The best firms build accountability cultures, develop climbers, and make tough calls.
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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
for CPA Trendlines
“Some firms dream of being great but only are willing to make the commitment to be good,” Allan Koltin, CEO of Koltin Consulting Group, says in the new episode of Gear Up for Growth with host Jean Caragher. “Leadership is the delta that separates all.”
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Koltin says the gap between elite firms and average firms keeps widening, and leadership is the defining factor. Widely recognized as one of the profession’s top consultants, he argues that firms chasing high performance must stop avoiding hard decisions, embrace accountability, and rethink what leadership means.
“You can have the same clients, same talent pool, same market opportunities, and one firm ends up in the upper quartile while another struggles,” Koltin says. “The difference is leadership.”
Best-Performing Leaders Build Accountability Cultures
Koltin says today’s best CPA firm leaders no longer operate by consensus-driven partnership models where difficult decisions stall indefinitely.
“Great firms have a structure to make tough decisions fast,” he says. “Too many firms are still discussing the same issues year after year without taking action.”
High-performing leaders create accountability across the organization and align partners around what is best for the firm rather than individual autonomy, Koltin says. “The willingness to be managed is one of the biggest separators between elite firms and average firms.”
Leadership Means Developing Others — Not Just Producing
Koltin also challenges the traditional definition of partner success, arguing that the best leaders stop focusing solely on personal production and concentrate on helping others grow.
“Leadership is getting results through others,” he says. “If you hold on to all the business, all the relationships, and all the control, you’re leading with one hand tied behind your back.”
He describes elite firms as cultures filled with “climbers” — professionals committed to continuous growth, improvement, and specialization.
“Bring it on,” Koltin says, describing the mindset of high-performing partners. “Don’t flatter me with what I did great. Tell me what I need to work on.”
Trust and Respect Are Essential Leadership Traits
Throughout the discussion, Koltin returns to the importance of trust, courage, and authenticity.
“You can’t be loved, and you may not even be liked,” he says. “But you do have to be trusted and respected.”
Many managing partners struggle because they prioritize harmony over performance and avoid confronting underperformance within the partnership, he says.
“Because we are nice people, we tolerate a lot of crap,” Koltin says. “Breaking up is hard to do. Tough decisions are darn near impossible for some firms.”
He also warns firms against believing their own marketing.
“Sometimes we put lipstick on the pig and start believing our own BS,” he says. “The best firms are brutally honest about what they are, what they are not, and what needs to change.”
More takeaways:
- Elite firms build a structure to make hard decisions fast. Average firms keep tabling the same issues year after year.
- The willingness to be managed — accountability over autonomy — is one of the biggest separators between top-quartile and bottom-quartile firms.
- Leadership is getting results through others. Partners who hold on to every client and relationship lead with one hand tied behind their back.
- Great firms are full of “climbers” who ask what they need to work on, not “cruisers” content to coast.
- A managing partner does not have to be liked, but must be trusted and respected — and brave enough to confront underperformance.
About Allan Koltin
Allan Koltin is the CEO of Koltin Consulting Group and is widely recognized as one of the accounting profession’s most influential advisers on firm growth, leadership, and mergers and acquisitions. He was the first guest on Gear Up for Growth, in August 2024.
Transcript
Jean: Hello. Thank you for joining “Gear Up for Growth”, powered by CPA Trendlines. I’m Jean Caragher, president of Capstone Marketing, and your host. I’d like to welcome back today’s guest, Allan Koltin, CEO of Koltin Consulting Group. Allan, you were guest number one on Gear Up for Growth back in August of 2024. So, thank you for joining me again.
Allan: Thank you, Jean. And my gosh, I can only imagine, how many of these have you done now?
Jean: We’re at about 65.
Allan: Oh, who would have thought?
Jean: We’re getting there. I forget the percentage of podcasts that actually get to 100 episodes. So, we’re more than halfway there.
Allan: Oh, my gosh, that’s like United Airlines. You’re going to be 1k pretty soon. That’s fantastic.
Jean: Oh, gosh. Well, Allan, we’ve known each other since 1986. I can’t believe that that’s 40 years. But here we are. And I think we’re still doing pretty good.
Allan: Absolutely, absolutely. Forty years in the desert, right? Oh, my God. Yeah, when you think of how archaic and backwards things were as it relates to practice growth and running it like a business, I mean, it’s almost like the Dark Ages. Like you almost don’t want to tell stories from those days because no one will believe them.
Jean: It’s an entirely different world, right? I remember… So, of course you know, I started in accounting marketing at a Long Island firm named Israeloff, Trattner and Company. Bob Israeloff was the managing partner. And he came back from one of those conferences and said, “You know, we need to organize our clients by SIC code so we would know the clients we had in different industries and how then we could market to those different industries.” So, for 1986, that was almost revolutionary. But we also didn’t have computers, right? So, of course, we did it. But can you imagine the time it took to do it then as opposed to now it could be, you know, like that.
Allan: Yeah. Well, I mean, so much of that was coming off the 1980 Bates decision, which up until 1980, you weren’t allowed to solicit business. And then they finally said you can, as long as it’s not false, misleading, or deceptive. And the ’80s, you were one of the first pioneers to become a director of marketing. And then we got into the ’90s, and it was director of business development. And then we got into the ’10s and industry specialization. And today, when I think of the sophistication of how we win business and how we measure success in firms, I mean, partner compensation was three things. How much business did you bring in? What’s the size of your book of business? And what’s your billable hours?
And that was in most accounting firms in the ’80s and 90s, that was 97% of… And today it’s a whole other world. You know, we talk about highest and best use and we play roles in our firms and we do what we have expertise in, what we have potential to get better at, and what our passion is. It’s just a whole different world. And probably the biggest is, in those days, the partners ran the firm. In most successful CPA firms today, the firm runs the partners. And that…
Jean: Well, yeah, we’re going to talk a little bit more about that because we’re going to focus our conversation today on high performing partners, right, and best leadership practices. And in the ’80s, we saw a lot of firm startups, managers, or even partners leaving bigger firms and starting their own firms. And I saw the study you were involved with, with Inside Public Accounting, about the IPA 200 firms formed between ’95 and 2005, and how few of them were founded after 1995. And I know that’s a select group, you’re looking at the IPA 200. But I also find in general that there are not nearly as many CPAs leaving firms and starting up their own firms. Would you agree? And what’s your thought about that?
Allan: Yeah, it’s actually staggering. We worked with Chelsea and Chris on that study. And, yes, we looked at the top 200, but I’m not sure if we even went to the top 500, which would be firms of revenue of $6 million or more, that the findings would be that different. We literally could count on less than two hands the number of accounting firm startups from the year 2000 to today that were in the top 200. And I reflect back to, I wasn’t practicing in the ’70s, but in the ’80s and ’90s of how many new firms started. And it’s almost like you could put it on a graph and it just goes like this. And it begs the question, why?
And some have suggested, well, look at the number of people entering public accounting. That line was going like this. That would explain it up to some point. I think number two is I think accounting, because of that, maybe fell a little bit out of favor as there were so many choices of what accountants can do when they come out of college today. In those days, you either become an accountant in public accounting or private industry. Today, there’s 72 other options that they can go into. And none of the least is the consulting and advisory practices of most accounting firms. Kids coming with accounting majors today are bypassing audit, they’re bypassing tax, and they want to go because it’s sexy into transaction advisory or the risk management business or financial services, whatever it may be.
So, you have all those things going on. But, yeah, at the end of the day, it’s surprising. There is one exception, if you think about it, Jean, probably the CAS space, which is easy to enter. I mean, if you look at accounting today or inside public accounting, that is a growth area is going like this. And the amazing stuff about business now, people are concerned that that could be the number one area that gets disrupted because of AI technology. Go figure. You can’t win. But, yeah, it’s the startup scene.
Jean: Right. I mean, also, CAS, I don’t want to downplay CAS, but don’t you think that’s a rebrand of what accountants have been telling everybody they’ve been doing forever? How advisory they are?
Allan: One hundred percent. In those days, we called it bookkeeping, and a lot of it was manual with some level of technology, but nothing compared to the ease and professionalism and sophistication of what can be produced today. I think the wave on CAS today is industry specialization. When we look at the highest performing firms, they own an industry. They are only doing CAS for dental practices, for family office, for non-for-profits, for cannabis, for oil and gas, for life sciences. So, we call it a double major, an expert in a service line and an expert in an industry. Very powerful combination.
Jean: Right, yeah. And we’ve been proclaiming about niche marketing forever, right? For some, it’s taken them a bit to get the message, but perhaps combining it with that specific service is helpful for practitioners to embrace.
Allan: Yeah, absolutely.
Jean: So, the lack of startups, you’ve mentioned a couple of reasons, but is that also impacted by lack of leadership or entrepreneurship or other factors? Is there maybe just not the motivation as much as it used to be to want to run and build your own firm?
Allan: I think, you know, and everybody’s got their commentary on this, you know, the 150-hour rule scared off a lot of people. That’s now changing. I think when I look at the salary grade of what a first year accountant gets versus what they could get in other disciplines using their accounting background, like investment banking, like private equity, like going into data analytics, going into real estate, going into financial services, going into wealth management. I mean, that world, historically, didn’t exist back in the prior century. And our wage hasn’t kept up.
And there is lockstep. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves. How many times do we see a superstar leaving public accounting and saying, “Wow, that was crazy. They told me I’m performing at a supervisor level, but I have to stay at the senior level for one more year to serve time.” Or, “The manager gets to talk on the client calls. I have to sit there with the line through my Zoom because I’m not there, yet.” So, there’s still this lockstep. Some firms have said, “That’s stupid. If we get a superstar, we’re going to game the system. We’re going to give them the best clients, the fastest growth, the best compensation, the fastest promotions. We’re not losing them.” But that thinking is still the exception, not the rule.
Jean: Right. So, that’s an example of how leaders are not changing with the times like you’ve just described, that they really need to open their eyes and look at the big picture here and how the world is different.
Allan: Oh, don’t get me started with this functionality of the partnership model. I will tell you that this is a great debate that goes on with my friends that still have partnerships. And I will say, yes, you have a partnership structure, but you run it like a corporation. Things come to a point. There’s a CEO, there’s a C-suite, there’s department heads. They have the authority to make tough decisions, lots of decisions, fast decisions. You’re running a business. And so, we find all too often that there are way, way too many partnerships still not built for speed. And everything comes to a point. If there’s seven partners and one says no, they kick the can. And it gets on the agenda for next year’s partner retreat.
Jean: Yeah, right. Crazy, crazy. Now, you recently did a podcast with Kacee Johnson. And one of the quotes that you shared in that podcast was, “Great leadership impacts and changes the culture to fit what kind of firm you want to be.” Tell us more about that.
Allan: Yeah. You know, let me define leadership just so we’re on the same playing field with it. To me, leadership, management, to me, it’s all one and the same. It’s doing one of two things. It’s getting results through others. That means that it can’t be me, me, me. You’re giving that up. You’re giving up the world you grew up with, which was personal production, business origination, book of business, billable hours. And you’re now going to get rid of that, because if you hold on to it, then you’re doing leadership with one hand tied behind your back. And that’s not a strategy for success.
Now, I understand if you’re a $1 million to $5 million firm, you probably need a day job and a night job. But as you have plans to or migrate to a $7, $8, $10, $15 million firm, clearly, just like your clients, running a $7 to $15 million business should be a full-time job. So, getting results through others, and maybe at the deeper level, Jean, it’s getting people to a place they can’t get on their own. Coaching, looking at someone’s potential and saying, are they in the right seat on the bus? And what can we do to take advantage of what we call the X factor?
The X factor is, this is the potential of the partner. This is where they’re performing. And it gets into some heavy stuff like, do they want to get better? You’ve heard me talk about the tree of growth. You’ve got the three kinds of partners. You’ve got the content. They look at the tree of growth and they say, “Good enough. I don’t want to do anything more. Don’t bring in that crazy consultant to talk to me. Just pay me a fair wage for what I do. As far as I’m concerned, I made partner. I’m like a tenured professor. Leave me alone.” There’s the second one, which great firms are made of, and that’s the climber. They want to get better. “Bring it on. Don’t flatter me with what I did great. Tell me what I got to work on. I want to be worth more to the firm. I want to be worth more to my clients. And I want to develop more expertise and specialization and become a better high performing partner.” When you’ve got a culture of those versus content or cruisers, as we like to call them, you can do something with it.
But at the end of the day, the third C is the crazy. They climb that tree of growth and they jump to the next tree and they’re changing the goals. They’re changing the rules all the time. We see that a lot in the first generation firms, the crazy founder. What has to happen in the flip to the second generation is they either get the next crazy, who was the understudy of, you know, the first crazy, or there’s a crazy culture. It’s the desire to be best in class. You know, when inside public accounting puts out the profit per equity partner, and then they say, here’s in the upper 10% what it is. I think last year was a million five per equity partner. Very good is $800,000, good is $500,000, and not so good is maybe something. And obviously, market size matters and all that.
But the Inside Public Accounting, when they do the annual benchmarking survey, the numbers don’t lie. There’s an upper quartile. There’s a secondary quartile, which I’ll call very good. Anything below that is underperforming. You know, the third quartile, I always hear, “Well, we made a lot of strategic investments, and therefore, that came out of profit per partner.” To which I say, “Well, wait a sec. The firm in the first quadrant said the same thing. They made the same number of investments, same percentage, but it wasn’t an or, it’s an and.” So, best performing is investing and doing what you need to do to be a great firm for tomorrow and still making money.
The bottom quartile, you know, I always say, the beauty of public accounting, as long as you don’t do a bad audit or tax return, you can stay in the game forever. And we consultants, me and you, always have to be very careful not to rain on anyone’s parade. There are lots of firms out there in the bottom quartile and they are happy. So, you have to really talk about the culture you have, the success you could have, but then apply reality. What is it you really, really want to achieve? Some firms dream of being great, but only are willing to make the commitment to be good. Some firms want to be great, but only have the talent to be good. And the hardest conversation is when the leader is average.
You know, think about getting hired by a CEO or a managing partner to come in. And my favorite story always is the KatzAbosch firm, Alvin Katz who you probably remember. He loves to tell the story. I hired Koltin to come in to evaluate our firm. And next thing I knew, he fired me. Now, he became the chairman. And we just said, “You know what? We got to shake it up. Let’s go bring Mark in. Let Mark be the person.” So, yeah, all firms, and you know this, you literally could work the same hours, have the same clients, have the same talent pool, why does one end up in the upper quartile, not working any more hours? And why does one end up in the bottom quartile? Leadership. Leadership to me is the Delta that separates all.
Jean: Right, absolutely. Because the fireside chat you did with Levenfeld Pearlstein, hope I’m pronouncing that correctly.
Allan: Yeah, you are.
Jean: You said that leadership is seeing something that doesn’t exist and saying how you’re going to rally the team to get there. And I believe that’s exactly what you were just talking about. So, the leader, the managing partner needs to have that vision of how he or she sees the future of the firm and enables everybody, to motivate, or rally them around that call.
Allan: Yeah. Jean, two comments. Number one, and we’re old enough that we remember the great consultant of the last generation, David Maister. David Maister published all these wonderful books. And it took me about a decade after reading an article which he called The Willingness to be Managed. The willingness to be managed starts with the two ways. And it’s not that swear word that begins with an A. But there’s autonomy and there’s accountability. When I go through the highest performing firms in America, and there are exceptions just like anything, the more accountable you are for setting goals, having your compensation tied to those goals, doing what’s best for the firm first, your team second, you individually third, those firms run circles around the other A, which is total autonomy. “I’m a tenured professor, I’m a partner, I’ll do whatever I want.” And willingness to be managed is the separation to be held accountable.
Jean: And we know that’s a big word, right? The accountability is a big word. I knew that word was going to come up in this conversation. And just to show you, so when I was a kid, I was a huge New York Knicks fan. Growing up on Long Island, loved the Knicks. And then of course, I moved around to all these different and all as well. Now, as we know, the Knicks are going into the NBA finals, having beaten Cleveland four games in a row. And when they were… The analysts last night were saying, they mentioned this, Coach Brown and the Knicks accountability contract, and what a difference that made for the Knicks. They got Jalen Brunson, and they built this team around this player. And everybody had an accountability contract. Now, maybe that’s something that every team had. I just thought that was so interesting.
Allan: Yeah, I mean, it’s funny you bring up Jalen Brunson. My oldest son, Jack, who is a second year associate at Levenfeld Pearlstein in grade school. That was the other high school, Stevenson and Jack was at New Trier and had the privilege or lack of privilege to cover Jalen Brunson. And we saw him as far back as sixth, seventh and eighth grade and the discipline to be great. He wouldn’t just practice, it was perfect practice. And when we watch him today, we think about when he was in 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th grade, taking 1,000 shots a day, and not just doing what many like to do, just going and shooting. He was already at that age, choreographing, having someone on him, having to stop and shoot, and this and that. And that discipline is what I believe he brought into the Knicks locker room. And now, they’re a team and they hold each other accountable. And he is the X factor. There’s no question he was going to win the most valuable player, maybe the most valuable player of the league. So, I’m pulling for him. I’m pulling for you.
Jean: Yay! Go Knicks!
Allan: By the time this airs, we’ll see how far they can go.
Jean: It’s been a long time. Yeah, yeah, we’re excited. So, what leadership mistakes do you see happening most often in CPA firms? You’ve probably mentioned some already, but other big mistakes that pop out to you?
Allan: The biggest one I hear so many firms pound their chest and talk about that they’re fiercely independent.
Jean: That’s the new thing now.
Allan: Yeah. And I’m like, “You’re chasing the wrong thing.” And they say, “What do you mean?” I say, “Well, I get that, that you didn’t take private equity or merge up. To me, that’s a capitalization issue. It’s an ownership issue. But I sit in your meetings with your partners and every time the next new idea comes up, it’s a stalemate. You are not fiercely independent. You are dependent on partners that strategically don’t line up with doing what’s best for the firm and what will produce a higher performing firm.” We use the analogy, are you a country? Everyone puts their hand in the middle. Leadership says, “We’re going to charge 6% on the invoice of the invoice amount.” And other firms are doing it. And a partner or two raises their hand and says, “No, my clients will never go for that.” And another one says, “Well, heck, if Joe’s not doing it, I’m not doing it either.” Whereas had they done that on a $20 million business, you know, $6 million is a million too to the bottom line.
The most profitable firms don’t sell illegal tax shelters or work like sweatshops. Profitability is a lot of little things done continuously with a discipline and focus wrapped around them. That’s the secret sauce. Great leadership makes sure that that happens. So, I say to firms, “Stop talking to me about fiercely independent. The question you need to attack is, do you want to be a best in class, high performing firm?” And if you’ve got a partner or two that’s holding us back, we probably have to exit that partner. But because we are nice people, we tolerate a lot of crap. We tolerate sometimes decades of crap that we put up with. Breaking up is hard to do. Tough decisions is darn near impossible. So, don’t get me started on that.
Jean: I know. Yeah, we could go on and on about that, right?
Allan: You know, I’ll get a call to come back to do another partner retreat. And you know where I’m going with this. I said, “I was with you four years ago. Send me the minutes of last year’s meeting and the to do list.” And I look at it and I said, “Where have I seen this Broadway play before?” And then I go in the file and I pull out 2022. It’s the same thing. You’re still talking about the same crap. I says, “You can have your retreat. I’m not coming. I’m not going to do this so that in 2030 we can look at it again.” Like, no, we’re going to lock the doors. We’re going to throw the keys out and we’re not leaving till we make a bloody decision. Great firms have a structure to make tough decisions fast, hard decisions fast.
Jean: The word that just popped into my head when you said that was bravery. You know, the managing partner leaders, they need to be brave and to lead their partners and not accept the crap. And perhaps accept that not everybody’s going to like them all the time. You know, maybe it really is just a personal thing that they want to be liked and they don’t want to be the bad person, you know, introducing these new ideas in this changing industry.
Allan: Yeah, we have a mutual friend. It was his birthday yesterday. He’s now retired. And I, for many, many years facilitated their partner retreats. And, you know, we do that survey up front of the partners on the 20 things that matter. And one of the questions is, are you happy with the performance of the CEO? And the CEO says to me, he said, you know, “I thought I was doing okay, but oh, my God, look at my ratings. It’s off the chart.” And I said to the managing partner, “You’re doing a crappy job. You’ve gone from being a country to a country club. I’m not blaming it all on you because you can only do what the partners are willing to allow it to happen, but you have gone from this high performing firm to sort of a firm in cruise control.”
So, oftentimes I say, you can’t be loved, you may not even be liked, but you do have to be trusted and you do have to be respected. They can bitch about you a lot and they can say, “Why are you picking on me? Go pick on so-and-so.” But when they come to realize that the firm comes first and they need to listen to the, call it the conductor of the orchestra, call it the quarterback of the football team, whatever it is, that’s what you have to do. Great firms line up. They’re role players. They know their sweet spot. They know their expertise. They know what they’re not good at. And they also are willing to take personal risk.
What’s the biggest personal risk, Jean, in a professional service firm? I think it’s bringing in business, having a big book of business, then getting rid of it, and transferring it to others. You’ve heard the analogy of hunter and farmer. The most valuable partner to me outside of a great leader is the hunter that goes and brings it in, but never holds it, pushes it off, and feeds others so they can farm the book. And what do they do? They go back into risk mode again and go out and try to build. We know that the basics of successful accounting firms, when you stop growing or you have slow growth, you hold on to crap. And eventually you have…
Jean: And you take in more crap.
Allan: Yes, yes. You pray, right, you pray that you can convert it over.
Jean: Right, right, absolutely. One more question before our lightning round. You had mentioned that as the number one thing that managing partners need to do is to gain the trust of the majority of the partners in the firm. And you just used that word trust. What’s the best way for managing partners to gain that trust?
Allan: Yeah. So, it’s a two-prong question. When we do leadership succession for firms, there are two major eliminators. Partners have to be trusted, partners also have to be respected. And those are two very different skills. Trust is, do you have my backside covered? If I expose myself to you and do take risk, do I know you’ll be there for me? I trust you. I know you’ve got my best interests at hand. That takes sometimes years or decades. Rarely does it work when you bring an outsider in as the professional CEO, because they’ve never built that base of trust.
The second is, do I respect your business savviness? Are you great at getting results of how we grow, how we make money, our culture, all the things that matter? Do you have the skill set? So, the skill set is more about the respect. The trust is more, I’m willing to go there because I trust you. Oftentimes when we’re looking at different candidates, somewhere along the line, they did something really stupid, or they did something stupid multiple times, and it’s eliminator. We can’t get them on board to be that leader. So, yeah.
Jean: Right, okay. Okay, so this is our lightning round.
Allan: Wonderful.
Jean: Okay, so we’re looking for quick, quick answers, all right? So, when you’re meeting with partners or you’re networking, what’s the question that you’re asked most often?
Allan: The question I ask them or the question they ask me?
Jean: No, the question they ask you.
Allan: The question they ask me is, our average equity partner comp is X, how does that compare with other firms of similar size and similar markets? And you know what I say to them? I don’t have a clue because I don’t know everything else going on. Are you building and investing a better firm today for tomorrow? Using a David Maister term, are you an asset milker or an asset builder? I need to know more about that before I can answer the question.
Jean: Okay.
Allan: I will tell you the question I ask them.
Jean: Okay.
Allan: It’s May 26, 2026. I want you to pretend it’s May 26, 2029, three years from today. And Jean, I want you to dream about the goals that you have for you personally and professionally. And then I want you to walk me back all the action steps that you’d have to engage in to make those things a reality. You’ve now given me your playbook. I can coach you. I can work with you. If I don’t know that about you, whether you’re a peer, a prospect, a client or referral source, I can’t build a relationship with you.
Jean: Right. Yeah. That’s a great question. Because that requires a plan. And we also know how a lot of CPA’s feel about plans, whether that’s a marketing plan or a strategic plan or an HR plan or technology, whatever it is, right? They’re really not fans, right? So, biggest opportunity for CPA firms?
Allan: I think this is going to be, the next couple of years, the greatest separation we’ve ever had between great, good, and not so good. So, the answer is we need to migrate from being the most trusted advisor or newsflash. If a client doesn’t trust you, they don’t use you. We go back long enough. In the ’80s, our mantra was, we’re a quality firm. In the ’90s, we’re family friendly. In the ’10s, it was we’re a technology company. In the ’20s, we’re the trusted advisor. The great firms are going to be the most valuable advisor.
Because as you know, by May 26, 2030, we will no longer us accountants preparing financial statements or tax returns. And it begs the question, what will you be doing? And I believe that the ones that are either great advisors and consultants, their clients are ready today, we’ll have more time. Those that are good, we need to train up and get them taking courses and programs and developing those skillsets. But the bottom third of the partners, I worry about them. I don’t know they’ll be around. And you’ve seen The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times the last couple of weeks, 10%, 16%, 20% of equity partners, early retirement or good-bye.
Jean: Right. Okay. What is one book every leader should read?
Allan: Oh, you stumped me. I don’t know. I mean, I can tell you what I’ve read. They were life changing for me. I think Dan Sullivan’s book, “The Strategic Coach”, taught me how to coach leaders, and partners, you should be coaching your clients. Barry Schimel and Gary Kravitz is good book, “How to be a Profit Coach”. To go into a business of any size and help them be more profitable, I think matters. I read a book from American Management Association on how to do strategic planning, and now, I could do strategic planning for clients. I think those are the kinds of things we need to be reading as business books.
Jean: Yeah, agreed. Agreed, agreed. If you were leading a $15 million firm today, what would be your top priority?
Allan: Oh, that’s a question you can’t answer with one thing, but it would be to get the partners on the same page and a reality test of what we can and can’t do. And then to have an honest discussion about, are we going to make some tough decisions and changes, or are we going to pretend that we’re great and only stay good? You know, really, really digging in and having those tough discussions.
Jean: Okay. All right. Last one.
Allan: Last question, Jean.
Jean: Last one.
Allan: You’ve done this once before.
Jean: Yeah, just like a couple of times. What is one thing CPA firms should stop doing immediately?
Allan: I think reading their press clippings and coming off with things like, we’re great when we’re not. We have little turnover. Yeah, it’s because they can’t get a job elsewhere. We have next gen talent. You do? I didn’t see that. Where is it? “Oh, you’ve got to see this 28 year old that we hired three weeks ago. They’re going to be a star someday.” I mean, come on, let’s get some reality, you know. So, I think we put lipstick on the pig sometimes, and we start believing our own BS at some point.
Jean: Oh, boy. Okay. Now, that…
Allan: Sorry, I don’t want to get any… I hope I’m, you know…
Jean: Oh, no, you’re good. Because what I heard in that answer was that they need to be more genuine.
Allan: Yeah. Yes. Spot on. Spot on.
Jean: And just communicate who they truly are. And that comes from my branding experience, right? Because, you know, the brand is not what you’re hoping to be someday. It’s like, you really are. Like, well, what truly is different about your firm that’s true and not something that you’re hoping, you know, is going to happen at some point in time? Right.
Allan, it’s been a pleasure having you back today. Folks, you know that I’ve been speaking with Allan Koltin, CEO of Koltin Consulting Group. I appreciate your thoughts as always.
Allan: And, Jean, before you go, I just got to thank you from the entire accounting profession. You were one of those early entrepreneurs who was one of the first, I think in those days we called it director of marketing, I think today they call it chief marketing officer, at a time where you were probably seen as a threat, and at a minimum, they didn’t know what you did. And when I think of not the hundreds, but thousands of growth leaders today, heads of marketing, chief growth officers, leaders of business development, you were part of the major transformation of the accounting profession as it relates to growth, and ultimately,, as it relates to profitability. So, thank you for decades of service and all the greatness you’ve done.
Jean: Oh, thank you, Allan. I really appreciate that, especially coming from you. And thank you everyone for tuning in to “Gear Up for Growth”. Be sure to check us out next time when we focus on another topic crucial for accounting firms aiming for smart growth in today’s competitive marketplace. I’ll see you then. Okay.