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
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.”
May 16, 2023 • 56min
Marie Greene: With Staffing, Lose Bad Apples Before Ruining the Bunch
The DisruptorsWith Liz FarrMarie Greene founded Connected Accounting in 2019 out of a desire to create a new kind of accounting firm where firm culture and “reliable, reliable, reliable” customer service were the highest priorities.MORE HERE: https://cpatrendlines.com/?p=111335“What is your culture? Who do you want to have on your team?” are questions leaders need to consider when seeking out new team members or deciding who to fire, says Greene. She advises firm owners to remember the message it sends when poor performers are retained because “the good people also leave because you keep the bad apples.”
May 8, 2023 • 41min
Menlo Innovations: Improve Office Culture by Overhauling Internal Reviews
Staff and employee annual reviews help assess where teams need additional help, guidance and development. If only they weren't so painful...Enter Menlo Innovations, an IT consulting firm and custom software development firm that appears to have found a better way to analyze team performance and deliver constructive feedback.
May 1, 2023 • 43min
Megan Genest Tarnow: Hire for Curiosity Rather Than Compliance
The Disruptors With Liz Farrfor CPA TrendlinesMegan Genest Tarnow is well-known in accounting circles as the go-to expert in using QuickBooks for the fund accounting required by nonprofit entities.
Full episode notes here: https://cpatrendlines.com/?p=108914
See all CPA Trendlines multimedia productions here: https://cpatrendlines.com/category/video,podcast/
Many of the best accountants she knows have come from non-traditional backgrounds like dance or philosophy. Megan worked in theater for several years before being thrust into a finance role. Like her, these non-traditional accountants apply their native curiosity to understand how the pieces fit together. By leaning into the work and asking questions, they uncover an unknown aptitude for accounting, suggesting that perhaps we should hire for curiosity rather than compliance knowledge.
Apr 18, 2023 • 56min
Twyla Verhelst: Firms Must Get Creative to Compete
With Liz FarrCreating the firm you want means you have to be intentional about it, said Twyla Verhelst, CPA. The head of Accountant Channel at FreshBooks and creator of Women in Accounting Mentorship said the first step is getting clear on your why, your firm’s why and your team’s why so you can approach growth more intentionally. More from CPA Trendlines here: https://cpatrendlines.com/category/podcast/She said CPAs should be asking, "Why is it that a particular goal appeals to you?" "Is that the right thing to be working toward now?" "What will you do to get there?"
Apr 17, 2023 • 48min
Donny Shimamoto: Future Firm Growth Requires a Mindshift
Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, says that one of the COVID pandemic’s benefits is accelerating technology adoption.With the ongoing talent crunch, technology is one of the ways firms can get the work done with fewer people, as firm owners seek to create a sustainable balance “because we can’t keep going the way that we’re going.”
Apr 17, 2023 • 46min
Hitendra Patil: No New Tech. No New Growth.
The silver lining of the pandemic is that it forced accountants to move to the cloud and to develop distributed labor models, changes that are here to stay, Hitendra Patil, author of Client Accounting Services: The Definitive Success Guide, tells CPA Trendines in the latest episode of The Disruptors.
Apr 10, 2023 • 46min
Transformation Talks with Chase Birky: Firms waste time and money recreating the wheel.
Produced by the Center for Accounting Transformation. Presented by CPA Trendlines. Entrepreneurs in the accounting profession are rare, according to Chase Birky, president and CEO of Dark Horse CPAs. And he should know.
More here: https://cpatrendlines.com/2023/04/10/chase-birky-paralysis-by-analysis-plagues-the-profession/
He had to take an uncomfortable step outside of his own comfort zone to become one.After starting out in audit at a Big 4 right out of college, he decided it was no longer what he wanted to do."I started an audit specifically, you know, not really having a great idea of what audit truly was, you know, because you take the courses in your undergrad, and you know, you have a section of it on the CPA exam," Birky explained. "But what that material is versus what the job is, you know, are two very different things."That motivated Birky to begin a partnership in a firm that specialized in tax and client accounting services (though he added it probably was not called CAS then).Unfortunately, that didn't work the way he hoped, either.However, as Birky reminds us, necessity is the mother of invention.
