With his hip-hop hats, silver chains, and rapper persona, he looks more like a SoundCloud artist than a buttoned-up businessman. Yet behind the unconventional facade lies the real story of an entrepreneur who found purpose in the unlikeliest places.

In his teens, Scott was set on making it big in the entertainment and music industry. Then, he made some regrettable choices selling drugs in college. He was arrested and kicked out of college. His entertainment dreams were crushed, and the future looked bleak.

After cleaning up his act, Scott rebuilt his life using street smarts and hustle to work his way up at a small tax practice. Over time, he was able to purchase the firm and scale it into a profitable, million-dollar business.

As told to me on the Earmark Podcast, Scott’s story proves accounting can provide purpose, community, and fulfillment for those from non-traditional backgrounds. With grit, innovation, and the right mindset, even someone with a checkered past can pivot to redemption and success.

Drugs and Recklessness

As a bright student and a born hustler, like any suburban kid in the early 2000s, Scott had dreams of hip-hop glory.

He was sure he would make it big someday and live the flashy lifestyle he idolized in music videos. So when he got accepted to UNC Chapel Hill, it seemed like his dreams were finally coming true.

Scott started as a business accounting major and even made the Dean’s List his freshman year. But not long after Scott got caught up in Chapel Hill’s fraternity scene. He began seeing dealing as an easy way to make money and live out his rap fantasies.

In Scott’s mind, selling weed and pills to other students was normalized party behavior, no different than underage drinking or smoking joints. “I thought I was doing stuff that everybody else would be doing anyway,” he reflects.

But Scott’s “fantasy world” soon came crashing down. Police busted a drug ring associated with his operation. Scott got arrested and charged with felony distribution, ending his college rap dreams in handcuffs.

He hit rock bottom as his family’s shame and disappointment washed over. However, the hardest part was yet to come.

The Road to Redemption

Getting arrested was a rude awakening for Scott.

When the handcuffs went on, he realized dealing drugs was a dead-end street. When UNC kicked him out, Scott resolved to clean up his act and turn his life around.

However, starting over wasn’t easy. As part of his probation, Scott received a suspended sentence and had to spend 40 days and nights in the county jail. He waited tables to pay for attorney fees and college tuition. Scott felt like an outsider on campus and in accounting classes, haunted by the shame of his arrest.

It took every ounce of Scott’s willpower to persist. He almost quit many times. But fueled by a desire to prove people wrong, Scott blocked out the noise and eventually finished his accounting degree.

Soon, he was hustling for any accounting job that would take a chance on someone with his background. Scott leveraged his sales skills to land an entry-level role at a local tax firm.

Sometimes, You Get More Than One Chance

A local tax preparer was looking to retire in five years. His small practice was generating around $90,000 annually working by himself.

He offered Scott a job with the chance to buy the business eventually. He wanted someone to take over day-to-day operations so he could relax into semi-retirement. It was a perfect fit for Scott’s entrepreneurial ambitions.

Scott eagerly accepted the opportunity and immersed himself in the practice. He marketed the firm through emerging online channels and implemented new cloud-based tools like Xero and Gusto to streamline work.

Scott realized that the skills he had learned “in the streets” also applied to a tax prep business. He employed tactics like three-tier pricing strategies to boost profits. As Scott explains, “I learned a lot about people in sales. I started doing menu pricing. Three options. I learned that from when I was doing options for different grades of drugs.”

Within five years, Scott grew the annual revenue from $90,000 to $500,000. When the time came, he purchased the practice from the owner through a seller-financed deal. In his early 30s,, Scott owned an accounting firm.

Scott transformed his life in just a few short years through persistence, smarts, and grit. The vulnerable ex-con became a successful young entrepreneur with a bright future. For Scott, this was just the beginning.

Operating and Innovating a Firm

In the years after buying the firm, Scott hit a plateau. No matter how hard he worked, he struggled to grow annual revenue past $1.2 million.

Scott admits, “I didn’t really know how to manage people.” Excessive work hours and high employee turnover resulted. He was working 80-hour weeks yet hitting a ceiling.

Eventually, Scott had an epiphany – he was the bottleneck holding the business back. His need to control everything and micromanage his team prevented the firm from scaling. He became determined to step back and build an organization that could thrive without him.

Scott implemented the Entrepreneurial Operating System to empower his team and build clear accountability. He forced himself to stop doing hands-on production, which was initially difficult. Scott also transitioned the company to a fully remote model, a pioneering move at the time.

Inspired by deep work concepts, Scott revolutionized workplace communication at his firm. He replaced frenzied Slack channels with structured “office hours” for focused collaboration. Calendar-blocking and time budgets enabled uninterrupted deep work.

By getting out of his team’s way, Scott enabled them to flourish and operate at their highest level. His firm transformed into a self-running growth machine approaching $2 million in revenue.

This newfound freedom to step away allowed Scott to pursue his passion for rap.

Takeaways for Accounting Entrepreneurs

Scott Scarano’s extraordinary journey reveals how accounting can change lives. His path from drug dealer to successful firm owner seemed improbable. However, through hard work, smarts, and an open mindset, Scott found redemption and meaning in an unlikely place.

Scott’s nontraditional origin story highlights the future potential of the accounting profession. His firm succeeded mainly because of the diverse experiences and “street smarts” Scott brought to the table. As the accounting profession becomes more inclusive, it should embrace owners from all walks of life.

Now, Scott is working to help others succeed, too. Scott created Accounting High, a community for accountants who want to move the industry forward and “get real about the nuances of practice management.”

On his Accounting High podcast, Scott shares lessons for those from non-traditional backgrounds who aspire to own an accounting firm someday.

Wherever your passions lie, Scott’s inspirational journey shows that you can find purpose, community, and belonging through accounting entrepreneurship.

Blake Oliver, CPA, is the founder and CEO of Earmark and co-host of The Accounting Podcast, the No.1 podcast for accountants and bookkeepers.

The post From Felon to Firm Owner: A Redemption Story appeared first on Going Concern.

Different generations in the workforce often struggle to understand each other. But experts say one thing that young professionals can do, including young accountants, is to be more patient.

Jerry Maginnis, former office managing partner of KPMG in Philadelphia and author of the new book Advice for a Successful Career in the Accounting Profession: How to Make Your Assets Greatly Exceed Your Liabilities, told me on my podcast that younger professionals have short attention spans and they’re very interested in what’s next. Their mindset is: “I’ve been doing this job for six months; when will I get promoted?” or “When will I have my next opportunity?” That kind of ambition is not necessarily a negative, but Maginnis said it can get in the way of a successful career if they change jobs or switch departments every time they hit a few bumps in the road.

“Let’s say they’re in public accounting, and they get assigned to an engagement with a manager or client they don’t particularly like,” asked Maginnis. “Or suppose they have to put in very long hours for a few weeks. Too often, young people will say: ‘That’s it. This isn’t the right profession for me. I’m leaving.’”

Instead, Maginnis said you have to give things time to play out because your next engagement might be with great people and a terrific client that ends up defining your career. But by bailing out too soon, you miss it. Maginnis recalls early in his career when Newt Becker, founder of the Becker CPA exam prep courses, told him that every year spent in public accounting is the equivalent of two years in private industry. But too often, young CPAs flee public accounting for what they believe are the greener pastures of industry and miss out on that learning and development.

It’s no secret the workload is notoriously tough for young accountants starting in the Big Four. It’s often described as “trial by fire” or “getting thrown into the deep end of the pool.” This could intimidate and discourage anyone, including people just starting their careers. But you have to show some grit and not be afraid to ask for help.

As Maginnis details in his new book, firms of all sizes have become much more sensitive to the importance of work-life balance, mental health, and the overall well-being of their employees. “As a profession, we have a way to go, but there are many firm-wide programs and initiatives to support young professionals through this,” noted Maginnis. By the same token, Maginnis said young professionals are sometimes “their own worst enemy” because even at age 22 or 23, they need to take ownership of their schedules (and their lives) and set priorities. He said firms don’t expect anyone to work 75 to 80 hours a week, and you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for flexibility – even during busy season – if you have important family or social commitments during the early evening on weekdays. He said you can usually trade off with co-workers to go home earlier on those nights and then work later on other nights.

Maginnis said most firms give you 30 days of PTO when you walk in the door. That’s the equivalent of six weeks off right off the bat. And for much of the year, the workload is closer to 40-hour weeks, with occasional 50-hour weeks.

Intellectual curiosity, advocate for yourself

“At KPMG, almost everyone came in with a baseline level of skills that enabled them to be successful in their job,” observed Maginnis. “The ones who rose to the top were the ones who showed great intellectual curiosity and who were avid learners.” In other words, they weren’t satisfied with understanding debits, credits, and audits. They wanted to know about the client’s business model and how they made money.

They wanted to know about their international expansion strategy and technology use. “The hallmark of a great auditor is not just understanding debits and credits, but understanding how the client makes money and the economics and the cash flows,” added Maginnis. “A lot of the auditing failures we’ve seen in the past could have been avoided if people got beyond the debits and credits and thought about the substance of the economic transactions they were auditing and whether or not they made sense,” noted Maginnis.

From where I sit, accounting gives you a great window into the inner workings of a company. That’s why it’s such valuable training for many business careers.

Importance of soft skills

While there is so much emphasis on staying current with technical skills, I’ve found that so much of success in the accounting profession revolves around your ability to work effectively with others, whether it be your client, colleagues, or peers. You could be the smartest person in the world and have all the answers. But if you’re challenging to interact with, you’re probably not going to do well. One of the most common complaints Maginnis hears from fellow managers is that their younger colleagues don’t possess soft skills. He’s hoping to see soft skills stressed more in the accounting curriculum but feels many advisory boards think some of the ever-changing “core requirements” would have to be eliminated to make room for soft skills. That can be a tough fight to win.

Maginnis recalls a situation early in his career when he was assigned to a large engagement with a principal client official who was rude and hostile toward the entire audit team. Instead of bad-mouthing the official or begging for a transfer, Maginnis invited the hostile client official out for coffee and tried to understand where he was coming from.

Maginnis quickly learned the official needed help understanding the role of independent auditors or why they were asking him to do certain things or provide so much documentation. However, after Maginnis patiently explained the role of auditors, the client asked Maginnis for regular weekly coffees and pointed out several areas in which KPMG could be more efficient. Long story short, Maginnis made partner a few years later, and the once hostile client was among the first to write him a congratulatory letter.

It’s a great success story, but Maginnis quickly points out that bringing in the business and building client relationships is not the only criteria for making partner. He said soft skills that include building relationships with team members and helping younger professionals achieve their potential are just as critical as business development and strong technical skills.

And, of course, having a high degree of intellectual curiosity about understanding the client’s business better or what’s keeping the C-suite up at night. “What are their biggest challenges? What are their biggest opportunities?” asked Maginnis. “It’s about being not only a student of the client (what their needs are) but being a student of your own firm — knowing all of the firm’s capabilities and how they can help the client make better decisions,” noted Maginnis.

Specialties to consider

Every business needs accountants, from local mom-and-pops to multinational corporations. “Young people today have the opportunity to marry a personal passion with the type of organization that needs accounting services,” said Maginnis. “It could be sports and entertainment, tech companies, life science companies.” There are also hot areas of specialization, such as forensic accounting, since AI has accelerated the pace and scope of fraud. There’s also the cannabis industry, digital currencies, and artificial intelligence. These emerging industries have some unique accounting and reporting issues and tax issues.

As a profession, we must better explain why accounting is a great, exciting profession and why it can provide young people with many opportunities. Unfortunately, Maginnis said the awareness level is not where it should be, and the stereotype of long hours, tedious work, unappreciative clients, and nerdy coworkers persists. He said the misconceptions became readily apparent after he retired from KPMG and started teaching at Rowan University near his home in New Jersey. He found the students highly motivated and curious about stable careers like accounting. But, they had concerns about the long hours, the 150-hour rule, the fear of boredom, and the lack of work-life balance.

Conclusion

“It dawned on me that there might be a broader need for explaining what accounting careers are like, the doors they can unlock, and the importance of forming good habits that will serve you well for a lifetime,” said Maginnis. What kinds of career advice are you giving young professionals? I’d love to hear more.

Blake Oliver, CPA, is the founder and CEO of Earmark and co-host of The Accounting Podcast, the No.1 podcast for accountants and bookkeepers.

The post Listen Up, Young Accountants: Career Advice For Sticking Out Those Early Years appeared first on Going Concern.