CFO Chronicles: The Secrets Behind Success

From Layoff to FBI Whistleblower: The Wild Path to Success - with Andrew Jordan

• James Donovan • Season 2 • Episode 38

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Fired. Depressed. Then tapped by the FBI.


 Andrew Jordan’s story isn’t a straight line - it’s a masterclass in resilience, reinvention, and building a firm the right way.

In this episode, we unpack:

  • The real story behind a $20M fraud scandal (and Andrew’s whistleblower role)
  • How getting fired sparked the growth of Jordan CPA
  • What it takes to build a 12-person firm with EOS and zero burnout
  • The single best move Andrew made after losing everything

This one’s part cautionary tale, part playbook.
 If you’ve ever hit rock bottom  or feared it, this is your roadmap back up.

👉 Press play to hear how Andrew turned failure into fuel.

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This episode is brought to you by Bill.com

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Speaker 1:

On today's episode of CFO Chronicles, we get into failing your way to success with Andrew Jordan from Jordan CPA. Turning that failure, that, that disappointment, into motivation to go off and grow into something bigger and better and more successful. And we even touch on a crazy story where Andrew was involved in some whistleblowing on a crazy fraud case. You're not going to want to miss this. Check out the episode. I cannot wait for you to hear it. Enjoy.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to another episode of CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success. So excited for our guest who's coming on today and I'll introduce him in a moment. But I do want to quickly shout out our sponsors over at Universal Accounting. Thank you so much for everything you guys do supporting the show, hosting amazing events like Grocon. If you are an accounting firm, accounting professional, tax professional, looking to grow the premier accounting firm, make sure to check out universalaccountingcom. Get connected with Roger. They have a ton of resources that we'll put in the show description. Go check them out, it'll benefit your business.

Speaker 1:

Business to our guest for the day, andrew Jordan from Jordan CPA. Welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you on today and dive more into your story, your background and all of your success. Hey, thank you, I'm glad to be here. Andrew, tell me a little bit right from the start how you got into this world. I'm going to go out on a limb. I kind of make this assumption with a lot of guests and I may be, you know, shooting myself in the foot here every time, but was growing up and running an accounting firm, something you knew you wanted to do when you were running around on the playground at school.

Speaker 2:

You know it wasn't surprisingly I think it is for some people, but it wasn't for me. Okay, so my dad's a doctor and when I was in high school I was great grades, all that kind of thing, and it's like do you want to be a doctor or a lawyer? You know, that's what your school counselor I knew I didn't want to be a doctor because my dad was a doctor and there's a lot of negative things about medical. So he had me talk to his lawyer and I kind of got to explore that. And he had me talk to his CPA and so I was like a junior in high school I was like, oh, the CPA thing, that sounds really good. Hadn't taken a bookkeeping class, any of that kind of thing, but I was like that seems like a really good career. And I never changed my major, started accounting, graduated accounting.

Speaker 1:

That that's interesting. I I always, I always laugh when people ask like how did?

Speaker 1:

I end up in this space because I hated my accounting course in college. I hated going through it. I struggled so bad to get through it. So the the ongoing joke now is, when we were picking our niche to work with, accounting was just at the top of the alphabet. So that's the dad joke of the episode I suppose tell me a little bit about. So you went to school, you got your degree and then out of school. How like, from out of school to now, what happened?

Speaker 2:

Man. So, yeah, I got my master's, so I get my CPA passed on the first attempt everything seemed like it was lined up. I started at a top 10 firm at their home office on the tax department. I got an internship with them and then they hired me on after that. And then, april 15th, after my first year full time, got called into the managing partner's office. I'd never talked to him before and he said, hey, this is your last day. You have 30 minutes to pack up all of your stuff. And I didn't realize. And I talked to my professors afterwards and they were like, oh man, we thought they had stopped doing that. But this firm, like I think, a lot of firms, every year after tax day they just let a certain amount of people go because they don't want to carry them during the off-season.

Speaker 1:

Wow, yeah, so it was a brutal First time meeting one of the partners and you're barely getting your pleasantries out of the way and you're barely getting your pleasantries out of the way and you're packing up your box.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, it was wrong. And there was a celebration that evening to celebrate tax season, making it through tax season, you know, big party, and so they intentionally let several of us go before that so we wouldn't be at the party. And I mean that firm. I worked an 80 hour week one, uh, one of the weeks in january, minimum 60. So it's like you put in all this and then that was rough.

Speaker 1:

So how'd you bounce back from that Cause? I'm sure that I mean being let go from any, any job. I was let go from from a job before actually starting starting this, but it's a hit to the ego and, like it, it hurts. It's hard you, I mean. For me, anyways, I felt, like you know, I felt pretty small at the time, like what did I do wrong? Can I be successful anywhere else? Like how did you respond to that and how did you bounce back?

Speaker 2:

Oh man, it's a good question. I don't think we talk about it enough and we always talk about our successes and things. But, like we, before I officially started full time, my wife and I had over I don't know six or eight people who were part of my same start class with this firm and we toasted the all-making partner together. You know what I mean. Like that's how it was, because that was kind of the mentality and so it was devastating and so I remember. So I was like I was home at like noon or something. My wife's a teacher wasn't going to be home for hours and I had like hours to just sit with it right and wasn't going to be home for hours and I had like hours to just sit with it Right and think, how am I going to explain to my wife that, like you know, I lost my job? That was, it was never even on my radar. The funny thing is, when I became CFO later, not to jump ahead. When I became CFO, you know most CFOs don't do their own taxes, don't do their own some certain pieces of things and the firm I hired was the same firm. Wow, because enough time had passed, there was no bad blood and like they do really good quality work and we're in a small area and they're like the ones that did the quality that I wanted. It was a different partner group and stuff, but like it was, it was funny, so that was part of it to me. I was like, okay, I think I've I have gotten over this, I'm okay.

Speaker 2:

But man, bouncing back was hard. I had an uncle who was a lawyer. I called him and said should I consider law? Like maybe this accounting thing isn't for me? It was, it was pretty tough and I was. I look back now and I was depressed, didn't realize at the time. I'm a very upbeat guy, so I had no experience with this, but I was like it was hard to get out of bed. I I would. I would wake up in the morning and I'd be have this like pit in my stomach, this feeling, and it would take like a few seconds to realize and it would hit me afresh of like oh, I failed. You know it was so hard.

Speaker 2:

But I was unemployed for like maybe a couple months because it was, you know, I'm a tax guy and it's like April, so there's not a lot of jobs right there. Um decided to try a small firm. So I went with a single CPA owner firm. Like eight or ten people in the firm was there for a year and hated it, hated it, hated it because, um, it was a very traditional thing where it's like a bee you know a beehive where, like everything, every email you sent had to go through the CPA partner, and so it just felt very, very stifling. And it was. I was doing payroll returns by hand, like this was like 2007 or something, and like getting out a pen and writing out payroll forms by hand. Because it was very, very old school. I learned a lot, but I was there for about a year and I was like I have made the wrong decision.

Speaker 2:

I have a degree I am never going to successfully use and my dad so my dad's an eye doctor One of his patients coming through just asked him during their annual exam hey, how's your son the accountant Because they're an accountant too How's your son the accountant, how's he liking things? And my dad was like he's not very happy. He, my dad, was like he's not very happy, he doesn't love it. And so this person said, hey, our firm is always hiring and it's a great firm and he should totally check it out. So it's a small firm in a different town. It's actually back home for me. Never thought we'd move back home. Moved back home for this firm. It was an open book management firm, very progressive, very cool, and I was there for three or four years, learned a lot again and then, kind of the classic story I was poached by a client to be their first ever CFO.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so, cool that's awesome.

Speaker 2:

It's a good bounce back story. I feel I feel pretty good now. I have no hesitation talking about it. But like man at the time, I was like I'm never gonna tell anyone because you know they would think so little of me if they knew I'd been fired. But James, you were fired. So cool people are fired, that's right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, thanks for the compliment. I'll run with that one, but.

Speaker 2:

I want to talk a little bit more.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 2:

I was just going to say. I think sometimes we're fired because we weren't meant to work for someone else.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I agree with that and I'm actually very grateful for being fired on how things turned out and it gave me the opportunity because I always wanted to start something on my own and I never really knew what that was. And yeah, I look back now and think, okay, if I never would have been let go, I wouldn't be able to have pursued this, and I think for the most part, it's out for itself and you know there's a lot more room to grow. But it's it's kind of just turning that, that situation into a positive of yeah, you weren't, it wasn't a fit for you here you're, you're, there's more greatness for you somewhere else, and I think that's really true. But you mentioned how people don't speak about failure enough and I would love to cause you're so open about it kind of tap back into when you were let go.

Speaker 1:

Like what were you doing from that time of being let go? It was, you know, maybe harder to get out of bed and before you did end up getting that other role at the smaller firm, that wasn't a great fit and that was probably even hard to get out of bed at the time. You're like I don't really love what I'm doing. Like how did you stay motivated to get out of, to pick yourself up off the mat and end up? You know getting to where you are now.

Speaker 2:

I think I worked from a prostate on the mat position, right, like I don't think I got up. I think I just we're good at grinding accountants, right, like that's our training, that tends to be our personality, and I would get up and I'd apply for jobs and it was a drag and it was several months of just every day kind of sucked, and there wasn't a whole lot of brightness or encouragingness there. It was kind of the cloud over everything. For several months I probably wasn't very fun to be around several months.

Speaker 1:

I probably wasn't very fun to be around. Do you do the successes today feel elevated at certain times because of going through all that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So my dad likes to use the analogy of let's see Jacob, right, jacob who had the coat of many colors. His brothers were jealous, they threw him in a well and then they sold him to slavery and then he was in prison. All these bad things happened to him, but then when you look back, it's like, oh, but it was all just on this path to lead you to this great position. And so if I hadn't started that big firm, if I hadn't worked at that small firm that was also awful I wouldn't have had the background. I wouldn't have had the background, I wouldn't have learned the things to be successful at the small firm that was good, and then I wouldn't have had the background to be successful as a CFO. And so like, absolutely Like, going through the tough times is what made me able to be really successful now. So I'm I'm very grateful for them, even though I would love to never have to go through them again. That's awesome.

Speaker 1:

I'm a big fan of Alex Hermosi. I don't know if you do. You follow him. No, no, really really great. Follow online. Very, very successful. I'd say he's like probably I would argue to say he's the best person in the marketing world. Or just like the business acumen he's really good. And he always speaks about how no great story is written from just a linear line of success or like no hardships. And if you're trying to build a superhero, you would want them to go through a lot of adversity. You'd want them to go through really hard times to get to the other side of it. You'd want them to go through really hard times to get to the other side of it. So I think it's super important to go through really hard things and challenge yourself and then just be reminded okay, this is really hard until it's not, and then, when it's not, everything feels so there's a lot more of a reward getting on the other side of it.

Speaker 2:

You know, like a tipping point, this idea of having like a tipping point. If you've ever read that book, malcolm Gladwell, I think it's a great one, and it seems like it's not true when you're in the moment. But like you will get to some point. A critical mass is what my dad would always call it, starting his medical practice. Like you get to a certain amount of clients and it's just like, oh, my goodness, there's all this abundance, yeah, and it's there. It's a real thing. It happens over and over again. You just keep plugging away doing the right thing and it you tend to get there.

Speaker 1:

So tell me a little bit now about Jordan CPA, because you guys are very successful. You're you're on the other side of that, that tipping point now, from from being fired from working the jobs that you didn't want to be in. You knew that wasn't your future. Tell me a little bit about Jordan CPA. You guys are crushing it right now. I imagine you love what you're doing. What do you attribute a lot of that success to?

Speaker 2:

So there's one more piece too before I open Jordan CPA that kind of factors in here. So when I was CFO of a company, before I opened Jordan CPA, that kind of factors in here. So when I was CFO of a company, we grew from 30 to 75 employees in a couple of years, and so I had this experience of having grown really quickly, and during that process, though, we were bought by a private equity group. So CFO did the dog and pony show, learned a lot there, discovered that, and I'll keep this really brief, but I did get to speak at a CFO conference. It was very cathartic for me. Last national conference was fun, last week, right? Yeah, no, this was a year or two ago, oh, OK, I'm getting mixed up with your events.

Speaker 2:

But I uncovered that my boss was committing fraud. I became a whistleblower. I worked with the FBI who then tried to recruit me, which was that felt nice, at least whistleblower. I worked with the FBI who then tried to recruit me, which was that felt nice. At least it was one of the few bright points of like a really tough time. Discovered that a lot of the income we had was fake and it was this whole big thing. It was very public. It was a super stressful time. During it we discovered we were losing a couple hundred thousand dollars a month and the equity group said hey, andrew, you're now the president because our CEO is now in jail and he's in jail for a few more years and has like a $20 million restitution order and like, you're now in charge of figuring out how to fix this thing. And so that's the piece that for me was probably the most encouraging. For me, like, okay, fine, I've been a CFO so I can like sell CFO services, but also like I can run a business. I've run a business. We turned it around in a year.

Speaker 2:

And then the kind of sad ending there is our equity group did a settlement with the federal government and it was like a hundred million dollar settlement or something. It was just phenomenally horribly for them big, and so they lost all their cash. So they had to shut down like six, eight of their companies all at once and we'd gone into the black, but like just barely, and we had all this like past trauma and like negative baggage, so like we were one that made sense. So I was launching my firm and this happened, coincidentally in April. So I launched a firm in April and yeah, but that experience like one of the things that you talk about is like your experience you always carry with you and so, even though I don't have that job anymore, like the experience allowed me to make Jordan CPA services really successful and there's like we're a team of 12. We have a new person starting on Monday, we're hiring for two more positions and so like we're very much in growth mode and have been for a little while.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. Are you open to speaking a little bit more about that experience that you went through when you were the fractional CFO and in the whistleblowing and what happened there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I mean. So I was their CFO. I was the first ever CFO when I came in and they had about 30 people. I was primarily tech companies, kind of this family of companies. They're like five or six different entities but all kind of around tech. And so, yeah, man, that was.

Speaker 2:

What happened is we had a Walmart contract. So we're about an hour from Bentonville where Walmart is headquarters. Our CEO, his spouse, worked in IT at Walmart and so he came with this like and we weren't that big, we're like a 5 million or less a year company and he had a $3.5 million Walmart contract. I think that was the amount. It was a few million, yeah, yeah, the idea was it was going to lead to so much more programming work from Walmart. And there was. I mean, it's the most elaborate thing you can imagine. There were emails. There were emails, there were people. He came every week into my office and gave me a download of his meeting with the Walmart guy. I forgot the guy's name, but he had a name, had an email. He loved to golf, his daughter was sick. I mean there are all of these things right, this imaginary person, fake contracts, fake RFPs, fake everything.

Speaker 2:

And what happened was eventually, after a while, like the project just kept dragging on and on and never quite got launched, and there are always more requirements and more hoops. And hey, we're working with Walmart. You know what do you expect, kind of a thing. And this guy was like a master at sort of perpetuating this. That's crazy. It was crazy.

Speaker 2:

And so when I went to my boss so we're owned by a Native American tribe, was the equity group and I went to my boss and I told my wife that morning I'm going to come home without a job. But I have to say something because I have no proof. And the phrase they used to describe the CEO was the goose that laid the golden egg. He was our only sales guy. He had all the relationships. He was talking to Gulfstream, he was talking to Procter gamble, he had the walmart deal. All those were fake, by the way, procter gamble was too, and gulfstream was too, as it turned out. But he was a really smart guy and he built these elaborate things so he had all of it looked very, very real.

Speaker 1:

So Was that a difficult decision to come to? Knowing like, okay, I need to say something, but like, this is serious stuff. You're not. You know you're not holding a white lie here. This is massive information. Like how are you handling that internally? Before you did say to your wife, hey, I'm going to work and I will be home early, internally before you, before you did say to your wife hey, I'm going to, I'm going to work and I will be home early.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, and that was the conversation, and I was very fortunate that the CEO said, okay, well, you don't have any proof, I need you to not say anything and not rock the boat.

Speaker 2:

And also, we will watch this and we will gather evidence. And over the months, like it became obvious I mean during that time, after I talked with him and was gathering evidence, was actually harder. It was easy for me to decide like this is the right thing to do. Again, accountants, like that's part of our training, like there's sort of this black and white, don't subordinate your judgment to someone else. You see something, you have to say something, and so it was easier to say something than not to say something. The really hard part was then afterwards, sort of playing double agent something. The really hard part was then afterwards sort of playing double agent, yeah, because then for three months or whatever, he'd come into my office and give me all these details and increasingly I was like I don't think, I think you're lying to me right now, and to keep my face straight, like that was hard for me.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, no kidding, yeah, that was it was crazy I mean I went, I was 32, 33, something like that, and I went, had a stress test done because I said to my doctor I have persistent chest pain and it was just from stress.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, whistleblowing is not great. No.

Speaker 1:

That's crazy that that happened. That's, yeah, my mind like kind of my mind's exploded a bit there. That's wild. Well, tell me a little bit about Jordan CPA and all the good things you guys are doing now. So what would you attribute a lot of that success to? Within the firm, you guys are growing. You're in growth mode. You're bringing on new team members. What is working so well for you, either from a retention standpoint, a deliverable standpoint with your team? Maybe it's how you guys are bringing new clients through the door, what's really working well that other listeners can take and try to implement on their own to see the same success that you guys are having.

Speaker 2:

I mean I would be remiss if I didn't say one of the things that works absolutely the best for me is my business partner, and so that doesn't help anyone else out. But, man, my business partner, we're we're so different, we're opposites in many ways, and so that means we're complimentary and where I'm weak she's strong, and vice versa is a much harder relationship to pull off than picking someone like you, but I think it's ultimately a lot more strengthening, and, and so that's having someone that you trust in your business. She started out as just an employee and she started out as my admin person, but she has an accounting background, and then she became my key employee and then became my partner, and so that, for us, has been huge. One thing that I am a huge fan of, too, is we follow something called EOS from the book Traction and the idea.

Speaker 2:

There's different other systems like it too, but the idea is, if you just fix everything with a Band-Aid, you end up with a company held together with duct tape, which is how so many companies are, and so just spending that little bit of time every week gradually improving things, I mean we look back. You know you have to do this periodically or you go crazy. And we look back and we say, oh, my goodness, we've solved a hundred things this year. A hundred little things. That really adds up, and so that's part of what's gotten us really traction going. That's great yeah.

Speaker 1:

What about? What about the, the retention aspect, or I guess retention, but even the deliverables cause, you're not doing all of the fulfillment every single day, whatever the, whatever the, you know the, the customer orders at the table. You're not out back preparing the meal and then running it out to the table and checking hey, did you enjoy the meal? So are you able to speak a little bit about how you're finding team members, how you're able to train up staff to deliver the quality work that you were kind of able to put your stamp of approval on?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, what's funny is, at the tech company, our primary business was custom programming.

Speaker 2:

I don't write any code, I don't know any computer languages at all, and yet somehow we were successful and profitable, with someone who can't actually do the work themselves doing zero of the work right, and if you think about it, that's like how every company is, except for CPA firms and CPA firms and, I think, engineering firms and law firms and a few other ones like oh no, we have to do the work. Personally, one of my goals in growing one of the reasons we started talking originally is like I want to get to the point where instead of 12 or 13 employees, we have 20 to 30, because at that phase I really get to be out of the day to day, and that's my goal. Like I want to be the president of this company, I want to be running things I want to. I like my CFO, my fractional CFO client, so I'm sure I will keep some of those. But like I don't want to be reviewing tax returns like I did this year. That's my goal.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. Last question for you, andrew what's the?

Speaker 2:

best piece of advice you've ever received. The best piece of advice I have ever received, man. I don't know exactly who said it or the exact wording, but like from a lot of people, a lot of different ways. Like figuring out who you are and what matters to you and then going after that, not going after what you think you should want or what someone else wants, like I think that's the best thing. One of my good friends said she became partner of a small firm and she said I got to the top of the building, got out on the roof and realized I'd climbed the wrong building, and so she's pivoted her career. I'm super proud of her. She's amazing. But that idea of you know, do the thing that's right for you, I think that's it that's so powerful it's.

Speaker 1:

It's your life at the end of the day.

Speaker 1:

And you shouldn't be living it for for someone else or to try to appease someone else. I think you can. You can help make people happy on your journey. Don't have to be entirely selfish, but that's that's really cool I that's great advice, andrew, thank you so much for for coming on and sharing your story and all of your insight and knowledge. Um, I really hope the listeners enjoyed this episode. How can people get in touch with you if they want to continue the conversation or they're looking to work with you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so my email is probably the easiest way to reach me. It is a for Andrew and then Jordan. J O R D A N a, jordan at Jordan CPA servicescom. I'm also on LinkedIn Find me there.

Speaker 1:

Perfect. We'll put that info in the show notes so people can get in touch with you. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, comment on it, like it. Whatever you need to do to get more exposure so that more and more people can get this amazing info that Andrew and all of our guests are sharing. Andrew again, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Cool, thank you.

Speaker 1:

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 accountingleadsnowcom 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 3:

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.