About Midwest CPA
Our values
Midwest CPA provides accurate, proactive and actionable guidance that gives every client confidence to make better decisions. That’s our mission, and these five values guide how we work with clients and with each other.
- Founded in 2022
- About 22 people, fully remote
- Clients across the U.S.
Mission and vision
What we’re working toward
Our mission
Midwest CPA provides accurate, proactive and actionable guidance that gives every client confidence to make better decisions.
Our vision
A world where more people are financially secure in their businesses and in their lives.
The key word for us is confidence. If we’re doing our job, you should come away more confident in your decisions, whether that’s what to pay for a company or how to run one.
How we work
Our five core values
Everyone on our team learns these when they join. They give us a common way to talk about how we treat clients and how we treat each other.
Leave people better
Every interaction with a client, a teammate or a vendor should leave them a little better off than we found them. We want to be easy to work with and easy to approach.
Don’t make them ask
You shouldn’t have to chase us for an update. We tell you where things stand before you ask, including when something is going to take longer than planned.
The lazy man works the hardest
Taking the easy way now usually makes things harder later, so we do the hard part first. For example, our bookkeepers clear bank feeds every day instead of saving it all for month end.
Heart of a teacher
Some clients know accounting inside and out, and some are buying their first business. We meet you where you are and explain things without talking past you, and we grow our own team the same way.
If nothing changes, nothing changes
If we want better results, we have to change how we do things. Anyone on our team who sees a problem is expected to speak up, and we fix it.
Our standards
What we won’t do
Put our name on work we can’t stand behind
Whether it’s a tax return or a quality of earnings report, if we can’t stand behind it, it doesn’t go out with our name on it.
Make you chase us
You won’t be the one following up for a status update. That’s what “Don’t make them ask” is for.
Cut corners because a deal is small
A smaller deal still gets a careful, complete process. You shouldn’t have to accept less just because the purchase price is lower.
Bring too much firepower to a small deal
We size diligence to the deal, so the seller isn’t stressed over things that don’t matter at your deal size.
Talk past you
We won’t bury you in accounting jargon or assume you already know it.
Hand you to a B team
The people responsible for your project are U.S.-based CPAs. Everyone on our team, here or abroad, follows the same security requirements.
Who we work with
The clients we work best with
We expect our clients to be responsive and engaged, and we like working with people who take their business seriously.
- Business buyersSearchers and acquisition entrepreneurs buying a small business who want to know the numbers are real before they close. Quality of earnings
- Owners after closingOwners who want monthly accounting, tax and payroll from a team that already knows their numbers. Accounting and tax packages
- Investment bankers and private equity groupsInvestment bankers and private equity groups who want issues found early and communicated clearly. Transaction advisory
How quickly a deal moves depends a lot on how quickly we get what we need from you. Clients who answer requests and join the calls get the most out of working with us.
Our story
Why I started Midwest CPA
Like a lot of my clients, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn’t know how I was going to make it happen. Then I came across the idea of buying a small business and ran a search of my own. I tried to buy a wrestling camp I used to work at. Then COVID hit, and wrestling is a hard sport to do six feet apart, so that deal didn’t work out.
Before Midwest CPA, I worked as a controller for a private equity-owned platform company. In 2022, I decided to try my hand at running a firm, as a side hustle. The plan was to buy a firm if I liked the work, so I could quit my job. Instead, a few good clients and some referrals made things take off much faster than I expected, and in September 2023 I went full-time.
I never had to buy a firm. We’ve grown completely organically, and most of our new work has come from direct referrals. Today we’re a team of about 22. We’ve done more than 350 quality of earnings engagements, and many owners who bought their businesses now work with us every month.
Chris Barrett, CPAManaging Director, Midwest CPA