Uncertainty Is Your Opportunity: A Tax Leader's Playbook with Mark Gallegos

0:00Hello and welcome to the Unique CPA with your host, Randy Crabtree. Our commitment is to our thriving community of accounting professionals who are physically and mentally healthy, fulfilled, and energized by their work, with the ultimate goal of elevating the reputation of the best profession in the world. The Unique CPA is brought to you by RandyCrabtree.com. Log on to learn more. Today's guest is Mark Gagos. Mark is a partner at Porti Brown, which is a firm here in the Chicago suburbs, actually a firm that I've known for a long time, and we're going to be talking about some really interesting things related to HR1 in general, but leadership. And right now, there's a lot happening with tax and regulatory environment. And really, instead of just reacting to change, which I see too often, Mark really thinks deeply about how firms can turn uncertainty into opportunity, and I love that. We're going to talk about leadership in times of change, how to move from compliance to advisory, which we talk about a lot, that's pretty exciting.

1:01I think this is a great opportunity to do that, and how the guy clients without politicizing conversations. And we see that a lot, especially when it comes to tax. It gets very politicized at times. So we'll talk about how we can avoid that, and how AI, another hot topic, and evolving legislations are reshaping the role of the modern tax partner. Mark, welcome to the NX EPA. Thanks for having me, Randy. I appreciate it. Yeah. It feels like you and I have done this before, because you've interviewed me a couple times. That's three times, I think, at this point in a different setting. So I'm glad that I get to pay back and be on this end of things with you today. This should be fun. Absolutely. And you know what? Let's talk about that, because what are you doing? Because you're hosting a show for Becker, correct? Yeah. Podcast called Tax News Now. It's once a month, we have someone from the accounting industry on, typically in the tax world, but doing something in tax and whether we're kind of glorifying, hey, what

2:02do they do? What do they bring to the industry, give it a little bit of a backstory, and then maybe something technical, something leadership, something management style, and really trying to figure out, how do we take this profession we're in and continue to evolve it? And bring leadership into it and to bring change to what seems to be something that's been stuck in the past, right? And how do we keep bringing it forward? Yeah. In addition to that, you're active. You're very active in this profession. So want to go into some of those other things. And if you miss one, I'll remind you what else you're doing. So tell me some of the things you're doing in this profession. So besides what I do at the firm here at Portie Brown, I specialize in mergers and acquisitions, credits and incentives and international tax. And then anything just complex in the tax world seems to be just a fun area, a needy, kind of the geeky thing for me. But beyond within the firm and leadership in the firm, I volunteer with the AICPA. So I'm on the Tax Practice Management Committee. I'm on different strike forces that deal with tax policy and legislation or other specialty

3:05areas. I speak for them quite a bit, done various things. I'm on the board of the Illinois CPA Society. I do a lot of speaking and volunteering with them. Obviously, I have the podcast with Becker, the tax news now. I do teaching for Becker, CPE as well. I teach for Stratford. I teach for a number of other organizations out there, prime global association, other associations in the accounting profession. I do volunteer leadership and teaching. And no matter what, I also do a lot of writing. Honestly, people always say, well, why do you speak so much? It's like, well, I first, it's all the writing. I love writing. It's passion of mine. And from there, I kind of get become a little bit of an expert in certain areas. And then people want to hear me talk about it, I guess. So it's fun. Yeah. All right. You forgot the couple. You are on the Bridge in the Gap Advisory Council. That's correct. Yes. For the second straight year. And so yeah, the Bridge in the Gap Advisory Council, would you and I are going to have a meeting? We're going on the Friday. We're going to have a meeting on Monday, where we will start to go through all the speaker

4:07submissions. We have for BTG 2026, Charlotte, North Carolina at the end of July, going to be exciting. We had a lot of submissions. So we've got a lot of work. I feel bad for the Advisory Council because there's a lot of submissions to go through. But our friend, Chad Davis, put an app together for us that's going to actually make it really easy for us to search and look through everything. So I'll show you all that Monday. All right. The other thing I was thinking is you were part of the BTG Roadshow, too. And so you hosted, I moderated, I think, at least two panels and you were on the third. Yes. That's correct. As a guy. And that was a fun afternoon. I mean, we literally, I felt like we had a packed room at the Illinois CPA Society and the energy and some of the feedback I got from it was just so positive. And I love that because it's like the BTG conference is phenomenal. But to have stuff that's not, you know, in the off season, we'll call it building up

5:09towards it and having conversations around what we're trying to do is fantastic. Yeah. It was pretty exciting. We did three so far. We're going on a tangent, but this is what we do on the show. We had three so far. And now we have two in the works for after taxis. And I actually was just on a call right before this with the Arizona Society of CPAs. Not officially yet, but it looks like we're going to be doing one there. And then Bob Doyle with the Michigan, I think it's called the Michigan Institute of CPAs. I think they do that society. And Bob and I were going to try to find a date maybe in May to do one in Michigan as well. So don't hold me to this if you're listening to this show, but look for an announcement soon. We may be coming to a state CPA organization near you. All right. With that being said, before we jump into the rest of this, you just listed about 400 things that you do in this profession. You sure you have time to actually work and put your problem as well. I do.

6:09I do. Yes. You know, I think I think one of the things that is I'm very organized in what I do and managing my calendar, but just managing the different projects and stuff. But also at Portee Brown, one of the things that we've always kind of like made us a little bit different than other organizations is the ability to delegate. And not just say we're going to delegate, but actually delegate work down to staff. We have all these young people that come out of college, they want to work for us and all the different levels. And they don't want to sit around doing the monotony, the boring stuff. They want to be involved in meetings. They want to be involved in the transactional stuff. And the best way to do it is to just bring them in and delegate stuff to them and let them run with it. And I think it frees me up to do this stuff, but at the same time, it gives them the ability to learn, grow and have the passion for what we're doing. Yeah. No, I think that's a great example. That's something that more firms should like reach out to you because you have tons of time. Reach out to you and say, hey, how are you doing this? Because that is very important, especially with the changing landscape that we have in

7:11the profession right now and the people coming in are going to need those type of skills a lot quicker than they've needed in the past. So just thrown it at them and I'm sure helping them and giving them support, but letting them do it themselves, I think that's a great way. And I think too often we've looked at this learning curve being a lot longer than it really needs to be. And like the fact that we're shortening that learning curve these days, at least you guys are. And so that's cool. All right. Let's go jump into what we've used in the intro. You know, each R1 is, we are in tech season right now. And so when we get new tech spills out there, obviously there's lots of things going on. There's change happening. And so let's just give us like the overview of the impact you feel HR ones having on techs, prepareers now this tech season. Well, yeah. I mean, since July 4th, when it passed and I was heavily involved in watching it unfold up until that point, but it has truly had a lot of impact. I know some people, they were waiting and waiting and then it's just now I'm getting lots

8:14of phone calls. It's like, you know, hey, I should have paid attention more before, but I got to get the speed on a lot of this new stuff and I'm happy to talk to anybody. But with that being said, I do believe that a lot of it was a continuation of what we had under the Tax Custon Jobs Act and an extension of it, you know, when it came to tax rates and QBI and and and see core provisions and stuff like that. But what I found is that there's a lot of great things in it. And anytime we have tax policy change, I view it as opportunities opportunity for planning and how do we get in front of our clients and really bring it to them. So a lot of that has been, you know, the one of the questions I get quite a bit when I'm interviewed is, is this good or bad for people, right? In general. And if you kind of look at it, if taking a step back, most people are going to pay less tax. I mean, we have seven tax brackets, we have a progressive system. You fill up the first, the 10% bucket and then it spills over into the 12 and so on, right? Well, the gaps between, especially the 10 and 12 have widened even further. The gaps between the ones up to 37% are still wide.

9:16And so with that being said, just based on tax bracket management, people are going to pay less tax. And then you have the four new campaign deductions that ended up in the bill. We have the no tax on tips, which is really a misnomer because it's not no taxes, that's a deduction. Right. No tax on tips, the overtime deduction, the car loan interest, personal interest deduction and then the enhanced senior deduction. Those four things I'm already seeing make a huge impact on people's taxes already in planning. So that's a good thing. I have a question on that real quick, the first two you mentioned, the tips in the overtime. How's the reporting on that? Are you getting the information from like payroll companies you need or how are you managing that? I mean, you're probably not preparing the tax, but what do you see when that information comes in? So to take a step back, it came out, it's all this is great, right? Because we know that there is a box for tips already on the W2 and people that reported tips, there's nothing for overtime, it's built into your box one W2, right?

10:17So then the IRS in the fall said, hey, we're not updating our 2025 W2 reporting for any of this because it came out so late in the air, we're going to do it in 26. And then they've been given out guidance along the way, which is great. So I was a little concerned at what are we going to receive, but what I have found for the most part is at least with the overtime pay is, hey, get your W2 and then either the employer or the payroll provider has provided some additional guidance or additional, hey, Randy, you said you work 15,000 hours of overtime, here's the amount that qualifies for this overtime deduction or they'll say, hey, here's your double time or here's your halftime or whatever the premium amount is. And the IRS did come out with some guidance that said, hey, it gave like seven or eight examples and they said, hey, depending on what you have, here's what you can do to kind of calculate the premium amount. So between that, I find it so far, it's been better than I was actually expecting. I'm sure there's people listening to this right now. They're like, yeah, Mark, you know, when I'm getting from my clients is none of that.

11:19And when I would just tell people, if you got people with tips or overtime, it's still got to report it, right? And ask them, hey, do where's your pay stuff show? Or can you get something from your employer or the payroll provider? Someone's got to give you something and a lot of times it's there is just a matter of asking for it. Digging it out. Do you think that's changing then next year? Are we going to have a better reporting system? Next year, we will have a more robust way of getting it on the actual W2s or 1089s. But again, anytime you change something, it takes a little bit of time to work through the system of how it's proper, right? Yep. Well, let's talk about that then, too, because anytime there is a tax reformer, tax change is, you know, there is a lot of, if it's neager reaction, but the first thing is, oh, there's so much we're going to have to learn so much. There's so much going on and people get bogged down in the compliance end of the thing, which is important. But one way you like looking at this reform is this is now advisory opportunities. How do you, you know, make that mind-ship change or what's the way that, you know, to get

12:19everybody to start looking that way instead of, oh, I got to learn new tax things. Well, yeah, I mean, it used to be, oh, new tax form, schedule one-shay, for example, just use, oh, I got to learn new form and all there's new deductions and all so many rules and nothing's clear. So I'm going to put my head in the sand, ignore it and let the software handle it, right? But then you don't know what's going on. You don't know what the output looks like if it's correct. And then clients start to question, Randy calls me and is like, hey, I thought I was getting this senior deduction, right? And well, you got to be over 65, Randy, in order to get it. And then all these things, these conversations go on and then I start to feel overwhelmed. So I'm not planning. I'm reactive to everything. Right. My view is, hey, you should read on this stuff along the way. I get it right now is probably for the average tax preparer, not the time to be reading. But I would say, at a minimum, after tax, he's going to start to read on this stuff because there's going to be a whole lot more guidance coming out. Trump accounts, for example, the 530A accounts, hey, they're available for 2025.

13:21You can't set up an account yet or fund it yet until July 4th of this year, right? So, but start getting familiar with those provisions because when you understand what's going on, whether it's the new stuff or even the old stuff, now as you're meeting with these clients, you can say, hey, Randy, because every client, what do they want to do? Pay less tax. So, hey, here's some options, Randy, you can do to pay less tax. Well, you can find ways to give more to charity, right? And oh, by the way, the charitable deduction, if you itemize, is going to kind of get limited a little bit potentially starting in 2026 with this half percent haircut from the rules. So, that's a bad thing, but what could we do to plan it? Strategies, whether it's, you know, donor-wise funds or bunching strategies or figuring out ways that we can help our clients. How do we accelerate depreciation? How do we take R&D tax credits, cost segregation studies, depending on the facts and circumstance of that individual or business, what are we doing to help them? And the more you understand it, the more that advisory comes in.

14:22You're not going to have every answer for them, but when you can give them options based on what they're telling, you're listening for their pain points, you're absorbing it, and you're saying, hey, here's how we could help you. And if I can't help you, I can bring in someone else like, you know, they can help along the way. And that's the important piece. That's a good point, because how many people do you have at Portee Brown? It's a... We'll say 160. 160 people. So, you can be thinking this way, but how do you, as a leader in the organization, get everybody 160 people within the firm on board, that this is advisory season now, and this is an opportunity for us, but let's be prepared. I assume that there's a lot of training, or how do you go through this, to make sure that this is a firm-wide initiative, not just a mark-wide initiative. Correct. We have... Well, training is... I always kind of joke that we're kind of like the trauma hospital, we're always teaching. We're a teaching hospital in the sense of a firm, like we have a lot of internal training that goes on. Randy, you've been part of it. We have every month. We have what we call a staff meeting.

15:22We pull everyone together, talk about, hey, what's going on in the firm, where are the wins? Any big announcements? But then we always have an educational section where we're talking about, what do we need to know and why? And we don't want to get everybody, because there's people that work in on it, people that work in... You know, cast. They don't need to know all these tax rules, but I want them to have an idea. So then when they're talking to clients, that this isn't foreign to them. And so all that constant communication in person, on team's calls, also just communication. And then, you know, really the focus isn't... Compliance is what we all do in some capacity, but it's really the advisory approach that is where we show the real value. And I think the more we continue to harp on that, not just during the busy season throughout the year, is very important. It shifts the mindset of everyone. All the way to a brand new staff understands this, tax planning, providing solutions. And then at top of it, it's just kind of like, it's not always this advisory season. It's the... We always call it, it's opportunity season, because this is the time where you're actually

16:25talking to everybody, you're meeting with them, you're interacting in some form or fashion. Don't just be like, hey, here's your tax return, I'll see you next year. That is not the approach you should take. Yep. For sure. And you just, I think, segue into something else we could just jump into, because you have mentioned advisory, you mentioned your meeting with clients, you mentioned earlier this tax bill, and tax often has political aspects associated with it. We said in the beginning that, you know, how do you advise? How do you talk about this without politicizing any part of the tax bill? Yeah. I mean, this is one thing I feel strongly about is always maintaining neutrality. Clients are polarized, advisors cannot be. And I know that you may have strong personal beliefs, you know, this is just my opinion. You know, hey, on one side, I'm a strong Republican or I'm a strong Democrat or I don't care. And that's all fine. And then I'm glad that we have the ability to have these beliefs. But, you know, when we're dealing with people, the minute we drift into whether legislation

17:26is good or bad and we dilute our authority, our role is an economic translator or an advisor, gets diminished. And again, people, they don't want to know what our political beliefs are, they want to know how is any of this going to help me, right? And again, I could say, you know, someone can call me up and be like, can you believe this, this is terrible for this and this? And I'm going to blame the president, a past president or whoever, right? And my view is I'm not really there to comment on what the president, the administration or anyone's done because again, I didn't make those decisions, but I can just interpret it and say, hey, how do I help you go through this jungle of complexity so you can win in the deal? This is always my goal. Even when I'm talking, I always want to keep it right in the middle. It's just not important. People, they can make their own beliefs. I guess I can tell you when I speak and people come up to me and the people will ask me, I can't tell if you're a Republican or a Democrat. I just smile because in my head is like, I did my job. Yeah. Nice.

18:27And I want to dig into something deeper that you just said, but, you know, you didn't make the decisions. There is a story where you did impact this text bill and I want to, you know, I want to, I guess, stop the middle of the conversation here and just tell us the story because it's a really interesting story. Yeah. No. So I got brought in to kind of have an advisory role from a independent side on the evolution of the text bill as provisions come out because at the end of the day, as things get introduced through on Capitol Hill, there is always insight coming from various groups. You know, like, how does this impact the average American taxpayer and to have a front-row seat to see that unfold and really breathe into it feels like you're contributing to something. Now, you know that it's going really, probably know where I'm really sensitive. My mind, I mean, people have their own agendas and, you know, elected officials are going to do what they're going to do. But to have people reaching out and saying, hey, here's, here's what we're thinking. How does this impact small business?

19:28How does this impact large business? How does this impact Randy Crabtree? Is he sitting there wondering what his text bill is going to look like? And you're just providing a very middle of the road answer that has, you know, is not political on either side. Right. You know, I love the idea of giving back and that's just another way that to me is just brings value to it. Yeah. So at least you've got to share your two cents when they ask questions and be part of at least the discussion prior to the text bill to see what they want to hear your thoughts, which I think is really cool. Yeah. I always tell people, especially people in our community where they are strong opinion on one side or the other, and hey, I'll listen to anybody, you know, whether it's a strong opinion or the ranting, it's all good, right. But with that being said, I always say, if you've got that strong of opinion and you really think you can change something, you should run for office, though. And that's this, because then you do get a say. Yep. All right. Well, let's segue out of that. So segue from, you know, politicizing this to your impact on at least they want to hear

20:32what you say. Now we're going to kind of completely do, I don't think of 180 because this is going to tie in. But we talked about advisory, I'm going to talk about pricing it a little bit too, because we're going to get to advisory. There's some, there's some issues there. But the other things that's going to impact pricing is when we talk about AI and technology in our profession. So AI, technology in general, I think we too often are afraid of just because the time involved in it. But what this is going to do for us to allow us to be the advisor that really we probably all strive to be is going to be huge in my mind. It's going to take a lot of the compliance away from us, not away, but it's we don't have to do as much or at least the data entry or whatever. But let's talk about like leadership in AI in general. I mean, you know, first, when you see AI's impact going forward in the profession and then how is it as a leader, are you managing that within the organization? Yeah, no, I think it's, first of all, AI is only going to help us, right?

21:37And I find when I talk to people, I find there's two camps, right? There's the camp that's like, we're all in, we can't wait to see what changes. But they're really just kind of sitting back watching. And then there's the other camp that's kind of like, I don't want it because I'm afraid I'm going to lose my job, right? Or I'm going to lose this industry. And at the end of the day, AI is going to compress compliance work, right? And that's going to happen. And it's already happening. I promise you, if you're not involved in it, it's happening. But what it really does is widen that gap between the mechanical preparation of tax returns that we've always seen, the compliance aspect, and not, and instead shifting towards more strategic thinking, strategic judgment, you know, AI can be used great to summarize tax code to be able to look at complex tax legislation and get some patterns and really help you understand it quicker, right? And even with tax research, I think it's phenomenal to be able to do it. But it can't, at the moment, still can't not weigh risk tolerance. It can understand the client nuances, the facts, the circumstances of the client, right? That's our job. It cannot apply judgment in other situations, right?

22:41And so AI isn't dangerous. The danger is, in my opinion, is tax professionals or professionals in general who stop developing critical thinking skills, right? And in my opinion, the value of the future tax partner isn't remembering all the rules and isn't pounding your chest because you can get a form 1065 done in X amount of time. It's how well can you think outside the box and understand your clients and bring value to it? The compliance aspect of it, which has always been just kind of like a mechanical process. Why can't we bring that to the AI, which is where, you know, and I know Alan Colton and other people have said, hey, by 2030 or sometime in the 30s, we're not going to be preparing tax returns anymore. I'm already seeing that in some aspects already and I do believe that's coming fast. And I'm excited about it because I'd be honest and I work, we talked about this earlier, the more you delegate down, it frees you up for things. And I say to the staff, you know what, instead of having them prepare tax returns, what if they can get the return already prepared?

23:41Now they're reviewing it. Now they're providing, hey, I'm doing Randy's return. This doesn't look like Randy's taking advantage of a number of things. They're strategically thinking outside the box on how they can help Randy versus going, I'm just ticking numbers to make sure it balances so different, right? And that's the opportunity with AI that I think it's missed in some of the discussions. Yeah, we're very proud of our technical skills and, you know, I know the tax code and all this. And as you just said, that's not going to be as important anymore, but the opportunities are going to be there and the ability to advise and the ability to reduce taxes and the ability to spend time and your communication skills are going to be needed more, but going back to what I started this with is I'm very concerned because as a profession, I think we've always kind of been this way. We give away our services too much. I think there's many firms, many people that are better at this now, but I get concerned that people are going to say, oh, wow, hey, I just saved me so much time. I can't charge for that now.

24:41And so what they're going to do is just replace it with more work, rather than replace it with more opportunities to be out and advising. How do we balance this, you know, hey, this mindset that we have that, well, yeah, I mean, I do have tax return and 10% of the time they used to take. So I'm charging, you know, maybe I'll charge 20% of the way they used to because, but no, you got to charge at least what you were, if not more, when you look at pricing, when you look at that mile, when you look at, you know, hours versus value or time or whatever, what's the best way we need to, in your opinion, going forward, start pricing our services? First of all, you hit on a very important piece in my head and that is people give away their work for free. Oh, yes. I mean, and I mean, they may charge for the tax return. I see people charging tax return fees that I'm like, you're worth a whole lot more. Just talking to someone for two seconds, I'm like, you need to be charging more. But then they're meeting with these clients. They're providing strategies. They're providing advice. And in their mind, maybe they don't think they're doing all this advisory in their mind

25:44because they're just so bogged down in the mechanical compliance aspect. They just do it for free. And then they're afraid because I had these conversations, hey, if AI starts doing the work, well, my client's going to come back to me and said, hey, you charge me $1,000 for my tax return and you are doing it. Now that you're a computer's doing it, I should only pay $200 for it. Right? And I would say slow, slow your role there because at the end of the day, if number one, you should be actually charging more now. Yep. And I'll give you an example. If my car breaks down, I could not fix the car. I can't even barely put air in the tires, okay? I'm just, that's not my thing. Taxis is one thing. Taxi laws one thing. So I think it's a dealership. Now that dealership could have a human being back there fixing it, a robot fixing it, AI fixing it. Do you think they charge less because that all is happening? No. If I go to the doctor and you have some sort of procedure done and they're using robotics and computers and AI, they're not charging you less. So why should we?

26:45And again, this is the problem in our industry is we don't always recognize our value. And this is something that I feel strongly about and we see this with, we do with BTG and other things. And that is somehow we've gotten into a profession where everybody likes to work really hard. I worked hard to get my accounting degree. I worked hard to get my CPA license. My badger honor is I can put the most hours in my firm and look at me. And then I'm exhausted and I'm burned out. And at the end of the day, though, we kind of value ourselves as like, well, we're just workaholics. And then when a client calls us like, well, I can't charge Randy for that. He's a nice guy. I like him. Well, here's the thing. You've got to be able to bill for your services because we have to live a normal life. I'm not saying gouge people for something, but the true work we're doing, we got to value it. And I think there are a number of people that if you're listening to this and you're just charging a small amount for your services, you need to really, really evaluate that. You may think that people are going to leave you because you raise your fees and I promise

27:46you that is not going to be the case. Do you have any companies, firms, people I've talked to about that exact thing and ask them how many people left? Pretty much is zero. I mean, they'd be up your fees by whatever, 25, 40% and people don't leave. They value you way more than you value you. And that's the problem. That's where we need to get better because they that perceived value in your mind is often, and I'm not saying everybody listens, but this happens too often that perceived value in your mind is way less than the perceived value that they're receiving or what they sense that value is they're receiving. So we need to get closer to that. All right. Great on that. That was, I love your answer there. There are going to be plenty of people out there that are going to be reducing fees. In fact, I got a mailer in the paper the other day that's like, all tax returns $250 and they're like, what? No, I can't do that. I know why they did this one. I don't know if I agree or not, but they have wealth management and they're just trying

28:47to get that money in for the wealth management and other things. But still, taxes aren't a loss later in my mind. I always think if you know like, if you're fee, if you're if you're running your own practice or however you're doing it and it's below and you feel like you're better than H&R Block or one of the local national prep firms, you should understand what they're charging for a basic return. And if you're below that, you really need to re-evaluate that immediately at a minimum. Yes, at a minimum. I agree with that. I won't name names now because we are looking for sponsors, so I don't want to miss anybody. Look at me. I'm selling out now. I am not. I can't be bought just so everybody knows. All right. We'll close up and one thing, let's get back full circle to this tax bill because there are opportunities. Like you said, a lot of things just continuation up before even reducing taxes overall.

29:50But if we had the name one or two things that people are missing from the advisory standpoint or from the tax saving standpoint, what do you think's happening out there? Yeah, I think with the tax bill, anytime there's changes in tax law, whether it's a big one, like we've just seen with the HR one, the one big, beautiful bill act or just a minor change. Those are the opportunities to reach out to your clients and let them know. Here's what's changed. How can we help you? And not only just, you don't want to just tell them exactly what's happened, but understand, hey, if I'm working with a specific person and they're an S Corp and now the legislation says, hey, I don't have to capitalize my 174 costs anymore because of this. Let's meet. Let's talk about how we can change that. What this means to you and how we can actually continue to plan what that will mean to you going forward. These are the things. Remember, clients, you know, they pay to reduce uncertainty, right? And the more we model, the more we meet with them. And this is why sometimes going out and actually physically meeting with someone helps.

30:53Or if you can't, you're not even in the same town, get on a call and not just a phone call but a team's call where you see each other. Those are opportunities where you're kind of having face to face. It builds the trust. It builds that, hey, I, you know, I'm looking at everything. And I think that's very important along the way. The tax bill, you know, legislation is a trigger and then advisories, the response to that. And the firms or the practitioners that produce strategic interpretation, they're going to go smooth into seasonality, they're going to deepen their relationships. And at the end of the day, they're going to bring something that is the most important thing of what we're doing. It's that trust us and come every year and they bring all of it to the table. And you know, you want more clients from that. Those are the people that are going to refer you more and more business because they're like, hey, Randy's at a party and he's like, someone says, hey, who do you, it's your tax which are done and he's like, oh, I go to so and so and here's why I love him. Blah, blah, blah. Well, give me his name or her name. And I think that is so relevant. And I see it all the time.

31:53You think it's logical, but unfortunately, we all in this community, we get bogged down. They're trying to figure out forms and e-filing and I got to send out this. And the whole meantime, I got a bill for my services and I got to collect for my services. And oh, by the way, should I be training my staff along the way? All these things are all real things we got to deal with. But if we do not, if we don't look at it properly, we will miss the boat on everything. And what happened to the other day, stress, burnout, the ability to not be able to think critically. That's where is your impact, which impacts your bottom line. Yep. Nope. I did our webinar on burnout yesterday and there was a lot of discussion we had. So actually filmed one. So look forward to that coming out. All right. Well, I think that was a great wrap up, but before we wrap wrap up, I have a couple of final questions. First one is, so when you're not being this super tax guru who's involved with everything that happens in the accounting tax profession, what do you do for fun, what's your outside

32:57of work passions? I love music. I love going to concerts. I like listening to music, hanging out with people and just, you know, whether it's a meal or going to a show, a play, a sporting event, you know, in Chicago, we have, well, we had a great football season this past year, which was fun and I'm excited about what the future holds there. But I mean, it's just always fun to be able to do things. And you know, it's starting to slowly warm up here in Chicago. We're not quite there, but we're getting better. And I get excited about that kind of stuff. So like, you know, people always like, oh, all you do is tax and the answer is no. There are so many other things I do. This is just a mechanism that gets me around people and then I continue to do other things with people as well. And I think it's all about community. So all about, hey, be yourself, have fun doing it and follow your passions and when you're doing that, man, nothing feels like a job ever. That's my opinion. Nope. And at what you just said, I actually just made some shirts recently.

33:58I have a motto that just came off of a podcast that was on once. It was actually the unique CPI was interviewing somebody and it is being nice and have fun. I love it. And so I just have these shirts made. I'll get you a shirt. Be nice and have fun. It does say Randy Crabtree under it. I was thinking of changing it to Randy Crabtree.com underneath, but be nice and have fun. That's I think a good model to live by. All right. So I want to ask you if I can ask this question, but you just mentioned music and you've got a pretty cool story of something you did recently in the music industry. Is this something that we can discuss? I can discuss the event. Okay. I won't mention the name just from a standpoint that I don't know if I should. But yes, I do have some relationships in the, you would say music industry. People that people probably hear about, maybe even listen to and then have become friends. I mean, close friends. And so I got invited to the Grammy Awards. Nice. A month ago and I've never been.

34:59I've watched them. I'm and I love all the music there and I, you know, people are like, oh, it's taxis. And how could you go? It's like, no, you just go. No one have fun. Right. And I had a blast and it was an incredible experience. And I even got to go to meet people and go to an after party and meet more people. And it's just that idea of, you know, when you put yourself out there and you build relationships, you never know where you're going to get invited. Maybe you just get invited to a lunch and maybe you can invite to do a family gathering. But maybe you can invited the Grammys as well. And I think that is, that's why we do what we do. And I think there's so much fun to be had in all this. Yeah. Be nice and have fun. And you're a living example of that. So last thing then, if people want to hear more about what you're doing, let me see what's going on with you and your world or party brown. Where would they look? They can come to our website, party brown dot com. You can look on LinkedIn. You usually have everything rolling on there. What I'm involved in and doing, or you can just reach out to me individually at Mark Diego. So M-G-A-L-L-E-G-O-S at courty brown dot com.

36:01Happy to have a conversation. If you have a tax question, you can find me, reach me, and I will respond to you. So that's awesome. Well, Mark, I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you being on the PTG Advisory Council. And I look forward to every time we get together and have conversations, so thanks for being here. Yeah, thank you for having me, Randy. You appreciate it. Thank you for joining us today on the Neeks CPA. You can find the show notes for today's episode and book Randy for your next keynote or event at RandyCrabTree dot com. Remember to subscribe and leave a five star rating on your favorite podcasting app. And join us next time for more expertise and insights on the unique CPA. ProfessionalProductions.net