Where Accounting Leaders Build Confidence Through Community

Your Private Community

You don't need another== water cooler ==community

Join a high-effort community that isn't underwritten by your software vendor.

🧠 High-context mastermind groups
🎓 Seasonal workshop cohorts
📚 Paid community librarians
🌟 A bespoke platform

The Best== Live Events ==on the Web

We organize ongoing series' with the most influential thought-leaders in the profession. Sessions are run for members in an intimate, interactive format.In addition to Realize-organized sessions, members organize events internally as topics arise that merit live discussion.Book Clubs
Quarterly Karbon Meetups
Quarterly Canopy Meetups
Notion Show & Tell
Show Me Your Reporting System
Show Me Your 1099 Process
Show Me Your Renewal Process
Show Me Your Ignition Proposals
CAS Roundtables
Tax Roundtables

Book Club with Kate Presto

Kate leads us in a weekly series, diving into the most influential business books for accountants. Past books have included The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, Atomic Habits, Radical Candor and Traction.

EOS-ish With Rachel Fisch

Rachel joins Realize to discuss her relationship with EOS, the business operating framework outlined in the book Traction. What are the best bits? What are the bits she doesn't leverage? This series will run you through what EOS means for firms like yours, and your small business clients.

Hall Pass with Brandon Hall

Brandon Hall joins Realize for a series on scaling resilient firms. He'll run us through identifying a niche, service design, sales & marketing, growing an advisory offering from scratch, building a fulfillment system and more!

Into The Chadiverse with Chad Davis

Join Chad in a new monthly session designed to introduce accountants to intermediate-to-advanced automation topics, and new developments from apps like Zapier, Make and Airtable.

Role Play with Nayo Carter-Gray

Get ready to have some fun and role-play your way through sticky situations with Nayo! Each session will have a different theme and we'll act out various scenarios to show you how to handle real-world conversations like a pro. Kicking off May 2023.

Swiping Right with Kellie Parks

Kellie joins Realize for a monthly masterclass on the lifecycle of a client engagement. From discovery & booking, clear through to re-engagement (and dis-engagement), Kellie shows us what dating a client looks like in 2023, in a series she's developed just for Realize.

The Content Farm with Jason Staats

A series about writing & producing your own content, as a long-term asset for your firm. Jason runs you through ideation, writing, and the various ways to put your content out to attract & educate clients, while building your personal brand.

Who Runs The World with Twyla Verhelst

Twyla Verhelst joins Realize for a series on women in leadership! These sessions are just for women, and will be accompanied by a private space in the community.

Software Demos

We have a growing library (25+) of recorded demos Realize has produced with the most popular software vendors in the space. Giving you the opportunity to explore new tech without being sucked into the sales process.

Mastermind Groups

Twice a year we matchmake high-context mastermind groups. They run 4-6 months at a time, and are made up of 5 members each. These are groups of people who run very similar firms, and these sessions have proven to be transformative for many.

Show & Tell

We often get together to privately share our live client setups. One of the best things Realize enables is having the opportunity to swap ideas with other practitioners who are equally motivated to share otherwise sensitive information in a private, high-trust setting.

Past Live Sessions

Where privacy and vulnerability aren't an issue, we generally record our live sessions. We've built a large library of valuble content over the last few years on topics such as presenting better on camera, Airtable training and much more.

Hi, I'm Jason Staats

Five years ago I switched my firm to a new practice management system. We spent a year of work researching, planning and training a team of 40 for the change, and in three months I realized we'd chosen the wrong system.The reason? We made decisions according to what colorful brochures and commissioned sales people told us.We were left with an impossible decision. We'd thrown away two years on this project, only to start the process over again. The ultimate cost would be years of lost productivity, and more sleepless nights than I could count.

I needed to ensure I never made the same mistake again.


Flip on a webinar to learn, and you find the same people who are sending you cold emails. Sit down at a conference talk, and you find the CEO of the same company, who bought a hefty sponsorship package to get on the main stage.Don't get me wrong, I adore the software vendors I work with, but their job is to sell software. My job is to get home by 5:20 to make dinner and try not to piss off my staff with more software changes.It wasn't until sitting at in-person conferences that I realized I'd rather talk to the guy across the aisle. The lady I'm sitting next to who tried this app six months ago. Why I was addicted to conferences was the people, the lunch conversations, the person you run into who understands your pains unlike anyone else in your life. I needed to bottle that inspiration.Twitter DMs were sent, and an idea was hatched. I gathered my favorite folks in the profession. The types of people who could be vulnerable, would share their wins and losses, and we created a private space for discussion.We raised money so we could go back out to our favorite experts, and pay them well (better than conferences do, as it turns out) to run private sessions without the vendor filter.And we found there was more to be learned in a room of people who run firms just like you than anywhere else.Two years ago I changed practice management software again. I knew every tool in the space. I sat down with 10+ firm owners, who in the last 18 months made the same transition I was considering. They walked me through their live client setups, and told me what it did and didn't do well. The transition went well 😊These days I have the unique opportunity to invest in making Realize into the space I needed when I was on an island, wondering what the hell I was doing, creating everything from scratch.Finding community, in all its forms, is the greatest personal unlock I've ever discovered. It's the reason I'm still in this profession. Because we're better off sharing what we've learned along the way, and growing together.

What happens after I sign up?

You'll get an email confirmation with a link to get access to the community, along with a scheduling link to book a 1-on-1 tour of the community.

I'm busy. Is this for me?

It's a community of successful firm owners, we're all busy 😆 The reason we hold so many events is to ensure there are high-context events available for everyone. We also try to record wherever possible in the event you can't join live.

I'm concerned about price increases

The price of the community is never increased for existing members. It's only increased for new members over time to ensure the group doesn't grow too large. Beyond a certain size it's hard to be vulnerable.

Why does Realize need a paywall?

The best communities are those that are full of people willing and able to share value. A paywall raises the stakes. It's not only the price you're paying, it's the price everyone else is paying to be there alongside you.

Is this a way to hang out with Jason?

Not really, it's a way to hang out with a bunch of other cool accounting leaders, many of whom also found the community through Jason. Which objectively is a cool crowd.

What sort of firms are in Realize?

Currently about 50% of Realize is 1-3 person firms, with the other 50% being of every other size, up to 150 or so. It's split fairly evenly between folks running accounting practices and folks running tax practices.

Do I sign up as a firm or as an individual person?

Memberships are on an individual basis, but the membership price for additional members of your firm is 50% off whatever the current rate is.

I think I'll sign up [X future date]

We all go through seasons of life that enable more latitude than others, but Realize has been built around a core group of folks who are never too busy to grow. Because making the decision to stop investing in yourself is a slippery slope.

I'm kinda sorta an accountant

If you have any other questions about whether Realize is for you, send us an email. In order to maintain Realize as a safe space for accounting leaders, there are generally no exceptions to the requirement that you're a practicing public accountant.

Realize

A collaboration community for accountants & advisors

Contact Realize