Kelly Mann: Women in Leadership, Thriving Against All Odds | ARC
“I’d go through cancer again before I’d go back to not having confidence.”
Accounting ARC
With Arpan Grewal
Center for Accounting Transformation
WOMEN IN ACCOUNTING
What Accountants Can Learn from T-Ball
Chaotic, crazy, and utterly joyful.
By Liz Farr, CPA
I’ve been spending a chunk of time lately watching my grandson’s T-ball games. And I’m loving the rules – or, more accurately—the lack of rules they follow in this league.
MORE LIZ FARR: Jody Grunden: Subscription Pricing Is a Game Changer | Loren Fogelman: Stop Undercharging and Start Being Client-Centered | Brannon Poe: Grow Your Business by Preparing to Let It Go | Dawn Brolin Says Grow Your Firm By Shrinking It | Nicole Davis & JW Davis Show How to Create Your Own Pipeline | Chase Birky Builds the Anti-CPA Firm | What Kind of Leader Are You? | Jason Blumer & Julie Shipp: Move Leaders Out of Client Service |
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No one keeps score. There are no outs. Everyone gets a chance to whack a baseball off the three-foot tee as far as they can. When everyone on the team has had a chance to bat, the inning is over. The last batter and all the kids on base run around the bases to home, and the other team goes up to bat. Two innings, and the game is over.
I love it. It’s chaotic, crazy, and utterly joyful.
Loren Fogelman: Stop Undercharging and Start Being Client-Centered
Stop letting your business and career “suck the life out of you.”
This video is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members. The podcast version will be available everywhere you get your podcasts.
The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
Loren Fogelman is on a mission to help accountants and bookkeepers build businesses that “don’t suck the life out of you.” As Fogelman says, “How much can you actually give up your personal life before it’s not sustainable any longer?”
MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS: Dawn Brolin Says Grow Your Firm by Shrinking It | Jason Blumer & Julie Shipp: Move Leaders Out of Client Service | James Graham: Drop the Billable Hour and You’ll Bill More | Karen Reyburn: Fix Your Marketing and Fix Your Business | Giles Pearson: Fix the Staffing Crisis by Swapping Experience for Education | Jina Etienne: Practice Fearless Inclusion | Bill Penczak: Stop Forcing Smart People to Do Stupid Work | Sandra Wiley: Staffing Problem? Check Your Culture | Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow |
According to Fogelman, a keynote speaker and one of America’s top-ranked business coaches for Business Success Solution, “At least 57% of firm owners are undercharging for their services.” She encourages professionals to double or even triple their fees, which frees up time so they can provide client-centered services and “go back to the gym or spend more time with your family or take that much-needed vacation.”
The highly-sought business coach has several methods her clients use to earn more, work less, and have more quality time for themselves.
Amber Setter: Coaching Helps Resolve the Tension Between Safety and Purpose
Safety’s knowing you can pay the bills. Purpose is knowing there’s something more.
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
Amber Setter, the chief enlightenment officer for Conscious Public Accountants, started out as a Type A overachiever CPA, but after a few busy seasons, she realized that she “didn’t want to be an accountant anymore.”
MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS: Blumer CPAs: Move Leaders Out of Client Service | James Graham: Drop the Billable Hour and You’ll Bill More | Karen Reyburn: Fix Your Marketing and Fix Your Business | Giles Pearson: Fix the Staffing Crisis by Swapping Experience for Education | Jina Etienne: Practice Fearless Inclusion | Bill Penczak: Stop Forcing Smart People to Do Stupid Work | Sandra Wiley: Staffing Problem? Check Your Culture | Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow | Jody Padar: Build a Practice that Works for You, Not Vice-Versa | Ira Rosenbloom: With M&A, Nobody Wants a Fixer-Upper | 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 |
Today she’s an executive leadership coach for accountants, helping them transform their lives and careers.
MOVE Announces Best Firms for Women, Best Firms for Equity Leadership
Pinched between immediate capacity shortfalls and applying talent to innovation, firms are crafting new ways to recognize and reward women’s resilience.
By Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
You can’t go the distance on an empty tank.
It takes pacing, re-fueling and constant systems checks to achieve long-term goals, for both accounting and advisory firms and women in the profession. Individual career sustainability is essential for firm growth – and vice versa.
In the recently released 2023 Accounting MOVE Project report, a talent-starved profession receives a fresh influx of strategies and inspiration for investing in the women it must attract and retain to achieve short goals and survive long-term. With nearly 75% of accounting firm leaders eligible for retirement, and accounting degree college enrollment continuing to drop, the profession is at a crossroads. It is more important than ever for firms to find ways to attract and retain employees to not only meet increasing client needs, but to simply survive. So, what are firms that are outpacing the industry doing differently?
MORE: Jina Etienne: Practice Fearless Inclusion | CSR for CPAs: The Missing Ingredient | New Study: Embracing Diversity in Accounting |Why the Diversity Problem Won’t Be ‘Fixed’ |Sponsorship Might Keep Talent from Exiting | New Study: Embracing Diversity in Accounting
The Accounting MOVE Project report finds firms embracing the new super skill of career sustainability are rising to the occasion. For women, career sustainability addresses the capacity to maintain motivation and energy at every step, while rebalancing the personal and professional with each engagement. For firms, it engenders a leadership culture, defining new capabilities, qualifications, and measurements for unmapped growth. And for both, this super skill is the ability to “skate to where the puck is” on slanted ice through upended physics. Through it all, mutual respect and collaboration remains paramount, the inescapable legacy of the workplace upheaval brought on by the pandemic.
Heather Satterley: You’ve Got to Meet People Where They Are
Stop saying yes to everything and start saying yes to yourself.
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
Heather Satterley is well-known for being an accounting tech expert. But tech isn’t the only skill accountants need today and for the future. “You can have great technology skills, but if you don’t have people skills and those softer skills, that’s going to be a problem,” she said.
MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS: Bill Penczak: Stop Forcing Smart People to Do Stupid Work | Sandra Wiley: Staffing Problem? Check Your Culture | Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow | Jody Padar: Build a Practice that Works for You, Not Vice-Versa | Ira Rosenbloom: With M&A, Nobody Wants a Fixer-Upper | 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
One of those softer skills that will be a key skill for the future is problem-solving, which requires keeping an open mind to “look at not just facts and figures, but look at tools, resources, people and pull them all together,” she explained. No one can be an expert at everything, so having “a wide network of really awesome professionals” is vital for filling in any gaps “to get the job done.”
Four Tips for Tough Times
Change your thinking to prevail over the most difficult circumstances.
By Sandi Leyva
The Complete Guide to Marketing for Tax & Accounting Firms
Perseverance is a skill that anyone can learn to not only survive, but thrive through life’s curves. When adversity strikes, it’s not what happens to you but how you respond to what happens to you that has the greatest impact on your life.
MORE: Now’s the Time to Clean Up Your Email List | Transform Your Marketing with CRM | Five Kinds of Small Thinking | Five Tests: How Open Are You to Change? | Maybe Price Isn’t the Problem | Three Thoughts for a Quiet Morning | The Seven-Step Plan for Marketing by Spreadsheet | Beyond QuickBooks: Wowing Your Clients | 11 Ways to Boost Billings and Impress Clients
Here are four specific ways you can change your thinking to persevere in the toughest of circumstances.
READ MORE →
Headcounts Grow 5%; Pay Rates Surge at 7% Pace
The only down spots? Tax prep and payroll.
By Beth Bellor
CPA Trendlines Research
We like to see a month or two of increases when we’re talking about jobs, but how about six or seven? That’s the rosy picture seen across several sectors in accounting, according to the latest available data.
MORE: CPA Staff Wages Hit New High and Keep Climbing | Firms Battle Staff Shortages with Pay Hikes | Tax & Accounting Firms Beef Up Wages and Headcounts | Employee Counts, Earnings Rise
Oh, you’re an employee looking at potential earnings? They just hit new highs at CPA firms and for staff overall.
We report here on the accounting profession as a whole as well as:
- CPA firms
- Tax preparation services
- Payroll services
- Bookkeeping
- Women
Comeback Stalls as Layoffs Hit 1,500 in Accounting
CPA firms cut average staff pay.
“The Tax Season from Hell?”
Join the survey. Get the results
By Beth Bellor
CPA Trendlines Research
The accounting profession sector by sector generally looks slightly brighter, with most reporting headcount growth for the month – but losses for the year.
Exceptions include the profession overall, which is taking a 0.2 percent dip, tax preparation services up for the year 3.3 percent, and bookkeeping, up 1 percent.
MORE ON JOBS: Tax & Accounting Regains 3,800 Jobs | Accounting Jobs Recovery Slows | Tax & Accounting Firms Rehire Two-Thirds of Pre-COVID Workforce | Tax & Accounting Firms Rehire Two-Thirds of Pre-COVID Workforce | New Job Cuts at CPA Firms | COVID Job Toll: Tax & Accounting Cuts 17,500 Employees | Firms Recall Half of Furloughed Staffers
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In this report, CPA Trendlines highlights:
- Current and long-term hiring trends in each of the bookkeeping, payroll, tax, and CPA segments of the industry (all data seasonally adjusted)
- Average hourly wages for key segments
- Typical hours worked per week
- Trends concerning women in the accounting workforce
Six Ways to Make Your Own History During Women’s History Month
Most of them are easier than you might think.
Add your voice to Comments: What’s working for women in the profession? And what needs more attention (especially this year when issues like this get pushed to the lowest priority)?
By Sandi Leyva
Did International Women’s Day come and go again in your firm without much fanfare? That’s OK because you have the entire month of March to not only celebrate Women’s History Month but also to make some history of your own.
MORE ON SMALL-FIRM GROWTH STRATEGIES: Clubhouse: Hottest New Social Platform or Just More Noise? | Who’s Offering Your Clients PPP Services? | PPP Client Fraud: How Much Risk Is Too Much? | Survey: Who’s Not Billing for PPP Services? | Add These Money-Making Rituals to Your Work Day | 3 Ways to Opt Out of Any Downturn | 5 ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ Ways to Raise Your Revenues Right Now | How to Lead in a Crisis
Here are several ideas you can implement immediately that will each take one small step toward advancing women.
READ MORE →
Tax & Accounting Regains 3,800 Jobs
Tax prep down, payroll sees big swings.
By Beth Bellor
When COVID ‘Got Real’
^ Click to play
Tax season turns into ‘advisory season,’ and a whole new niche is born, with Gabby Luoma.
Planning for the Coronavirus Recession
If past recessions are any guide, the profession could lose up to 100,000 jobs.
Busy Season Barometer:
Bracing for the Coronavirus recession
Join the survey. Get the facts.
By Beth Bellor
The tax and accounting profession was adding new jobs at a rate of 2.3 percent per year before the Coronavirus outbreak, according to CPA Trendlines Research.
See: All CPA Trendlines Special Coronavirus Crisis Coverage
More Staffing and Hiring Trends: Automation and the Future of Accounting | Getting and Keeping the Best: The Struggle Continues | Headcounts Dip by 3,500 in Tax & Accounting | Creative Perks for Remote Employees | What Staffing Shortage? | Hiring Trends Flash Warning Signs of Slowdown in Tax & Accounting | Salary Survey: Top Skills Getting Top Pay
But with a new recession looming, CPA Trendlines estimates the profession could lose up to 100,000 jobs and take up to seven years to recover.
The latest data available show more than a million employees in the profession, and growing at about 2,800 new jobs per month. At the same time, wages are hitting record highs.
But with the Coronavirus crisis threatening a new recession, CPA Trendlines conducted a long-term, 30-year analysis, focused on the job losses caused by the dot-com crash of 2001 and the financial meltdown of 2007. From the analysis, CPA Trendlines calculates the profession could shed up to 10 percent of its current workforce, and not fully recover for two to seven years.
In this report, CPA Trendlines highlights:
- Current and long-term hiring trends in each of the bookkeeping, payroll, tax and CPA segments of the industry (all data seasonally adjusted)
- Average hourly wages for key segments
- Typical hours worked per week
- Trends concerning women in the accounting workforce