Proctor: Turn Dumb Ideas into Brilliant Solutions | The Disruptors

Reward curiosity, encourage experimentation, and involve the team in every step of firm transformation.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Like many guests on The Disruptors, Tony Proctor didn’t start out as an accountant. His firm, Proctor and Associates, started as a side hustle in 2007 when he was working in IT management. As a testament to the client service focus of his tech-forward firm, his very first paid client remains his customer.

“They are actually still on the roster, and so I’m very excited about that, and I’m excited that they are still willing to pay what today’s price is, and they are not stuck on what the price was in 2007, so I love that,” Proctor says.

CPA TRENDLINES CELEBRATES:The 100th Episode of The Disruptors

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Proctor, like many of today’s forward-thinking accountants, thinks like an entrepreneur. As he explains, accountants are “usually very risk averse and very honed in on the details, and it’s like compliance first,” while entrepreneurs are “what I would call risk tolerant, and so they usually are seeking the risk and figuring out what opportunities are presented from that.”

Thinking solely like an accountant, Proctor says, can lead to paralysis.

Posted on October 7, 2025

Liz Farr

About the Author

Liz Farr, CPA, is a special contributor to CPA Trendlines, bringing an insider's clear-eyed view of the tax and accounting business and a passion for advancing the profession.

She's the host of the hit CPA Trendlines podcast series "The Disruptors," available everywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

As founder and proprietor of Farr Communications, she is the secret weapon that her clients use to get their messages out. She has written blog posts, web content, articles, white papers, case studies and books for accountants and accounting tech companies. Her specialty is ghostwriting for coaches and consultants who want to move accountants into the future. She can bridge the gap between the dream these visionaries have for the future and the mindset and reality that today’s accountants are living in.

Five of her past and current clients have been named to Accounting Today’s annual list of 100 most influential in accounting. She has written under her name for the Journal of Accountancy, Intuit’s Firm of the Future blog and AccountingWEB. She has also appeared in Forbes, CFO.com, and Accounting Today.

Farr has a broad educational background, studying biochemistry at the University of Munster, Germany, and obtained her bachelor's degree as a double major in biochemistry and German at the University of New Mexico. She also studied German, Spanish, computer science and linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and continued her studies in linguistics at the University of Washington. She earned her master's degree in accounting in 2004 from the Robert O. Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico, qualifying as a licensed CPA in 2005.

Professionally, Liz began as a tax preparer at H&R Block before working at several local CPA firms in the Albuquerque, N.M. area. At her last assignment as a tax manager, she helped a team develop streamlined processes for getting tax returns out faster and more accurately.

After spending 15 years working as an accountant in the Albuquerque, N.M., area, she traded in her ten-key for a pen and has been writing full time since 2018.

She can be contacted at Farr Communications.

When she’s not writing or studying the accounting business, she’s hiking or skiing in the mountains of New Mexico.

Click here for more by Liz Farr

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here

Sponsored by Poe Group Advisors: Helping accountants buy, build, and sell exceptional firms. See Today’s Special Offer

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start">?</span>Poe Group Advisors consistently excels in helping our clients find the right accounting practice sales opportunity.

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