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Articles by Kyle Walters
Council Post: Pennies, Steamrollers And Bonds: Are Your Potential Rewards Worth The Risk?
Kyle is the bestselling author of The Personal CFO, Founder of Atlas Wealth Advisors, and Co-Founder of L&H CPAs. getty When it comes to long-term investment strategy, one of the most important concepts to understand is calculating risk versus reward. You want to look for investments that come with the highest potential for reward and the lowest potential for catastrophic risk. Sometimes, though, investors do the opposite.
Council Post: How Do Financial Advisors Get Paid?
Kyle is the bestselling author of The Personal CFO, Founder of Atlas Wealth Advisors, and Co-Founder of L&H CPAs. getty One of the trademarks of a good relationship with your financial advisor is trust. For you to commit to investing your savings and your financial future with someone, it’s important to understand how they get paid, how much they get paid and why. Your financial advisor probably knows exactly how you make your money. Do you understand how they make theirs?
Council Post: How To Find The Best Financial Advisor For You
Kyle is the bestselling author of The Personal CFO, Founder of Atlas Wealth Advisors, and Co-Founder of L&H CPAs. getty There are over 300,000 financial advisors in the United States. Choosing the right financial advisor is a decision that offers lasting benefits to your family, your life and your legacy. Choosing the wrong financial advisor, on the other hand, can be an expensive mistake. And, it's a mistake people typically don't even know they made.
Council Post: How To Control Your Investing Experience
Kyle is the bestselling author of The Personal CFO, Founder of Atlas Wealth Advisors, and Co-Founder of L&H CPAs. getty Because investing requires risk, putting money in the stock market can feel stressful. We can’t control what will happen tomorrow, next month or even next year in the market. We can’t control what the market will give us, but there is something within our control: our experience. The solution is simpler than you think. It all comes down to time.
Now is the time to be your clients' problem-solver
Ever since the coronavirus took the U.S. by storm, I’ve spent the better part of my time on the phone with our clients. At times like these, when so many business owners and other successful people are scared, you can play a vital role as your clients’ go-to problem-solver. Whether it’s debt obligations, cash flow, employee issues or retirement, nobody’s in a better position than you to help clients with issues like these. Why? Because nobody knows their financial situation better.
Advisor Insights: Atlas Wealth Advisors Managing Director Kyle Walters On Making Clients' Lives Easier
By Kyle Walters, CFP, CPWA, CIMA, Managing Director of Atlas Wealth Advisors, LLC For this series, we have asked guest bloggers from established financial advisory firms to provide their views on a range of topics. Atlas Wealth Advisors is a growing investment advisory firm dedicated to helping clients have the confidence they need to make smart financial decisions today and tomorrow.
Don’t take your post-tax season vacation yet
You’re past the finish line of another frantic busy season. Congrats! Before you pack your bags and hightail it to the airport, take a half day with your team to review all the moving pieces involved in your latest busy season. Tax Day may be April 15, but tax season should officially end on April 16. Let your team sleep in. Order lunch for the office. But make sure everyone shows up. Sure, there were days and clients that you’d like to forget ASAP.
Point with your thumb, not with your finger
Ahh, busy season. Chances are you’re lamenting how disorganized your clients are this time of year. You’re wondering how they can get through life when they’re such procrastinators about sending in the simple forms and statements you need to do your job. Bloomberg Sure, most clients don’t enjoy the tax preparation process, but when you start pointing the finger at clients and blaming them for delays and frustrations, you’re not looking in the right direction. You need to look in the mirror.
Point with your thumb, not with your finger
Ahh, busy season. Chances are you’re lamenting how disorganized your clients are this time of year. You’re wondering how they can get through life when they’re such procrastinators about sending in the simple forms and statements you need to do your job. Sure, most clients don’t enjoy the tax preparation process, but when you start pointing the finger at clients and blaming them for delays and frustrations, you’re not looking in the right direction. You need to look in the mirror.
Adopting a Ritz Carlton mentality
If you’re feeling like busy season is especially…well, busy this year, you’re not alone. With late nights, deadlines and tax reform weighing down on you, it’s tempting just to check things off the list as quickly as possible and move on to the next client obligation. Before checking another box, take a step back and identify what your service really is: a luxury. Now, I know you don’t identify your accounting firm this way.
Client communication during busy season
Take a quick look at the email exchange below: Charla: “Kyle, can you do a call at 9 am tomorrow?” Kyle: “I have a meeting at 9. How about 8:30?” Charla: “That should be fine. You will call Larry’s cell phone at ...” Seems pretty routine, right? This is where professional service firms tend to slip—the day-to-day back and forth with clients—especially when a firm is under time pressure. Granted, we all make mistakes and I’ll talk about owning up to them in my next article.
Productivity hacks: Getting more out of your valuable time
Busy season has barely begun and I can’t tell you how many CPAs have told me they expect it to be one of the most frenetic and stressful tax seasons ever. As mentioned in my book The Personal CFO, most professionals are living in a constant state of information overload and decision fatigue. Clients are increasingly demanding and there are more choices than ever to weigh. As I wrote last year in Don’t Succumb to Decision Fatigue, we now have vast stores of information and options at our fingertips.
Productivity hacks: Getting more out of your valuable time
Busy season has barely begun and I can’t tell you how many CPAs have told me they expect it to be one of the most frenetic and stressful tax seasons ever. As mentioned in my book "The Personal CFO," most professionals are living in a constant state of information overload and decision fatigue. Clients are increasingly demanding and there are more choices than ever to weigh.
The annual organizer is dead - long live the engagement kit
We recently merged two accounting practices into our firm this fall. One of the first things we discussed with our new colleagues was how to start communicating with clients when tax season kicks off in January. We discovered that one of the firms still mailed tax organizers to clients in January.
How to get hydrated without choking on the fire hose
Seth Godin, the prolific blogger and marketing guru, likes to say,“Drinking from a fire hose is a really bad way to get hydration.” We’re all humans. We need water to survive. But no matter how thirsty you are, if you are getting deluged from all sides, the normal response is to walk away and say, “I’m better off thirsty.” Mario Beauregard Obviously, that’s not sustainable for your personal health or your practice.
A goal is not a plan
Holidays aside, it should be relatively quiet around the office this time of year. After spending so much time in the Performance Zone all year, it’s time to get back into the Learning Zone.
50 shades of (CPA) gray
If you’re like many CPAs, you don’t use words like “maybe,” “probably,” “perhaps” or “possibly” — at least in the workplace. Those are messy words that leave too much room for ambiguity and uncertainty. Unfortunately, that messy pool of ambiguity is where the world is headed and your clients expect you to help them wade through those murky waters of uncertainty. Legendary venture capitalist Peter Thiel likes to talk about the difference between calculus (determinate) and statistics (indeterminate).
It’s not fee compression; it’s value compression
As we head into the new year, a question I keep hearing from CPAs is: “How do I start raising my fees?” When I hear that my first reaction is: “Great. What are you going to be providing to justify the increase?” Usually they point to things like their rising overhead and cost of living.
Become the expert in your client
When I attend CPA conferences or read the trade publications, there’s plenty of advice about how CPAs can get to the next level. Most of the time, it’s about mastering a technical area especially in light of the new tax laws. That’s useful, of course. But you rarely hear suggestions about how to work more effectively with clients or how to help clients solve their problems.
Red teaming
With football and midterm elections in full swing, everyone’s keeping tabs on their competitors. Sure, competitive intelligence has its merits. But, suppose you turned the tables and asked yourself: “Where do our competitors think we are vulnerable? How would they try to put us out of business? Which of our shortcomings would they highlight, if they were bidding against us to win the same new client?” As we head into the fourth quarter, now is a great time to take the outward-looking-in approach.
Divinely discontent clients
In his annual letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, "One thing I love about customers is that they are 'divinely discontent.'" That sounds existential, but he meant that it’s human nature for customer expectations to keep going up — no matter how well you serve them. And for that reason, Bezos said, “Companies cannot rest on their laurels.” Research shows one-third of your clients are considering switching CPA firms at any given time. I’d say that estimate is conservative.
Becoming an anti-fragile CPA
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger." That popular quote, attributed to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, has been sprinkled into countless motivational speeches by generals, coaches, business leaders and reality TV show survivors. But lately, I’ve been thinking there’s more to success than simply surviving difficult circumstances; it’s about learning how to embrace those challenges so you become comfortable with, and become stronger from, that discomfort.
How would your firm change if you served CEOs instead of clients?
Management guru Peter Drucker once said that the most important question companies should ask themselves is: “What do our customers [clients] value most?” But, Drucker said it’s the question companies tend to ask least, because they think they already know the answer. From a CPA’s perspective, the thing your clients value most is not a spreadsheet, financial statement or tax return. It’s the clarity you give them that helps them make better financial decisions.
Don’t succumb to decision fatigue
Today’s digital age gives us instant access to information and virtually unlimited choices at our fingertips. Having all this information at our disposal is empowering when you feel like you’ve covered all the bases and made the best decision possible. But sometimes having too many choices works against you when it prevents you from making decisions—or second-guessing the ones you’ve just made. Remember the famous “jam” study done at a busy upscale grocery in New York?
From number cruncher to personal CFO
In researching my new book The Personal CFO, I interviewed dozens of successful professionals, business owners and retirees. The same theme kept coming up during our discussions: “When I meet with my financial professionals, including my CPA, I feel like I’m just getting overloaded with information instead of getting what I really want—simplicity.” Clients appreciate all the professionals that are working hard on their behalf.
Avoiding smartest kid in the class syndrome
I remember early in my career, I would get so excited when clients came to our office for a consultation or review meeting. I really thought they were coming in to learn about all the latest developments I was following in accounting, tax and personal finance.
What CPAs can learn from Beyoncé
So, which zone is better: Performance Zone or Learning Zone? The Performance Zone is the core implementation of your work. It’s where you apply your skills, execute, try to minimize mistakes and achieve our best results. The Learning Zone is where you make improvements and focus on what you don’t know. It’s where you experiment and make mistakes in a low-risk setting so you can learn and get better. Actually you need to spend time in both zones to be the best you can be. Let me explain.
Hot wash that tax season away
Tax season is over. I’m sure the last thing you want to do is revisit the last couple months, but now is exactly when you want to have a debrief. The experience is still fresh in your mind. By documenting and addressing the friction points and bottlenecks ASAP, you will make the process less stressful and less painful the next time. I know what you’re thinking: “If I get the whole team in a conference room this time of year it will be a couple hours of bitching and moaning. Fingers will get pointed.
Hot wash that tax season away
Tax season is over. I’m sure the last thing you want to do is revisit the last couple months, but now is exactly when you want to have a debrief. The experience is still fresh in your mind. By documenting and addressing the friction points and bottlenecks ASAP, you will make the process less stressful and less painful the next time. I know what you’re thinking: “If I get the whole team in a conference room this time of year it will be a couple hours of bitching and moaning. Fingers will get pointed.
Don’t be a numbers person: Be a ‘complexity filter’
People don’t have a problem finding information these days. It’s everywhere. They have a problem applying that information to their business and personal live and making it useful. As a CPA, that’s what clients are paying you for. But are you delivering knowledge and wisdom when you send clients a completed tax return or updated financial statement?
Don’t be a numbers person: Be a ‘complexity filter’ for your clients
That iPhone in your pocket is more powerful than the mainframe computers NASA used to put a man on the moon in 1969. We have more Information at our fingertips than is housed in the Library of Congress. And it’s on every device we own, available everywhere we go. We’re bombarded with more and more information every day. But is it making us smarter? No, unless you know how to use all this information to your advantage. People don’t have a problem finding information these days. It’s everywhere.
Amazon effect: Business with least amount of friction wins
Hopefully you’ve paid off all your holiday shopping charges by now. Wasn’t it amazing how much you spent with Amazon? All the charges are legitimate, but you don’t remember spending so much time shopping there, right? That’s the point. It’s just so easy to do business with Amazon that you’ll continue shopping there even if they don’t necessarily have the lowest prices. Amazon has all your billing, shipping and card information on file. They know exactly where you want your items shipped.
Autopsies without blame
You have two choices when things go wrong at your firm: Spend time defending yourself or spend time solving the problem. Attacking a colleague for making a mistake discourages learning, poisons your culture and ultimately hurts your clients. Make your organization a learning organization based on trust and transparency. I was flipping through the AICPA’s CPA Horizons 2025 Report the other day and a few things jumped out at me. First, CPAs must never stop learning.
Idea meritocracy for CPAs
Most CPAs know they must become more agile and more innovative to stay relevant. But how can you and your team take time out of your overloaded schedules to come up with new ideas, new services and better processes that clients value—and actually pay for? One of my favorite techniques for doing so is using “idea meritocracy,” a concept made famous by Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, and author of the best-selling new book, Principles.
Becoming a multiplying force
Most CPAs tell me they’d like to grow their firms. They also tell me they’d like to work fewer hours, raise their fees and increase their take-home pay. The question is not: “How can I raise my fees?” The question you need to ask yourself is: “How can I become more valuable to my best clients?” Hint: You may have to sacrifice some billable hours short-term to get to the next level of growth. Suppose you add a new service that increases your perceived value to a client by 40 percent.
Four quadrants to master for 2018
Now is the time of year when many of us sit down to finalize our business plans for 2018 and beyond. Like most professionals, CPAs will say they want to hit X amount of revenue or land X new clients in the coming year. But those numbers are just a byproduct of how you do business and the team you have in place. What you need to figure out is where you really want to be three years from now. What will an ideal day looks like for you then and how you’re going to get there?
Use 3 Colors to Create Clarity and Deliver Value - CPA Trendlines
How the three colors of a traffic light can improve your client relationships. From the CPA’s perspective, a completed tax return is a summary of all the hard work that you have done on behalf of your client. The return represents a mountain of paperwork that you have tamed – everything you had to evaluate, research and consider in order to complete the often-complex process of preparing and filing a U.S. tax return.
What Can You Offer That IBM’s Watson Can’t? - CPA Trendlines
A personal touch is just the start. Did you know that the entire technology infrastructure NASA used to put a man on the moon in the 1960s could fit inside your iPhone today? Hard to believe, but not if you understand the basic principle of Moore’s Law – that the processing power of computers doubles every two years. That means the processing power of computers has doubled about 25 times over since the first Apollo moon landing. So, you’re a CPA, not a rocket scientist.
The What, So What and Now What? - CPA Trendlines
It's no longer enough to be a historian. Ever noticed that a car's windshield is always larger than its rearview mirror? When you are driving down the highway of life, looking ahead is far more important than looking behind you. The same is true when it comes to your client’s financial goals. Reporting the past doesn’t provide them with as much value as helping them see their future.
Clients Don’t Have a Fee Problem, They Have a Value Problem - CPA Trendlines
Clients don’t pay you to fill in forms, they pay you to help them make better financial decisions. As a CPA, it’s easy to think your job is simply to provide tax and auditing services – i.e. to give clients a historical analysis of their financial statements. Your input is data; your output is more data in the form of a completed tax return. Chances are, you became a CPA because you’ve always liked numbers and structure.
The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy - Season 3
Help make the final season of the award-winning web series "The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy"
The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy - Season 2
Thanks for making Season Two happen! check out our season 3 campaign - bit.ly/makeNPW
Storyburg: An Adventure Story Deckbuilding Game
Campaign Rewards FAQ 10 Community STORYBURG is an adventure story deck-building game. Play as Dorothy Gale, Peter Pan, Alice Liddell, and Little Nemo. Travel to Oz, fly to Neverland, rabbit-hole to Wonderland, and dream of Slumberland. Has elements of dungeon-crawlers, RPG, dice-chucking, and pick-your-own-path.
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