GROWTH STRATEGIES

Blake and Pryor: From a $550,000 Tax Bill to Near Zero | Big 4 Transparency

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Integrated planning, not heroics, creates life-changing outcomes for clients.

This is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
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Big 4 Transparency
By Dominic Piscopo, CPA
For CPA Trendlines

What happens when you fuse a CPA firm with a wealth advisory under one roof and design the operations from a blank page? In this two-guest episode of the Big 4 Transparency, host Dominic Piscopo sits down with Owen Pryor and Steve Blake, managing and senior managing advisors at Evans May Advisory, the sister firm to Evans May Wealth Advisory. Their premise is simple and radical: serve the client with unreasonable hospitality, align wealth and tax strategy, and deliver family-office convenience to high-net-worth families and growing owner-operated businesses. 

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Pryor and Blake describe a system built on proactive data sharing (with client consents in place) so the firm, not the client, chases documents, coordinates advisors, and executes. The impact shows up in small, high-leverage wins (e-paying taxes and killing paper vouchers, physically banking clients’ mailed checks twice a week, fully recording receivables) and in headline outcomes (structuring a family-farm sale from an estimated $550,000 tax bill to near $0 through planning; spotting missed depreciation and back-catching via Form 3115; introducing lesser-known international strategies like ICDIS where relevant). The result is relief for clients and measurable ROI that converts conversations into scope. 

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Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | The Disruptors

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Firms that wait until a partner is ready to retire have already waited too long, plus 19 more key takeaways.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

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Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Erin Daiber, founder and CEO of Well Balanced Accountants, keeps seeing the same issue in firm after firm. A partner announces their intention to retire within a year or two, and the firm suddenly realizes no one is ready to take over.  “Firms are not starting that conversation soon enough,” Daiber says.

MORE STREAMING:MORE STREAMING: Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm |  Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time | Vanover: 5-Star Firms Don’t Bill by the Hour | Kless: Profit Is a Result. Flourishing Is the Purpose | Whitman: Build Culture on ‘Progress,’ Not Change | Shein: No PE? No M&A? No Problem | Hood and Weber: Time to RISE | Proctor: Turn Dumb Ideas into Brilliant Solutions | Carter-Gray: How 1 Poor Review Strengthened the Firm | Hartman: Upwork to “40 Under 40” in 3 Years |

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“They’re not thinking about succession planning as a strategy,” she explains. Instead of treating succession as an ongoing process, firms see it as simply the point in time when a partner exits the firm. According to Daiber, succession planning should ideally begin with hiring decisions and culture building so that firms can be confident that they won’t lose clients or staff due to uncertainty about what might happen as partners get older.  

When succession planning fails, firms lose key employees before they even reach partnership consideration. “We’re losing them much sooner than that, which creates a big hole in the pipeline,” Daiber notes. She identifies an inability to have difficult conversations as the root cause, particularly when dealing with founders who view the firm as their legacy. 

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Why Most CAS Practices Stall | It’s Not Just the Numbers

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…And what the successful ones do differently.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.
Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

It’s Not Just the Numbers
With Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead
For CPA Trendlines

Client Accounting Services (CAS) has moved well beyond bookkeeping. For firms serious about advisory, CAS is now a fundamentally different operating model, one that demands new roles, new systems, and a far higher level of internal transparency than traditional tax or audit practices ever required. 

In this episode of It’s Not Just the Numbers, Damien Greathead and Penny Breslin draw on more than two decades of shared experience to unpack what actually makes a modern CAS practice work in the real world. Their discussion goes beyond theory and into the structural, cultural, and operational decisions firms must confront if they want CAS to be scalable, profitable, and sustainable . 

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Traditional accounting firms are built around specialization and hierarchy: junior and senior accountants, bookkeepers, managers, and partners, each working essentially in isolation on their own client list. That structure works for compliance, but it breaks down in a CAS environment. 

“CAS requires the team to approach the client holistically,” Breslin explains. “You can’t have people operating in silos. Everyone needs to understand the client’s goals, not just their individual task.” 

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Change Fails in Silence | MOVE Like This

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Firms that treat communication as strategy—not admin—move faster, scale smarter, and keep trust intact.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
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Not Your Headcount

MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines

On this episode of MOVE Like This, host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk explores a deceptively simple question with Alice Grey Harrison, founder of AGH Consulting: Why do so many firm transformations stall—not because of strategy, but because of communication?

With more than 30 years of experience in strategic communications and change management within the accounting profession, Harrison has seen firms navigate mergers, private equity investments, leadership transitions, system implementations, and cultural shifts.

The difference between momentum and misery, she argues, is rarely technical. It’s human.

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Her core insight is that culture becomes a growth engine only when people understand how their work connects to the firm’s mission, vision, and values. That clarity unlocks what she calls “discretionary energy”—the extra effort people put in when they believe in the firm’s direction. READ MORE →