What makes our 'Dancing CPA' tick

 

The robber said he had a gun, and 17-year-old bank teller Miles Romney wasn't about to question him. Romney merely did what his employer had instructed him to do in such cases – follow orders. In this case, that meant:

1. Start handing over $100 bills.
2. Don't press the alarm -- or he'd get shot.

"I got robbed at gunpoint," Romney reflects about 25 years later. "That's why I dance."

Leave it to Romney to turn any moment, even a serious one, into a punchline.

And leave it to the assistant professor of accounting to dance.

Dance? You bet he does. He dances on cruise ships. He dances at basketball games. He dances on YouTube. He dances in so many places that he can hardly, well, account for it.

He also sings, jokes, mimes and, in a fun way, disrupts, even in the Rovetta hallways and classrooms. In December, he cracked up colleagues as a contestant in the college's annual holiday Ugly Sweater contest – prancing through the Starry Conference Room as if he were on a fashion runway.

"I love performing – making people laugh, making people smile," Romney says.

At FSU, he's known to cut loose at men's basketball games like a rollicking robot with groove. Most notable is a YouTube video from three years ago in which Romney – during a timeout late in a close game against Clemson University – jerks his head against his shoulder like a cyborg, rolls his hips like Elvis and runs his hand over his shaved head like Danny from "Grease." He busts out classic moves such as "the sprinkler" and "the lawnmower." And like a fluttery-fingered maestro, he gradually raises his hands to elevate cheering from the crowd, then instantly silences it on command.

He does this to the smiling or giggling delight of those sitting around him at the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center, including his oldest son and a friend of his son. And he does it with a look of certifiable seriousness and confidence, as if he owns the place.

"At the Tuck," Romney says, referring to the civic center's nickname, "I can be the center of attention because it's on the big screen, and everybody can see where I am."

Happy in front of a crowd

It's no secret that Romney thrives to be seen and to amuse. He practically lives for it. 

He even once sought to get paid for it – marketing himself years ago, when he owned a private practice in his hometown of San Diego, as the "Dancing CPA." He would attend San Diego Padres games in a baseball jersey that bore his go-to number: 1040, as in the standard tax form, with "Dancing CPA" on the back of his jersey and on his vehicle's California license plate.

As a Floridian, Romney sports no such plate. But at FSU, he has license to be himself.

"Miles is perfectly happy in front of a crowd, and I think that is part of the reason he's such an outstanding teacher for us," says Allen Blay, EY Professor and chair of the college's Department of Accounting.

His personality puts students at ease, Blay says. 

"They're going to walk into his office, and he's going to put on an accent and say something funny and welcome them in," Blay says. "And they're going to have a smile on their face."

Despite his light-hearted delivery, colleagues and administrators in the No. 24-ranked Department of Accounting hail Romney as not only a serious teacher, but also as an outstanding researcher and expert in his field, particularly from his work as a CPA.

He has established himself as a leader in economic-based tax research, which explores the ways in which public companies balance tax benefits and public perceptions, including those of analysts who scrutinize financial reports. He has published in top-ranked academic accounting research journals and has established a pipeline of research that sets him up to strengthen his international reputation, Blay says.

As a teacher, Romney connects with students in his tax classes through a mix of, among other things, line items and one-liners. 

In a recent undergraduate Federal Tax Accounting II class, where his students seemed surprisingly alert for 8 a.m., Romney lectured on the importance of entering correct information into TurboTax. He provided sound effects – "boop, boop, bloop" – to parody the software program calculating a tax bill that might throw them for a bloop. 

In a discussion about how to set up corporations, Romney called upon students – consistent with the textbook – to create an innovative app to use as a hypothetical company that the class would discuss throughout the chapter. 

One student mentioned that he uses only Snapchat. Romney thereby proposed that, for the project, the class develop "Chapsnat."

"I can already see our marketing slogan – 'Let's get chappy,'" Romney said to laughs.

Romney ranks humor and attention after the most important things in his life: his family, including his wife, Amy, and their four children, and his faith as a member and missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He's also a triathlete who enjoys playing basketball and teaching daily 6 a.m. religious-education classes to teenagers.

About that other Romney

Romney was born in San Diego as a descendant of, no joke, Miles Romney, a British convert to Mormonism, a 19th Century settler of the American West and an architect who built temples and tabernacles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 

That makes him a third cousin of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee and current U.S. senator from Utah.

Miles says he has met Mitt only once. That happened in 2012 while Miles was working on his Ph.D. at Michigan State University. The politician was attending a rally as a candidate for president against incumbent Barack Obama.

"I forced my way up to the front and shook his hand and said, 'I'm Miles Romney. I'm your third cousin from San Diego.' And he said, 'I have a grandson named Miles – hahaha.' And that was it."

Interestingly, high school classmates voted Miles Romney most likely to be a U.S. senator. But they also voted him most likely to be in a comedy troupe. 

"My mother likes to say that my favorite two things are a captive audience and the sound of my own voice," Romney says.

He attributes his penchant for performing to his mom, a former member of the famed Mormon Tabernacle Choir, now the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. 

His fun-loving mother and more-reserved father, who died in 2006, raised him among six extroverted children. 

He honed his dance skills as a child via choreographed performances for a singing group. That led to further performances in high school, including as a singer, and he participated in an acting club as an undergraduate student at Brigham Young University. 

Music, especially from the '80s, centers his dancing and performing. 

"I love feeling the beat, feeling the music and figuring out what moves people might like," Romney says.

He also always wanted to help people with their financial decisions. At age 11, he says, he won $690 in a radio call-in show in which he correctly identified the San Diego Chargers' "play of the game" from the previous football game. That prompted him to study what to do with that kind of money.

At age 17, he got the job that produced a defining moment. A tall, burly man walked into the bank where Romney was working as a teller. The man told Romney he had a gun inside a pouch he was carrying and to start handing over "all your hundreds," or else. 

The robber made off with more than $9,390 but landed in jail after Romney testified against him in court.

"I'm reasonably certain there was no gun, so I never felt like there was any danger," Romney recalls.

Yet a lesson emerged.

"I'm a very trusting and somewhat naïve and gullible person who sees the best in people," he says. "Having an experience like that teaches me firsthand that not everybody is good and kind, and that's a good lesson to learn – to always be on guard."

He continued with his monetary interests and entered Brigham Young University's accountancy program. After finishing his undergraduate degree, he returned to San Diego and worked for two years at Deloitte, earning his CPA in 2003. 

He went on to earn a master's degree in accountancy and financial management from the University of San Diego in 2005, and he opened a practice as a tax preparer. He also taught classes at the university and performed at baseball games as the Dancing CPA. 

He figured he'd find a better professional rhythm through teaching, so he pursued a Ph.D. in accounting at Michigan State, graduating in 2016. 

He has been at the FSU College of Business ever since. 

And the answer to an obvious question is no.

"I usually don't dance in class," Romney says. "But I'm going to bring the energy every day."

-- Pete Reinwald