Today's Features
LEADERSHIP

Growing and Developing Future Leaders Is a Two-Way Street

Businessman with briefcase riding on rocket5 leadership skills to hone and 4 questions to ask about your firm.

By Carrie Steffen
Bridging the Gap

Bemoaning a lack of future leaders within the firm is not a solution to the perceived problem. Instead, it behooves current leaders to identify and nurture potential leaders, helping them develop the relevant skills and clearly communicate a defined path to leadership as well as expectations for applying targeted competencies. Young professionals with aspirations of leadership, in turn, must embrace opportunities and demonstrate willingness to meet current leaders partway.

MORE: They Don’t Want to Be Owners! | The Culture of Continuous Improvement | A Winning Culture Is an Intentional Culture | A Call for Change: An Open Letter to Each Generation
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Firms are at a crossroad when it comes to transitioning to the next generation of leaders. According to the CPACA study on Succession Readiness, 48.3 percent of firms of all sizes cite “lack of future leadership talent” as a primary obstacle in their succession.
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THE RADICAL CPA

Narrow Your Social Focus

Young concentrated businessman writing notes down and looking at laptop in officePick one thing and do it well rather than try to be everywhere.

By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA

Each social media channel has its own language, culture and dialect. You need to make sure that your culture (aka your voice and how you post) matches the specific channel, otherwise it’s going to seem awkward.

MORE ON RADICALISM: Why Transparency Matters to Clients | Social + Strategy = Success | Make the Cloud Work for You | 5 Ways to Capitalize on Trends | Embrace Disruption | Who’s Your Competition? EVERYONE | Radical or Complacent? You Choose
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Social media has to be understood and used properly and even though you’re going to be experimenting there are also some unwritten rules. Make sure that you’re fol­lowing the basic rules of the social media channel you’re using.
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TALENT & CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Get Better, Work Better, Right Now

Businessman looking at calendar on tabletYou have an obligation to yourself. Put it on your calendar if that's what it takes.

By Bill Reeb

Whatever you decide you want to improve or accomplish takes effort. Relationships take effort. Your job takes effort. Having fun takes effort.

MORE: Stay in the Present | Investing in Loss | You Might Be Your Biggest Obstacle | What to Stop May Be More Important Than What to Do | Stop Wishing Your Life Away | Don’t Let Inertia Determine Your Direction | What Does ‘Getting Stuck’ or ‘Being Stuck’ Mean?
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Know that whatever is important to you could easily start to wither away if you don’t give it the right amount of attention.
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TAX PRACTICE

Life Change As Opportunity

Senior businessman mentoring two younger workersEven traumatic times may open a window to be a hero to your clients ... with sensitivity, of course.

By Randy Fox
Ez Charitable

Life is always full of change. As advisors, we see our clients go through regular changes: new jobs, children heading off to college, death of a parent or birth of a grandchild.

MORE: Opportunity Under Your Nose | Opportunities in Collectibles | TRPIF Is One of the Best Kept Secrets in Planning | 1031 and Done: What CPAs Need to Know about the New 1031 Changes
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Viewed through a different lens, change presents opportunity to raise the questions about philanthropy. In many circumstances, philanthropy can be the best solution to the change that’s taking place, if only we will think to ask.
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THE RADICAL CPA

Accodex Sets Up a Platform for Practice Management

Portrait of Chris Hooper
Hooper

The goal: admit new partners without bottlenecks.

By Kayleigh Padar

Chris Hooper, the CEO and managing partner of Accodex, recently redesigned the firm’s business model to respond to clients’ changing accounting needs. The firm operates in four areas: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Philippines. It is made up of over 50 employees.

MORE ON RADICALISM: The Persona: A Closer Look | Happy Tax: Why You Need to Know Its Name | 3 Challenges in Shifting to Product Management | Tips from a Veteran Product Manager | Productized 1099s the New Vision Way | Karbon Builds a Practice Management Platform on Steroids | Why Our Clients Need Us to Be Radical | Introducing the Fifth Radical Tenet: The Business Model | Dear Midsized Firms: Yes, You Can Change
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“I started with a small practice in 2011 in Australia,” Hooper said. “It was 100 percent cloud, fixed fee, global from the get-go. There wasn’t really a need to change those fundamentals.”
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THE PARTNERSHIP

Buyout When a Partner Dies

Older businessman leaning back thinkingIs the firm's life insurance up to date? Probably not.

By Marc Rosenberg

It's a tough question, but one that must be asked: In the event of a partner's death, does the firm wish to accelerate the buyout?

MORE: When Votes Must Be Taken, What Are the Options? | Why Voting Isn’t Such a Big Deal | What’s in a (Firm) Name? | Protect Your Business with a Solid Partner Agreement
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There are two ways to do so: accelerate vesting or accelerate the payment schedule.
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MARKETING & SALES

How Long Does It Take to Rank?

Person using search engine on laptopFocus on getting it right, not fast.

By Becky Livingston
The Accountant’s Social Media Handbook

There are many schools of thought about the length of time it takes to rank on the first page of Google’s (or Bing’s) search.

MORE: What Is SEO and Why Is It Important? |  Social Media Marketing for CPAs [VIDEO] | Craft a Social Media Influencer Strategy | 10 Steps to Creating Employee Brand Advocates with Social Media | What ‘Social Sentiment’ Is and Why You Should Care | How to Build a Strong Landing Page for an Accounting Firm | How to Set Up a Social Media Plan | DIY Design for Social Media | Tailor Content to Social Media Platform | How to Track Who’s Clicking Your Links
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According to Website Muscle, “The average time for websites to rank on Google through optimization (SEO) techniques is about three to six months.”
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TECHNOLOGY

Offsite Backup Is Critical

Computer hard driveDon't forget about encryption.

By Roman H. Kepczyk
Quantum of Paperless

Your firm’s safety net in the event of ANY disaster is your data backup. It had better be consistently performed and securely stored offsite.

MORE: How the Cloud Plays into Scheduled Server Replacement | Some Firms Dumping Desktop Computers | Roman Kepczyk: Inside The Quantum of Paperless
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Typically, firms have a problem when the process they relied on to make the backups didn’t work or were not complete because new servers, drives or directories were added but not updated in the backup program.
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TECHNOLOGY

New Technology Purifies Water Using Sunlight

Abstract water wave with bubblesIt's going into a solar still.

By Rick Richardson

A new, low-cost technology could provide drinking water in regions where resources are scarce, or where natural disasters have struck.

MORE TECH THIS WEEK: Your Next Bank Card Might Have a Fingerprint Scanner Built In | New Lidar Sensor Slashes Cost, Boosts Production | IBM Has Created a Computer Smaller Than a Grain of Salt | Solar Panels Generate Power from Falling Raindrops | Google, Rolls-Royce to Create Self-Piloting Ships | Blockchain Corporate Strategies [VIDEO]
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Scientists have developed a new technology that uses the sunlight to purify water with near-perfect efficiency.
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CANNABIS

PODCAST: John Repetti and Mitzi Hollenbeck of Citrin Cooperman

Click the player above to Play, Stop, Restart, Download, Like and Share.

Citrin Cooperman takes on the cannabis niche.

We catch up with the Citrin Cooperman executives at their booth at MJBizCon Next in New Orleans about why they took the plunge and how the calls keep coming.

Get more CPA Trendlines podcasts here.
And more on the cannabis niche at CPA Trendlines cannabizcpa.pro

 

THE RADICAL CPA

Happy Tax: Why You Need to Know Its Name

Fixing the broken retail tax prep model.

By Kayleigh Padar

What if tax CPAs charged labor for a platform and were not even a firm, but part of a franchise and technology play?

MORE ON RADICALISM: Product Management: Start with These 6 Steps | CSH’s Brad Self on Revolutionizing HR | Father, Son Team Up to Capitalize on Capacity | Going Deeper into Product Management | Dean Quiambao: ‘If You’re Not Disrupting, You’re Not Doing It Right’ | Josh Zweig’s LiveCA Offers New Thinking from the Ground Up | How ‘Agile’ Applies to CPA Firms
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This is the story of Happy Tax. And it is changing the nature of our business as we know it.
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TALENT & CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Stay in the Present

business meeting of a woman and two menThis goes for both your business and personal lives.

By Bill Reeb

Have you ever caught yourself daydreaming and realized a significant amount of time has passed while you were on autopilot and you can’t remember any details in between?

MORE: Investing in Loss | Constantly Build on the Basics | From Martial Arts to Business: 5 Steps of Evolution | Expect and Embrace Failure Anytime You Do New Work | Determining Your Desires Should Be an Active Process | Know Where You Are Running To
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In the beginning, when I was driving back and forth between Austin and Arlington when Michaelle was earning her Ph.D., I found that there were times when my mind would get immersed in a topic and when I came back to the present, I might have driven between 50 and 100 miles. I couldn’t remember passing through cities. I did make the drive often, so the road was familiar, but what a scary thought that I was driving a death machine at 70 miles an hour on a crowded freeway and had no recollection of my navigation for such a long distance.
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