James started his professional accounting experience shortly after being admitted into the University of Iowa Honors Program and completing an Honors course in Intro to Financial Accounting taught by the director of the Masters in Accountancy Program (MAc). Based on his performance in the Honors section he was sent a letter by the Accounting Department Chair recommending he highly consider pursuing a major in accounting. He found the course work both challenging and enjoyable, so he consulted with the MAc Director, and other accounting major students. However, he still harbored concerns about the long-term demand for accounting professionals. Through these insightful conversations, James discovered a promising trend—an ever-increasing demand for skilled accounting professionals. Notably, he learned that University of Iowa’s graduating accounting majors had achieved a remarkable 100% employment rate, securing full-time positions. This statistic resonated deeply with James, as he was funding his own education and sought assurance that his chosen field would offer ample opportunities for his future career. He was fortunate, and those opportunities presented themselves sooner than he had ever imagined.
One day while talking with accounting students in Pat’s Diner inside the Tippie College of Business about his hobbies (Computers, Gaming, CryptoCurrency), and his entrepreneurial adventures (eBay, Virtual Goods) he got introduced to a couple of students who had started a consulting business called Launch Services at the Bedell Entrepreneurship Learning Laboratory (BELL). They needed someone who could assist with bookkeeping, but they also wanted someone to help with accounting systems implementation for potential business clients. They only had grant money to hire one individual but had about five people interested. With the help of the BELL advisors, they created a test for their applicants by creating a fake QuickBooks Online (QBO) company, entering sales, receipt data, owner distributions, and payroll data. They created 5 copies and gave access to each applicant a QBO company file. James spent 12 hours finalizing the financials and wrote to them how he would record the company distributions and payroll. They reviewed the results with the BELL advisors, and he got the job.
James became the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) & Accounting Consultant for Launch Services. Working for Launch Services was a blessing because it allowed him to utilize the information on accounting and taxes he was learning in college and apply it in real world situations that impacted actual people.
James enjoyed the work being done by Launch Services because he was able to help grow and assist many different businesses like local coffee shops, fro-yo hangouts, solar panel installers, chiropractors and excavation companies. Some of his work on financial projections allowed aspiring business owners to get Small Business Loans and start their own companies. He knew he wanted to do this type of work for the rest of his life, and eventually start his own consulting company, so in 2014 he bought the domain www.corridor-consulting.com, with the vision that one day in the very distant future he’d open his own office.
Shortly after taking Introduction to Tax, he started to realize he really enjoyed tax law and took every elective he could on the subject. Because of his interest in the field, he talked with a local Certified Public Accountant (CPA) who specialized in taxes and decided to make the CPA certification a new long-term goal. It was a big goal, that required sacrifices, as it would require passing 4 exams in under 18 months, and working directly under a CPA for two years before he could even attain a license to practice. Unfortunately, Launch Services did not have a CPA on staff.
During James’ junior year in college, he began looking for a full-time accounting job. He decided his accounting skillset would be most marketable to a hospital or clinic since he understood their operations from his prior experience as an EMT-B & CNA. Shortly after searching, he landed an interview with the Vice President of Finance at one of Iowa’s largest privately ran hospitals and outpatient clinic operators. During the interview, the VP of Finance gave an example of five transactions, and expected him to verbally state the journal entry, and the impact on the financial statements. He passed every example and got a call back the same day.
There James worked as a Staff-Accountant under three CPAs to meet his work requirement. He helped maintain accounting records in accordance with GAAP for three corporations and produced monthly closing statements for sixteen clinic locations and thirty primary care physicians. He reported the results monthly to six Operations Directors and the Vice President of Finance. In addition to that work, he was tasked with assisting in the yearly budgeting process for those clinics and maintained oversight of the outpatient clinics’ $1M+ per year capital budget and assisted every year with the annual audits.
While working, he graduated college, began studying for his first CPA exam and took on more responsibility in data analytics and process improvement for the primary care physicians. He did this by compiling the daily revenue management reports along with supplying data sets and custom reports to the VP of Finance for Lean Six Sigma projects. After meeting the CPA licensing experience requirement, James continued to work full-time and scheduled his four CPA exams, he took and passed all four across 6 months.
Because of James’ success in helping the Lean Six Sigma team, and his recent success in passing the CPA exams, he was selected as a managerial candidate and offered the opportunity to start training at the Iowa Quality Council. There he trained under Gary Nesteby a very well-regarded quality expert with 15 years’ experience as a Director of Quality for Universal Gym and 21 years as a Senior Examiner for National Baldrige.
Iowa Quality Council’s critical message is the following:
- That the impact the workforce has on the product and quality of the goods and services is underestimated and underappreciated by senior leaders.
- Once the intelligence and motivation of the workforce is aligned with the purpose of the organization there is almost no chance for failure.
- The greatest risk within an organization is based on the decisions made by the leadership. The greatest reward given to the organization is the relationship between the leadership and the workforce.
- Quality is a tool that is overlooked, and appreciated most when something goes wrong.
During Green Belt training James was tasked with solving an issue he deemed a problem, and gathered a group of diverse professionals, who had opposing stakes in the issue to come together. James applied the principles that he was taught by the Iowa Quality Council to lead the 2 hour long monthly meetings.
After six months they reached a conclusion, and solved the issue saving the outpatient clinics upwards of $150k-$200k/year. He was the first person at the organization to complete a project and reach a conclusion in under a year.
James successfully defended the project in front of the Iowa Quality Council, and received his Green Belt Certification. He went on to present his findings during the monthly managerial council to the CEO, CFO, Directors and Clinic Managers.
By showing an interest and initiative in process improvement, along with his experience in accounting, he became a key member helping to remove the old main-frame enterprise system that was paper based, to deploy a new cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for the hospital and clinic locations.
While implementing the new ERP system, James realized he enjoyed utilizing his accounting and tax experience to help others. In order to be well rounded in all aspects of accounting, he wanted to further pursue attaining work experience in public accounting- specifically in tax planning & preparation for businesses and high net-worth individuals.
After a long search he found a small CPA firm that had been in business for 20+ years that specifically worked with high-net-worth individuals. There he worked closely under a partner with 42 years of tax experience, 20 of which was employment in public accounting firms where he provided tax and estate planning services to businesses and individuals in the local area. Ultimately that CPAs firm merged with a larger firm that specialized in audits for the construction and manufacturing industry, and James was their first hire.
James was responsible for the following:
- Researching tax law changes through pending legislation along with communicating those changes to partners and staff through education.
- Preparation of tax returns (1120s,1065,1041,1040, 990, 709, 706, 5500, 5227) in multiple states.
- Gathering apportionment data, and filing any applicable state composite and/or withholding returns.
- Initiating firm wide tax planning initiatives for businesses, high net worth individual clients, along with their trusts and estates.
- Providing responses to federal and state notices on behalf of clients to applicable revenue agencies.
- Providing assistance for in person IRS Examinations
- Organizing documents for all new client on-boarding consisting of:
- Reviewing all given accounting data, financial reports and supplemental detail to identify any errors or omissions.
- Referring recommendations to amend prior year returns to the engagement partners.
- Organizing documents for all new client on-boarding consisting of:
- Training staff on preparation of returns and bookkeeping for clients.
- Assisting in on-site audits during off-season for large national commercial construction companies.
- Analyzing tax account reconciliations/accruals (ASC 740) for audit clients.
After gaining the aforementioned experience, he decided to start his own accounting firm. This firm would not only serve clients locally but also virtually across the USA and overseas, while providing him with the time and flexibility needed to raise a family. The domain, purchased in 2014 while working for Launch Services, was linked to a web server. Registration documents were filed, and thus, Corridor Consulting was born.