Today we’d like to introduce you to Eric Pierre.
Eric, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
How I got started in running my own CPA firm is that over a decade ago at my corporate job in Houston, I had a boss named Matt Gannon who pulled me aside one day and told me out of the blue that I would be much happier working for myself than working for others. He told me that I was too smart for Corporate America and that I would help others much better and make significantly more money. I was offended at that time hearing such things, but a few years later, my adopted Grandmother, Juanita Loftin, pulled me aside at Houston’s First Baptist Church in Downtown after service and said the same thing. Again, I was offended and upset as I had desires of climbing the corporate ladder and I was quite frankly scared of the prospect of going out on my own.
Three years after Juanita said that prophecy to me at church in Downtown Houston, I found myself hating my corporate career and hating my life. I found myself working hard to allow other people to profit off me, never get the credit and finding myself in a position where I was competing and not collaborating and building healthy relationships where we all can win together. So, I left Corporate America for good on December 14, 2015.
When I left, I had taken a vacation here in San Diego and had a nice dinner with my friends Kristian and Kara Peter and they asked me what I wanted to do with my life and I said sheepishly “Uh, I want to have my own business and live in Southern California…” So, they asked me what was holding me back. They asked if I had a wife, children, etc. There was nothing holding me back, so I told my family on Christmas 2015 when my apartment lease ran out, I would pack my stuff and head to San Diego to explore my California Dreams.
I left Houston on January 31, 2016, left behind my girlfriend at the time, my parents, my closet friends, my church and everything I had known in Houston for over 30 years and drove to San Diego. I arrived on February 1, 2016, and started to figure things out. Things started happening such as me having the opportunity to meet Ty Hines, who hosts the So Cal Luxury Listings and The Neighborhood So Cal. I met him in his office in La Jolla and he thought that I’d be great on TV as a CPA, which shocked me since most people don’t like to talk or hear from CPAs. I was so blessed to have the opportunity to advertise and talk about taxes on TV and make it fun like the jet ski video we did where I did wipe out at the end, and it wasn’t scripted!
From there, that content that I also posted online opened doors for my business to grow in San Diego and helped me meet better people such as Dan Fulkerson, Sky Hoffman, Patrick Dillon, Shani Cooper, Michael Yoffee, Ben Montgomery, Kyrsty Conway, Ryan Saucerman, Darci Daneshavri, and these people all were people who helped me grow my business in one way or another.
Also, what helped me grow was finding a group of people in my community that helped me grow personally and not just as a business person. My friend Jessica Wilkins, in Toronto, got on me for not attending a church so my mother called and asked me to buy a Bible for my dad for Father’s Day and I visited the Bookstore at Rock Church in Point Loma. When I was there, I saw Marcus Preciado preaching and he was wearing some nice Jordans, which appealed to me because I’m such a Jordan sneakerhead. I met with him and he helped me identify some areas of growth and he introduced me to Willie Briscoe, who runs Hope Leadership Academy, Chuck Franklin, who challenged me to give more money away to not only the church but to other organizations such as Hope Leadership Academy, and Nasser Jones, who helped me find the Men’s Support Group that I’m in today.
My story basically is that once I allowed other people to pour into me that are more successful than me financially, spiritually, physically, and emotionally, my firm grew. My firm just grew three-fold this tax season from last and we opened a new office in Austin, Texas, which allows me to go back to my home state and stay connected to the friends and family I left behind as well as move into a bigger office here in San Diego and help us serve the community better.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I can definitely say without a shadow of a doubt it wasn’t a smooth road. When I first showed up to San Diego, I didn’t know many people outside of Kristian and Kara Peter, so I used to pass out flyers in the Gaslamp at night and post flyers on cars in Downtown, Point Loma, Golden Hill or any garage. It was quite scary not making any deals in the beginning.
My journey as an entrepreneur also exposed some serious character flaws in myself including how selfish of a person I really am, how bad of a communicator I was, the lack of leadership and quite frankly, I saw that I wasn’t great. Most importantly, I had to see how fearful I was of people saying no to me and I allowed that fear to hold me back for almost two years.
What helped me overcome that was that I had to change the people I had surrounded myself with since when I first got here, I had a friend from Houston that was supposed to help me, but he turned out to be not a very nice guy and he was teaching me to hate people and be jealous of others instead of winning with other people.
Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
I work as a CPA. I am also known as Your Favorite CPA.
I’m known for being very different from other CPAs as I’m more of an outspoken, outgoing, gregarious personality. I’m not afraid of putting my firm and myself out there to educate the masses in San Diego and beyond on tax law because I’ve learned that taxes and finance are a touchy area.
I specialize in the following areas:
Advanced Tax Planning for High Net Worth Individuals
Tax Planning and Preparation for Small Business and Individuals
Forensic Accounting and Auditing
Accounting/Bookkeeping Services
What I’m most proud of is that I can show people testimonial videos and written reviews on Google, Yelp, and YouTube of clients whose lives my firm has changed. This is an awesome thing for me because when I was in college and in college, I was taught that a great accountant is one that you haven’t heard of. The only time you heard of accountants is when they committed crimes such as Andrew Fastow and Jeff Skilling at Enron when I was a college kid in Houston. With those testimonials and stories, I’m proud that I can change that perception about accounting and help show the world how important accounting, financial and tax strategies are.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
The proudest moment of my career was representing a client of mine in Lancaster, CA on an IRS Audit. The client had hired a horrible tax preparer and the IRS said that they owed $83K and they were facing liens and other difficult financial situations. When I met with the IRS, by the Grace of God, I was able to knock that tax debt down to less than $8K. To hear the client’s excitement in their voice and to see their stress level change was probably the proudest moment as that audit helped increase and validate my credibility and my decision to leave Corporate America since I wanted to help people win and not try to make others look bad to make money.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2870 5th Avenue, Ste 106
San Diego, CA 92103 - Website: www.yourfavoritecpa.net
- Phone: 619-8008-6852
- Email: eric@yourfavoritecpa.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourfavoritecpa/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yourfavoritecpa/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/bedrockcpa
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/your-favorite-cpa-san-diego-san-diego
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO1XWRM-KZpjtlrbHnrYGFg
Getting in touch: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
