Tate Henshaw, the Co-Founder and COO at Arc Business Management, joins Gary to share his journey as a finance major in college, to working in entertainment. In this episode, Tate shares the different paths he took to get where he is today, why he chose to pursue a career in entertainment management, and how his management company allows their clients to focus on what they do best.
Tate Henshaw, the Co-Founder and COO at Arc Business Management, joins Gary to share his journey as a finance major in college, to working in entertainment. In this episode, Tate shares the different paths he took to get where he is today, why he chose to pursue a career in entertainment management, and how his management company allows their clients to focus on what they do best.
Live from Xerocon 2022, Tate shares how Arc Business Management is more than just a bookkeeping and tax firm, how he became a Xero Ambassador, and how he manages his time between all of his current projects.
Listen now to learn about Tate's stellar tech stack and what's down the pipeline for Arc Business Management!
Learn more about Tate and Arc Business Management: https://www.arcmgmt.co/
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Gary DeHart
Hello and welcome to another episode of Accounting Insiders. I'm Gary DeHart, publisher of Insightful Accountant. And I am broadcasting or recording here today at Xerocon 2022 in the steamy, New Orleans, Louisiana. I hadn't had quite as much range with thought but still steaming. So I've got Tate Hinshaw, the, what's your title?
Tate Henshaw
Well, yeah, co founder and CEO.
Gary DeHart
All right, Arc Management. And I find that we were kind of chuckling before. So you're not a CPA? No, no, you're not a bookkeeper. Or not by training. You might be. You might go along. Yeah, but Yeah, but you're a CFP. That's right. So which is certified financial planners, planner. All right. Yet, you're here at Xerocon Right. And I've seen you set some other events. But welcome, I guess I'm supposed to say that first. So thanks for taking a little bit of time, but so just can dive in. So how is a CFP at an accounting conferences? Makes no sense to me, for sure.
Tate Henshaw
So it's probably a little bit of a all encompassing answer. I know. We're gonna get into the niche and all this kind of stuff later. But to start off from a high level, I was always a numbers person growing up. And so when I went to college at the University of Georgia, I was majoring Go Dogs and Go Dogs. Yeah.
Gary DeHart
No, it wasn't national champions. Yep. Nine days. Like that. Yeah. happiest time of the year. Yeah.
Tate Henshaw
And so I was there. And majored in math and started in computer science, I thought I was gonna be the next big video game developer. And realized that meant more like sitting in a cubicle for 12 or 14 hours a day coding, then it did what I thought it meant
Gary DeHart
Red Bulls and pizza.
Tate Henshaw
And so I transferred from computer science over to the business school because my other roommates were in the business school. And their work seemed a lot easier than mine. And so, switch computer science to finance I stayed with the math major. And as I was going through that, a couple of things happened. I did really well in my accounting courses, being kind of the numbers person. And my fraternity elected me as the treasurer, because I'd made the best grades in the accounting class, and had been helping the other guys with their tutoring more or less. And so I thought, oh, okay, there's something here with this. And then the other big thing that happened was, the University started a music business program while I was there, and one of my other roommates, we were in a band together in Athens. And he said, You need to get into this program. I was like, Well, why? What's it all about? And he said, Well, basically rock stars come through, and they talk about their lives, and you get college credit for it. And that's about all I need to know sold. Said, That sounds a lot more fun than than other electives I'm taking. And so I got into that program and did some really fun stuff, interned with drive by truckers worked with Tim Claremont, which is a college radio, promotions PR agency. And then when I graduated, you know, obviously, everyone who graduates you're kind of at a crossroads. And, and my math degree, was a great degree taught you a lot about problem solving really relevant to my current role, but didn't really have a career track unless you wanted to get a doctorate and teach math, which I'm pretty nerdy, but maybe not quite on that level. And so my finance degree had more of a career track, but that meant more of interview and brokerage houses and all this kind of stuff. And I was interviewing and they were talking about cold calling and networking and owning a farm. Now understand, those are really relevant scales to have. But at the time, I was thinking, I'm the numbers guy, I'd crunch the numbers, do the spreadsheets, figure out how to solve problems. And so I was really struggling, but needed a job obviously, regardless. And the person running the music business program, Keith Paraiso, who's actually at Kennesaw State now, doing a program there. He said, There's a guy in town in Atlanta, that runs a business management firm. He's looking for an intern, are you interested? And I thought, well, I don't Don't really know what that means. I think we've had one business major come through. And the main thing I remembered from his talk was bailing people out of jail. And so I was like, I don't know if this is the best fit, but But what are some pizza? Right? Yeah, I mean, it wasn't the cold calling job, right? It was at the Red Bulls and pizza. So I thought, yeah, let's give it a shot. And that was January of 2008. I started there, and spent 12 years there. Before I started ark in June of 2020. And that farm was a business management firm. So, you know, for the audience. It's is a bookkeeping firm, it is a tax firm. But it's also more than that. We're doing accounts payable, accounts receivable, tracking royalties, looking over different contracts. So very, very involved with your clients, and normally working with, you know, musicians, touring bands, those kinds of things. And, and we're pretty much the full financial backbone of that business. They don't have a CFO, a controller, a bookkeeper and accounts payable person, none of that we're filling all those roles on a fractional basis. So it's kind of a fractional CFO, controller, bookkeeper, accounts payable consulting all rolled into one with the industry specialty on top of it.
Gary DeHart
And that which, which that industry, and not this, this would is a blanket statement. But imagine out of out of, and there's multiple industries out there, but But I imagine that one, right, that in particular, where the artist definitely don't want to deal with any of that stuff that you're dealing with for them, right, I mean, pretty much for them to be at their best, they don't need to be.
Tate Henshaw
Correct. It's funny, I was talking to someone yesterday about songwriting, and just being creative generally. And it's really a different mindset from being tactical and dealing with numbers and organization. And so the more that we're able to give them time back and give them the kind of the peace, peace of mind, for them to be creative than the more successful they can be. And, and now, we've worked with a lot of athletes too. So it's kind of the same concept of allowing them to focus on what they do really well, and what they can uniquely do, that 99.9% of the population cannot write. And then us coming in and creating that structure and that foundation financially, for them to have a platform to, you know, hopefully, monetize that and exponentially monetize it. Right?
Gary DeHart
And are they straying a little bit but national, and they're going across the country?
Tate Henshaw
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, when you talk about sports, specifically, they could grow up in Atlanta, next door to me, right. But then they get drafted. They go wherever, Chicago, Toronto, you know, Miami, Cleveland, wherever, the draft that fall, right. And, and then the musicians, we've got a little more of a concentration currently. But you know, we have people in Nashville, I've got a group up in Vermont that we work with. So it's really not location dependent.
Gary DeHart
So do you end up networking with a lot of like other like sports agents?
Tate Henshaw
Yeah, so most of it, when talking about marketing, it is referral based, but not necessarily client to client as much as adjacent professional is kind of the term I use. So whether the athlete that could be an agent, it could be a AAU coach, a college coach, really, whoever that specific athlete is gonna ask, Who do I need? When I need help with my money? Who should I work with? And it's usually going to be one of those people predominantly on the music side, you're talking about entertainment attorneys, booking agents, managers, those kind of people. Talk to a manager this morning, I dropped by the entertainment attorney's office this morning. Welcome in. Which unfortunately put me in a lot of that right.
Gary DeHart
Oh, yeah, that was rocked out. Just when you're outside like no, and then it stops. Yeah.
Tate Henshaw
I was. It was manageable until I was about two blocks away and then it just came bottom fell out, but I'm dry now. Right?
Gary DeHart
And so, alright, so I'm going to switch topic just a little bit. So you got that right. Here's the The business I'm running and doing well with, but you're also a Xero Ambassador. That's right. And you're so you're a firm owner and then some involvement with Accounting Salon. You had a shirt on yesterday with that. So. So what is what is, uh, I think most of our audience understands kind of what a firm owner does, although you're pretty unique, because you've got a little different, different clientele base than most happening. But Xero Ambassador, what is that?
Tate Henshaw
So yeah, it's funny. The way you like to tell the story, because it's kind of a recurring theme. I was lucky, we started using XERO, at my prior firm in 2015. And really liked it really started converting a lot of our current clients over to it. And through that, they sent this survey out and said, Would you like to be on X pack? And I was like, you'll remember this phrase, I use it. Just second guy said, I don't really know what this means. Yeah, it looks like a two minute survey. I need a break anyway, in the day, I'll fill it out. And so then sure enough, maybe as a week, two weeks later said, Congratulations, you're in X pack. Oh, maybe I need to figure out what this means now. And for those not familiar with X pack, zero partner Advisory Council, they fly out. I think it's about 12. farm owners partners, as zero calls them. And basically, we go out and we have a great time. But we also really helped him to understand where's the product lacking? What can be improved? What are we looking for, so that it's not just, you know, developers, or whoever deciding this is what we want to do, really, truly getting that partner feedback. And that was really, what impressed me about zero was, I thought, well, is this maybe just a rah rah session to make us look good? Yeah. But then when we are sitting at a table, the 12 of us, and then around the side of the room was filled. And those people introduce themselves. And you're talking the head of marketing, for the US the head of product for the US, the head of sales for the US, and they're taking notes on everything that we're saying. And I thought this is really impressive. They really are taking this very seriously of what their partners are failing, and how they can help us. Right. And so anyway, to get back to the ambassador thing, the X pack is a twice a year meeting. And so the second meeting was in Denver, and there was an initiative that they had started to do local ambassadors. And they reached out to me and they said, Is this something you'd be interested in doing? And I said, Sure, I don't really know what that means. But, you know, let's do a call, we can talk about it. And so basically, it was working with the community at that point, and doing some thought leadership doing some local events, and just really relating a peer perspective to new partners, current partners, whatever it may be also helping the salespeople to know, okay, this partner is saying this, what does that mean? Okay, well, from a partners perspective, what they're getting at is XYZ, whatever it may be. And so I did the local thing for I think about six months, and then right around zero con Atlanta. I changed over to a national ambassador. So there's four of us in the US one in Canada. Me Jay Kimmelman, Liz Mason, Amanda Aguilar, and then Alison Hawkins and Canada. And we work with different teams, but it's still basically the same concept of just being able to, you know, a new partners got questions that are about maybe it's not even specifically zero, but running a cloud practice, right, which is not necessarily something that the zero, you know, account managers are going to be familiar with, but where we can come in and help and relate, you know, everything from, you know, managing remote workers, things like that. Pricing, you know, all those kinds of things, other apps that they can integrate with, and so I've been doing that now for about five years. Yeah. Which in tech land is pretty long time.
Gary DeHart
You're like, this was a short stint? Yeah, perhaps not. Right. And is that something that they say? Aren't you gonna do this five years and then we're gonna start rolling people off or is it kind of up to you to go I'm done.
Tate Henshaw
Yeah well I'm sure they could tell me I'm done. Right. But it's just kind of been an ongoing developing thing. And this continued to evolve over time. And the things that we're doing have changed and then change back. And but it's been, it's been a good ride, right. But there's no set time period, so to speak.
Gary DeHart
And now the new I've talked to him yesterday, I forgot the guy, Cookie.
Tate Henshaw
Oh, yeah, cookie. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Cookie of product, right? He's product guy. Yeah, yeah, he's leading the charge in the US for the product. And I've had multiple conversations with Cookie. Got a great just mind for the art of project management or product management. And so I'm really excited to see all the things obviously, we've heard some of those at the conference about sales tax inventory, that things are working on there. But really excited to see the continued development For the US product.
Gary DeHart
And are you 100% Xero firm? Yes. Okay. So let's talk about Accounting Salon. What is it? And what's your involvement with that?
Tate Henshaw
So Accounting Salon is kind of a brainchild of Amanda Aguilar, who we both know.
Gary DeHart
She's from here right? I just made that connection.
Tate Henshaw
We got everybody on Slack. Where do we need to go? Where should we eat, I had all those kinds of things. But her thing was, you know, we go to these conferences, and a lot of the people who maybe are the speakers, or the thought leaders, if you will, which I think is kind of a hairy term to even get into but you know, we had such value that we get from the happy hour or hanging out at the hotel bar and having those conversations. And so she wanted to create a group or a platform to have more of that. And so what accounting salon is, is this Invite Only you can apply. But it's a invite only kind of mastermind group. And we have get togethers and happy hours and webinars, but it's a lot of like minded firm owners, and then some app partners, different people that we just get together and figure out what's next. And kind of, you know, sharpen each other, if you will, because it's really can be inspiring when you're sitting there with a Clint Bowers or, or Liz Mason, or Britney Brown, and you hear what they're doing, right. And then for me, I'm thinking, Man, I gotta up my game. So that's basically the impetus there. And it really all came from getting into that Xero ecosystem. Right? Meeting, Amanda and Jay and Liz, and all those people has really led to a lot of these cool opportunities.
Gary DeHart
Yeah, that's great. Well, so how do you do that? I mean, because there's only um, I don't know if you've figured out how to get more than 24 hours out of a day. But
Tate Henshaw
Well, I got time turner. Harry Potter. That's what uh, yeah. You know, people ask me, How do you split your time with even mainly the zero and the arc stuff? Because Accounting Salon is really a couple of events per year, maybe? Or you kind of split it up? Other than the, the memes on Slack? I keep up with those were pretty prominent with those. But, and there lies 80/20? Is it 60/40? And my thing is, it's 100/100. Really, I mean, you just yes, there's a lot of intentional planning that goes into it of, okay, my Mondays are heavier with zero stuff. So I'm gonna dedicate there, get all that those kinds of things wrapped up. But then I'm back in Arc world and really focusing on that, but you know, best laid plans can still fall apart different times when there's hot button issues or things that come up that you just have to be flexible and willing to adapt. A lot of it's having great people to help you. So Molly Garcia, she just got married on my sister, her old last name, but she kind of coordinates a lot of the ambassador stuff so that we're not having to figure out logistics and what presentation are we doing? She's helping us just be able to come in and execute. And then I've got great people on our team at art as well, to help with that and know, okay, these are the things that need to be executed if we've got meeting means, you know, let me know, what needs to be addressed. Make sure that these two days were taken care of, etc.
Gary DeHart
And I think that's one thing that's really hard is, especially for a small firm owner, or we're a small business ourselves, is not letting go of things, but but making that investment and that person who you let things go to correct, right? Because it's so critical, right? And you can't do all these things. If you're doing it yourself.
Tate Henshaw
Correct. And I'm very, I'm very upfront with my team at Ark about, if we're waiting on me to solve all the problems, we're in big trouble, right? Because, number one, I don't know everything. Number two, I don't have time to solve everything. So you know, we're really intentional. And that's one of the reasons that Lauren, my partner and myself started Ark was to waste, we had a vision of how we wanted to operate. And a big part of that is finding the right people, and trusting them to do the work. I'd be lying if I said there was some times where it's not sure I want to give up. Yeah. But you know, when I look at people, I've mentioned them a lot of times with people like like a Liz or Kenji, at acuity, and you see what they built. And when you see the people on their team and things that they're doing, then you kind of realize, okay, they're able to do it, and look where they've gone by doing that. And so if we're able to do it, we think the sky's the limit for us.
Gary DeHart
So, absolutely. Alright, so the niche, we've touched on a little bit, but how'd you end up in the kind of the entertainment is really as entertainment was first and then yeah, now you've kind of broadened out a little bit into sports.
Tate Henshaw
Yeah, right. Yeah, it's kind of a two sides of the same coin. But when we, when I started at that farm, that farm, I started that was doing predominantly only entertainment. So I really just fell into the music side of things. And then my current partner joined that firm in around 2015, he was the one who actually brought up the idea of Xero and those things, which is interesting, because he's not a technical person at all. But he had seen it and thought, He's He's very much a brand person in a field person of this is what we want to portray our brand, as is no current and up to date, and mobile capable, and all the things that, you know, the cloud apps kind of can accomplish for you. And his background is as an MBA agent, before he moved over to doing business management for predominantly the same clientele. So we worked together at that firm for about five years before we started Ark. And so that's where the sports component came from. Okay. And growing. Growing. Yes, rapidly.
Gary DeHart
That's fun, fun, but probably, yeah, scary. I think if you're in that mindset, right? It's not scary. It's more, you sit back and go, growth is phenomenal. It's fantastic. How do we manage it? Right? Because you got your basic clients, you can't let them down? Correct. But you also want to grow.
Tate Henshaw
So it's a constant. I think if you're not growing, you're dying. But then last, you can't let people out of the back door when like, as soon as they come in the front door, either. Yeah. Or you're just constantly churning things. So we've had really good luck as far as keeping clients on board with us. And then the growth is really starting to pick up now. Which is, which is fun to see. I mean, it's a testament to the work that Lauren and myself have done, obviously, but also the team. Sure. All the work that they've been putting in. Yeah.
Gary DeHart
People don't stay with you if if you're not doing a good job, right. The so let's talk real quick, just before we wrap it up about your tech stack. So obviously zero. Yep. And there's the core GL. What, what else is in that kind of the? Here's our must haves. Yeah. And then, yeah, like to have liked to have? Yeah, we'll go with that. I was gonna say things that I don't care if I have or not, but we don't want to do that. So we'll say here's our must haves, and for you, and really any firm and it's not necessarily product. It's a it's not a you got to have this app, it's you have to have an app that serves this purpose, right? Yeah, for sure. It'd be either way your choice.
Tate Henshaw
Xero is kind of the hub and then bill.com It's another huge component for mentioned. We're paying a lot of bills all the time. Yeah. A lot of the invoicing we do is through Xero using the stripe add on as well, to enable credit card payments, we use LastPass for password management, a lot of the secure credentials for people that are needed for different things that we do use the Microsoft suite 365, SharePoint OneDrive for document management. He's hub dot longtime hub dot user. And then this is where there's a lot of other things that are in play that I forget about HelloSign will use for a signatures teamwork, is what we use for project management. Those are kind of the primary things and then you'll have little ancillary shoot offs here in there. We've been looking at some of the reporting apps to maybe up our game there possibly to be determined on that follow up next time, maybe.
Gary DeHart
And so how do you go through kind of the betting process? Right? So think about maybe adding X hat? How do you bet that?
Tate Henshaw
Well, it's it, it really depends on for me, I like to start at flexibility. Because our engagements are relative to the industry at large is gonna be much higher touch, much more customizable. And obviously, the fees reflect that as well. So it's a little different business model. But we're not really the one saying, you know, this is McDonald's, if you order a Big Mac, you get all the stuff on it, we don't take it off, where the guys, you know, the five star steakhouse of if you want it, rare, medium rare, this, that other this kind of sauce, whatever, that's what we're gonna do, when we tried to streamline it as much as possible for scaling efficiencies. But there's a lot that we do, as far as you know, for this specific client, you're kind of doing this for this when you didn't similar, but maybe a little bit different. So flexibility is where I like to start both from a, you know, we'll build up comm all the different ways you can make payments, all the different ways you can set up approvals. And also the ability, obviously, to sync with all the other applications that you're using is a huge one for us, as well. So that's where it starts. And then, you know, you bring in the team members. And well, a huge part of it for me is asking those other people that I know and community for through accounting salon, zero. Does anybody have experience with this? Or knowing the people that are involved like Brad Gustafson at ramp? That's the guy I would trust, you know, like a brother. So when he's over there telling me this is what we're doing at ramp. This is how it's gonna work. I believe in right, you know, and so there's people at a lot of the firms we work with, obviously a will Lopez that gusta or there's, you know, Joel over rippling a lot of those kinds of people where I know them, I know their integrity, and I know I can trust them if something's going on for them to be there for me. There's people@gmail.com, zero that are that way too. So I guess that's not a very clear answer. It's not a very, you know, flowchart, the right kind of answer. But it's the people involved along with the flexibility of the application, really is what leads the discussion for us.
Gary DeHart
But I think one big point that comes out of that, and you mentioned, as you were talking, I thought about accounting salon, and then you mentioned that but is the networking side, right. And you got somewhere to run to write, okay. There's the networking side, that's why you come to events is why you get in these different involved in these different things. So, so I think networking is key. I mean, a lot of people have already done that. All right, no, no reason to reinvent the wheel. Right? They can get halfway done for you. Then you've only got half as much work to do. Yeah, and I know you need to run so we're gonna stop it there. Appreciate the time. Thank you for Thank you. Since we missed yesterday, thanks for being able to come back in here today. Absolutely. Thank you. Appreciate it.