CCK Strategies

CCK Strategies was founded with a straightforward purpose: to deliver outstanding service, build lasting client relationships, and nurture a culture of care. Three decades later, that purpose still drives everything the firm does. With more than 125 professionals across offices in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Frisco, Texas–servicing clients in all 50 states and internationally–CCK has grown into a full-service CPA and advisory firm with four core divisions: tax, M&A and business valuation, advisory, and assurance. 

CCK has always been committed to serving as a trusted advisor to clients navigating complex challenges in an ever-evolving marketplace. And as these changes happen, CCK isn’t standing still. The firm is in the middle of what they call “Horizons”—a deliberate, multi-year strategy to formalize and lead with advisory services. 

“We’re really seeing a shift in how our clients want to interact with us. They’re asking more in-depth questions than ‘how can I save money on taxes,’’’ says Sara Mays, CPA and Partner at CCK Strategies. 

Mays has been with the firm for nearly 20 years, and sees the growing demand for advisory work firsthand. Clients want answers to questions like how to structure a business for a future sale, plan for succession, or  deploy wealth strategically. To be able to provide high-quality answers to those questions–and at a faster pace than the competition–the team recognized it needed a research tool that could keep up.

When Legacy Tools Get in the Way

Before Blue J, doing tax research at CCK meant toggling between Google search for simple lookups and a legacy research platform for anything more complex. Both options came with challenges.

Using Google for quick questions—like the standard mileage rate or a filing deadline—left accountants with answers they could only hope were accurate, but could never fully trust. Deeper questions saved for the firm’s legacy tool meant wrestling with answers that included dense statutory language. “Code is just hard to understand sometimes, and it can feel contradictory,” says Mays.

And that translation gap was the real cost. Getting from complex to clear, confident client-ready responses using the legacy tool took time. Senior members of the team had to spend more effort creating responses clients could understand, which meant less bandwidth to provide the valuable advisory services CCK was striving toward. For a firm trying to be more responsive and seen as a trusted advisor, the friction was adding up.

‍Putting Blue J to the Test

Belinda Jordan, Tax Division Leader at CCK, discovered Blue J and brought it to the team for a pilot. A group of 10 users tested the solution through a full tax season–a deliberate, real-world trial of the work that comes across the desks of the CCK team.  The evaluation was simple: put Blue J in the hands of the team to see if it could help them get through the research faster, and give them more time to leverage their professional judgment.

Mays, who is known around the firm as “the question asker,” was a natural fit for the initial pilot group. “I would put my question in Blue J and compare it to our old workflow,” explains Mays. “I found Blue J so easy and simple to use–it gives you easy to understand answers and the sources to back it up, so you know it's grounded in actual tax law.”

Any hesitations Mays had about Blue J dissolved when she started cross-checking answers and found them to be not just accurate, but easier to understand. Where the legacy tool surfaced answers with dense legal language that required significant effort to interpret, Blue J translated the same law into something a staff member could act on immediately and a client could easily understand. And critically, it didn’t hide the reference points: every answer links to verifiable sources so anyone could go deeper if needed. 

The pilot team came away convinced. After tax season, Blue J rolled out to most of the tax department–and they haven’t looked back. 

A More Confident Team at Every Level

As Blue J spread across the tax department at CCK, the impact went beyond individual efficiency. One of the most meaningful changes was how it enabled junior staff—saving senior accountants even more time in the process. Emerging practitioners used to arrive at a senior colleague’s desk with an open question. Now, they come prepared with a Blue J-researched answer. The dynamic between junior and senior staff has shifted from “I don’t know” to “here’s what I found–what do you think?”

“Our staff are taking those really hard questions where they’d usually be going to an upper level staff member and going to Blue J instead,” says Mays. “They now have the confidence to say ‘I can start this’ and really get to an answer quicker and at a lower billable rate.” 

For Mays, it means she can reinvest her time back into her clients.

“Instead of staff coming up to me and having me walk through answers together, they always go to Blue J first. It shortens the time we need to spend discussing an answer and lets us get back to clients faster.”

The time gained from using Blue J gave CCK space to dig into more strategic guidance.

And it’s not just new practitioners that Blue J is helping confidently embrace advisory work. Staff at various levels were nervous about the firm’s shift to focus on advisory engagements because it could surface questions they don’t know how to answer. But now that team members can ask Blue J and get a well-sourced, clearly explained response, they feel ready to deliver the strategic advice their clients expect.

From Compliance Tool to Advisory Engine

The most compelling chapter of CCK’s Blue J story is what’s happening at the advisory frontier. Blue J is changing how the CCK team shows up—whether preparing for client meetings, responding to urgent questions, or onboarding a prospect—the team is walking in with more context, sharper questions, and confident answers. 

For clients, that difference is tangible: they’re getting more substantive conversations and faster responses than they were getting elsewhere. Because CCK is uncovering more advisory opportunities, the firm is building the trust needed to win more clients over. 

“Before a call with a high-net-worth prospect, I uploaded their tax return into Blue J and asked it to surface questions I could bring to the conversation,” recalls Mays. “After the call, the now-client told me, ‘I’ve had more discussion in the last 15 minutes than I’ve had with my tax accountant in three years.’“

Those meaningful conversations made possible by Blue J won CCK a client, the exact outcome the firm is building toward. The more the team uses Blue J, the more impactful advisory engagements are on the horizon.

‍The Horizon Ahead

CCK Strategies didn’t get here overnight. After thirty years of hard work, they’re looking forward to what’s next. The firm is on a five-year path that’s intentional, client-driven, and grounded in a clear vision of where the profession is heading. And Blue J has become an integral part of how they’re getting there: empowering junior staff to be more independent, giving senior staff time for more meaningful work, and helping partners show up to meetings ready and able to deliver the strategic advice clients rely on. 

With the accounting industry trending toward practitioners becoming trusted advisors to their clients, the firm’s plan to focus more on advisory work is perfectly aligned. CCK Strategies isn’t just keeping up with the future of tax—they’re helping define it.

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