The Unique CPA

Hosted by Randy Crabtree, CPA

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Episodes

285

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Sep 2026

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About the show

Over more than six years and 250 episodes, The Unique CPA has blossomed from "just an accounting podcast" into a community of thriving accounting professionals. With personal fulfillment and energizing, passionate work at the top of our list of priorities, we're keeping you at the forefront of the changing face of public accounting through conversations with fascinating leaders who understand that the one constant in the accounting profession is change: Change in our approach to the demands of the profession, change in the technology we use to more efficiently do our jobs, and change in our ability to express who each of us really is as a human being.

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60 recent

September 8, 2026Episode 28527 min

Building the Littlest, Biggest Firm in America, with Tom Angelo

Tom Angelo started his career above a pizzeria, hired as the first staff accountant at a three-partner firm in New Jersey. He made partner at 28, built an IT services arm years before "digital transformation" became a buzzword, and eventually merged his own firm into HBK. Now its second CEO in 75 years, he's steering the company through Catalyst 2030, a strategy built around industry-led teams rather than geography. On Episode 285 of The Unique CPA , he and Randy Crabtree dig into how HBK weighs acquisitions, why cross-selling remains stubbornly difficult even with the right incentives, and what AI can and can't replace when it comes to clients who have built their businesses over generations. Tom also stresses that with new hires going forward, the focus should be far less on data entry, and far more on curiosity and client-facing comfort. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

September 1, 2026Episode 28441 min

Accountants Won't Be Competing with AI, They'll Be Leading It, with Matt Armanino

Matt Armanino traded a law career and a stint at PeopleSoft for the CEO seat at Armanino, a top-20 firm he once never imagined joining. He tells Randy on Episode 284 of The Unique CPA that nearly two decades later, he's steering almost 3,000 people through what he considers the largest technology shift of his lifetime. Focusing on AI's effect on billable hours, Matt explains why his firm shifting to value billing years ago, long before generative AI made it an absolute necessity. Culture, he says, is the real differentiator once technical knowledge becomes cheap, and Matt traces Armanino's "build anything" philosophy back to a Peter Drucker quote and a Pat Lencioni exercise that took a full day to answer one question: "Why does Armanino exist?" Curiosity as a career advantage and a firm-wide bet on becoming indispensable rather than replaceable round out a discussion about what accounting looks like once knowledge stops being scarce and you have to differentiate yourself more than ever. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

August 25, 2026Episode 28332 min

Multidisciplinary by Design, with Mike Payne

The first thing we learn on Episode 283 of The Unique CPA is that Randy has real trouble saying the word "multidisciplinary." Once we've worked that out, we learn that his guest Mike Payne built his career on a bet that most professionals avoid: pairing a law degree with a CPA license instead of picking a lane. That combination became the foundation of BOSS Advisors, a firm he grew to $2 million before recognizing the ceiling of his own skillset. Rather than force growth he wasn't suited to drive, Payne sold the firm to Haga Kommer, a Midwest-based multidisciplinary group with plans for an employee stock ownership structure. Now serving as Chief Growth Officer, he's applying the same generalist philosophy that built his practice, and he argues that AI makes broad issue-spotting more valuable and accessible than narrow specialization, since professionals who can flag a problem can always bring in the right expert to solve it. Mike unpacks the mechanics of merging a law-and-accounting practice, the ethics rules that shaped it, and what business owners should weigh before selling to a larger platform. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

August 18, 2026Episode 28233 min

Helping the World by Helping People, with Justine Lackey

Randy Crabtree sits down with Justine Lackey, founder of The Incubator, on Episode 282 of The Unique CPA . Justine originally built one of the earliest virtual bookkeeping firms out of necessity, long before "remote," or even anything besides QuickBooks Desktop, became standard practice. Their conversation moves from the mechanics of scaling and selling a firm to the grief that follows a successful exit, and the anxiety that lingers even when everything goes right. Justine breaks down her four-S framework – systems, service, sales, skills – and makes the case for choosing the "right size firm" instead of chasing growth for its own sake. Threaded through it all is a shared conviction that accounting's stress gets ignored far too often, and that the profession's future depends less on compliance work than on the relationships built along the way. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

August 11, 2026Episode 28137 min

Offshoring, Tech, and Bettering Lives, with Anshul Agrawal

Half of all offshoring relationships collapse within five years, and Anshul Agrawal has spent his career figuring out why. Randy Crabtree sits down with the founder of June15 Consulting on Episode 281 of The Unique CPA to unpack the real difference between renting offshore talent and owning it outright, as well as how that distinction shapes everything from culture clashes to client trust. Anshul explains why a "family emergency" means something entirely different in India than it does in the U.S., why firms chronically underestimate how long it takes an offshore hire to reach full productivity, and how AI will serve to expand the offshore talent pool, rather than shrink it. He reveals heartwarming anecdotes about everyone winning in these offshoring arrangements: what happened when one client's new hires gave him back his evenings with his kids, and what it looked like to double an employee's salary and watch him buy his first car. It's a conversation about building teams that actually work for everyone, wherever they're located. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

August 4, 2026Episode 28025 min

What Actually Makes a Firm Valuable? Answers with Luke Frye

Randy Crabtree sits down with Luke Frye, who's gone from hand-stamping journal entries as a small-town government accountant to scaling Bench to thousands of customers, running his own firm through a messy business divorce, and now advising practices at Canopy. Their conversation on Episode 280 of The Unique CPA keeps circling back to a single, uncomfortable question: What actually makes a firm valuable, as opposed to just busy? Luke argues that key man risk, not revenue, is the real threat to most practices, and that hourly billing quietly rewards inefficiency while punishing the AI tools meant to help. He pushes clients to charge what they're worth instead of discounting out of fear, and to build systems, like a real CRM, that let a firm run without its owner chained to it. Randy's own transition out of the company he built nineteen years ago and into advisory adds real-world weight to the discussion. It's a candid look at pricing, succession, and the mindset shifts firm owners tend to avoid until it's too late. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

July 28, 2026Episode 27932 min

Change Will Never Be This Slow Again, with Matt Rampe

Change has never moved this fast, and accounting firms are feeling it everywhere: AI eating into bookkeeping and tax work, private equity reshaping ownership, generational splits over who's willing to adapt. Matt Rampe, a change management specialist at Rosenberg Associates, joins Randy on Episode 279 of The Unique CPA to break down why partnership structures built for consensus often become anchors when speed matters most. He argues real transformation happens person by person, through vulnerability and trust rather than mandates from the top. While in theory, smaller firms can pivot like speedboats while giants struggle to turn, Matt points out that larger firms have their own advantages too, but both agree that billable hours must give way to value, tax preparers must at least consider becoming advisors, and that it takes a bit more than just an edict from above on "modernizing the firm" to get partners and associates alike past "that sounds great, but I've got a day job." Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

July 21, 2026Episode 27838 min

The Unique CPA Heads "Upstream": Leading the Way with Jeremy Clopton

Randy Crabtree steps away from tax season and toward retirement from Tri-Merit, joining forces with Jeremy Clopton of The Upstream Leader for a crossover conversation on Episode 278 of The Unique CPA . AI dominates firm conversations right now, but Clopton argues the real anxiety comes from chasing an uncertain future instead of holding onto what won't change: being the protector of public trust. That anchor reframes everything from staffing fears to succession planning. They dig into leadership structures at growing firms, the false choice between serving clients and running the business, and why hiring managers instead of developing them rarely works. Private equity and M&A come up too, with the two sharing a conviction that independent firms aren't going anywhere, and that the choice between selling, scaling, or staying small comes down to knowing who you actually want to be. Randy closes by dismantling the doom-and-gloom narrative around recruiting, pointing to rising enrollment numbers as proof the pipeline is healthier than the algorithm-driven headlines suggest. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

July 14, 2026Episode 27741 min

Train Your Successor: Embrace Evolution in the Profession with Dr. Rachel Anevski

Dr. Rachel Anevski quit high school at 16 and attended three different colleges to get her bachelor's degree, then built an independent consulting practice for 13 years before folding it into Winding River Consulting this year. On Episode 277 of The Unique CPA , she tells Randy that the move rattled her more than she expected: she fought the firm's processes, demanded to know the reasoning behind every new system, and found herself living, even sweating out the change management principles she'd spent a career teaching others. That tension runs through her explanation as to why the accounting profession keeps failing its own people through transitions. From partners who dismiss AI because they won't be around to see its impact, to seniors whose formative years were scrambled by a pandemic no one prepared them for, there are many pitfalls you won't see until the ground below is approaching. She traces her philosophy on succession back to a mentor's blunt instruction to train your replacement, and pushes back hard on the idea that partnership has to mean sacrificing a life outside the firm to earn it. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com

July 7, 2026Episode 27632 min

How Community is the Real Currency at Bridging the Gap

Randy Crabtree and Terrell Turner team up to co-host Episode 276 of The Unique CPA , previewing what's coming July 28th at Bridging the Gap 2026 in Charlotte . Four years in, the conference has moved past simply naming burnout and connection as problems worth discussing, with the focus now turning to implementation: accountability structures, longer workshop formats, and the potential for speakers to linger and chat with attendees in the future instead of disappearing once their time on stage is over. Tying directly into a session on loneliness at the top, Terrell reflects on his newly promoted manager, who quietly absorbed weeks of team burnout rather than raise it, feeling exactly the kind of isolation hits so many leaders, and reminding him how topical and on the nose BTG is every year. There's a session Randy's son is speaking at, which he'll admit up front he's a little biased about, and when talk turns to the gala's NASCAR theme, "The Winner's Circle," they decide that there will be multiple winners this year, with scores of folks playing the roles of pit crew to each other, all of them just trying to help the next person get further down the road. Get the full show notes and more resources at TheUniqueCPA.com