In this episode of The Localist, host Carrie Rollwagen sits down with Jordan Pridemore, Director of Strategic Development at LUCA, an accounting and advisory firm that takes a modern, people-focused approach to finance. Rather than focusing solely on tax season or compliance, LUCA works as an embedded partner for small businesses—offering real-time financial insights, tech-savvy solutions, and strategic advisory services that help entrepreneurs make confident, data-informed decisions. Carrie, a LUCA client herself through her day job at Infomedia, shares how LUCA has helped her team move beyond financial chaos to clarity by understanding not just where the money is going, but what story it tells.
Throughout the conversation, Jordan explains how LUCA combines the power of cloud accounting platforms and AI tools with a deeply relational approach to client service. They emphasize the importance of bringing narrative and context to financial data—turning numbers into actionable stories that guide growth. The episode also touches on larger industry shifts, including the shrinking talent pool in traditional accounting and the rising demand for outsourced financial services that scale with small businesses. Whether you’re running a one-person shop or leading a growing team, this episode is packed with insights about how and when to level up your financial operations.
Mentioned in this episode:
Website: https://www.lucahq.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/luca_hq/
Fox Hound Bee Company: https://www.instagram.com/foxhoundbeeco/
Episode Transcript
Carrie
Welcome to the Localist a conversation with local makers and independent entrepreneurs. I’m your host, author of The localist book and former small business owner Carrie Rollwagen, our guest today is Jordan Pridemore. Jordan is from Luca, which is an accounting and advisory firm. He’s their director of strategic development. So Luca is actually the accounting firm that I work with in my day job at infomedia, and infomedia is also our podcast sponsor, so I wanted to have them on. I really wanted to have Luca on for a while. The first time I thought of it was when Fox Hound Bee Company mentioned it in their localist episode, because he really talked about that advisory side of Luca and how important not only the finance piece was, but also the advice piece was, and that was my experience with Luca as well. So I really wanted to get them on the podcast and to kind of drill down into not only, how did they build a business with that kind of reputation, which I think is really great, but also, how can other small business owners either work with Luca or kind of incorporate some of the things that Luca does. So today, on the podcast, we do talk about how the company grew. We talk about what Luca does for small businesses, and then toward the end of the episode, we also get into kind of What’s New in accounting, if you’ve noticed that finding an accountant or a bookkeeper is a lot more difficult than it used to be, or a lot more expensive than it used to be. We talk about exactly why, and then we talk about when your small business should look at more of an advisory for firm, and not necessarily just an accountant. And a company like Luca is great for that. So I really enjoy working with Luca. I wanted to have an accountant on but I really wanted somebody that I felt like we could trust their experience, and I really feel strongly that we can trust that from Jordan and from Luca. So I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did awesome. Well, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. I kind
Carrie
of wanted to start off with what makes Luca different from other accounting firms. I actually have a friend who I think maybe went to school with Trey or something, and she was talking about how she’s an accountant, and she mentioned a lot of accountants focus on the tax time, and the General Accounting is a little bit of an afterthought. And she was, she mentioned that you guys kind of do the opposite, like you do the general accounting, and then the tax times are easier to weather. And since we are, infomedia is a client of Luca, that resonated with me a lot. I feel like you guys are more of a real partner in the business. And then we work out we do use finance as a lens, but it isn’t just like, send us your receipts and here are your this is how you file. You know? Is that true? Is that just my experience, or is that how you guys work with everybody? Well, I
Jordan Pridemore
certainly hope that’s not just your experience. Our feedback surveys say that you’re not the only one who experiences that. No, I think you use a great word, and I’m glad you did. You said that we are like a partner in the business. Our goal, our approach, is we want to feel as though we are an extension of the team that our clients have in house, right? And so our goal is to be very relational in what we do, and to very much feel like, you know, Trey, let’s just take Trey’s name, for example. It’s like Trey’s sitting down the hall, you know, so traditional accounting very much, especially from the academic side. When you’re kind of going through school, most people are sort of thinking, I’m either going to go into tax work or I’m going to go into audit work, right? Those are kind of the two primary areas when you think about public accounting. And to your point, the sort of general accounting, managerial accounting, if you want to call it that, can sometimes really kind of be an afterthought. And so you’re very right. Our whole focus is sort of taking what was traditionally an overlooked part of the business and bring that to the forefront of small business owners. You know, the reality is, when you’re managing your business, your finances, throughout the year, that real time you know that real time information, the availability to understand your your cash flow, understand your margins, understand you know at a granular level, what is performing well, what lines of revenue are your. Most profitable, those kind of CFO right type things. Those are really what can make a break a business. I mean, at the end of the day, like, yes, you have to be ready for taxes. You want to be as you know, tax advantageous as possible, for sure. But you also really have to have a grip on your cash flow and the way you’re managing your business to be able to make those kind of nimble decisions. And as a small business owner, you know the first three years are are your most critical. And so, you know, our focus and our sort of philosophy is that it’s that daily financial management that allows you to make the most impactful decisions to grow your business.
Carrie
Yeah, well, I think it’s definitely been true in our case. I mean, infomedia is a pretty old or as far as the internet, it’s 30 years old, so, but we, like, we haven’t been working with you guys the whole time, obviously, and I do feel like we really saw a shift when we did shift that focus, because we were seeing, like, the struggles and things of you know nobody. I don’t think most business owners like filing taxes. So that was not a fun time for us, but we weren’t really fixing the root cause. And I think you guys kind of really help us to look at that root cause like consistently. So it is easier when you hit that so not the most fun thing we’ve ever done, but at least you feel in control. You feel like you know what’s going on, and also kind of what levers to pull to make financial change, which is honestly pretty tough, especially small business owners, you’re usually really good at the thing you’re doing, right? You’re not necessarily. A lot of small business owners, like, don’t have a business degree, you know,
Jordan Pridemore
yeah, yeah. Most, yeah. Most actually don’t, yeah. A lot, I
Carrie
kind of say most business owners are just, like, really comfortable with chaos, and that’s what makes them a business owner, yeah,
Jordan Pridemore
the success, the successful ones, anyway, the ones that kind of Yeah. Test of time. I would say that’s a that’s a common attribute.
Carrie
So it is really helpful to have somebody coming in and saying, like, okay, yes, but let’s, like, actually look at the plan and make decisions based on data and what the numbers are actually doing, instead of all gut instinct. Yeah, it doesn’t mean gut instinct isn’t still a part of it, but gut instinct, I think is better when it’s backed up by data.
Jordan Pridemore
Yeah, data. Data is, you know, what’s fascinating? I won’t, I won’t get too nerdy, because I will get nerdy. But most small businesses have no idea how much data they really have at their fingertips, just in their own finances. You know, a lot of a lot of businesses that come to work with us when we start really deep diving into their finances. You know, we hear phrases like, I’ve never even looked at this before. I never, I knew that was in QuickBooks, but I never really knew, like, what to do with, yeah, you know, the data that that most businesses have when they understand how to really service that data, and then kind of decipher that data, and that’s if you want to think about the difference of Accounting and Finance, right? Accounting, you know, traditionally speaking, it’s kind of a historically focused practice, right? You know, money was made, money was spent. You know, did we get it to the right place, that kind of thing, but, but finance really comes in, and this is kind of where the CFO role, really, you know, sits in any small business or large business, is taking that data, servicing that data, but then interpreting that data and say, okay, the numbers are right, but what do we do with this? How does this inform decisions? And I think that for a lot of small business owners, one that just takes time that they may not have right, like we joke around. So the phrase we like to use is we love to build business for sport, like helping small businesses grow is really fun for us. But lots of business owners, even successful growing business owners, don’t necessarily derive the same joy from building the business. It’s almost like a byproduct of them just being passionate and good at, you know, making quilts, yeah? Or, you know, I know Adam was on here like that, you know, beekeeping, yeah. Adam necessarily wanted to build a great business, but he loves bees, and a byproduct, as his business is growing,
Carrie
yeah, well, and that was a great example. We’ll link to his episode in the show notes, but he mentioned that he wanted to do different product lines. And he was getting conflicting advice, I think, on should we start LLCs for all of these different things? Do we need to? Do we not? And he brought you guys up because he was like, I just got great advice on what I was, what I should do here, how I can build this for the future. And that advice wasn’t strictly financial. I think it also was speaking into, like, a little bit of knowledge about when you need an LC, when you don’t, when do you not, and that kind of thing. So just yeah, like the CFO or the business advisor side is so helpful, yeah, and you do see, I think meeting with you. Guys, it does feel fun. It’s like, well, you could do this. Here’s an idea, here’s an idea. We’re dreamers, yeah, but I think it’s really I love those meetings, because some of those ideas, I’m like, this wouldn’t work for us. I don’t think right now this one, we probably need to tweak these. But this could be really exciting, or this can work out of the box, but it is really cool to see those different things and have someone speaking into that conversation who’s coming from that perspective, and also just somebody having someone else you trust, who knows the reality of your business, because the finances are, in many ways, the reality of your
Jordan Pridemore
business. That’s 100% that’s a great, yeah, that’s a that’s a really great point.
Carrie
And so you can meet with other people, but very often they’re only hearing your interpretation. And you guys do hear our interpretation, but you’re also like, I hear you, but this is telling a different story. How do we reconcile that, which is really, really helpful, yeah, so
Jordan Pridemore
I, I was listening to a podcast recently, and there was a physician, and he was talking about how I think he was talking about blood pressure, and he said, I know that there is a pill that I can prescribe that will make, let’s Just say a five to 10% improvement in my patients blood pressure. I also know that if I could convince them to make entire lifestyle changes and diet and exercise, we could see a 30 to 40% increase, he said. But I have to balance the reality of I know this patient, and I know their lifestyle and their habits, and I know what’s realistic, and so I want to give them the best advice that I think that they will go and execute. And, you know, I’m willing to be with them for a long time as they hopefully continue to make incremental improvements. And if I can make that analogy, and in a lot of ways, I think that that’s kind of how we try to work with our business owners, is sure we know kind of the pie in the sky methodology for, you know, whatever, whatever results you’re looking for, but also, like, we understand just the reality of them as a person. Like, we get to know people on a very personal level, and kind of understand their, you know, there’s general flow of life. And so we try to operate both in what is kind of textbook good, but then also, like, what’s just, what’s reality for their business, and how can we hope to impact them and make the most effective change in the short and the long term that that they’re likely to succeed with? If that makes sense?
Carrie
Yeah. And I think again, on the client side, I think that is really accurate. I think there are certain things that we’re like, we agree. Let’s drive toward these, and that’s really the focus of the meeting. But I do think that Trey does consistently bring up those other things that we’ve kind of left on the table, and not in a well, you know, you have to do this, and it doesn’t ever feel like that. It just is like a soft reminder, like we also have this. But I think that’s really good, because we’ve found that, like, we may leave that on the table for several months and then, but it’s kind of like, in the back of my mind, it’s like, Oh, hey, now’s the right time. Let’s try that, you know? So I do think that is what is really interesting. Like, I’m not naturally a numbers person. I understand them, but that’s not the way I would normally choose to tell a story, but it is really cool to be able to I do think you guys bring the story so like, there’s some people get the data, like they just see the world that way, but even for people like me, who don’t necessarily, naturally, I feel Like meeting with your team, you are bringing that story so like that’s bringing more people into the conversation, if that makes sense.
Jordan Pridemore
Yeah, yeah. Narrative is sort of the word we like to use. We want to bring narrative to the financials. You know, I think it can be very overwhelming sometimes to have financial statements just played in front of you. Well, there’s numbers, right? Yeah, you know, okay, yeah. Now, what you know, it’s yeah. I told you before the podcast, I have four small kids, so I remember vividly, you know, the doctor handy me my my first child, my daughter, my oldest daughter, and they, like, gave me this baby, and I was just like, okay, yeah. Now, what do I do? And sometimes, you know, financials in a big way, you know, that’s like the baby of your business, and now you have these, and you’re like, What do I do? And so we try to bring, we try to bring the narrative, right? And our approach is not so much, hey, here’s what you do. It’s more. So, hey, here are some options, right? Here are some things to consider. We try to be a little bit Socratic, right when we’re meeting with clients, not say, okay, you know, okay, here’s your numbers, and here’s what you should do with this. But rather, okay, here’s the data, some considerations you could make, you know, have you thought through, you know, kind of x, y, z, and then where do these decision paths lead, and what impact does that have? On the business again, we want to try and and make the greatest impact we can within, you know, reasonable expectations for for anyone’s business,
Carrie
yeah, well, and I think that is such a I do think it’s a really different approach, and it helps. I think it helps in working with the business owner, because having that approach also help, because you need some of that information from the business owner. Like, I think hopefully I’m not speaking out of turn here for us. I don’t think I am. But, like, we had things categorized in sort of a way we used to do things so, like, when you looked at the overall number, that was still correct. But we had to really get in there. And once we started working with you guys, we did and said, Oh, hey, like, we have this allocated to this department, and we moved that two years ago, you know, like, so being able to, like, engage with that narrative, I think, was helpful, because then you just tell a better and better story with the data, which you can’t do if you’re just sending your your taxes off once or four times a year, you know, like, which I think is cool. Another thing that I think you bring to the table, definitely, for us, and I think for other clients, is a lot like of a tech focus, yeah, can you kind of speak to that a little bit?
Jordan Pridemore
How nerdy Do you want?
Carrie
I mean, this is a business podcast. I think you can get nerdy.
Jordan Pridemore
So let’s take a kind of a traditional look at the accounting industry at large, traditionally speaking, pretty, pretty non embracing of kind of emerging technology, right? Lay adopters, you know, you basically go look at almost every popular tax platform right now, and they all look like they were built in 1998 Yeah, they’re just being patched, right? Yeah. We absolutely have a philosophy that technology is is a superpower for Small Business Owners. You know, to a large degree, hope Trey doesn’t get on to me for saying what I’m about to say. We might fix this in
Carrie
post. We’re both playing, yeah. I mean, yeah, to a to a
Jordan Pridemore
large degree, a good bit of what we do, not everything, certainly, but a good bit of what we do is not necessarily things that business owners can’t do for themselves. You know, our value proposition is that their time is simply better spent focusing on the growth of their business and not being their own, you know, their own bookkeeper, essentially, and so, but we implement what you could consider off the shelf products in most cases, but the way we do that is a very integrated kind of back office, Integrated Financial back office, and so we want something like QuickBooks Online as a great example. You know, probably 90% of small business owners at one point in time have used QuickBooks or QuickBooks Online. But there’s other products like 00. Is a fantastic platform as well, but we want those to be what we would call the single source of truth, right? So you don’t need to go to a payroll spreadsheet and then an AR spreadsheet, and then your payables spreadsheet, and all these different places to try and piece numbers together manually, when you have platforms that can, you know, through through cloud based infrastructure, manage all of that in a single place. And then to your point, right, once the data is all in one place, and you’re not spending hours and hours just compiling numbers, you actually have the time for the narrative. That’s where we can really get to. What story is our our financials, telling about the business, and then what, you know, what do we do with that story? And so, yeah, we’re very tech, you know, technology forward, we AI. And it’s like a buzz word, because probably 80% of people think AI is just chat GBT. There’s, there’s an incredible amount of growth in AI. So both as like standalone platforms like llms, like chat GPT or Claude or Gemini, but then also just the same way, you kind of heard the internet of things, right? Like my fridge is on Wi Fi. Now my stove, my wife can start our stove from her phone, yeah. So you have all these things. So now you sort of have, I don’t even know what the term is, but the way you had the Internet of Things, Wi Fi is and everything now AI is starting to be very integrated into just everyday tools. And so what that really does is it puts a lot of power, I would say, back in the reach of small business owners to say, okay, the things that were taking my time before that were not necessarily value add to the growth of my business. They’re important, but they’re not necessarily the highest value add. We’ll say those things can now be streamlined. They can put on autopilot so much we, again, we’re talking about this data, but just feeding, like a chat, GBT or something, data, and just say, hey, like, there’s a million things here. Can you help me make sense of this? And just to see what it starts to glean from you. I mean, it’s, it’s really incredible. And so we really lean into that technology the same way it would empower you and your business. Uh, it empowers us in our business and allows us more time to focus on value creation items for our clients, and not just being data entry, right? Like, that’s not, that’s not the highest and best use of of our time and ability.
Carrie
Yeah, well, and I think one thing I love about working with you all is that you do recommend those platforms, but when you recommend a platform, first of all, I can’t think of a single platform that Trey’s recommended to us that you aren’t using at Luca. So you number one? No, I think I did first of all, and number one. But we’re lost, but I’m for it, yeah. So we know that not only is it vetted because you’ve used it, which I think that’s another thing, like, Yes, anybody can Google, you know, software that helps me chase down AR, but I know that the one that you’ve recommended to us is actually vetted, and it actually works, and it actually talks to the things it needs to talk to, which is a huge time saver for me, instead of saying we’re gonna choose one, and then it turns out to be the wrong one, or it doesn’t do some critical thing that we needed to know, and then we have to reverse all of that and try again. And I know that you are all keeping up with that as it changes, because you’re using it yourself. So yes, technically, it’s a third party, but I still think there’s a ton of value in like good advice as far as what you should be using. I think the same is true for infomedia, like we use third party systems too. But the value of choosing them from us or we know the ones that you know don’t. We know the ones that don’t work. We know the ones that work. And even as far as AI goes, I think I find that you get so much more out of AI when an expert is using it Sure. So I can feed a lot of stuff. I could feed data into chat, GBT and get some ideas for how to build my business. Oh, yeah, but financially, I don’t know as much which ones are good ideas and which ones aren’t. Yeah, I do think that that’s when I think that you see AI being like, used in really cool ways, like My background is as a writer, and I can put something into chat GBT and our director of business development can put the same question theoretically, but because I know how to prompt and how to respond to it, he would say the same, I’m still going to get a way better result. And I think that’s the same as with you guys using AI,
Jordan Pridemore
yeah, at the risk of being cliche, it’s the archer, not the arrow, right? If you gave, if you gave me, you know, a sledgehammer and, you know, a paintbrush and some shiplap, and you gave Joanna Gaines those same tools, right? And said, go to town on this kitchen. The same tools are going to produce a drastically different result, right? Because she knows what she’s doing, yeah, and I don’t. And so, yeah, I think, I think that’s, that’s spot on, and that’s when you talk about advisory, right? That’s the role that we that we really want to sit in. I mean, we’re not making business decisions for our clients. We’re trying to help them understand the, you know, the implications, and you know the best possible options for them. And so our goal is simply to use those tools to be the archer that cuts that decision making time down and just kind of cuts out the noise too, right? Shout out, Melanie. Melanie, Schor, she’s our tax director. She is a very strong advocate. Is not the right word. She’s very persistent at reminding people do not take tax advice from Tiktok, right? Yeah, but that’s a great example of there’s so much noise when it comes to, like, a financial advice on social media, right? And all these, all these different places. And so you’re getting inundated, as a business owner all the time with, oh, you should do this, and you should do this. And so the ability to cut through that noise by understanding what are the actual right questions to ask, what’s realistic? Probably don’t take tax advice from Tiktok, you know, yeah, actually talk to somebody. But, you know, all those things that create so much noise, what we really want to do is get to the heart of of the issue and help people as quickly and efficiently as possible be able to make decisions that are going to benefit, you know, their business and their people. Right at the end of the day, behind every business, it’s a person, or it’s people, and we have that mindset, right is that these businesses are creating opportunity and impact and change in the lives of real people, and so at the end of the day, like our fuel for helping businesses grow is as we’re hopefully making a positive impact, right to the people who are behind those businesses?
Carrie
Yes, definitely, well. And even as far as that advice. Is you have to look at motivation to some extent. Like, if you’re putting out tiktoks, you don’t grow a Tiktok unless you’re being divisive or just saying something a little wild, you know, like, that’s how a social media algorithm, right, right? But you don’t grow like your business unless you’re growing other businesses. So like I I also get why it’s fun to look at what people are saying on social media, but to some extent, you do have to look at the motivations behind the advice. Like so their motivations on a social media platform are just to say things that keep you watching. It’s not to grow your business. They don’t care if you grow your business. That’s right. But if your clients don’t grow their businesses, then they’re not your clients anymore. So it’s a different
Jordan Pridemore
motivation, yeah, well, you asked kind of early in the podcast, you know, I think you said, what makes, what makes Luca different or special? You know, the reality is, there’s a lot of services now where, like, you can go online as a small business owner and sign up for a very affordable, you know, kind of low cost, virtual bookkeeper type thing. And it’s someone you’re never going to have a relationship with, you know, they’re not going to take the time to get to know you as a person. They’re not, you know, down the road, and they can, you know, come visit you these kind of things, right? And so the work may get done and it may suit your business, you know, maybe, maybe that’s all you need. But for us, I think the high level of relational focus that we put into working with our clients and just getting to know them, I think that that’s that matters a lot, right? Like we really are focused on the people and the story behind that business, nonprofits, you know, shout out Nick. Nick D’Alessandro. He’s our director of nonprofits, probably our fastest growing kind of segment in the business right now. And Nick is one of the most passionate individuals you’ll ever see when it comes to nonprofits and the impacts that they’re making. And so, I mean, I can tell you, you know, with absolute, confident confidence, Nick has, you know, kind of a an altruistic motive for for doing great work, to see these nonprofits grow, because he believes in the impact that they make. And so, you know, that’s just one example from our team of you know, why we really want to focus on, on the people, on the stories, right? What’s the motivator to use your word?
Carrie
Well, in that, I think that is true even on a granular level, like we use a book, like our bookkeeper is through you guys as well, and she’s always asking us why? I think you know it not just, Well, there’s, there’s a lot of stuff on our back, and it’s like, why did you do this? But that’s super helpful. I think we’ve gotten to the root of a lot of issues, just as much in the bookkeeping side as we have, I think probably on our in our meetings with Trey, because it is like, Well, why are we doing that? Why are these departments spending so differently? Why are we categorizing this here when it doesn’t belong there. And again, that all goes to telling the story better. And if you were just putting the information into software, it’s not going to ask you that she’s going to believe you.
Jordan Pridemore
Yeah, can I give you the worst analogy? But it actually makes a lot of sense. You have a lot of people who spend great amount of time and money going to, like, chiropractors or getting medicine and things for like back pain and stuff like this, right? And they spent all this time and money, and they’re and they’re trying to figure out what’s going on. Well, you know, at the end of the day, they needed, you know, a better insole in their shoe, right? Yeah, that’s all it was. It was this little thing that you don’t think about. You just put your shoes on every day. Yeah? And it was this tiny thing. The same way bookkeeping can seem so menial sometimes, but the reality is that that small change flows up to a greater impact for the good or for the bad, yeah. And so not losing focus on doing the little things, right? Yeah, I think is critical. And that’s, you know, for any small business owner, you know whether, whether you work with Luca, or whether you do your own books, or whatever it is, the attention to detail on those small things really have a downstream impact that that can, you know, heavily influence your business?
Carrie
Yeah, so if somebody is listening, and they’re just like, I’m sold. I I’m really interested when I don’t even know if this is the right question, but when is the best time to work with Luca? Is it? I mean, infomedia probably started on our 25th year, or something, so probably nothing. But if you’re like a super small business, like a mom and pop, is it? Is it worth it? Then, is it worth it? If you’re trying to grow into your like, I want to have this shot, but I eventually want to have multiple or when, what is kind of your sweet spot as far as a client, or is there one? Is one? That’s
Jordan Pridemore
a great question. I’m really glad you asked that question, actually. So like many things in accounting, it depends. And so I’ll give you a couple kind of scenarios. Now. I will say, typically, we work with growth oriented businesses. And so what I mean by that? I don’t necessarily mean, hey, the next three to five years you’re trying to have, you know, a 10x exit. But rather, our whole model is designed to be very scalable. And so we build out sometimes when we work with smaller or younger companies, not younger people, but you know, younger in terms of how long they’ve been around. Sometimes when we’re working with them, it may feel as though we’re over engineering a little bit. But the reason that we do that is we we build out the financial infrastructure to scale. And so, you know, we’re looking, we’re looking to work with businesses who have kind of a degree of growth in mind. It can be slow growth, but we’re going to build a scalable model. And so, you know, to that end, with nonprofits, you know, are usually a little bit kind of smaller on the on the budget end, but I would say, generally speaking, probably about a half a million dollars in revenue is where our model probably starts to make the most sense. And, you know, there are some costs associated with our work, you know. And we always tell people, we’re definitely not the cheapest company out there, but we’re also not nearly the most expensive. We want to be accessible, but I regular. I mean, I had a phone call with a business yesterday. Awesome guy started a local business here. It’s starting to grow, but he’s just not ready for our solution. I spent about 10 minutes giving him some like, really great DIY tools, like, Hey, you can go use this for the next 18 months on your own and really grow. Stay in touch. I want to see how your business is doing. I’m here to help you out. And you know, when it’s time, let’s work together. So I wouldn’t say, like, generally speaking, kind of that half a million is, is, is where it’s going to start. Sweet Spot wise, you know, I think kind of a full scale, sort of Lucas solution, if you want to call it, that probably really starts to feel good about a million dollars in revenue. I mean, it kind of goes up from there, you know, I think these days small businesses, small business is defined as something like startup to $40 million I can cover kind of a wide, wide range. But, you know, really that kind of, I mean, at that million dollars, you have a proven concept, right? You’re probably scaling your business. You don’t typically accidentally create a million dollar business. You’ve got people at that point, the owner is probably not necessarily as much of an individual contributor, maybe, as they are now managing the business. And so as they’re managing now, that’s when they need that kind of second set of eyes to start, you know, start looking at things. You know, I was, I was reading recently, so about 70% as of 2024 about 70% of small businesses outsource some financial or accounting function. And about 37% of small businesses in the US right now outsource the entire finance function for their business. And so you know, even the mom and pops, depending on what the business looks like, worst we have, we have plenty of solopreneur clients, right, that are high performers, high individual contributors to their business, and their model lends itself to them continuing to be that role. And so they need to offload, you know, these kind of critical functions, yeah, and so we’re, you know, we’re a great fit for organizations like that. But, yeah, I would say, you know, once you start getting into towards that million dollars, like, that’s really, you got to have a solution. You can’t just, yeah, you can’t, kind of Bootstrap, I feel like, at that point as a business owner, whether you hire somebody, or whether you start working with, you know, Luca, or anyone, yeah, that’s probably a good, a good cover with
Carrie
them. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And two of the things so I I get, obviously, everybody we have on the podcast has a different story. But the two things that I’ve heard the most often as far as like, consistency in business. One is that managing people shows you a lot about your character that you probably would rather not know. Wow, yeah. But the other one is always, I should have hired an accountant sooner. Hear that a lot, yeah. So I do think that’s extremely consistent, and I think that makes a lot of sense. It did make me remember you mentioned you guys aren’t the cheapest solution. I did read one of your Google reviews, which are positive, so this isn’t going to be a gotcha moment, but he actually said, I can’t remember what the business was, but he said, They’re not the cheapest solution, but we have actually saved money down the line because of, I think, some of the technology that they were able to replace certain other functions that they were paying for different people. And then obviously you’re also making more money because you’re making smarter financial decisions. Yeah, and we found that to be true too. So
Jordan Pridemore
yeah. I mean. If you think about, let’s just say you’re a business, and you’re doing million, million and a half dollars in revenue, you’ve you’ve grown a good business to really fully staff all of the finance functions. Okay, so let’s just think about this. And high numbers, you know, you got to have a bookkeeper, right? I mean, these days, a good bookkeeper, who knows what they’re doing. You know what? 50, 60,000 minimum. Yeah, right, especially in like the Birmingham area, somebody’s got to be managing payroll. You know, a payroll manager can be, you know, anywhere from depending on the size of the business, right, 60 to 8090, $100,000 a controller, you know, a good controller. I mean, that’s climbing into a six figure role. A CFO, right? Is probably 150 base plus incentive. Pam, you’re talking about a business starting to staff, you know, a quarter of a million dollars, easily, plus just to have a really robust finance function, right? And to find one person that has the the one the skill set to do all of those things, yeah. But two that you know, the temperament and disposition to be everything from a bookkeeper to the CFO and everything in between, yeah, that’s so one, that’s so hard to find. And two, they can’t focus on value creating items when they’re doing everything. And so when you start to look at it, kind of at that level. For a lot of businesses, the outsourcing makes so much sense early on, because for a fraction of what you would pay to hire all those internally, and then, you know, not to mention the cost of turnover, the benefits, right? The fully loaded kind of burden on having that talent in house, versus, you know, paying a fraction of that cost to have, you know, a deep we have, I think, 55 team members now, right? So a very deep bench of talent, it’s, I don’t want to say a no brainer. There’s, there’s business cases for everything, but the math kind of makes sense to a large degree when you’re thinking about outsourcing, because you can just get so much talent at your disposal for a very accessible fee as a small and growing business?
Carrie
Yeah. Well, I want to shift gears a little bit because I wanted to, I think we were going to talk about some of the things that are changing in the industry, maybe some things to look forward to, or or to watch out for, and maybe just some kind of for small business owners here are me, like, maybe I’m not at that million yet, but I do want to get there. Like, maybe I want to be a Luca client someday, or I want to at least, like, get to that million and I’m maybe I have, like, a mom and pop now, but I have, like, more of a growth mindset, like some things that people can be kind of had on their radar, and some things that are happening now.
Jordan Pridemore
Yeah, so let me start with the kind of accounting industry as a whole. So you forgive me, I wanted to make sure I got the numbers right. Yeah, I always have national accounting right. So, you know, a few things I think I’ve got these, maybe I don’t have to look so. And about the last decade or so, there’s been something to the tune of a 17% decline in accounting bachelor degrees, something around a 20, like a 20 ish percent decline, I want to say, on masters of accounting, there’s been about a 27% decrease in The number of enrollees to the CPA exam, and upwards of like 55% of senior level accountants are saying they’re considering retirement in the next three to five years due to just increased stress, workload, things like that. So the talent pool for accounting, just as kind of a whole as we’ve known the industry, the talent pool is shrinking. So what does that mean for small businesses? Right? It’s a little bit more difficult to find in house talent, right? You know, quite frankly, and what you can find is getting more expensive, right?
Carrie
And so, yeah, I would say that from the seat of somebody who has, in the past looked for somebody, I would totally agree. Yeah, yeah. And so businesses it’s my husband ends a business too. So
Jordan Pridemore
does he need an account? So, so it’s if I’m a business owner right now, and I’m looking at, okay, I know I need some help here. And again, there’s a business case for everything. So this isn’t me saying, oh, you should never hire somebody, right? Yeah, but that’s something to consider, right? Is the talent shrinking, and it’s becoming more expensive to have that in house talent. And the industry, you know, like many places, service based industries, post covid, is trending to a lot of remote and hybrid and stuff. And so some business owners, that’s a bit of a non starter, you know, for them, whether it’s preference or practicality, yeah, but you know, for small business in general, right? I mean, there’s so many changes right now. You know rates, we just had another rate drop, right? So, you know, funds are becoming, you know, accessible private equity, you probably need an entire episode to kind of dive into private. Equity, and what are the implications of that for, you know, businesses, there’s a lot of consolidation, and there has been a lot of consolidation. It’s starting to slow down a little bit right now, but there’s just a lot of factors. There were something like close to half a million applications per month, I think, and 2024, for like, new small businesses, which is a 20% increase from pre covid, like 2019 numbers. And so there’s a ton of new small businesses being created. Minority owned businesses are up. Female owned businesses make up something like 49% of new applications. I think, I mean, it’s like a really high number. I think 23% as of what 2024, 23% of all small businesses are female owned, right now, African American owned businesses doubled in the in the latest kind of Economics Report. So there’s a lot of growth just in small businesses and traditional small business and a lot of opportunity. But you know that also means there’s, there’s a lot of noise, there’s a lot of saturation, right? And so I think it’s more critical now than ever, that while creating a business is very accessible, and you see a rise, the fastest growing segment of small business growth right now is what the government would be would consider micro businesses so five or less employees, and that’s the fastest growing segment, which makes sense because of the accessibility that technology creates, right? Anybody can start a business at home, if you have, you know, a phone, really. But again, I think it makes so much sense with with all that growth, that you have someone who you can soundboard those ideas off of, right, a trusted advisor to say, Okay, this is kind of what I’m thinking. This is sort of the the niche that I want to take my business. But, you know, maybe they don’t understand, even from the formation standpoint, like, not only legally speaking, how do I create a business, but also, how do I do, just like, a market analysis to even understand, Should I, should I make this business right? Should I? Should I kind of go follow this niche, or whatever it is? And so we have a lot of conversations with business owners who, I would say are early stage. They may be exploring something, typically, the one the business owners we work with that’s not going to be their first business. So we have a lot of conversations with people who may have successfully started a company. Successfully started a company. They’re kind of ready to serial entrepreneur, right starting the next thing, but they want to soundboard, and they want to say, Okay, we’re kind of thinking this. You know, our business, you know, kind of, what do you think about this? And I really appreciate the trust that they put in us when they ask those questions, because they genuinely want our opinion and feel like we’ve we’ve created and established some some trust and some value, and what we’re going to share with them in that. And so, yeah, I’d say my general advice right now to anyone looking to start or grow a business is, have someone that you can just be really honest with about, like, what you’re thinking, What direction are you trying to take things? And someone that you know you trust, will tell you sort of The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, right, right. Give you all these things to consider. But right now, I mean, there’s a really favorable outlook for small businesses. TD economics. TD Bank put out a report recently, 90% optimism across the small business owner base that they hold, which is like 10% Yeah, from Peak, yeah, not Yeah, that kind of sentiment. So a lot of positive sentiment in the in the business community right now.
Carrie
That was interesting to be running a podcast for small businesses during covid and as weird to call somebody and, you know, be like it was all remote, obviously at the time. So, yeah, just like, how’s your business doing? It was interesting time. So,
Jordan Pridemore
but isn’t the resiliency of small business owners encouraging? Yeah, you know, I think small business makes up like 40% of US GDP. But I mean, when you, when you look at just from a people standpoint, right? We talked about our Myers Briggs earlier, yeah, I get my energy for people, so I love thinking about like people stories and and you’ll never find better, better stories of just like the human the human spirit, yeah, and the resiliency of people. Then when you see a small business owner that has weathered covid, they have pivoted, they have the battle scars to prove that they have done hard things, and they’ve come out on the other side. And what we’re seeing is tremendous businesses that are serving people and creating real community impact and opportunities because of that. For me personally, like, that’s really encouraging.
Carrie
Yeah, absolutely, I think it is. Yeah, it’s definitely really cool to see we even last, the last podcast we had with somebody who creates, like, has a or it’s called the gathering lab, and she has places for people to meet and kind of develop community. Together, and we talked on that podcast about how, to me, that’s so much of what small business is, is that you are, you know, if you have a brick and mortar, you’re connecting with people like every day when, when I was at the coffee shop, you know, I’m talking to people consistently like that was really, we considered that to be our products, like coffee and books were the medium for those conversations, you know. But the thing that was different about that place that were compared to another coffee shop is that we had pretty good coffee, but we had really good connection, you know. But that is true of so many small businesses, like yes, people who are working with people who are going to walk in off the street and get a cup of coffee, but also at infomedia, you know, like, we have good connections with our small businesses, and you talk to those people who are running those businesses, and you know, when they have they’re having a baby, when they have like trouble in their life, like it is, I think small Business is such a powerful way to build community, and especially in a you know, it is, I think our communities are struggling a bit under maybe social media and things like that. So I think it is, like, hugely important. And yes, small businesses also have that huge economic impact to your city or town or broader even, but, yeah, the community aspect, I think people maybe forget, but it’s really important.
Jordan Pridemore
I think so Oh, it’s huge. It’s huge. I like to, I like to tell people that the service that we provide to business owners is not accounting. The service that we provide is the data visibility and the ability for them to make impactful decisions that grow their organizations, right? The mechanism that we happen to deliver that with is accounting, right, yeah, and I think it’s just kind of a focus shift, but to say, like the numbers, for the sake of the numbers are not why we do what we do. The reason we do what we do is is to help businesses grow, right? And here locally, like those businesses impact for the positive the community that, you know, I leave the office and go raise my four children in, yeah? And so that’s really important, yeah,
Carrie
absolutely. Well, I feel like we could keep talking forever, but I kept thinking of like, oh, we need to have you back for an episode on this or whatever, but we were out of time. So how can people get started with Luca? If the if they’re wanting to do that, what’s the best way to Yeah,
Jordan Pridemore
absolutely. So the easiest way if you go to our website, www, dot Luca hq.com like Luca headquarters, right? Luca hq.com there’s a lot of great information on there, just about the different things we do. But probably the most important thing is there’s a big button right at the top. It says, Click here. You know, I don’t know what is something like, right? It’s probably an orange button. Yeah, it’s probably an orange button. We actually have a side note, great color scheme for the fall. Oh, yeah, that’s true. This is our season for branding, right? Go to our website like a brand, yeah? Great fall colors, yeah. But yeah, if you go to the website, Luca, HQ com, you can book a call. We don’t, we don’t charge for, you know, taking a look at the business you know that time for talking, probably important to note as well, that when you work with Luca, we don’t just bill you by the hour, right? The way we establish working relationships is to have a fixed fee, kind of recurring scope with our clients so that it’s a very predictable cost to their business, right? It’s not like, oh, I need to ask Luca a question, but if it’s hard, I’m going to double my feet, kind of thing. And so, you know, we don’t charge for the for the consultation that we don’t call it that. We call it discovery, yeah, but we wouldn’t really get a good understanding of the business. Take a deep dive into the state of things, and sort of just give you what our best look would be, as to how we would approach the work, and then kind of go from there. So it’s really organic conversational. If you go to the website, you’ll end up on a call with me. So, you know, I’d love to talk to anybody that wants us to take a look at it. And if we’re not the best of it, I’m happy we have, you know, trusted, trusted colleagues in the business here that we can probably connect somebody with if, if that may be a better fit for them. So happy to do that as well.
Carrie
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for taking the time. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me. This was great. The Localist podcast is written and produced by me, Carrie roll legend. We record right here at infomedia studios. So if you’re interested in hosting a podcast, or even in just having some little social media clips that you can use to promote your business, infomedia does that. Infomedia is where I have my day job, and they also sponsor the podcast, and I’m really lucky that they do. I’m so excited. Excited every week to have the infomedia team working with me on this. So part of that team is me, but also we have Taylor Davis, who’s our show runner. We have Hannah craigen, who is our outreach manager, and Paul Bryant is with me in the studio making sure this gets recorded, that it looks great and it sounds great. So our team just does a fantastic job. And I’m always so lucky to get to work with them, and you could work with them too. So until next time, here’s to thinking global by acting local and putting small shops before big box.