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PODCAST

The Unique CPA

Randy Crabtree, 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

business management

All Episodes

20:14

An Unexpected Visit at Bridging the Gap with James...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/10/06

At Bridging the Gap 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

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34:14

Living a Life That Matters with Okorie Ramsey

The Unique CPA ·

2026/09/29

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

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39:22

From Practitioner to Advisor: Redefining the...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/09/22

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,

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32:56

Skill Hollowing and Other Hidden Risks of AI, with...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/09/15

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

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27:57

Building the Littlest, Biggest Firm in America, with...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/09/08

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

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41:38

Accountants Won't Be Competing with AI, They'll Be...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/09/01

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,

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32:16

Multidisciplinary by Design, with Mike Payne

The Unique CPA ·

2026/08/25

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,

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33:19

Helping the World by Helping People, with Justine Lackey

The Unique CPA ·

2026/08/18

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

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37:11

Offshoring, Tech, and Bettering Lives, with Anshul...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/08/11

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.,

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25:00

What Actually Makes a Firm Valuable? Answers with...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/08/04

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

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32:08

Change Will Never Be This Slow Again, with Matt Rampe

The Unique CPA ·

2026/07/28

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

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38:59

The Unique CPA Heads "Upstream": Leading the Way with...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/07/21

Randy Crabtree steps away from tax season and toward retirement from Tri-Merit, joining forces with Jeremy Clopton of The Upstream Leader 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

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41:34

Train Your Successor: Embrace Evolution in the...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/07/14

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

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32:51

How Community is the Real Currency at Bridging the Gap

The Unique CPA ·

2026/07/07

Randy Crabtree and Terrell Turner team up to co-host Episode 276 of The Unique CPA, previewing what's coming July 28th at Bridging the Gap 2026 in Charlotte. 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

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34:13

Making the Profession "AI Native" with Ariege...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/06/30

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 BILL.com/uniquecpa 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

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30:56

Academia's View of the Pipeline and More with Scott...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/06/23

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 MagneticTax.com. 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

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16:22

Randy and Terrell Talk Keynotes, Community, and More...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/06/16

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

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13:11

Mental Health, Better Clients, More Money at BTG,...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/06/12

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

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16:16

A Family Reunion You Actually Want to Go to, with...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/06/09

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

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14:14

Bridging the Gap on ADHD and Community with Questian...

The Unique CPA ·

2026/06/05

Recorded live at Bridging the Gap 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

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