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CPA & Consultant for Accounting Firms
Scaling New Heights, round two.
Happy Frye-Day. I made it to my second Scaling New Heights ever, this time in Orlando. If you're on the fence about conferences, this is one I'd actually recommend. People go to connect. Vendors are present, but they're really just part of the community, not the whole point of the trip.
Jay Kimmelman and I gave a Power Breakfast on Tuesday morning on AI replacing offshoring. He and his team at Pillar Leverage use Copilot and the Microsoft Office Suite, on top of Canopy, to automate a lot of bookkeeping tasks. I've been following Jay for years, since he had his own firm and was a major player for Xero back when I had my tax practice and was a Xero partner myself.
Ran into my old boss and friend Sasha Orloff, who shouted me out on his main stage talk. He referenced my line about using AI on broken systems: it's like pouring gasoline on a bicycle. Doesn't make you go any faster. Just makes the crash worse. He walked by right as I ran into another old Pilot.com coworker, Justin McConchie, who was there announcing Pilot's new platform, Pilot.com/meridian.
Also spotted Logan Graf hovering around the Canopy booth, sorting through the Lego bin, while Jason Staats was a few feet away. Hard to tell if he was more excited about the Legos than about Jason. Some things never change.
Canopy's culture keeps impressing me. One move: a free coffee cart every morning at 6:30am. Too early for me most days, but I made it out at 6:45 once, and noticed a few "competitors" quietly lining up for Canopy's coffee too.
Ron Baker and Mike Triantos, VP of Sales at Rippling, gave a great talk on Pricing to Value as part of the Strange New World session. I'm becoming a bit of a Ron Baker groupie at this point. Always worth the seat.
Instead of heading straight home from Orlando, I made a stop in Greensboro, North Carolina, where I sat on a BDO Alliance panel on modern practice management with Heather Evans, Vivek Srivastava, Pete Miele, and Marty Rubin. New state for me, good event.
Coming Up
Look mom, I'm published. I wrote a chapter for The 2026 Tax and Accounting Automation Guide, on client experience as your firm's best growth strategy. I'll be presenting the high-level version on June 30th. Register here.
Worth Reading
One more thing worth your time if you haven't seen it: the IRS released new guidelines on responsible AI use. Worth reading in full. Read the bulletin.
What's the best thing you picked up at a conference this year that had nothing to do with the sessions? Hit reply.
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Luke
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