405 Implementing VARIABLE Pay in an Accounting Firm

Gang, buckle up for this one. Today we are talking with Jamie Campbell who kind of has a different spin on variable compensation and how she approaches not only just how accountants get paid but, but equality, pay gap, wealth gap. Like there is such a mission to, to what Jamie does to the clients that her firm serves. Honestly kind of puts this whole production.

Pay conversation through a different lens.

Super sharp. You could tell just the level of.

Thought that has gone into this setup if you had any dou about, I don't know, production pay being.

I've heard it framed as almost like a lazy approach like commission sales or something like that.

Like, no, like there is a, a level of depth here that it's super, super impressive.

I think you're going to love this conversation.

So check this one out with Jamie Campbell.

Okay, we got Jamie today. Super excited for this one. Jamie, if someone has not had the.

Pleasure of meeting you in the wild yet, what is the, what is the 32nd Jamie Campbell intro?

Certainly. Thank you, Jason. My name is Jamie Campbell. I've been a CPA for about 20 years. I'm the co owner of Tier 1 services. We are outsourced year round CFOs and complete accounting departments. We serve primarily organizations involved in social justice and our clients are in the one to $20 million range. I love talking with my fellow accountants about what they're up to these days as much as I love talking with people out there doing great work for the communities.

So to contextualize your firm a bit.

For, for listeners are you doing is like bookkeeping, cfo, any element of tax or.

Not any longer. I was a tax practitioner for 10 years and I was an auditor and no regrets, never going to do it again. No longer having nightmares about it. But yeah, been there, done that, got the T shirt, never doing it again. So the teams that we deploy to serve clients are CFOs, controllers, bookkeepers, treasury specialists for segregation of duties and process managers.

Love the niche too that like anytime you see a firm that's like super excited about a very specific thing, like I love those kinds of firms.

Yes. We believe that financial sustainability and social and repairing social harms are not at odds. We believe that social justice demands financial sustainability and that's what we're here to do.

Very cool. Okay, so we were geeking out a bit before we hit record and you are like, you have, you've got like such a great framework for this. But I want to start like because most people listening to this have not done this before. Like let's go clear back to the very first, you know, scary version of this where you're kind of unsure what were maybe the problems you were trying to solve with this and what did that V1 look like?

Certainly we have used variable compensation from the beginning, from our first employee who we hired in our first year of being in business as an accounting firm. And the problem that we wanted to solve was scalability. How do we get off the ground? Because we know that, I mean, I had been in this industry for 10 years at that point. I was a happy employee in a stable public accounting firm receiving a traditional flat salary. I had incentive compensation and I was engaged in selling at that time, by the time I left. But I knew that we wouldn't be able to scale if the first thing we did was overload our overhead. Particularly because I didn't have a predictable sales pipeline. If I had a predictable sales pipeline, I, I may have overlooked the opportunity to develop a variable compensation model. But starting from zero, except the brains in my head, we developed this model in order to be able to scale.

Was for those first hires, like in the very beginning, was there added trepidation for them where they're like, you're telling.

Me you don't know if you've got.

The money to pay me, and that's, that's the model.

Well, so here's the thing. We always have the money to pay. In a variable compensation model, we have the money to pay 100% of the time. It's guaranteed by design. So for every dollar we bring in, we're paying out $0.40 plus payroll tax, the employer share of payroll taxes and benefits, et cetera, to the people doing the work. So making payroll is literally the least of my concerns because of our model. And to, to also answer the other piece of your question, which is, you know, what did our first employee say? We were a side hustle for her. She had a stable full time job in a bank. She came to me, we knew each other, and in fact, it just came up in conversation that she'd like to earn some extra money. And I stopped, I said, wait a minute, let us be your side hustle. So for our very first employee, there was very little risk for her because she had her salary and benefits.

So the very first version of this.

Was it as simple as 40% of what we get paid?

Yep, it is the version that survives today. And we have a firm of 16 people stretching across the US from coast to coast. And that is, it is without variation, the exact same model that we have today, 10 years later, more than my gosh, 12 years later, does it put.

Any pressure on, on the responsibilities that person gets tasked with or an added emphasis for them to be production oriented rather than some of the ancillary kind of supporting roles?

Yeah, great question. It absolutely put a structural pressure, not an emotional pressure, but a structural pressure on someone to be production oriented. And so we needed to build processes, policies and a culture which would by design minimize any non production activities. So what we did not have was a ton of meetings every week. We stripped those out and guess what? Everyone was happy to not have a ton of meetings every week. Over time, did meetings start to appear on the calendar? Yes, but that was that. That didn't happen until it made logical sense and financial sense to start having those meetings. When we had enough clients and enough team members, enough employees that we really would benefit from putting our heads together once a week and talking about our clients and how things are going, celebrating together, troubleshooting together, sharing our wisdom. Oh, you have troubles on that engagement. We had a trouble on this engagement that's similar. Here's how we solved it. And as time continued to go on and our firm continued to develop, we had multiple CFOs, multiple controllers, multiple bookkeepers, et cetera. So a role specific coaching meeting evolved for once a week. But it made sense because everyone was making money hand over fist on their engagements. And without meeting with other people in your same role for coaching, for training, for comparing notes and solving problems, it would decrease those effective rates. So what everyone found for themselves because they're smart, savvy people experienced in the industry. No one is going to meetings for the sake of meetings or to sit through them to they see for themselves that these meetings, these meeting of the mind, help to increase their effective rates and help them earn great money while working as little as possible, as little as they want to work. So we still do our best to keep administration to a minimum. It has developed a little bit, but it's financially worthwhile. Yeah.

How has that shaped kind of the org chart with 16 people now? Do you have any non production roles?

We do. We're a seven figure firm now and we have several non production roles including a director of operations and an operations analyst. However, and we also have an administrative assistant. What's noteworthy is that with this kind of fluidity, right? Variable compensation supported by policies, procedures, technology, from sales to operations to administration, it allows for a great deal of role fluidity, which means we can for example, hire someone who is interested in a non production role administrative assistant and a production role treasury treasury specialist. I like to pay the bills, right, for clients. So from their point of view they're decreasing their risk as compared to if they had only come on in a production role because our administrative assistant compensation is more traditional in structure. So from their point of view they're decreasing their risk, you know, and, and so it's a good illustration of how variable comp can really enable more fluidity.

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Can you tell us about how that.

Impacts your hiring process and the filtering of someone that's suited for a production role versus a non production role or maybe even just may not be a fit for you?

Yeah. You know, the quickest way that we find out if someone's not a fit for us when we hire is through the opening webinar. So when we post one or more positions up on on the various social sites, we review the applications and for certain applicants we invite them to our webinar before anyone invests more time in a one on one interview. And in that webinar I calculate, live in a spreadsheet in front of everyone exactly what our variable compensation structure is. And we do it with a sample average size client and we do the calculations right there on screen. And I take questions and we talk about variable compensation and we talk about organizational culture and people experienced. I mean we only hire People with 10 to 30 plus years of experience in the field. This variable compensation may or may not, I don't know, I've never tested it, be appropriate for someone straight out of school. So they're savvy people, they're experienced accountants. Right. They're sharp with math and logic and assessing risk. And I watch, I watch who is on the call and who drops off the call and I invite people. I say the first thing that that comes out of my mouth. We're on variable compensation model. I'm going to calculate in front of you what that means. There is no flat salary and no hourly for this, for this role. You will not know how much you're going to earn in Your in your first 12 months of being here. And I get that that's a risk. I was an employee earning a flat salary for the first 15 years over. Over two careers. It's a good thing to know how much you're going to earn in the next 12 months. It is a natural and useful thing to know that. And that's not information I can give you. What I'm going to give you is a lot of information about how it works and the range of effective rates that our people are currently earning. And that comes from data. So during that webinar, people hear about the variable compensation along with the organizational culture that is around and underneath that variable compensation so they can assess the risks and benefits and the risks and rewards for themselves. And I see people drop off the call, that's fine. And I say to them, if you hear anything during this webinar that says like you're crazy, that nobody can do that, I need a flat salary. I'll say, excellent. Whoever hires you is going to be lucky to have you. I've seen your resume. Go, go get em. That's fantastic. For everyone else who's staying on the call, here's how it works and I'll take your questions.

That's cool. I also just love the idea of a webinar as a maybe filtering mechanism isn't the right word, but just as a way of sort of mass educating the folks in the pipeline. That seems super efficient.

Yeah, it is. I mean, a variable compensation structure. You said it, Jason. A variable compensation structure has to be centered around operationally centered around efficiency in order to work. And that includes client qualification and how we market, how we generate leads, our sales process. It includes the technology and the tools and templates that we provide for our employees. It includes the extent to which we document processes, the extent to which we are willing to customize processes versus have processes that are always a particular rate period, the end. And having all of that linked together by design to support experts in the field making amazing effective hourly rates and giving them choice in any area where we can possibly give them choice. It's what all makes it work.

In your setup, do folks have a.

Have some sort of base and the production or the variable pay is calculated relative to that or is there no base at all? It's just, it's 100% driven by production.

There is no base at all for people hired on variable compensation. Variable compensation is. Is what they earn. The only thing that has evolved as our firm grew into a high six figure and, and then a Seven figure organization is that we pay an hourly rate for the upfront onboarding and upfront training phase. It's a very, very modest hourly rate. It's nothing. You're right. It's just something to help get you by until you are on engagements and then that hourly rate disappears and the variable comp kicks in and then the effective rates start going through the roof. So they, it is all variable compensation. We also offer a few benefits like a professional development benefit for up to a certain number of hours a month engaged in professional development that meets these criteria. 1, 2, 3. Those will be compensated. We have some benefits. Again, those are added over time as our firm grows. But our core compensation is all variable comp.

Is there some, like so many of us are kind of allergic to the.

Super sweaty big four culture, partner up and out sort of thing. Right. And so we're, you know, where the.

The cool kids running off to run.

Your little opinionated firm that's going to do it different.

But is, is there a risk along.

The way of like building something that is still fueled by the folks who are just mega, mega output people?

Like, is there any risk in that fixation on, I don't know, the top line?

Yeah, I'll tell you exactly what, what some of the risks are and how to counter them. So first of all, when, when someone is focused exclusively on production at the expense of relationship, at the expense of humanity, at the expense of following our existing established procedures, it will not work. And these are things that we look for in the hiring process. Also, if people are so focused on production, but they don't have a background in public accounting, like they can't keep the clients straight, you know, we risk cross contamination, we risk data confidentiality issues, sometimes these things. So we only hire people with experience in public accounting, keeping all the different clients separate and straight and it comes down to that efficiency. Are we going to stop everything and train someone how to transition their mindset and processes from corporate to public accounting? We're not. We're on variable compensation. You need to come fully loaded with knowing how to keep separate data separate, confidential data, confidential. Follow processes. And where people get trained is in where we will allow our processes to be customized and then at that point use your professional judgment. So when someone says I just want to get it done myself, I'm going to do the work as I see fit, I'm going to do other people's jobs if I don't think they're doing it well enough and I just want to get it done because I'm production focused. No, that person will not last long with us.

What is the feedback loop for those, I guess, non financial kind of softer elements where if you're doing a review with someone, Obviously, you know, 100% of that feedback isn't just going to be related to, well, here's, here's your output. It's, it's some of the softer skills.

So a couple things. Number one, we keep an eye on effective rates because clients, most clients pay us a flat monthly fee. So that means, you know, times 40%, most of our employees are getting a flat monthly fee. So it's the, the, the production can be measured by effective rates. So as far as the review goes. Right. There's the mathematical piece on the softer side as you were talking about. These two are often linked. So when we see effective rates go down below established norms of other people in the same role on different clients, when we see those effective rates go below that employee's own targets for themselves, which are shared with us during the onboarding process and they are shared transparently in the firm, that's something that we pay attention to. We also pay attention if the engagement, if the effective rates go higher sometimes that means, oh my gosh, you are so efficient. That is amazing. Let's celebrate and let's everybody learn from how you're doing it. Sometimes it means that an engagement is being underserved.

Yeah.

And that enters into the, what you call the softer side of, of a review. Whether that review is formal, annual or semi annual review or a ho ho. We have to have a conversation. And on rare occasion we have, we needed to have conversations with people at either end of the spectrum, people whose effective rates are much higher than we expect. And when we dig into the data, it turns out that we're not celebrating, they're not doing their work. And people at the lower end who are, as we discover it could be anything from they're going out of scope of our entire engagement letter. They're producing too much and we're not getting paid for it. They're doing other people's jobs, they're overcomplicating, they need, or they need more technology training. They're not using our templates correctly, they need more training with our templates to boost it could be discovering that it's not them. A particular client is causing low effective rates across the board, maybe because of unexpected issues with client compliance with our procedures. Maybe it's training for the sales team on doing a better job of vetting clients. Maybe it's training for the onboarding folks to train the clients better to work with us so we could be of service to them. So there's a lot of data that we pick up from managing effective rates that leads into those softer conversations. Let's talk about relationships. Let's talk about. Let's talk about being straight with me. When you realize that you've said yes to more engagements than you should because you're under, you know, because there is a financial incentive to say yes, but you're in reality under serving some clients, this is what the data is showing. We need to have conversation about that or we need to have a conversation about why you keep doing other people's jobs. Let's talk about that. And those become relationship based conversations. What's going on with a person deep down inside such that they're generating this dysfunction for the team? What need are they trying to get fulfilled? Are they aware of the impact of their actions on their colleagues, their effective rates, their clients? Let's talk about that. And with people with the right attitude, we have generative and generative conversations. We. Right size. What needs to be right sized? The coolest thing, my favorite thing is when someone comes to me as they do and they say, you know what? I have more capacity. I am killing it on my engagements and I'm using two thirds of the time that I used to please, I want some more engagements. Great. Or when someone comes to me and says, you know what I need to get off an engagement, I'm a little overextended. I'm feeling it, the money's good, but this is the one I'd like to off board off of. Fantastic. Anything can be done in communication. All we have to do is put our heads together and solve the problem. And that's a great example where organizational culture is so important. In a variable compensation structure, it takes a lot for somebody to go, you know, to the person who hired them and say, I need less work and I need to get paid less and know that they're not going to be judged or canned. That freedom that, that freedom to move and have conversations is essential.

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One other thing I wanted to bounce off you on the the risk of. Of under serving or the risk of somebody perpetually cutting corners to handle a bigger volume of work. Obviously if the, if you know, metrics go off the charts, that's one signal. But is there, is there say, a review from somebody else in the firm or some sort of quality assurance process to ensure that somebody isn't perpetually underse England clients?

Yeah, there is. So that's, it's done in two different ways. Number one, our operational metrics. Our operational metrics focus on the monthly close and incomplete and overdue task analysis. And I have personally programmed an operational dashboard in Excel using VBA and macro programming to keep an eye on that and our operations analyst. So our, our process managers pull the data from each individual engagement and upload it to a folder where our operations analyst takes all that exported data from our workflow management system and synthesizes them in our operational dashboard, clicks the buttons, works the macros, updates the dashboard, which is a visual dashboard. And our director of operations looks at that dashboard and interprets the data that's there. Our operations manager also keeps an eye on effective rates for the reasons why I mentioned earlier, you know, does somebody need help? Are we celebrating what's going on? The second thing is really is feedback from clients and colleagues. There's just, there's a great deal of communication that happens in our firm on a year round basis. And if somebody isn't getting what they need from someone, our director of operations is going to know about it, our process managers are going to know about it, and if it gets escalated, I'm going to know about it. We also have quarterly quality assurance calls with our clients to get direct feedback from them. The wins, what could be working better, what's not working at all. And those are conversations that our sales team has with our clients. And it's kind of like segregation of duties, but, you know, in a different context. Our sales team consists of a number of people in our firm, accountants who have opted in to join the sales team. If the member of our sales team who is the relationship manager on that engagement is also their cfo, then they'll swap out who does the quality assurance call. So that from a, from a quality standpoint, from a security standpoint, we have multiple people receiving that feedback. And you know, so we get that feedback qualitatively from a variety of sources and quantitatively from our KPIs.

On the subject of how those projects get distributed throughout the team, maybe the, I mean, maybe the biggest upside or what I see people get most excited about is in the traditional setup, you have a new project and you bring it around and everyone kind of runs and hides and they're like, do I really want to want that one more thing on my plate? As opposed to. In a variable compensation structure, folks are. There's just a much greater appetite for figuring out how to take that next project on. How, how does that stuff get allocated in a, in a fair way when somebody gets stuck with a bad, a.

Bad project or something goes sideways or what is.

What are the politics of how projects get shuffled between team members?

We do our best to minimize the politics and maximize individual choice. And our team members are generous with each other. They are generous with each other, Jason. They work things out. They negotiate. Hey, there are four engagements in the pipeline. I would love to be on a couple of them. You want a couple of them? Like, you know, we don't know which ones are going to close, but, you know, if we have multiple people interested in a particular role, we talk about it, we work it out. And it's, it's my job to make sure our sales pipeline is full enough that there's plenty for everyone. Because scarcity is the enemy of equity. And so more specifically, part of our organizational culture includes as much individual freedom and choice as we can possibly bring in. We don't assign engagements. We tell the team by posting it in our internal chat group about potential clients when they're still potential clients. Because if nobody opts in, we need to place a referral or hire some people. And we tell our team about this client, the mission, the size, whether they're a privately held business or a nonprofit. We tell them about the personality of the leadership and the big opportunity at hand that we can help them capture or the big horrible thing that's on the horizon that we can help them minimize or avoid. They read up all about this. If it's a nonprofit, we share the 990s also, and they opt in. They also consider how much time they have because a new client requires upfront work in addition to the year round, right? They always do. Whether it's setting up or completing what our predecessor didn't get a chance to complete, or, you know, cleaning up or whatever there's. Or a conversion, there's always some upfront work to do. So we give people a chance to opt in to whatever roles they're interested in. And if two people are interested in a single role, we talk about it and we work it out. And that's the best way I know how to do it.

What does that look like for a new team member coming on board and getting Them sort of up to speed. Is that pulling projects from other team members, how do you tackle that?

Yeah, we tackle that in conversation. And that's really for a couple of reasons. Number one, we don't want a new team member on a new client before they've been trained on our processes. So first things first, that new team member is going to be shadowing other people in their same role on existing engagements. And part of our shadowing process is that when they're. When both parties agree that they're ready, they take control of the experienced practitioner's computer and do the work. This positions them to be able to take on a new engagement. Also, you had mentioned about people rolling off. I don't ask anyone to roll off. I don't give instructions to anyone to roll off. But my director of operations and myself, we're gonna stay on top of people's capacity and interest and where they're having a good time and where they're kind of maybe tolerating. And we'll have a conversation and say, once this person gets trained, would you be happier taking on, like, the next new client that comes in and bringing this person onto this engagement that you. You're kind of tepid on? And they're like, yeah, bring it. I would love that. Right? I mean, and some of the time they've already come with. They've already come to me and said, I'd really like to roll up this engagement. Can you see if anyone's interested? Maybe it's not a personality fit. Maybe it's not a mission fit. You know, we've. We've had some people who thought that they would love serving a particular mission, and then they realized their heart's not in it and they want to get off the engagement sometimes. You know, I had a. Had someone come to me once and say, I know I don't interact with the client directly, but where we interact in our workflow systems, I, I would. I will die happy if I never hear another word from this person. I want to get off this engagement. Great. I got it. Thank you for coming to me. Let's make it happen. And as it happens, some other people were a great fit for this client's personality. They love how this client communicates. And the client has been very, very happy. As a matter of fact, this. This one client that I'm thinking of had four firms in four years and is now in her second year with us. Happy as a clam. When you have the fluidity, because compensation is not a limitation. When you have the fluidity to give people the freedom to say, I'd like to opt in, I'd like to opt out. You can really move people around according to their. Their place of joy. So, you know, when. When we hire new folks, let's get them on engagements as soon as possible, because that's where the big money is. That's where the difference making happens. And it's only if someone has. Was serving a lot of engagements and then left our firm. It's only in those rare occasions where someone really steps into a portfolio and we need to, you know, get them trained quickly and then onto that portfolio of engagements.

Very cool. This is like drinking from a fire hose.

Any what questions haven't we asked?

Like, for people that are on the fence about doing this?

What.

I don't know, what wisdom would you give them that maybe we haven't gotten into?

Yeah, I'll say this. What is it like to transition from traditional comp to variable comp? That's a question. And I've worked with a number of employers in this industry on that question because they're concerned that people will leave. And this is my answer. The right people will stay. The people. And I have data that supports this. The people who have been skating by telling you that they only have the capacity for ex clients, when in reality, if they were doing their jobs as designed, they would have the capacity for much more and should be financially rewarded for that, but have been skating by the ones who run through the hills when there's a new project or a new client. Those are the ones that you don't want. You're overpaying for them already, and they're not being straight with you. That is what lights my fire. They're not being straight with you, and they're skating by at your expense. And I have no. I have no appetite for that. Anything can be worked out in honest conversation. Anything. But you're going to hide things from me. We're done. So let's work it out. Let's have a conversation. And when people have implemented this, they've told me the people that they knew were well under capacity but kept denying it. Oh, because I have so much work? Mm. Mm. It's because you're going out of scope. You're delivering things to the client that they're not even paying us for. You're delivering things to the client that you're not even authorized to deliver because you decided how you wanted to run this engagement. Well, you know what? If you want to be the one to decide, you're free to do that as a freelancer, not as an employee to whom I'm not given that degree of latitude. So that is not a fit. When it's often I've heard that when people transition from traditional comp to variable comp, they lose their worst performing people and their highest performing people, both in terms of the work, the culture, all of it. They get excited the minute they hear it because they know that they're going to financially be rewarded for their skills and their heart. So I would say don't be afraid of losing people. You're going to lose the right people. Be ready to hire and expand your capacity.

Totally makes sense. I think you just got some people pumped up. Somebody just pulled over their exercise bike and they're pumping their fists right now. Excellent.

Jamie, thank you for doing this. How can we support you? Where do people find you online? How can, how can we connect with you after this?

Thank you so much. Our website is tier1services.net. You can. I'm very active on Facebook. My handle is Jake CampbellCPA. I'm on your. Your other typical social media properties. LinkedIn, Instagram. We're evaluating some others, but those are, those are the best places to find me, to make, to reach out, to connect, to make inquiry, to have some conversations together. People can always email me@jake campbellcpa1services.net that's T as in tango. Tier 1 Services.net 1 is spelled out O N E. I love to have conversations with fellow accountants about what's going on and how we can. The biggest thing that lights me up is the opportunity to work with people in the industry to advance the equity with which employers in our industry do business. And variable compensation is a golden ticket to equity. And I will die happy if I see that the compensation gap, the earnings gap, the wealth gap for race and gender has been eliminated in any area in which I have an influence. So that can't be done alone. It has to be done by people banding together.

That's so cool. I love that. Jamie, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you, Jason, it's been a pleasure.

All right, take care.