Tim Harty, The Business Times

Saying PBG Advisors outgrew its former location in Fruita isn’t enough. Not when there’s a good anecdote to make the point.

PBG Advisors had a staff of about a dozen people when it resided at 138 S. Park Square in Fruita, but the approximately 2,400 square feet there didn’t allow for a training area.

That meant to have full-staff training sessions or meetings, the partners and employees had to drive to Timberline Bank in Grand Junction to use the bank’s conference room.

Now, the entire staff drives to Grand Junction every day, because PBG Advisors resides at 2452 Patterson Road, Suite 200, which has 5,400 square feet that includes a large training room, so the firm can do its staff meetings in house. And that’s with several more people on staff in the new location.

“We outgrew the space in Fruita, would’ve loved to stay in Fruita, but could not find anything that was suitable,” said Ken Palmer, one of the firm’s three partners along with Joshua Brady and Kitrick Galloway. “We looked into building, and the cost was very prohibitive under the current construction market. And so we then looked in Junction, and found this wonderful spot.”

Palmer said the partners live in Fruita, which is why they wanted to find another spot in Fruita, but the new location is near Mesa Mall, so it’s a relatively short commute.

More importantly, he said, “Clients have loved it. Most of our client base is in Grand Junction or in the western U.S. … This makes it very easily accessible for them.”

The staff increased to 16 people, which couldn’t happen at the Fruita office, “where we were really having to be creative in office use,” Palmer said. “In Fruita, we were having to have people work from home certain days, rotate, switch offices, just to be able to make that work. So we needed to move for a while.”

And it needed to grow for two reasons.

The first reason aligns with a national trend, as Palmer said, “From an industry standpoint, there’s a shortage of accountants and especially accountants who do a very conscientious job. So, we have tried to focus on being very, very conscientious and professional with the work we do, doing it very technically correct.”

That also means “we’re not the cheapest firm in town, and we don’t want to be,” Palmer said. “We tell clients we’ll bill them the way we would want to be billed, which is well enough to do a very, very good, professional job.”

The second reason also ties into the need for good accountants, but from a proactive business philosophy of finding and retaining good employees.

“As we have found good people, we’ve hired them, because there is a shortage of young people going into the accounting profession,” Palmer said. “But fortunately we’ve tapped into some markets and found some really, really good people, so we were growing people-wise to meet the market demand, and we just needed more space for them.”

Finding good people also got a little easier as PBG Advisors’ larger location and being in Grand Junction have been selling points.

“We’ve had several of our new hires or potential hires tell us that for them the access here in Grand Junction was better,” Palmer said. “It’s also a more professional-looking space.”

Not only is there office space for everyone on staff, Palmer said PBG Advisors has a few extra offices and some community-work areas.

“We definitely have the capacity to add three to five people very comfortably in the new location,” he said.

If the staff does eventually grow to 20 people, PBG Advisors will remain without worry when it comes time for the full staff meeting or large training session. That’s because – and Palmer said this is “the most important and exciting thing” – its location has a very large training area.

He said it’s “very well set up,” can accommodate 20-plus people, and they use it regularly.

WHAT TOOK SO LONG?

PBG Advisors had a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce at its new location, 2452 Patterson Rd, Ste 200, on May 20, but the staff moved there in the fall, about seven months earlier.

The delay in doing the ribbon cutting was readily explained by Ken Palmer.

“It was just timing,” he said. “We were very busy last year wrapping up (the fall) tax season, trying to get settled in the new space, and then (the main) tax season hit, and so we just didn’t want to hassle with it honestly until after we got to a point where we had time to do it.”

HOW IT ALL STARTED

With the Grand Junction Chamber officiating the ribbon cutting, Palmer was the one to do the honors with the giant scissors. Then he was asked to say a few words, which took him back to the beginning of what would eventually become PBG Advisors.

Palmer, who is 58 years old, said he sold his practice in Arizona in 2005 and moved to Grand Junction where he started a business that was “just me at home for a while.”

He also was an adjunct instructor at Mesa State College, now Colorado Mesa University.

Palmer said he moved to Fruita in 2008, where the business “was still just me,” but he hired his first employee that year. From there, his business slowly grew. He hired Joshua Brady in May 2014, and Brady became a partner in 2019. Palmer hired Kitrick Galloway in 2019, and Galloway became a partner in 2019.

Take the first letter of each partner’s last name, and you get the PBG in the firm’s name.

WHAT THEY DO PRIMARILY

PBG Advisors is a full-service accounting and advisory firm that offers personalized solutions in tax planning and preparation, accounting and business-advisory services.

For what they do the most, Palmer said it’s tax consulting, tax strategy and tax advising.

He added, “We do some accounting, bookkeeping for those clients that utilize our tax and advisory services. We also do business valuations. We do estate planning, estate consulting, mediation, litigation support a little bit. We do mergers and acquisitions.”

For the next tier of services, he said it’s “probably bookkeeping, and then it’s the structuring and just general consulting. We have a lot of clients in healthcare, and so we work with them on compensation strategies and how to structure compensation models for the professionals.”

To find out more about PBG Advisors visit pbgadvisors.com online or call 970-242-3320.

Business hours are Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.