Good Neighbor Podcast: Auburn and Opelika
With her genuinely good heart and a wealth of experience behind her, Susannah works to connect local business and non-profit leaders to their neighbors. In a community like ours in which so many have invested their lives, there are fantastic stories all around us that motivate and inspire, often right next door. She hopes to share some of those here, on the Good Neighbor Podcast. Book an interview today at GNPAuburn.com
Good Neighbor Podcast: Auburn and Opelika
Ep.#87: Himmelwright Huguley Boles - Local Accounting, Real Relationships
We talk with John Boles of Himmelwright, Huguley & Boles about the real value of local, relationship-driven accounting and why outsourcing payroll early can save small businesses from costly mistakes. John shares his path from Auburn to public accounting and how culture and community shape better client outcomes.
• services overview across tax, payroll, bookkeeping, and assurance
• why small businesses outsource payroll for accuracy and time
• career journey from Auburn to Atlanta and back
• the power of relationships in client advisory work
• growing with families and local businesses over decades
• lessons learned from a merger that did not fit
• choosing local expertise over big-city brands
• how to contact the firm for help
www.hhbfirm.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Hugo.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome. And with me is John Bowles with Hemoite, Hugley and Bowles, an accounting firm in Auburn and Opalika. Welcome, John. Thanks for having me. Tell me a little bit about your firm. Accounting is kind of a broad term, so tell us what you do.
SPEAKER_02:We are a local CPA firm. We do a lot of individual business taxes, a lot of tax compliance, a lot of tax planning for small businesses. We also do what we call client accounting services, which are payroll, bookkeeping, those sort of things for small businesses. A lot of times small businesses don't have the resources to do payroll. So they'll outsource it. And we we help a lot of the small businesses here with things like that. And then we have an assurance group that does audits and reviews and compilations, a lot of financial statement work, um, things like that. So that's that's sort of uh the services we provide in a nutshell. We're here and we were originally founded in Obalika, and then in 2003, we opened an office in Auburn, and we've just had those two offices here since then.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Well, I tell you what, you know, part of the reason I do this um podcast is to encourage people to go into business for themselves, to be an entrepreneur, if you will. And uh part of that process is you you really you know have to be real with yourself and can I really handle the accounting side of the business? And having an accountant, I know for for me is a huge relief. And I'm sure that you run across that a lot.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. It it sounds like you value that.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely, I do.
SPEAKER_02:I I want the help. It's it our best clients are those that like you that see a need for what we do and value it. But but yes, that it is a a vital part of uh a business is the accounting function, and and some people are really good at it, and some people have a wife that can do it and are really good at it, and some people just need help, and we can we're there for for all of those in different ways.
SPEAKER_01:So absolutely, it really is a relief for me uh because it's so complicated, uh, especially payroll and tax time. And the I know you guys provide a lot of relief for people.
SPEAKER_02:It and payroll is one of those things that if you make a mistake, it is really costly. And people, it's not that expensive to outsource that. So that's the probably the easiest thing to outsource and gives people the most value right at first until they have someone that can do it.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Well, tell me a little bit about how you got into the accounting world here. What was your career journey?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I was a student at Auburn University, and this is this goes, this would have been probably in '94. I got a call from Wayne Alderman. He was the dean of the School of Business, and he was my fraternity's advisor. He wanted to have breakfast with me. And he said he asked me, you know, meet him early in the morning while I was a student, it seemed early. And uh he asked me what my major was, and I said, International business. And he said, No one hires international business students from Auburn. You need to change your major to accounting.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_02:So I went that day and I changed my major to accounting. I I just did what he said, and um, and he was like, you know, at that time, it may be a little different now, but at that time that was a degree you could get from the school of business, and you you could do a lot of things with it, and you were you're gonna probably find a pretty good job back then. And it was one of the degrees that you didn't necessarily have to know what you wanted to do your whole life, it was a gateway to a lot of different things, and that's sort of what he sold me on, and so I never thought I'd be a public accountant. I thought I'd move to Atlanta and do this a little while and go work for a big company or start my own business.
SPEAKER_01:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02:But my wife had been at Auburn, and when she was at Auburn, she worked in the athletics department, and one of the things she did was work in the suites. And way back then, Jay Jacobs, before he was the AD, I don't know what his role was, but he had told Janie, he said, you know, if you ever want to move back to Auburn, we would love to have somebody like you work in the suites. So Janie and I, I graduated Auburn, we're married, we've been living in Atlanta about a year. She had been working at the Georgetown for the Falcons, doing the suites for the Falcons, managing about half of them. And she came home. I was working at Ernston Young, a big firm downtown, and she said, Jay Jacob said that I could move to Auburn and work in the athletics department one day if we really wanted to. And I was like, done. I don't worry about it. We are moving from Atlanta.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:I really at that time thought I'd be in Atlanta forever, which I liked fine. But the idea of going to Auburn was, you know, just a it was a no-brainer for me. So I went into Ernst and Young and told them, hey, I want to move to Auburn. And my biggest client back at that time was was West Point Stevens. And the people in West Point talk like me, and no one else in Atlanta talks like I do. Yeah. They're all from up north. Right. They said, Well, we can't, you know, who's going to talk to those guys in West Point if you're not there. So they moved JD and I to Auburn. And I worked for ENY from Auburn for a few years. And then I'd met Jim Hilmerright and knew about his firm. He and Hal Hughley had a firm in Opa Like at the time. And uh we actually uh I called Jim about a year and a half after I was down here, and we I started working for Jim and Hal and then never looked back. That was I guess 2001 when I joined the firm.
SPEAKER_01:That's a great story. I tell you what, uh, there's no better place to come work than Auburn and Opalika. Just uh this area is a pleasure, and especially you know, coming from a place like Atlanta where you're stuck in traffic and it's the best decision Janie and I have ever made was moving here, raising our family here. Well, you've been in the accounting world for a while now. What kind of misconceptions do people have about you know their their uh accounting needs or maybe about what you do?
SPEAKER_02:I think a lot of people look at accounting and think that introverts are accountants, and there's not a lot of relationship in accounting. And I I think that is the furthest thing from the truth. And I tell all our people that is that's really what we have to sell is our relationship. You can find anyone to do your payroll or bookkeeping or tax return or an audit, put a financial statement together. But if you like the person and you trust the person and you know the person, you're gonna pick that person. So our our profession is 100% about relationships. That's good. Build those relationships, you understand your client, you serve them better, you anticipate their needs. So that's that is a key, key component of what we think is important in this firm.
SPEAKER_01:And that's so true. I think everything in life comes down at some point, it's gonna come down to a relationship with someone.
SPEAKER_02:It is, and and being a part of a local firm, you you grow with families. I mean, we there have been businesses that young men have started and they've grown them and they've sold them and they've had kids, and the kids have gone to college and gotten married, and you go through life and all those issues with your finances are involved in all of that.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, they tell that story, don't they?
SPEAKER_02:They do. It's very rewarding to get to have those long-standing relationships with clients.
SPEAKER_01:Well, let's talk about you for a minute. So, what do you do for fun when you're not working on someone's bookkeeping?
SPEAKER_02:Um I work, I work quite a bit, but we have four kids. Janie and I have four kids. Well, one of them's married and adult now, one of them's at Auburn. But if I'm not at work, I'm normally doing something with a kid. I am taking a kid somewhere. When when we get to finally go somewhere, though, I love to get the kids in the car and just drive. During during COVID, everything was shut down and we didn't know what to do for vacation. So we rented this van and drove from here to Massachusetts.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my goodness, it was awesome.
SPEAKER_02:We yeah, like stopped at the White House, we went down Wall Street, we spent three days on the Jersey shore and just did things that I never, you know, didn't really plan, just just did them. And that's my favorite thing to do. And you you get all the kids in one car and they they start talking to you and they don't have any place to go.
SPEAKER_01:I know. I that's what I tell people. I said, if you want to get uh a conversation started with your child, get in the car and take a drive. Yeah, it works every time.
SPEAKER_02:It does, it does. So that that is probably I I'll yeah, I love my family, and when I'm not working, I'm normally doing something with them.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, that's great. So part of the reason I do this podcast is to um be an encouragement to others who might want to go follow their dreams, go into business for themselves, be an entrepreneur. And uh so I like to interview people uh about that journey. And a lot of the times uh there's always gonna be an obstacle, a hardship, whether it's um in your business or in your personal life, that you have to overcome and keep going on that journey. Um, what are some of the things you've encountered in life that made you stronger or your business stronger?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so we, you know, we've certainly made mistakes and hopefully we we learn from them. One one mistake, uh a lot of businesses want to grow too fast. And there was a time and there were you know, we are in a very growing area, so firms from larger cities want to come into this market, and we were approached by a bigger firm and we merged with them actually, and it was just a terrible mistake. The the uh cultures were very different, the firms were different, and it was just a struggle for you know I think we were merged for maybe almost three years, maybe two and a half years, and it took you know a year to get merged, it probably took two years to unmerge or unwind. So that was a that was a difficult time and and something that we just had to to uh to learn and and work through. But we got through it and realized how thankful we are for this community and the people here that you know stuck with us through all of that. Yeah, we did not realize how important how how much pride our clients had in being a part of a local firm.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and that is that is something that's real have doing business with local people.
SPEAKER_02:They we we learned a big lesson there, and our clients they were not impressed with a bigger city for sure. So culture is important. We learned a lot, and we got through it and and put the firm back together better than it was. That's good.
SPEAKER_01:And that's and that's what you have to remember when you're going through hard times. You'll get through it, and when you get on the other side, you'll be better, right? So, what's one thing you wish people knew about uh Himmelwright, Hughley, and Bowles that they may not realize?
SPEAKER_02:Um we we have about 35 people here and and probably 15 CPAs or so vote. Just that we they don't have to go to Atlanta or Birmingham, they can be served here by by our firm. We're we're a part of uh an association of other firms, so when specific issues come up that aren't in our wheelhouse, we know when when they come up and we can call on other experts to come in and help. But you just because a firm is in a bigger city doesn't necessarily make them better.
SPEAKER_01:Right. That's so true. Well, how can how can people learn more about your firm and get in touch with you?
SPEAKER_02:Um, our website, uh www.hhbfirm.com, um, they can call me uh 334-521-1479, email j bowles at hhbfirm.com. We are very responsive. So if you call or if you email, we are gonna be back in touch with you.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that sounds great. John, I've really enjoyed talking with you and learning more about you and your accounting firm. Thanks so much for being with me.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast Auburn. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpauburn.com. That's gnpauburn.com. Or call 334 or 2140.