Allison Mott scored a 102 on her first college accounting test. The class average was a 60. That moment in a 500-seat lecture hall at Oklahoma State flipped her major from public relations to accounting and set up a decade-long loop through a big four firm, a burnout so deep she quit without another job lined up, two nonprofit roles that rebuilt her love for the work, a failed apprenticeship, and finally AMCPA, the full-service CPA firm she founded five years ago this September.
What You'll Hear
- The 102 percent accounting test score that rerouted Allison from public relations to a CPA career
- Why the big four "get in, get out" two-year resume model pushed her to quit without another job
- How a nonprofit controller role rebuilt her love of accounting after corporate burnout
- The failed apprenticeship that was supposed to end in her buying an established firm
- Launching AMCPA in 2019 and running a first solo tax season that got extended to July because of COVID
- Why hard selling accounting backfires and soft sells produce better long term clients
- The emotional toll of delivering tax bills people did not expect, and how CPAs burn out from it
- Imposter syndrome, the Crossroads, and why Allison joined the Crossroads Community Association as treasurer
The 102 percent test that picked her major
Allison Mott did not grow up planning to be an accountant. As a kid she wanted to own a restaurant. In high school she had no specific dream beyond going to college. She declared public relations as her first major at Oklahoma State, then took an accounting class second semester of freshman year and her brain clicked into place.
The first test came back at 102 percent. She figured it was an easy test. When the professor walked in the next day and told the 500-seat lecture hall the class average was a 60, Allison realized the material was not obvious to everyone. It was just obvious to her. She changed her major to accounting, transferred from Oklahoma State to Kansas State her sophomore year, and stayed at K-State through her master's so she would have the 150 credit hours needed to sit for the CPA exam.
Part of the appeal at 18 was practical. She could live anywhere, and every business needs an accountant. It felt flexible and stable at the same time. What she did not picture at that point was owning her own firm. That idea did not show up until years later, and when it did, it showed up the hard way.
Big four burnout and a two year statistic she could not outrun
Her first job out of K-State was at a big four accounting firm, specifically in the advisory practice doing IT audit work. The big four are known inside the industry as a two year resume builder. You work an ungodly number of hours, you put the name on your resume, and you leave. Allison went in convinced she would beat the stat. She was a self-described workaholic, she loved challenges, and she was certain this was her career.
She did not make two years. She was 22 and 23, learning basic adult life skills at the same time she was pulling all-nighters to push work out the door, then coming back in for another 14 hour day. The culture rewarded people who cleared an impossibly high bar and quietly ejected the rest. She described it the way Alex Hormozi talks about "get there or die" cultures. The bar is set so high that no one really clears it, and the whole thing turns cutthroat.
On top of that she was an auditor walking into rooms where nobody wanted her there. Clients assumed auditors existed to find problems, when in reality she was just testing the system and hoping everything worked so she would have less to document. She was young, in a subset she had mostly taught herself on the job, asking questions she did not always have the vocabulary for. She quit without another job. She thought she might leave accounting entirely.
A nonprofit accident that saved her career
While she was figuring out whether to go back to school, someone sent her a job board for nonprofit roles. One organization had two openings, one in fund development and one in accounting. Allison applied for the development role because she was done with accounting. HR forwarded her resume to the accounting team anyway because she had a master's in the field, and the accounting manager called and said they would interview her for that role instead.
The interview was a breath of fresh air. The culture was a mix of social workers working toward a mission and admin people running the numbers that kept it all funded. It was softer and less stiff than the corporate accounting world. The work itself was closer to what she had actually studied in school, since a single nonprofit entity looks a lot more like a small business balance sheet than a mega corp audit engagement.
She rebuilt her love for the profession there, then took a promotion to controller at another local nonprofit, running the entire accounting department. After a couple of years she had hit the ceiling of what that role could teach her, and the challenger in her started looking for the next thing.
A failed apprenticeship and an accidental firm
The next thing looked perfect on paper. A CPA she knew wanted to find an apprentice who could learn his firm, then buy it from him when he retired. Allison went part time with him during tax season to see if it was a fit, then quit her controller job and went full time. Within a couple of weeks she realized the match was not there. She spent a year trying to force it, because her dream of owning a business was tied up in this specific deal and she was scared to walk away.
When the last hard conversation ended she gave her notice. She had no clients, no invoicing system, no storage setup, no processes. She had to figure out every single piece from scratch. Terrifying at first. Then, the further she got, she started getting excited. If she had actually bought the old firm she would have inherited 30 year old processes and every existing client problem alongside them. Starting from zero meant she could build for how accounting actually works today.
That became AMCPA. The firm meets multiple times a year to revisit processes. When something is a pain point they redesign it instead of defaulting to "this is how we have always done it." Five years in, AMCPA is a team of eight including Allison, doing accounting, bookkeeping, business taxes, and individual taxes for small to mid-sized businesses.
COVID, soft sells, and the emotional cost of tax season
Allison opened the firm in 2019. Her first solo tax season was the one COVID extended from April 15 to July 15. Congress passed four major tax bills that year to deal with the pandemic, after not touching the code in a serious way since the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and before that 1983. She thinks that wave is part of why an older generation of CPAs who planned to retire in ten years decided to retire immediately. The math of running a one person firm through that was brutal, but the extension gave her breathing room to work a pipeline she was still learning how to size.
She sells the way she wishes more accountants would. She calls it a soft sell. She shares pricing, process, and the pain points she hears from other firms, then leaves the decision alone. If a client has to be convinced that accounting has value, they will not cooperate with monthly document requests later anyway. The soft sell screens out bad fits and produces longer client engagements, which matters because all of the heavy onboarding time gets spread across the life of the relationship.
The part that actually burns CPAs out is not the returns. It is the human element. Tax math is a formula. If you made X and paid in nothing, you owe X. It is not personal. But telling someone they owe money they do not have can produce a reaction as intense as telling them their pet is dying. Allison has handed out six figure bills to clients who said "thanks, where do I mail the check," and 800 dollar bills to clients who fell apart. The CPA is the messenger, not the IRS, and the messenger takes the hit. She pointed out that every small business owner has heard some version of "my CPA ghosted me" or "my CPA had a breakdown and closed mid tax season." The emotional wear is what causes that, not the volume of returns.
Imposter syndrome, community, and what she wants new founders to hear
Allison was open about imposter syndrome. She has dealt with it her whole career. She is an introvert who can perform as an extrovert for a work day and then not talk to anyone for hours. She also keeps ending up in rooms with people who have more power and influence than she currently does. Her answer is to remind herself that she did not crawl in through a window. Someone saw what she brought to the table and opened the door, and she has to trust that and speak up.
She recently joined the Crossroads Community Association as treasurer after AMCPA moved its offices to the Crossroads. The neighborhood fit the firm on purpose. Small business oriented, arts forward, positioned between the professional services cluster near Crown Center and the downtown finance district. Serving on the association has already paid off in ways that have nothing to do with selling tax work, which she said matches what Sam has seen at local chambers of commerce. Showing up in the community gives you people to call when something goes sideways.
Her closing message was blunt. It is easy to look at someone further down the road and assume it was easy for them, that they did not cry at night or think they were going to lose everything or feel like an imposter. The truth is they have been there, they might currently be there, and the only thing that actually separates the people who make it is that they kept waking up and doing the same work over again. Nobody has the book. Everyone is making it up every day.
About Allison Mott
Allison Mott is the owner and founder of AMCPA, a Kansas City CPA firm offering accounting, bookkeeping, business taxes, and individual taxes for small to mid-sized businesses. At the time of recording, AMCPA had just celebrated its fifth anniversary on September 19 with a team of eight. Allison earned her undergrad and master's in accounting at Kansas State, cut her teeth at a big four firm, then worked as a nonprofit accountant and controller before launching AMCPA in 2019.