PODCAST

Joe Pine: The Transformation Economy Comes for Public Accounting | Gear Up for Growth

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As AI automates compliance, value shifts to measurable outcomes and client aspirations.

This is a preview. The complete episode 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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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines

Author and strategist B. Joseph Pine II urges accounting firm leaders to confront a fundamental question: What business are you really in?

MORE Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here | MORE Gear Up for Growth | MORE CPA Trendlines videos and podcasts here

According to Pine, the profession is approaching a critical inflection point as the global economy moves beyond goods, services, and even experiences, into what he calls the transformation economy.

“You use experiences as a raw material to guide people to change, to help them achieve their aspirations,” Pine tells Gear Up for Growth host Jean Caragher, president of Capstone Marketing. This shift, he explains, requires firms to move beyond simply delivering accounting work efficiently to helping clients achieve meaningful, measurable change.

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Candy Bellau: The $350 Pricing Mistake that Nearly Broke this Boutique Firm | The Disruptors

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How to reset pricing, rebuild margins, and stop “helping” clients into bankruptcy.

The complete 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

Candy Bellau didn’t set out to build a firm that could operate without her. But her hand was forced when her mother became ill.

“I kept dropping the ball at my own company and my team, the long-term members kept picking it up, and slowly but surely, they just absorbed the client work I was doing,” Bellau recalls. 

MORE DISRUPTORS: Oliver: Build a Biz that Runs Without You | Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | 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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Her team at Kramerica Business Solutions not only maintained the business but made it better. “They did things that were so much better, and they looked out for me,” Bellau says.  

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Alan Whitman: Breaking the Mold with PE Backing | Holistic Guide

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Ex-Baker Tilly CEO takes helm at a new “category” of CPA firm.

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!

By Rory Henry CFP®, BFA™
For CPA Trendlines

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.

MORE Alan Whitman Plants a Flag in the Private Equity Landscape | Whitman: Build Culture on ‘Progress,’ Not Change | Moss Adams-Baker Tilly Merger: Bigger Isn’t Better. Better Is Better. | Rory Henry and The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management | The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management |

5 Advis-ROR® Takeaways

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Systems enable people to scale. Communication, sales, and talent engines allow firms to grow without relying on individual effort or burnout.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

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Why Happiness is Hard-Fought for High Achievers| ARC

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Learn how easily pros tie well-being to success—and how fear of failure can distort self-worth. 

Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

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Accounting ARC
With Byron Patrick and Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation

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

Busy season may still be a days out, but the stress response already starts to hum for a lot of accounting professionals — the calendar fills, the inbox tightens, and the margin for error feels like it shrinks to a sliver. In the latest Accounting ARC, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, and Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, take that reality head-on with a surprisingly practical lens: modern stoicism. 

MORE Accounting ARC: The Fastest Way to Lose Talent Is “Dick Leadership” | Post-Holiday Fatigue Isn’t a Failure; It’s a Signal | OCR, Research Bots & Meeting Assistants: What Actually Helps Now | Return Season is the New Stress Test | Small Firms May Have the Biggest Advantage in 2026 | Downgraded: What the DOE Said About Accounting | Savage: Using Your License as a Megaphone |  Baker: Interpreting Pricing Psychology | Don’t Get Fired by Your Own Automation | What Amazon Doesn’t Tell You | Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC 

They start by naming the misconception most people bring to the word “stoic” — that it means emotionless, rigid, “stone-faced.” Shimamoto, founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC and founder and inspiration architect for the Center for Accounting Transformation, admits that’s how he learned it, too: a kind of unfeeling resilience.

But the article that sparks the episode — a Psychology Today piece on the science of stoicism — reframes it as something more useful (and more human): a set of attitudes and behaviors linked with resilience, lower anger and higher life satisfaction.  

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AJ Johnson: New CPA Licensure Pathway Opens Doors to Talent | Gear Up for Growth

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Expanding access while maintaining rigorous standards.

This is a preview. The complete episode 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!

Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines

“This legislation has real consequences – positive consequences – for the health of firms, corporate accounting departments, and the broader economy,” says Aiysha “AJ” Johnson, CEO and executive director of the New Jersey Society of CPAs, during her appearance on Gear Up for Growth with Jean Caragher of Capstone Marketing. “I like to think that we’re opening doors.”

More Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here | More Gear Up for Growth | More CPA Trendlines videos and podcasts here

Johnson highlights New Jersey’s new legislation signed by Governor Murphy, creating an additional pathway to CPA licensure, a move designed to expand access while maintaining rigorous standards. It will take effect Feb. 11, 2026. READ MORE →