Unlock the secrets of small business success with Erin Preiser the vibrant heart of Cherokee CPA, as she joins us for a journey through the evolution of a firm that's so much more than your average accounting outfit. Prepare to be inspired by the tale of Hope Clear, a single mother whose grit and determination fueled her rise to CPA greatness, while also getting the lowdown on how Cherokee CPA transcends the typical by offering comprehensive bookkeeping and strategic financial decision-making support year-round. With my chat with Erin, you're not just getting a rundown on tax prep; you're getting a masterclass in financial advocacy that's a game-changer for small business owners.
Now, let's shake up the image of the monotonous accounting life as Erin pulls back the curtain on Cherokee CPA's office culture—a place where fun collides with finance, and where every day is an opportunity to grow, laugh, and learn together. From monthly lunch and learns that feed the mind to exhilarating team-building escapades, Erin's infectious enthusiasm as the 'office cheerleader' is a breath of fresh air. As she shares the importance of nurturing client relationships and the inside scoop on small business lending, it's clear that Cherokee CPA's doors are wide open, inviting you in for unparalleled business guidance and financial wisdom. Don't miss the chance to connect with a team that's rewriting the rulebook on what it means to be a partner in prosperity.
Unlock the secrets of small business success with Erin Preiser the vibrant heart of Cherokee CPA, as she joins us for a journey through the evolution of a firm that's so much more than your average accounting outfit. Prepare to be inspired by the tale of Hope Clear, a single mother whose grit and determination fueled her rise to CPA greatness, while also getting the lowdown on how Cherokee CPA transcends the typical by offering comprehensive bookkeeping and strategic financial decision-making support year-round. With my chat with Erin, you're not just getting a rundown on tax prep; you're getting a masterclass in financial advocacy that's a game-changer for small business owners.
Now, let's shake up the image of the monotonous accounting life as Erin pulls back the curtain on Cherokee CPA's office culture—a place where fun collides with finance, and where every day is an opportunity to grow, laugh, and learn together. From monthly lunch and learns that feed the mind to exhilarating team-building escapades, Erin's infectious enthusiasm as the 'office cheerleader' is a breath of fresh air. As she shares the importance of nurturing client relationships and the inside scoop on small business lending, it's clear that Cherokee CPA's doors are wide open, inviting you in for unparalleled business guidance and financial wisdom. Don't miss the chance to connect with a team that's rewriting the rulebook on what it means to be a partner in prosperity.
Speaker 1:
This is the Good Neighbor podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Stacey Polar.
Speaker 2:
Hey everybody, I'm excited to be chatting with Erin Prizer. She's the Director of Business Development at Cherokee CPA. Welcome, erin, hi. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, I wanted to start off by telling us a little bit about Cherokee CPA.
Speaker 3:
Okay. I'd love to Cherokee CPA has been around almost a decade and we serve the local area as a small business focused CPA firm, meaning that we help small business owners have accurate bookkeeping, know their numbers, make financial decisions, feel like they have an advocate in their pocket to talk to and rely on, and then make sure they're always up to date with their financials and their taxes.
Speaker 2:
Awesome, awesome and I know that your principal CPA there is Hope. Maybe you can touch on a little bit about kind of how she got into accounting and maybe how you guys kind of got together and you started working at Cherokee CPA.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so Hope. Thank Clear is our owner, our CPA. We also have a full staff behind her supporting her. But she had to make it sort of a midlife change at one point in her career. She had become a divorced, single mom and knew that she needed to have a better path forward to support her family. So she went back to school, got her CPA license and started doing some small bookkeeping for a few local businesses, and the great news is some of those businesses are still our clients a decade later. So she has single-handedly built this business up from the ground, being the sole proprietor, the owner and the person doing all the work. And now we have a staff of seven. She's the head CPA. We have two IRS enrolled agents that are also on staff. We have two staff accountants. It's the port staff with our admin and then myself who does a lot of our talking, so sales and marketing and development. And now we are approaching 100 small business clients in the community and we absolutely love being able to support our business owners.
Speaker 3:
Because what happens with business owners that decide, hey, I've been in electrician for years, I've worked for a big company. I can totally do this on my own. I'm going to open my doors and hang my sign out, and they do well, but then they incur the problem of going. I don't know anything about accounting. I don't know how to do financials. I don't know my numbers. I have a checking account. I don't know what my margin of profit is. I don't know anything about that. So that's when they reach out and go. I need somebody who can tell me all the things that I don't know. And so we love educating them, partnering with them and then making sure that they have that outsource so that they always know their numbers. They're always in compliance and they can pick up the phone 52 weeks a year, call us with all their questions and we're here to help.
Speaker 3:
I have been working with your CPA about two years. What got to the point where business was sort of growing and she had an existential crisis like I can't be the bookkeeper in the CPA and all this and grow at the same time. So she reached out and was just having a casual conversation actually with one of our clients. He said I've got to find somebody I can pull into this role and she's like I have a person for you. It's not who you think you're looking for, but she's the person and I had been home raising my kids for several years. I actually have a background in psychology and then an MBA, and I had worked in the corporate world and taken a good 10 or 15-year doc to get my kids thrown and had done some bookkeeping at home on the side just to bring a little money in.
Speaker 3:
But I pulled in my psychology and I was like I love talking to people. I have no desire to do taxes, I have no desire to do accounting Don't stick me in there but I believe in our staff and what we're doing for our small business partners so I can come out and talk to anybody and so she's like well, let's just give it a shot and see what it looks like. And it has been the job I did not know I was looking for. I absolutely love working for help. She is amazing. I love our staff. I love our office. I absolutely love our clients and getting to know them and have touch points to deal with them and feel like I can be here to be an extra resource for them all year through.
Speaker 2:
Oh, oh, wow. I like that Sounds like you guys were just really meant to be together and it was meant to be the right opportunity for you.
Speaker 3:
So that's why we feel about it. Sometimes, you know, when you got your look for a new, a new employee, you think, well, I'm looking for someone who has a background in this, and sometimes that's not at all what you're looking for.
Speaker 2:
Very true, very true. Can you talk about any myths or misconceptions that are out there about small business accounting?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so a lot of the calls that I get in the meetings that I get are people who initially come in and say, hey, I'm looking for a new accountant. And when they think about looking for a new accountant they mean I'm looking for someone to do my taxes. And that's a once, you know, that's a once a year thing. Like, hey, it's January, february, let me drop off my financials and give you access to my Facebook and good job, you pulled in you know, $250,000 last year and you owe the IRS $50,000. That would not be a fun part of our job.
Speaker 3:
So what we do is sort of a reconstruction of what a small business account should look like.
Speaker 3:
So we actually asked our clients to outsource bookkeeping to us because that allows us to give them year round comprehensive support. So we know that the numbers that we are producing for them every month are done, they're done correctly and they're done on time. And then we are providing year round tax strategies, tax advising and tax planning for them. So before they ever hit December 31, they already have projections about what their tax liability is going to look like. They have an opportunity to make any adjustments before year round. They have someone that they can pick up the phone and call or shoot us an email, you know, any day of the year and we can give them support and give them answers because we know what's going on with our business finances. So I think that misconception is that a tax accountant is somebody you only see once a year and in reality you're when you're running a small business. You need somebody that you can talk to anytime you have a question for the year.
Speaker 2:
That makes a lot of sense. It would be like if somebody was going to a doctor once a year but then the other 11 months of the year was just eating junk and not exercising and not taking care of themselves. And then you know, you get to the doctor and there's a whole lot of surprises. So it's kind of like someone holding your hand along the way, right?
Speaker 3:
Yes, that is exactly what we talked about. We, yeah, we say it's exactly the situation. I've never really thought to put it in those terms. But yeah, if you only go to your doctor once a year and you're like, help me understand why I gained 60 pounds, well, let's dig in deep and I'm going to have to have you come back every three months. We can run some blood work so we can have a baseline. We can you know all that good stuff.
Speaker 3:
It's really more about relationship, year round relationship, than just hey, be my tax preparer, because in all honesty, that's just somebody who's filling up form, that's not somebody who's your partner. So we've really changed the way we approach small business accounting. So when owners get to me and they they're like, hey, I'm looking for a new CPA, I'm like what are you looking for? And they often describe I'm looking for somebody to do my taxes. But I'm like, well, it's so much more than that.
Speaker 3:
When you're running a business, when you're, you know, when you're a W2 employee, and all you have to do is, the end of the year, enter your stuff and you can run it into TurboTax and all that good stuff, that's one situation. But when you're a business owner, you, you've got to know your numbers year round because you want to make educated business decisions. How do you know if you can afford to hire new employees and support that? That's that. How do you know if you have the revenue and the profit margin to buy new equipment, go out and buy a new vehicle for your business? If you're not savvy and you don't have an accounting background to do it yourself, you need someone as a small business owner that can partner with you 12 months of the year, not one month of the year.
Speaker 2:
Awesome. Can you talk about maybe some of the challenges or obstacles that you guys see in the work that you do?
Speaker 3:
Yeah. So we get a lot of business startups who are either getting ready to open their doors or they're within the first 12 months of business and again having to figure out how to do financials and how to do some accounting Really comes as a second thought to some of them and really comes as a surprise. And so letting them know and helping them understand why this is a service that they truly need and helping them understand that that's something they just are gonna have to budget for, because they're like, oh gosh, like I'm barely making ends meet. I, you know I'm, I'm getting ready to open my doors. How do I account for that? We understand the struggle to work that into your budget but Honestly again, how do you get your, how do you get your feet out, out the door as a new business owner If you don't have any understanding of how much money you have coming in and how much money you have going out and how much Profit you're actually going to be able to keep? So there's a little bit of education in helping those brand new business owners See the value and and the need like they sort of know they needed but they don't know how to budget for that Is is definitely one of the biggest struggles that I run into so often and we have an initial conversation and I say you know, can't afford it now, understand, come, come talk to me a couple months.
Speaker 3:
We'll still be here. We're ready to help you at whatever point. You figure out how to put that into your budget. But they do. Usually a lot of them come back and go. Okay, I've realized I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I don't want to get, you know, stuck in next April with the IRS breathing down my, my throat, because the one thing I tell them is the IRS is not going anywhere, they're always going to be there, they're always going to find you and they have some pretty rich of guy things about how that works for them.
Speaker 3:
So at some point, if you don't do it now, you're gonna have to do it later.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean I know that you know number crunching and in and of itself kind of has reputation for being boring, maybe not that fun, but I'm sure the people who are working for you guys actually like it and enjoy it. Maybe even talk about some of the other things that you guys do as an officer, stacked to have fun and really get to enjoy each other's company once in a while.
Speaker 3:
So when I first started working for Hope, it was there was three of us. It was a truly a small business and she was even like, hey, if you want to work from home, you can. I'll be like, oh heck, no, I've been home with my kids for 15 years. I can't wait to come to the office. So, as we have continued to grow and build our staff, one of the things that I have naturally taken on because it's part of my personality and I enjoy it is really becoming the office cheerleader, and so I've helped us put into place some things that like this is a fun place to work. So we do monthly lunch and learns where Hope caters in lunch and we talk about things that our staff need to be educated on. So, for example, the one coming in January, you have a guest speaker coming in to talk to us about small business lending and how we can have an additional resource to extend to our small business owners who are, you know, in the position they don't know who to call when they need to have some growth and maybe get a small business loan.
Speaker 3:
We've also started doing some really fun quarterly team building. So we just went in December and had our big Christmas party. We went out to lunch river stint corner bistro and then we went and did an escape room, and so that provides for some really fun opportunities off site. I think our next one we're planning is doing axe throwing. So people have a misconception that accountants are probably 65 year old gray men and, to be honest, our staff only has one male. We the rest of us are females, we have kids, we have lives, we like to go out and do fun stuff. We hang out together and do barbecues. So I think once they get to know our staff they realize that we're a lot more fun than what they ever envisioned their accountant would look like.
Speaker 2:
Awesome. Is there one thing that you haven't shared yet about Cherokee CPA that you want our listeners to know?
Speaker 3:
I think the thing I love I try to convey to people when I meet new business owners is that we are in it for the relationship. We love our small business owners. We just did a focus last November, a client spotlight month, where we got permission from our clients to be focused on our social media. We want to see them succeed and we want their numbers to be great. Ultimately, we want them to increase their revenue and be good at what they're doing. So we one of the best parts of my job in my function is forming long-term relationship with those owners.
Speaker 3:
I joke, I'm not as super I have a lot of kids outside because I'm not a super huggy, feely person but I recently was delivering some goodie boxes some of our clients. I love going to their office and I love visiting them or their location and dropping up some goodies. And I walked in and two or three of them they get up and they're like oh hi, and they come and give me a big hug and I was like are we hugging? Is this where we're at now? We're hugging, we're hugging.
Speaker 3:
Okay, so it's just different. People don't think about hugging their accountant and their staff, but that is really what our relationship looked like, we have restaurant owners and we go take team outings and we go to the restaurant and we eat there. It's a very reciprocal relationship. But I think that's the revolutionary thing that I want people to know that chair PCPA is that we're not just an accountant, we're not just a CPA firm, but we are an advocate for our small business owners and we really want to see that succeed and have a great long term relationship with them.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and it sounds like you're also a connector, I imagine kind of helping businesses that would have mutual interests meet each other and, you know, finding some of your folks who may be good referral partners for each other and connecting them. Do you do a lot of that? We do.
Speaker 3:
So we really protect our client identity and obviously because you know, when it comes to the accounting world and financials, we don't disclose publicly any. You know who our clients are but if we know that they would be a great resource, so say, we have a marketing firm that's a client and we have a new business who's trying to get off the ground and we know that they need a marketing resource I reach out to our marketing client and say, hey, I have a new person I'd love to connect you with. Would you be okay if I passed on your information? And they, you know, 99% of the time are like yes, absolutely. Again, like I mentioned, with our, we have a small banking relationship and they we love having connections for them to give our small business clients and say, hey, this is somebody who can help your business and we would love to facilitate that relationship as well. So, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:
Awesome, awesome, all right, thank you, erin. Why don't you finish up by telling us where folks can find you? Well, we are located?
Speaker 3:
We have a physical office in Holly Springs. We are at 101 Mountain Brook Drive, sweet 100 in Canton. We are about three minutes from the Holly Springs Walmart. You can also give us a call six, seven, eight, four, five, six, four, four, seven, four, or feel free to shoot me an email, erin E-R-I-N at CherokeeCPAcom, and we would love to connect with you.
Speaker 2:
All righty Well, thank you, Erin. You did a great job and it was so good getting to know you and Cherokee CPA a little bit better. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast Milton and more. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPMiltoncom or call 470-664-4930.