Jeff Call on Trusted Advisor Relationships, Lateral Partner Strategy, and Scaling a $125 Million Accounting Firm

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. As you listen today, let one idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Jeff Call, managing partner and CEO at Bennett Thrasher LLP.

They are a privately held accounting and consulting firm offering tax, audit, advisory, and business process outsourcing services to businesses and high net worth individuals. Founded in 1980 in Atlanta, it has earned praise in industry rankings for integrity and top notch client service. Jeff has been with the firm since 2002 and founded their personal financial services practice, specializing in estate and wealth transfer planning.

He also holds CPA, CFP, and PFS designations. Jeff has been named to the Atlanta Magazine five-star wealth manager list multiple times and is a frequent speaker featured in outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Before joining Bennett Thrasher, he honed his expertise at Arthur Anderson and Deloitte. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency.

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Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Jeff Call (02:19)
Yeah, thanks for having me, Anthony. Really appreciate it.

Anthony Codispoti (02:21)
So Jeff, you graduated Auburn in 96 with both a bachelor’s and a master’s in accountancy and taxation. What’s first sparked your interest in this field?

Jeff Call (02:33)
So originally My father’s a CPA so he was a partner at a large firm in the Midwest called sickage and So I was around accounting a little bit as a young man Actually did not think I was gonna go into accounting I thought I wanted to study marketing and my dad convinced me that marketing was too general a degree and I should go into accounting since the language of business and I would have plenty of chances to do marketing if I was successful in the accounting

Anthony Codispoti (03:01)
Okay, so if I’m reading this right, your first job right out of school was Arthur Anderson, and then from there to Deloitte. So you worked for two of the big boys right away. How did the culture at those places compare to each other?

Jeff Call (03:09)
That’s correct.

Yes, I did.

I mean Anderson was one of the largest firms like you said in the country and in world and so it was a good atmosphere for a big firm but obviously I think one of the things that’s one of the things I think we have as a benefit of Bennett Thrasher just a more entrepreneurial culture better for our employees at earlier stages of their career it’s not as much of a grind we do try to have a much better work-life balance but

Overall good culture for big firms, but definitely different than what we experience here at firm like Thrasher.

Anthony Codispoti (03:47)
So how did the opportunity to join Bennett Thrasher come about?

Jeff Call (03:51)
Yeah, so I was at Anderson Anderson as some may know, I went through a lot of scrutiny around the Enron ⁓ situation. They were the auditor for Enron and Anderson basically was collapsing and so the Anderson practice in Atlanta went to Deloitte. So I went to Deloitte and actually we had one day off between our last day at Arthur Anderson and our first day at Deloitte. I was actually playing golf because that’s one of my ⁓ hobbies and passions.

and I got a call from Headhunter about the position that Bennett Thrasher had to kind of start their personal financial services group. so, you know, I ended up being at Deloitte for about eight weeks because I was in negotiations of whether or not I was going to join Bennett Thrasher, but it was a pretty short tenure at Deloitte before I joined Bennett Thrasher.

Anthony Codispoti (04:37)
Okay, so you were kind of checking out options there. What was it that ultimately drew you into Bendit?

Jeff Call (04:43)
I’ve been at Thrasher. think what really would attract to me was first of all, an opportunity to be the leader of a practice that they didn’t have. So kind of put my own entrepreneurial stamp on the practice. you know, I learned a lot at Arthur Anderson and Deloitte about how to run a successful kind of high net worth tax and trust in estate practice. And they also just had a really appealing culture. know, the culture of our firm is really about a lot about family and people first. And that really attracted me. And I met a lot of the partners and could tell that

A lot of people talk about that and even the big firms talk about it, but they don’t walk the talk very well. And so was clear to me that they did walk the talk and I was going to have opportunity to have a lot of freedom and, you know, entrepreneurial opportunity to grow the practice in the best way that I saw fit, but also having good balance in my life. At the time that happened, my son, he’s my oldest, he’s a little over 24 this year. He was a newborn. So basically I had a newborn as our

Anderson was collapsing and so it was appealing to me to find a firm that really put in that you know people first, family first opportunity and that was attractive to me.

Anthony Codispoti (05:54)
So like you said, Jeff, a lot of people talk about their culture and being people first and family first. What made you so confident that Bennett Thrasher was actually walking the walk and not just talking?

Jeff Call (06:07)
is actually a pretty interesting story. So I was meeting with Rick Bennett and Ken Thrasher.

⁓ in the final stages of my negotiations or recruitment to the firm. And we were in a meeting in their office talking about, you know, potential compensation and what I could bring to the firm and all that great opportunity. And Rick Bennett, one of our founders actually got a phone call on his mobile phone and he said, excuse me, I need to take this call. It’s my son. And he stepped out of the meeting when he’s trying to recruit a high level candidate. And that meant a lot to me. He’s like, I don’t know if it was a planned call, but a planted call, but you

They live what they say. So was pretty clear to me that they do put family first and that was important to me and really resonated with me that, if this is how they react, then this is a place for me.

Anthony Codispoti (06:57)
So I know that you ultimately founded Bennett Thrasher’s personal financial services practice. Was that the idea with you coming in in the first place or did that kind of unfold later on?

Jeff Call (07:07)
Yeah, yeah,

that was that when they were hiring me, that’s what they were trying to do is launch this practice. They didn’t really have a formalized practice in this area and they knew that I had that expertise. So yeah, they were hiring me to kind of launch that practice for them that they didn’t already have. They saw it as a good growth opportunity coming out of, you know, at that time we had Sarbanes Oxley and there was a lot of transition going on. A lot of big firms had a lot of the high wealth business at that time, but it was clear.

to them and me that there was gonna be a tremendous opportunity for middle market firms to really grow practices in this area. And so they saw that as an opportunity to bring me in and help launch that practice and kind of take it to the next level.

Anthony Codispoti (07:46)
Explain that opportunity, what was going, what is Sarbanes-Oxley? Why was that creating an opportunity for smaller firms?

Jeff Call (07:51)
So the Saurvain’s

Oxley was a law that was put in place kind of coming out of some of the audit failures of Enron and Worldcom and other large companies. They basically wanted to separate the amount of work that audit firms could do around executives and other specialty.

know, tax planning. And so they basically were asking firms to disclose if they’re doing this other work. And really what it ended up doing was it kept a lot of that high net worth, you know, executive tax work and other large engagements like that ended up being separated. So a lot of times they didn’t want their auditor to do that work. And so it moved to another firm.

And so it created opportunities for firms like Bennett Thrasher to kind of tap into that market and pick up work from some of these public companies, executive work, as well as it also just kind of created a disruption in the entire ecosystem where a lot of these big firms then focused heavily on their audit practices and it created a lot of opportunity around tax. They flushed out some of their really good tax clients.

that were maybe privately owned companies. And so that just created a tremendous opportunity for firms like Thrasher size to really grow market share. And that’s really the firm grew from an 02, we were about 8 million in revenue and went to this past year, we finished a little over 125 million in revenue. And so a lot of that came from the opportunity that kind of started with Sarbanes-Oxley and some of that regulation that disrupted the big four market a little bit, created opportunities for

mid-size firms to gain some market share with the high wealth market as well as with the private company market.

Anthony Codispoti (09:29)
So let me see if I understand this and help me fill in the gaps where I’m getting it wrong. So Sarbanes actually came in and that kind of forced people to one, know, this, the, big companies were going to continue to do the audit work, but now tax consultancy or, ⁓ like individual, you’re like taking on, ⁓ advising the high level executives that kind of needed to be peeled away. So there wasn’t this perceived conflict of interest.

Jeff Call (09:56)
Yeah.

That’s correct. I mean, I think they did have the opportunity if they wanted to, to keep that work, assuming that the audit committee would sign off on it. But a lot of audit committees asked for it to be separated to keep this perceived conflict of interest and make it go away. And so that created a lot of opportunity for firms like Bennett Thrasher to kind of come in and be an alternative resource that could pick up some of that business. And so that created a lot of opportunity for us to pick up, like I said, some of these

very successful private companies that were kind of dislodged because the big four focused a lot of their effort on the fortune 100, fortune 500. And so if they had other nice middle market private companies, they also kind of pushed some of that out the door.

Anthony Codispoti (10:41)
Gotcha. And so did you get to put that marketing hat on that you wanted to back in college? And how did you go out and find this new business?

Jeff Call (10:46)
Yeah. Yeah. So mean, was, uh, you know, that was a

big part of it was me getting out in the market and, really trying to generate business for us, tapping into all my network that I had in the Atlanta market and helping to grow the firm. And so that was a big, a big piece and of how I spent a lot of my time in the early days with the firm was going out and letting all my contacts know, Hey, I’m now at Thrasher. Here’s what we can do as an alternative to maybe what you’ve seen in the big four. And it helped us gain a lot of market share pretty quickly.

Anthony Codispoti (11:15)
So from your experience advising high net worth individuals, entrepreneurs, family business owners, what are some common misconceptions about wealth transfer and real estate planning that you encounter on a regular basis?

Jeff Call (11:29)
I mean, I think a lot of people think it is complex, but a lot of times it’s just doing the blocking and tackling. Some people just don’t do it at all because they think it’s such a complex topic. They don’t want to engage in those conversations.

If you have a good advisor, a good individual tax advisor and a good estate planning attorney, they can definitely do that. I see a lot of people that come to us as wealthy clients and they haven’t done their planning yet because there’s this perception that it’s so, difficult that they don’t, or they’re, people are just afraid because of the, nobody wants to face their own mortality. And so a lot of people just.

put it off. ⁓ And then, unfortunately, you see situations where people haven’t done their planning and they do have a premature death and then you end up with a real chaotic situation that we’re having to deal with. We’ve had to deal with those a number of times and it’s always better if people proactively address it and make sure that they’re getting the proper advice and counsel.

Anthony Codispoti (12:28)
So walk us through layman’s terms, what the firm does today.

Jeff Call (12:33)
across all of our practices or the, I mean, so we serve a lot of ⁓ privately owned businesses as well as high wealth individuals from, we do audit work for private companies, we do forensic accounting for private companies, we do business valuation, we do outsourced accounting, ⁓ and then we also do a lot of tax work. those are kind of the big swaths. Also we have specialty practices around

you know, forensic accounting, dispute resolution, as well as, Cameron, if I mentioned business valuation, we do transaction advisory services. And so we’re really able to kind of provide a full suite of services to the private company, the middle market company. ⁓ We also do do some work for public companies, primarily on the tax advisory, as well as risk advisory doing, know, work, which is statement on controls.

And so we’re kind of, we have our services look a lot like what you might get from the big four firms as far as all the different specialty services, but we’re offering it in a kind of a more entrepreneurial package, more hands-on from your partner and a more advisory oriented kind of trusted business advisor status is really where we focus a lot of our effort.

Anthony Codispoti (13:53)
So would you say that’s kind one of your differentiators is that you guys are able to provide the same services that the big guys can but with more of a personalized touch?

Jeff Call (14:05)
That’s a big piece of it. mean, we have a big focus as a firm on

really being proactive business advisors to our clients and trying to be their most trusted business advisor, delivering five-star client service on a regular basis. I think that’s the one thing. think sometimes the big firms, they get so big, they lose touch with client service. And that’s a big thing that we think is a real differentiator for us is that proactive advisory-oriented, trusted business advisor status that we have with our clients where we become hopefully their most trusted business

advisor and they’re calling us and touching base with us about any major decision they’re making as kind of a first point of contact and that’s really the position we want to put ourselves in is having that elevated trusted business advisor status.

Anthony Codispoti (14:53)
So kind of walk me through a little bit what the relationship might look like. Is it mostly the client coming to you saying, hey, I have this need or I have this question? Or is it also you proactively reaching out saying, hey, there’s this new thing, this new law, this new opportunity, this new whatever that you need to be aware of.

Jeff Call (15:12)
Yeah, it’s both. mean, generally our large clients, we’re trying to touch base with them on a regular basis at minimum quarterly.

and talking to them about different ideas or strategies we may have for their business to help them optimize their overall business operations or tax position. But then also, clients are reaching out to us as they have ⁓ big transactions or other activities going on as well. So we try to have a very proactive approach where we’re the one that’s leading the client. But certainly, clients are free to call us at any point if they have a key issue that they want to think through or help me

understand how you guys would look at this or what are the options I have for planning a strategy around this particular transaction. Sarbanes-Oxley came into place in 2002.

Anthony Codispoti (15:56)
And Jeff, remind me the timeline of Sarbanes-Oxley again.

2002. Okay, ⁓ so there was a lot of new business to be had from sort of the fallout, if you will, of that you guys saw a lot of growth during that period. ⁓ What have been the big growth levers since then?

Jeff Call (16:12)
Yep.

And for our firm, mean, think a lot of it, obviously anytime there’s a new tax law, that’s a little bit of a lever, you know, cause

Clients want to get informed about the new tax law and how that impacts them. But a lot of our growth has really been driven by us hiring really high quality, talented people in different specialty practices and building teams around them. you know, about, I guess it was eight or nine years ago, we decided we wanted to have a transaction advisory services practice. So we went and found a key partner in that area and built a team around him. And that team now is doing tremendous

to some out of revenue, averaging 20 to 30 % growth per year. you know, that’s a, you know, we went from one partner to four partners in, you know, a couple years, just because of the growth trajectory of that practice. And so we have a number of stories like that where we decided to, hey, we’re going to launch a new practice or launch a new industry segment. We’re going to go hire the talented individual that has that specialty expertise. And then we’re going to support them and build a team around them to support that growth and opportunity for the

And so some of those practices have had tremendous growth and become kind of national practices, not just, you know, we have offices in Atlanta, Dallas, and Denver, but some of these, you know, offices have, you know, or these opportunities have, you know, fueled national growth.

Anthony Codispoti (17:40)
So when you want to grow into a new direction, do you ever look at acquisitions or is it mostly identifying a high level person, bringing them in, then building it around?

Jeff Call (17:49)
Yeah, we’ve

done both. mean, so we’ve done over the history of the firm, we’ve done a few acquisitions. None of them have been really massive, ⁓ but we have done a couple of acquisitions. We’ve also done a lot of lateral partner acquisitions. So bringing a lateral partner from another firm that has that specialty expertise and then kind of building the team around them. we think of a lateral partner bringing a lateral partner is kind of like a small acquisition, but usually you’re just acquiring a person. Maybe they have a team member or two that comes along with them. And then we

kind of build the team around them over time as the growth.

Anthony Codispoti (18:22)
So somebody who’s got a smaller

firm that you can then absorb because they’ve got the expertise, a little bit of a client base that, you can mostly you’re tapping into that expertise.

Jeff Call (18:31)
Tapping

into the expertise, also, generally when we’re trying to do this, we’re trying to find somebody that has kind of the three legs of the stool. They have the ability to do the work, they have the ability to sell the work, they’re good market facing, and then they’re also really good at kind of developing people below them. They have that coaching and development mindset to help build the team around them that can be their future partners.

Anthony Codispoti (18:59)
Is that something that’s sort of baked into Bennett Thrasher?

Jeff Call (19:02)
That’s

big piece of our success of our firm is finding those talented individuals that have all those three skill sets and are able to deliver on that consistently. And then we can build those teams around them to help fuel that growth and opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti (19:20)
even with your kind

of frontline employees, is there a big interest in investing in them and educating them and giving them opportunities for growth?

Jeff Call (19:26)
Yeah, we’re always, I mean, that’s a big

piece of training and development, it’s a big piece of our firm. And so we’re always investing in our younger people, even to the fact that most firms don’t do this, but we’ve all even done business development training for people in the first year of their career.

Usually, most firms, you don’t see any business development training until they get to maybe year six, seven, eight, nine, when they’re starting to get closer to partner. We’ve done business development training all the way down to our staff level and trying to give them the skills. the skills for business development look different for a staff person versus a person that’s a manager, senior manager, director that’s on their pathway to partner. But we’re definitely making sure that they have the skills to start those, build those tools at an earlier stage of their career, which helps the overall firm.

And we pay commissions and there’s referral incentives for employees to generate business at the earliest stage of their career. So if they have contacts or people in their network or people in their family that can become clients, they can get paid for that as well.

Anthony Codispoti (20:24)
Hmm. I want to go back to what you were talking about before in terms of wealth transfer. And sometimes people haven’t done the planning and there’s an unexpected event and it throws things into chaos. In its simplest form, what should somebody do? A high net worth individual, a business owner, what is sort of the basic building blocks that they need to have in place?

Jeff Call (20:48)
mean, generally the building blocks that we would expect to see for a high wealth individual would be, first of all, you need a will. It says what happens to your assets if you pass away. You want to have, hopefully, sufficient life insurance, sufficient disability insurance, and then you’d also need to have powers of attorney, medical powers of attorney, a durable power attorney, financial. So if you were incapacitated or something, who’s in control of your assets, who’s in control of your health care situation?

That’s kind of the basic blocking tackling. And then if you have a very complicated situation, then you’re probably going to have a more complex estate plan, which is going to have maybe trusts and family partnerships and other vehicles that you’re utilizing to pass wealth, you know, at, you know, use it, utilizing some of the tools that are available in the state tax code to be able to, you know, minimize your estate even further.

Anthony Codispoti (21:41)
What’s the difference between a medical power of attorney and a durable power of attorney?

Jeff Call (21:46)
Medical is basically who has control of your healthcare decisions. So if you’re in the hospital and they say, do we need to pull the plug? Who’s making that decision? Or saying, do we want to give sustaining life care, feeding tube or whatever? ⁓ Financial power attorney is who’s in control of your financial assets if you’re incapacitated in some way. if you were hit in a car accident, you’re in a coma.

who’s going to be in control of your financial decisions during that time. Now, generally, if your people are married, they’re going to name their spouse first. But if they’re not married, they may have, you know, siblings or parents or whoever’s around that’s going to be in control of those decisions until they’re, you know, if they pass away, then at that point, then their will takes control. But if they’re incapacitated, you need to have somebody that’s in control during that time. And unfortunately, you do see some situations, bad stories where something happens and people don’t have those documents.

you have to go to court to try and figure out who’s in control of things and those can always be problematic and troubling.

Anthony Codispoti (22:47)
So you joined Bennett Thrasher almost 24 years ago. They brought you into Bill, say it again, July of 2002. Okay, and then in July of 22, you moved into the CEO managing partner role. there other sort of steps on the ladder in between there?

Jeff Call (22:51)
Yep. July of 02. July of 02, correct.

Yeah, so I, well, I think as we talked about, led kind of, I was led and was a senior founding partner of our personal financial services group for a number of years.

I also served as the service line leader of our entire tax practice for about five years in the middle. I was a board member of the firm for, I was admitted to the board of the firm when I was like 31, 32 years old. And so I’ve been on the board of the firm for I think every year except one over the last 20 years or so. And so those were some of the, guess, stepping stones to leadership that I had kind of before I became the CEO.

Anthony Codispoti (23:44)
What was that transition like coming into the CEO role?

Jeff Call (23:48)
Yeah, so the way our process works is you have kind of a two year transition. And so I was elected as the incoming managing partner in July of 2020, right in middle of COVID. And then I had our board, well, I elected, but I’m put forward. We have a special committee basically who decides who’d be the next managing partner. They make recommendation to the board and then to the full partnership for a vote.

Anthony Codispoti (24:00)
elected by the board.

Jeff Call (24:13)
and you have to get a 75 % vote of the partnership to be admitted. So that’s kind of the process. So then I had a 24 month transition and so I was riding alongside of our current CEO. I was working on transitioning some of my clients and other things that I needed to do to be.

position for the role and then ⁓ took over the role officially July 22 but unofficially I took it over January 1 at 22. We decided with myself and the prior managing partner that would make the transition easier. So basically once I was you know I guess managing partner CEO and waiting he and I would basically collaborate you know daily on any major decisions. He wouldn’t make any major decision without talking with me because he didn’t want to set me up for

you know, having to deal with a decision that I didn’t agree with. Um, and so for the first 18 months of the transition, that’s kind of the way it worked. He was kind of driving and I was copilot. And then the last six months, I did, he basically put me in the seat. I was operating as acting CEO and he was kind of copilot. So I would talk with him about any major decisions to make sure that he didn’t think I was driving the train off the tracks.

And so that made the transition much easier when I took over July 1 and 22. Everybody had kind of been used to me being the seat for six months. And so was pretty seamless transition for the most part.

Anthony Codispoti (25:29)
Is this same ⁓ transitionary framework used for other key positions?

Jeff Call (25:35)
We’ve done it not for two years. Typically we’re doing like six months for other roles like service line leaders and things like that.

Anthony Codispoti (25:44)
As you made that transition into the CEO seat, what was something that really surprised you?

Jeff Call (25:52)
I mean, I think I didn’t realize how many just unusual personnel matters come up to the CEO desk. You know, I thought, our people officer deals with all that. Well, they deal with a lot of them, but they don’t deal with the partner issues and they don’t deal with like very senior people issues. They want the CEO to sign off on those.

So you end up getting a lot of those unusual, you know, personnel matters cross your desk. Cause it’s like sometimes like, we’ve never dealt with this before. How should we deal with this? ⁓ and so those, those, those were, I wasn’t totally, I mean, I guess in my transition, I started to see and hear about those, but those were some, those were some things that I didn’t anticipate fully, I guess, as much until I got in the seat.

Anthony Codispoti (26:32)
When that happens, I’m going to guess there’s still quite a bit of dialogue with your Chief People Officer, maybe with some outside counsel as well that focuses specialized on these things.

Jeff Call (26:40)
Yeah, definitely. mean, you

know, sometimes we’re bringing our legal counsel in our employment attorney if it’s a unique issue that we think we need to involve them in. But a lot of times it’s myself and the people officer making that decision based on, what do we think is the right thing to do here? But yeah, we came across, you know, pretty early in my CEO tenure, we had an employee that their spouse died fairly unexpectedly. And we’re like, what do we do? You know, we’ve never had this happen in the firm. And so, you know, we had to figure out what’s the right

pathway to how to navigate that and how much time we give and what kind of parameters around leave, et cetera, that are well beyond what you would normally expect for a breathing leave. So different situations like that do come up at times.

Anthony Codispoti (27:23)
Whether it’s at Bennett Thrasher or earlier work at Arthur Anderson, can you tell us about a curveball situation, a difficult thing that you had to kind of work through from a work perspective, taught you a powerful lesson that you still hold with you today?

Jeff Call (27:38)
I mean that one was one, just dealing with an unexpected death for an employee and trying to figure out how do we best support this person, how do we give them the time they need to grieve this.

individual had a young family with three young children and how do we just navigate through that and support them as best we can? mean, that’s probably one of the biggest curveballs I’ve been thrown, obviously. We’ve had other situations where we’ve had other employees with really, really dire health situations and we have to kind of operate outside of the normal confines of our benefits plan to kind of provide additional support to them, things like that. So there’s always…

Not always, but there’s often these things that come up that aren’t really in your employment manual. How do you deal with this? So those are always interesting. I think with our people first mentality, we always try to do what do we think is in the best interest of this person and give them a lot of grace and try to work through it to support them as best we can.

Anthony Codispoti (28:43)
I mean, sounds like obviously, a firm your size, you have to have a pretty good size, you know, employee handbook, you know, here are the rules, here are the benefits, here’s what happens in X, Y or Z. But it also sounds like there’s a fair bit of flexibility.

Jeff Call (28:56)
Yeah, I mean, there’s times where we’re like, you know, the standard handbook is not going to be sufficient to address this situation. And so, yeah, we’re going to try and.

do what we think is in the best interest to support this person if they’re dealing with a really catastrophic situation in their family that we want to be, if we say we’re people first and family first, then how do we take care of this person and allow them the greatest opportunity to work through this and keep their position here and make sure that they feel comfortable with how we’d handle this and they know that we did the right thing for them.

Anthony Codispoti (29:31)
You know, a lot of accounting firms are really experiencing rapid technological change. Can you walk us through one or two recent innovations at Bennett Thrasher that’s helped you guys stay a step ahead?

Jeff Call (29:38)
Yes.

Yeah, so I think obviously AI and automation are a big topic and so we’ve invested in

There were different automation technologies. There’s something we use called Laurel AI, which is basically helps people enter their time. So basically it sits on top of your system and it tells you all the different things you did in a day. So instead of you having to like write down or somewhere, monitor how you spent your time, Laurel AI will basically tell you, here’s what I think. Here’s how I think you spent your time. It’ll give you kind of first draft of your time entry, which is a big, you know, pain in the butt for a lot of accountants having to keep track of that.

Um, you know, we’ve also invested in other tools, uh, truly ends a tool we use on the audit side that has a lot of AI built into it. And we’re also, um, we’re using copilot. Yeah. So just about all of our people have access to copilot and a lot of them are using that. We’re trying to get, you know, what are the best use cases for how do you use copilot to make your job more efficient and take out the monotonous task of your day that, maybe isn’t, you know, your favorite thing to do. And it can, you know, streamline some of those elements. It can help you write memos.

things like there’s a number of also ⁓ tax research software as we use. BlueJay is one of them and Co-Counsel is another one that have a lot of AI built into those tools. And so it makes tax research much quicker.

allows people to very quickly maybe produce a letter or a memo that can give the basic elements of a tax idea or strategy to a client. And you still need to have somebody that understands the law overlooking it to make sure it’s not hallucinating, cetera. But it can, you might have maybe would have taken somebody, hey, it’s gonna take me four hours to write this memo. Well, maybe now it takes you 30 minutes because it gives you a great first draft.

in a minute or less, and then you’re cleaning it up to make it ⁓ fit your client’s needs. So those are some of the tools that we’re seeing. And we’re also starting to invest in Domo, another tool that has some automations and other things, overlays, ⁓ ways for us to help build out some automations to do certain tax work, et cetera.

Anthony Codispoti (31:53)
You know, the Laurel AI is the one that really caught my attention because, geez, what was this 25, 26 years ago, one of my companies built one of the first SaaS products out there. It was a time tracking solution. And people love that you could do this now on your computer rather than, you know, program that had to be uploaded. the biggest problem was people didn’t want to enter their time. They got busy, they were doing this. And so what you’re, you know, describing there, very basic, but sounds like, wow, what a time saver.

Jeff Call (32:23)
Yeah, think we’ve been using it for probably eight months or so. So we’re trying to get everybody to use it. Some people go, still like to do my old way, but we’re trying to get as many people to use it as possible and make sure that we think it is a.

We think it is a tool that can be very beneficial at the firm if everybody uses it and helps capture more time. people, think based on what Laurel has done for us in our first little pilot of it, they’re saying that the average person captures an extra about 20 minutes a day if they use the tool versus time they may have somehow just slipped through their fingers.

And so there’s a way for it to create additional efficiencies there, plus hopefully it’s making it lot easier for people to get their time entry in addition to capturing time that may have previously just gone vanished.

Anthony Codispoti (33:11)
Yeah, fantastic. And what is the Domo tool? How are you guys leveraging that?

Jeff Call (33:15)
Domo, we’re using that in a couple ways. One is on the tax side, there’s a way to use that to.

create automations to get information from K-1s and other things we may ingest from clients into our tax software more efficiently. And then we’re also going to be using it to do a lot of overlay and financial analytics and reporting across our entire, all the different softwares we have within our firm, basically pulls pieces of that together and makes them all work with kind of API type strategy or API kind of integrations.

Anthony Codispoti (33:48)
So Jeff, as you look into your crystal ball, where do you see AI tech going? How do you see this fitting into your workforce, replacing folks, supplementing folks? How do you think about

Jeff Call (34:00)
I

think I mean our view is it’s not going to stop us from hiring people. It’s gonna my view is It will make our people more efficient. They can probably have be more productive. So if you know, let’s say Maybe 20 % of their day today is doing stuff that you know, they don’t consider productive or it’s you know, the not in this number crunching

If that can do a lot of that and do that really quickly, that gives them more time to do more high level advisory work for our clients and be more advisory oriented earlier stages of their career. A lot of times, early stage accountants, they’re doing a lot of crunching numbers and analytics. If a lot of that analytics can be done by these tools.

that’s going to give them more opportunity to spend more of their time at earlier stage of their career as true trusted advisors to our clients. And we’ll be spending more time upskilling them at earlier points in their career. So I think that’s my general view is I don’t think it’s going to reduce the number of accountants. It’s just going to make each of our accountants more efficient. Now, I guess maybe over some period of time you say we don’t need to hire quite as many people, but we’re not going to be eliminating positions. I think it’s just going to allow us to do more work with the same number of people.

and be more advisory oriented, that’s really where I think a lot of the value add for our clients is if we’re more advisory oriented versus compliance oriented, that’s where they want us to spend our time anyway.

Anthony Codispoti (35:21)
This may be oversimplifying it, kind of getting out of the spreadsheets and getting more face to face with the clients.

Jeff Call (35:27)
Correct, yeah, think more opportunity for consultative discussions and consultative oriented planning and strategy for the clients is where.

we would like to be spending more of our time. And I think the clients will appreciate it too. And generally that’s what they’re willing to pay more money for is that real strategy and planning versus pure kind of compliance oriented work. So I expect it’s going to be a continued emphasis for us. I do think we’re not going to be building our own AI tools in great part. I think we’re going to be fast followers. There’s a lot of technology providers that

rolling out new tools every day for the accounting industry and so our view is you know find the best tools and then adopt those and utilize those to serve our client base in the best way and it’s evolving very quickly as you would expect.

Anthony Codispoti (36:20)
Bennett Thrasher talks a lot about being better together. I’m curious to hear your approach to attracting and retaining good talent in a tight labor market.

Jeff Call (36:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, I it’s a big emphasis for us. mean, so yeah, Better Together really came from, we’re a very collaborative firm. And so we have a mindset of trying to bring all of the services the firm offers to our clients and not just have like a partner say, this is my client and I just do this and nobody else gets involved. And so we have a big focus on cross-serving clients and trying to make sure that we’re bringing the full breadth of all of our services across the firm to all of our clients.

⁓ But a big part of that is, you know, if we’re, is leaning into our people and making sure that we’re engaged with them and creating opportunities for their learning growth and development. And so that’s a big piece of how we keep great people is we give them opportunities at earlier stages in their career to.

accelerate and advance what they’re working on. And that keeps as long as people are making progress in their career and seeing that opportunity for the future. And they can see that, you know, that we as a firm have promoted 45 partners over the last 10 years or created 45 partners that gives them the opportunity to say, hey, there’s a lot of opportunity here at this firm for me. And this is the place I want to be, especially if they have that family atmosphere and they kind of feel that people first, hey, we care about our people. And that’s one of our key

differentiators that creates the opportunity for us to have tremendous retention of our great people.

Anthony Codispoti (37:53)
because you see that a lot from your folks is that they really want

to advance in their career. They want to know that, hey, there’s an opportunity for me to grow here.

Jeff Call (38:00)
Definitely.

Anthony Codispoti (38:02)
So I also note that you’re actively involved in different philanthropic and advisory boards like the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Legacy Advisors Board. You’re a busy guy, you’ve got a family. Why take time away from your busy schedule to get involved in this kind of

Jeff Call (38:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so I think, you know, I’ll give my parents credit for that at an early stage. You know, they were both very philanthropically oriented and charitable. And so they taught me that was important to always give back to the community. so.

Pretty early stage in our career as I had opportunities, I got involved with different charitable activities and making sure that we’re giving back within the community. It’s a big element of what our firm does. We have our own foundation and we give percentage of our top line profits goes directly into our foundation, which we’re giving out to different charitable organizations across the entire country where we operate. And we also have a big element of we give each of our people at least two days a year to dedicate to philanthropic activities as well.

We also have a big element of last past year we did foundation day where we had, I think close to 300 plus people across the firm, across the swath of our different offices doing charitable activities in their markets. So it’s a big piece of what we are as a firm. It’s a big part of what I was taught from a young age by parents. And so we love to give back and giving back is a great way to just pay

pay back to the people that have helped us have so much success.

Anthony Codispoti (39:36)
I like that. Is there an observation from your job? Because you get sort of a special view, right? You have many clients, lots of different industries. I’m curious, do you get any insight into the broader economy? Like what’s really going on right now? What’s taking place?

Jeff Call (39:50)
Yeah, definitely. Yeah,

I I get to see it a lot, know, so I’m in addition to just interacting with clients. I’m also part of a Vistage CEO group and so.

I sit in a room with 15 other peer CEOs once a month and we’re talking about our businesses and interacting with each other. And so I get to see a lot of the, you know, what’s going on in the economy through multiple different industries and Vistage as well as sitting in my CEO seats. yeah, it’s definitely in, in, in generally, I would say right now the economy’s in pretty good shape. Actually I was at the Atlanta Rotary today and we had a

presentation by Rafael Bostec, who’s the president and CEO of Atlanta Fed. And so he was talking a little bit about the economy as well. But what we’re seeing is consistent with what he was saying. He said, you know, I think last year GDP growth is probably in the two and a half, maybe a little bit higher percent range. And they’re expecting similar, if maybe not slightly better this year. And that’s pretty consistent with what I’ve been seeing from our clients. A lot of our clients are doing quite well across many different industries.

Anthony Codispoti (40:56)
Do you see your clients being, broadly speaking, in hiring mode this year or more sustaining?

Jeff Call (41:04)
I think we’ve seen some hiring for sure. ⁓ think we would say it’s not like massively robust, but I think you’re seeing people add some headcount, ⁓ but it’s probably maybe slightly above average, but not like at maximum levels.

Anthony Codispoti (41:25)
Now, where are you seeing what are the headwinds?

Jeff Call (41:29)
headwinds. I mean, think there’s certainly some concerns still around impact of tariffs. A lot of folks are still talking about that. Is there going to be a

additional impacts from that, know, concerns around inflation, you know, the markets had a, you know, stock markets had a really good run, you know, is there some softness there that may come into play? But for the most part, I think, you know, the general economy we’ve seen to be pretty strong, you know, our transaction advisory groups having a tremendous start to the year. And so there are a lot of times a good bellwether for what we’re seeing in the economy if, if transaction activity is strong and people are buying companies.

that typically bodes well for the real economic environment.

Anthony Codispoti (42:12)
That’s interesting. Okay. ⁓ How about something surprising you’ve come to understand about human psychology from your

Jeff Call (42:19)
Something. Well, I think one thing I would say is, know, people, what’s in it for me, you know, people always want to know what’s in it for them first, you know, so there are.

That’s something you have to be, know, making sure you’re messaging, you know, if I’m going to ask you to do something, here’s the benefit to you. And so I think that’s one interesting thing I think I’ve learned from psychology over time for sure.

Anthony Codispoti (42:51)
Certainly that’s not surprising.

Jeff Call (42:52)
It’s not overly surprising, I don’t know. guess I generally, I don’t always think of myself first. I try to think of others. maybe it’s, and I think a lot of our people do, but it is something that you come across as you’re working through challenges.

Anthony Codispoti (43:07)
Yeah.

Where’s the firm going? What are the exciting things that are on the horizon?

Jeff Call (43:13)
Well, I think I mentioned earlier briefly, you know, we’ve launched into Dallas and Denver over the last couple of years. Both those markets are growing at tremendous clips. And so we’re continuing to invest in those markets, hiring lateral partners in those markets and trying to create a lot of opportunity. think there’s tremendous growth there while also continuing to invest, you know, in our Atlanta market, which, you know, we have a very nice market share here. So I think our goal is, you know, to continue to grow at a double digit clip. And I think this past year we finished

Right around 10 % growth. And so that’s our that’s a goal for us generally annually is to try and continue to grow around that level. And it’s ⁓ it gets harder and harder the bigger you get. But we’ve had some pretty good success. And a lot of it is just making sure that we’re continuing to lean into our people. think my view is if if we’re taking great care of our people, they’re taking great care of our clients. And that continues to create opportunity for growth. ⁓ Yeah, but we’ve had a big focus just on

growth and accountability across our entire partnership. What are we doing every day to continue to focus on that and making sure that we’re executing for our clients and for our people?

Anthony Codispoti (44:23)
Jeff, who’s your ideal client?

Jeff Call (44:26)
Our ideal client, a lot of them are privately owned. So, you know, we, would say we spend a lot of time working with companies between 50 million and $500 million in revenue that are privately owned. ⁓ Those, there’s a lot of opportunity for us to work with those types of clients. A lot of times.

Many times those clients might or prospective clients might be working with a smaller firm and they may be about that firm and they didn’t realize it or maybe even occasionally maybe they decided they thought they needed to use a big for a national firm and then they realized well I’m not gonna do the kind of service I want and so that’s where usually our business is coming usually from people that have outgrown their

CPA firm, accounting firm, and somebody brings it to their attention or they just realize, hey, maybe there’s a better way. Or they went up market with a national firm and they realize I’m too small or I’m not getting the level of service I want. And so they, you know, they reevaluate the market and see who else is out there that really has the right mindset to serve them in a really proactive way.

Anthony Codispoti (45:25)
And so when they do that, obviously they’re talking to multiple firms at that time. Why do they ultimately decide on Bennett Thrasher?

Jeff Call (45:29)
Many times, yes.

think a lot of it is generally the relationship we build with them through that process. ⁓ Their ability maybe to see that we have expertise in their industry. ⁓ And really some of the ideas and strategies we may bring to them in our initial evaluation process that they can see that we really have talented individuals that have a lot of skill sets that bring something different to the table that maybe they weren’t seeing from their previous provider.

Anthony Codispoti (46:02)
What industries are your strongest in?

Jeff Call (46:04)
Our biggest industries are high net worth individuals if you consider that an industry. Real estate, technology, manufacturing distribution, professional services, healthcare. ⁓ Those are some of the biggest. Investment companies, like private equity backed companies and investment companies is another large industry signal for us. So those are some of the biggest ones for us as a firm.

Anthony Codispoti (46:30)
Let’s shift gears for a moment, Jeff. You know, behind every success story, there’s usually a chapter that almost broke someone. Can you share a serious challenge that you’ve gone through, personal or professional, how you got through it what you learned?

Jeff Call (46:44)
Well, one of my biggest challenges was the whole collapse of Arthur Anderson. I went to Arthur Anderson thinking this is like big four, safest firm in the world. I’m going to try and make partner here.

And then kind of one day you wake up and you’re reading about your firm in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and it looks like we’re going out of business. So that was a pretty crazy time, especially at the time that I had a brand new son who was born in April of 2002, right as the firm was collapsing. So that was a pretty stressful time for me, just trying to figure out what I want to do. Do I want to stay in the big four? Do I want to go launch out with the firm like I’ve at Thrasher?

I’ve been fortunate, it worked out quite well, but at the time it was very stressful. And I remember my wife, my wife and I are like, you know, this is, yeah, we didn’t, this wasn’t on the playbook. You we didn’t think that, you know, you working Arthur Anderson was ever that your company was going to go out of business. And fortunately we landed at Deloitte, but nevertheless, it just created a lot of chaos that wasn’t foreseen. And yeah, it was at the time it was very, very stressful, but it worked out and, you know, been, been pretty good, pretty good run at Bennett Thrasher, but it was not without its challenges.

time.

Anthony Codispoti (47:57)
So

what was the time frame between when the news started hitting the fan to where you landed at Bennett Thrasher?

Jeff Call (48:05)
Yeah, so I think the news about Enron hit in October of 2001 when like Enron was failing. And then I think it was maybe like early January when they started trying to point the finger at Anderson saying, you know, hey, some documents were shredded and

Eventually the whole thing was overturned like a year and a half later. But at the time, once Anderson was in the news as a potential, hey, you audited these guys, there’s questions about some of the crazy financial positions they took. And so it went from being in the news every day, Wall Street Journal, New York Times from pretty much I think that January of 2002 all the way up till the firm was indicted in March of 2002.

Basically once mid-March I think of 2002 happened, it was pretty clear Anderson can’t continue in business. Even though a lot of the clients I worked with, high wealth clients, they had no intention to leave the firm. But once you lost all the really large public company audit work.

they had to find a landing ground. so, you know, going to, you know, merging into the Deloitte practice was the option. And many, many parts, many parts of Anderson across the country landed Deloitte. Some went to other big four firms, but Deloitte picked up the biggest piece of the Anderson practice across the United States. And so, yeah, that was a, it was pretty, crazy times from, you know, every day you’re reading about your firm in the news. And occasionally we would get some voicemails from the voicemails or emails from the CEO.

of Arthur Anderson at the time, but yeah, it was very chaotic times for sure.

Anthony Codispoti (49:47)
Where did you find support and stability through the chaos?

Jeff Call (49:50)
I mean some of my colleagues because we were all talking about it obviously what’s happening what are we gonna do but also you know my parents you know they were good advisors to me to remain calm and also my wife was also another stabilizing force at the time but yeah it was definitely definitely something you just don’t anticipate when you go into the accounting field with a big firm that you know that could ever happen.

Anthony Codispoti (50:16)
And here’s something that I think I heard you said, and I to make sure I understand. It was actually all overturned a year and a half later.

Jeff Call (50:22)
Yeah, later on that Arthur Anderson indictment basically ended up being overturned. They were found not guilty, but that damage was done by that point. know, so it was, you know, once, once the reputation was in shambles, I basically had to, every firm, part of the firm had to kind of scatter to the wind to go into other firms that where, you know, people could take the clients because the clients trusted their partner or their manager or whoever was working on their account.

And so most of those relationships kind of went to those places. But yeah, was the firm’s name basically was tattered at the time. ⁓

So funny enough now, the Anderson name was rekindled ⁓ and Anderson tax ⁓ is all actually became a public company late last year. somebody basic, some of the Anderson partners went to another firm, which was called, ⁓ I think, World Tax and Advisory Services. They bought the Anderson name back, I think about 10 years ago, I guess enough time had passed that they felt like the name was ⁓ still okay and they bought it and then they rebranded their firms.

Anderson tax and then they basically went public here recently last year. the Anderson name is back in business.

Anthony Codispoti (51:33)
⁓ interesting. So they’re hoping.

So they’re hoping that enough people remember

the positive legacy, but not the negative.

Jeff Call (51:42)
I think

for the most part, if you talk to most people, because Arthur Anderson, I guess I’m biased, it had one of the best reputations in the entire industry at the time. Very premier firm, ⁓ obviously, and a lot of people realized, what happened with that? It ended up getting overturned and was kind of, Enron needed a scapegoat and we became the scapegoat at the time and it all ended up getting overturned later. Nevertheless,

A lot of was done to a lot of people. lot of people lost their jobs. Some people lost their jobs and didn’t get a job at Deloitte or wherever. And also a lot of the partners lost a lot of money. So it was definitely a trying time. I was fortunate I was not a partner. I was just below partner. But it was still quite trying at the time and not a fun process.

Anthony Codispoti (52:32)
Jeff, what’s your superpower?

Jeff Call (52:35)
I would say my superpower is ability to compartmentalize and focus. So I can have a lot of different crazy things going on in one aspect of my life or dealing with some crazy client challenges or whatever. And I can just put it in the compartment and focus on what I need to focus on at that moment. And allows me to be able to continue to be very successful even in spite of other little storms going on in the background.

Anthony Codispoti (53:04)
If you had to recommend a book or a podcast to our listeners, something that’s been really helpful for you, what would you say?

Jeff Call (53:12)
Well, I’ve got a few that I’m reading now. I’m reading the AI Driven Leader here by Jeff Woods. I’m early stages on this one. I’ve finished it. I’m trying to say, mean, there’s a lot of good books out there. ⁓ When I was young, my dad was a big proponent of Tony Robbins. So I read Waking the Giant Within. I love Tony Robbins stuff. I watch a lot of his stuff now on.

Twitter and Instagram little some his little videos and snippets. I listened to all of his at that time all of his tapes So I’m a big fan of Tony Yeah, some good books good to greats a great book I love Malcolm Gladwell, I’m trying to think of other ones that are top

Anthony Codispoti (54:01)
I’ve been waiting for him to come

out with a new book. I love his stuff.

Jeff Call (54:05)
Yeah, no, he’s great.

Anthony Codispoti (54:06)
Yeah. How about some daily practices?

Jeff Call (54:08)
Lindsay on the Apache Patrick Lindsay on the

one thing on he’s another one that I’ve liked a lot of his stuff

Anthony Codispoti (54:13)
What’s a message from him that you take away?

Jeff Call (54:16)
I mean, he’s got, you know, Death by Meeting, Five Dysfunctions as a Team. Those are both great books that I read and just trying to, you know, be more, how do you be more efficient? know, how do you compartmentalize things? He’s really good in that realm.

Anthony Codispoti (54:30)
Any daily habits that, I don’t know, help you get your day started or keep you on track?

Jeff Call (54:37)
I mean, I’m pretty religious about calendaring myself, you know, so I basically, if it’s not on my calendar, it doesn’t happen. I schedule most everything.

I also try to block out a couple hours a day for just kind of focus time, you know, to catch up on things and spend a little time around focus and strategy. I like, I read a lot, I read a lot of books, I read a of articles, just always trying to keep kind of, you know, ahead of what’s out there and try to look at a lot of different perspectives on things.

Anthony Codispoti (55:10)
Jeff I’ve just got one more question for you today, but before I ask it I want to do three quick things First of all anybody wants to get in touch with Jeff call or guest today First of all, you can go to their website, which is bt CPA net BT as in Bennett Thrasher bt CPA net also his email address Jeff call see a ll Jeff call at bt CPA net and You sure you want me to get about your office number?

Jeff Call (55:39)
Sure, sure.

Anthony Codispoti (55:40)
I’m gonna do it. All right, here

it comes 678-302-1456. 678-302-1456. That’s his office number. You can call him 678-302-1456. All that information will be in the show notes if you missed it. Also, if you’re enjoying the show, a quick comment or review on your favorite podcast app goes a long way towards helping others discover our show. So thank you for taking a quick moment to do that right now.

And as a reminder, if you want to be the hero advisor that shows your clients how to get their employees access to therapists, doctors, and prescription meds that, as paradoxical as it seems, actually increases the company’s net profits, reach out to us at addbackbenefits.com. So last question for you today, Jeff. A year from now, what is one specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?

Jeff Call (56:32)
⁓ I think we’re hoping that we’re

coming year so that’s a big that’s a new a big target for us and I’m hoping I’m hoping I’m celebrating another record year for growth for the firm and all of our people being really pleased with how we finished out 2026.

Anthony Codispoti (56:54)
Love it. We’ll check back in in a year to see how you’re coming along with that. Jeff Call from Bennett Thrasher. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you being here.

Jeff Call (57:05)
Yeah, it’s my pleasure. Thanks, Anthony, for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (57:08)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, try putting it into action today.