Here’s what you’re looking for: Liz Farr

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Anne Napolitano: The Future of Accounting’s in Value, Not Time | The Disruptors

“The balance sheet is where all the bodies lie.”

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

The Break-Through Blueprint for Revolutionizing the CPA Firm Business Model

Anne Napolitano used to give advisory-level guidance without charging for it. “I was doing those advisory-type services without really getting compensated for it because I just felt it was what you were supposed to offer to your clients,” she says.  

But after learning about value pricing from various resources, including Ron Baker and Ed Kless, her thinking changed. “The better we got at something, the quicker we were, the less money we were making because we could do things faster,” she says.   

MORE Disruptors with Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

That realization helped her understand that clients weren’t buying time; rather, they were buying the decades of experience she and her team had as accountants and the value that comes from that experience. And today, she charges a premium for that expertise.  

“We need to value ourselves correctly and appreciate the fact that we’re really doing some great work for our clients, and we should be compensated for that,” she explains.  

Her firm, Anne Napolitano Consulting, landed on its niche specialty of restaurants, bars, breweries, distilleries, and wineries, partly because of Napolitano’s love of cooking. 

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INNOVATION & CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk: Caregivers Caught in the Middle | The Disruptors

Accounting firms may offer flexibility, but outdated expectations and missed opportunities can still push experienced professionals out the door.

This is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first and always available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

The Break-Through Blueprint for Revolutionizing the CPA Firm Business Model

Accounting firms have spent years worrying about the front end of the talent pipeline. Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk wants them to look at the other end as well. 

Ruszczyk, owner and research lead of the Accounting MOVE Project, led this year’s MOVE report, Caught in the Middle: How Caregiving Pressures Are Reshaping Women’s Careers in Public Accounting. This new report examines what happens when experienced professionals take on care for children, aging parents, spouses and partners, and whether their firms keep them on the path to leadership. 

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MORE MOVE Like This | MORE Caregiving Research

That question matters because of the disparity in women’s representation in leadership at accounting firms.

Firms “tend to be pretty much 50:50 gender parity up until you get to the senior director, almost going to go into partnership,” Ruszczyk says. At MOVE firms, women hold about 42% of partner roles. Across all U.S. firms, that ratio drops to around 34%. For women of color, the drop is even sharper. According to Ruszczyk, about 20% of associates are women of color while only 5% of partners are.   

Caregiving isn’t the only cause for the disparity, but it is “one of the areas where we’re seeing some leaks spring up,” Ruszczyk explains. While caregiving has always been a part of the lives of accountants – men and women – several converging trends are making this a bigger issue today.

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GROWTH STRATEGIES

Nick Boscia: More Clients. More Hours. Less Happiness. | The Disruptors

Burnout pushed him to rethink growth, rebuild his processes, and make room for a better life.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

The Break-Through Blueprint for Revolutionizing the CPA Firm Business Model

When Nick Boscia joined his father’s accounting firm in 2013, it was like stepping back in time.

“When I joined, we were still using like the green ledger sheets,” he recalls. “I started in 2013, and it was like it was 1980.” Today, Boscia is known as the Balanced CPA and is co-owner, with his brother Joe, of Boscia and Boscia PC, the firm their father founded in 1975.

Working for his father was difficult.

“He didn’t really value going on vacations or taking time off,” Boscia recalls. Adopting new technology was out of the question.

MORE Disruptors with Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

“I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and it works, so we’re not changing things,” his father would say. But when Boscia and his brother took over, things changed dramatically.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

David Marquis: AI Can Do More Work but Auditors Must Make the Call | The Disruptors

A five-layer “AI trust stack” helps auditors put AI to work while keeping professional judgment at the center.

This is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first and always available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by Radical Pricing: Optimize Profits, Delight Clients, and Build a Top-Value Firm
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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

The Break-Through Blueprint for Revolutionizing the CPA Firm Business Model

As AI takes on more audit work, David Marquis sees professional judgment becoming more valuable.

The Caseware CEO argues that the opportunity extends beyond faster document reviews and automated analysis. Firms can rethink how audits work while strengthening the consistency, accountability, and trust that clients and capital markets depend on.

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In The Disruptors, Marquis explains why putting AI to work requires more than a powerful model — and why the profession’s human responsibilities remain central to its future.

“They’re not simply knowledge industries, they’re actually workflow industries,” he says of audit and accounting. READ MORE →

CLIENT ACCOUNTING SERVICES

Karen Reyburn: Use Your Creativity as a Competitive Advantage | The Disruptors

Curiosity, problem-solving, and creative habits help strengthen marketing, improve client experiences, and bring more humanity to an AI-driven profession.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

The Break-Through Blueprint for Revolutionizing the CPA Firm Business Model

Karen Reyburn, managing director of We Are PF and author of the new book Accountants, You Are Creative, wants accountants to embrace their innate creativity.

Reyburn’s first book, The Accountant Marketer, laid out the building blocks of marketing for accounting firms based on what worked for the firms that she and PF worked with. She noticed that just having a playbook and structure for marketing wasn’t enough. “The accountants who were seeing the greatest success, the greatest transformation for themselves and their clients, were the ones that either knew that they were creative human beings, they knew they had creativity within them, or at least they were open and curious about what that looked like, and willing to try,” she explains.

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As she watched AI’s rapid advancements over the last few months, she nearly shelved the manuscript. “Is this even relevant anymore? With all this stuff about AI, does anyone care about this mindset of creativity?” she wondered. But as she thought about AI and talked to accountants, she realized she was seeing a “both, and” moment. “You’re seeing leaning into AI to help you with tasks and repetition, and you’re seeing people want more humanity, more opportunity to trust you, more case studies, more in-person events,” she explains.

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PODCAST

Logan Graf: Build a Modern Accounting Business, Not a Job | The Disruptors

“People don’t want to work themselves to death for a third of the year.”

This is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by Radical Pricing: Optimize Profits, Delight Clients, and Build a Top-Value Firm

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

The Break-Through Blueprint for Revolutionizing the CPA Firm Business Model

Logan Graf, owner of The Graf Tax Co and founder of the Counter community, is proof that there’s a better way to run a tax firm. Last tax season, after restructuring, hiring a manager, and implementing a tax scheduling system, neither he nor his manager worked more than 40 hours a week. He believes accounting firms should operate like modern businesses. “We don’t have to look at what’s been done in the past and copy them,” he says.

Graf, who launched his own firm in 2020, took mental notes of what he liked and what he didn’t like at the firms he worked at. At his last place of employment, Scott & Aderholt near Austin, TX, he was given an unusual level of autonomy. “I was basically running a firm within a firm,” he recalls.

MORE Disruptors with Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

In addition to technical work, he also handled client onboarding, return preparation, review, billing, workflow design, and documentation, all of which made going out on his own easier. “It was like a seamless transition,” he says. The extra money as a firm owner was a welcome surprise. “I was basically making double the amount of money and working the same amount of hours, if not less,” compared to his prior jobs.

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LEADERSHIP

Rachel Anevski: Next Leaders Won’t Develop by Accident | The Disruptors

Replace informal succession practices with trained mentors and measurable opportunities for growth.

This is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by Radical Pricing: Optimize Profits, Delight Clients, and Build a Top-Value Firm

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

The Break-Through Blueprint for Revolutionizing the CPA Firm Business Model

For decades, accounting teams have assumed future leaders would emerge through the normal progression of the ranks. The best seniors would become managers, and the best managers would become partners, ready to step into the shoes of retiring leaders.

According to Rachel Anevski, that approach is no longer sustainable.

Anevski, president and CEO of Matters of Management and managing director of leadership and people at Winding River Consulting, says we must become far more intentional about training, mentoring, and retaining their next generation of leaders.

MORE Disruptors with Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

As she describes in her book, Train Your Successor, the greatest weakness in the traditional model is its lack of deliberate preparation. The book’s title, inspired by her doctoral research on training and retention, comes from advice given by her first mentor, Ted Dudek.

“His talk to everyone was that retention and the future perpetuity of the firm were solely reliant on whether or not you could successfully train your successor,” Anevski tells The Disruptors host Liz Farr.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Kenji Kuramoto: When AI Does the Work, What Are Firms Selling? | The Disruptors

Intelligent agents will reshape accounting workflows, pricing models, employee development, and the value firms deliver to clients.

Sponsored by Radical Pricing: Optimize Profits, Delight Clients, and Build a Top-Value Firm

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

The Break-Through Blueprint for Revolutionizing the CPA Firm Business Model

Kenji Kuramoto says accounting firms will be changing how they work — and even who does the work.

“The future of accounting firms,” Kuramoto says, “is going to be made up of a workforce that has two components. It’ll have people and agents.”

His current company, Basis, where he serves as managing partner in residence, is building those agents. Kuramoto says approximately 30% of the top 25 accounting firms are using them across client accounting services, tax, and audit. The agents perform multistep workflows such as reconciliations, account categorization, and first-pass tax return preparation, including work on complex partnership returns.

MORE Disruptors with Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

By the end of the year, Kuramoto expects some practice lines to achieve efficiency gains of 60% to 80% by using agents. Within a year, “we should probably be able to see agents working and collaborating together, overall, being directed and architected by people,” he says.

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PODCAST

Lynnette Oss Connell: Your Staff Want to Lead—But Not Like This | The Disruptors

Burnout is not a personal failure. It’s a nervous system signal.
Sponsored by True Advisor: The Definitive Success Guide for Client Advisory Services by Hitendra Patil

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

True Advisor: Buy now | Learn more

Young accountants still want to become leaders. They just don’t want to work the way many of today’s leaders do.

A 2026 KPMG intern survey cited by burnout coach Lynnette Oss Connell finds 92% of interns aspire to reach the C-suite or another senior executive role. Yet the workplace behavior they most want eliminated is an “always-available” culture.

MORE Disruptors with Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

For accounting firms worried about keeping their next generation of managers and partners, Oss Connell says younger professionals hear firms encouraging boundaries and work-life balance while watching managers and partners remain constantly connected, work long hours and push through stress.

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ADVISORY & CONSULTING

Erin Pohan: How to Help Your Clients Understand Accounting | The Disruptors

Connect with your clients: “You’re an entrepreneur, I’m an entrepreneur.”

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

True Advisor: Buy now | Learn more

Erin Pohan’s firm, Upkeeping, is on a mission “to make accounting relevant and understandable” to all its clients. Pohan describes Upkeeping as “a tax-ready firm” that does everything but tax prep, which they hand off to the clients’ tax professionals. But their hand-off doesn’t stop with providing the tax pro with the information needed for the tax return.

MORE Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

“We don’t believe in just handing pieces of paper over to our clients and letting them run with it,” she explains. “We do work with them throughout the year. We do our client calls where we’re explaining the numbers and the stories behind the numbers, especially, and making sure that they feel equipped and empowered to understand their business finances.”

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