Isaiah T. Gresham is the founder and president of Gresham Financial, which provides tax, accounting, and outsourced chief financial officer (CFO) services for business owners, executives, and independent professionals. He started the company in 2016 with the goal of helping clients plan for the future, grow their businesses, and accumulate savings to achieve their dreams.

Gresham has been doing his friend's and family’s taxes since 2009; today, he treats each client's return with the same level of care and concern. Leveraging his deep industry expertise and personal dedication, his proactive approach goes beyond tax preparation to help clients live more fulfilled lives.

Gresham’s passion for helping people thrive extends to small-business owners and executives. The way a company is structured impacts the owner’s business, investment, and estate planning taxes — and Gresham understands these complex interactions, as well as how to limit liability in each area. Serving clients not just as an accountant, but also as a strategic partner, he offers outsourced chief financial officer (CFO) services and access to a network of trusted professionals outside accounting.

Outside the office, Gresham enjoys being outdoors, traveling, and spending time with his family.

• CEO Hack: Book – Burdens of a Dream: 33 Actionable Nuggets of Wisdom for the Creative Entrepreneur
• CEO Nugget: Never forget about your family
• CEO Defined: Empowering others to be great

Website: https://www.greshamfinancialcpas.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamfinance
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/igtaxhero

FULL INTERVIEW

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Transcription

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[00:00:02.20] – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

[00:00:29.80] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Isaiah Gresham of Gresham Financial. Isaiah, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:39.29] – Isaiah T. Gresham

Thank you for hosting me, Gresh. I really appreciate it.

[00:00:42.29] – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Isaiah so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Isaiah is the founder and president of Gresham Financial, which provides tax, accounting, and outsourced chief financial officer services for business owners, executives, and independent professionals. He started the company at twenty-sixth with the goal of helping clients plan for the future, grow their businesses, and accumulate savings to achieve their dreams. Gresham has been doing his friend's and family's taxes since he thousand nine, and today, he treats each client's return with the same level of care and concern.

Leveraging his deep industry expertise and personal dedication, his proactive approach goes beyond tax preparation to help clients live more fulfilled lives. Isaiah's passion for helping people thrive extends to small business owners and executives in the way, the company is structured and impacts the owner's business, investments, and estate planning taxes. Gresham understands these complex interactions as well as how to limit liability in each of these areas. Serving clients not just as an accountant, but as a strategic partner, he offers outsourced chief financial officer services and access to a network of trusted professionals outside of accounting. Outside the office, Gresham enjoys being outdoors, traveling, and spending time with his family. Isaiah, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:02:04.79] – Isaiah T. Gresham

Oh, I'm ready.

[00:02:06.00] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Let's let's do it. So to to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you got started. Could you take us through your CEO story, and we'll let you get started with the business?

[00:02:16.50] – Isaiah T. Gresham

Absolutely. So my CEO story started with friendship. One of my long-term friends, Perry Lewis, is still a business owner back in Birmingham, Alabama. Met him when I was seven years old. He's about ten years older than my mom. And I had an opportunity to hang out with him, spend time around his flower shop, learn about, you know, how he got that business off the ground. Even as a kid, he exposed me to, other opportunities in the community where I was able to see, like, you know, how he was also working as a business owner, not just I mean, not as a business owner, but as an investor, in the community as well, in in a lot of his efforts. You know, I won't go into detail with those because that's more, like, personal for him.

But, also, my mom was an entrepreneur, and watching her go through her experience and also seeing her without an accountant. I, you know, I got a chance to kinda see the best and the worst of both ends of being a business owner. As I started my accounting career, I got, like, deep into details, and I started going through the normal standard auditor walk, you know, going out to meet really large businesses and getting into their financial statements. And I didn't understand why we were doing that. As far as, like, you know, I've seen those clear examples of business owners who needed an accountant and what we were able to do for them. But as an auditor, I wasn't getting the same fulfillment.

So, I spent a couple of years chasing that dream and trying it out, and none of that was working for me. I decided to take a step back and go back to what I have the most passion for, which is actually helping my friends and family with taxes. So when I moved to Washington, I decided to set up my own entity. You know, I was licensed as a CPA, and still am in the state of Florida. And I decided to, you know, continue to pursue that. As I got started with that process, a lot of my neighbors started coming my way and started seeing a lot of tax issues they were having. And I noticed that people needed more tax planning. They needed somebody more proactive instead of just somebody who could be another H and R Block. So from there, I decided to leverage that audit experience and bring in the accounting end of the business, but then also take that same approach and bring that to the tax end of the business. And especially financially, we can't go ahead and do this today.

[00:04:31.00] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Absolutely, definitely appreciate, you know, the story and being able to kinda understand exactly what passions your passions are and why you do what you do and be able to kinda, of course, help and impact so many organizations and businesses and individuals if we really get and dig a little bit deeper.

[00:04:48.30] – Isaiah T. Gresham

Right. Hundred percent.

[00:04:50.10] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I know you touched on it a little bit, but I wanted to kinda drill a little bit deeper through exactly how you work with clients. Could you take us through the services you provide the different services and also what that process looks like?

[00:05:01.10] – Isaiah T. Gresham

Definitely. So my business is split into two ends that really service a a client from a holistic standpoint. So, the greatest example I could give is a startup company that I've been working with, since two thousand eighteen. We helped them from the c f CFO end of the business initially by helping them get funded. And the CFO of a company could do multiple things. So we were able to help them adjust their projected financial statements. We're able to help them establish credit history because business credit works completely differently from personal credit. But, you know, we understand the intricacies of how those things work.

So we're able to get them established on both ends of that. You know, even setting up initial HR functions from an accounting standpoint, you know, establishing payroll, getting a couple of other things in place. But then we're able to carry that, to the next level by helping them with tax planning and, you know, potentially plan which states they're they're going to operate their business from and even how that would make a major impact on the bottom line for the business. Setting up the tax structure, the purpose tax structure for not only their purposes but also for the outside investor's purposes to make them all happy.

You know? And at the end of the day, we wanna be able to make money, but also save as much as we possibly can. So, the accounting end of the business starts with the CFO. The CFO is the highest accounting officer. If you're thinking in terms of sports, which is my favorite way to go, we'll use basketball as an example. CFO is the front office up there where a controller is more of a head coach. He's he's kinda dictating where things are going. And, also, you know, and by that, I mean, revenue and expenses. So we're able to predict revenue. We're able to set payment terms and do things like that at that middle tier.

But then we're also able to set payment terms on the outside by saying, hey, you know, biller I wanna adjust my bill date to such and such date, you know, and basically create a cyclical system so that we can create some predictability in the business and help grow it. The bookkeeper is more of the person that's like the manager sitting back on the side, keeping score, and, you know, keeping the game moving forward for their referee. That same analogy is being taken on the tax side, tax planner is basically somebody coming in, taking that dynamic coaching role, and guiding this person in the right direction or guiding this business in the right direction to ensure that they're paying the absolute minimum they possibly can and that they're in a defendable position whenever they do so with the IRS so that it's not an issue for them.

But, you know, we really think about things in a three to five-year range. Then, also, if there are things that have a long-term implication that may have a twenty to thirty-year implication on them, we take those things into consideration. Tax preparers do the same thing as bookkeepers. They're more, you know, here and now. The record keeper basically shows how your score was in that last year, and they're doing everything they can to keep it within a minimum range, but they're not being as proactive to a certain extent. They're being reactive. Then you have that final tier, which is our tax resolution services. So you think of that as like, an official on the cleanup job, coming in and trying to make sure that everybody's okay and that, you know, the client doesn't have to overpay if they do have a large bill with the IRS and that the IRS is also true to family. So we kinda that intermediary there.

[00:08:20.80] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely appreciate that. I'm a big sports junkie, so I was able to follow that perfectly. So I'm glad you broke it down like that. And I always say, like, a true, to me, a sign of expertise in even say that related to teaching is the ability to be able to communicate who with who you're talking to and to be able to take that, understand that knowledge, understand the high level and the kinda nuances of it and be able to kinda communicate that to whoever you're having a conversation with. So I definitely appreciate that. Yeah. No problem. And so I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for you personally or your business, but what do you feel kinda sets you apart and makes you unique?

[00:08:57.60] – Isaiah T. Gresham

I think the thing that sets us apart is the fact that we care. And it's not just about me at the end of the day. I am, you know, I work with the clients. I'm I'm the first person you meet, in a lot of situations, But, it's not just about simply my expertise. The people that I work with on this team are experts in their own field, whether that be someone who is, you know, tremendously gifted at business taxes. You know, I have another person who's tremendously gifted at tax resolution. I'm strong at strategy.

So, you know, that's that's really where I like to drive. I have, you know, someone who works with us who has their MBA and who's just focused on creating systems. They're very good at developing those. Where there's even another person I'm working with who's a CMA who she is just, like, all the way in terms of being able to take a company, dissect it, and rebuild it to make it more efficient. So, you know, it's all about the fact that all of us like what we do, and we care for the people that we work with and the businesses that we work with.

[00:10:03.79] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:10:15.29] – Isaiah T. Gresham

Oh, yeah. I have it with me. So, it's the burden of a dream. It's thirty-three actionable nuggets of wisdom, for the creative entrepreneur. It's, by Craig Chavis. I read this book about two months ago, and it's made a huge impact on my business. It was really easy to read. One of the things that I liked, was lesson number thirty-three, which talked about, you know, tomorrow. You know, tomorrow is the most important thing that comes to us. And you can't forget about it because sometimes it's like with everything that's going pandemic these days and every other event that's come right behind it, it's just been one thing after another.

But there is going to be a tomorrow. And that's one thing that we have to keep in mind. The sun will rise tomorrow, and, you know, hopefully, coffee still exists if anybody, you know, drinks coffee. I know, you know, I like a little bit of caffeine myself, but it's a matter of things that will continue to move forward, but it's always about continuing to put in that effort and never giving up. And that's one of the things that I was able to take from this book from start to finish. You know? Never give up on your dream.

[00:11:21.79] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And that could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

[00:11:33.10] – Isaiah T. Gresham

Definitely. Well, one thing I would say is never forget about your family. You know, and everything that I do with business, a lot of the reasons why I do what I do is because of my family. I started with, you know, watching my mom as a business owner who has a hard time with not having the right person on her team, the right quarterback, so to speak, in terms of the CPA. And, you know, I look at the same deal with being able to take care of my own family. I can't forget about them as I continue to grow this business. They're the reason why I do it. And in a lot of cases, your family is going to be there for you if you do, happen to fail, which in my eyes, is just learning a lesson as a business owner.

[00:12:15.70] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And it's extremely powerful. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Isaiah, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:12:27.89] – Isaiah T. Gresham

Well, to me, it means empowering others to be great. So whenever I work with someone, my goal every time is to help them achieve whatever it is they set out. We set that original goal when they get there. Like, If they want to be their own CEO in terms of some of the contractors I work with, then I help them be the best they can be at their own craft and help them introduce them to as many people as I possibly can. And, you know, that that even goes to the mentorship level. What is that student looking for that I'm working with? And how can I help them achieve that goal at the end of the day? With my clients, same story. How can we help them achieve their goals as a business owner? You know, and even if it's a not-for-profit, how can we help them make a larger impact on the community?

[00:13:18.29] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And that's extremely powerful. A lot of times we have our zone of genius that we lean on, that we want to do. And a lot of times, especially for entrepreneurs and business owners, usually we have a strong why for what we've created. And when we are able to focus even more on that impact and have, you know, experts like yourself to be able to lean on so that we can make sure that we're strategically in the right place and know all the numbers and all that aspect as far as how we can be successful. It allows us to to show up and to show up even better when we know that we have a strong team on our, behalf.

[00:13:48.29] – Isaiah T. Gresham

Right. I agree.

[00:13:49.89] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Isaiah, truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

[00:14:04.79] – Isaiah T. Gresham

Oh, yeah. Great. So we we are currently based in the Greater Seattle area. However, we do work with, people all over the country, and we are expanding to the East Coast. So, I would say look out for us within the next year to have the location-based in New York. And, you know, we wanna be able to continue to take care of you. Gresham Financial Services, professional service companies, real estate companies, as well as, startups that are more, developing their intellectual property and devices. So, if you kinda fall into that business niche or if you're an individual who needs somebody to help you with a tax plan and a tax resolution and possibly save you as much as they can, definitely give us a call. You know, as far as being able to find us, we're at Seattle accounting firm dot com, or you can find us on most social media platforms.

[00:14:55.79] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Isaiah. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can find you even easier. But truly appreciate you, my friend. Truly appreciate all the awesome things you're doing and the impact that you're having, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:15:09.00] – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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