Today's Features
CLIENT SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

Blake and Pryor: From a $550K Tax Bill to Near $0 | Big 4 Transparency

Integrated planning, not heroics, creates life-changing outcomes for clients.

This is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
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Big 4 Transparency
By Dominic Piscopo, CPA
For CPA Trendlines

What happens when you fuse a CPA firm with a wealth advisory under one roof and design the operations from a blank page? In this two-guest episode of the Big 4 Transparency, host Dominic Piscopo sits down with Owen Pryor and Steve Blake, managing and senior managing advisors at Evans May Advisory, the sister firm to Evans May Wealth Advisory. Their premise is simple and radical: serve the client with unreasonable hospitality, align wealth and tax strategy, and deliver family-office convenience to high-net-worth families and growing owner-operated businesses. 

MORE Dominic Piscopo | MORE Private Equity | MORE Pay & Compensation

Pryor and Blake describe a system built on proactive data sharing (with client consents in place) so the firm, not the client, chases documents, coordinates advisors, and executes. The impact shows up in small, high-leverage wins (e-paying taxes and killing paper vouchers, physically banking clients’ mailed checks twice a week, fully recording receivables) and in headline outcomes (structuring a family-farm sale from an estimated $550,000 tax bill to near $0 through planning; spotting missed depreciation and back-catching via Form 3115; introducing lesser-known international strategies like ICDIS where relevant). The result is relief for clients and measurable ROI that converts conversations into scope. 

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ABOUT US

Advisory Opportunities Expand as FICA Tip Credit Rules Shift

Advisory Revenue Strategies: Navigating the New FICA Tip Credit Landscape with Jody Padar – Register | Learn more

Webinar with Jody Padar, Jan. 16 – Register | Learn more

By CPA Trendlines

A major shift in the federal FICA Tip Credit framework is opening new advisory revenue opportunities for accounting firms, as lawmakers and regulators move to redefine who qualifies for the long-standing payroll tax incentive.

CPE Webinar: “Advisory Revenue Strategies: Navigating the New FICA Tip Credit Landscape.” With Jody Padar. Jan. 16, Noon ET. 1 CPE. $49.50. Register | Learn more

Those changes will be the focus of a Jan. 16 webinar led by Jody Padar, CPA, titled “Advisory Revenue Strategies: Navigating the New FICA Tip Credit Landscape.” The one-hour session runs from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. ET.

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MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Negotiating a Merger? Remember These Three Factors

Hand drawing a rainbow-colored 3

BONUSES: Smaller firm to larger, 25 questions to ask and 17 data points to request.

By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Mergers: Your Complete Guide

There are always three intangible factors that greatly influence the extent to which merger terms and issues are negotiable:

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1. Negotiation ability of each firm. Some people are “tough” negotiators, continuously trying to impose their will on the merger partner, while others are more malleable and tend to go along with whatever the other side wants.
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MARKETING & SALES

Why You Might Struggle with Selling

Businessman with head in hands

Accountants need to reframe their thinking.

By Martin Bissett
Business Development on a Budget

Let’s take a look at the last 20-plus years of my experience and my research as to where new clients come from in an accounting practice. I don’t think there are going to be too many shocks here.

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What I’ve found is that 82 percent of all new clients in a given year who come into an accounting firm come in from a referral source. This may be a bank or a lawyer or some other source, perhaps an existing client, who has recommended that a particular business meet with your firm and come on board as a client.
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GROWTH STRATEGIES

Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | The Disruptors

Firms that wait until a partner is ready to retire have already waited too long, plus 19 more key takeaways.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour 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

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!

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Erin Daiber, founder and CEO of Well Balanced Accountants, keeps seeing the same issue in firm after firm. A partner announces their intention to retire within a year or two, and the firm suddenly realizes no one is ready to take over.  “Firms are not starting that conversation soon enough,” Daiber says.

MORE STREAMING:MORE STREAMING: 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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“They’re not thinking about succession planning as a strategy,” she explains. Instead of treating succession as an ongoing process, firms see it as simply the point in time when a partner exits the firm. According to Daiber, succession planning should ideally begin with hiring decisions and culture building so that firms can be confident that they won’t lose clients or staff due to uncertainty about what might happen as partners get older.  

When succession planning fails, firms lose key employees before they even reach partnership consideration. “We’re losing them much sooner than that, which creates a big hole in the pipeline,” Daiber notes. She identifies an inability to have difficult conversations as the root cause, particularly when dealing with founders who view the firm as their legacy. 

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