CFO Chronicles: The Secrets Behind Success

From $0 to Baton Rouge’s #1 Accounting Firm in 3 Years - with John Roberts Jr.

• James Donovan • Season 2 • Episode 35

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He scaled a firm 5x in 3 years—and didn’t burn out doing it.

In this episode, James sits down with John Roberts Jr. of Attract Accounting to break down the mindset, systems, and strategy behind one of the fastest-growing firms in the country.

You’ll learn:

  • How John bought his first firm with no money down
  • Why building SOPs before hiring paid off fast
  • The masterminds that changed everything
  • How his team helped land an $70M client exit
  • What’s next—and why most firms won’t get there

👉 If you’re ready to grow like a business, not a freelancer—this one’s non-negotiable.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success, the go-to podcast for fractional CFOs and accounting firm owners who want to attract more high-paying clients and increase their revenue. Hosted by James Donovan from Nine Two Media, this podcast dives into marketing strategies specifically designed for lead generation and client acquisition. In each episode, you'll hear from industry leaders sharing their success stories, and Today we're joined by John Roberts Jr from Attract Accounting Super excited to have you on the show, John.

Speaker 2:

We've been working together for a little bit now, but you have a really cool story, a very successful company you've built in just a couple years. So I'm really excited to dive in, to hear a little bit more about Attract, where the idea came from and how business has been the last couple of years. John, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3:

Awesome James, Thanks for having me Super excited.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, awesome. So, john, I was just asking before the show started here background John Roberts Jr. Similar to Ken Griffey Jr as far as the name goes. Give me a background on, maybe, the family lineage and where the junior came from. Obviously from your dad. But, like, maybe tell me a little bit about your family background and where the name came from.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so you know John Roberts is a pretty common name. I like to joke with a lot of people and tell them that my grandfather is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States because his name is also John Roberts. But my family is not that connected politically. You know my one of the reasons I started this firm is really I saw the issues that my dad had with his accountant. You know he owns a millwork distribution company, so he's basically the middleman between the folks who put windows and doors together and then the builders who install it.

Speaker 3:

And you know before that you know his father was a carpenter, and so we have a really rich history in construction, also in entrepreneurship. And you know, when Attract came to be, that was kind of the ideal client, the business owner who really had no idea how they were doing. They didn't know how to measure themselves other than the cash that was in their bank account, and then at the end of the year they just get completely surprised by a big tax bill. And so all of that in mind is what we did, or who we considered, when we built Attract.

Speaker 2:

That's cool. That's cool, and I want to hear a little bit about how Attract came to be. Is owning an accounting firm something you wanted to do from childhood, or how did you get to where you are now?

Speaker 3:

I wanted the lifestyle. I wanted the ability to think on your feet and to add value to people, to build trust and and just develop those type of relationships. And you know, midway through my college career you know I was a political science major I got some really good advice to switch to accounting because, you know, accounting was the language of business and business was the best safety net, right If something went wrong with law school. You know, at that point I had seen folks go through undergrad and make it to law school and find out either A it wasn't for them or you know B when they did graduate they were kind of stuck at like private injury firm or you know personal injury firm, and you know, kind of stuck there and I'm like man, I've got to be more well-rounded. So I switched to accounting the last two years of my collegiate career. I was a college football player as well. So I was on the five-year plan. I got redshirted my first year and then, you know, took basically five years to graduate and I got redshirted my first year and then took basically five years to graduate and I got my 150 credit hours. Well, I was actually supposed to sit for the LSAT, the law school test. About three days after I blew out my knee like this terrible football injury. That really just kind of changed the trajectory of my life and so I stuck with accounting. I almost dropped out of school just to rehab because it was just an injury that took four surgeries to fix.

Speaker 3:

But I stuck with accounting and the public accounting firms came calling and they basically offered me a job on the spot and I had really nothing else lined up. So I said, sure, I'll take it. And then they said, john, we expect you to get your CPA license. And so I did and, you know, kind of worked my way up through public accounting and when I was there I loved the exposure to, you know, the very consultative type of relationship with our clients and being able to add value. And I was actually on the partner track at that firm.

Speaker 3:

But there was just some things culture wise. You know, I wanted to be able to pick who I worked with and who my clients were. And when you join a big firm you know you don't really get to pick, you just kind of fill in a role. And so you know I knew that entrepreneur or entrepreneurship was something I wanted to go for. I just didn't really know the avenue. But later on, you know, in that public accounting career, I started to think like man, I could maybe do this on my own one day. But it's been four years since I've done a bank reconciliation, like I was very good at audit in the sense of, you know, theory and what to look out for and testing different types of things, but the day to day of running a business from an accounting department's perspective, you know I had no experience doing so.

Speaker 3:

I moved over to corporate accounting to a private equity backed manufacturing firm. I worked there for, you know, three years and you know, towards the end of that that that part of my life is when COVID hit. And so COVID really allowed me the opportunity to kind of reassess like where my life was going. You know, did I feel like I was using my skills to the best of my ability when I selling myself too short in certain areas? And you know I basically mapped out this plan to start. What became Attract?

Speaker 3:

And so you know, fast forward to the end of 2021, you know, just picking up a few clients here and there, just friends who were business owners and then I got the opportunity to buy a small bookkeeping and tax firm and basically said, ok, here's my chance. So I bought the firm. You know it was an owner finance arrangement. So I did have a soft landing and you know I had two kids at the time and I'm like this is where we're going. So you know, fast forward another four or five months. My old boss from corporate America decided to join me as my partner, which is Armin Michaud, and it's just been up and to the right ever since.

Speaker 2:

That's so cool. That's great. Where did the name Attract come from? Great?

Speaker 3:

question. So I always wanted a name that would outlive me. You know I didn't want it to be Roberts, you know, cpa firm, or Roberts andisha's CPA firms, and so I always liked the branding aspect of business as well, and you know I used to joke that I wanted a name that was just one word that everybody knew, like Beyonce, you know, and so I thought like, hey, what is the?

Speaker 3:

what is a word that means something to me, um, that you know would resonate with, with my, with my team and with with my clients. And so, uh, I was reading this book called the secret by Rhonda Byrne, and, uh, the secret is basically the law of attraction that, you know, what you put out into the universe, you'll also attract back, and, and so what I also loved about the word attract in my mind was that if I added one C to the last four letters, that is the abbreviation for accounting, and so it was born, it was then attract, and you know, the hardest part for me at this point is reminding clients to put that extra C in there. And so, anytime you know I'm giving to exude the, the thought and the energy that you know, we have a, a very specific goal, and that's to help people, and the way you you help people is is by putting yourself out there, and then you know being attractive. And so, uh, that's where attract came from that's so great.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting you talk about the two C's in the name, because for us I would probably choose a new company name or a new domain if I would have known how many people would spell it wrong. Every time I go to give my email address it's like no, it's not the letters, it's spelled out N-I-N-E, but people are still putting the numbers in. It's like should have picked an easier email address. I would love to hear about, like, where all of the success came from for you, but maybe what was hard at the start, because you guys are a really new firm but you're crushing it. But I can't imagine. It's always just been like hey, I got into business and boom, we're making a ton of money and profit margins are awesome. Why didn't I do this earlier? What was some of the stuff in the earlier days, or maybe some stuff you're going through now as you grow that you're like man, this business thing is hard.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, great question. I mean, look for us. I had never even worked in an accounting consulting firm. You know, now you look at it it was like the best time to get in. Everybody got in because money was cheap and those types of things.

Speaker 3:

But I had built up a pretty sizable real estate portfolio and kind of proven to myself that like there's a winning formula to scaling a business. Number one is you really have to educate yourself. You have to be humble to know that you don't know everything. You can't be afraid to make a mistake, you have to have proper reserves, you have to have safety nets and you have to have mentors and people to ask. And so there was this guy named Tyler Rogers who I still mastermind with every month, and he had started this accounting consulting firm about a year and a half before Attract started. And so I became like even closer friends with him and you know kind of learn the ins and outs like what does the proposal look like? You know what softwares do you run, and he was really beneficial and helpful for me in that front.

Speaker 3:

And then when we bought the existing firm you know the existing tax and bookkeeping firm you know they had their own processes. A lot of them pretty much 95% of them sucked, so I knew what not to do. But it was just a huge, a huge game of trial and error and of stress and anxiety and, you know, worrying, like did I bite off more than I could chew and am I really fit for this? And you know, along the way I continue to make more friends in the industry and you know, I looked at our lack of maturity not as a disadvantage but as an advantage, because I could start from scratch. And you know, luckily, my partner Armand at the time, you know, as he left corporate America, he kept the relationships with the companies that he had worked for and so he started consulting back with them and so he was really cash flowing the business for like the first six or eight months, while I was building everything you know, I was implementing ignition and carbon and keeper and marketing and the website and doing our hires and building out our SOPs and making loom videos, because I knew that what I needed to build needed to be an asset. And I was like thinking ahead, like visualizing myself in five years, like wouldn't it be nice to have a training library, which we have, you know, wouldn't it be nice to have financial reporting infrastructure in place, which is, you know, we use reach reporting, and so you know that allowed me to start surrounding myself with some really key players, and you know Jacob Faust and Kimber Gill are both on our team and they've been just so instrumental of, you know, basically augmenting what we were already doing and just scaling it, you know, to new heights.

Speaker 3:

And so you know it's still a grind. You know we still make mistakes and some of them are costly, but you know I'd rather hit the guardrail, going around the curve every now and then and go fast, than just putt-putt around and, you know, never really make any progress. You know we've grown we 5x'd in three years, so I think it's like 160% annual growth over three years, I think. And you know that doesn't happen without, you know, a vision. You know we implemented EOS really early on and you know we self-implemented it in the beginning and we're very clear about our goals, and so that every time we were presented with a business decision, the question was does it get us closer to our goal or not? And if it gets us closer to our goal, then we have to do it.

Speaker 3:

And so you know, my partner, armin and I are both really lucky that we were. We're both well connected in the community. You know, we both have, I think, pretty good reputations and and so people just started coming out the woodwork like, hey, my brother owns a company that does this, you know, and you know our CPA is retiring, so can you guys take over the work? And then, you know, we do the work and we market it. And then the next thing, you know, you know, we've, we've 5x in three years. So, um, it's definitely been a grind for sure there's so much insight there.

Speaker 2:

What I love is the way you're speaking about the business, knowing it's it's an asset and it's not a job and I think a lot of firm owners in probably more so just getting started. But I think some people fall into that trap where it's like, oh, I just have a job and this is just what pays the bills, versus well, this is a business and it's an investment and it's it's an asset that I can get out of and it's going to run on its own. So I love that you were forward thinking to build everything on the front end while you were doing it, and now you, you have resources. You don't have to keep going back to the well and training on the same thing over and over and over again. That's really cool.

Speaker 2:

The other thing I wanted to ask you about because I was asked this on a podcast earlier today you touched on being in a mastermind early out in your journey. What's your take on joining masterminds, and I'll leave it at that. What's your take on joining masterminds and I'll leave it at that. What's your take?

Speaker 3:

on joining masterminds? I don't want to answer the question for you. Yeah, so I, from the very beginning, invested in coaching, you know, and a lot of those were masterminds. I mean, the first one I ever did was this guy named Bryce Tubbs who reached out to me over LinkedIn and you know, when he told me that you know it was five grand for this course, I was like Are you kidding me? Like I cannot afford that. And then the next thing, you know, you know we're billing 25,000 a month and you know it paid for itself Now and I got a lot out of that right. Like I had connections to workers in India and you know people who were really good at, you know, out me kind of subcontracting some stuff to in the beginning and I wouldn't have that. You know, what I did was I bought time. Like I paid money to save time, so I bought time. I paid money to save time, so I bought time For me. It's been one of the best decisions that I've made to invest in masterminds After Bryce Tubbs.

Speaker 3:

Then I went to well, I kind of self-educated myself, from Rob Nixon's group In fact.

Speaker 3:

I mean I've got the book right here and I mean, rob, if you're watching, everything's highlighted and I've got notes in there, and so I took this course.

Speaker 3:

And then I took the Summit CPA course, which was like the best 5K that I've ever spent. And then I invested in Jackie Meyer's Tax Plan IQ mastermind, and now I'm in a mastermind with Brandon Hall and you know 30 or so of like the leading, like CPAs, and you know accounting consultants, you know in the nation, and what I'm finding is that you know I am and I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, but I'm way further along than I thought I was and being in masterminds not only lets me learn from others, but also gives me a little bit of validation that, like you know, what I'm doing is right, and so I love masterminds. I'm quick to turn them off, though, if they don't work, and the same goes for coaching. I mean, look, there's a season for coaching, um, and you know I've outgrown many coaches and you know they, they understand it and they appreciate it. So, uh, I'm curious to get your take, though, on masterminds yeah for sure.

Speaker 2:

Well, there, there again. There's so much value there. And I really like that last piece about outgrowing a coach and the coaches who are cool with that. That's a real coach, the one like that's the. That's the objective you're, so they're supposed to coach you up, to essentially outgrow them and you move on to someone else. There are coaches out there, I think selfishly, who want to keep you under that ceiling and that that's not the right intention, right. So that's cool that you have had some coaches in the past who are like hey, I've got you to where you needed to get. Now this is the next person that you should go and speak to. This is who you should work with.

Speaker 2:

My take on masterminds I think it's, hands down, the best money you can spend. There's a lot of groups, there's a lot of masterminds out there. So, like anything, you have to do your research on who do you want to be hanging out with, who's the leaders of that group? But I think who you surround yourself is who you become, and a lot of people might think that sounds a little and a lot of people might think that sounds a little, you know, maybe spiritual or whatever it is, but it really is true, if I was restarting, I would have invested in taking masterminds a lot more serious a lot earlier, because some of the groups I've been in in the past the one I'm in now, I mean there's marketing companies doing 15 mil a year.

Speaker 2:

They have quarterly events. You start hanging around people who are making more than you in a year. Then they sorry, they make more in a month than you make in a year. It's naturally you're just going to grow. So my take is a hundred percent invest in them, because they're you're going to get a significantly larger ROI than playing it safe in the SMP, and that's fine. But if you really going to get a significantly larger ROI than playing it safe in the S&P and that's fine. But if you really want to see your money grow and your time, and just you as a human, evolve, invest in masterminds.

Speaker 3:

For sure 100%.

Speaker 2:

I wanted to ask you something along that but I feel like it's slipping my mind right now. But, John, maybe tell me quickly about some of the most recent wins that Attract has been able to be a part of with your clients. Like, what's the things that you guys get super pumped up about that you share with the team and you're like man, what we do is sick.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So it kind of plays on what you had just said about kind of graduating coaches, right, and those coaches, you know, basically turning you over to someone you know who can service them better. For us that might mean, look, we got your company so big that now you need to hire a full-time CFO right, you can afford a 200K a year plus CFO, and that's a win, you know, for us. So we've had, you know, one or two of those, which is awesome because you know we took them from making, you know, 150k a year to then making 850 a year and now they can afford that, right, and luckily we're still on board. You know we just kind of report to the CFO now instead of to the owner, but they're able to build an asset more, you know, around that CFO, you know. I like when our clients exit their companies. You know we have one client who, or who just sold for the valuation was 70 million, who just sold for the valuation was 70 million.

Speaker 2:

Is that good?

Speaker 3:

And they sold a portion of it to private equity. That was so cool for us because their books were a mess when we took them over and the private equity guys were even like you guys know what you're doing. Well, yeah, we've got experience that spans public accounting, private equity, publicly traded companies, Like we know what we're doing.

Speaker 3:

Well, yeah, you know, we've got experience that spans public accounting, private equity, publicly traded companies, like we know what we're doing and so helping them exit there. I've got one roofing company that just got an LOI for eight and a half times EBITDA, which is just crazy from a roofing EBITDA multiple perspective right, and so those are all really awesome things. Another win that we've had recently, you know, because I close most of the deals but our reputation is such that you know, someone comes in the door and someone on my team closes them, and there's some clients now who I don't even know. And that's really the goal of all of us as business owners, right is for the business to operate efficiently without us being involved in every piece of it, and so that's going great. You know, we've developed relationships with clients that are very nurturing.

Speaker 3:

Like you know, we'll have a new, a new employee on our team and I'll get with the client or someone on my team. We'll get the client say, look, this guy's new. You know we've prepped him for this meeting but he's going to lead the meeting. So you know, take it easy on him. You know, understand what we're trying to do, because at the end of the day everybody wins. The better our team is Right. And so you know, we've just we've continued to grow. And you know, I don't know when this is going to be aired, but I'll just go ahead and say it we, we had, we got voted the best accounting firm in Baton Rouge, which is where we're at Louisiana.

Speaker 3:

So, and we won first place. And so you know we're a three year old firm. We beat all of the big, the biggest firms, you know, the regional firms who have just sold out to private equity. We beat them and it was really cool for us to again get validated through that that our clients cared so much that they would vote for us and continue to vote, and so we've had a lot of wins and you know we just want to keep it going.

Speaker 2:

Congratulations on that award, because I just saw you guys post online the other day as well about your three-year anniversary. So is winning that award being where you guys are at now? Is this something you ever could have imagined three years ago when you started?

Speaker 3:

I knew it was going to be good. I did not think that it would happen this quickly. But that's really just a testament to my team because, like alone, I could have never done it this quickly. But when you have, you know, 12 to 15 people all pulling in the same direction, you know all live by our core values, you're all willing to go the extra mile. It's really amazing what a team can do, and we were very intentional about who we hired. You know what does the interview process look like. You know putting them really through the ringer because we have the ability to. You know, pay them on top of market.

Speaker 3:

But it's not all about the money, right, it's like, you know, getting a team environment and me as a leader to.

Speaker 3:

You know not always wear my heart on my sleeve and to be compassionate when I need to be and be empathetic and and but but also be.

Speaker 3:

You know, someone with a clear vision, and you know when I can sit in a meeting or an interview with a prospective employee and hand over my 40-page business plan that I hand wrote every goal we've ever hit or every goal we've ever set we've hit, and so it builds this level of trust with our team to know that like, look, they can trust us.

Speaker 3:

And then they've shown us that we can trust them. And so when you have a team that just trust each other and is again willing to go the extra mile, you know you can't coach attitude and effort. You can coach skills and teach skills, but I would rather hire you know someone who has a lot of give a damn and less skills because you can't teach, give a damn, right Like you can teach skills. And so for us having that culture and that energy in our company then rubs off to our clients because they like the high energy, they like the you know ability to you know ask a question and not feel stupid about it, right Like we want our customer, our team and our clients all to be very comfortable.

Speaker 2:

So Great, I got two more questions for you, John. What's next for? For attract what's on the horizon?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so our, our goals are, um, to double in the next, uh, three years. So we set that goal at the end of 2024. So by the end of 2027, um, you know, our, our PNL, is just going to be where it's at now. Times two. Um, you know we are expanding into different markets, uh, which is really exciting. Um, you know we're investing a lot into marketing and you know, getting the reach that's outside of our region and you know we want this to be a place that people like to continue to come to work and be happy and, you know, just give more opportunity for our team to, you know, increase their value at work and make more money and just basically be happier by getting more time and spending it with their family and the people that they love. So that's, I think, what's next for us, at least in the short term.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, Awesome. And then last question for you, John what advice would you give to other entrepreneurs out there?

Speaker 3:

Man, I'd give a lot of advice. I think the main piece of advice is you have to first believe in yourself before anybody else will believe in you. And the way that you believe in yourself is you make small promises to yourself and then you fulfill them. So I promise myself I'm gonna wake up early tomorrow, and then you do it. And then you promise yourself that you're gonna, you know, step on the treadmill for 30 minutes, and you do it. And then you promise yourself that you're gonna eat healthy, and you do it. And then you make promises to your wife and to your kids, and you do it. And then you promise yourself that you're going to be eat healthy, and you do it, and then you make promises to your wife and to your kids that you do it. That builds confidence in knowing that you will do whatever you say you're going to do. And then, with that confidence, comes then mentors, and then they start telling you what you're capable of doing, and then you start believing it and then you start looking at content that gives you that energy, like one of my favorite things that I'm telling everybody about right now is the pep talk app right, and it's just this collection of everything motivational. And so I don't listen to music, I don't really listen to that much podcasts anymore. I just listen to the pep talk app when I'm brushing my teeth, when I'm getting ready for work, like that's what I'm feeding into my head.

Speaker 3:

And so the first thing that you have to do is convince yourself that it's possible. And it could be podcasts, it could be books, you know, I mean, I'm a big fan of oh God, I can't even think of the guy's name. It's the guy who wrote Think and Grow Rich, napoleon Hill, and then he also wrote Outwitting the Devil. And you know, just content, just pouring into your brain of positivity and what's possible. And then all through that, though, you have to stay humble you have to know that you don't know everything. It's OK to make a mistake, it's OK to ask a stupid question, but the first thing you have to do is work on yourself and your mindset.

Speaker 2:

That's an awesome way to cap off the episode. I love that.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 2:

I'm definitely going to download that app as soon as we get off here. That's really cool, john, thank you so much for coming on. This is an amazing, amazing journey. You're on amazing story. I'm so excited to see where track goes in the next couple of years and in, like, the short term and the long term goals and the new awards you guys are going to rack up. So again, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your time with us today.

Speaker 3:

Awesome. Thank you, James.

Speaker 2:

Talk soon. Thanks for tuning into this episode of CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success. I hope you found value in today's conversation. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. If you enjoyed today's discussion, please rate and review the show. It helps others discover the insights we share here. Second, if you're ready to take your business to the next level and attract the high-end clients you deserve, head over to accountingleads nowcom or click the link in the show notes to book your strategy. Call. It's time to position yourself as the advisor your clients need. And don't forget you can connect with me on LinkedIn to stay up to date on what's happening in the world of accounting and financial growth. We've got exciting topics coming up, so stay tuned for the next episode of CFO Chronicles. Until then, keep pushing forward. Your growth is just one strategic move away.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success. We hope today's episode provided valuable strategies to help you attract more high paying clients. Be sure to subscribe, follow and share with fellow professionals. Connect with us on LinkedIn and leave a review or comment to join the conversation. Your feedback helps us bring you the best insights in finance and marketing. Until next time, keep striving for success and unlocking your business's potential.