Ex-Baker Tilly CEO takes helm at a new “category” of CPA firm.
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By Rory Henry CFP®, BFA™
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When CPA firms talk about growth, the conversation often centers on acquisitions, headcount, or revenue targets.
But Alan Whitman, the ex-Baker Tilly CEO and newly named CEO of a private-equity-backed hybrid, says sustainable growth requires something deeper: clarity of strategy, shared language, and systems that enable people to perform at scale.
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5 Advis-ROR® Takeaways
- Growth requires a mindset before metrics. Sustainable scale comes from changing how a firm thinks and operates, not just from chasing revenue, headcount, or deal volume.
- Strategy is about direction, not activity. Conferences, outreach, and initiatives only matter when they clearly support how the firm wants to be seen and who it is built to serve.
- Systems enable people to scale. Communication, sales, and talent engines allow firms to grow without relying on individual effort or burnout.
- Language creates alignment. Clarity about who the firm is and what it does helps teams make consistent decisions and reduces confusion as the organization expands.
- Leadership demands clarity over hope. Early success may come from hustle and hope, but long-term growth requires intentional structure, accountability, and shared understanding.
This episode of AFO Wealth Management Forward was recorded shortly before the public announcement of a new professional services platform that combines accounting and advisory firm Nichols Cauley with insurance brokerage Partners Risk Services and transaction advisory firm JGH Consulting. The new platform is supported by a strategic investment from private equity investment firm Madison Dearborn Partners. Whitman was named CEO of the combined platform. Widely known for his role in helping scale Baker Tilly into a national firm, Whitman says his leadership mindset is focused less on outcomes and more on the conditions that enabled growth.
“What I am most proud of is the transformational mindset shift that the organization accomplished,” says Whitman, emphasizing the difference between planning and strategy.
“Plans are actions,” he says. “Strategy is what you are looking to deliver, how you want to be seen in the ecosystem. Then you put the plan in place to execute getting there.”
He cautioned that firms often confuse motion with direction. “Doing more conferences, more trade shows, touching more people is not a strategy,” Whitman says. “That is the how.” Instead, he encouraged leaders to focus on communication engines, sales engines and talent engines – the systems that allow firms to grow without relying solely on individual effort.
“Humans can only do so much,” he says. “At some point, the organization has to build the ecosystem and tools to enable people to accomplish more without working more.”
Whitman pointed to the 2008- 2009 economic downturn as a formative moment. “The fish stopped jumping in the boat,” he says. “We did not have the engine. We did not know how to grow.”
Language, he argued, plays a central role in building alignment. In Break the Mold, Whitman devotes significant attention to lexicon and how firms describe who they are and what they do.
“If we build on what we are going to say about who we are and what we do, that becomes an alignment facilitator,” he says.
A client once told Whitman, “My plan is to hustle and hope,” and that phrase stuck with Whitman, who acknowledged that hustling and hoping had worked earlier in his career. “You do a lot of hustle, and you hope that in those activities, you get the opportunity. And you know what, that worked. But as organizations scale, Whitman noted that hope alone is not enough; you need carefully defined leadership communication and accountability. Without specificity, he said accountability breaks down using the image of a fist to gauge an organization’s leadership effectiveness.
“[A fist] forces people to show where they actually stand,” he says. “A four or five means you are good. A two or one means we do not have a consensus.”
As firms evaluate new capital structures and strategic partnerships, Whitman urged leaders to move beyond labels. “What does independent mean?” he asks. “Break it down.”
For Whitman, the real shift is not about ownership alone; it’s about shifting from a “lifestyle business” to a “business business” in which you are highly intentional about growth instead of just hoping things work out.”
Throughout the conversation, Whitman says that growth is not about asking people to do more; it’s about creating clarity, trust, and systems that allow people to do their best work.
“Bigger is not better,” he says, quoting a former colleague. “Better is better.”
Alan Whitman
Alan Whitman is a seasoned executive and the former Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Baker Tilly U.S., LLP. During his tenure at Baker Tilly, Whitman oversaw 3x growth in topline revenue, substantially expanded the firm’s geographic footprint, and led the execution of more than 20 acquisitions. Whitman has dedicated his life to challenging the status quo—moving organizations to think differently, act boldly, and transform from good enough to great. As a highly sought-after transformation and growth advisor and the mind behind Break the Mold™, he guides organizations of all sizes to transform, scale, and grow by breaking free from tradition and “the way things have always been done.”
TRANSCRIPT
(Transcripts are made available as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling
[00:00:00] Narration: Welcome to AFO Wealth Management Forward, a show powered by Arrowroot Family Office that’s at the intersection of accounting, wealth management, behavioral finance, technology, and entrepreneurship. We help accounting firms and financial advisors grow their practices by going beyond the numbers, learning from industry leaders and subject-matter experts to discover the secret to their success. A podcast that highlights everything from the transformative power of AI to embracing the human-first approach of behavioral finance to help you understand the psychological and emotional relationships to money and meaning. Here is your host, Rory Henry, director at Arrowroot Family Office and author of Holistic Guide to Wealth Management.
[00:00:44] Rory Henry: All right. Hello, everyone. I have another returning guest joining me today. He’s the former CEO and chairman of Baker Tilly. We help scale the firm from $500 million to $1.5 billion. He’s recently been advising CEOs and firms on culture leadership as a transformation and growth advisor. He’s now the author of the brand new book, Break the Mold, How to Achieve Transformational Change, Scale, and Growth Simultaneously. So without further ado, let me introduce my friend, Alan Whitman. Alan, welcome back to the show.
[00:01:16] Alan Whitman: Thanks, Rory. Very glad to be here. It’s great to be coming back with you.
[00:01:19] Rory Henry: Yes, buddy. Well, let’s get started here. You just wrote the book. And so I would love to know, you know, why this book and why now?
[00:01:30] Alan Whitman: Yeah, thanks. There’s not a lot of books written about professional services, specifically CPA firms or partner-led organizations. There are books, but there’s just not many. And you know, you mentioned the numbers, you know, and everybody gets excited about the numbers, half a billion to a billion five in a very short period of time, 20 acquisitions, all that stuff. Great. I mean, those are just the results. But what I’m, or Anne, what I’m most proud of is the transformational shift that the organization accomplished, the mindset shift. And as the title says, how to scale transformational change, scale, and grow simultaneously. That to me is what I’m most proud of. We changed a very, very good firm, great firm, while being steeped in the past into a very progressive organization that was very foot forward and leaning forward. And to me, that was what was so important in this journey. Without that, we wouldn’t have achieved, the results wouldn’t have resulted. And so to me, the ingredients of what did we do in order to achieve what was achieved, needed to be written about it. Since leaving Baker Tilly, I’ve been advising, as you said, a lot of CEOs, a lot of C-suite, whether they be tech companies, whether they be professional services companies, et cetera. And I’ve seen repeat of all the experiences I had at Baker Tilly. And so it’s like, all right, there’s something here more than just what I experienced. And so pulling it all together, and then playing it back before the book was even written, I’d been coaching and advising for two years before I started the book. And so I validated that this wasn’t just a one instance, a one trick pony, this was real and it was recurring. And so it was like, all right, I got to put it out there. And it’s been met with a lot of nodding heads, I’ve got a lot of emails, yes, I’ve experienced that, thank you. And so the timing was as a result of ratifying my thinking and the need in my mind was getting something out there that everybody should read about, because it’s stuff that people are experiencing every day as they try to progress their organizations.
[00:04:00] Rory Henry: Yeah. And speaking of progressing organizations, I mean, you were at Baker Tilly, this Break the Mold philosophy started there, but it seems like the profession is now just catching up to Alan in the Break the Mold, especially with PE, getting involved in the profession and causing a seismic shift. Can you talk about the early experience at Baker Tilly and how you started to break the mold there first?
[00:04:25] Alan Whitman: Yeah. Look, as the first couple years of my tenure began, I listened a lot, I sat back, I observed and I started making notes of all the things that I thought needed to be reimagined and redesigned and we redid our strategy in 2018 and that was the fork in the road, whether we were just going to continue being the same type of organization, just try to work harder and achieve more by doing more, or are we going to reimagine how things happened? And look, every organization, every individual needs some sort of a calling card, right? Just do more or just do what I say isn’t enough. You need something to rally around. Maybe you need to aspire towards a future vision and you need to align behind a mission, but if there’s not a calling card or if there’s not a future statement, a rally cry, you don’t achieve as much as you would hope to. And so, the Break the Mold wordmark, the concept was that rally cry, we’re going to break free from where we were and people got behind it in an enormously powerful way. And so, look, there’s a lot of things happening. Yeah, my book is a culmination of a lot of things that we experienced, that a lot of firms are experiencing, that with the perfect storm of PE and technology and AI and recognizing what got us here won’t get us there. I’m just one component of a much bigger story and hopefully the examples in the book and the isms and the lessons in the book are helpful and people recognize that it actually can be done.
[00:06:04] Rory Henry: Can be done. Well, let’s speak about that story because I know when we spoke last time, I mentioned First Principles and Reed Hastings and Elon Musk, and you talk about a blank canvas. Now, you’re at Baker Tilly trying to transform that huge behemoth of an organization and now I know that you’re on to potentially something new here with a new platform. Can you maybe talk about that and, you know, really developing things and breaking it down to a First Principle type of way of thinking?
[00:06:36] Alan Whitman: Yeah, look, the chapters, the titles of the chapters, all roads lead to and from strategy. Words matter, you know, the trek towards maturation, effective leadership teams, all the things that are in the book are the same things that have been through and through true in the organizations, big and small. And so, yeah, I’m about to lead a new platform. It’s a multidisciplinary platform focused on a specific sector in the market and a specific part of the country. We’re not trying to be all things to all people. We’re not trying to just become a national firm or, you know, go to larger, more complex organizations. We’re sticking to exactly the type of clients that we’re looking, that we serve now. And it’s a part of the market that is underserved to a certain extent. And at the same time, words will matter, strategy, all roads lead to and strategy, building the engines will be important. And so, the lessons in the book appeal and are usable regardless of, in my opinion, they apply regardless of the type of organization. Prime example, I’m advising a $100 million, maybe $200 million professional services organization, not part of PE, excuse me, not part of the CPA world. Professional services, not part. The principles are exactly the same, Rory. It’s the same merry-go-round. It’s because, guess what? It’s people. And a partner-led organization is a partner-led organization, whether you’re a law firm, architectural firm, PR firm, CPA firm, the common denominator is people. And so, this platform is very exciting. It’s going to be sponsor-backed. It’s, I’m really excited because the leaders are aligned. Alignment is so critical. They came up with the thesis before they invited me in to learn about it. So they knew what they were going to do. Then they invited me in. Then the magic, the spark happened and it’s like, wait, we can do something really, really cool together. And the rest, the rest, the dominoes fell.
[00:08:37] Rory Henry: Let me ask that. What is that thesis or what made it so compelling that, I know you probably get a lot of overtures, Alan, from folks out there to lead their organizations. What made this opportunity so compelling for you to come on board?
[00:08:50] Alan Whitman: They knew the markets they wanted to be in vis-a-vis the geographic markets. They knew the client type they wanted to serve. They knew the integration, the horizontal, I talk about vertical to horizontal. They knew that being horizontal was critical and they already started working on it before the consummation of the transaction. They recognized that they needed both an organic and inorganic play. And they had experience in that. When you pull it all together and you look at the mission and the foundational mission that we’re looking to achieve, when you hear about it, it’ll make sense. All the different components of aligning behind the what we’re going to do, for who and where, they were already made. I didn’t have to convince them that we should go on this journey. Normally, in a CPA firm, partner-led organization, somebody stands up and says, I’m going to lead us and I’m going to lead us to a new future. And trust me, when we get there, look, I may have shared this with you. I remember in 2018, probably shared this with you in our last call, we set a goal of some astronomical growth that we were going to hit a billion five by 2025. And my mathematician leaders went back in the back room and they came back and said, Alan, it’s impossible. You can’t do it because you’ve had to do this, this, and this. And so, trying to convince them. Now, mind you, we did it two years early. We achieved our goal in 2023. But trying to convince them. I didn’t have to convince anybody when I walked into this thing. It was already, the ingredients were already on the table and they were somewhat mixed. All I needed to do was organize it and systematize it with what I’ve done. And it came to life like that. I had instant alignment. I didn’t have to cajole and promise things and convince them. They wanted what they had put on the table. They just didn’t know how to, they needed a different catalyst to shape it in a different way. And then it was like, that’s it. We’re ready. Let’s go.
[00:10:56] Rory Henry: Yeah. Can I ask about, you know, a little bit of the particulars, the where, the what service offerings, you know, can you share that information? It’s a little more specific for us, Alan.
[00:11:10] Alan Whitman: Yeah. Yeah. No, I get it. Thanks. We’re going to be in the Southeast. Okay. We’re going to be in the Southeast. That’s right. Southeast. And we’re going to be focusing on the small and medium-sized businesses, the lifeblood of all of our communities. And we’re going to be delivering kind of the life cycle of services. You know, some would say one-stop shop, what have you, but we’re going to take that.
[00:11:34] Rory Henry: I call it a virtual family office. There you go.
[00:11:36] Alan Whitman: Yeah. We all have our way, but basically from cradle to grave, so to speak, of the business life cycle. And, you know, and so you look at three markets, geography, knowledge, and capabilities. We’re going to be very knowledge-focused and we’re going to drive the capabilities that are going to be able to serve these smaller, less sophisticated financially and technology-wise companies that we can do it for them. So we’re going to be focused solely on that, solely on that sector in the marketplace.
[00:12:07] Narration: Yeah.
[00:12:08] Rory Henry: I know you talked about that in the book, the location, knowledge, and capabilities, and just the capabilities aspect expanding, right? Does expanding into wealth management, estate planning, valuation, and other services. Is that what we’re talking about here?
[00:12:21] Alan Whitman: Yes, it is. It’s technology-based, it’s risk services, it’s wealth services, it’s outsourced services, you know, MSPs, you know, all the things that the smaller organization doesn’t want to bring in full-time. Yeah. And we’ve got a very nice start of the service complement that companies like that need.
[00:12:47] Rory Henry: Yeah. All right. So which of the principles from the book there, the themes, are you going to focus on first as you lead this new organization?
[00:12:55] Alan Whitman: Well, we’re certainly going to get to strategy and really understand what our strategies are.
[00:13:02] Rory Henry: Can you talk about, I know we’ve talked about this before, but for our audience members, can you kind of tell them the difference between strategy and planning and your philosophy there?
[00:13:11] Alan Whitman: Yeah. Thank you. Plans are actions. Plans are the how you get things done. Plans are the campaigns you run, the mailings you execute, the pipeline you work. The strategy is what are you looking to deliver? What are you looking to look like? What are you looking to be able to deliver to the marketplace? And how do you want to be seen in the ecosystem? What is it that you want to be for them? And then you figure out, put the plan in place to execute getting there. And so, the individual activities are not a strategy. That’s the how. And so, people say, we’re going to do strategic planning every year. That’s confusing to me.
[00:13:55] Rory Henry: It’s like an oxymoron. Right.
[00:13:57] Alan Whitman: You’re doing planning every year to update your activities to make sure that you achieve your strategy.
[00:14:04] Disclaimer: Yeah.
[00:14:05] Alan Whitman: Right. Right. So, we’re going to focus on that. In a lot of organizations, there’s a lot of hustle and hope. You do a lot of activities and you hope you get the opportunity. That came from a client of mine, one of the C-suite I was advising. He said, yeah, my plan is to hustle and hope. I’m like, okay, let’s organize. Let’s get a little crisper on that. Before that though, Rory, the thing that I’m going to focus on is lexicon over the organization. How do we describe who we are, what we do, what words? There’s a chapter in the book that says words matter. Words do matter. Right. And so, if we build on what is it that we’re going to say about us, who we are, how we are, and what are we not going to say. Right. And what’s my job of communicating and repeating the message over and over so people, it just becomes ingrained in who people are and how they show up and how they speak. That is a very important alignment facilitator. Yeah. Words.
[00:15:16] Rory Henry: I mean, I love the me and mine versus we and ours. Like, you know, that hits home. Team members instead of staff. Exactly. Do you have any new hits here, Alan, for lexicon?
[00:15:31] Alan Whitman: Well, I had the hustle and hope. That was a newer one. I like that.
[00:15:37] Narration: Yeah.
[00:15:38] Alan Whitman: Oh, you know, somebody said to me the other day, and I haven’t really refined this, but he said, you know what, Alan, that’s just a sugar high. That’s not a balanced meal. And what he was talking about was an event, you know, something that got everybody excited. That’s just a sugar high. You think it’s great, but it’s not a well-balanced meal. It’s not organized. It’s just a jolt. You know, it’s a piece of candy.
[00:16:00] Rory Henry: It’s like coming back from a Tony Robbins seminar and you’re walking on coals, right? Yeah. There you go. Yeah. And healthy meals, right? We need to have the consistency every day.
[00:16:11] Alan Whitman: It’s your shot of espresso at three in the afternoon or whatever. So that’s one that I actually just heard and I can’t recall where I heard it from. I loved it. Look, to me, how you describe what you are is critical. And here’s a play on words, and it’s a play on strategy. I was talking to some of the team members of this new platform the other day. And we were talking about change and, you know, how are things going to be different? And I said, listen, everyone, yes, we’re going to have different ways of doing things. And yes, we’re going to take on technology and all that. But at the end of the day, what I want you to focus on is executing our mission. I want you to execute our mission, not focus on doing a tax return or an audit. That’s the how you execute the mission. If you’re executing the mission and what we’re here to do on behalf of our clients, everything will work out. So think about that. Think about working across the organization and the results will result. And so think about a broad sense of what we’re here to deliver to our clients, not just a linear line of what you do. And so again, it’s mission and vision, mission and vision, mission and vision, and drip that. There wasn’t an address or communication or whatever, however mode of communication it was while I was a CEO that I didn’t drop our mission and vision. I just, I said it all the time and it got everybody to understand it and live it themselves.
[00:17:46] Rory Henry: And that becomes the foundation for trust and trust is really essential for scale and collaboration.
[00:17:54] Narration: Right.
[00:17:54] Alan Whitman: And so we need to know that everybody’s doing their job so that when you do your job, you know, the old just do your job, whether that was Nick Saban or whomever it was, you know, just do your job. Well, your job is to execute the mission on behalf of our clients. That’s what we’re here to do. And not a lot of people understand that. I was just, I was in a meeting with about, I don’t know, 200 partners a few months ago. And we were using the book as a foundation. And I went to strategy and I said, all right, who knows what our vision is? Excuse me, who knows what our mission is? Not a single person. I said, all right, we’re going to, I went to the website today, open up your browsers, go to your website, what is it? And it’s so interesting that partners don’t associate enough of what they do to what the company is doing. They only associate to what they do. Don’t associate it to the business. And I was having a conversation with a leader the other day, and I asked him how closely associated are our partners to the financial plan of their practice versus just what they do? And the answer wasn’t too appealing. The answer is they’re not. Because this is a very vertical, bottom-up, partner, individual-led profession, which is why all the principles in Break the Mold are so critical to get people to realize that we’re going to do our task on behalf of the organization or in addition to the organization.
[00:19:40] Rory Henry: Yeah. And I really liked, Alan, your chapter where you talked about soft ass, which is vague, and how you need to be really clear with your requests. The who, the what, the when, the why. And I think, can you, right?
[00:20:01] Narration: Yeah.
[00:20:03] Alan Whitman: Laurie Zukin, who’s a wonderful advisor, coach, gave us that present, if you will, that gift of soft versus hard asks. She also gave us the term. And I’m the Commodore of the old club, the very storied boating club. And I find in our board meetings, we stack. Somebody says something and then somebody says, and yeah. And we stack things. And so, whether it’s hard asks or soft asks, whether it’s stacking, whether it’s asking clear and concise comments, those things are critical to the effectiveness of a team. And I don’t know if it’s because people are nervous or sheepish about asking specific asks with the who, the what, the why, et cetera. Or if they, maybe they don’t want the answer. It makes meetings so much more effective when you get really intentional and prescriptive.
[00:21:05] Rory Henry: Yeah. And I like the fist to five, which, yeah. Can you dig into that?
[00:21:11] Alan Whitman: Yeah. So, the fist to five is if somebody has a proposal and, you know, sometimes you get a lot of silent agreement.
[00:21:19] Rory Henry: Right.
[00:21:20] Alan Whitman: And so, you say, no, you got to show your fist to five. You got to tell me. And if it’s a four or five, you’re good. But if it’s a three or two or a one, you’ve got some issues with the pathway, with the decision. And if it’s a two or a one, the question is, are there a lot of twos and ones whereby you really don’t have consensus or enough consensus? You know, a three is kind of neutral, right? A four or five is, the four says, yeah, I’m good, but for one thing, but go ahead, right? A three is, yeah, I got a lot of questions, but I’m okay if you go forward. And it’s basically putting your money where your mouth is. And it’s good because it allows people to avoid the uncomfortable situation of saying things. People don’t like to challenge their colleagues, you know, when they come up with an idea. And so Fist to Five gave us a platonic way of figuring out where everybody was in a very powerfully platonic way. It was great.
[00:22:28] Rory Henry: Well, let’s talk about figuring out where everybody is because I’m sure, you know, obviously you’ve been advising PE firms, advising firms out there. You know, we are in a new era of private equity here. Can you talk about how you’re advising partners out there and firms on, you know, whether they should stay independent or take outside investments?
[00:22:50] Alan Whitman: Yeah. Yes. I take a different view on this or my, I guess it’s my own unique view. Look, what is necessary as a partner led organization are the same things as necessary as with institutional capital or a strategic sponsor. Same thing. Organic growth, CAGR, transformation, sustainability, being relevant, you know, all the components. And you know, it’s no different than the 25, 22 or whatever companies that I look to, we look to acquire and everyone said we’re fiercely independent. Well, okay. Well, what does that mean? I don’t really know what that means. And so, look, I see a lot of benefit in bringing on a strategic partner. Money aside, I see a lot of benefit because the linear fashion of progress is slow.
[00:23:47] Disclaimer: Slow.
[00:23:48] Alan Whitman: It’s slow. It’s slower than needed. And I’m not even suggesting it’s because AI or what have you. Now, look, the playing field has changed because capital is in the businesses and capital, people are being monetized and the prices are going up. So, that has changed. And so, in order to keep up in an acquisition world, you’ve got to have capital. And partner-led organizations where they’re not taking advantage of the capital markets are at a huge disadvantage. Okay. From a strategic perspective, shifting from a lifestyle business, which again, as I say, is not about having a second car and a beach house, it’s about good enough is good enough. We do what we can and whatever we accomplish is good enough and we try again next year. That’s a lifestyle business versus, no, we have a specific plan. We’re going to execute strategy. We’re going to do what’s necessary to achieve that. Now, nobody loses a limb if you don’t achieve it, but you’re much more intentional about achieving it than you are with a lifestyle business. That to me is the biggest benefit from having an outsider as a shareholder and advisor and partner, shifting from a lifestyle business to a business business. That’s a huge, huge enabler.
[00:25:11] Rory Henry: Yeah. And it’s, I know you talk a lot about scaling, it’s not about squeezing more out of people. It’s about building the business and the engines to scale itself. Let’s go into, I know that chapter was great and really how we can build engines to get this to scale.
[00:25:31] Alan Whitman: Look, humans can only do so much. We can only work so many hours. We need rest. We need to regenerate. And more than that, in our profession, we’re both player coaches. We’re doing the work and we’re selling the work. And so, there’s always so much you can do. And there are technical partners and there are client service partners and there are finding partners, selling partners. And the technical partners aren’t as interested in growing things, they’re interested in doing the technical work, which is so critically valuable and important. And yet that book of business isn’t growing every year unless the other partners are feeding them and selling more work. So, at one point, it does slow down. And so, the organization has to build the ecosystem and the tools and the practices to do things with the partners for, well, with the people, for the people. And in some instances, despite the framework, despite the fact that not everybody’s going to be selling. And so, we need sustainable organic growth, CAGR. That’s the true indicator of value. Probably even more than profitability. Now, I know it’s values based on your EBITDA. If you’re not growing, there’s no way you’re going to get to be profitable. If you’re growing, you can at least have a chance because you can rationalize and you can systematize, et cetera. But if you’re not growing, you’re dead in the water. And so, to me, building engines, whether they’re communications engines, data uses engines, recruiting, development, sales, making a firm vertical to horizontal engines, the organization enabling and working on behalf of and enabling individuals to accomplish more without working more, that’s the secret behind engines.
[00:27:26] Rory Henry: Well, isn’t the secret, and you state it, I think, in the book, it’s really slowing down to speed up. That’s the old adage, right? It’s slowing down to speed up to build those systems, to build buy-in, to align strategy.
[00:27:38] Alan Whitman: Yeah. Look, my predecessor said, look, bigger isn’t better, better is better. Tim Christian, one of the GOATs. Bigger isn’t better, better is better. And that’s the same. Doing more, running faster, jumping higher is not the solution. It’s getting organized. It’s slowing down to build the infrastructure, which will allow you to, as you say, accomplish more or vis-a-vis grow faster, right? That to me is so critical versus put a plan together to just do more conferences, more trade shows, touch more people. Okay, maybe, but, or and, you’re not going to be able to do that. You can’t do that in a sustainable fashion. You can’t do that year over year over year. I have one company I advise where they have been running it in sixth gear for many, many years and they’re not slowing down to build the platform. And I’m fearful that something’s going to happen that’s going to shake them. It’s going to happen to them. And they’re going to be like, well, what just happened? It’s air. Look, I read about it in the book. Bigger Tilley was one of the fast, if not the one of, it was the fastest growing firm from 2000 to 2008 or nine. And then we all know what happened. And the, we were, we were really good. And the fish were jumping in the boat. New business was jumping in the boat. Well, 2008, 2009, the new business spigot turned off. The fish stopped jumping in the boat. We were in a dry hole. The lake had been fished. We didn’t have the engine. We didn’t know how to grow. And so sales went, the incline curve or the growth curve went from a nice incline to flat to negative. I mean, and that’s, that’s in the record books, you know, in the league table reports. And so we didn’t slow down to build the engine. Now we did afterwards, but we had a, we had a hard going for a little bit because we hadn’t built that engine. You know, when, when things are going great, nobody thinks you need an engine. That’s the time to build an engine because one day the merry-go-round may stop. Yeah. So I’m a huge believer in that concept of slowing down to speed up and to have the organization be a business, which is enabling the results to result from our activities. Yeah. That, that to me is critical. Yeah.
[00:30:10] Rory Henry: Well, let’s talk about outcomes. Cause I know you’re big on outcomes and client experience and, and really charging for those outcomes and the value you provide and not for the inputs and the production. You know, can you talk about, you know, that really, that mindset shift or the importance of really, you know, building a firm off of the values based outcomes that you provide clients?
[00:30:33] Alan Whitman: Yeah. The thing I’m going to say is it’s, it’s bloody hard because, because you’re going to have to change mindset. Human nature is human. It’s undefeated as somebody said to me recently. And so look, it’s something that we will continue to push on. I don’t think it’s going to be snap the fingers and solve it. I think the firms that are willing to break the mold and allow the practices that can operate that way, even more profitably than by the hour, let them do it, spin them off, put them over, you know, put a, put a, put a wall between, between the types of practices. You know, I think one of the challenges with the large firms in their cast practices is that they, they aren’t willing to let the cast practice from an operation operating operational perspective, a structure perspective, or a pricing and, and, and fee basis perspective, operate the way they need to operate. It always comes back to hours. Well, how are we going to account for that in the financial statements? How are we going to record that? What’s that got to do anything with anything?
[00:31:43] Rory Henry: This is where our accountants are going to be less accountants and more like financial advisors.
[00:31:47] Narration: Right.
[00:31:48] Alan Whitman: I was talking with a, with a potential, an acquisition candidate for this new platform. And great firm, 50% EBITDA percentage, very strong. And he, and he made a comment, he said, Alan, I do not want to go into a CPA firm. Yeah. Because that’s a different organization than what I’m building. And it will be an enormous pull and tug or fight. So I need to be part of a consulting organization, a productized consultancy, not a CPA firm, because we are so far different. We are at the other end of the spectrum here and we’ll be watered down if we go into a traditional CPA firm.
[00:32:35] Rory Henry: Yeah. And you talk about freedom, but within framework, right? And so, you know, a lot of stuff you want people to do is to have that freedom, but also you can’t have full autonomy because then it becomes chaos. So can you talk about the freedom within a framework philosophy?
[00:32:52] Alan Whitman: Yeah. Look, it, it goes back to a great quote and I’m sure you know it, Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink. Right. This book Extreme Ownership, right? Great book. And you know, a lot of, a lot of partners in firms are afraid of discipline or systematization because they say, you’re going to ruin my entrepreneurial spirit. No, actually, if I give you some structure, if I give you some organization, the framework that we know 85% of the stuff is going to be done this way, so you can have some fun in the last 15, we’re actually going to make more money because we’ll be more profitable in the 85 and you will have some opportunity. So I’m a huge believer that freedom within a framework, the, the, the, the, the word that’s so important there is framework. Is that organized, organized framework? Are we doing the same thing, the same product across the organization the same way so that it’s, it’s systematized? Yeah. That’s the, that’s the critical success factor there. I’m a huge believer in that. And that’s the old adage of going, my book, my client, my book, my practice, or my office and everybody else’s. No, it’s the firm, our firm made up of the, of the, of the, of the parts or enabled by the parts. And we’re working much more horizontally, which is part, which is mentioned in the book. Huge shift in these firms, huge. Because remember they were brought into this, excuse me, they were brought into this profession to, to be technicians, to be subject matter experts, to build, to bring in my client, which I understand why they say that. And that’s how we define our value as the clients we serve. And so I’m, I am, I am chipping away at a foundational principle that has made the profession systemic. Exactly. Yeah.
[00:34:47] Rory Henry: I mean, it’s, that’s the whole difference between the, the consultative approach versus the, you know, the expert approach. And I get it. We’re all on credentials. We all went to school. We all get licensed and have those letters behind our name and we want to show our value And we want to, you know, provide our knowledge and, and, you know, it’s the beauty of what I talk about and the human first approach is really, you know, dropping our guard and using that blank canvas and really, you know, understanding the human behind that numbers and just asking great questions. And then you can guide them to hopefully meet their goals, dreams, and aspirations.
[00:35:23] Alan Whitman: Couldn’t have said it better. Totally agree.
[00:35:25] Narration: Yeah.
[00:35:25] Alan Whitman: Yeah.
[00:35:26] Rory Henry: Cool. All right. Let’s wrap up here. Is there anything else that we didn’t touch on, Alan?
[00:35:32] Alan Whitman: No, other than the book is out, pre-orders are available on Amazon. I think they are going to be shipped out on the 16th of December. I’ve got one in my hand. I’m signing a lot of them. It’s a, it’s, it was a fun, it was a fun project. You know, it’s, you know, you never know what it’s going to be like. I tell you my, my, our, our eight, a 19 year old son was flying back to San Diego. He’s a sophomore at San Diego state, was home for Thanksgiving. And I gave him a copy, signed it, et cetera. And midway through the flight back, he said, dad, I’m reading the book and wow, I’m learning a lot about your career and your, your, your, your, your, you know, experience. This is awesome. And you know, with all due respect to everybody else that’s out there, the fact that your son reads your book, it was, it was, it was pretty cool. I, you know, outside of that, continue to advise firms, break the mold is consistently apparent and, and, and part of the, you know, the, the, the things that need to be broken are consistent across virtually every organization I, I, I touch and, and, you know, I’ve been out of the game for a few years. I’m really excited to get back in with this platform. It’s going to be announced in the next couple of weeks. We’re already working on it right now and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s going to be a lot of fun scaling a new product, kind of a new category in the space.
[00:37:00] Rory Henry: Yeah. I knew you’re a category creator. You have that, that energy here, Alan, I appreciate you coming on the podcast again. I love the book. I already went through the every page there and I look forward to learning about the new platform here in the near future.
[00:37:15] Alan Whitman: Awesome. Thanks again. You’ve got a great platform and you’ve got a great voice as well. And thanks for all you do for, for everybody out in the financial world.
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