CPA Trendlines Podcasts
CPA Trendlines
Exclusive information. Extraordinary insight.See all podcast episodes here: https://cpatrendlines.com/category/podcast/ CPA Trendlines is the world’s only research and advisory service focused solely on the tax, accounting, and finance professions. We use a time-tested, quality-proven, proprietary blend of data, analysis, community, experience, and imagination to produce extraordinary value for our clients. Elite decision-makers from all over the world look to CPA Trendlines for trusted advice, bold insights, and confidential access to exclusive intelligence and decision support. You’ll stay more focused, save time, grow revenue in a fast-changing global digital environment, and sleep better at night. Guaranteed. Facts. Figures. Insights. Implications. Here you'll find the data and analysis you can use for your practice and your career, plus exclusive research, insights, and commentary on the most pressing issues and fastest-changing trends. We are dedicated to delivering the actionable intelligence that tax, accounting, and finance professionals need in order to identify and act on emerging issues and opportunities. We specialize in high-quality, concise executive briefings designed to help busy professionals improve their organizations, advance their careers, and enhance their lives. Our reports are relevant, timely, and to-the-point, providing the most essential information, and are digestible often in under an hour.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Aug 13, 2023 • 16min
Which is Better: A Year of Education or A Year of Experience? Featuring David Bergstein and Steven Sacks
The 150-hour rule is facing harsh criticism in the accounting staffing crisis.With Steven SacksThe NEW Fundamentals: Thriving in DisruptionThere is a movement afoot by the state CPA societies to reconsider whether the fifth year of an accounting program that offers the student a Master’s in Accounting is worth the cost, not to mention the increased complexity of business requiring as much exposure and experience as necessary to groom the younger professionals.FULL SHOW NOTES: hereMORE STEVE SACKS: Sell Service, Not Hours | Fine-Tuning the Subscription Fee Model | When Cyber-Crime Hits Close to Home | How to Build a Winning Proposal | Six Ways to Fix Your Firm Agreement | The Great Resignation or a Reshuffling? | Listen to Learn | Build the Framework to a Solution with Five Answers | Try for Success, Not a WinHowever, there is a shortage of 300,000 CPA candidates entering the profession’s pipeline. That's why several states are seeking to eliminate, modify or enhance the educational/experiential model.Sacks discusses the dilemma of education versus experience with accounting expert David Bergstein, CPA, the chief innovation officer for Bergstein CPA and teaching adjunct for Valencia College.
Aug 8, 2023 • 1h 1min
Getting Real: Accounting Tech Decisions You Need to Make Today
Chad Davis, a CPA and co-founder of LiveCA LLP in Canada, joins the podcast to discuss embracing technology in the accounting profession. The panel discusses the challenges of choosing and implementing accounting technology solutions, the importance of workflow solutions and tools for firm management, Microsoft tools and app integration, the significance of strong support in a tech stack partner, the challenges of tech stack changes and AI in accounting, and valuable advice and encouragement for navigating the accounting tech ecosystem.
Jul 23, 2023 • 60min
The Disruptors: Al Anderson on The New Manifesto for Audit
The DisruptorsWith Liz FarrCPA TrendlinesAl Anderson is out to change audit as accountants know it. Auditors, he declares, are spending too much time being busy instead of being valuable.
Get the free preview of his forthcoming handbook: “The New Manifesto for Accountants," Instant Download (PDF)
Anderson is preaching a revolutionary framework for audit leadership, described in his forthcoming handbook from CPA Trendlines.Auditors, he says, should be looking closer at transactions, instead of focusing narrowly on the balance sheet. The transactional approach, rather than a balance sheet approach, provides more value to the client because it reveals the bumps in the road that happen as a transaction rolls up to the general ledger so that it can be recorded correctly. For example, consider invoices that could go out earlier, which causes clients to lose a few days of cash flow. Consider, for example, invoices that could go out earlier, which causes clients to lose a few days of cash flow. You're unlikely to notice it if you tie the receivable sub-ledger to the general ledger.
Jul 17, 2023 • 1h 10min
Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow
The Disruptorswith Liz Farrfor CPA TrendlinesWhen Scott Scarano lost a few good people at his firm, he knew he needed to change things. Instead of continuing to grow for the sake of growth, he overhauled his management approach
More CPA Trendlines podcasts here.“And things are better now at the firm, because we're not focused on growth,” but instead on “growing everybody,” including himself. By building better habits and finding better ways to do things, his team is growing their bottom line, and a few of the people who left earlier have now returned. “That’s growth I like to see.”
Jul 13, 2023 • 57min
Ira Rosenbloom: With M&A, Nobody Wants a Fixer-Upper
The DisruptorsWith Liz FarrFor CPA TrendlinesIra Rosenbloom has been working in the M&A space for accounting firms for over a decade and says it’s a complicated and exciting time in the M&A space today. “We’re seeing a lot of things that make sense, and a lot of things that are frustrating because they make sense, and a lot of things that make no sense,” he said.Staffing problems on both sides are forcing buyers to be far more selective about the firms they consider buying.More here: https://cpatrendlines.com/?p=112436
Today’s buyers are different in many ways than the sellers. First, Rosenbloom explained, baby boomer sellers tend to like to talk to people, while the younger generations looking to buy firms are “more selective in their communication.” Younger buyers tend to be more entrepreneurial, and “the more that the seller comes across as an entrepreneur, the more interested the buyer is going to be in what's going on,” he added. Buyers are also interested in firms making a break with old methodologies and sellers who “want to invest in the long game," Rosenbloom said.
Jul 10, 2023 • 55min
Jody Padar: Build a Practice that Works for You, Not Vice-Versa.
The DisruptorsWith Liz FarrCPA Trendlines Jody Padar, the author of The Radical CPA, has been shaking things up in the accounting world for years. But today, firms are at a boiling point, limited by supply and demand. “You only have so many people doing the work. And what are you going to do? You can’t make the work up. It’s got to get done," Padar said. More here: https://cpatrendlines.com/?p=113007
The old business model was taking whoever walked in and billing by the hour. But today, we don’t have the capacity. “There’s so much work out there," she explained. "I have not heard any accountants say that they are looking for work. They’re all saying, ‘Stop, go away. I don’t have the resources to serve you.’”She encourages firm leaders to prioritize time to think about what kind of firm they want. “It's really about having a practice that works for you instead of you working for it, right? It's about making sure that you spend time focused on your business and not in your business,” she explained.
Jun 19, 2023 • 43min
Peter Margaritis: Communication is key but can be harder to teach.
The Disruptors With Liz Farr for CPA Trendlines Peter Margaritis, who also calls himself The Accidental Accountant, grew up in the gregarious environment of restaurants, “where everybody communicated, not well, sometimes, but they communicated.” So it was a shock when he went to work at Price Waterhouse, and he “felt that all the air got sucked out of the office, and nobody was communicating at all, and they looked at me like I was crazy.” More here: https://cpatrendlines.com/?p=112394
His crusade for the last decade or so has been to help accountants improve what we often call soft skills, but which he calls power skills: the ability to communicate clearly and effectively with others. “There’s nothing that will slow you down more in your career than a poorly written memo or email or a presentation that you were poorly prepared for,” Margaritis said.
8 snips
Jun 5, 2023 • 1h 1min
BONUS EPISODE: Robert Fligel Explains How Private Equity Is Impacting the Profession
Robert Fligel, CEO and founder of RF Resources, discusses the impact of private equity on CPA firms, including changes to ownership structures and staffing. The podcast explores improving valuation for accounting firms and factors affecting firm attractiveness. It also covers the shrinking number of buyers for smaller firms and the rise of private equity in the profession. Additionally, it discusses starting and growing an accounting practice, including capital requirements and the role of facilitators.
May 31, 2023 • 48min
Joe Montgomery: Find the Sweet Spot of the Right Clients, Right Services and Right Prices
The Disruptors With Liz Farr for CPA TrendlinesBefore Joe Montgomery started his firm, he had an epiphany. He asked himself, “Why would I ever want to own a firm, if that’s what it looks like?” He saw firm leaders chained to their desks, working long hours and dealing with waves of turnover. “There’s got to be a different way to do it,” he thought. More here: https://cpatrendlines.com/?p=111981
After too many 100-hour weeks with a wife and three kids he never saw, he reached his breaking point and exited his family firm to start his own firm and his coaching business, GroupUp. His focus in his accounting firm and in GroupUp is finding that sweet spot of the right clients, right services and right prices. The first step is “making sure we have the right people in the right structure with the right motivators behind it. Those three components can build an unstoppable team," Montgomery explained. Next, he said, “on the client side, we do the right service that's in our wheelhouse, that we can consistently deliver to the right client…and for the right price, so we have enough money coming in the door.”With that structure in place, Montgomery said, firm owners “can get out of production and lead the firm,” changes that can lead to “you running a firm that gives you more freedom.”
May 22, 2023 • 47min
Ryan Lazanis: Build the Firm that Suits Your Lifestyle
The Disruptors With Liz Farr for CPA TrendlinesRyan Lazanis started his previous firm, Xen Accounting, a 100% online accounting firm because he thought he could have a better life if he started his own business. Now, he teaches firm owners from around the world how to build firms that support their lifestyles.More here: https://cpatrendlines.com/?p=111660
“Your business is there to serve your lifestyle. We often lose sight of that,” Lazanis says. Instead, firm owners should think about what makes them happy, and how their business will help them get there."Growing your firm should start with that concrete end in mind. Work backward to see what you should be doing next and how big you want your firm to be. “A lot of firms are able to grow, but to the detriment of someone's work-life balance,” he said. Adding to the top line can also mean “we're driving ourselves into the ground.”Instead, Lazanis wants “to help firm owners create a business model that can scale, where we can add to the top line, but in a more reasonable fashion where we're not adding to our existing workload.”
