INNOVATION & CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow

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We need the machines to do as much of this as we can.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

When Scott Scarano lost a few good people at his firm, he had an epiphany that he needed to change things. Instead of continuing to grow for the sake of growth, he overhauled his management approach.

MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS:  Peter Margaritis: The Power Skills Every Accountant Needs | Joe Montgomery: Find the Sweet Spot of the Right Clients, Right Services and Right Prices | Marie Green: Your Bad Apples Are Ruining You | Megan Genest Tarnow: Hire for Curiosity Rather Than Compliance | Clayton Oates: One Way to Keep Clients for Life | Randy Crabtree: Follow These Three Rules to Keep Employees Happy | Erik Solbakken: Yes, You Can Work Less and Make More | Donny Shimamoto: Future Firm Growth Requires a Mindshift | Jennifer Wilson: Empower Young Workers to Build the Firm Everyone Loves | Mike Whitmire: Re-Think Your Hiring and Training Practices | Hector Garcia: Success Strategies of a Quickbooks YouTube Superstar | Blake Oliver: Why Tax Work Yearns To Be Free| Private Equity Explodes in U.K. | Brannon Poe: The Status Quo Must Go  | Accounting Nerds, Unlock Your Super Powers  | Disruptor: Jason Statts Shakes Up the Status Quo | Think Small to Think Big with Matt Wilkinson | When Financial Statements Go Extinct with Corey Schmidt | Can Geraldine Carter Save Accountants from Themselves? | Re-Inventing Accounting with Tyler Anderson

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“And things are better now at the firm, because we’re not focused on growth,” but instead on “growing everybody,” including himself, Scarano said. By building better habits and finding better ways to do things, his team is growing its bottom line, and a few of the people who left earlier have now returned. “That’s the growth I like to see.” READ MORE →

What an A.I.-Powered Workforce Means for Accountants

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Ready or not, AI is here to stay.

By Rick Richardson
Technology This Week

The complicated relationship that humanity has had with its technological creations throughout time has shaped many executives’ views on adapting to change and remaining in demand in any industry or profession. The various cycles of emerging technology always enlighten, frighten and inspire the masses until we adjust and change our mindsets to embrace the disruption.

MORE: ChatGPT Passes CPA Exam on Second Try | Smartwatch Saves Two Lives | ChatGPT Unlikely to Replace Accountants | Looking for Investments? Check Out Smart Home Technology | Solar Sensors Detect Wildfires Early, Saving Lives, Money
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Even though it has been present for decades, artificial intelligence (AI) is currently promoted as the dramatic change that threatens to upend our society. People are terrified as they try to imagine how it will change the way they live their lives, how they view their employment and what the future of their professions might bring. READ MORE →

Three Fundamental Questions to Ask in Audit

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Are you teaching your team the real work or just the compliance work?

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Instant download:
“The New Manifesto for Accountants.“

When I started in accounting, we wrote audit programs out by hand, and we thought about what it was we needed to do to carry out our audit procedures.

And then, the firm got a copy machine. That started the arts and crafts period of public accounting.

MORE: The Big Issues in Audit: Frustration, Inconsistency and Technology | Five Ways to Increase Audit Efficiency | Early Adopters Gain an Edge in Audit | Talent Retention: Five Tips for an Audit Adjustment | Six Benefits of an Internal Audit | The Ten Financial Controls That’ll Make You a Hero | Five Cash Reports You Can’t Live Without | When an Audit Is a Great Thing
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Because we were going to do the same as last year, every year we would make a copy of last year’s hand-written audit program, cut out the sign-offs, tape that on a new page, make sure to draw the lines for the sign-offs, and then we’d make a copy of that. Then we had our audit program for the new year.

READ MORE →

Jody Padar: Build a Practice that Works for You, Not Vice-Versa. 

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If you can’t change your pricing or your customers, it doesn’t matter how efficient you are

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr for CPA Trendlines

Jody Padar, the author of The Radical CPA, has been shaking things up in the accounting world for years. But today, firms are at a boiling point, limited by supply and demand. “You only have so many people doing the work. And what are you going to do? You can’t make the work up. It’s got to get done,” Padar said.

MORE: Jody Padar here

PODCASTS and VIDEOS:  Peter Margaritis: The Power Skills Every Accountant Needs | Joe Montgomery: Find the Sweet Spot of the Right Clients, Right Services and Right Prices | Marie Green: Your Bad Apples Are Ruining You | Megan Genest Tarnow: Hire for Curiosity Rather Than Compliance | Clayton Oates: One Way to Keep Clients for Life | Randy Crabtree: Follow These Three Rules to Keep Employees Happy | Erik Solbakken: Yes, You Can Work Less and Make More | Donny Shimamoto: Future Firm Growth Requires a Mindshift | Jennifer Wilson: Empower Young Workers to Build the Firm Everyone Loves | Mike Whitmire: Re-Think Your Hiring and Training Practices | Hector Garcia: Success Strategies of a Quickbooks YouTube Superstar | Blake Oliver: Why Tax Work Yearns To Be Free| Private Equity Explodes in U.K. | Brannon Poe: The Status Quo Must Go  | Accounting Nerds, Unlock Your Super Powers  | Disruptor: Jason Statts Shakes Up the Status Quo | Think Small to Think Big with Matt Wilkinson | When Financial Statements Go Extinct with Corey Schmidt | Can Geraldine Carter Save Accountants from Themselves? | Re-Inventing Accounting with Tyler Anderson

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The old business model was taking whoever walked in and billing by the hour. But today, we don’t have the capacity. “There’s so much work out there,” she explained.  “I have not heard any accountants say that they are looking for work. They’re all saying, ‘Stop, go away. I don’t have the resources to serve you.’”
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Peter Margaritis: The Power Skills Every Accountant Needs

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Your EQ is just as important as your IQ. And seven more take-aways.

^ Unmute for sound and adjust the volume
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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr for CPA Trendlines

Peter Margaritis, who also calls himself The Accidental Accountant, grew up in the gregarious environment of restaurants, “where everybody communicated, not well, sometimes, but they communicated.” So it was a shock when he went to work at Price Waterhouse, and he “felt that all the air got sucked out of the office, and nobody was communicating at all, and they looked at me like I was crazy.”

MORE: Joe Montgomery: Find the Sweet Spot of the Right Clients, Right Services and Right Prices | Marie Green: Your Bad Apples Are Ruining You | Megan Genest Tarnow: Hire for Curiosity Rather Than Compliance | Clayton Oates: One Way to Keep Clients for Life | Randy Crabtree: Follow These Three Rules to Keep Employees Happy | Erik Solbakken: Yes, You Can Work Less and Make More | Donny Shimamoto: Future Firm Growth Requires a Mindshift | Jennifer Wilson: Empower Young Workers to Build the Firm Everyone Loves | Mike Whitmire: Re-Think Your Hiring and Training Practices | Hector Garcia: Success Strategies of a Quickbooks YouTube Superstar | Blake Oliver: Why Tax Work Yearns To Be Free| Private Equity Explodes in U.K. | Brannon Poe: The Status Quo Must Go  | Accounting Nerds, Unlock Your Super Powers  | Disruptor: Jason Statts Shakes Up the Status Quo | Think Small to Think Big with Matt Wilkinson | When Financial Statements Go Extinct with Corey Schmidt | Can Geraldine Carter Save Accountants from Themselves? | Re-Inventing Accounting with Tyler Anderson

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His crusade for the last decade or so has been to help accountants improve what we often call soft skills, but which he calls power skills: the ability to communicate clearly and effectively with others. “There’s nothing that will slow you down more in your career than a poorly written memo or email or a presentation that you were poorly prepared for,” Margaritis said.
READ MORE →

How to Transform Your Team into Trusted Advisors

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woman ladder binoculars city view outlook vision success climb AdobeStock_57204649.jpegAre you looking in the wrong place?

The smartest route to advisory:
Join the survey. Get the roadmap

Or scan this:

Launch survey

By Donny Shimamoto, CPA, CITP, CGMA
The Center for Accounting Transformation

There’s a secret lurking in the depths of the public accounting world. A hidden treasure, a powerful weapon that can catapult your firm to new heights of success. It’s called “advisory services.” And yet, despite its immense potential, many firms are not yet experiencing its transformative power. Why? Because they’re looking in the wrong place.

MORE DONNY SHIMAMOTO:  How Trusted Advisors Transform Businesses | The Future of Accounting: A Vision of Trust, Clarity, and Hope | Donny Shimamoto: Future Firm Growth Requires a Mindshift | AI, OCR, NLP & CPAs: Oh My!   |  Accounting Nerds, Unlock Your Super Powers  | Early Adopters Gain an Edge in Audit | Dustin Wheeler: For Serious CAS Success, Hire Tech Teams | CSR for CPAs: The Missing Ingredient | Donny Shimamoto Explains How ‘Agile’ Applies to CPA Firms |  Staff Retention for Remote Workers | Why the Future is in Risk Advisory |  Ready for Non-CPA “CPA” Firms?
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The truth is, advisory services are not just about technical skills and compliance knowledge. It’s a whole different game. And if you want to play and win, you need to invest in your team’s development and give them the tools they need to become trusted advisors.
READ MORE →

Joe Montgomery: Find the Sweet Spot of the Right Clients, Right Services and Right Prices

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An engaged team with a great culture is better than landing at the perfect ratio of payroll to revenue.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
for CPA Trendlines

Before Joe Montgomery started his firm, he had an epiphany.

He asked himself, “Why would I ever want to own a firm, if that’s what it looks like?”

He saw firm leaders chained to their desks, working long hours and dealing with waves of turnover.

“There’s got to be a different way to do it,” he thought.

After too many 100-hour weeks with a wife and three kids he never saw, he reached his breaking point and exited his family firm to start his own firm and his coaching business, GroupUp.  

MORE: Megan Genest Tarnow: Hire for Curiosity Rather Than Compliance | Clayton Oates: One Way to Keep Clients for Life | Randy Crabtree: Follow These Three Rules to Keep Employees Happy | Erik Solbakken: Yes, You Can Work Less and Make More | Donny Shimamoto: Future Firm Growth Requires a Mindshift | Jennifer Wilson: Empower Young Workers to Build the Firm Everyone Loves | Mike Whitmire: Re-Think Your Hiring and Training Practices | Hector Garcia: Success Strategies of a Quickbooks YouTube Superstar | Blake Oliver: Why Tax Work Yearns To Be Free| Private Equity Explodes in U.K. | Brannon Poe: The Status Quo Must Go  | Accounting Nerds, Unlock Your Super Powers  | Disruptor: Jason Statts Shakes Up the Status Quo | Think Small to Think Big with Matt Wilkinson | When Financial Statements Go Extinct with Corey Schmidt | Can Geraldine Carter Save Accountants from Themselves? | Re-Inventing Accounting with Tyler Anderson

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His focus in his accounting firm and in GroupUp is finding that sweet spot of the right clients, right services and right prices. The first step is “making sure we have the right people in the right structure with the right motivators behind it. Those three components can build an unstoppable team,” Montgomery explained. Next, he said, “on the client side, we do the right service that’s in our wheelhouse, that we can consistently deliver to the right client…and for the right price, so we have enough money coming in the door.”

With that structure in place, Montgomery said, firm owners “can get out of production and lead the firm,” changes that can lead to “you running a firm that gives you more freedom.”

A key to making those changes is to be willing to delegate and empower. “We advise our clients to outsource and grow and scale their business,” Montgomery said. But many firm owners fail to practice what they preach. By failing to build out an empowered team, he explained, “We have a bunch of worker bees, and we become extremely busy, too.”

12 More Takeaways from Joe Montgomery

READ MORE →