Buyers find good deals as Baby Boomers head for the exits.
By Joseph Tarasco
Accountants Advisory Group
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How “take what’s given” works in business.
By Bill Reeb
In the practice of martial arts, the concept of “take what’s given” is drilled in to teach us to respond to what our opponent is offering rather than either following some mental plan we have conjured up or over-relying on our strengths.
MORE: Are You Your Biggest Obstacle? | Why We Risk Change | Learn to Embrace Failure | What Would Make You Happy? | Do You Have a Goal or Just a Speed? | Learn More By Letting Go
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When you have an unfamiliar opponent, both a mental plan and leveraging strengths require information you don’t have to dependably work. In other words, those two options presume superiority – that I know my strengths are greater, or that my plan has all the necessary contingencies to appropriately react to the actions and reactions of my opponent. How could you have this level of knowledge or insight about an unknown opponent?
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Are you building a cathedral or merely breaking stones?
By Bill Penczak
The combination of the summer doldrums and the COVID shutdown has provided some firm leaders pause to get in touch with their right-brainedness.
MORE MARKETING in the COVID ERA: 5 Things Your Firm Should Do Differently This Summer | Do You Have the Guts to Beat the Covid Crisis? | How to Inoculate Your Firm against Covid Competition | ‘Found Money’ Delights Clients | Don’t Buy a Rolodex, Buy a Process | The Three R’s for Beating the Corona Crisis | 6 Reasons Why Your Marketing Sucks |
These are difficult times for the economy and the industry, and while some firms hope to return to the good old days, COVID and other societal changes may cause a long-overdue sea change in the accounting industry, which has been doing the same thing the same way for more than 100 years.
Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to spur fundamental change, and that’s what we’re seeing today.
Some of these might stick around even when they’re no longer necessary.
By Rick Richardson
The coronavirus pandemic has forced everyone to get creative.
Whether through Zoom meetings, online fitness classes or takeout cocktails, companies in nearly every industry are pivoting to get through the crisis.
MORE TECH THIS WEEK: How Your New Car Could Double as a Doctor | House OKs $100 Billion for Rural Broadband | Zoom Will Offer End-to-End Encryption to All Users | castAway Gives Your Smartphone an Extra Screen | An Aging Satellite Returns to Service | Microsoft Gets Ready for a New Era of Windows
But beyond short-term fixes, many innovative new strategies and business models have emerged that are likely to stick, even as many jurisdictions begin to reopen in some capacity.
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Four ways to make sure managing partners will fail.
By Marc Rosenberg
The Rosenberg Practice Management Library
There is an intuitive notion that comes to partners that goes something like this: “Let’s all get together and form a firm that will make us all more successful than any of us could be individually. We’ll follow the principles of democracy by dividing up the management duties so that no one is overburdened. The partners will make decisions as a group, thereby avoiding vesting too much power in one person.”
MORE: Don’t Let Exiting Partners Double Dip | The 13 Signs You Have a Partner Problem | COVID-19, Adversity and Innovation | How Covid Impacts Partner Retirements | Three Tough Questions in Partner Buyouts | Is Mandatory Retirement a Best Practice? | COVID-19: How Your Firm Can Respond
Management by committee is doomed to fail. This list refutes the excuses partners often give for favoring management by committee.
The top ten ‘soft’ factors small business owners are looking for before they buy.
By Laurie McCabe
SMB Group
The best small- and medium-size business know that strong financial planning is essential for survival and growth – especially these days when they’re looking for ways to automate financials, streamline planning and budgeting operations, and provide the visibility they need to steer their businesses through changing market conditions.
MORE on TECH: COVID-19 Sparks Creative New Business Models and Strategies | How to Add Visuals to a Message in MS Teams | How Your New Car Could Double as a Doctor | Composing Text Messages in MS Teams | House OKs $100 Billion for Rural Broadband | When COVID ‘Got Real’ | The COVID Outlook: A Long, Slow Climb back to Recovery | Composing Chats and Posts in MS Teams | Free Service Makes Better Passwords |
The good news for accounting firms is that SMBs are increasingly turning to cloud-based financial solutions that can give them robust capabilities without the hassles of deploying and managing hardware, software, and infrastructure in house. Cloud solutions provide continual access to real-time, consistent information, frequent updates, and continuous innovation. While ERP cloud adoption has trailed in other areas, it’s poised to catch up quickly as businesses get more comfortable with the cloud model.
John Higgin explains how to add visuals to your Teams messages. 
This could be just what your clients need.
By Jody Grunden
Building the Virtual CFO Firm in the Cloud
You may have heard about virtual CFO services. It’s a concept that’s been around for a while now that allows CPAs and accounting firms to offer CFO services to smaller businesses that may not yet be able to afford a full-time CFO.
MORE: The Only 3 Metrics You Need | How to Attract Clients Like a Magnet | 6 Steps for Sales and Conversion | The Right Way to Onboard New Clients | 4 Ways to Bill Clients | How to Evaluate Workflow Management Software
What is a Virtual CFO?
Virtual CFO (or VCFO for short) stands for a virtual chief financial officer. A VCFO provides outsourced accounting services at a high level for businesses.
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Will you be ready when the demographics shift?
By Steven E. Sacks
The NEW Fundamentals
The 2016 presidential campaign had been engulfed in the battle for and against political correctness. What people thought but never verbalized – at least in a large company of people – had made the art of conversation more difficult. College campuses, the bastions of higher learning and the incubator for dissenting opinions resulted in additions to our lexicon, with such terms as “safe places” and “trigger warnings” in order to preclude the rise of “micro-aggression.” Legislation is trailing the changes taking place in the LGBTQ community, and decades after protective laws were passed, there still exist hostile work environments for women and minorities.
MORE: Effective Communications in the Age of COVID | Why Proper Communication Is Critical | How to Create Effective Internal Communications | How to Select Your Firm’s Board | Trust Is a Key Organizational Ingredient | Real Influence Vs. Immediate Gratification | Fake It ‘Til You Make It: An Ultimate Goal? | 4 Ways to Boost Job Satisfaction | Have You Gauged Your Staff’s Enthusiasm? | Why Knowledge Maintenance Is Key
Today’s college students are exposed to greater on-campus diversity than in the days of my contemporaries, so one would think that there would be greater understanding and flexibility in human interaction. This really is not the case. If students think that tough challenges exist on campuses, wait until they graduate and enter the real world.
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Do you agree?
By Hitendra Patil
Accountaneur: The Entrepreneurial Accountant
For years, I have been interacting with accounting firm owners and partners day in, day out from firms of all sizes, all over the country, and catering to a wide variety of industries and professions.
MORE ON ENTREPRENEURIAL STRATEGY: Client Accounting Services Poised to Surge in Post-Corona World | 20 Ways to Grow Your Firm in 2020 | 3,771 Accountants Help Uncover CAS Success Secrets | A.I. vs. Auditors | How to Be Ready for Real Artificial Intelligence | How Accountants Can Ride the Artificial Intelligence Wave | Blockchain: What You Need to Know Now
Some have been in practice for several years. Some are just starting. But all of them are seeking success at the top of their agenda.
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