by Lindsay Odom
MEET THE AUTHOR: Communications Coordinator and Columbia native Lindsay Odom received her degree from Clemson University before joining the Endeavor team in May 2017. In addition to social media responsibilities, Lindsay is interviewing Endeavor members to learn (and share) more about marketing, agency life, entrepreneurship, and what it means to create meaningful work for clients.
As a stereotypical, creative communications person, math and numbers are intimidating to me. But the one thing more intimidating than math and numbers are accountants, so you can imagine my hesitation when I was getting ready to interview one.
Thankfully, Jason Blumer isn’t just an accountant, but an accountant for creatives. “I tend to be a creative person,” he told me. “I’m more aligned with creative people –– the way they talk, how we interact, how we use technology –– I’ve always been a creative person. A few years ago, our accounting firm started working with agencies, which we really enjoyed, so we began to focus more on that industry. Now, we serve agencies all over the U.S.”
It’s safe to say that Jason is a busy man. As CEO of two companies –– Blumer CPA’s and Thriveal, his days are pretty structured. In fact, his calendar is planned a year at a time because of the work he does. “I do a lot of writing. Content creation is the foundation of our marketing. I write growth guides and blog posts, and Julie, my business partner, and I do a good bit of teaching and group coaching for the members of Thriveal,” he told me. “For example, we have ‘team days,’ when spending time with our team takes a full days per week, and ‘meeting days,’ where we batch all of our meetings into one day.”
What exactly do they meet about? Strategy, to my surprise. “We’re always looking at the high level of what we are building,” Jason told me. “What’s the next thing we’re going to launch? How are our values changing? Right now, we’re in the process of moving our team around to better places –– we’re making some new roles and doing some hiring.”
I couldn’t help but laugh when he told me why he chose accounting as a career path. “I was in a rock band in college, and I had to pick a major two years in. My dad was an accountant, so I thought that’s what I’d do. It wasn’t well thought out,” he laughed, “but I did want to pick something specific that I knew could be used to support a family. My dad started Blumer CPA’s in 1997, and I started leading the firm in 2003. I’m not the founder –– my dad was. He’s retired now, so I’ve been leading it now for about 15 years ever since I graduated from Wofford College.”
“I didn’t know this at the time, but what surprised me in my career is that you will take a lot of paths, and will probably be doing something different than what you studied for in college,” Jason shared with me. “You could do things that don’t even exist right now. I got an accounting degree, but we created a company that teaches other firm owners how to run companies. I’m not really a good accountant –– I don’t even like accounting and taxes,” he smiled, “but I morphed it into a valuable company where people let us coach them. Creatives are more wide open than they used to be when I graduated.”
“If you work for good people, you can request growth paths, telling them ‘I like this’ or ‘I don’t like this –– I want more of this.’ Always look for things you can do to add value. You can morph in amazing ways.”
