The Unique CPA
Over more than six years and 250 episodes, The Unique CPA has blossomed from “just an accounting podcast” into a community of thriving accounting professionals. With personal fulfillment and energizing, passionate work at the top of our list of priorities, we’re keeping you at the forefront of the changing face of public accounting through conversations with fascinating leaders who understand that the one constant in the accounting profession is change: Change in our approach to the demands of the profession, change in the technology we use to more efficiently do our jobs, and change in our ability to express who each of us really is as a human being.
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An Unexpected Visit at Bridging the Gap with James Donovan and Cameron Bean
10/06/2026
An Unexpected Visit at Bridging the Gap with James Donovan and Cameron Bean
At 2026, James Donovan of the Accounting Leads Now Podcast sat down with Camden Bean, founder of Ping for a live conversation. Camden traced Ping’s evolution from a basic note taker into a platform that detects upsell opportunities and generates proposals before a client meeting even ends, and told the story about the now-legendary ping pong ball jacket stunt that got the team escorted out of Intuit Connect. Suddenly, Randy crashed the conversation, accidentally becoming the first repeat guest on Accounting Leads Now, and forming the basis of Episode 289 of The Unique CPA. Randy shared the mistake of taking on every client when starting out and why leaning into a niche makes work stop feeling like work and more like what you “get to do” every day. Together, they push past “advisory” as a buzzword toward concrete playbooks, sales funnels built on real leads, and the reminder that as crazy as things may feel with AI, the robots aren’t going to kill you. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Living a Life That Matters with Okorie Ramsey
09/29/2026
Living a Life That Matters with Okorie Ramsey
Okorie Ramsey built a legacy statement around six words: “To live a life that mattered.” As Vice President of Sarbanes-Oxley at Kaiser Permanente and the first African American male to chair the AICPA, he’s spent his career turning that philosophy into action. He launched the National Pipeline Advisory Group, grew accounting enrollment for three straight years, and brought HBCU students into the profession through the Balance Sheet Bash, among many, many other contributions. On Episode 288 of The Unique CPA, Randy and Okorie dig into the AI governance gap threatening the profession’s role as trusted advisors, why the next generation of accountants needs more than technical skills to thrive, and what it means for seasoned leaders to shift from doing the work to pouring knowledge into those coming behind them. Okorie is also blunt about leaders who treat AI as someone else’s problem, as well as about the point where staying in a role you’ve outgrown becomes its own kind of comfort and complacency. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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From Practitioner to Advisor: Redefining the Profession with Douglas Slaybaugh
09/22/2026
From Practitioner to Advisor: Redefining the Profession with Douglas Slaybaugh
Douglas Slaybaugh has spent close to 10,000 hours coaching accounting leaders, and he’s seeing something he doesn’t like: partners drowning in chargeable work, admin, and meetings. They then don’t have any capacity to do the one thing that actually matters, sit across from a client and talk deep strategy. He calls it the partner bottleneck, and it’s pushing experienced professionals toward burnout and early retirement. On Episode 287 of The Unique CPA, Doug tells Randy that AI could be the fix, creating capacity at lower levels, but he fears firms will just fill that space with more compliance work, thanks to the same “Parkinson’s Law” that has governed public accounting for decades. Doug further unpacks what faces accounting firms, like how “advisor” has become a pretty hollow, ill-defined buzzword if firms aren’t careful to identify what it means to them. He also tells of a coming client retention war, with pricing pressure from above, below, and outside the profession entirely, which makes the current situation in the profession mission critical. The firms that figure out how to turn practitioners into true advisors will hold their clients, but the ones that don’t may not. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Skill Hollowing and Other Hidden Risks of AI, with Jennifer Harrity
09/15/2026
Skill Hollowing and Other Hidden Risks of AI, with Jennifer Harrity
Most firms measure AI adoption by efficiency gains and dashboards full of green checkmarks. Jennifer Harrity, author of The Human Cost of AI, argues on Episode 286 of The Unique CPA that the real numbers worth tracking are psychological safety and burnout. Associates who once learned judgment through repetition now babysit AI agents instead, quietly losing the muscle memory that built professional skepticism in the first place. Managers absorb the overflow, catching hallucinated outputs while their own workloads climb 40% or more. Jennifer traces how polished corporate messaging about “freeing up time for higher-level work” collides with a workforce doing more, understanding less, and afraid to say so. Randy then connects this to survey data showing rising dissatisfaction even as productivity climbs, and together they map out what leadership grounded in honesty and psychological safety could look like, and why firms that teach fundamentals before automation will be the ones still standing when the dust settles. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Building the Littlest, Biggest Firm in America, with Tom Angelo
09/08/2026
Building the Littlest, Biggest Firm in America, with Tom Angelo
Tom Angelo started his career above a pizzeria, hired as the first staff accountant at a three-partner firm in New Jersey. He made partner at 28, built an IT services arm years before “digital transformation” became a buzzword, and eventually merged his own firm into HBK. Now its second CEO in 75 years, he’s steering the company through Catalyst 2030, a strategy built around industry-led teams rather than geography. On Episode 285 of The Unique CPA, he and Randy Crabtree dig into how HBK weighs acquisitions, why cross-selling remains stubbornly difficult even with the right incentives, and what AI can and can’t replace when it comes to clients who have built their businesses over generations. Tom also stresses that with new hires going forward, the focus should be far less on data entry, and far more on curiosity and client-facing comfort. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Accountants Won’t Be Competing with AI, They’ll Be Leading It, with Matt Armanino
09/01/2026
Accountants Won’t Be Competing with AI, They’ll Be Leading It, with Matt Armanino
Matt Armanino traded a law career and a stint at PeopleSoft for the CEO seat at Armanino, a top-20 firm he once never imagined joining. He tells Randy on Episode 284 of The Unique CPA that nearly two decades later, he’s steering almost 3,000 people through what he considers the largest technology shift of his lifetime. Focusing on AI’s effect on billable hours, Matt explains why his firm shifting to value billing years ago, long before generative AI made it an absolute necessity. Culture, he says, is the real differentiator once technical knowledge becomes cheap, and Matt traces Armanino’s “build anything” philosophy back to a Peter Drucker quote and a Pat Lencioni exercise that took a full day to answer one question: “Why does Armanino exist?” Curiosity as a career advantage and a firm-wide bet on becoming indispensable rather than replaceable round out a discussion about what accounting looks like once knowledge stops being scarce and you have to differentiate yourself more than ever. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Multidisciplinary by Design, with Mike Payne
08/25/2026
Multidisciplinary by Design, with Mike Payne
The first thing we learn on Episode 283 of The Unique CPA is that Randy has real trouble saying the word “multidisciplinary.” Once we’ve worked that out, we learn that his guest Mike Payne built his career on a bet that most professionals avoid: pairing a law degree with a CPA license instead of picking a lane. That combination became the foundation of BOSS Advisors, a firm he grew to $2 million before recognizing the ceiling of his own skillset. Rather than force growth he wasn't suited to drive, Payne sold the firm to Haga Kommer, a Midwest-based multidisciplinary group with plans for an employee stock ownership structure. Now serving as Chief Growth Officer, he's applying the same generalist philosophy that built his practice, and he argues that AI makes broad issue-spotting more valuable and accessible than narrow specialization, since professionals who can flag a problem can always bring in the right expert to solve it. Mike unpacks the mechanics of merging a law-and-accounting practice, the ethics rules that shaped it, and what business owners should weigh before selling to a larger platform. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Helping the World by Helping People, with Justine Lackey
08/18/2026
Helping the World by Helping People, with Justine Lackey
Randy Crabtree sits down with Justine Lackey, founder of The Incubator, on Episode 282 of The Unique CPA. Justine originally built one of the earliest virtual bookkeeping firms out of necessity, long before “remote,” or even anything besides QuickBooks Desktop, became standard practice. Their conversation moves from the mechanics of scaling and selling a firm to the grief that follows a successful exit, and the anxiety that lingers even when everything goes right. Justine breaks down her four-S framework – systems, service, sales, skills – and makes the case for choosing the “right size firm” instead of chasing growth for its own sake. Threaded through it all is a shared conviction that accounting’s stress gets ignored far too often, and that the profession’s future depends less on compliance work than on the relationships built along the way. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Offshoring, Tech, and Bettering Lives, with Anshul Agrawal
08/11/2026
Offshoring, Tech, and Bettering Lives, with Anshul Agrawal
Half of all offshoring relationships collapse within five years, and Anshul Agrawal has spent his career figuring out why. Randy Crabtree sits down with the founder of June15 Consulting on Episode 281 of The Unique CPA to unpack the real difference between renting offshore talent and owning it outright, as well as how that distinction shapes everything from culture clashes to client trust. Anshul explains why a “family emergency” means something entirely different in India than it does in the U.S., why firms chronically underestimate how long it takes an offshore hire to reach full productivity, and how AI will serve to expand the offshore talent pool, rather than shrink it. He reveals heartwarming anecdotes about everyone winning in these offshoring arrangements: what happened when one client’s new hires gave him back his evenings with his kids, and what it looked like to double an employee’s salary and watch him buy his first car. It’s a conversation about building teams that actually work for everyone, wherever they’re located. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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What Actually Makes a Firm Valuable? Answers with Luke Frye
08/04/2026
What Actually Makes a Firm Valuable? Answers with Luke Frye
Randy Crabtree sits down with Luke Frye, who’s gone from hand-stamping journal entries as a small-town government accountant to scaling Bench to thousands of customers, running his own firm through a messy business divorce, and now advising practices at Canopy. Their conversation on Episode 280 of The Unique CPA keeps circling back to a single, uncomfortable question: What actually makes a firm valuable, as opposed to just busy? Luke argues that key man risk, not revenue, is the real threat to most practices, and that hourly billing quietly rewards inefficiency while punishing the AI tools meant to help. He pushes clients to charge what they’re worth instead of discounting out of fear, and to build systems, like a real CRM, that let a firm run without its owner chained to it. Randy’s own transition out of the company he built nineteen years ago and into advisory adds real-world weight to the discussion. It’s a candid look at pricing, succession, and the mindset shifts firm owners tend to avoid until it’s too late. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Change Will Never Be This Slow Again, with Matt Rampe
07/28/2026
Change Will Never Be This Slow Again, with Matt Rampe
Change has never moved this fast, and accounting firms are feeling it everywhere: AI eating into bookkeeping and tax work, private equity reshaping ownership, generational splits over who’s willing to adapt. Matt Rampe, a change management specialist at Rosenberg Associates, joins Randy on Episode 279 of The Unique CPA to break down why partnership structures built for consensus often become anchors when speed matters most. He argues real transformation happens person by person, through vulnerability and trust rather than mandates from the top. While in theory, smaller firms can pivot like speedboats while giants struggle to turn, Matt points out that larger firms have their own advantages too, but both agree that billable hours must give way to value, tax preparers must at least consider becoming advisors, and that it takes a bit more than just an edict from above on “modernizing the firm” to get partners and associates alike past “that sounds great, but I’ve got a day job.” Get the full show notes and more resources at
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The Unique CPA Heads “Upstream”: Leading the Way with Jeremy Clopton
07/21/2026
The Unique CPA Heads “Upstream”: Leading the Way with Jeremy Clopton
Randy Crabtree steps away from tax season and toward retirement from Tri-Merit, joining forces with Jeremy Clopton of for a crossover conversation on Episode 278 of The Unique CPA. AI dominates firm conversations right now, but Clopton argues the real anxiety comes from chasing an uncertain future instead of holding onto what won't change: being the protector of public trust. That anchor reframes everything from staffing fears to succession planning. They dig into leadership structures at growing firms, the false choice between serving clients and running the business, and why hiring managers instead of developing them rarely works. Private equity and M&A come up too, with the two sharing a conviction that independent firms aren't going anywhere, and that the choice between selling, scaling, or staying small comes down to knowing who you actually want to be. Randy closes by dismantling the doom-and-gloom narrative around recruiting, pointing to rising enrollment numbers as proof the pipeline is healthier than the algorithm-driven headlines suggest. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Train Your Successor: Embrace Evolution in the Profession with Dr. Rachel Anevski
07/14/2026
Train Your Successor: Embrace Evolution in the Profession with Dr. Rachel Anevski
Dr. Rachel Anevski quit high school at 16 and attended three different colleges to get her bachelor’s degree, then built an independent consulting practice for 13 years before folding it into Winding River Consulting this year. On Episode 277 of The Unique CPA, she tells Randy that the move rattled her more than she expected: she fought the firm’s processes, demanded to know the reasoning behind every new system, and found herself living, even sweating out the change management principles she’d spent a career teaching others. That tension runs through her explanation as to why the accounting profession keeps failing its own people through transitions. From partners who dismiss AI because they won’t be around to see its impact, to seniors whose formative years were scrambled by a pandemic no one prepared them for, there are many pitfalls you won’t see until the ground below is approaching. She traces her philosophy on succession back to a mentor’s blunt instruction to train your replacement, and pushes back hard on the idea that partnership has to mean sacrificing a life outside the firm to earn it. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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How Community is the Real Currency at Bridging the Gap
07/07/2026
How Community is the Real Currency at Bridging the Gap
Randy Crabtree and Terrell Turner team up to co-host Episode 276 of The Unique CPA, previewing what’s coming July 28th at . Four years in, the conference has moved past simply naming burnout and connection as problems worth discussing, with the focus now turning to implementation: accountability structures, longer workshop formats, and the potential for speakers to linger and chat with attendees in the future instead of disappearing once their time on stage is over. Tying directly into a session on loneliness at the top, Terrell reflects on his newly promoted manager, who quietly absorbed weeks of team burnout rather than raise it, feeling exactly the kind of isolation hits so many leaders, and reminding him how topical and on the nose BTG is every year. There’s a session Randy’s son is speaking at, which he’ll admit up front he’s a little biased about, and when talk turns to the gala’s NASCAR theme, “The Winner’s Circle,” they decide that there will be multiple winners this year, with scores of folks playing the roles of pit crew to each other, all of them just trying to help the next person get further down the road. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Making the Profession “AI Native” with Ariege Misherghi of BILL
06/30/2026
Making the Profession “AI Native” with Ariege Misherghi of BILL
This episode of The Unique CPA is brought to you by BILL and BILL’s Accountant Console. Accountants deserve tools that work as hard as they do. Learn more at and get a $250 gift card. Terms apply. Small business clients are increasingly showing up to their accountants armed with AI-generated answers, and Ariege Misherghi thinks that's actually an opportunity. A Senior VP at BILL, Ariege has spent years watching the relationship between accounting professionals and their clients evolve, and she sees the current moment as the clearest stage yet for accountants to demonstrate what a professional truly brings. On Episode 275 of The Unique CPA, she and Randy also dig into what “AI native” actually means at BILL, why auditability is non-negotiable in financial automation, and why Ariege's number one piece of advice for AI-fatigued firms is to stop reading every email and start with one problem worth solving. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Academia’s View of the Pipeline and More with Scott Showalter
06/23/2026
Academia’s View of the Pipeline and More with Scott Showalter
Additional support is also provided by Magnetic. AI prepared 1040s with remarkable accuracy and form coverage, so your team gets complete returns ready for final review. Check it out at . Scott Showalter has spent more than 50 years in accounting, with 33 of them at KPMG, the last 22 of which were as a partner. Since 2008 he’s been bringing that experience into the classroom at NC State’s Master of Accounting Program. That unusual vantage point gives him a clear-eyed read on the talent pipeline debate: On Episode 274 of The Unique CPA, he pushes back on some of the doom-and-gloom narrative, pointing to graduate school applications up 72% nationally last year, and credits much of NC State’s own steady enrollment to actively recruiting career-changers, including a Broadway makeup artist and a PhD violinist who found their way to accounting in search of stability. Host Terrell Turner also covers with Scott what firms get wrong when they recruit on campus and the limits of internships as a proxy for real work. They also look at why AI in accounting education is less about replacing fundamentals than about rethinking how those fundamentals get taught, and who’s ultimately responsible when the technology gets it wrong. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Randy and Terrell Talk Keynotes, Community, and More at BTG
06/16/2026
Randy and Terrell Talk Keynotes, Community, and More at BTG
Randy is put in the unusual position of being a guest on his own show at Bridging the Gap 2025, as Terrell Turner sits down with him just hours after a keynote that left much of the room in tears. On Episode 273 of The Unique CPA, our final entry in this special BTG series, Randy talks about his speech, which was years in the making and drew on pivotal moments from Randy's early career, including a firm where he was nothing more to them than a billable hour and the contrasting leadership that shaped everything that came after. There’s also a lot of focus on BTG itself and what it’s grown into. At the heart of it all is Randy's conviction that accounting can be the greatest profession there is, and that changing the culture, not just the workflows, is how we get there. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Mental Health, Better Clients, More Money at BTG, with Lisa Simpson
06/12/2026
Mental Health, Better Clients, More Money at BTG, with Lisa Simpson
Terrell Turner sits down with Lisa Simpson of the AICPA, who leads the organization's Transforming Your Business Model initiative, live from Bridging the Gap 2025 on Episode 272 of The Unique CPA. Lisa makes a compelling case that the old model, with its long, billable hours where firms carry too many of the wrong clients, is not only unsustainable, but actively unnecessary. Firms that have right-sized their client base are almost universally earning more the following year, not less, because they can finally deliver the kind of advisory value clients will actually pay for. She traces how the pandemic's visible toll on practitioners sparked a broader reckoning inside the AICPA, and how that translated into concrete tools, peer stories, and low-cost resources now available to firms of every size. Lisa also touches on the cultural inertia that slows change down, and why technology is making that resistance increasingly hard to justify. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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A Family Reunion You Actually Want to Go to, with Chad Davis
06/09/2026
A Family Reunion You Actually Want to Go to, with Chad Davis
Recorded live at Bridging the Gap 2025 in Denver, Randy Crabtree sits down with founder of LiveCA, tech commentator, and full-time glamper Chad Davis for a wide-ranging conversation that captures exactly what makes BTG different from every other conference on the calendar. On Episode 271 of The Unique CPA, Chad talks about why he rerouted his entire week just to be there, and the two get into the real tension Randy is wrestling with: how do you grow something without killing the thing that made it worth growing in the first place? Shifting to Chad’s upcoming session on what accountants should actually care about in tech right now, they discuss the mental health dimension of overwhelm that rarely gets named, and why having an operating framework like EOS changes what you actually do with the ideas you pick up at a conference. A candid and camp-themed conversation. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Bridging the Gap on ADHD and Community with Questian Telka
06/05/2026
Bridging the Gap on ADHD and Community with Questian Telka
The Unique CPA is also supported by Magnetic. Magnetic’s AI-prepared 1040s are built for accuracy with every return checked before it comes back to your firm. Learn more at . Recorded live at 2025, Terrell sits down with Questian Telka, co-host of the She Counts Podcast and a late-diagnosed ADHDer, for a conversation that goes well beyond the typical conference interview. On Episode 270 of The Unique CPA, Questian talks candidly about what it meant to finally receive her diagnosis as an adult, the moment she describes as “my whole life makes sense to me now,” and how understanding her own brain became less about labeling herself and more about having a user manual. She moderated a panel at BTG where three highly successful CPAs reframed ADHD not as something they succeeded in spite of, but often because of, like a “superpower.” It’s a perfect example of what Bridging the Gap does differently from other accounting conferences, and why the profession needs these conversations happening at all times, not just once a year in a hotel ballroom. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Behind the Curtain at Bridging the Gap with Krystal Joiner
06/02/2026
Behind the Curtain at Bridging the Gap with Krystal Joiner
Continuing the conversation at 2025 in Denver, Randy Crabtree sits down with Krystal Joiner from the conference’s marketing team on Episode 269 of The Unique CPA for an honest look at what goes into making BTG what it is. Krystal talks through the months of behind-the-scenes planning that attendees never see, and why the relaxed, connected energy on the conference floor doesn’t happen by accident. The tone, she explains, gets set long before anyone lands in Denver, through social media, sponsor relationships, and every touchpoint along the way. There’s also a candid moment about what it feels like to finally arrive at an event you’ve spent half a year building. With BTG Charlotte on the horizon, Krystal is confident the best is still to come: “We just get better.” Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Return on Relationships: The Human Multiplier at BTG with Rory Henry
05/29/2026
Return on Relationships: The Human Multiplier at BTG with Rory Henry
Recorded live at Bridging the Gap 2025 in Denver, Terrell Turner sits down with wealth advisor and speaker Rory Henry on Episode 268 of The Unique CPA to talk about what he calls “return on relationship.” “ROR” is the idea that when you genuinely invest in understanding the people you serve, the ROI takes care of itself. Rory makes a compelling case that the real work of financial professionals isn’t in the numbers at all, but in the questions: What are your best hopes? What does your ideal life actually look like? Drawing on behavioral finance and values-based planning, he argues that money is rarely the point, but rather, meaning and wellbeing are. The conversation also takes in the energy of BTG 2025 itself, the growing wave of new talent in the profession, and why Rory is convinced that in-person connection remains one of the most underrated growth strategies available to any practice. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Build Relationships and Solve Problems with Roman Villard
05/26/2026
Build Relationships and Solve Problems with Roman Villard
Support for this episode comes from BILL. Simplify your workflows and accelerate your growth with BILL’s Accountant Console. Take a demo today at for a $250 gift card – terms apply. Repeat guest Roman Villard built Full Send, his Boulder-based accounting firm, on a deliberately contrarian premise: hire leadership first, reject the CAS label, and train your team to think like the business owners they serve. Four years and 18 team members later, split between Colorado and Argentina, the results suggest he was onto something. He covers a lot of ground with Terrell Turner on Episode 267 of The Unique CPA: the weekly Friday training rhythm Roman runs entirely from team-submitted topics, why “build relationships and solve problems” is a more honest job description than any service-line acronym, and how managing across cultures has forced a more intentional approach to feedback than most firm owners ever develop. They also get into the genuine complexity of AI adoption right now: Roman is candid that even firms on the forefront are still figuring out how all the moving pieces fit together. (And then there are the 34 miles and 8,000 feet of vertical he’s about to run!) Get the full show notes and more resources at
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What Gen Z Brings to Your Firm with Chayton Farlee
05/22/2026
What Gen Z Brings to Your Firm with Chayton Farlee
Recorded live at 2025, Terrell Turner sits down with Chayton Farlee, a Gen Z accountant whose first-ever conference was Bridging the Gap itself, on Episode 266 of The Unique CPA. What started as a LinkedIn ad turned into a career-defining experience, and Chayton has been vocal about BTG ever since. He makes a pointed case to Terrell for why accounting firm owners should stop sleeping on Gen Z talent, not just for their comfort with AI and automation, but for the energy and outside-in perspective they bring to firms that have been doing things the same way for decades. Chayton moderated a “Gen Z Effect” panel at BTG 2025, where he gave firm owners a frank look at what it’s actually like to be a young person entering the profession right now, and why the opportunity to tap into that talent pool is bigger than most realize. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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A Values-Driven Firm and Culture with John Sensiba
05/19/2026
A Values-Driven Firm and Culture with John Sensiba
Support for this episode comes from BILL. Simplify your workflows and accelerate your growth with BILL’s Accountant Console. Take a demo today at for a $250 gift card – terms apply. In 2008, John Sensiba became managing partner of what is now Sensiba, and promptly watched revenue fall from $18 million to $13 million. On Episode 265 of The Unique CPA, live from 2025, he tells Randy that it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. His and his team’s deliberate, sometimes painful commitment to values eventually transformed a regional firm into a near-$100 million practice. John also talks candidly about the moment in March 2020 when old fears resurfaced, why he eventually gave up his tax practice entirely to focus on leading, and what a six-years-out succession announcement actually does for an organization. He also makes a sharp case against time sheets, not as a billing philosophy argument, but as a values one. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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Fostering a Culture of Experimentation in Accounting with K.C. Eames
05/15/2026
Fostering a Culture of Experimentation in Accounting with K.C. Eames
Accountants aren’t supposed to embrace failure. It runs counter to everything the profession is built on. But K.C. Eames, who leads operations at Dark Horse, has spent time thinking carefully about why that instinct holds firms back, and what it actually takes to build a culture where people feel safe to experiment. Recorded live at 2025, her conversation with Terrell Turner on Episode 264 of The Unique CPA covers her main stage talk on making it safe for accountants to fail, how Dark Horse uses open communication to surface and celebrate new ideas, and what it felt like to retool her presentation at the last minute to lead with personal stories rather than a framework. She also reflects on the kind of tight-knit, genuinely collaborative community that keeps drawing her back to Bridging the Gap year after year. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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The “Hive Mind“ Effect at Bridging the Gap, with Nancy McClelland
05/12/2026
The “Hive Mind“ Effect at Bridging the Gap, with Nancy McClelland
Support for this episode comes from BILL. Simplify your workflows and accelerate your growth with BILL’s Accountant Console. Take a demo today at for a $250 gift card – terms apply. Recorded live at Bridging the Gap 2025 in Denver, Randy Crabtree sits down with Nancy McClelland—CPA, community builder, and self-described member of the BTG “hive mind”—to talk about what keeps drawing her back to the conference year after year on Episode 263 of The Unique CPA. Nancy is candid about the real challenges of running a sustainable firm and how BTG gave her not just ideas, but permission to act on them. She also talks through the two sessions she ran at BTG 2025: one on effective collaboration between bookkeepers and tax pros, drawing directly on what she hears inside Ask A CPA, and another on reasonable S corp compensation that managed to make a technical audit topic feel like an advisory opportunity. It’s no surprise, but Nancy brings the same openness and practicality to this conversation that she brings to everything else she contributes to the profession. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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One Stop, Full Access: Rethink Client Engagement with Rozeta Atlas
05/05/2026
One Stop, Full Access: Rethink Client Engagement with Rozeta Atlas
Support for this episode comes from BILL. Simplify your workflows and accelerate your growth with BILL’s Accountant Console. Take a demo today at for a $250 gift card – terms apply. Recorded on April 15th, a day Randy describes as one he’s never been fond of, and now has even more reason to dread, is this conversation with Rozeta Atlas on Episode 262 of The Unique CPA. The Director of Product Enablement and Adoption at HubSync, Rozeta cuts right to the heart of why busy season feels so broken, explaining that the problem isn’t just the volume of work, but also that progress is invisible to clients. They assume nothing is happening, and since accountants are buried under their own huge pile of returns, the communication gap between the two is like an ouroboros of failings. Rozeta draws on her background moving from tax technical work into firm operations to make the case that technology alone isn’t the fix, because process has to come first. She's also clear that the window to fix things for next year is already open: Extended returns due in September and October mean there’s still time to standardize, identify the gaps, and layer in the right tools before the next wave hits. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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The Changing Face of Public Accounting, Then and Now
04/28/2026
The Changing Face of Public Accounting, Then and Now
Support for this episode comes from BILL. Get clear insight into payment status and cashflow with BILL's Accountant Console. BILL uses AI to simplify your tech stack so you can increase productivity and spend more time delivering truly personalized client service. Take a demo at and you'll get a $250 gift card. Terms apply. Six and a half years in, Randy Crabtree and new co-host Terrell Turner take a rare look backward, revisiting the very first episodes of The Unique CPA to see how well the show’s early conversations about technology, advisory work, and burnout have aged. Turns out, surprisingly well! David Bergstein’s cruise-ship-vs-jet-boat analogy for firm agility still rings true, and Tim Jipping’s casual mention of AI from 2019 lands differently in 2026. The conversation moves naturally from the compliance-to-advisory tension that still defines the industry to something more personal: the importance of knowing the whole person behind the accountant. It’s part retrospective, part honest reckoning with how much, and yet how little, accounting has changed, and a preview of where Randy and Terrell plan to take the show from here. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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From Burnout to Balance: How Firms Can Thrive with Erin Daiber
04/21/2026
From Burnout to Balance: How Firms Can Thrive with Erin Daiber
Support for this episode comes from BILL. Simplify your workflows and accelerate your growth with BILL's accountant console. Take a demo today at for a $250 gift card. Terms apply. Randy Crabtree sits down with CPA turned leadership coach Erin Daiber on Episode 260 of The Unique CPA. The founder of Well Balanced Accountants, Erin digs into what it actually takes to build a firm that can survive and thrive in a rapidly shifting profession. Bringing a refreshingly grounded perspective on AI adoption, Erin says your focus should be less about chasing every new tool, and more about having a strategy before you start stacking up subscriptions. The conversation moves into the leadership crisis that’s quietly brewing in many firms, mindful of the gap between great technicians and effective leaders, and what happens when nobody’s been developed to take over when senior partners retire. Erin is a fierce advocate for firm independence, and makes a compelling case that most firms turning to PE or M&A could have avoided it with earlier, more intentional investment in their people and processes. Get the full show notes and more resources at
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