The origin story
Seventeen years in, Ignite Spot is a fully virtual firm serving clients who want financial clarity. Dan’s been there for fifteen of those years. He started as a bookkeeper and worked his way to partner while the firm shifted online and grew to a 21-person team.
“I’ve been at this firm my entire accounting career. We moved online a decade ago, and it’s been incredible to navigate all that change with a team of really great people.”
That change didn’t happen in a vacuum. Dan credits much of the firm’s evolution to showing up in rooms where new ideas are born, user conferences, partner camps, and community-driven events that pushed his thinking about technology, service design, and client experience.
From classroom dreams to a CAS curriculum
Before accounting, Dan thought he’d be a teacher. In 2024, he finally blended the two. Alongside Utah Valley University professor David Waite and Brittany Brown of LedgerGurus, Dan helped design and launch a bookkeeping/CAS course that ties accounting foundations to tech-enabled, real-world work.
The pilot drew nearly 90 students. The next term more than doubled to 200, with additional sections and a virtual course on deck.
“We’re teaching students to connect what they learn in class to what they’ll actually do. It’s not tax and audit only. It’s technology, process, advisory, and how to think.”
For an industry anxious about staffing, this is the quiet revolution: creating a pipeline of graduates who already speak cloud tools, workflows, and client communication.
The cost of the highlight reel
If you’ve seen Dan on stage or in your LinkedIn feed, you’ve probably seen the sunlit version of success. What you haven’t seen is the grind.
He graduated into a recession. He and his wife had three kids by the time he finished undergrad, and four now. He navigated PPP chaos with clients. Mid-pandemic, he went back for a master’s degree. The result: 18- and 19-hour days, week after week.
“It nearly broke me. I loved the work. I loved learning. But I saw my kids on Sundays for a couple hours. Everything suffered. It forced me to confront balance for real.”
That reckoning led Dan to redraw boundaries, recalibrate priorities, and redefine what growth needed to look like for his firm and family.
Conferences, community, and why the airport home hits different
Like many of us, Dan gets charged up by the people who speak his language. Conferences are not vacations. They’re 12- to 14-hour sprints of sessions, side meetings with vendors, client fires, and impromptu hallway strategy summits. Still, they’re where ideas and friendships compound.
This year Dan brought his 17-year-old and, on another trip, his wife. Watching him in his element reframed how they see the work.
“My son said, ‘Everyone wants to talk to you.’ It opened a conversation about building your own community and reputation. For my wife, it was seeing the social side, the relationships. At home I can feel like a guest in the system she runs so well. At conferences, it’s my zone.”
And when it’s over?
“The moment I hit the airport, I’m scanning for an earlier flight. I can’t get home fast enough.”
Leadership lessons you only learn the hard way
Ask any long-tenured partner about their top management mistakes and you’ll get a masterclass. Dan’s biggest one: rewarding the loudest voices and overlooking the quiet high performers.
“An employee told me during her offboarding, ‘You listened to the loudest. Others were better.’ She wasn’t bitter. She wanted me to learn. She was right. I missed promotions I should have made.”
Since then, Dan has tuned for signal over volume. He seeks out the thoughtful, less vocal contributors who often see the whole system and quietly hold it together.
Candy connected that to her turnaround work: when owners gave her carte blanche to fix a sinking company, the most valuable intel often came from the quiet ones who cared deeply but didn’t feel safe speaking up. It’s a throughline across firms of every size.
What healthy partnerships look like
Sustaining a partnership through growth requires clarity and trust. At Ignite Spot, the partners divided ownership into buckets: Dan on operations, a partner on sales and marketing, another on CFO/advisory. Each has decision rights within their lane, with agreed-upon financial thresholds that don’t require full-partner approval.
“It’s not about equal hours. It’s about equal commitment. We argue, we disagree, but there are no grudges. We know what each of us is great at, and we protect that.”
The structure reduces friction, speeds decisions, and lets each leader run without micromanagement, while still welcoming feedback and collaboration.
Bringing the team into the room
There’s a lingering fear among some owners: if I bring my best people to conferences, someone will poach them. Dan’s take is the opposite.
“If someone’s going to leave, they’ll leave anyway. I want them to feel part of something bigger than the 20 clients they touch each month. They return with ideas, context, and peers. That’s fuel.”
Sam echoed it. When she brings ops leaders to events, they come home with better implementation plans and, importantly, the conviction to say no to the shiny thing the firm doesn’t need.
The human side of “unbalanced”
Throughout, Dan is candid about the identity whiplash many firm owners feel. At work and in community, you’re the expert. At home, you might be the laundry captain and the person who forgot the science fair date. Loving your work can tempt you to retreat into the place you feel most competent, especially when family life is messy.
There’s no perfect solution, only an ongoing audit of priorities. The practice looks different for everyone. What matters is doing the math honestly.
Parting advice for the unbalanced community
“There is so much opportunity in our space. Technology is shifting fast. Education is changing. Staffing is changing. Step outside the bubble of just doing the work and pay attention to what’s shaping it. Try things. Take the leap. Doors will open.”
Connect with Dan
Dan is most active on LinkedIn and at industry conferences. If you see him, say hi. He’ll happily talk ops, advisory, and the future of CAS, and then he’ll race you to the earliest flight home.
Catch the Unbalanced Podcast on Spotify, brought to you by Anchor, the billing platform built for firm owners who are done chasing payments. Book a 30-minute demo to see how we can help.
