Today’s guest is someone who is helping reshape how accounting professionals engage with their clients—not by changing what they know, but by transforming how they communicate it: Carlos Garcia. Carlos is a sales coach, speaker, and co-founder of REFRAME Conference alongside his brother Hector Garcia. His mission is to empower accountants to break out of the compliance only mindset and step into the roles of confident financial thought leaders. With a background of finance, communication, entrepreneurial development, Carlos has worked with hundreds of firm owners to help them clarify their message, connect more deeply with clients, and sell advisory service with authenticity—nice. As a TaxDome certified consultant, he combines sales, psychology, strategic communication, and the power of human connection to drive growth, making the sales conversation less like a pitch and more like a partnership. That’s, I think, enough. I’m going to stop there, Carlos—I could keep going on. But Carlos, welcome to The Unique CPA. 

Yeah, why not just make 25 minutes of my intro? I’m just like, yeah, keep going, man. 

I’ve been going longer on intros lately, but I wanted to keep going, ’cause actually the one thing that I did not have in there was the, one of the things we’re going to talk about today is your certification as a what… exactly…?

Exactly What to Say, yeah. So, Exactly What to Say is a methodology that was originally written by Phil M Jones. He’s been in the business of influence, communicating influential language and persuasion, but all doing it ethically, right? It’s about how to communicate intentionally and effectively. And I fell in love with this work—I think Hector first interviewed him for his podcast in 2017. He’d just launched a book. And then ever since they’ve sold like 3 million copies and it’s the most listened to book in Audible in the nonfiction category. It’s been translated into 30 languages, so it’s nice because it’s very practical. 

And you got a chance to come to a mini version of like the workshops that I do over at Intuit who were generous enough to invite me over and give like a little one hour, one and a half hour masterclass. And what’s really cool is like these are some easy, like to use plug and play words that you can insert. In different moments, in your day-to-day conversations, like open-minded like “Randy, how open-minded would you be to having a conversation in a, through a podcast so that we can potentially, you know, reach out to better audiences?” Or if I’d say, “Hey, Randy, who do you know that is a forward thinking accounting professional that might be considering wanting to be part of an experience that’s transformative?” or, “Hey, Randy, I’m not sure if it’s for you, but I have this really cool workshop happening in New York and it’s a one day workshop around improving your communication,” and we can go on and on, right?

Nice!

So like, I’m not being, you know, pitchy-salesy, but what I’m doing is I’m being very focused on where I want the other person in the audience to pay attention to what it is I’m about to say. And we’re reducing the probability of being rejected, increasing intrigue and curiosity. And so I just was fascinated by this ’cause there’s like neuroscience and there’s actual like, you know, things in the subconscious that help us communicate better at helping people make decisions. And in the accounting profession, I think we’re really effective at a lot of things, which is delivering work, crunching numbers and being precise with numbers. But oftentimes we overlook the importance of being precise with our words. 

And so then I got certified and I just went all in nerded out, ’cause I’ve been in the world of communication, sales and training for over 15 years, coaching people, financial professionals. And then I stumbled into the world of accounting and I was like, you know what? I’m going all in, you know, partnering with Hector and we developed REFRAME and you know, Hector is a another half of brilliance, but you know, in all other concepts, I was like, you know what, I’m going to lean in onto this, but, that’s a bit of the story, yeah. 

Yep. You guys make a good team too. You’ve got a couple different personalities, but you mesh well and you’re out there talking and you’re passionate and the passion shows through too, which is fun. So you mentioned the Intuit event that we did, or you did? They did ask us all ahead of time, “We’re thinking of having Carlos out here, what do you think?” And I was like, oh yeah, you got to have Carlos out here. 

I appreciate that. 

I’ve heard bits and pieces before, and this would be awesome for that group. And so we had a lot of fun. I think you got some people out of their comfort zone a little bit and thinking, you know, more on that, how you say things that, the way you say things I think is super important, and the right questions, coming up with the right questions was actually a little tough, but fun, challenging to do. So what’d you think of our group when you did this? Did we learn? 

I thought it was great. I think, you know, in the accounting profession that we’re all really just great humans that sign up to do a couple of things. At least what I’ve been being able to perceive, one is the number one is we’re in the business of helping people, right? And I think having kind of that noble, you know, mission, it’s like you want to help people—whether it’s giving them financial clarity, giving them confidence to make decisions about their numbers, helping them stay compliant, helping them stay out of tax trouble, whatever it is, we’re in the business of helping people or empowering them to become more financially literate. So I think the cause is beautiful, right? I think then, where things kind of get broken is there are all these moving pieces. There’s a lot of content that you need to understand around the technical aspect of how to use the software the right way and how to be compliant and what tax code to follow and how to follow the GAAP rules and all this stuff is stuck in our brain. 

And I think professionals that are trying to sell their services, it’s not consciously or, and it’s not purpose, but they think that spewing out all the things that we know is the definition of good selling. When in truth, it’s how do we stay curious, how do we slow down and how do we understand what’s on the other side? We need to be curious enough to learn, what does the other person wants to accomplish? And I think when I went to Intuit and there was a lot of great thought leaders—I mean, I was extremely privileged to be in that room and with you included, it was really wonderful that many of you came with the open mind and the willingness to learn, even though you bring years and years of knowledge, experience, wisdom, and expertise, you all were still able to consider bringing that rookie mode that beginners had. And I think that is the advantage that any accounting professional or any human professional that wants to be successful is coming into any place saying, you know what? I know a lot, but I know that I don’t know everything and I’m willing to accept that there could be different perspectives I could adopt in my processes. That was my initial impression. 

Yeah. And actually that’s a good segue into what we were going to talk about further today is trust, ’cause you know, it would’ve been hard for us to do that if we didn’t trust you. So there was a level of trust there already. And I am going to segue ’cause you will be speaking at Bridging the Gap this year. 

I know! I’m so excited and thank you, I appreciate the opportunity. 

Oh yeah. Well, no, that was pretty much a no-brainer, especially after being, I got the privilege of going to REFRAME this past year and seeing what you guys are doing there. And we’ll talk about REFRAME a little bit later, I think in the conversation too. But at Bridging the Gap, right before we started recording, you told me you updated what you’re doing there, and that sounds really exciting to me. And you’re going to talk about the language of trust. 

Yeah, you know, Hector and I have done several workshops and we went to Chicago recently and we went to a…

I know! I wanted to be there, but I couldn’t get to the Chicago one. We had a company meeting. 

Yeah, you had a conflict. It was alright, We’ll get to hang out some more. But essentially one recurring theme that came up and you know, like one of the main, you know, we have, I’m going to do a little shout out to ADP who’s been generous enough to provide us their space, but one of the team leaders from there, you know, after lunch, because they’re helping us with this space, we give them a little slot to speak. And he showed up and he said something that I said that I didn’t even know I said. 

Right!

You know, like when you say something you didn’t even know, like you don’t know how it’s going to land on some people. And then when he said it, I was like, yes. You know, because when people take away—there’s so much content you give them, but when they take away the one thing showing up, the word “trust.” So I’ll give you a couple of little examples and you got a chance to see it in the Intuit. I went over this triangle of trust. If you remember it, every conversation starts and I’ll do a real quick recap. 

Yes. 

We start with curiosity, right? Because curiosity is the fuel to great conversations. But what happens when we go into conversations often, is we don’t show up curious, then the opposite would be we might show up close-minded. We might show up with an agenda. We might show up with already assuming or judging what the other person’s going to think or know, and all of that closes opportunities to build trust and build rapport. Especially whether it’s sales or you lead a team and you’re leading team members and you’re thinking, oh, they’re always late, so they don’t care about the company, but who knows? Maybe someone in their family’s sick, you know? We’re not curious and we’re not empathetic. Then we’re risking the opportunity to build trust. 

And so this triangle, curiosity leads to empathy. Empathy leads to courage. Courage helps drive action. And ultimately, when we are in any conversation, we want to try to get to that action part, but we need to slow down and go through the curiosity, the empathy part, the vulnerability, which is something that you share a lot. But ultimately, like, the trust part kept coming up, and he said, you know one thing that Carlos said is like, “we’re in the business of trust.” And I think about a partner company like ADP, who is always thinking about their goals, which is, let’s just get more payroll sales. We try to help them slow it down, and we talk about everything’s about trust with accountants—it’s a transfer of trust. Accounting professionals have this huge responsibility of helping small business owners make these major decisions, and they’re looked at as, you know, a source of authority when it comes to financial decision making, compliance, all these things. So when you have outside partners trying to say “refer us people,” and it’s like, what have you shown me for me to be able to trust you to transfer this very sensitive and delicate relationship that I have built years and years of my reputation, of my hard work to be able to do.

And so that transfer of trust is a very delicate piece. And that could work in partnerships, it could work amongst team members, it could work with customers. So I just, that just kept on coming up and that’s why I think that we can really go in deep into the conversation of trust on all levels. 

Yep. I completely agree. I’ve been talking about trust more lately, but really, and when you made me think about this when you were talking about it, is that when we started Tri-Merit 18 years ago, basically we had to build a level of trust with all the accounting firms that we were supporting, ’cause we don’t go direct to taxpayers, we go to taxpayers through accountants. And they’re not going to send us to their clients unless they trust us. And so for us it was just a matter of, you know, education showing we knew what we were doing, showing that our level of professionalism was as high as it could possibly be. We never want to put any of their clients in a situation where it’s going to reflect bad on the CPA. But that’s not like a overnight thing, so how do we work on building this trust? 

Yeah. It’s huge. And one of my thoughts is, I’m sure that something came up to you when you were tasked with this challenge is that relationships can’t be built overnight. Right? 

Right. 

Relationships are built one conversation at a time. One interaction at a time. It could be a good interaction or a bad interaction. Sometimes if we call it like the bank account of trust, you’re going to build that interest or that trust account up, and sometimes you can draw off of it, right? You can withdraw from the trust because you’ve earned enough equity—trust equity—inside of that relationship, and you can’t ask for the business if you haven’t earned the trust. You can’t ask for the team member for more commitment if you haven’t earned their trust, if they don’t know that you’re on their side. If you don’t show them that you know them—there’s a concept that Phil Jones teaches in our methodology is like when we’re talking to folks, we want to touch a little button inside of their back of their head that says the, “show me that you know me” button. “Show me that you know me.” I can only show you that I know you if I take the time to understand, who are you, what are your goals, what do you care about? And empathy comes with that trust.  

And I’ll just throw this quote out there, which is from another author of a book, and he defines empathy as “to care about what the people you care about, care about.” “To care about what the people you care about, care about.” So if you show up caring about what other people care about at the same level of depth, it’s a great starting point to building that and accelerating that trust. 

No, I love that, although I’ll never remember the quote. There’s too many words in there—I’ll have to write it down. Let me give you a, since you are the expert at exactly what to say, let me have you analyze me for a second. I was doing a presentation this week, and I’m going to mention this—it was on being a vulnerable leader. But trust is a big part of that. Empathy is as well. I was talking about those. But at the beginning of the presentation I said, “Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do today: I’m going to ask you to start with a level of trust of default. You’re going to default to trust with me, and then we’re going to go into some parts of this presentation where I’m going to—I want you to have this level of trust in me right now, but I will prove it out with statistics later.” I was trying to figure out if there’s a better way to do that, a different way to do that, and I’m sure one of those all the, you know what if, you know, imagine if, or whatever they, exactly what to say. But yeah, we get to the point where then I can see that trust level’s there, but I just ask them to start with a higher trust level. That’s probably not the best way to do it, but any thoughts on that? 

Yeah. It’s kind of interesting, right? ’cause like the format of where you can build trust is different depending on like where the conversation is happening. This interaction isn’t a one-to-one, it’s just like you addressing an audience. So I think that sort of changes the rules of like, where are you in trust? If you have a prebuilt credibility and people know you, and everyone in that audience has interacted with you personally, you can do that. That’s where you’re literally, you know, withdrawing out of that trust bucket that you’ve built over years with your reputation, with your thought leadership. If you were to go to a different industry, non-accounting, and it’s an audience of strangers that don’t know who the heck you are, the way that they will perceive that initial question will be totally different. 

So I think the environment matters, the context, and the audience. What I have found to be helpful, and sometimes it’s hard to do in public spaces, but what I have found to be helpful is that trust is built without you asking for anything—it’s actually getting them to talk. Like, one of the other concepts that we teach is that the person asking the questions controls the conversation, right? And so, and I’m certain that you probably had a few rhetorical questions that made someone think at a deeper level. Those things could be trust building, because if you can build either a story where you’re being vulnerable and they can see themselves in that story as the hero. Where they see elements of themselves as like, “Oh, I could see myself doing that,” or “I have gone through something like that,” they’re connecting with you personally with through empathy, and that’s a trust builder. You can ask them questions that make them see the same problem, but from a different perspective, you’ve added value because now they’re seeing something from a different perspective, and it’s quite interesting. And I’m going to do this quick little trick with you.

Uh oh! Okay!

So what do you see, Randy? 

I see a notepad with an elastic band on it. 

What do I see? 

Oh, probably a title? Oh… you see nothing?

Close.

Oh, you see a pen? Oh, okay. 

I see a pen. Who’s right? 

I guess we both are right? 

We both are right. It’s both. 

The same thing from different angles. Sorry, did I steal your thunder? 

That’s exactly it, that’s exactly it, right? It’s like the, we can look at the same thing from a different perspective. And so if we only communicate things from one perspective, then it’s harder to build trust, but if we can stay curious enough and try to, you know, kind of together, let’s go’s look at the problem, then I think that’s a another way for you to build, you know, a relationship rapport. And some of that has to be by being curious, asking questions, being vulnerable, telling your story where people can feel like they can connect. 

Yep. I think that’s how I built trust pretty quick because I did tell a vulnerable story about myself at the beginning of it when I talk about the power of vulnerability. 

Alright, let’s go more into the language of trust then. At the conference or in general, you know, we were expanding on it already, but I’m sure there’s a lot more to the presentation and how you look at this than that. 

Yeah, I won’t give it all away, right? 

No, don’t give it all away. Just the sneak peeks. 

There is an interesting exercise that I’ve done, and these are just words or phrases that you can use in conversations that are either going to build trust or, you know, break trust. So one of the words that I usually recommend folks to avoid, and sometimes it also works with self-trust, like we talk about the self-talk, is “should.” The word “should,” you know, proceed with caution. Because if you start shoulding all over people, nobody likes to be should on. 

Right. Uh huh.

And you know what I mean when I say, “Randy, you know what you should do?”

Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, I get that. 

So I immediately, there’s judgment in disguise. There’s lack of curiosity. And that could break trust or that could put trust at risk. Now if I am your coach and you’ve given me permission and you say, “Carlos, what should I do?” “Here’s what you should do,” right? Like, it’s a different way of positioning that, but unsolicited advice, typically one of the highest trust risk, you know, scenarios that you can do. So like, that’s a word I would recommend folks to be careful of leveraging, depending on the context. There’s another set of words that people leverage that often distorts a lot of realities, and that is using absolutes like “always,” “never,” “every time,” “all the time,” “no one,” “everyone,” right? “No one’s going to pay me that much. I will never be able to get a client to pay me that. Oh, they always do that.” See how some of that distorts reality?

Oh yeah. 

And so if we are using that also in team member language, you know, “Hey, you’re always late. Hey, you never put your reports on time.” There’s a lot of judgment behind that, and that can break trust. So those are some of the examples I would share, right? So I won’t give it all away. You see how like, how becoming aware of these words can just elevate the way we were conscious?

Oh yeah, for sure. Alright, so let’s start looking at this in the real world scenarios of professional accounting community. So CPAs, EAs, accountants, advisors out there in general. And you said it earlier, I mean, we’re very knowledgeable. We have great, you know, expertise in certain areas. That doesn’t mean we’re great communicators or great at selling because we just don’t one, this is my impression, CPAs don’t like to be sold to. So I think CPAs don’t know how to sell. But I think in general, people don’t know how to sell and I think that’s why you’re out doing this. So, you know, how do we take this person who’s such a great technician and teach them how to become better at conversations and trust and listening and saying the right things, and selling?

Yeah, so I think one of the first mistakes that anyone in a, that’s selling professional services, whether it’s an accountant, a creative designer, or an engineer, an attorney or whatever, I think the World Society has created a certain appearance of what sales means. And you know, we look at Wolf of Wall Street, or we look at some of these 1980s and nineties films like Glengarry  Glen Ross “Always Be Closing,” boiler room. Like I’m disgusted by that. I don’t want to be even associated with it. So they’ve kind of stained the word “sales.” 

I agree.

But sales, if you look at it in like the dictionaries, the definition is it’s an exchange of value or goods, right? Like so if we know that’s really the place we want to come from in selling services, look at sales first as serving. Selling is serving. You are in service to someone. Our goal is not to make someone buy something from us. The first REFRAME I would say for folks is look at sales as you have the responsibility to lead someone in making the best decision for themselves. You’re leading them to a decision. So we are professional mind maker-uppers. That’s what we want to look at ourselves. We want to be proud of helping someone make up their mind, whether it’s to work with you or to not work with you. Preferably to work with you if there is a fit, the budget makes sense, if you did a good job at understanding their needs—but also be detached from the result of if they don’t work with you, you’re also doing a service to them. Because it could be possible that they might not be a fit for you, right? Whether it’s budget or not the right industry, or not the right need, or you’re not the right specialist. And so show up first through every conversation as you’re here to serve. You’re helping them make the best decision that’s for them, and that’s mutually beneficial. That’s the first REFRAME. 

The second part is, people are not interested in knowing how much you know about, you know, how to do bookkeeping and how to do taxes. What they care about is, can you give them the result or the outcome or the feeling that they’re looking for? So we’re not selling a service or selling a feeling, we’re selling an outcome. That’s the second feeling. Can we sell the feeling or can we sell the outcome somebody typically wants to come in when they want to think about getting an accounting or a bookkeeper. Typically the outcome that they’re looking for is to clean up their books. The outcome they’re looking for is to have peace of mind. The outcome they’re looking for is they don’t want to worry about getting a surprise letter by the IRS because they’re going to get audited, right? Like the outcome they’re feeling is they don’t want to feel nervous about what can I write off? What can’t I write off? I don’t want to do things unethically. Whatever it is, but we can only understand what they want or what they don’t want if we remain curious and ask enough questions to understand what’s the feeling they’re looking for? What’s the outcome they’re looking for? 

Yeah, I think that’s great advice. It is very easy to start wanting to talk about how good you are at this and how many companies you’ve helped in the past and all that. 

Or the easy questions: How many transactions do you do per month, and how many bank accounts do you have, and how many credit cards do you have? So we look at the inputs part of things, which is, oh, that’s going to take me 10 hours, so because it’d be 10 hours, then I can charge this. But instead, like, let’s look at the bigger picture. What do you care about in hiring an accounting professional? What was your experience with a past accounting professional? You know, when the time you had a conversation about your financial goals? At the beginning we ask those meaningful questions, so that you understand what the other person really cares about. It goes back to the empathy part, right? 

Right. 

So, Randy, I have a question for you. You’ve asked me a lot of things around my perspective, but I’m always curious to hear yours. You know, being someone who’s been in the world of accounting and you have a big, amazing mission with Bridging the Gap, you know, there’s the work-life balance. From your point of view, if you were to narrow it down to one or two things, what do accounting professionals need most for them to propel forward?

Actually, it’s a mindset thing. I think our mindset is so stuck in, you know, this is the way we’ve always done everything, so we’re going to continue to do everything this way, rather than being open-minded and thinking, Okay, how can I change? How can I be better? How can I do something different in every aspect of the profession? It could just be in my time management. It could be my interaction with the people I work with. It could be my, you know, not having to take on every single client. So everything I think goes back to just being able to look at things through a different lens, and seeing if there’s a different way to do it. And that’s where I think we have a hard time doing. 

Yeah. Again, I think it goes back to the noble intention, people came in here to want to help people, but sometimes we end up sacrificing, helping ourselves. I just love your mission with what you’re doing with Bridging the Gap and bringing more awareness to the life-work balance—I remember that, by the way, from when I went years ago, because it’s the truth, right? We tend to put work in front of our life and we tend to also measure our own worth based on how busy and productive we are. Quite often, we don’t really prioritize what’s important for us taking vacations, being with family, and having a regular life.

But some of it—and a lot of this starts not only with a conversation with ourselves around how we see the world, but also how we’re having better conversations with clients to set the right boundaries, to communicate the right prices, to be in service of what they can do and what they can’t do for them. So I love the connection between the language of trust and, you know, the mission that BTG has. 

Well, thank you. Well, as long as we’re talking about conferences, let’s talk about REFRAME. Because we are, you and Hector and myself and Tri-Merit are kind of living the same lifespan of a conference. We’re both about to do year three of our conference, and you are also doing a traveling road show with yours as well. So why don’t you give us a little background on REFRAME and where you’re going with it?

I appreciate that. Yeah, no, it’s awesome to be growing up together with you and as we’re learning some of the trials and tribulations of what it is to run an event, be a community organizer, and the logistics and whole sponsors and everything that goes with it. But yeah, REFRAME has the mission of wanting to basically rebrand the accounting profession, be sought out as the most innovative, creative, and forward thinking of all professions. And by that, we talk a lot about technology, like how AI is disrupting the industry and how we could stay ahead of it and become allies with AI, not the enemy of it. And then we also talk about self transformation. Like how do we transform our personal and professional growth, and our business offerings, and the way that we price ourselves and position ourselves as strategic partners and guides? And you know, I love that you compliment a lot of it with the balance part, right? Like, how do we make sure that you don’t burn out while doing all of these things? 

But we have got New York coming up in person is our last workshop of our road show. That’s going to be on June 9th. And if you’re interested, I’ll send you the link for folks to kind of dig into that. That’s coming up pretty soon. But our big capstone event is following the Bridging the Gap conference. It’s going to be in November. And that’s November 2nd through 4th, where we’ll have a half day workshop all about the latest stuff with ai. And that’s where Hector really just dominates. He’ll spend three hours in front of a computer looking at all the different types of AI and how you can use it in the world of accounting so that you can elevate the way that you provide advice and support to small business owners.

And then two days it’s going to be around pricing with confidence. So we wanted to use those three words intentionally because, what comes first, confidence or pricing? And sometimes folks tend to be apprehensive around changing prices or communicating price increases to clients because maybe they lack the confidence to do it, they don’t know how to do it, there’s a lot of things around packaging, positioning and how to have the conversation to properly price their clients and some ways to set boundaries through pricing. We’re going to really navigate, we’re bringing a couple of speakers like Tricia Brouwers, who is, and also an Exactly What to Say certified guide, but an executive leader in the mortgage space that brings a lot of real world experience around the path to building confidence. And then we got Blair Enns, who’s the author of Win Without Pitching and The Four Conversations, and so how to sell expertise. A lot of thought leadership and authority around that world. And then of course, our favorite Ron Baker, who is the grandfather or father or godfather of pricing and Hector’s personal hero, which he’s actually claimed. And yeah and I’ll throw this out there: Hector’s also going to be doing a keynote. 

Nice, nice.

Why not? I’ll be MCing this time. So I won’t be in this front stage, but I’m sure I’ll probably be called to do a couple of things here and there, but you know, it’s a good time. You were there. 

I was there, and I’m planning on being there this year, I just was looking at my calendar while we were speaking and I had something on the calendar, I’m like, “Oh wait, I’m not going to that thing.” And so that time’s open. 

Yes!

So my, my plan is to be there for sure. It was a great time last time and very, I mean, I’m just so impressed with what you guys are doing and how you have a mission of basically improving the accounting world. That’s truly what the mission says, and that’s kind of what we’re both trying to do. So I love that we’re doing things in the same direction for the profession. 

Yeah. It’s feeding into the same, you know, mission. So, which is beautiful. And this is the kind of community that I want to be part of. One where we can be collaborative, not competitive, and compliment each other. Rather than like overstepping. So I appreciate it. I appreciate, you know, the partnership the friendship that we’ve built over the short period of time and yeah, I’m very excited and grateful that I got a chance to hang out with you here. 

Well, yeah, it was fun. But before we go, there’s a few things: One, can’t wait to hear your session at Bridging the Gap. Two, everybody needs to go take a look at what’s happening with REFRAME. I will be there. So hopefully that doesn’t turn people off and they still want to come. 

I think that would make more people want to come. 

But two, before we finish up and I’m going to ask you two final questions before I ask about contact information for you in the conference and all that, I’m going to ask you, and I was going to bring this up, but I figure I shouldn’t, I can bring up, if you don’t answer, the one thing that I think you might, but we always end this podcast with telling us what you love doing outside of work. So when you’re not, you know, helping people be more successful when learning the right things to say and value trust, what are your  outside of work passions?

Is this my “And?”

Yes, it is. 

So right behind me, you see a set of instruments. 

Yep. That’s where I thought we were going. 

I’m a guitarist, singer, songwriter, and I know you got a, maybe I think, you got a chance to see me play live. 

I did, I did. 

It’s one of my passions. I’ve been a singer songwriter since I was 20 years old, and I write both in English and Spanish, and actually I just released a song recently—I’ll share it with you after the podcast.

Yep, I saw it online, actually. I haven’t listened yet, but I saw it. 

I mean, I love music. I love creating, I love writing. Just different feeling. And you get to do it with music. And I’ve had the ability to kind of get into that world, to have the gift to write music, and it’s a pastime I love. 

And just being up playing like I, you know, I was talking to somebody this week, I’m like, oh, then you know what, there was a karaoke event at this conference I was at, and I’m like, “I wish I had the ability to go up there and sing, because I just can’t.” But I said, the only thing I can equate it to is when I’m on stage speaking at a conference or at an event, it’s just like, it’s just this adrenaline rush, I’ve got to believe when you’re on stage performing, it’s got to be the same, isn’t it? 

Yeah, it’s a performance. It’s like, I won’t go into too deep of a story, but when I was a kid I was like 14. I started playing guitar. My dad’s very proud. I think you got a chance to see him at REFRAME last year, and we would have big family get togethers, 15, 20, 25 people. He’d always be like, “Carlitos, bring the guitar, play for everybody.” It was like nerve wracking, but it was a safe space for me to practice how to perform in front of an audience. And ever since I was just like, you know what? I don’t mind it. You know, a lot of people fear public speaking, but I had the ability to scaffold my way into not really being that scared of it.

Yeah. Which is nice. Alright, and then, so final then: If people—not if, they definitely—want to find out more what you’re doing and REFRAME, so what’s best places for people to find out what’s going on with you and your world? 

Yeah, so www.REFRAMEaccounting.com. And if they want to personally contact me, it’s carlos@REFRAMEaccounting.com.

Alright, and then don’t you have Exceed Sales? Isn’t that the name of your organization? 

Yeah, so that’s my training company and kind of a CRM consulting, you know, workflow automation. And that’s where I support some accounting firms who want to do some workflow automation with TaxDome or one-on-one coaching around value pricing or things on just transforming their firm overall. 

Alright. Well, Carlos, thank you. Thanks for being on here. It’s always fun and enjoyable hearing all your awesome insights on these things that most people are not experts at, and you’re going to help ’em be that. So thanks for being part of The Unique CPA today.

Thanks Randy, appreciate it.