Managing Expectations with Chris Papin

Chris Papin 0:16
want to thank you. I appreciate you having me. Yeah, excited to have you on. Tell us a little about your personal life more about your work, why you do what you do?

george grombacher 0:02
Chris papen is a CPA and attorney helping navigate helping clients navigate complicated complex financial and legal terrain, ensuring growth and compliance for their business. Welcome to the show, Chris, I

Chris Papin 0:25
Well, it’s kind of an interesting statement. It’s an all in one hair. I grew up in a family of small business owners, my passion and my career revolve, working with and owning small businesses and working with small business owners. Sometimes people kind of asked like, what do you do for fun work or sometimes not, but got some weird, weird passions, personally, you know, and Oklahoma boy that likes to go snow skiing. I’m a snowboarder, anytime I get a chance, I take the opportunity. But I have a German shepherd named Jade, that is my work life balance person, if you will. So close the laptop when I need to. So those are kind of some fun bits. And I know we’ll dig into more about the others.

Yeah, I appreciate that. So growing up around entrepreneurs, no doubt, you saw some of the good stuff. But then you also saw some of the struggles.

It did. It’s kind of an interesting and passionate story for a lot that are in this world with us. But from my perspective, the lifestyle, it’s a choice. Oftentimes, people you know, they may not seek all the money in the world, they want a comfortable living, they want to be able to do for their community they want to provide for their family. And when you’re it, you know, if you’re in the one man band, it’s different. There’s nobody to delegate to. And as you grow, who do you work with? Who do you talk to? It’s kind of lonely at the top. Because different people don’t always understand those pressures. Mom and Dad were a great mentor mentors and dads passed, but mom’s still with us. And from my perspective, one of the most invigorated entrepreneurs who really should be in the retirement ages of her career, but she still wants to serve her clients and loves every minute of it. And I hope I can rise to the challenge to keep doing it as long as she does.

Do you feel like you’re going to be up to?

You know, I hope so I tried to do all the right things in there. And I still love what I do. So I think I got a shot. Got it.

I have all the confidence of the world. So it’s not easy to run a successful tax and accounting practice, it’s not easy to run a successful law practice. Why? Why do those things simultaneously?

The cliffnotes version? is I sitting in an accounting class, during my my master’s education, I kept asking the professor, why are we skipping sections of the book? And he said, Hey, it’s not that we can’t understand this or do this, but it’s technically legal work. So we as CPAs would not be able to cross over and draft if you will, the documents necessary to implement whatever is going on here. You know, I leave his office and I’m on the way back to my apartment, I’m scratching my head going, this is done. Why would you go to two places to do this? Well, fast forward four or five years later, and I’m working in a firm who did exactly that. And they were great mentors to show you can be a one stop shop for small business owner, you can have a lot of disciplines under one roof. And at the end of the day, my job’s not different. I represent the Small Business and the small business owner. The topic may switch based on state law requirements or licensing requirements. But fundamentally, it’s the same conversation, which I think makes it easy for a lot of our clients.

So what does that mean? I think most people understand what attorneys do. People understand what accountants what tax professionals do. So when you say you represent businesses, what is that? What does that mean?

Right, great question. I’m going to take you through kind of the life cycle of a business may usually resonates with most but if if you’re a budding entrepreneur, maybe you’ve got a side hustle or something like that. Eventually you say, You know what, I want to do this for a living and creating an entity, making sure you have a proper legal structure in place. Helping people go through the different conversations if you have business partners or employees, dotting I’s and crossing T’s with respects to compliance issues, insurances, payroll, all kinds of different stuff. You know, just that startup conversation can be overwhelming. I tease people all the time. You know, get on Tik Tok, get on Google, whatever. versus the you enjoy, go do that and tell me where that roadmap is for you, and it just doesn’t exist. So we want to sit next to folks sit at the Board of Directors table with them and help navigate that, then got operations on making some more money on growing? Should I spend money on expansion or marketing campaign? Or do I have enough saved for taxes? Or how do I invest properly in the right equipment, or vehicles for my business, all natural stuff people go through. And I think sometimes clients just don’t know how to ask that or don’t know who to ask the question of the get the wrong perception or who to talk to, we want to be that we want to be that forward looking, again, Board of Directors style conversation, for a small business. And I know that sounds weird, you know, a one person business having a board of directors yeah to you, as well as you’re the janitor and the employee, and the technician and all the things like that it’s kind of the small journey. At the end of it, I really see it as goal setting, we just talk to folks and try to align ourselves with what they’re trying to achieve. Help them see it through a different lens, if I can give you three paths where you only know one, you’ve now got a couple of options, and you choose what’s best for you

really hard for the solo entrepreneur or small operator operation, to be able to see around corners or to think about things that you know, because of your background and how you are looking at problems. And I imagine that a lot of people come into your office and have collected things, they have different things that they’ve done, if it’s an agreement, or if it’s an insurance policy, or whatever. But it doesn’t have that cohesive flow to it that you’re talking about.

It’s even gotten worse, kind of if you can in this, I call it a DIY environment, you can go out and self select into, say an insurance policy. But if you’ve got workers comp, general liability and maybe like a business owners coverage or your content, do they coordinate? Are they appropriate for what you’re trying to do? Do you have enough dollar value covered for? I don’t know, I mean, real estate has spiked recently that’s kind of turned everybody’s insurance policies upside down. What value do I need to be insurance for? And yeah, you’re right. There’s there’s a lot of those where business owners have never been down the path before, and blessed to have lived it all my life with my folks. But we had hundreds and 1000s of experiences with clients, where we can sit down and say, yeah, we’ve been down this road before, I can guess that. I don’t know, in 18 months, one of the three following things might be relevant to you. Let’s try to give you an example. Now. It’s better to know what’s coming and to be completely blindsided all the time.

That 100% is is is true. Do people do they? Do they like that? You have the CPA and the and the legal background? Is that sometimes confusing? Is it? What is what is typical response?

Initially, I think it’s a little bit intimidating, because the question you asked in the beginning, so what do you do? It’s overwhelming in the sense that we have a lot of debt. Some clients hire me for one discipline or another, maybe they have some experience with somebody that helps them legally form their business. So they need me to be the financial CPA for their business. We can respect those different lanes. But I think at the end of the day, the complexity that can be under one roof, and we say it internally in the form of fable, we need to be able to distill our information to a fable. Simple enough, anybody can understand it, but complex enough that it hits the mark for whatever the the complexity of the situation may warrant. It’s maybe not spot on to what I think you may have been asking there. But I think it represents the truth of where we live with clients. And sometimes I have to just flat tell folks, let me lead for a little while, which is a tough ask when it’s a new relationship. But that’s the business we built. It’s on what we call advisory services that are forward looking for folks. I think when people know me or if there’s a referral base around, they start to get familiar with Yeah, that’s kind of the direction we want to go. We at least know we’re going north. We know we don’t want to go south. I mean, I have all the answers but we’re all heading in a general path together. And in reality, sometimes businesses They are with us for a season instead of a lifetime. And that’s okay too. We can step in, we can be very effective for your needs at the time worked together. But the ideal is we do this for a number of years so that we can execute those longer term plans, because those are the hard ones to hit.

Yeah. I think that the idea of, of the fable is a really good one. Because we all remember the lessons that those golden books taught us when we were kids. And I think back to them actually, kind of frequently, especially when you look at some of the crazy stuff going on in the world. And like, I thought we were taught this when we were little. And you’re working to thread that needle of, of your jargon, as a CPA, your jargon as an attorney and your expertise and all those areas. And that’s super important, and the differentiator, but if you can’t communicate and articulate how that’s going to translate to a business owner, who maybe doesn’t have the technical knowledge, and that’s why they’re in your office, then you’re going to be ineffective.

Yeah, you’re spot on. It’s, it’s like you’ve lived that journey before something. But the the essence of it is, we need people at the table with us, it’s got to be a two way conversation. I can’t just create a video and explain legalese to folks. That’s not what they want to either. It’s more along the lines of okay, how does my scenario fit into one of one of my longest running clients, we teased all the time, because he starts his conversation with I know, you’re gonna say no, but what I’m really asking is, how do I do this, and then he tells me what he’s not supposed to be doing. And we restructure it. But I think there’s some some power in telling the story that way. Because just because you see it in a specific way, doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the only way to achieve the goal. Oftentimes, there’s many administrative or logistical hurdles that we have to cleared and to be audit proof, or to make sure that we’ve got some version of compliance check box hit, so that, you know National City or local governments are knocking on your door. Sometimes it’s just that simple, knowing what role to apply the right time. And other times, it’s, it’s like you said, you’re trying to thread the needle in the snowstorm with wind with, you know, rope this big with a needle, that’s tiny. Well, that’s part of the journey, you got to distill that information down so that we can do the job. And again, that’s what takes that two party conversation,

for sure. And I love the idea of the board of directors for for any size business, there’s so much value in that. And I also imagine that a lot of your clients have professional invite professional advisors they have relationships with and they prefer that you work with them. And you need to have a good relationship with them. And to put them at ease that you’re not trying to take away their legal or their tax or accounting business, whichever one you might not be doing. So there’s a lot going on there. So I see value in that. And people charge in different ways to now. You know, there’s there’s just so many different ways that professional services firms can charge. So how have you landed, how is your firm, your organization decided to, to charge,

my path follows that have kind of a model I would want. Because I’m a small business owner, I don’t need a surprise invoice at the end of the month or at the end of the year. And I think that’s one of the biggest fears with folks with legal practice is the fear of the billable hour. There’s all kinds of wonderful jokes that I’ll spare everybody, because it’s kind of industry specific, where all the attorneys are CPA is a laugh at this. But at the end of the day, we try to go through a fixed fee model, we try to define as much as we can up front. We do this through a two meeting approach with our clients meeting, one’s about meeting the client info gathering in between the two meetings, there’s also a data dump, because we’ve got to see all the information that comes to us. And then in our second meeting, we outline and try to give everybody a very clear scope of roughly the next 12 to 18 months. What is it look like for you? What are the costs involve? What is the monthly commitment? What are one off costs, if any, and bring all of that into at least a timeline that can be executable, and then we try to convert it into a monthly fee just because everybody kind of has a budget per month that they can look at and make a decision or not everybody’s the same. And I know there’s lots of wonderful firms out there that do it vastly different than I do. But defining and understanding what’s in scope and what’s out of scope is where I see people get lost the most. We get folks all the time that say you know I’ve got a great accountant. I don’t think they do anything wrong, but they never call me for planning or give me advice. And we look at the engagement letter and like all you hired them to do is the tax return or Maybe sometimes these firms don’t want to be on that forward looking side. So finding that match and making sure you understand what you’re getting and what you want. It’s hard, especially in industries where you don’t know how that the surface models work. So we encourage folks to reach out have conversations, but most importantly, find a personality that fits. If you don’t like it, or you don’t understand it, keep asking questions. Because that’s what will get you the partnership that you need to make your business success.

Keep asking questions, try to get clarification, be on the same page, your expectations are what are probably going to make or break all your relationships. So the more clarity you can have up front, the better it’s going to be up front and in the middle. And hopefully, 30 years from now.

Yeah, people in my mind, make or break every deal. So when you find good folks, you lean in and you find ways to work together. The hardest thing in that is the way I will say it is a lot of people have a good relationship, but they’re not willing to have the hard conversation because it’s stressful or, you know, keeps you up at night or all the all the negative work life balance things we see in the news. But you’ve got to find a professional that you can know and trust and have the hard conversation. Even if you’re mad. I’ll happily take a client feedback that says, hey, I think you missed the mark on this one. What can we do to avoid it in the future? Because it makes the relationship better for all involved? Because I’m sure as heck going to do it to you when you ghost me or don’t give me information on deadlines. So we expect it back in the other direction. Yeah,

yeah, I think that that sounds like it makes for healthy relationship. How important is it for? I’m sure people say, You know what, Chris, I don’t I don’t even want to know this stuff. I just want to make sure it’s taken care of, does that? Is that music to your ears? Or does that make this the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

I would challenge a business owner to watch the news continuously for a month, and then count how many business owners claim that as a defense and still face criminal prosecution. And I don’t mean that to minimize somebody’s time, because some business owners need to be at the high level looking down at that bird’s eye view, and they can’t get into the weeds, they do need to delegate that. In my experience with small business owners when they say that there’s a cost that is attached to that true delegation of I need out and I need you to own that whole process that they’re not ready for. So you have to strike that balance. And you cannot be the expert at everything. But there is an element where who runs the business you do. And that’s why I use the analogy of the Board of Directors table, I need you at the table to make decisions because I can’t, I am not authorized to make a decision on your behalf. Professionally, that would be malpractice. In many instances, I can talk about the options, I can tell you what I think is best. But at the end of the day, it’s client choice. And clients either need to do that themselves, or assemble a team around them that are authorized to do so on their behalf. Because I don’t think any professional is just going to run with it and do all of the things as if they were a business owner. Why would they don’t have equity in a business? My sarcastic line to folks is when they asked me to do things like that is you can’t afford me. And they’ll be like, What do you mean? Like, you don’t want to give up 99% equity in your business thanks shark tank for a few minutes. If you want me to do that I need the majority share to be able to do that. And it real quickly gets them focused on the right thing so that we can kind of partner with that decision rather than delegate that decision.

It’s well said. Well, Chris, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you?

There’s a lot of different fun things. I’ve got a LinkedIn page, you can find my name Chris Papin, where we post a lot of just free legal and tax tips. I encourage small businesses and small business owners to follow us there. And then we are doing a quarterly business 101 webinar. We’ve got one upcoming you can go to PAP and cpa.com/listener and find more information there. You’ll find it in February, very timely for kind of that future planning. We go through a lot of the basics, but we also go deep enough that if you’ve been there before, it’ll be a good refresher course.

Excellent. If you enjoyed this as much as I did show, Chris your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. You find Chris on LinkedIn and then go to Papin cpa.com. It’s P A P I N cpa.com/listener. And check out all the good resources and check out that upcoming quarterly webinar that Chris was just talking about. And if it resonated with you the way it resonated with me I’m digging a little deeper thanks again Chris Thank you till next time remember do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.