Adam Larson: 00:05

Hello, and welcome to Count Me In. I'm Adam Larson, and today, we're joined by a special guest, Chris Pappin, owner of Pappin CPA, and a beacon in the financial and legal realm. Our episode zeros in on the duties of advisors in a complex and changing world. Chris will share his wisdom gained from his tenure at PAP and CPA on guiding clients through uncertainty, thriving during challenging times like the pandemic, and the continued relevance of the ethical human advisor in an AI driven age. Expect a rich dialogue on setting client expectations, balancing emotions with sound financial advice, and the importance of integrity in the industry.

Adam Larson: 00:42

Tune in for an enlightening session with Chris Pappin. Let's dive in. Chris, we're so excited to have you on the podcast today, and as we're gonna be talking about, you know, the 3 pillars of the ethical trusted advisor, and especially in the context of the accountant, maybe we can start off by explaining the scope of shaping that role, the ethical trusted advisor. It's a that's a handful to say, isn't it?

Chris Papin: 01:10

It is. It is. 1st and foremost, thank you. A great opportunity. Appreciate the, the willingness to have the chat.

Chris Papin: 01:17

And then let me start with, I wear a lot of hats. I've got a CPA firm. I've got a law firm. I've got an insurance license. We do some other things outside of that, just in the sense of of general business.

Chris Papin: 01:30

My family are small business owners. So when it comes to scope, you can start to understand why I focus there.

Adam Larson: 01:36

Yeah.

Chris Papin: 01:37

What am I hired for? What is the expectation that goes with it? And I think COVID kind of put this on illustration for financial professionals where perhaps a business qualifies for a certain provision based on the advice of one person that maybe not based on the advice of another. So I always look through the lens, what what do my clients want? What is the expectation first?

Chris Papin: 02:01

And a lot of times in in the financial world, clients know what they think they want. Mhmm. So you get to translate for them into what they meant in the technical terms, if you will. So somewhere inside of this, what does it mean? At the end of the day, it's making sure that there's clarity around who you are as the service provider, who the client is, because maybe it's a small business, maybe it's a small business owner, maybe it's some combination of businesses, and then making sure that what they want and need line up to what you're good at and what you intend to help people with.

Chris Papin: 02:38

Mhmm. So running joke, simple analogy. You don't go to McDonald's and order a pizza. So don't do that to a tax and accounting professional. It creates a good dialogue point because I think folks actually start to think about what do I want rather than, oh, it's numbers you deal with.

Chris Papin: 03:05

That's it, which is tough. Right?

Adam Larson: 03:06

That is very tough when especially if you're within like, if you're part of a firm that's offering services. But if you're an accountant within an organization, you still have to look at it that way because a lot of times people look at the accounting team as that team over there and not the kind of the business partner, that trusted partner, the adviser that they should be, whether you're a CPA firm offering your services out or you're an internal accounting team, whatever it is, you still have to look at it from that perspective.

Chris Papin: 03:31

Oh, you bet. And and I go back to that that translator analogy I gave a minute ago. Mhmm. Numbers are the language of business. Yeah.

Chris Papin: 03:38

I mean, most businesses are out to achieve a goal. They they've got revenue streams or they've got financial benchmarks. How you account for that matters.

Adam Larson: 03:47

Yeah.

Chris Papin: 03:47

And and there's your translation. You need the numbers dorks like me around to help translate to did your marketing goals generate the revenue that you intended. Sometimes there's not a direct correlation, so getting the right stakehold holders in that conversation is really important. It is really important. So what are some

Adam Larson: 04:11

parameters as you're learning to translate, learning to connect with them. How do you set up those boundaries and are there common challenges that people face as they're trying to set that up?

Chris Papin: 04:17

Well, first is kind of a client learning story. You got to know who you serve, you got to make sure that what you do, or in our case, what we try to serve are small businesses and small business owners. Yeah. I don't wanna misconstrue that we are some version of a fractional CFO. We are an external accountant that is different than than what a fractional CFO may offer.

Chris Papin: 04:38

So making sure that you're lining up what does the client want to what you do is is kind of step number 1 for me. Be a big enough person to say it doesn't fit if it doesn't fit. Yeah. There's lots of great professionals out there. But on the other side of it, defining scope and making sure that the kind of folks are in boundaries for a lot of small business owners, tax and accounting stuff is you know, it's maintenance, it's required by the government.

Chris Papin: 05:02

It's the, I have to do it. So I don't want to deal with this. I'm a sales guy or I'm a technician in my business. I wanna make widgets or something. So realigning that principle, being forward looking, being a adviser, if you will.

Chris Papin: 05:18

We we speak about advisory services as opposed to maintenance services. Maintenance, the stuff you gotta do. Mhmm. That's what keeps your car running. You don't put gas in them.

Chris Papin: 05:27

There is no gas. If you don't file a tax return, there is no business. What business owners really want is that forward look, they don't drive while they're looking out their rearview mirror. They look through the windshield. So they need somebody that has this perspective of all that maintenance info, but is also sitting with them at that board of directors table in navigating, we call and, you know, again, all my quips, we call it a top ten list or goals or whatever it is that the clients are looking at.

Chris Papin: 05:53

But then let's have a collective conversation about how we can help you achieve those goals. If there's steps to hire our firm to do, create a change order. There's your scope conversation. If there's steps you need to hire somebody else to do, great. Hire them.

Chris Papin: 06:07

There's usually not crossover when you hire somebody else, but internally to businesses, we run-in the same problem. You know, the finance folks are notorious for saying, no, you can't spend money on advertising. And the advertising folks are saying, you got to spend more money on advertising. You have to balance those conversations out to make sure that why it's not a function of we're not willing to spend money on advertising. It's that we want to be stewards of the position that we are put in.

Chris Papin: 06:34

There's particularly for licensed professionals, there's usually a fiduciary duty that goes with that. There are professional ethics standards that go with that. And that's important that you meet those, which is very different than kind of where I started this with, Hey, you want a second opinion on your on your COVID stuff? Not everybody was doing that in a legit format and unfortunately got pushed back on licensed professionals that do it for a living. Do you meet the criteria or not?

Chris Papin: 07:03

And is somebody testing that criteria? Because I I mean it in the nicest way, but most clients don't know what the standards are. If you ask a client, was I impacted by COVID? They'll say yes. But that's not a qualifier.

Chris Papin: 07:14

Were you impacted by COVID based on IRS definitions? Different question. Right?

Adam Larson: 07:20

Very different question.

Chris Papin: 07:21

It illustrates that subtlety around what is scope? What is my role? What is my job? What do you want it to be? And sometimes you got to say no.

Chris Papin: 07:29

That's that's the reality of it. And it's tough, but you have to. Well, and

Adam Larson: 07:33

it's not easy saying no, because you're like, oh, I'm losing business, or I'm doing or I wanna grow my business. And if I say no, then I won't get that business. And it's that fear factor. And it's kind of over understanding good business decision versus weighing your fear.

Chris Papin: 07:46

Yeah. The fear and emotion, you know, money comes with emotion whether you like it or not. So naturally in business, emotion creeps in despite what everybody will try to say and keeping emotion out, but is particularly with, with financial decisions. Yeah. What we may want is to be the number one person in our industry or be the number one brand in our area.

Chris Papin: 08:08

What we can afford might be something very different. Mhmm. We watch a lot of small business owners owners make personal decisions, like buy a boat or want a larger home for their family or, you know, they're these are great ideas because they're vesting in bringing their family together, experiences. But if the business is the thing that funds that, now you're in a funding competition between your family and your business. That's not an easy decision.

Chris Papin: 08:32

And as a business owner, we don't know what's best sometimes. So helping reason through that in pulling on experience, Now my my running joke, and you'll you'll find I've got tons of quips as we go through, right? You've already gotten like 5 or 6, but my running joke is, hey, Adam. I have an investment for you. I need a $100,000 from you.

Chris Papin: 08:52

What do you think? Interested?

Adam Larson: 08:53

What are we investing?

Chris Papin: 08:55

Okay. So you're you're gonna get this thing, and you're really gonna like this thing. It's shiny. It's pretty. Everybody's gonna comment on it.

Chris Papin: 09:02

The catch is is at the end of year 1, it's gonna be worth $80,000. And And at the end of year 2, probably 70, maybe 65. The end of year 3, it could be 50.

Adam Larson: 09:12

Sounds like a car.

Chris Papin: 09:13

No. By the way, there may be a surprise tax bill when you sell it. But what do you think now?

Adam Larson: 09:17

Sounds like I'm buying a bad a car.

Chris Papin: 09:20

You are buying a car. Okay. You're spot on. Most people will say, why on earth would I do that? Yeah.

Chris Papin: 09:26

And obviously with your wisdom and experience in this area, you know exactly where I'm going, but every client we have says they want to build wealth or they want to work towards the future. But in the next vein says, I want to buy a depreciating asset. So I tell the whole story to get back to, how do you tell somebody that you told me one decision was to grow wealth and another decision is going to directly impact that? Yeah. That's where I'm not saying no.

Chris Papin: 09:51

I'm illustrating 2 different paths and 2 competing scenarios. Business owner's choice. It's always the business owner's choice. But let me show you let me illustrate to you the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now, if I said it or a Range Rover or like a G Wagon or something like that, people perk up and they're like, oh, it's a it's shiny.

Chris Papin: 10:08

That's a status symbol. At what cost?

Adam Larson: 10:11

Yeah. At what cost? Well, and like I I was I was I have a my oldest child is is starting to drive. And I was explaining to her, like, you may want a really expensive car. But you as always remember, can I maintain an expensive car?

Adam Larson: 10:25

Because you might be able to buy Mercedes, but can you maintain having that Mercedes for many, many years because the cost of maintenance, all that stuff, the parts are more expensive, etcetera, etcetera. And then, therefore, you have to understand what the long term vision of buying that thing is. And something clicked when I said that.

Chris Papin: 10:41

It's interesting how how we we tease in Charlie. We we call these fables. Mhmm. You know, do kind of the the childhood fable that they've gotta be simple enough that a young child can understand, but complex enough that it makes sense to adults too. Of course.

Chris Papin: 10:54

But if the analogy hits, it's a beautiful one because as a, as a young person, you know, your, your daughter's making a choice. Do I want a or B that's what business owners get to do all day, every day. And we want to do it with them with the right parameters. How am I supposed to help somebody make that decision if I'm not hired or engaged to look at the future looking conversation? Mhmm.

Chris Papin: 11:15

It's so hard to do in a silo. I can tell you what everybody else made a decision on. Mhmm. I can tell you statistically what doesn't make sense. That's not what people wanna know.

Chris Papin: 11:24

How does it impact me?

Adam Larson: 11:26

Yeah. When when you're a small business, numbers are very important because sometimes you're going from you're making decisions based on whatever is in your bank account because you're that small. Yeah. And you have to make very strategic decisions. So it's very hard to make those those impactful decisions because it's risky.

Chris Papin: 11:41

It is. And you get all kinds of good advice, and and, you know, we were teasing earlier about TikTok. People watch TikTok all the time and and, you know, hey, my neighbor said I should, or I saw a TikTok video on. Mhmm. And and I'm not to say that that advice is not wrong or correct.

Chris Papin: 11:57

There's a lot of good material on all all of the different social channels that get people started, but they don't see the perspective as how it applies to you. They don't see the bigger goal. They don't see that larger advisory standard is the way I'm going to say it. And I know a lot of folks in the industry are really trying to shift, especially getting clients off of kind of a commodity based exchange into that value based conversation. But every client I talk to Mhmm.

Chris Papin: 12:24

Wants the something more. They just don't know how to ask for it.

Adam Larson: 12:27

Yeah.

Chris Papin: 12:27

Then there's another question around, can we afford it and does it make sense and all of those other things too, but, you know, layers to that onion that we have to unpack with folks. For sure. So when

Adam Larson: 12:37

we're talking about being an ethical trusted adviser, you know, especially in the accounting world, you know, IMA has their ethical professional practices, you know, NASBA has the ethics requirements for people who are CPAs. So all the different accounting bodies have their ethical requirements, but when you're in the trenches and, you know, somebody comes up to you and says, hey, I need these numbers to work, you're like, well, I can't just make the numbers change all of a sudden. You're faced with many challenges, especially having to tell the truth. And sometimes that truth doesn't look good.

Chris Papin: 13:04

Yeah. Especially during COVID, too. Right?

Adam Larson: 13:06

Yes. Especially during COVID.

Chris Papin: 13:09

So one example that I'll give, there was COVID loans, the EIDL loans. Yes. And they had a very narrow use that was permitted with them. And universally, everywhere, this is not just me and and our profession. I know CPA firms, accounting firms all over the nation We're fighting this battle because it's a 30 year fixed 2.75% business loan.

Chris Papin: 13:34

Wow. Who's not going to sign up for that.

Adam Larson: 13:36

Yeah.

Chris Papin: 13:37

But what's the catch on the other side? What are you gonna use it for? And and there was a lot of chatter, and we're still kind of in the gray, if you will, about how are you going to prove it? What are you going to go through the battle with? And the way I use it as an analogy was, hey, they've given you a baseline in in, you know, try to try to keep this neutral for all audience members.

Chris Papin: 13:59

But I have what I call a clean hands test. Can you stand up and look as if you have clean hands at the end of it? If you took on the loan and you did all the things you were supposed to do and check the box, buying PPE, supporting your team, keeping people employed, paying the rent, all the things you were supposed to do. Maybe there's some other variables in there that weren't directly applicable, but were a result of COVID, cool. I'm all for it.

Chris Papin: 14:23

But if you took on the loan and all of a sudden have 7 more locations, I don't think that's the way it was supposed to work. That does not look like you have clean hands. So by analogy, I spoke with most folks, and then sometimes you got to use it. It's fear factor. We had a few people that wanted to be aggressive, and I just reminded them, 1st and foremost, I am not hired as legal counsel.

Chris Papin: 14:44

However, even if I were, I do not have the resources of the US Department of Justice. Oh, yeah. That's an endless fund. Yeah. Sometimes you just have to give some sticker shock.

Chris Papin: 14:55

There are scenarios where it's gray. Mhmm. In where it's gray, we talk about audit proofing. Okay. And going through a process based on the data that was available at the time, did you make a good faith effort to comply?

Chris Papin: 15:07

I've never known anybody to get in trouble when they made a good faith effort. Yeah. You don't have to be perfect. Here, I just did the best I could under the circumstance. So those are a couple of ways that that we kind of try to talk folks through.

Chris Papin: 15:19

Mhmm. You know, inevitably lenders and things like that want income. Well, as a taxpayer, you don't. Those are competing interests. I you know, we educate folks on kind of the goods, the bads.

Chris Papin: 15:31

But what I have found is folks don't cheat. They're not really wanting to cheat. Cheat. They just don't have an understanding of the principles. Yeah.

Chris Papin: 15:38

So once they once it's clear what's going on, for example, I bought my g wagon and I took it as depreciation, so my income looks a lot less. Guess what? The bank doesn't care. They're gonna add that back. They know that that is a non cash item.

Chris Papin: 15:53

Oh, well, if that's the case, then I think we're okay. So that's kind of my paradigm. Now I fully understand there's a whole different set, But as we onboard folks, we flat toe them. We don't lie. We don't cheat.

Chris Papin: 16:03

We don't steal if you're even close to that in the conversation now. And I think most licensed professionals do the same thing. Yeah. Now I want to touch on one quick thing. You mentioned like all the different governing bodies.

Chris Papin: 16:16

There are a lot of layers, but licensed professionals kind of know where that is. Mhmm. And what I have found that the more and more and more I go with different reputable licensed folks, there's also what I'm going to call a true north. It's not necessarily a moral or like a religious or anything like that. It's just, we know what happens with successful business owners, and we're going to follow that path.

Chris Papin: 16:41

We're going to pattern success. We're not going to pattern failure. So sometimes that ends up an easier way to say you could go down that road, but the other 7 people that just went down that road had these hurdles in front of them. If you don't like those hurdles, perhaps choose a different exit.

Adam Larson: 16:56

I like that. Because it's one of those things where there's so many different situations that you find yourself in as a professional, whether you're running a business or whether you're running a system, you know, whether you're CPA, CMA, whatever certification you have, whatever governing body you agree to, there's so many situations and and things are constantly changing and it's hard to stay on top of that. So all the more important that as professionals that we need to stay up with our continuing education, make sure we understand the changing of the laws. And so how do you balance that to make sure that you said that clean hands test, but you're like, But everything I'm dealing with seems to be gray, and I feel like I have gray matter all over my hands. How do I fix that?

Adam Larson: 17:31

Where's that balance there?

Chris Papin: 17:33

It's hard. I mean, one of, one of the things that I lean on and particularly during, you know, I'm using COVID as the example, repetitively, just because it was an unprecedented time, Of course, from 1986 to, like, 2017, there were, what, 4 or 5 major tax law changes. And then in 2021, there were 4 or 5 major tax law changes. You know, it's it's one of those, like, I think it was January 18th. No.

Chris Papin: 17:59

It was March 18th when the first major COVID legislation hit. I checked voice mail that weekend and already had 2 messages at, like, 9 PM that night. Hey, I saw on the news, like, guys, I haven't even printed the law and you're asking me what it is. So what I have chosen to do and what I think helps people understand is talk a little bit about the learning process. Talk a little bit about how I go through my process of gaining information.

Chris Papin: 18:30

We're plugged into a nationwide network of folks that do something similar to we do. Mhmm. You know, having conversations with guys like you, making sure that everybody is pulled together. And as an industry, we kind of see a pattern here. We don't know if it's correct or not, but this is the pattern that we see today.

Chris Papin: 18:47

Mhmm. And and I think seems this is a for real thing we did. We, but we shared, you know, the old YouTube video about the piece of paper, like how a bill becomes a law. Yeah. We reminded people that if it's one house or the other, stop listening because it's going to change 15 times, worry about it once it's been signed by the president.

Chris Papin: 19:07

So that process kind of reiterated social studies 101 in a sense, but here's how we get our information. Here's the path we go on. Sometimes buying time is in your favor. You don't need to be the guinea pig. Mhmm.

Chris Papin: 19:21

Now in other instances, my style was, I don't know all the ins and outs. I'll help you with the full disclaimer of here's what I know to date, but I can't know all of it because it's final regulations are not issued. So we have the conversation. You paper that up like any normal process. Most folks got it, especially during those times.

Chris Papin: 19:43

So now with instant on demand information, I mean, there's, you know, you can ask Microsoft Copilot any tax question you want. It'll get it right about 40% of the time. But with that level of information, I think there's where the collaboration process communication is the yes, no question. Yeah. It's not.

Chris Papin: 20:06

Most good clients vest with you in that process. Mhmm. And the way I will say it is if if the client isn't, they weren't my client to begin well.

Adam Larson: 20:15

It was one thing that you said as we were preparing for this, that interactions with, you know, clients, it's like that. It's not all rainbows and unicorns, and we have to be flexible. And maybe you can expound upon that a little bit about not being all rainbows and unicorns.

Chris Papin: 20:27

Yeah. The clickbait is rainbows and unicorns. Right? But Yeah. Sometimes it's sunny outside.

Chris Papin: 20:32

Sometimes it's cloudy. Sometimes you slip on the ice and the ice and snow falls on your head. That's just the nature of the beast. So we, we token it rainbows and unicorns, just having fun. But the reality is that if you are in business, you're going to get IRS notices.

Chris Papin: 20:49

Something wrong is going to go along. I mean, life is this way. You have ups and downs and ebbs and flows. So part of what we try to vest folks in is a conversation. If you can't have a hard conversation with your professional adviser, I don't need to be your professional adviser.

Chris Papin: 21:03

If you don't trust me to tell me the negative and work our way through it Mhmm. I don't know what we're doing because that long relationship there, what do you do when you're in a car accident, you ended up addicted to pain meds, your wife takes the kids and moves out, your business is failing, and you've got an IRS link. What do you do? Nobody wants to have that conversation. Yeah.

Chris Papin: 21:26

But I said this, and somebody knows the scenario or has had some pattern similar in their life. And, hopefully, whoever we're representing in that in that paradigm gets the help they need to overcome the hurdles, but the infrastructure is not set up only for success. So the best analogy I like to give here is is, you know, I I I Tom Brady is the goat to me, and he proved it because he was losing a Super Bowl by the most points ever and came back and won. He didn't abandon his principles. He didn't change teams.

Chris Papin: 21:58

He didn't quit. They didn't run new plays. They found a way to execute and overcome, and that's what business owners need to go do whenever it's not all of the positive things. You make decisions now when it's good to protect yourself when it's bad. You don't just buy more Range Rovers.

Adam Larson: 22:16

I I really like that. Make decisions now when it's good so that you're prepared for the bad. And I think in business and life, that's a great that's a great thing just in thinking of just life decisions you're making. If things are going well, make sure you're preparing for when things aren't so well. And that's a decision, like, for when you're when you're when you're going through life, when you're in in a business.

Adam Larson: 22:33

Like, that's that's something that everybody should be thinking about because not everything's going to be going well because there's good times and there's bad times.

Chris Papin: 22:39

You have to prepare for both. You bet. You bet. I mean, that's just the reality of it all. Your daughter took defensive driving courses at some point, right?

Adam Larson: 22:47

Not quite yet. I've been her driving course instructor, basically.

Chris Papin: 22:50

Okay. So inside of there, I'm willing to bet. At some point, you recommended that she breaks sooner just in case. Yes. No different.

Chris Papin: 22:59

That's what we're trying to go. You know, you can go insurance poor, spending money on all every risk that could be there. Mhmm. But make those strategic decisions so you have control, rather than being at the mercy of the car that's in front of

Adam Larson: 23:12

you. I like that. So, you know, let's say you're you're new to this and you're like, hey, I wanna get into this business of being a business adviser, being that that trusted ethical adviser. What what what advice would you give to somebody just getting in and, like, they wanna manage those expectations properly and and have transparency as they get into these complex business situations that we've been discussing?

Chris Papin: 23:30

You know, first and foremost, you know, a lot of your your, podcast guests have said this too. So I'm not unique. And we've all heard this, but you need to have clarity of vision on what you're doing. You need to know your why to put it in Simon Sinek terms. Mhmm.

Chris Papin: 23:45

If you know what you're supposed to go in and do, then you can help guide folks. Now I want to be clear in that. I am not at all pretending I know everything about everything because I don't.

Adam Larson: 23:56

Yeah.

Chris Papin: 23:56

But I do know what my role should be. I sit at the board of directors with the small businesses and the small business owners that we represent, and we discuss and we lay out options, and that might mean that we need to do some homework on a new scenario that came up. Cryptocurrency 10 years ago. Wasn't a thing. Yeah.

Chris Papin: 24:16

Now you can accept Bitcoin payments through online apps. And I've got lots of clients that are saying, Hey, should I do this? Does it make sense? So this is one of those where I didn't know, but we've got to figure out how do you report it? Is it appropriate?

Chris Papin: 24:31

Does it make sense? What's going on with the with all of the different reporting mechanisms? And then debate it for a business unit. I would argue that if you are a small business that maybe deals in things that are borderline appropriate or not, say a medical marijuana dispensary. Mhmm.

Chris Papin: 24:52

You're legal. It's legit in your state. Probably Bitcoin's not the thing to do. It's gonna look like you don't have clean hands. But as a as a restaurant, who cares?

Chris Papin: 25:04

So those nimble things, you know, 1st and foremost, you got to know what you're doing. 2nd, you've got to be willing to learn and you've got to be willing to adapt or say, this is outside my scope. We need to go find somebody else that this is their expertise. Mhmm. Or sometimes and and, you know, I'm I'm probably the first of this just because we're a relatively small shop.

Chris Papin: 25:25

All of my family stuff has always been relatively small shops. We're good at what we do. We're really good at what we do, but we don't know what we don't know in a lot of instances. So let's just stop here and let me go find you a resource. And if you want me to sit next to you and translate what that resource says, that's probably the strongest thing as a business adviser you can go do.

Chris Papin: 25:45

You don't have to be the expert, you can work with the expert, maybe pick up from the expert some new skill sets so that you can expand your representation as you go forward, and then communicate until your face turns blue. Because no matter how many times you go through it, like adult learning, there's there's kind of a mantra about tell, teach, tell. Well, my experience with clients is you can do that and then they'll forget it until you tell, teach, tell again because they're not worried about the technical thing all day, every day like you are. So making sure that everybody kind of knows why did I recommend that you shouldn't buy that vehicle because you told me you were behind on your retirement goals, and I don't see how taking on an auto loan advances your retirement goals. There's that.

Chris Papin: 26:30

It's small, but don't just say, no, I don't think you should buy the vehicle because they're going to say, my neighbor said I could save a bunch of taxes doing it. Your neighbor's correct. You could. Let's talk about all the other things you're giving up in exchange for that tax savings. Mhmm.

Chris Papin: 26:42

Which one makes more sense for you? Subtle, but I think important.

Adam Larson: 26:45

I like that, finding the right partners so that you can see the big picture properly.

Chris Papin: 26:50

Yeah.

Adam Larson: 26:50

Because we as individuals may not be able see the whole big picture, but it's surrounding yourself with the right people so that you can be informed properly to see the big picture in the right way. And as a business owner or as a professional, that is the best way to go forward and to be successful. And, I mean,

Chris Papin: 27:05

as a finance professional inside an organization Mhmm. You know, I was I was picking on advertising earlier, but there is no better lead source for a lot of businesses than social right now. Mhmm. They cannot measure dollars directly to the to the advertising. It's it's softer than that.

Chris Papin: 27:22

They can measure clicks. They can measure people in the pipeline. They can measure, you know, phone calls, things like that, but it's never, I spent 10,000. Therefore I got a 100. I wish,

Adam Larson: 27:32

Hey, that would be great.

Chris Papin: 27:33

But to, to your analogy in that scenario, right? You got to bring the right stakeholders to the table so we can see and talk about all the different variables and draw some professional conclusions about maybe that spend is 10,000 to get a 100,000. I don't know. If it is, by all means, sign up sign me up for that gig. There's there's more to it than that.

Chris Papin: 27:53

It's never that simple. And, and yeah, seeing the big picture is hard and none of us can do it. No, we all have different perspectives and lenses and experiences to pull on. The more of those you can get, the better you can get. Then there's that cost benefit analysis.

Chris Papin: 28:07

How much time do we have to analyze it and how much money do we want to spend on? The clients usually got maybe an hour a week at best that they're going to give you in these scenarios. So you got to distill that stuff back down to this basic driving analogies that we're having so much fun with.

Adam Larson: 28:24

We are having so much fun with those. I like to wrap these conversations. This has been a great conversation. I kind of like to wrap these up is, you know, if you had a crystal ball and you're looking into the future, how do you see this trusted advisor role evolving into the future? Especially, we've got changing technologies.

Adam Larson: 28:38

You know, you mentioned, you know, Copilot, you know, there's generative AI, there's so many things happening, and it's so fast. You know, how do you see this this role evolving as we as we look toward the future?

Chris Papin: 28:48

So the where I kind of go with most of my clients, most of the professionals that I talk to, it kind of boils down to the analogy around the language learning models, all of the different AI or automations. Sometimes I think we misplace vocab there, but the processes that are in place are based on data that is typically historic data. It can identify trends. It cannot show patterns. It can show qualifications and things like that that we had to do manually.

Chris Papin: 29:16

Nobody can predict the future, nor can any of these technologies. Yeah. They can show trends about the future. And deciding which trend fits the business or the client or the family, that's really where I see the the secret science. And it's not going to be as crystal clear as, oh, AI said do this, so go do this.

Chris Papin: 29:39

How do you go do that? That's the next piece. I tease folks all the time. Nobody's going to go do it for you. Yeah.

Chris Papin: 29:44

You've got to go do it. And that's where I think the infrastructure steps in. That's where I think an advisor really will shine going forward is, number 1, of the 3 decisions we've got in front of us, what makes the most sense? And then number 2, what is the path? What are the pieces to execute on to ensure as much success as possible?

Chris Papin: 30:04

Because I don't know if you're like me. I first thing I do half the time is Google it. Mhmm. And then Google will give me the framework So I know what vocab term to use, but it never tells the whole story. Of course.

Chris Papin: 30:14

And that's where your advisor is going to shine through. They're going to tell the rest of the story and pull from the experience and give it a little extra guidance and pull the audible when it's not rainbows and unicorns and help you overcome to go the other direction.

Adam Larson: 30:28

Yeah. Well, Chris, I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast, sharing your knowledge. This has been a great conversation, and I really hope our audience enjoyed it as much as I have.

Chris Papin: 30:37

Thank you again for the opportunity I've enjoyed every minute of.

Announcer: 30:41

This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.ima net.org.