Featured Accountant Interview
Troy Patton, CPA
The Voice of Experience
It was my distinct honor to conduct an interview with none other than the six million dollar man, Troy Patton, CPA. We here at NCI are extremely excited to have Troy, the most successful client in NCI's 20+ year history to now be conducting all of our practice development seminars beginning this December 7th. Before I get into the interview I wanted to review the tremendous achievements Troy has accomplished using our system. Troy graduated from Miami University in Ohio with a B.S. in accountancy. He then started his career with Ernst and Young. Troy enjoyed his time there and though he would be a lifer. Then he received an offer to be the controller for one of Ernst and Young's clients. He accepted the offer and was quickly promoted to CFO and treasurer. He was originally a part of the group that started a buyout of that firm but decided instead to start his own practice; this was at the end of 1996. Troy tried a multitude of different approaches to market his new firm and get business. He did not have much success.
With $28,000 in billing he came to NCI to learn how to market. He began by attending the plan I practice development seminar (which he now teaches.) He liked the systematic approach that he was taught and he used it effectively. But Troy realized that in order to really grow he would have to let someone else do his selling for him so he could focus on running the practice and handling the work. He attempted to hire a sales rep himself and when that failed he entered into an agreement with NCI to install three sales reps at three separate offices in the Indianapolis, Indiana market. This is almost unheard of, but Troy is an ambitious business man and he trusted our system. So we did three simultaneous Client Acquisition Plans for Troy. He then went on the build a six million dollar, eleven office operation with 80 employees. One of the ways he was able to grow so successfully is that he used the NCI marketing program to bring clients in and then he cross-sold financial planning services to those clients. Troy has since sold his practice and has started a new CPA firm. He also has a coaching program for accountants and CPAs who are looking to add financial planning to their suite of services. Now that you're caught up, let's move on to the interview.
Chris: What do you hope to accomplish through your new relationship as the lead seminar instructor for New Clients Inc.?
Troy: One thing that I've always enjoyed is seeing the successes of some of the other CPAs I've spoken with over time after maybe they've gone through the NCI program, or answering questions for them or helping them out along the way. And I see [teaching the NCI seminar] as a further enhancement of that. If I have one passion, and I have multiple passions but one thing that really catches my eye is I do like to help people and I love to see them accomplish certain feats, and I think this is one way to do it, and really get hands on with these people. Really share my experiences and hopefully my experiences can become their knowledge.
C: As the lead seminar instructor, how do you see your experience with building and selling your practice helping future NCI clients?
T: No one goes through life or business making no mistakes so, what I want to do is use that knowledge I gained from not only building my practice, and then ultimately selling my practice, to share those problems that we had as well as the successes, so that way we can get people passed that learning curve a little bit quicker.
C: Speaking of mistakes, can you share some of the early missteps you had in developing your practice?
T: A lot of the people that call me whether it's as a reference for NCI or whatever the case may be, I used to tell them about all the crazy things I tried repeatedly to [attempt] to pick up new business. And I always thought I could sell but I really didn't have the structure, I even tried calling out of the yellow pages, I put things in people's mailboxes, until the U.S. postmaster made me quit, probably for the third time, they really threatened me (laughs.) But really the NCI program, even in my business today, using the structure that they teach, whether it's building an accounting firm then or building my [current] firm, it's really a way of conducting business. It's a corporate structure, as I always say, those lessons learned back then and as well as the lessons I learned on my own really are going to help make better participants at NCI seminars and create some more success stories.
C: What are you up to these days in regards to business?
T: Currently, what I'm doing now is managing the Archer Balance Fund. I do have a CPA firm; however one of our main focuses is in the dental profession. And we work with a lot of different dentist's across the country not only helping them with their, what we call financial planning aspect of not only their practice but also of their personal life [and] also their investment management. What we're trying to do is to teach other accountants and CPAs how to offer investments, financial planning or just plain investment consulting to their clients. We have a coaching program, what we do is, we go out and one thing we look at is how are they marketing their practice and then frankly we advise them, we say hey you know what here's the NCI program, you need to go through this program. Then we go through and we look at their realization, their utilization, how their practice is running currently. Then we start discussing how the financial services could fit into their practice and how that can expand the margins of their practice. Because we think it's vital, I'm biased but I do think that the financial services aspect of a CPA firm or an accounting firm is vital to the services that clients want and expect today. They all want the consulting.
C: You have extensive experience, with NCI, our company, our programs, our CEO Bruce Clark, can you sum up your feelings about our company and what we offer?
T: As I've said before and I'm not afraid to say it, I really think the NCI [organization] is a class act. [The program] definitely works, I mean if you follow the structure, and the way that you guys teach it, it works. Not just for building my practice then, but really some life lessons, some business lessons that I think were well founded at the NCI seminars that I learned then and that I still use and accomplish today.
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with me Troy. I cannot express how excited we are to have our most successful client of all time now teaching others how to reach success in their own right.
Chris Clark
To learn more on how NCI can help you grow your practice, click here.
Click here to read the featured article about Troy Patton in Creative solutions fall issue of Solutions Newsletter.
