There aren’t many things that I’ve experienced in running a law firm that are irreplaceable. Most of the systems that I’ve set up, I could have a workaround. Most of the people that I use to help me get stuff done. There are other options. But the one thing that I am so glad that I had in place from day one is a CPA firm. And this is not just for purposes of doing my taxes. There are so many ways that I lean on my CPA firm on a month-by-month basis. I mean, first of all, you will need to plan on paying taxes. And so you’re going to need to work out with the CPA, paying quarterly taxes, paying your taxes as part of your payroll. That’s obviously part of it. But when you hire people and you are running payroll, the number of different kinds of calculations that need to be done for workers’ compensation and social security and state tax and this tax and what can be depreciated and what cannot be depreciated.

And just the sheer number of pieces of paper that I get from the states where we operate, from the secretaries, the state or the treasurer where I open it up and I’m like, “I speak English and I’m reasonably well-educated and my eyes are connected to my brain, but I don’t have any idea what this piece of paper is about. ” I scan it, I send it over to my CPA and they’re like, “Don’t worry about this. This is normal or this is good news or this is an issue.” And so you just cannot, even out of the gate, even think about what is the best form of organization for your company unless you’re able to have a discussion with somebody about what are the tax consequences about having a pass through entity versus another kind of entity? And are you going to be on a calendar year for your books or a fiscal year for your books?

And I just cannot overstate the value of having a good CPA on board. Recently, one of the employees who used to sit for years and years in the office right next where I’m recording this, moved to Seattle, Washington where we are setting up a new beachhead on the West Coast and all of a sudden I employ somebody in Washington state and there’s all this stuff that I needed to get done before I was able to run payroll the next time. They were able to talk me through exactly what I needed to do. I would’ve been lost without them. Also, my CPA runs my payroll. So I use ADP and somebody needs to sit there at the CPA’s office and work the back end of this all and understand that like, “Okay, Jeremy, well, so you have to contribute this much to your employee’s 401k account and you have to contribute this much to their healthcare and this much to their dental and you owe this much social security.

And oh, you’re giving them a raise this quarter.” And the amount of levers that get pulled and the data that gets entered and the questions that get answered by a CPA accounting firm is just beyond anything that I would’ve imagined before I set it up on my own. It goes so far beyond just managing taxes. And let me tell you, saving money for taxes as you go and not winding up with a nasty surprise that you owe. Half a million bucks at the end of the year is also a pretty important function. Having it calculated, figuring out what’s the right way to think about putting that money away, when do you need to make your contributions to stay in good stead with the IRS and the state taxing authorities? I could have probably solved for just about every problem that I have encountered over the last six years of running my law firm in some way other than I did with the exception of this one, you absolutely need to have a CPA onboard advising you from before day one, from day zero, from before you even think about how you’re going to organize yourself.

I happen to be an LLC. I don’t know if that’s right for you or not, but there were a lot of discussions before I even drafted my operating agreement to figure out how I was going to establish myself as a business entity where it would’ve been absolutely impossible for me to get that done without the help of my CPA. So non-negotiable, you got to get a CPA out of the gate.