Your Cents’ Worth is a monthly series that explores inspiring stories of accounting and bookkeeping firm owners who are building their dream firms and a life they love.
Some people enter the accounting profession with a plan.
Michael Eckstein arrived with a shrug, a knack for math, and a last name that clients still mispronounce.
Today, he runs his firm (Resting Business Face), grumbles through tax season, and builds an oddly loyal following by doing what most accountants won’t: saying the quiet part out loud, especially on LinkedIn.
You won’t find boilerplate advice in his posts, thought leadership, or even carefully bullet-pointed deductions. What you’ll find instead is something rarer: someone willing to talk about the industry the way it actually feels. Frustrating. Funny. Absurdly human.
Financial Cents recently spoke with him about how he turned brutal clarity into a brand and made room for people who don’t always fit the mold.
A different kind of accountant, a familiar kind of human
A few minutes before the recording rolls, the mood is light. Michael Eckstein is already joking about his place on the Internet. “I yap on the Internet. I tell jokes about accounting and have little rants about whatever it is I’m upset about at the moment,” he says. The line lands with a grin, then lingers with a question. What does it take to be both very online and very good at a job most people only think about at filing time?
This profile sits at the intersection of two realities. The public persona that makes LinkedIn laugh, and the private worker who carries a client roster, the calendar, the deadlines, and the weight of trust. The story is not neat. It is honest.
Long Island Beginnings and an Accounting Career Found by Logic
Accounting wasn’t a passion. It wasn’t even on the radar.
“I didn’t want to be an accountant. I didn’t want to be a doctor either,” he says. “Though my mom is still very upset I didn’t become one.” The disappointment in his mother’s voice, he jokes, only began to subside after he started winning awards. “As recent as a year or two ago, she was not over it,” he adds dryly.
He was raised in Long Island, New York, which he calls home but never over-explains. There’s an unspoken familiarity in the way he mentions it, like a place that shaped him more by osmosis than by design.
He doesn’t recall having a clear childhood ambition. Nothing scripted or polished. “I don’t even remember what I wanted to be,” he says. Instead, his route to accounting came through a detour. He entered college intending to study computer programming, but somewhere along the way, he made a shift.
I swapped into accounting. Ironically, that pivot—made in a moment that might seem forgettable—turned out to be one of the most defining moves of his life"
It helped that the path was already worn. His father, also an accountant, had walked it years before. When his parents immigrated to the United States, his dad had looked for a career that suited his strengths: strong in math, still building fluency in English. “They’re like: accounting,” Michael says
And then decades later, I was like: what can I do where I’m good at math and not great at English? And they’re like: accounting"
The LinkedIn accountant who refuses to play stiff
There is a stereotype of the accountant. Grey suit. Careful smile. Careful words. Eckstein does not fit it. He credits an unconventional apprenticeship. “I left college and worked for my dad. Most people went to big firms where they’re told, this is professionalism. I never knew better,” he says. He talks to clients like a person and posts like a person. It is deliberate and effective.
“I’m very much a text-based ranter,” he says.
“I don’t want to shower and dress up to rant on TikTok. By the time I’ve done that, the rant’s gone. The frustration has evaporated. The moment has passed. But on LinkedIn? LinkedIn doesn’t know it’s the same shirt I was wearing yesterday,"
Michael leaned into what he knew best: honesty, timing, and voice.
That combination has won him a dedicated following. The kind of loyal visibility that gets him speaking invites, new clients, podcast requests, and respect from peers who are quietly tired of pretending to love the rules.
Even his moments of restraint are calculated. His drafts folder is full of posts that never made it. “Some of them are just too mean.” He says with a laugh, but still, the honesty simmers just beneath the surface.
He’s not trying to blow up the profession, or on a mission to disrupt accounting. He’s just done performing respectability.
Accounting Career Myths, and a Different Invitation
Michael doesn’t give the profession a glowing review. He doesn’t try to make tax season sound noble. What he offers instead is a rare kind of clarity: you can build a good life in a field that can sometimes feel deeply unglamorous. And you don’t need to pretend you love every second of it to belong.
“I get it,” he says of the younger generation skipping over accounting as a career. “There are sexier jobs than this. I’m not going to sit here and say it’s the most exciting thing you can do with your life.” But then he adds, with a steadiness that cuts through the noise,
As much as I complain about it, it’s been good to me. It lets me live how I want to live. I make good money. I have freedom."
That, in a way, is the radical invitation he extends, not to fall in love with the work, but to see it for what it really is: a reliable foundation. A means to autonomy. A structure you can build a very real life on.
There’s power in that honesty. Especially when the cultural conversation around work has become so binary: either you “follow your passion,” or you’re doomed to a life of soul-sucking labor. Michael lives in the grey zone between those extremes. He didn’t fall into accounting because he loved it. He stayed because he was good at it. That was enough.
“I never had a moment where I thought, ‘I’m a tax genius.’ I just had moments where I thought, ‘I’m good at this. What else would I do?’” he says. No grand vision. No calling. Just competence and clarity.
And that’s what makes his story different.
Legacy, With a Wink and a Plan
When asked about legacy, most people reach for the usual lines; mentorship, impact, family, growth. Michael Eckstein doesn’t.
“I would like them to name a law closing a tax loophole after me,” he says. No hesitation. No caveat. Just that.
It’s the most Michael answer imaginable: part punchline, part blueprint. He’s not interested in monuments or memoirs. He wants his name baked into the bureaucracy. Something permanent and un-skippable.
“They say we’ll be forgotten in two generations,” he shrugs. “Not if I have my way.”
He cites Roth. As in Roth IRA. The man may be gone, but his name still haunts syllabi, client meetings, and QuickBooks integrations everywhere. That’s the kind of immortality Michael’s gunning for. “Years from now, there’s going to be a law, and it’s gonna be named after me,” he says, with the tone of someone joking just enough to disarm you, but not enough to hide the real desire underneath.
You’ll be forced to learn about me in college just because they’re like, ‘Yeah, we can’t do that anymore."
On a Final Note
Michael Eckstein is a reminder that there’s room in every industry for individuality, humor, and heart. In a profession too often associated with grey suits and rigid rules, Michael brings color, curiosity, and a touch of rebellion.
Whether he’s ranting on LinkedIn, hiking through Utah, or walking clients through the messiest parts of their finances, Michael stays true to one unshakable principle: be human first.
In doing so, he’s not just reshaping the way accounting is done. He’s redefining what it means to succeed on your own terms, even if your mom still wishes you were a doctor.
