W. Michael Hsu is the Founder and CEO of DeepSky, a pioneering virtual CFO firm that functions as the accounting department for entrepreneurs. He was the first professional in the US to adopt and become certified by Xero and the inaugural recipient of the Bill.com Guru Certification. Beyond DeepSky, Michael is the creator of MEASURE x HACK, a methodology designed to help entrepreneurs achieve more while working less. His insights and work have been featured in esteemed publications, including Inc. Magazine, Forbes, CPA Practice Advisor’s 40 Under 40, Accounting Today, and AIGA.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [4:39] How W. Michael Hsu started building and selling custom computers
- [7:07] Why a lie led to an accounting career
- [9:28] The importance of financial literacy and intelligence for entrepreneurs
- [13:05] The challenges of starting a bookkeeping business
- [16:32] Michael explains the MEASURE x HACK methodology and its purpose
- [19:39] What are common financial literacy gaps in entrepreneurs?
- [26:26] How should parents introduce financial literacy to their kids?
- [31:04] How CFO Club is bridging the knowledge gap for accountants
In this episode…
Many entrepreneurs struggle with financial clarity, often operating their businesses without genuinely understanding the numbers behind them. This lack of insight leads to reactive decision-making, missed opportunities, and a constant feeling of being out of control. But what if financial systems could be used not just to track the past but to shape the future?
W. Michael Hsu, a financial strategist and creator of a business performance methodology, shares how entrepreneurs can shift their mindset from reactive to intentional. Michael emphasizes empowering business owners through simple, clear financial systems and accountability frameworks. He introduces his MEASURE x HACK approach, which helps leaders understand key metrics and implement strategies that optimize results, offering specific steps to gain control, reduce overwhelm, and create real growth.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews W. Michael Hsu, Founder and CEO of DeepSky, about designing financial clarity for entrepreneurs. Michael shares how business owners can reclaim time and control through metrics, mindset, and systems. He also discusses the power of mentorship, how to introduce entrepreneurship to kids, and the role of freedom in business.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- W. Michael Hsu on LinkedIn
- DeepSky
- MEASURE x HACK
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
- EO Accelerator
Special Mention(s):
Related episode(s):
Quotable Moments:
- “Turns out teachers have a lot more money than students.”
- “I went from $270 an hour to 50 bucks a month.”
- “Measure and hack. It’s the little things that you do every day over time.”
- “Every time we talk about money, it’s almost always bad.”
- “Entrepreneurs are incredibly smart people; 99.99% of them know exactly what to do as soon as they know what the problem is.”
Action Steps:
- Know your numbers consistently: Tracking key financial metrics allows entrepreneurs to make informed decisions instead of reacting to financial fires. Clarity in the numbers leads to greater confidence and strategic control over the business.
- Build systems, not just solutions: Creating repeatable processes instead of quick fixes ensures long-term scalability and reduces dependency on any one individual. Systems allow your business to grow without chaos.
- Focus on outcomes, not hours: Shifting from time-based thinking to results-based performance improves team productivity and prioritization. This helps entrepreneurs gain freedom while maintaining accountability.
- Schedule regular financial check-ins: Setting time to review numbers weekly or monthly keeps business goals aligned and prevents drift. These sessions provide a rhythm for decision-making and growth tracking.
- Use financial data to tell a story: When owners understand the narrative behind their numbers, they can communicate their vision more clearly to teams and investors. This builds alignment and attracts the right support.
Sponsor: Rise25
At Rise25 we help B2B businesses give to and connect to your ‘Dream 200’ relationships and partnerships.
We help you cultivate amazing relationships in 2 ways.
#1 Podcasting
#2 Strategic Gifting
#1 Our Predictable Podcast ROI Program
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 200 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
What do you need to start a podcast?
When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.
The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.
We make distribution easy.
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?
Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
#2 Our Comprehensive Corporate Gifting Program
Elevate business relationships with customers, partners, staff, and prospects through gifting.
At Rise25, thoughtful and consistent gifting is a key component of staying top of mind and helps build lasting business relationships. Our corporate gift program is designed to simplify your process by delivering a full-service corporate gifting program — from sourcing and hand selecting the best gifts to expert packaging, custom branding, reliable shipping, and personalized messaging on your branded stationary.
Our done-for-you corporate gifting service ensures that your referral partners, prospects, and clients receive personalized touchpoints that enhance your business gifting efforts and provide a refined executive gifting experience. Whether you’re looking to impress key stakeholders or boost client loyalty, our comprehensive approach makes it easy and affordable.
Discover how Rise25’s personalized corporate gifting program can help you create lasting impressions. Get started today and experience the difference a strategic gifting approach can make.
Email us through our contact form.
You can learn more and watch a video on how it works here: https://rise25.com/giftprogram/
Contact us now at support@rise25.com or message us here https://rise25.com/contact/
Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about how to know your numbers as a business owner. My guest today is W. Michael Hsu. I’ll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:11
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:27
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of this show. You know, every week we talk with interesting and smart CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies and organizations. We’ve had Netflix and Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos, YPO, EO, lots of other ones in the archive. So go check those out. And of course, this episode is brought to you by our company, Rise25, where we help B2B businesses get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with done-for-you podcast and content marketing. And I absolutely love the ability to talk to interesting people I’ve never met before.
Like today’s guest, Michael. And I have never connected before, and we’re going to have a great conversation. We’re going to share some of his ideas around how to know your numbers as a business owner. And beforehand we were chatting. It turns out we have a lot in common, including having gone to the same alma mater. So I love that about this. And if you are interested in knowing more, you can go to Rise25.com or email us at support@rise25.com and learn all about it.
All right. And before we get into this episode, first shout out to Ami Kassar of MultiFunding. Go check out MultiFunding if you need any funding needs for your business. He’s a great guy. He’s been a guest on this show a couple times before and he introduced us and our guest is W. Michael Hsu. He’s the Founder of DeepSky, which is a company that provides outsourced CFO services, and he helps entrepreneurs with businesses anywhere between 1 million to 40 million. He helps CEOs make financial decisions by focusing on what is most important for sustainable growth. He’s got a couple other companies as well, which we will talk about, and he has been very active in entrepreneurs organization, which I have been as well, which is how we connected.
But Michael, I’m so excited to have you here today and you’ve got some crazy stories. You know, usually people have got 1 or 2 stories about, you know, doing a lemonade stand like once and you’ve got a couple of crazy stories from when you were a kid. So first of all, you in your high school decided that you saw all these other clubs that were selling candy on campus, and you wanted to also. So you just went and did it. You didn’t have a club and eventually they figured that out. I love this. So you just started selling candy on campus? Like, did you make up the name of a club? What did you do?
W. Michael Hsu: 02:35
I didn’t, I just, I just I didn’t think much of it. I was at Costco, and then I realized they have these big boxes of candy, and I’m like, these are the same things that they were selling on campus. So I just borrowed some money from my mom, bought 3 or 4 boxes, and then started packing them into these big Ziploc bags because that’s what everybody did. I just started selling and then got tired of selling it. So I started hiring my friends to sell it. Until one day somebody came asking. I was like, what club are you guys with? And we’re like, what club?
John Corcoran: 03:05
Oh yeah, they have a club.
John Corcoran: 03:07
So that’s funny. So you’re just like selling it, profiting it. And did you remember, did you have a bunch of extra candy now that you had to part with after that.
W. Michael Hsu: 03:15
No, no. We actually did, so it was really funny. We ended up when they shut me down, I did actually start a club, but that was really later on in the game. As I say, they call it the Asian Movie Appreciation Club, which we just watched every Wednesday night. But what I bought during that same time, I had figured out they had vending machines and I forgot where I was reading about it or where I was reading about it, and I was looking at the teachers lounge and they don’t have a candy machine. So I had some money from, you know, saved up. I also had some money from, you know, selling the candies. And I ended up buying the candy machine and then putting it in the teacher’s lounge. I just talked to the right people, asked around like, is it okay if I do that? And I’m pretty sure I can’t. I don’t remember how much it was, but then I had to ask my mom for a loan and it’s like slowly paying her back with the money. But I think I made that back within months. So it was just absolutely amazing.
John Corcoran: 04:11
Joke’s on you. The joke’s on you. You won’t let me sell candy to my classmates. So instead, I’m going to put a vending machine, a candy vending machine in the teacher’s lounge.
W. Michael Hsu: 04:21
Turns out teachers have a lot more money than students.
John Corcoran: 04:24
Well, that’s it.
John Corcoran: 04:25
That’s a good insight, actually. Yeah. That’s hilarious. And then you went on from there and you started making custom computers until, in your words, Michael Dell put you out of business. So tell me a little bit about that.
W. Michael Hsu: 04:40
Yeah, I mean, I wanted, I want, I love computers and then every, every kid wants a cool computer. I remember back in like the early 2000, late 90s, early 2000, we had those computer machines like the window you see inside. They got LED RGB lights going on and I just couldn’t afford it. I remember there were like 2 or $3000 if you were to buy them from Best Buy or back then.
John Corcoran: 05:01
Which was a lot of money back then.
W. Michael Hsu: 05:03
Yeah, it was a lot of money. I mean, for a high school kid, it’s a lot. Then my cousin took me to a computer show. Then I realized all the parts added up to what, six, seven, $800? That’s a good margin, right? Yeah, it cost six, $700. My labor was zero. Right. And so I was selling computers for $1500 to $2000. And I was able to customize them, build them and the same thing. It actually helped me. That actually helped me pay for my first car that I bought in sophomore year of college. And yeah, it was a good time.
John Corcoran: 05:35
Yeah, actually, that never goes away because I just did a heat pump at our house the same way I looked at all the different parts. These HVAC companies wanted to charge me an arm and a leg. I was like, I’m just going to do this myself. So I did. But then. So at what point did Dell come along and start to erode your business?
W. Michael Hsu: 05:53
Hey, it’s gotta be my sophomore year because I stopped doing it in my sophomore year of college. So what is that? Maybe like 2 or 2000? Maybe like 90? Yeah. So I graduated in 2005, 2003, 2004. Yeah. So their prices just came way down. I mean, their prices were, I remember , the first time selling, you know, a $1,500 computer, 9.99 computers like in Best Buy.
John Corcoran: 06:15
Yeah.
W. Michael Hsu: 06:15
Right now you’re looking at 1 to $200 margins. And people are thinking, well, there’s this, you know, do I buy it from Best Buy or do it from this? Buy it from, you know, my dorm mate.
John Corcoran: 06:25
Yeah.
W. Michael Hsu: 06:26
So when you’re having a, when you’re having a $1500 or $2000 spread, I think it’s, it’s a lot easier to play with. But when you’re playing with $1 to $300, you just can’t compete.
John Corcoran: 06:35
Yeah. And everyone was buying computers from Dell at that time. And then there was Gateway Computer. Also I bought a computer from Gateway which had big boxes with the white and black cow print on them, which was crazy to me. I was living in Washington DC and I bought a computer from them, I think through their website. And I come home one day and on my front porch in Washington, DC, there’s these massive boxes that might as well just say, like, here’s a computer, steal me. You know, they left it on the front porch. I couldn’t believe it.
W. Michael Hsu: 07:04
That’s crazy.
John Corcoran: 07:05
Yeah. All right, so you decide to go through that? What drew you to accounting? Because you decided to study accounting. You seem like a. First of all, you seem like a personable, charming guy. Got a lot of charisma and accounting. No offense to the accountants out there. It’s kind of a dry kind of a, you know, business. What? What drew you to that?
W. Michael Hsu: 07:28
Yeah. Every time people ask me that, I tell a lie.
John Corcoran: 07:32
And the lie drew you to it? Yeah.
W. Michael Hsu: 07:34
Yeah. The lie. The liar was my mother who told me that I wanted to drop out of high school and start a business. You know, ever since the candy machine, I thought I was going to have a, you know, candy machine empire. And then I wanted to. And. But that’s not an option for an Asian kid in America, Erica Wright.
John Corcoran: 07:52
Candy empire. Yeah.
W. Michael Hsu: 07:54
Yeah. Yeah. You go. You go to college, and you and you get a degree, and you either become a doctor or a lawyer. And if you can’t cut, if you can’t cut it, then. Then we’ll settle for an accountant. And that’s and that’s what. And that’s what it was. And so did my mother. But I wanted to do business. And the lie was my mother told me, if you want, you need to know your numbers. If you want to do business, that’s the only way you know, which is how to do it.
John Corcoran: 08:21
How did your mom know this, by the way? Was she a business owner?
W. Michael Hsu: 08:24
She was not. She was not. She took her. She was a homemaker. And my dad was a business owner. My dad was an entrepreneur. But I don’t.
John Corcoran: 08:33
Now, that’s a pretty profound statement from someone who wasn’t a business owner to say that to you.
W. Michael Hsu: 08:40
Yeah, she’s extremely smart, probably one of the smarter, smarter people that I know in my life. But that’s what she told me. You’re like, you got to know your numbers. You got to know your money. But. But the reason why I say it was a lie is because when I went to school, that’s not what they taught us. That’s not what they taught us in accounting school. They taught us dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s, debits, debit and balance. Really boring stuff. Like exactly what you said in the beginning. Like very dry, very compliant stuff. And what I, what I and that actually planted the seed because I was so frustrated with it.
You know, I wanted to create freshman year. I want to quit sophomore year. And then by year three I graduated and then I went on to go to a grad school because I didn’t learn anything in college. So I have a master’s in accounting because I don’t know what I was doing in, in, in undergrad. But the point is, what I realized was that numbers are important. Financial literacy and financial intelligence are important. But that’s not what accounting taught me. And that’s why that’s sort of planted the seed for deep sky and measure and hack methods. And everything that I’m doing today is even a CFO club, which was to educate both CEOs and financial professionals. The application of numbers and money into business.
John Corcoran: 09:54
I want to get into that. But I skipped over another story that I wanted to find out about, which was you actually grew up in Taiwan? Correct. And decided that you wanted to move to America. Tell us the story about how you got here.
W. Michael Hsu: 10:09
Yeah, that’s another one. The short answer is Disneyland. Then every time I say that, people think that’s funny. But the truth is, I came to America when I was nine, went to Disneyland, fell in love with it, and then told my parents that I want to come. So they sent me again when I was ten and put me into summer school. And I’m thinking, this is the easiest school in the world. And we did one hour of English, one hour of math, and then we went to Disneyland, you know, in the afternoon. And, and at that time, I nagged my mom. And, you know, sometimes your parents tell you, hey, if you do A, I’ll do B knowing that you’ll never do a. Yeah, which is what my mom did. She was like, hey, if you get into the first 10th place. So we have tests in midterms and in Taiwan if you get into the top ten I’ll let you go to America. I’m never a top ten kid and lo and behold, I got 10th place. So she put me on the plane on December 94th, winter break and sent me by myself to America to LA, to live with a family friend. And she was thinking, I have let you now move to America and you’re going to want to come back. And that’s on you. So she was.
John Corcoran: 11:13
Supposed to be a is supposed to be just winter break that you were there.
W. Michael Hsu: 11:16
It was supposed to be winter break, but she told me she had let me move to America. Right?
John Corcoran: 11:20
Yeah.
W. Michael Hsu: 11:20
Yeah, right. So. So she called me, and she’s like, you miss home? Yeah. You miss mom? Yeah. You want to come home? No. And we did that for three months.
John Corcoran: 11:31
So you.
W. Michael Hsu: 11:31
Start.
John Corcoran: 11:32
Taking classes there, you start going, you go to local school.
W. Michael Hsu: 11:35
Okay. Yeah. And what I, what I really appreciated about my mom was that she wanted to keep that promise, even though she was ten years old. She could have bought me a transformer and I would have forgotten about the promise. Yeah, but she made the promise. She kept it. And then? And then she started figuring it out. She started figuring out the visas, the schools and all that. And I stayed. And I think that that was one of the times in your life where you just, your life just changed, your trajectory just changed.
John Corcoran: 12:00
Like, I’ve never heard a story of someone moving to a country, the United States or otherwise, at age ten because they set their sights on it. I mean, others like you set their sight on it and like years later, in their 20s or 30s or 40s finally make it. But that’s crazy that you made it at age ten.
W. Michael Hsu: 12:17
Yeah, yeah, it was incredible. But mostly mostly because my parents were just again, it just left a lesson, right? Like, make a promise, don’t make promises easily. Make a promise, do it.
John Corcoran: 12:28
And follow through. I mean, you fail, you follow through on it. Like she said, here’s the path to move to America. And you did it. You made it happen. Yeah. That’s incredible. So you go, you get your master’s in accounting, you end up working for a firm for a year or so and then decide this isn’t for me, I need to start my own thing. Which is pretty quick for someone you know to go out from. A lot of times, people kind of apprentice in an accounting firm for longer before going out and starting their own firm. Tell me about the early days of starting your own firm. Was it as easy as you thought it would be, or did it take a little while to get traction?
