IAM174- Tax and Finance Professional Helps Clients Streamline Their Financial Processes

Chris Hervochon is the owner of SOAR (Strategic Operational Accounting Resources) which is a sole proprietor CPA firm started in 2018. SOAR provides outsourced accounting and tax preparation for businesses and individuals. Prior to forming SOAR, Chris spent the prior ten years between forensic accounting and corporate accounting and finance, most recently as Finance Director for a large healthcare organization.

Chris is highly involved in the accounting profession, volunteering with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and South Carolina Association of CPAs (SCACPA) and is also a 2018 graduate of the AICPA Leadership Academy.

• CEO Hack: Reading a lot; publications, magazines and newsletters.
• CEO Nugget: Go out on your own and do it but get help for the things you don't have expertise in.
• CEO Defined: Drive a business forward and execute your vision

Website: https://betterwaycpa.com/

Facebook: facebook.com/soarCPA
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishervochon/
Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisHervochon
Blog: https://betterwaycpa.com/soar-blog/

Full Interview

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

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.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

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 Chris Hervochon of SOAR (Strategic Operational Accounting Resources). Chris, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Chris Hervochon 0:38

Thanks so much for having me. Looking forward to it.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it as well. And what I wanted to do before we got started is read a little bit more about Chris, so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Chris is the owner of SOAR (Strategic Operational Accounting Resources), which is a sole proprietor CPA form started in 2018. SOAR provides outsourced accounting and tax preparation for businesses and individuals. Prior to forming SOAR, Chris spent prior 10 years between forensic accounting and corporate accounting and finance.

Most recently as a Finance Director for a large healthcare organization. Chris is highly evolved in the accounting profession, volunteering with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and South Carolina Association of CPAs, and is also a 2018, graduate of the Certified Public Accounting Leadership Academy. Chris, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Chris Hervochon 1:26

Yeah, let's do it.

Gresham Harkless 1:27

Let's do it. So first question I had was to hear a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Chris Hervochon 1:33

Sure. So I got an interesting start right out of college, I was actually started as a golf pro, which was interesting. And part of being a golf pro was hanging out with a lot of people who kind of thought about the golf swing a little bit differently, I got into how I get better in the most efficient way possible, I was one of those guys that kind of made my own training aids to give myself feedback on my golf swing.

The golf thing didn't work out. But I brought kind of that mindset with me when I came to accounting, I spent a lot of my career building automation inside the companies in the firm that I worked for making things as efficient as possible.

And at the same time, for the last seven years, I've had this business as a part-time practice, you know, while I was working a full-time job, and it just got to the point where it either had to grow or go away. And so I decided that I wanted to leverage those skills, the automation skills, creating efficiencies for businesses, in my practice, that's what I wanted to do. So I'm kind of bringing that skill set to other businesses.

Gresham Harkless 2:26

That's awesome. And I'm a big sports nut, as we talked about a little bit offline. So I love kind of like the talking about golf and breaking down the swing, and making it more efficient, and how you're also bringing that to business because I feel like there's a kind of synergy between businesses and sports.

Chris Hervochon 2:41

Absolutely, there absolutely is. And golf is one of those things where it's very much an individual game, and so you're kind of out there, you know, as a golf pro on your own, like, it's up to you to kind of make a living in the figure out. And so it's really important that if you're off your game, you need to be able to make adjustments as quickly as possible, you didn't know what those adjustments are.

And you need to be as efficient as possible with your time because there are only so many hours in the day to kind of work through those things. And Golf is a complex game. Well, all that stuff transfers over to business, all of it. So it's just a different application of the same skill set and mindset.

Gresham Harkless 3:13

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So I now wanted to drill down a little bit deeper here on how you're helping to support the clients that you work with. Could you tell us a little bit more about what you do?

Chris Hervochon 3:21

Sure. So, as you said, I'm a sole practitioner, a CPA firm. I provide outsourced accounting, which is everything from bookkeeping to virtual CFO services to businesses, plus a dashboarding service for my clients. So there's a business intelligence component to that. And then also all things taxes, tax planning, tax prep, for businesses and individuals as well.

Gresham Harkless 3:40

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And do you have to be located in the South Carolina area for you to work with us?

Chris Hervochon 3:46

You do not. My clients actually triangulate from Rhode Island to Florida to California. So they're all over the place. So, I operate virtually, and a lot of my clients are virtual as well. So, works out pretty well.

Gresham Harkless 3:59

Okay, that makes sense. So they're able to kind of, I guess, in everything they need, or just interact with in this day and age and period, it's pretty easy to have a conversation even like now.

Chris Hervochon 4:07

Beauty in technology.

Gresham Harkless 4:08

Exactly, exactly. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is what you feel kind of distinguishes you or sets you apart. So do you have an example of a secret sauce for you or your organization can share with us?

Chris Hervochon 4:20

Sure. So I was actually at a conference back in June, the FCPA is a big engaging conference. And it's somewhat of something like seven or eight conferences rather than the one that's a crazy ton of people there. But the CEO of AICPA gave a stat that by the end of 2018, only 60% of CPAs plan on having any interaction with the cloud by the end of the year. So we're getting up at the end of the year, and only 60% of CPAs expect to have any interaction with the cloud. In reality, that should be 100%. Right?

If you think about the cloud and all of the technology that can be utilized in business, that's your accounting software. That's all of the applications that kind of surround that being, accounts payable, accounts receivable, business intelligence software, your email, document storage, all that stuff, right?

So my business has been cloud focused since 2012. As I said I've been at this for a while. And what I do with that is being cloud-based and having a cloud focus is you're able to leverage data. So you can connect financial data to non-financial data. And when you do that, you create leverage data.

So better strategic insights into your business. The other thing that it allows for is more automation and more efficiency. And efficiency and automation are important because want to create a more consistent product and to it turn around the data faster. So really, we're at the point now, where you shouldn't have to wait a month or two to get your financial results from the prior month, we should be able to turn that data around in a matter of days not months.

Gresham Harkless 5:42

Yeah, that makes sense. And I imagine that it allows your clients to make decisions that correct decisions, but also probably makes them a lot more efficient and a lot quicker. So that helps to kind of make decisions based on maybe hiring or firing or what service may be to continue on with or to pivot or do whatever. But a lot of those decisions can be based on financial data, and that is just off whims I imagine.

Chris Hervochon 6:04

Exactly right. Still, data is an enemy of efficient and prosperous business. Right? So if you don't have the data to make decisions on, then, you know, really, you know, what can you do, you can't really do anything with it. It's kind of like the folks who throw all the receipts in a shoebox, the shoebox clients, right? And then they take it to their CPA at the end of the year and say, Hey, do my taxes. Well, it's sitting in that shoebox that has a ton of data and a ton of information that yet, you could have been using throughout the year to make decisions on and to advance your business and to the business that you want, as opposed to the business that you have. And so getting around that stale data problem is enormous for businesses.

Gresham Harkless 6:40

Yeah. And I can imagine that being able to obviously put it in and leverage the cloud, but also probably be able to have somebody like yourself, who's able to kind of quote-unquote, translate that data so that you understand like what decisions to make or not to make based off that data.

Chris Hervochon 6:51

Exactly right. Once you get the data, you have to be able to tell the story about what the data is telling you. So that's, that's part of what we do, especially using the dashboard. It's a one-page visualization of where your businesses that data in your business and measures things that help you to advance your business forward. So that's another component to that it's being able to actually see the data in a meaningful way.

Gresham Harkless 7:12

Yeah, that makes sense. And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or habit that you have, but it's something that you feel makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

Chris Hervochon 7:24

Sure. So I guess this would kind of fall into that habit bucket. But maybe it's not a hack, but it's being intellectually curious, right? And for me, what that means is reading a lot. So it's not for me, it's not just technical accounting information that I'm reading or management books, but also publications, magazines, newsletters, things like Fast Company strategy, plus businesses, another good one entrepreneur, just kind of getting a sense of the things that are going on around me what is going to apply to my business, and also it's going to apply to my clients business.

And then a good recommendation I have is Anything by Daniel Burrus. Daniel Burrus is a futurist whose last name is spelled Burrus. And he's put out a lot of stuff. And what he focuses on is hard trends. So hard trends are future facts, things that we know in the future are 100% going to happen. A good example is demographic shifts.

And so what he kind of teaches in his writing is how to identify these hard trends, and then how to apply them to your business. So really important to be able to know the things that the things in your environment that are going to impact your business, so you can make decisions based on that and kind of get ahead of that curve. Right? That's kind of how you pass your competitors.

Gresham Harkless 8:30

Yeah. And I can imagine if you're definitely dialed into those as you said, those are things that are going to happen. So if you're aware of those at the heart of the business, you're always trying to minimize your risk. And one of the ways to minimize your risk is to be very aware of what's going on in your industry or in the world in general and how it will affect you and impact your industry.

Chris Hervochon 8:48

Exactly. Right. So the strategy that's based on future facts is lower risk than a strategy that's based on soft trends or whims, right, you know, things that aren't backed up by data are backed up by the things that are advancing around us.

Gresham Harkless 9:02

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And now, I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Chris Hervochon 9:12

I would tell myself to do it sooner, go out on my own, rip the band-aid off, that's something that we say a lot in my house, rip the band-aid off, just go out and do it. Right. If you're always kind of putting it off or saying well, the times are not right, the time is never going to be right.

So if you're listening to this, and you're thinking about going out and starting a business and going out on your own, know that yeah, the first step is actually getting started, you got to get started and you got to throw yourself into it.

And then the other thing I would say to that is to get help, right? I actually wrote a blog article, you can find it on my blog, at the store blog on betterwaycpa.com about something that's pertinent to me in my industry, but outsourced accounting, right? One of those things that if you're a business owner, you're thinking about going on your own or you just went out on your own, and you're not you don't have an accounting background, you don't have accounting expertise, go out and get an accountant right.

The same thing is true for a lot of other facets of the business. If you're not a lawyer, and you don't have legal, you don't have a legal background, go out and hire a lawyer to help you get that business started and help you form that entity. If you think back to what I was saying about my golf career, you know, everybody who's out on the PGA Tour, they've all got coaches, in most cases, they've got more than one. And so businesses the same way go get yourself a business coach, go outsource the things that you don't have particular expertise in. And the best thing you can do is take that first step.

Gresham Harkless 10:26

Yeah. And I love that reminder. Yeah, if you want to start a business that started yesterday, make sure that when you do start it, we all have our lanes and things that we do better than other people. So understanding what your lanes are having that self-awareness, but then being able to bring that team along to have that accountant, that CPA, that attorney, whatever it is, where you're weak, or you're not as knowledgeable about can only help increase your likelihood of being successful. So I think that's a great reminder.

Chris Hervochon 10:52

Exactly right.

Gresham Harkless 10:53

Awesome. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of being a CEO. We're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show, but I want to ask you, Chris, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Chris Hervochon 11:02

To me, it means being in a position to drive a business forward and execute a vision.

Gresham Harkless 11:08

Awesome, awesome, perfect, perfect. And Chris, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I want to do is pass you the mic to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know, and then how best they can get a hold of you to find out about your blog content and all the awesome things that you're doing.

Chris Hervochon 11:22

Yeah, sure. And I appreciate that the best way to get in contact with me is email chris@betterwaycpa.com. You can also get in touch with me via the website, which is betterwaycpa.com. I've got a pretty active Facebook page, that's facebook.com/soarCPA, all one word. Twitter is ChrisHervochon.

And the other thing that I'll offer up, is I've got a product called Wayfinder, which consists of a one-hour introductory factfinding video call with me. And then it's the preparation of an eight to nine-page report followed by another one-hour video call where we walk through the report. Now the report consists of a look at the current state of your industry and the geographic economy in which you're operating in financial benchmarking within your industry. And then we'll look at your accounting processes and procedures.

And then from that, what we do is we put together five recommendations on how to move forward, you can see an example of that report on betterwaycpa.com/Wayfinder. Usually, it's a $1,500 one-time fee for this product. But you know, for your listeners, I'll go ahead and offer a discount code, which is IAMCEO2018, all one word, and that will give you the price of 199 for that particular tool. You can also find that on the webpage. And you can also book that with me through the webpage betterwaycpa.com/Wayfinder.

Gresham Harkless 12:41

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, definitely appreciate you for offering that Chris. And we'll do is we'll have those links in the show notes just so that anybody can take advantage of that offer. Make sure that you do that. And then also to follow up with Chris, and follow all the awesome things that you're doing. But Chris, I appreciate you. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Chris Hervochon 12:56

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on.

Outro 12:59

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

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