Picture an accounting firm that keeps partner salaries locked away like state secrets. Staff spend years wondering what partnership actually pays. Meanwhile, another firm down the street posts everyone’s salary on a public leaderboard. The path to partnership comes with clear milestones and transparent rewards.
This stark difference shows just one way “renegade” firms are shaking up the accounting profession.
In episode 104 of the Earmark Podcast, recorded live during the Advisory Amplified tour in Austin, host Blake Oliver digs into what it means to be a “renegade” in accounting. He’s joined by Madeline Reeves, founder and CEO of Fearless Foundry, and Wesley McDonald, go-to-market leader at Relay. Together, they explore how forward-thinking firms and tech companies challenge everything we thought we knew about running an accounting practice.
What Makes a Firm “Renegade”?
So what exactly is a renegade firm? Reeves has worked with many of them, and she has a clear answer.
“A renegade firm is leading their clients to somewhere new and is not settling for the ways things have always been done,” she explains. These firms challenge the status quo. They see tech companies as partners, not just vendors. And they push their clients and technology partners to do better.
These firms also stand out in unexpected ways. Take Lance CPA (now part of Revel CPA). When they signed new clients in the brewery and hospitality space, they didn’t just send a standard engagement letter. They delivered beautiful welcome kits complete with custom beer glasses and cool socks. It was their way of saying this isn’t your typical accounting relationship.
But being a renegade goes deeper than nice gestures. These firms also excel at saying no.
“A lot of firms are dedicated to being acts-of-service people,” Reeves notes. “They become a little bit of “yes people” or people pleasers. But the real renegade firms are like, ‘I do not do that service or I do not work with that industry.’”
They’re not trying to be everything to everyone. They focus on being exceptional at what they do best.
Taking the Lead with Clients
Traditional firms often let clients call the shots. They use whatever software the client prefers. They adapt to the client’s processes. They follow rather than lead.
Renegade firms flip this completely around.
Reeves puts it perfectly: “When I go to the dentist, I’m not telling the dentist, ‘No, don’t use that drill in my mouth.’ I don’t know how to do dentistry. So if you’re an accountant, it’s your job to lead your clients.”
These firms come to the table saying, “This is how we do this job well and effectively for you. If the goal is advisory services, this is how we get there better, faster.”
When you’re the professional, you set the standards for how the work gets done.
Breaking Open the Black Box of Compensation
One radical change happening in renegade firms involves money—specifically, who knows what about everyone’s pay.
“On the most successful sales teams I’ve been a part of, there’s a leaderboard that shows exactly how much people have attained in their salary in that quarter,” McDonald shares. “Which is a wild concept to think about in some industries.”
Oliver points out the obvious problem with traditional secrecy: “One of the biggest secrets is how much the partners make. But if we want everybody to want to be a partner, why don’t we tell them?”
It’s not just about knowing the numbers, though. Reeves emphasizes that firms need “not just pay transparency but pathway transparency.” People need to see the clear steps to advancement, not just the end goal.
McDonald, drawing from his tech experience, says promotions shouldn’t be about time in seat. “You’re ready to move to the next level as soon as you’re performing at that level.”
This represents a huge shift from the traditional model where you might wait five years for a promotion regardless of your performance.
Building Teams That Actually Want to Work Together
The old model pits high performers against each other. Remember those weekly emails showing who billed the most hours? Competition is the traditional way to drive performance.
Renegade firms take a different approach.
“If you have people on your team who think the only way up is their own performance, your whole team is going to be fighting against each other,” Reeves explains. She learned this building sales teams. When she tied part of compensation to team performance, not just individual metrics, “We saw performance double because people were suddenly willing to turn to the teammate next to them and show them what was working.”
This collaborative approach is essential for attracting younger professionals. As Reeves notes, “There are a lot of young people who are coming out of school, and there’s nothing exciting to them about working 90 hours a week during tax season. They’re like, ‘hard pass.’”
“You can tell people to do the work and you can pay people to do the work,” Reeves says. “But to actually get people to want to show up and fully do the work, it has to align around the things that genuinely motivate them as a human.”
When Banking Becomes a Partnership
Banking isn’t usually seen as innovative. But companies like Relay are changing that, starting with how they work with accountants.
Most people choose banks for passive reasons. “It’s because I know that bank exists or they’re down the street or my parents bank there,” McDonald observes.
But what if your bank actually worked for you and your accountant?
“Relay is purpose built for our accounting partners and their clients,” McDonald explains. Traditional banks gatekeep information. Relay surfaces it to accountants so they can actually help their clients.
The difference is stark. “I’m not even sure how I would give feedback to Chase or Bank of America or Wells Fargo,” Oliver admits. In contrast, McDonald says, “If a partner of ours has an idea and they bring it to us, we will act on that idea.”
This isn’t just talk. Being a champion for SMEs and their partners is one of Relay’s seven core values. They were the first banking platform to go to market specifically through accounting professionals.
Reeves shares her own frustration with traditional banking. She wanted to support a local community bank that shared her values. But they had no online banking. Getting statements required writing emails to a banker.
“If you’re really serving small business at the core of who you are,” she says, “making me have to email a banker to get a bank statement isn’t serving small business. That’s creating extra manual work for me or for my accountant.”
Learning from Renegade Mistakes
Being a renegade means trying new things. And that means making mistakes.
Reeves shares a particularly painful one. She built what she thought was an innovative compensation model, paying top performers a percentage of deals they closed. Then she discovered a senior employee was committing fraud, jacking up prices in their proposal system to increase her cut.
Reeves recalls discovering the fraud just before a major conference and having to lock down all her banking immediately. The experience taught her to “trust but verify.” You need systems to ensure people act the right way, even those you trust.
McDonald shares his own revelation about breaking from the traditional path. He started his career as a fixed income broker. But as he earned promotions, he looked around and realized, “everyone there had been doing it for 30 years. I thought, ‘Can I do this for 25 more years?’”
He chose the non-linear path instead, moving between sales, consulting, and building teams. “I had stopped my learning journey,” he reflects. “I want to be a lifelong learner.”
Oliver’s “mistake” was majoring in music at the most expensive university in the country. But the experience taught him how to teach himself anything—a skill that proved invaluable in accounting. “If you can sit in a practice room for six hours a day and learn how to play a concerto, that’s all just breaking problems down into literally measure by measure, note by note.”
The Path Forward
The renegade firms discussed in this episode aren’t making small tweaks to the traditional model. They’re rebuilding it from scratch.
They’re becoming strategic leaders who guide rather than follow clients, creating transparent cultures where collaboration beats competition, and embracing technology companies as true partners rather than necessary evils.
With younger professionals rejecting traditional firm culture and clients demanding strategic guidance over compliance work, the old model is dying. The renegade approach offers a sustainable alternative that actually addresses why people leave accounting.
These innovations are happening right now at thriving firms. From brewery-themed welcome kits to banking platforms built for accountant collaboration, these changes prove accounting firms can create experiences that rival any modern service business.
Want to hear the complete conversation? Listen to the full episode. You’ll get the full story of how Reeves uncovered fraud through her proposal system, Olivers’s journey from professional musician to accounting innovator, and detailed strategies for implementing renegade principles in your own firm.