohort. I’m trying to collect as much feedback as possible—we’ve only been running for about three months—and so I’m really trying to hear from the community on how they’re feeling and what they want to see with the community and people that I bring in and what we do. So it’s going to evolve completely as we go, probably. And the audience, the members, will evolve as well—they’ll probably evolve into no longer being new firm owners and being more experienced firm owners. And so maybe we kind of shift gears for more of a more experienced firm membership or, you know, continue to have the new firm owner appeal as well. So we’ll see. I’m just super excited. We had 200 members—not trying to brag—but we had 200 members sign up in the first week, which was just bonkers.

Let’s talk about that a second. Cause there are some other things, but I was with you, I think, right? The moment it went live and you were just looking at your phone, “I got, there’s 60 members already and there’s,” and then, like every time I saw you at this conference, “How many members?” And it was a hundred. I don’t remember the numbers now, but it was just crazy. And that’s for a couple reasons. One is that need for community, that need for support, that need to help each other, but it’s also what you’ve done personally and being vulnerable and being out there and sharing, and people gravitate towards that. So I give you a lot of credit for taking what you build and sharing it forward, because people like you. I don’t know if you know this, but people like you.

Nice to hear! 

Yeah, if you’re a nice person, it comes through and people realize it and they want to be part of it. So I’m really excited. So where are you at now membership-wise?

We’re at about, so we have some free members that were in at the very beginning, like beta testers, but we’re close to probably about 280, with about 260 paid members. So we’re at like a steady increase trajectory. We, you know, some members turn out, they’re just like, “Hey, I’m not using it as much as I thought I would,” but there’s a steady inflow of members, which is really cool to see, and hoping that the value continues to increase for people that join. I’ve heard some great things from members on how impactful the community has been so far. So it’s really, you have to participate to get stuff out of it. You can’t not post, and you cannot look at other people’s posts and [not] check it out. Otherwise it’s, you know, it’s kind of pointless to be there.

So are you looking to cap that at a certain number or what’s the plan for the future of memberships?

No cap right now. I don’t really see that unless it just gets out of hand. I think people naturally leave just, they leave the phase of new firm ownership, or maybe they just don’t see the value anymore or they’re just super busy or they’re trying to cut expenses, so I don’t think it’ll blow up too much in my opinion. I’m kind of brainstorming launching a students section of Counter. So, and this would probably be free.

I like that.

Free or maybe a one-time fee for life, very small fee, where accounting students can discuss different things like accounting courses, internships, test-taking like CPA, EA exam taking, career advice, all of that. And it would just be private for the students, and just as a way to kind of give back. Because I have a lot of students reaching out to me on LinkedIn, and it’s hard for me to talk with them as well, and there’s not really a space for them either except on Reddit, which is super toxic, and I would never tell people to get advice from Reddit. So maybe it’s like a more positive experience for students, like a community for accounting students? I don’t know.

You’re brainstorming. 

Yeah.  Yeah, it’d be really cool. I’m not like trying to make a bunch of money off students. I think it would be, again, free or something of very low cost for them to join, and then maybe they can somehow interact with the paid members, in a way. 

 Yeah, that’d be pretty cool, ’cause any of us that can do anything to try to help the pipeline and showing a positive impact in the profession, showing that things can be different, showing that we are. We have a perception issue, I think in the profession is, well, it’s reality, but perception too, is that we’re just sitting and typing in numbers all day, and that’s what we do. In reality, we have a major impact on the clients that we’re working with. Not just reporting what they’re doing, but we’re impacting what their future is. And so I think if we can like, highlight things like that, and impact’s important. People, especially the next generation coming in, they wanna know they’re having an impact. So I love that idea. Would you, um, think they have that student run? I mean, ’cause you’re gonna, you, you personally will be running outta time I would think.  

Yeah. I would probably try to get someone to kind of lead it and moderate it or monitor it. And really it just depends on how much stuff we want to do for them, like do we do any events for them or, you know, if there’s no events or anything like that. It’s mostly like, just make sure nobody’s like being super toxic or, you know, trying to mess things up in there, but yeah, who knows? 

No, but brainstorming, coming up with ideas, thinking forward. I love that.

Yeah. Student led would be great. Get some students in there.

Or have, you know, whatever—I’m not gonna—you think about it. But let me go back now to where I was thinking, because you said something about you’ve seen the impact already of what’s going on in Counter. Do you have, you know, any specific stories of, “Yeah, hey, somebody reached out to me and said that this had such an impact on me and I’ve changed my direction, or I’m doing this different?” You know, if not, that’s fine.

Yeah, do you mind if I find the post real quick?

Yeah, sure.

So, the post says, “Since joining this community, I’ve learned something new every day, and I have each of you that contribute to this community to thank for that. You’ve challenged me to become better each day, and I truly believe that the knowledge I’ve gained in the short time here has been on par with that first-year learning curve when I was a new accountant. Even if I may never use the software discussed or encounter the type of work some of you do, my love language and learning is fed in your posts every day. Most of all, I’m amazed by the words given when someone is on a rant or someone is in their success—I can assure you that is not the accounting community I’ve experienced in real life. So each one of you that gives advice and encouragement to others in this forum is a breath of fresh air.” And it goes on. But yeah, stuff like that is so cool to see and hear from. And I would’ve never thought it could be something so impactful. It’s definitely my hope but to have it so soon in the life of the community means a lot that people are feeling that.

Yeah. You do these things, you hope people are getting positive confirmations and education out of it, but when you get something like that and somebody actually tells you that what you think you’re doing to help is really helping, that motivates you to keep going. I know personally for sure, and I assume the same thing with you on that.

Yeah, it’s like when I hear people talk about Bridging the Gap conference, they just love that conference. They have nothing but good things to say about you and the conference, Randy.

See, you just made my day now. See, I appreciate that. I think I told this story on the show once before, but I’m going to say it again and Justin can cut it out if I’ve said it before, I guess. But to go to that fact, I mean, that’s what you want to do. You want to help the profession. You want somebody to not go through the mistakes you did. You want somebody to enjoy what they’re doing. 

I was at a conference last July, and in this conference, I was sat in a session, and this speaker at the session, who I knew, he’s a good guy and I like him a lot. He’s a great guy. He challenged everybody, we were at these round tables. He said, “Okay, now I want you all at your round tables to sit and talk amongst each other for yourself, reflect on this question and then discuss it.” And the question was, “Assume right now you’re at your retirement party.” This is your mindset. “You’re at your retirement party, and what would have to happen at that party for you to feel you had a successful career?” And so everybody’s, you know, doing this and you know, I think it’s our turn to start talking amongst ourselves. And obviously I volunteered first ’cause I talk. And I said “Honestly, if one person at my retirement party came up to me and said, ‘Randy, you made this profession fun for me,’ I would like, cry for two days straight.” 

And the most amazing thing, and I’ll never forget this, and this meant so much to me, I’ll probably start crying right now. This person across the table from me looks up and says, “Randy, you’ve done that for me.” And I’m like, “Oh, that’s unbelievable!” But my whole point was what you just said, what you just read: Getting confirmation, somebody telling you that what you’re doing is making a difference for them means the world. I’m so happy that you got that letter from somebody.

Yeah, absolutely. I hope it happens more and more. One person at a time.

Exactly. And even if you don’t get confirmation, you know it’s happening ’cause someone’s already told you. Alright, let’s do this. Let’s talk about one more thing before we wrap up on Counter. The one thing I want to know is, in this creation of Counter, what are the key things that you see that you need to address in the profession? What are the common themes that are coming out from people asking about, you know, how do I price, or how do I get down to 40 hours during tax season? Should I extend? I mean, what are some of the major issues that you are having to address through Counter?

Yeah, I think it’s all about confidence in how they interact with clients. And this is a theme I see outside of Counter as well, and experience in running my firm—it’s not letting your fear of letting down someone impact your value, essentially. So we are very quick to let up and give concessions to clients, give things away for free when they probably would have no problem with a little bit of pushback from us on something. Or they would have no problem paying for something that they caused a problem or something new happened, or they probably wouldn’t have a problem with extending their return or getting something late. And so it’s really about confidence and how they interact with clients is a big thing so far from what I’ve seen in the community. And I’ve seen a lot of people encourage those posters like, “Hey, you know, you’re not the jerk if you say this to the client, or if you charge them this.” And so I think we need that positive reinforcement on helping us break through that wall, because it is really hard to stand up for ourselves. It’s one of our character defects as accountants in my opinion—we just want to help and problem solve for people, but that creates a lot of problems for ourselves.

You hit the nail on the head. I agree completely with that. We are people pleasers. We have answers; they have problems. We know how to solve them. And so we just end up giving it away or we end up working so many hours ’cause there are so many problems that have to be solved. We help everybody else but not always ourselves, and so giving that confidence to say it’s okay to say no in this situation or not, you know, “I can’t help this client, and these are the clients I can have more impact if I am solely concentrated on this,” I think that’s a big—I love that it’s something that’s being addressed because I think that’s one of the major things that we deal with.

Yeah. Stuff like that is how we change the industry, and when we get our confidence back and realize our value. And a lot of what I said was actually said by a member during a book club session that we had recently. She was like, “We’re problem solvers. We want to solve problems no matter what.” And so I was like, “Yeah, man. You’re totally right.”

Spot on. That’s something that I think I might see in all my webinars these days, that we’re dealing with that. Alright, but Logan, this was an awesome conversation. I am so excited to see where things are going with Counter. I still haven’t received my free membership, so we’ll work on that since I was there the moment you went live? No, I’m kidding you. But I’m really excited to see what you’re doing and really for the last two, three years that I’ve been following you, just to see the progression of you personally and what you’ve done has been amazing. So, thank you for what you’re doing in the profession and thank you for doing everything you can to help others.

Yeah, thank you, Randy. Really appreciate you letting me talk about me and Counter and everything else. And you’ve been in my videos before.

I have, yes.

Promoting the profession. So I owe it to you as well for my success.

Well, I was two minutes in there. You’ve done everything. But before we wrap up, finally, and I think we did this last time, I don’t remember what your answers were, but you know, I’m a big proponent that we are not our job titles. We are our passions outside of work. So when you’re not working on Graf Tax, or Counter, or helping the profession, what do you love doing when it’s not business-related?

I love being outside with my girls. They recently found a love for being outside and being in creeks, so I’m completely shocked by that because not too long ago, they did not want to get any dirt or mud on them at all.

Really!

So now they’re tromping through creeks with me, and that has been so fun to help their love of nature grow and just having fun outside. So I love being outside, I love mountain biking and riding my bike around and just getting out of the office.

Nice. And then finally, if people want to find out more about you and Counter, well, you’re everywhere, but what’s the best places for them to look?

Yeah, if you want to find me, I’m on LinkedIn—just search Logan Graf, G-R-A-F. And I’m on X @LoganGrafTax. I’m also on YouTube and I think it’s @LoganGrafTax maybe or…

We’ll put the links in the notes. 

And Counter’s CounterCommunity.co.

Awesome. Well, Logan, thanks for being a repeat guest. I had a lot of fun today and you know, we’ll do this again in about 15 years and see where everything’s at!

That’d be awesome. Thank you.