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The Disruptors: Al Anderson on The New Manifesto for Accountants

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Change your firm or go extinct.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Al Anderson has been trying to change audit for nearly his entire career and has always been “willing to try things differently.” While he’s always loved auditing – and thinks to this day that auditing can be fun – what he didn’t love was “auditing by doing it the same way every year.” However, he sees far too many firms performing audits the same way they have for decades. Anderson believes that “the firms that are unwilling to change eventually are going to be history.”

INSTANT DOWNLOAD: Al Anderson’s “The New Manifesto for Accountants.“

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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In an effort to combat the rising tide of commoditization of audit and assurance services, Anderson has been teaching a revolutionary framework for audit leadership to auditors around the world and has now written a book (to be released later this year by CPA Trendlines) that describes the five attributes of this framework.

These five attributes include:

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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 →

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

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

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.

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Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

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.
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Robert Fligel: Private Equity Shakes up M&A

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Opportunity or threat? It depends.

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With Rick Telberg
For CPA Trendlines

Private equity takeovers of accounting firms are changing the rules for the CPA business, impacting succession plans, shifting talent strategies, and reshaping the competition, according to Robert Fligel, CEO and founder of RF Resources, one of the nation’s leading advisors.

MORE: Dustin Verity: Keep an Open Mind and Constantly Learn | Secret to Success? A Growth and Abundance Mindset | O.D. Lanier: Stepping Into Advisory | From Tax to Transformation | Early Adopters Gain an Edge in Audit | Why the Future is in Risk Advisory | Four Strategies for a Future Ready Firm 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

SEE ALL: Podcasts and Videos here

In this exclusive interview with CPA Trendlines, Fligel, a veteran dealmaker in the vast and active New York market, explains what PE firms may not want you to know, why CPA firms are suddenly so much in demand, and the often-uncertain outlook for owners, staffers, and the profession.

For some, PE is an opportunity. For others, a threat. Fligel helps sort it all out.

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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

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Ryan Lazanis: How to Build the Firm that Suits Your Lifestyle

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Bigger isn’t better if it creates headaches.

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Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr for CPA Trendlines

Ryan Lazanis started his previous firm, Xen Accounting, a 100% online accounting firm because he thought he could have a better life if he started his own business. Now, he teaches firm owners from around the world how to build firms that support their lifestyles.

“Your business is there to serve your lifestyle. We often lose sight of that,” Lazanis says. Instead, firm owners should think about what makes them happy and how their business will help them get there.

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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“Growing your firm should start with that concrete end in mind. Work backward to see what you should be doing next and how big you want your firm to be. “A lot of firms are able to grow, but to the detriment of someone’s work-life balance,” he said. Adding to the top line can also mean “we’re driving ourselves into the ground.”

Instead, Lazanis wants  “to help firm owners create a business model that can scale, where we can add to the top line, but in a more reasonable fashion where we’re not adding to our existing workload.”

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