Today's Features
SPECIAL

Staying Independent: Why Your Best Clients Hope You Turn Down Private Equity

two men talking across table

The conversations you should be having right now.

By Hitendra Patil

There is something that consistently gets missed in the private equity conversation, and I have watched it get missed from both sides: the people inside firms that took PE money, and the independent owners watching from outside.

MORE by Hitendra Patil
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Independent firms hold real structural advantages that the PE model works against by design. For the right clients, those advantages are not a secondary consideration. They are the core of the relationship.
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ABOUT US

Bissett Bullet: The Big Three

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “Growing your firm is possible even with limited time and resources, if you simply focus on the three most profitable exercises that build your credibility as an expert in your field.”

By Martin Bissett

Create high-level intellectual property such as a video series or a guest blog about a niche area for a trade association publication that can be repurposed for all manner of marketing collateral for your firm. If it is published in the places that your ideal clients are looking then you will find that you are attracting new opportunities rather than “selling,” and those appointments take far less time and resources to convert.

Today’s To-Do:

Start today. Dedicate a small amount of time every day to focus on three key things that will build credibility in your field. The rest is billable hours.

See more Bissett Bullets here

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ACCOUNTING ARC

Efficiency Is the Wrong Goal for AI | ARC

Value, quality, and effectiveness—not cost savings—should define success.

Sponsored by True Advisor: The Definitive Success Guide for Client Advisory Services by Hitendra Patil |
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Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason, Donny Shimamoto, and Byron Patrick
Center for Accounting Transformation

Does meaningful AI adoption require scale, budget, and the dedicated innovation teams embedded in large accounting groups? In this episode of Accounting ARC, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA; Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP; and Liz Mason, CPA, take on a familiar—but increasingly flawed—narrative in the accounting profession: that large accounting teams will define AI success

The reality, they argue, looks very different on the ground.

MORE Accounting ARC: Accounting’s Hidden Talent Risk: The Sandwich Generation | Built Fast. Sold Faster. Broken Later? The Truth About Accounting Tech | Recognize When You Need to Recharge Before You Burn Out | Valuing More Than the Balance Sheet | Accounting’s “Untalked-About” Frontier | Why Happiness is Hard-Fought for High Achievers | 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 |

What starts as a reaction to a “big firm” innovation discussion quickly turns into a broader reframing of how small and mid-sized organizations should think about artificial intelligence—not as a race for efficiency, but as an opportunity to increase value, improve quality, and deepen client relationships.

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MARKETING & SALES

Six Techniques for Acquiring New Clients

man displaying emails on computer screen

Don’t be afraid of giving too much information away.

By August Aquila
MAX: Maximize Productivity, Profitability and Client Retention

A good marketing program never stops marketing the firm. You must always think about acquiring new clients to replace lost ones and to improve the quality of your client base. It’s a fact of life that some clients will move, go out of business, merge or even leave us for another firm.

MORE by August J. Aquila
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Let’s look at some basic client acquisition activities that should be part of your marketing plan. You may be asking yourself, “Which ones work?” They all do. The secret of business development is to constantly be in the marketplace because you never know when a prospect is ready to buy from you or to move from their existing accounting firm.
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MANAGEMENT

Shirt Logos, Surveys and Bears, Oh My

Marketing encompasses many things.

By Ed Mendlowitz
Call Me Before You Do Anything: The Art of Accounting

I like to wear shirts with my firm’s logo. We have an arrangement with Land’s End where we can order what we want from their catalog and have the Withum logo applied. It is a very easy process.

MORE by Ed Mendlowitz
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When I had my own firm we let staff freely choose what they wanted from the Land’s End catalog, and we ordered it for them. It shows pride in the firm, is a walking billboard advertising your firm, and presents an appearance of a “together” firm. READ MORE →