The Small Firm Challenge:
Growth, Tech & Talent

Sufyan: Welcome to the CPA Talk series, where we dive into the stories behind forward-thinking financial leaders. Today, we are joined by LaToya Price, CEO of Trust Pointe Financials. With over 25 years in the industry, LaToya has built a nationwide practice helping real estate professionals and high earners reduce their tax burdens through strategic planning and compliance. She’s also experienced working with outsourced partners, including a current limited engagement with us, giving her a unique perspective on how firms can scale smartly while maintaining control and client trust. Welcome to the podcast, LaToya. How are you doing?

LaToya: I’m doing well. How are you?

Sufyan: I’m good. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to have you on this platform because we have been talking since some years now, I would say, I mean, I know you since 2021, if I’m not wrong, and for everyone else, LaToya is an existing client of ours with Datamatics Business Solutions. We recently started our engagement, although very limited. So yeah, it’s great to have you on a platform like this and explore what values and what enlightenment you bring to the table for our audience, and everyone. So, thank you once again for making it, for fetching some time out of your busy schedule.

LaToya: Thank you for having me.

Sufyan: All right. So, my first question to you, LaToya, is about shaping the modern CPA firm. And if I put it across this way, because like I said, I know your journey a bit since some years now, you’re someone who has led a growing advisory firm. So how do you see the CPA and tax advisory industry evolving, especially when it comes to serving high earning clients and real estate businesses? How do you see the tax advisory industry evolving?

LaToya: From my perspective, I see it evolving more into cloud-based, automation-based. When you’re dealing with high income earners or real estate professionals, they’re mainly on the go. So, I see that we are moving away from manual paper trails, more so to digital or cloud-based. And on the CPA tax, and accounting side of things, we have to evolve with the changing dynamics of what our clients need. And so just being more accessible, being more available, making it easier for them to communicate or upload documents or, you know, pretty much get real time data to us or from us, it’s really moving things faster between the client and the advisor.

Sufyan: That’s a fair point. And I believe after the COVID period we all lived through, thankfully, things have evolved and remote working has become the new norm. After the new normal things are evolving on the technical and IT side as well with AI being part of the game as normal as it was not before, so yeah I think that’s where it is but one thing that I would like to add here irrespective of how advanced we are going with technology LaToya I think there is always going to be human intervention that will be required. Even now, whatever development we have on the AI front, there is always a human intervention that is required, especially on the advisory side for someone like you. But on the data entry and repetitive work that probably your staff member does, even on that front, you know, it cannot be just a blindfolded AI-based data entry that we can do. What do you say about that?

LaToya: I agree that clients still want human interaction, human touch. They don’t want everything to be AI-based. I think, like you mentioned before, everything was in person pre-COVID. And now we have to go through that experience, it opened up our eyes to – oh, we can do this virtually or more remotely. But we, in my opinion, I would hope that we don’t stray too far away from the human touch as well, the human interaction. I think that should always be a priority between the client and the CPA.

Sufyan: Makes sense. And since you have worked with outsourced support in the past and you continue to do so, like I said with us, although in a very limited way for now, what role do you think outsourcing should play in a firm’s strategy, especially with boutique and specialized practices like yours? Where do we fit in? What is our role and what is the best level of support you can expect from outsourcing?

LaToya: With outsourcing for small boutique firms, it’s very, I would say it’s very, I can’t think of the correct word, but it’s needed. It’s added, you know, really a sigh of relief. Yeah, it’s essential. because not every business or every person who has a dream has the capital or the funds to create this big firm of the start. So, we all, I’m sorry, we all have to start somewhere and just getting that essential first-hand support is needed in order for us to scale and grow our business. So it is appreciated when we are able to find, you know, an exceptional outsourcing partner. You all do a great job, by the way.

Sufyan: Thank you. We will take a snippet of this and we are going to put in all of our ads.

LaToya: But yeah, it’s essential that it helps the business owner or the CPA, you know, stay focused on their dreams of what they’re trying to do and be able to help those clients that they, you know, dream of helping. And just to have that back end or the back-office support, it’s very appreciated.

Sufyan: I agree 100%. And I mean, I usually tell this to our clients and our prospects, that you got to be in the driver’s seat and drive the business instead of doing the basic bookkeeping, accounting and tax prep work. But there is always a need to have a bit of balance as well, right? I mean, it cannot be a 100% delegation of your work to your outsourced partner. For that matter, even if you have the in-house staff, you cannot delegate everything to everyone. So, I’m sure with your previous experiences in outsourcing and even with your current experience, you must have learned some lessons. So, what are those that you have learned when it comes to, you know, handing off back-office work while still maintaining full control over client experience and quality, LaToya.

LaToya: How I maintain control and quality over that is through checklists, monthly, quarterly meetings to ensure that everything is going according to plan. I also establish clear instructions, clear requirements that are needed for consistency, for, you know, just that could be consistency with how we are, you know, managing the data, how we are filing the client information, how we are maintaining that communication with the client. I’m very cognizant of what I give to my team. I don’t want to overwhelm them for one with something that they cannot do or are not comfortable doing. I ensure that they have the ability to complete the task. I don’t take advantage of them. I don’t take advantage of their time. I am still all into it as well. So, I’m doing the work too. It’s not just on them. I just make sure we all know that we’re a team. We’re in this together. I’m not just throwing the book at them and telling them to do it and just show appreciation along the way.

Sufyan: So three things out of what you just said. Number one is about the checklist that you mentioned. That’s very important. A lot of times it so happens that there is a bit of a friction with our relationship with any of our clients. And when we do an RCA, we understand that there is a problem with the checklist that they have created or we have created for them. So just going through that checklist helps us fix a lot of issues. But an even more important factor out here is the second point that you mentioned about communication. So, a lot of time I hear from some of our clients and prospects that they tried outsourcing, but it didn’t work out. Outsourcing failed. Outsourcing is not what they want to do because it is not for them.

And I agree to it. I say, yes, outsourcing failed, but it is not because your setup or your business is not the right fit for outsourcing, but it is probably because you were not able to communicate with your service provider properly. If I talk about, I’m doing sales since like 18 years now. And if I put it across in the sales language,10 years back, we all used to believe sales is nothing but convincing. If you are able to convince someone on some idea, it is sales . But in today’s date, I would say sales is not about convincing. It is about connecting. You know, if you are able to connect with your clients, if you are able to understand their current pain point, their past experiences and their future goals, If you’re able to connect with your clients on these three points, and if you’re able to provide a solution that helps them in all these three things, then you don’t need to convince them. They will go ahead with your service. So that applies here in the outsourced arrangement as well, that you’ve got to connect with each other and really understand where the pain points are. Let’s talk about some of the biggest business hurdles, LaToya, and I would be very interested and keen to understand what’s one challenge that you have faced recently? I mean, keeping outsourcing discussion apart, but as a business owner, as a CPA practice owner, what is that one challenge that you have recently faced, whether it is staffing, capacity, or compliance, and how did you tackle it?

LaToya: So coming from an accounting background, I really don’t have much knowledge in IT or tech or security. That’s very foreign to me. So that is my biggest challenge, trying to make sure, you know, I see a firewall, but I have no clue. Like, I won’t know. So that’s one of my biggest challenges with the, as a firm, how do I ensure, like, how do I 100% know that my client information is protected? That’s really scary with outsourcing. So, it’s very important that who you decide to partner with, with outsourcing, they have that trust that we will protect your client’s information. Our employees are good enough to handle this task that you are asking us to do. We did background checks or whatever the case may be to make sure that we’re trustworthy. So, it’s, we’re blindly throwing our trust with our partnership for the sake of trying to find that solution for our client. So, it’s scary. It’s a big pain point for me. But so far, I have not had any issues. I hope I don’t. And that’s just always been my biggest concern, even with, you know, just with my own, like within my own office, I want to make sure everything is protected, you know, anything could happen. So being tech savvy is okay.

Sufyan: And has outsourcing helped you tackle this challenge? Has outsourcing been a help in any way?

LaToya: I would say yes. When I partner with whoever I partner with when it comes to outsourcing, I look for those certifications. I’m researching their website to see, do they have this certification or do they have that? How do I know for sure the information I send them through their portal is encrypted or saved? Yeah, so that’s a big deal. I know about the third party apps I use, but when we’re talking about outsourcing and the outsourcer have their own portals, how do I know for sure it’s secured? So, I ask those questions, you know, I’m always paying attention. I prefer portals versus sending confidential information through e-mail. You know, if it’s a red flag, if the outsourcers say, oh, just you know, send me their social security numbers through e-mail, you know, this might not be a good fit. So, you know, I just pay attention.

Sufyan: I get the crux of what you’re saying. And I mean, I cannot deny this fact. It’s 100% how it needs to be. And I mean, if I talk about my past experiences and the kind of clients I deal with, when someone says that they’re scared of any kind of data theft, data breach, or an incident when they go for an outsourcing support, the first thing I tell them is, are your systems safe enough? Because if someone really wants to take any piece of information out of a system, the easiest way to do it is to deal with CPAs and not with an outsourcing company. And I’m talking about an established outsourcing company. You will get thousands of outsourcing service providers in the market. But first, rule number one, deal with someone who is established enough, those who have their footprints since years, someone who is a known name in the market, someone who is into different businesses and not only in outsourcing.

But apart from that as well, if I’m a hacker, if I really want to take any piece of information from someone’s computer, I think for me, a CPA office is going to be a simpler target than an outsourcing company. And the reason I’m saying this is, so let’s take an example of Datamatics Business Solutions, our company. We never take any information from our client’s data, client’s server, or client’s computer, or their platform, or their software to our system. It always remains there in their computer itself. So, on our server, literally there is no sensitive information at all. So even if someone hacks into our server and our system, they won’t find anything. Then, like you said, checking the credentials is very, very important. Someone who is an AICPA SOC 2 compliant company like us, someone who has other credible accreditations like ISO certification, like us, is very important. I’m not saying give all the business to Datamatics Business Solutions only. If you are doing so, welcome. I’ll be more than happy. My phone number will be on the screen. Our marketing team will put it there. But we have some good competition. I’m saying that we have some good outsourcing companies available in the market, and you got to just choose the right one. So that’s very, very important.

We are already in the 25th minute of this podcast. And I would like to close it on a high note from your side, LaToya, some golden words that you can share with us. As you’re looking to the future of Trust Pointe, what is your next goal? What do you want to do next? Are there any specific areas where you see room for tech partnership or outsourcing to play a bigger role in scaling your services? What kind of roadmap do you see further ahead?

LaToya: In the next one or two years, my roadmap is to strengthen the tech strategy portion of my firm.

Sufyan: You do know that we can help you in that as well?

LaToya: Absolutely.

Sufyan: Okay, go ahead, please.

LaToya: Like I said, I’ve had good experience with outsourcing, so I don’t foresee me in the next year or two, you know, bringing a lot of those tasks in-house just yet. I think that right now, just building those client relationships, just networking, bringing in more business, keep the overhead down. So, I’m okay with that. So, I really want to be of service to clients, to real estate professionals at this moment and, and just, appreciate the outsourcing as well. Yeah.

Sufyan: Awesome. Well, like I said, outsourcing will play a pivotal role in this kind of an aspiration and journey ahead because the most important thing you need is the availability of time. And that will happen only when you are able to delegate your work to someone who can do it with the same efficiency, same proficiency, and you’re not spending your time even in the reviews. So, for all the listeners, when we work for any of our clients, we not only complete the task, but we also make sure that we review the work with a manager level resource before it becomes the final deliverables. And that’s why they sleep at peace at night.

Well, thank you so much for your time. It doesn’t even feel like we are in a podcast. It’s more like having a good chitchat discussion with someone that I know. But thank you so much for your presence. Any closing note that you want to put across before we say goodbye to our audience?

LaToya: I want to thank you for inviting me to this podcast.

Sufyan: Our pleasure.

LaToya: It definitely felt like just a casual conversation. And it’s nice to have. I think it strengthens that relationship as well. So I appreciate it. Thank you.

Sufyan: Absolutely. Our pleasure. And we will make sure that we are doing this more often so that we build relationships. Yeah. Well, thank you so much dear listeners. And I can guarantee you that we will be bringing more guests like LaToya, who will be enlightening us with their thought process, with how do they think and what do they see about the accounting industries’ futures. So yeah, thank you so much once again and looking forward to see you in our next episode. Until next time, take care.