Insights from Roger Knecht on Building an Accounting Career

Certainly, Roger Knecht, President Universal Accounting Center. Universal Accounting Center is a post -secondary school for accounting professionals. We basically work with individuals that are trying to improve their careers, getting the skills they need to get the jobs they deserve, as well as work with individuals that starting and building accounting businesses. So definitely in the accounting space and happy to be here. This is gonna be a great discussion.

Yeah, certainly. what it started was back in the 90s, interestingly enough, I was acting as what’s called a headhunter, a recruiter. So I was essentially placing individuals in temporary and permanent assignments. In that process, I got to know of Universal Accounting Center and became acquainted with their graduates. And so I was able to take their individuals, put them on assignment, and my clients loved them. I felt that they were fully skilled and capable of doing the jobs that they were being asked to do. And it was through that more or less relationship that I became introduced to Universal Accounting Center and some opportunities presented themselves such that I started on in 1999. I’ve been with the company now 25 years and I’m currently the president.

So as a school, what we’re basically doing is we originally started as you would expect in a traditional in -campus kind of environment. You’d go to a classroom, get instruction. Today we’re entirely online, virtual, and so we’re dealing with the e -commerce side of things where we’re working with individuals to help them actually see what type of courses, programs they can enrol in, and then at the same time trying to fulfil that, deliver that in an online environment.

Generally speaking, it’s people who are in the process of starting and building their accounting business. So I work with the account entrepreneurs is how I like to refer to it. It’s those people that have the desire to service the small business community, offer quality accounting services, and we’re assisting them in not only just marketing, selling, and pricing those services, but clearly delivering quality services, whether themselves or with staff that have gone through our training.

Great question. So there are a few things. One of which I would actually attest to is the coaching that we provide. Every one of the programs that you’re enrolled in, is basically including an orientation counsellor. It also comes with what we refer to as an academic coach. This is more or less a tutor. The academic coach is meant to actually help you learn the curriculum as well as apply that. So even though the courses may take a few days, a few weeks, maybe a month or more to go through, at the end of the day, we’re supporting these individuals in the real world application of these principles for as many as 12, 18 or 24 months. And so it’s not just tutoring, but it’s also the fact that they’re able to reach out, get support and at the same time, some coaching as well. So that’s one of the main things that’s unique about the training we offer.

It would definitely be our free type of resources. We try to do what I refer to as our give back. So nearly every year in the last number of years, we’ve created curriculums or programs that we use to basically give back to the community, whether they be personal or individual type trainings or business type courses. And so we have a curriculum that’s called the Turnkey Business Plan for Accounting Professionals. It literally is just that. It’s the turnkey business model for what an individual would want to actually implement as they’re starting and building their business.

On a personal side, have a personal finance course where individuals are able to go through it and more or less teach their children, their family, young adults. It’s used quite widely as a way of actually learning how to manage personal finance. So just a variety of free things that we’ve created over the years.

Make money. No, the thing that we’re trying to do now is we’re trying to really give a voice to the accounting community, help them understand that there’s more that they can be doing that’s proactive with their clients. One of the things that the accounting profession is going through right now is this evolution as it relates to doing more advisory work. It’s how we actually now take the accounting information that’s referred to as accounting as the language of business. Well, we’re the interpreters, the translators that help the business owner understand what the company’s trying to say. And so the intent is through the advisory services, we’re able to now get more engaged with our clients and help them understand, okay, what are the numbers saying? How can I make use of this information? How can I make more informed business decisions? And so it’s really a way of empowering the small business owner to be more successful and profitable.

Oh wow, I’ve got a lengthy answer here, so I’ll try and be succinct. As a business, one of the things that we decided early on, this is back in the, say the early 2000s, 2005 perhaps at the latest, is we felt that as a business, we didn’t want to be anchored to a particular individual. We wanted the program to be kind of like Nike, right? Nike, it’s not a branded thing to an individual. It’s basically a brand in and of itself. Well, we went as a school and kind of embraced that and didn’t really put an individual’s face or an individual as a flag.

person or spokesperson of the company. Well, as the internet started to take off and social media became so much more prevalent, I had to be challenged as now the new acting president as to who’s going to be the face of the business because it was unrelatable just being a company, Universal Accounting Center. It was unrelatable being a school. And so we needed to put something out there. And clearly as the president, I realised that perhaps it needed to be me. So

If you’re anything familiar with accounting, you might have actually seen me. I’m quite all over the social media, but it’s not because I’m sharing, here’s what I ate today and this is what I did to do my laundry perhaps. I’m actually very focused on giving back. And so I have a podcast. I have a lot of social content that I create that’s meant to be tips and tricks. So it’s a variety of things that are meant to be inspirational as well as informative. And it’s really just from a marketing point of view, trying to be omnipresent or ever present as it relates to If you need something or if it’s about accounting, it’s universal. That’s how we like to say it.

Correct. So on Universal Accounting, you can find some of the free resources that I’ve been mentioning, but at the same time, we have the podcast information. It’s there that you can find all the guests that we’ve had. We’ve actually compiled some playlists. These are highlights that we’ve compiled over the last basically five years now almost. And in these 300 plus episodes, we’ve kind of compiled, here are the best ones regarding certain topics. And so you can binge listen to things related to marketing, selling, pricing, client relationships. We even have some that relate to meltdowns, mental health, just a number of topics that someone may want to consider as they’re working on their business.

Quite a few challenges, honestly. Cash flow is clearly one of the things that you always have to consider as a business, and so we had to address that. It’s nice to have a line of credit. It’s more important to be attentive to what’s going on with the correlation of payables and receivables, so a lot there. There was something that you might appreciate hearing, which is as I became president, the third president of the school, I asked the preceding president whether or not there were any sacred cows, and that was to simply suggest, are there things that he would suggest I not change or maybe effect. And so it was very limited the number of things that he felt were essential to the business. And over the 10 years, I’ve tried to respect those things and more importantly, kind of adhere to those. And some of them were cultural related, some of them were client related. But yeah, it’s okay. Here’s where it would be preferred I not change the business. Other than that, and literally it was only just a few things, I was able to do what I needed to to grow the business and put my fingerprint on the company. And so

Those were some of the challenges I had to face as to what is my vision, what am I seeing the company becoming in the New Year’s and how we’re going to achieve that. And over the years, fortunately, through the challenges and struggles we faced, I’ve been blessed to be able to not only just achieve the successes I was hoping for, but we recognized for them as a HINC 100 company numerous times over, as well as a Utah 100 company a number of times over. So the recognitions have followed.

First of all, I’m gonna say you’re gonna have to put yourself out there or someone is the face of the offer. I’m very much of the opinion that you have to be personable, approachable. You have to be someone that someone is drawn to. And so that does necessitate you being willing to be out there and be vulnerable. Not so much that you’re having to reveal your personal life, but you definitely need to take on a brand of some sorts that people are drawn towards. And so from an e -commerce point of view, you’ve gotta have that. And then I’m assuming everyone that’s in e -commerce is very familiar with the funnel marketing that’s happening today. It’s this whole idea of what are you first of all willing to do to offer to get in exchange their contact information. And so anytime you can identify your ideal customer and present to them something that you can actually use to get their contact information, enabling you to no longer be dependent upon whatever medium you originally found them, but now bring them into your CRM and now be able to market them directly rather than indirectly through some other medium.

That’s golden because now they’re into your database, now they’re part of your list, and you’re able to, in your cadence, reach out to them with promotions, offers, basically educate them. Now, as it relates to the sales process, definitely one of the things I would encourage is to approach it with two things in mind. I feel that for e -commerce, you need to be able to differentiate yourself by educating your customers to why what you’re offering is unique. That education needs to be free. You need to be very forthright as to what and why.

And then regarding the e -commerce, you need to be very specific as to why you’re the exception, why you’re the expert, why you’re the ideal or right choice. And if you can answer those questions for your customer, they’re gonna be more inclined to actually act and purchase whatever product or service you’re offering.

Well, if you include all of my employees, I’m over, we’re about 30 or so right now. We’re still growing, just hired a few individuals this month. I have a few more that we’re hiring next, so we’re still growing, but not too large, just about 30 individuals in the company. But experts, I definitely work with a few individuals that are third parties that I have delegated some of the responsibilities to that I would consider experts. So easily about five people that I work with regularly to try and address either marketing, sales, client retention, just a variety of things in those wheelhouses.

Yeah, a few things. As a word of advice to your listeners, one of the things that I’d like to impart is, first of all, success oftentimes takes sacrifice. Don’t be surprised at the sacrifices you’re making. It will take that kind of a sacrifice. But with that sacrifice, I’m sure you’re going to find the success you’re looking for. So be perseverant. It’s going to take time. Everything takes longer than you expect. And then with regards to success, be passionate about what you do. Passion is contagious. It’s contagious for your customers.

They’re gonna get excited about what it is you’re offering. It’s contagious for your employees. They’re gonna wanna be a part of that process, part of that thing that you’ve identified is your vision. And so be free and open with your passion. Let people know and understand what you’re trying to do and kind of tap into that energy that you bring. But lastly, it’s the idea of then sustaining the passion. You need personal time. Don’t concern yourself with those moments that you need to recharge. So you do need to find At least some way that you can actually do something that allows you to step away from the business, the day -to -day routine, so you can think outside of the box and at the same time work on the business. So that’s just a few thoughts that I’d like to share.

My pleasure, I appreciate the opportunity. I thought we had some good discussions and always remember this, if it’s about accounting, it is universal.