Shane grew up in North Little Rock and graduated from the University of Arkansas.
Much of Shane’s life has been centered around a small business
His parents purchased their first business the year he was born. He grew up roaming in his parent’s motorcycle shop. Some of his favorite early “jobs” at the motorcycle shop included emptying and counting the change from the soda machine and counting the cash, stamping the checks, and filling out the daily deposit slip. In his later years, he helped with more important tasks like implementing the shop’s first computer system for sales and inventory tracking along with developing the detailed revenue and expense tracking worksheets for his family’s trucking business. Looking back, it’s not too much of a stretch to say that Shane was destined to be a small business accountant.
First accounting career
After college, Shane began his career in public accounting at Arthur Andersen. Auditing large private and public companies gave Shane a lot of business perspective and accounting experience quickly. After his stint in public accounting, Shane transitioned into performing equity research at Stephens Inc. This work focused on developing investment recommendations for professional investors based upon research into company’s financials statements, visits with CEOs/CFOs/operational leaders, and conversations with investors. This job helped Shane develop perspective into what it takes to build and lead a successful business along with the factors that contribute to building a valuable company. The next stop in his career was Alltel, where Shane led operational and compliance audits. Shane’s time at Alltel added more detailed operational insights into what it takes to run a successful business.
The forming of Diamant Accounting
After a few corporate downsizings and restructurings, Shane decided to strike out in a different direction and take more control of his professional life. In early 2010, he joined Massey & Wood CPAs (aka Massey CPA Group). Many of the clients we serve and many of the offerings and processes we use today come from the eight years Shane spent with this firm. This firm was absorbed by Patrick Accounting in 2018, with Shane and his clients spinning back out in 2020 to form Diamant Accounting.
Personal life contributions to Shane’s professionalism
Over the last 50 years, a lot of Shane’s personality, perspective and skills have been developed outside of working hours. Growing up in a motorcycle shop, Shane was never very far away from the adventure provided by an engine and 2/3/4 wheels. Along with all the mechanized fun, Shane spent much of his childhood and later school years playing sports. Motorized fun and sports provided a lot of insights and life lessons concerning risk/reward, competition, success, and failures (e.g., staying upright on 4 wheels is good, hitting a tree is bad, you must get low when you’re tackling a big dude running the ball).
After he finished high school sports, Shane needed another way to satisfy his competitive itch; he found the solution in quite an unexpected place – racing cars.
If you live in the South, you know that car racing is not the glorious exercise you see on TV. It involves driving in circles on dirt tracks in the middle of nowhere with mud / dust / rocks flying. If you’ve never witnessed it, it’s quite the spectacle of machinery and humanity. The late model class that Shane spent much of his time racing in involved purpose-built race cars with 800+ horsepower engines that could hit 100+ mph on certain tracks.
Driving a race car is a lot like owning and running a small business – it doesn’t come with an owner’s manual, you have to figure most of it out on the fly, and a change in success / failure is often just around the next corner. You celebrate your success when you can (winning a race is a great feeling), you learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat them (hitting the wall is bad), and you must be willing to pick yourself up and shake it off when you have a hard day.
We’re not 100% sure, but we’re pretty confident that in the 1990s / 2000’s, Shane was the only race-car driving, plane-flying, truck-driving, snow skiing, scuba diving, snowmobile riding CPA in Arkansas.
We all have to grow up eventually. Owning a business and having a few kids meant that Shane reached the point in the early 2010’s where there wasn’t enough free time and extra cash to keep racing.
Today’s adventures for Shane are generally a lot tamer and mainly consist of normal activities like watching his kid’s sports games, learning how to play guitar, or improving his sports photography skills.
