Welcome to Elevate with Elsner. Join us for inspiring conversations with individuals who have transformed their lives and are making a difference through the work that they do. And now, What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Elevate with Ellsner, where we dive deep into real stories of real people making real moves. And today's guest fits that to a T. He's a numbers guy and a business guy. Michael McCall is the owner of Buffalo Finances, a rally-based accounting firm, helping blue collar businesses get their taxes right, their books tight, and their businesses on solid financial ground. He also just sold a dumpster rental business he built from the ground up over five years. So this guy's seen both sides of the grind. Michael, welcome to the show. Can't Yeah, man. Thanks, Blake. Thanks for having me. I'm super pumped to Absolutely. So what got you into numbers as Yeah, that's true. Well, I've always liked the business world. My parents had that entrepreneurial spirit. They were farmers. And they had their own farm and worked like crazy to try to keep it working. And that didn't that turned out not to be a good plan because it was hard to make money in the dairy farm world. And so I had to pick a different career choice. And I just I just happened to be good at accounting like People in my class, they couldn't figure out what the teacher was talking about. So I ended up becoming a tutor and helping people with accounting. It just didn't seem weird to me. It was very normal. And I just kept on that path and became a CPA. And Yeah, that's, that's neat. So that the, the whole number part, people always go like, Hey, math or science, either like one or the other. But then I always joke, well, isn't math part of science? Like, right. So, so I guess growing up, you, you were a big numbers guy, but what really Yeah, I went to school up in New York. Roberts Wesleyan was my college just for accounting because it's the language of business. And it was a good foundation for me to understand how businesses worked. And it actually opened up lots of different opportunities. Because I started as an auditor. Most people don't know how the accounting world, the ladder goes. So I started as an auditor. And every week, I was inside a different business. So I saw 50 different businesses every year. And they got to be successful. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to hire an accountant. So I saw 50 different successful businesses every year. And then I eventually joined one of my clients. and essentially became a private accountant. So after that, I was inside the blue collar world from the office standpoint, like I was part of an environmental firm, demolition firm, a company, actually worked for a government manufacturer for a while. So I got different experiences and figured out the stuff that I really liked. So turns out the dirtier our company was, like the dirtier they got, the more fun I had, even if I was just on the book side. So we had to dig out tanks, we did environmental remediation, demolition, you're destroying stuff, which is very cool. And then I guess I'll tell you the story about how I went from being in the accounting world to actually being in the ownership role. because I was a good CFO, but the personalities don't always line up. I had a CEO that we just didn't agree on how to do things. When COVID happened, him and I had big disagreements about how to run things. He wanted to lay certain people off, and I wanted to keep them. We got in an argument about what to do, and we parted ways. I said, man, if this guy can run, he's kind of a jerk. A lot of respect for him, but very aggressive and kind of mean. I said, if this mean guy can do this, then I bet a nice guy could run a business successfully, especially if my heart's in the right spot. That's when I got into the dumpster business myself as the owner, not nearly to the scale of his company. I had four trucks. We had 200 dumpsters. We had a great time. The culture was really fun. It was very relaxing. Even though the work was hard, it was very rewarding. And then I just sold it about six months ago so that I could focus more on helping other business owners. So I take all the experiences I learned from being a business owner in the dumpster world, in the blue-collar world, to actually help people that are in that role. It's very different being an owner than being a CFO. You Yeah. And that makes sense because you're trying to maximize your profits, right? So as a, as you go in there and you audit a business or even your own business, right? Your, your goal is to, I think what people think about like CPA is like, Hey, just taxes, taxes, taxes. Well, there's a whole strategy to, you know, right. As you know. So when you go in there and you say audit, I'm guessing like you go in there and you try to figure out, Hey, how can we do X, Y, and Z to, you know, save this Yeah, it depends on what type of business it was. We audited manufacturers and banks and auto dealerships. We had quite a range. They all have different strategies. But really, when someone has to hire an auditor specifically, it's typically because they have a bank loan and the bank wants to prove that the financial statements are accurate. My specific role during that time was to make sure that financial statements were accurate. And so we'd review them very closely, and we would use that opportunity to find tax strategies. Like, all right, maybe we should accelerate your inventory expense so you can get that expense now. Funny thing called LIFO versus FIFO. If we take the LIFO strategy, then you can write things off today and get a tax break, even though you didn't spend a certain amount of money. We got very in the weeds to find exactly how the business ran, down to every detail of inventory or That's interesting. Now, now, have you ever heard the term April is for amateurs? Is that as a CPA? Is that like, you know, I feel like that you hear some of some of them say it, some of them don't. That's basically saying if you're focused on April 15th, if that's when you start looking at your taxes, you're just too late. You need to plan way ahead. Right now, we're in 2025. You can't wait until your taxes for 2025 are due. and April of 2026. That's too late. So we want to be proactive and do tax planning right now, the That makes sense. Well, I guess, and I hear it in another standpoint of people talking like, Hey, You know, I don't know why people say to file extensions also on that. I don't know if that's like a misinterpreted, you know, April is for amateurs. And I hear people go, yeah, you're supposed to file extensions till October. And that's what they talk about that. And I'm like, is that because of there's certain, you know, strategies in that, but I know there's penalties and whatnot, obviously people in St. Louis as a, declare we're in a FEMA declaration zone, so we're not getting any penalties over here. But talking about that on those extensions, when people say that April is for amateurs, they sometimes reference that. Now, is I wouldn't say it's a strategy, but it gives you way more time because All us accountants were very busy for the first quarter, and so we don't have energy to do any strategy review. We're just prepping tax returns. If you extend it, you can do a six-month extension. Businesses are due September 15th if you extend, and individuals are October 15th. at least for certain types of businesses. So that gives us all somewhere to make sure those tax strategies actually got implemented. And there's certain things you can do even after the year's over, like accelerate depreciation, that's a big one. Or maybe we can change one of your basis points. So that's where the FIFO and LIFO comes in for a manufacturer. So yeah, I always recommend extending businesses. So the individuals that Okay. Yeah. That's what, well, it's interesting. Cause I was just talking to somebody and they said, it's now it's November here in St. Louis because of those tornadoes we had come through and those penalties and the interest is, They probably still want you to pay the money though. That's the weird thing is if you extend, you still owe the money. Like they want the money. Um, it's the filing. So I would, I would still pay the money in if, if, if you think you're Oh, there you go. That's good advice. Because I know, I know there's a lot of people out there that are, you know, filing extensions or working on this next year, like you say, next year's taxes or going, shoot, maybe I should be working on next year's taxes right now. So you're definitely a guy, obviously being in rally, you can service all, you know, all over the country, correct? Like, Oh We have clients in California and Texas and Oregon, so we do anywhere. Some of the states, though, are a little bit challenging. I am from New York, so I'm used to one of the more challenging states. New York is very challenging for taxes, especially if you're near New York City. They just slam with even more stuff. But yeah, we do everywhere. We're happy to. And this is a very business friendly state. So we actually have a lot of people coming here. That's why I came here. It's so friendly for businesses, which brings employees. So yeah, but we do the whole country. And I actually, my team, we have about 15 people. 15 full-time equivalents, some of those are part-time people, but 15 people on the team and they work in different states too, like I have team members in Florida and Utah, and so that helps with making Yeah. Cause that's, it's a lot of different state tax codes and brackets and all that other good stuff that you gotta learn. So yeah, I'm assuming having people in those States like that helps. Right. Well in the, you're in the real estate world, so the big beautiful bill just passed. It's going to affect you and your real estate stuff. Do you work with individuals or do Yeah. but they should have more money to work with for buying their houses and selling their Yeah, we'll have to see how this all shapes out because right now I feel like there's so much, you know, you're hearing so many different things. It's just like the tip thing, you know, to go on this whole tip thing, I guess it's like no tax on tips, but then you read the fine print. It's like only till 25,000 IRS approved jobs. You're like, wait a minute. So it's really not like, you're like, The fine print, I feel like, until all that stuff really comes out, nobody really understands it, right? You It's more like a selling point than the reality of it. It's in that line though. So if you're a waitress and most of your money comes from tips, then that will be helpful. But if you're not already getting paid, 25 grand or less in tips, then it's not gonna help you. But yeah, that's the cutoff there. And then they're gonna do, they tried to do no tax on social security. That's not quite how it works. So I'm gonna do a full breakdown of the whole thing, because I wanna make sure I get it right. But it's in the spirit of it. So that people that have overtime, people that have social security income, they will get a break, but it's not everything is Yeah, we're all gonna be free of taxes is what it sounds like, right? Big and beautiful. No, I always joke about politics. Never believe anybody but yourself, Yeah, that's right. We have to have integrity. Otherwise, we lose our license. So we have to be honest. But what's wild to me is, have you heard the unusual whales yet? the like Twitter or the X feed? It might be, I think they do have a feed. So Unusual Whales is they follow the politicians and how they trade on the stock market. And it's, their gains are like the best in the world. They're the best stock traders ever. Like Nancy Pelosi and GOP. What's that guy's name? Mitch McConnell. Those two are so good at trading stocks. Like Right, it's a mystery. So there's a stock ticker for both the Republicans and the Democrats. You can just buy that, it's essentially an ETF, and you can get in on the trade. You just basically follow their trades. And it outperforms the market Oh, wow, I did not realize that there's an ETF doing that now. That's interesting. It's just like how Bitcoin, as we're recording this, just hit an all-time high, 112,000. I'm like, oh my goodness. It's just, it's incredible to watch some of these other currencies that I have a feeling might take over for the dollar. What's your, not to get too conspiracy theorist, but Oh, well, we're not doing the right things as a country. So we should put our tinfoil hats on. We keep doing things that devalue the currency. So the big beautiful bill just printed billions of dollars. And so that's spending when the government spends money that creates inflation, like at that moment, and the dollar is worth less. So you and I have to work harder to make it actually keep its value or not lose it so much. So we're doing all the wrong things. And so we're taking steps towards making it so the dollar is no longer going to be the reserve currency. So I don't know if you know how that works. It's really interesting when I figured that out. You know, once upon a time, we had the dollar, the gold standard for the dollar, which meant that if somebody wanted to buy, trade gold in for dollars, or got dollars in for gold, it was transparent. We basically would buy, it was tied to the gold, tied to gold. And when we turned that off, we immediately started devaluing our dollar. and we're never going to go back to that. It's just not possible. Eventually, we're going to lose that gold standard. The way we've held on to it is we require everybody use dollars to buy oil. That's how we're maintaining it. Printing more money is not good. I Well, that's what I think. I'm like, well, you see this, as soon as this bill went into effect, Bitcoin then just surged to another level, which tells me that that's just pushing itself as a higher, I don't know, it's a cryptocurrency, but at the same time, it's obviously pushing itself up knowing that this bill is probably devaluing the dollar, therefore, It just seems like. Bitcoin is so interesting. I wish that I did the right thing for Bitcoin early on. I was trading Bitcoin when it was 100 bucks. for one, and I didn't realize, I should have just held on to it, right? I should have just held on to it. But they're only going to make 21 million Bitcoins. That's it. That's all they'll ever have. And so just by default, it's going to go up in value forever because it won't inflate. With dollars, they can make as many dollars as they want, but there's only going to be 21 million Bitcoins. So it'll always go up in value. And whenever, yeah, comparing against inflationary currency, it'll That is interesting. I feel like we all have like a Bitcoin story. It's like when I was back in college, we were buying stuff on the black market with Bitcoin, not even understanding what we're buying. We're like, yeah, we can buy this with this Bitcoin, thinking this is like 2012. Yeah. When I was, let's see, I was a sophomore in college and yeah, we're sitting there like delinquents, you know, playing with, I'm like, what were we doing back then? Like, yeah, I Right. She just bought it. You know, when it hits a million dollars, we'll It's so true, because I remember when it was just 30,000, like last year, like it sat at 30,000, it sat at 60,000. Now here we are 112,000. So no, that's, that's pretty interesting. So, so when you sold the dumpster rental business and decided to just go all in, you obviously saw a weak point inside a dumpster, the industry of like books, right? Obviously, clearly, like you say, they're, they're good at what they do. But there's obviously a hole you saw inside Yeah, definitely. Well, I got to so there's a few reasons why I pivoted from dumpster rental to accounting. For me personally, I had grown to the size where I needed to bring in more money to grow the business. It's a very capital intense business. We had we had seven, we had eight eight eight trucks and the 200 dumpsters, I four drivers, but we always have backups and things. And so if I needed if I wanted to grow more, even Getting more customers is very possible. Getting more drivers is very possible. But to get more dumpsters, I just had to buy them. And that meant I had to either borrow more money or bring an investor in. And I just wasn't excited about either of those ideas. And so I found a strategic partner in the area that they were aggressively buying equipment and companies. So we just made a relationship, and it just made sense. So that was why I decided to stop doing the dumpster rental, because there's just so many levels. Waste management is the biggest in the whole country, and no one's ever going to become them because they are the biggest. And then on the accounting side of things, a lot more scalability. I can add people forever and ever and ever without having to get outside assistance. I'm very wary of partnerships, outside money, because it changes what you can do. You can't be true to yourself. You have to honor that relationship. And that compromises some of my core feelings that I'm going to have about running a business. So I'm very much very spiritual and very, very much care about integrity. So I'm a Christian that wears my Christianity on my sleeve. And I didn't want an investor or a a bank or someone financing me to ask me to compromise that. So I decided to stay in an industry that was more people oriented. And I also have a lot of knowledge in the accounting space. I've probably forgotten more stuff than most people ever gonna learn about it. So, but yeah, I really wanna help business owners because I just, I understand what they go through. I've been inside board meetings. I've been the guy that has to make those tough decisions. Hiring and firing is a big deal. And finances is True. True. I think that's a big, big thing too, to have owned a business and be a CPA, because like you say, you know, the back end of ownership, business ownership, and that's the main part. And so being able to do, do it like that is obviously you got the experience on both, you know, edges of the Yeah, it was a lot of fun though. I have a whole list of stories that I don't know if I should turn them into a little book or something just so I can give it to my kids. I was really committed. The first two years, I actually bought a trailer and I lived on site. I lived where the trucks lived. My drivers would roll in at six in the morning. I'd be up and we'd be having coffee together and make sure the trucks all roll out correctly. It was a lot of fun. There's just stuff that you have to be 1,000% committed to to make it happen. If a truck is broken, you got to fix it. I'm not a mechanic, but I learned some mechanic skills. I learned how to change a serpentine belt under a tree in the middle of nowhere. on a Ram 5500, that like three other people tried and they failed. I'm like, you guys, you guys should be able to do this. So I guess I'm gonna have to learn if you can't. Yeah, so I totally know what the truck driver is going through that. the truck business owner because they don't ever get to touch a computer. That was one of my things I learned is I needed someone that could sit at the computer and tell me what it says because What was the cost of a dumpster? If you could Yeah, it went up. It was four grand to buy a 30-yard dumpster. And it bounced between four grand and six grand, depending on the cost of oil. So there's different sizes. So we 30, 30 yards are the most popular when you're, when you're trying to be serious. Um, the smaller guys do tens and twenties, but yeah, like it, and it's a lot. So that's a Yeah. So you would go drop them off, pick them back up. Yeah, yeah, so there's different types of waste haulers. We call it temporary roll-off. And so a 30-yard dumpster is a commercial grade, and we primarily service contractors. We're not helping homeowners out that much. Like 95% of our work was with contractors, specifically guys that are either remodeling homes or building homes. So there's certain phases of building a home that require a lot of waste. The framing requires a lot, the drywall requires a lot. In those phases, they needed a big dumpster because they're going to fill it up two in a day. For the drywall phase, they will. And yeah, so that when you have a job site and you're working, doing a remodel or you're doing a construction, you have to have a dumpster on site, but you legally have to. And so we would get calls right before a job started to make sure that they'd put the portage on out and then we'd put the dumpster out. And whenever it gets full, they call us up and say, get this thing emptied. Uh, and can you do it yesterday? Because my guys should have told me that they were going to work, fill it up. And no one, no one, uh, gave me a heads up. So we, we were very focused on speed. Like that was our advantage. Uh, I said, if somebody calls, they have a problem right now. And so we can't schedule them out. We had, we had competitors that are like, all right, I'll get there in a week. Well, that's when they call me and say, Hey, I can't wait a week. I need somebody that's going to get there. you know, either today or first Especially in that industry. It's just like a concrete truck. When that pulls up, those guys never seen people move so fast on the concrete's moving, coming out of the truck, you know. That's As soon as that thing, yeah, as soon as it's on the ground, it's going to Yeah. And the clock and the, The payment's rolling, that's for sure. Oh, man. Well, that's interesting because I really think it's a pretty neat industry. Like you say, it's trash. You obviously built a business in five years and you were able to sell it. That in itself, I feel like is sometimes the most successful businesses because you build it, you do it, and then you just get to get rid of it and you get a nice payment for it and you don't have to worry about it because you see a lot of people that build, you know how to build businesses, they build them in a couple of 5-10 years, then Yeah. Well, I think we all have different levels of skills. The guy that can turn a a business from a $10 million business to a $50 million business, it's very different than the guy that goes from the ground up. I'm probably not going to be the guy that takes a business from $0 to $50 million. That's probably not me. That's okay. I'm happy stopping at$10 million. I'm happy to pass it off at 10 million to somebody else and then do it again. I think that'll be my cycle. At this point, I've got enough experience. I've had some success. I'm doing things because I want to do them, not because I'm forced to do them, which is that freedom of being able to choose how you spend your energy. Everyone should have it. I think everyone should have that ability. Because otherwise you become a slave to something that you hate. You spend your time doing Yeah, that's true. That's because I always say you go from creator to free mode and to get to that free mode is very hard because you kind of want to stay in that creator Yeah, exactly. Related to that, getting freedom is tough. It happens to be that when we work, we like there to be money on the other side of things, so the person that hires us to do things, they have to have money, and poor people don't have a lot of money. We can't help everybody, which is where charity comes in. We have to make space for generosity and charity in our life. That's something that's a priority for me right now. I don't know if you're able to Yeah, we oh yeah, we we actually for every sale we've been given back to for a while. Saint Louis Youth Sports organization in Saint Louis. They bought basically a bunch of sporting equipment. They had a gym in just a store and kids can go in there and buy all that are just basically shop for free and get any type of sporting equipment. So that was really cool. But now we're doing miracles in progress, which is just helping like sick children and we got some cool stuff. We're doing actually a putt putt tournament. Um, September mini putt, putt tournament. Yeah. We're just starting to promote it. And, uh, so yeah, I'm behind them and I love giving back, but yeah, that was one thing that I, I think I had an issue with was, you know, sometimes you got to take care of yourself before you can take care of other people. And that, that's one thing that kind of caught up with me, I think, but If you think about being on an airplane. they tell you to put the mask on yourself first in an emergency before you help your neighbor. That's exactly right. You got to really train yourself to give people the best version of yourself. And you got to help yourself first. So yeah, that's good. Well, I really appreciate you coming on here and talking about the dumpster business all the way to what you're doing now and continuing this accounting firm. which where, where can people find you? Yeah. Instagram. My handle is buffalo.finances.cpa. And, uh, we are, we are buffalos because I don't know how much you know about buffalos. I know Colorado's, uh, mascot buffalos, right? Yeah. So we've got a few at Lone Elk park here. You drive through in St. Louis there. There's some, there's some there, but. No, any, Yeah. So what I found in my, my experience is that, uh, well, I'll tell you about the Buffalo. So, so the Buffaloes are very tough, right? They're a tough animal. They're not afraid of like anything. I don't think they're afraid of anything. And so when a storm comes through, they don't do what most animals do. They don't run away. They actually face the storm. They physically turn towards the storm and they run headlong into it because they know that the storm is not going to hurt them because they're tough. And they'll be through the storm faster if they run right through it. And so that's how we want to handle our problems. That's how we want to handle our finances. Instead of running away from our problems, we want to address them and just hit them head first. And so that's what we do for our clients. And Oh, that's awesome. I didn't, you know, I never knew that. So look at that. You get to learn and know why you have it named that because that's true, not just in finances, but in life and anything, right? Right. Face the storm and run head on. Well, I'll tell you what, I think if you don't have a good CPA or you're looking to switch, go ahead and get in contact with Mr. Michael here. He'll definitely keep you straight laced, get you some strategies going. Make sure you file on time, right? That's the main goal. That's Absolutely. As always, another episode of Elevate with Ellsner. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. And if you feel so inclined, please leave us a review and tell your