pirolli: you can’t “declare” independence — you have to earn it | gear up for growth

firms that want to stay independent must transform how they operate, lead, and plan for succession.

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pirolli, a former aicpa chair and longtime cpa firm partner, emphasizes that succession planning must begin on day one, not five years before retirement. he cautions that too many firms wait until it’s too late to build future leaders or transfer client relationships effectively. 

he also challenges firm leaders who proudly declare their intent to stay independent but lack a strategy to sustain it. true independence, pirolli says, requires more than avoiding private equity. it demands discipline, leadership development, and a clear operational strategy. 

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“if firms want to stay independent, they have to do all the things that will keep them that way,” he explains. “you can’t operate the same way and declare independence. you have to make changes in your strategy and how your firm operates to compete against firms that are not independent.” 

throughout the conversation, pirolli shares insights into how generational leadership shifts, trusted advisor models, and client advisory services (cas) all tie into effective succession planning. 

 other highlights:

1. gen x and millennials now dominate firm leadership, bringing new priorities: early retirement goals, flexible governance, and a focus on work-life integration. 
2. these generations are rethinking partner agreements written by baby boomers and implementing more corporate-style governance structures. 
3. firms must define what independence means, such as client selection, hours, and culture, and ensure that their operations support that vision. 
4. it’s too early to judge long-term effects, but pe must protect the cpa brand, the very asset that makes firms valuable. 
5. new clients entering through cas, rather than tax or attest, enable firms to gain a deeper understanding of their clients and leverage more services across departments. 
6. technology plays a crucial role in scaling and integrating cas services to enhance advisory potential. 
7. success for the traditional “trusted advisor” approach requires a systemic, firmwide approach, not individual heroics. 
8. succession succeeds when clients are familiar with multiple team members and trust the firm, not just one partner. 
9. firms should help retiring partners find new purpose through mentoring, training, or community work. 

transcript

(produced by automation. not edited for spelling or grammar.)

jean: hello. thank you for joining “gear up for growth”, powered by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. i’m jean caragher, president of capstone marketing and your host. today’s guest is bill pirolli, executive vice president of firm services at succession institute, llc, where he focuses his efforts in the areas of trusted advisor and emerging partner training and coo support services. he was a cpa firm partner for over 40 years, including 15 years with disanto, priest & company located in warwick, rhode island. bill served as chairman of the board of the aicpa and co-chair of the association of international certified professional accountants for the 2021-2022 year. bill, welcome to “gear up for growth”. 

bill: thanks, jean. great to see you. we go back a long, long way. we won’t say how far, but we go back a long way. 

jean: yeah, well, that’s right. yes, a very long way. and i calculate sometimes my life by where i was living at the time. so, it’s a long time because there’s been a few moves since then. so, you’re now with succession institute and have your specialties, but let’s start off with just a few questions about succession. so, where should cpa firm leaders start when they’re thinking about developing a succession plan? what’s the first step? 

bill: so, we get asked that question a lot, obviously. and firms call us all the time and they say, “we’d like to talk about succession.” so, my very first question is, define succession for me. what do you mean by succession? what are you talking about? and 9 times out of 10, they’re addressing it in terms of a partner retirement situation or at the end of someone’s career and that whole process of transition. 

and the way i look at succession is a little bit different, is that it really needs to start on day one. and that’s the problem that a lot of firms have, is they just don’t really pay attention to what succession really is until they get to the last few years. and they need to be addressing it all throughout their career and all throughout their staffs and their associates careers, because you can’t get into succession unless everyone else is also doing the same thing. and it starts with staff. it’s the whole process of replacing an office or property or a task or a job with one person for another person. that’s what succession actually means. so, that has to happen all throughout the lifetime of the firm in order to be properly established at the end to avoid that scenario. 

jean: right. but now, if it isn’t. and that’s a great point, it really should start at the beginning, but many times it’s not. what should leaders do? 

bill: well, leaders need to address it a good five or six years before it happens. so, if we are talking in the context of a partner retirement, which is how most people view succession, the good news is that it’s already happened. the baby boomers have already pretty much left the marketplace. you and i see each other at engage every single year. we pass in the hallways at conferences. and in my session i asked how many baby boomers were in the room. i probably had a couple of hundred people in the room, and there were only five hands that went up, five. 

jean: wow. 

bill: so, guess what? it happened. it happened quietly. everybody thought it would be a huge deal when the baby boomers stepped away, but nothing bad really happened. so, now, when we go into firms, we find that leadership has changed. so, leadership has passed down now to gen x and millennials in the normal course of business. and they’re doing things a little bit differently, they really are. 

jean: okay, tell us a little bit about that. 

bill: so, i’ve been studying this whole generational issue because those are the leaders we’re dealing with now. they’re not the baby boomers anymore. there are still quite a few around, but the leadership in the firm has really shifted. and they choose to do things just a little bit differently. so, we’re looking at a lot of governance structures. they tend to be more of a corporate governance than a top-down type of governance. 

and generally speaking, what we see is that they want to retire earlier. i mean, i’m looking at agreements where 100% vested at 62. we had one firm where everybody wanted to leave at 55. so, i think they’re learning from what was put upon them. they didn’t have any say in those agreements. they were drafted by a whole generation of people for themselves and now they’re saying, “okay, is that going to work for us? that type of transition of people within the firm, that whole succession, will that continue to play out with the generations that we are working with?” 

jean: right. that’s so interesting because let’s face it, the baby boomers, it was all about the hours, and how many hours can you work? and how many life events can you miss? and all those things. and the next generations watched that, and they’re saying, “that is not what we want.” and now, as leaders, they have the opportunity to do it differently. 

bill: right. and they are. it remains to be seen how successful they will be, but they’re, at least, asking the questions. because in a lot of cases, that next generation, those gen xers who are just great folks, but they’re totally different than the way baby boomers operated. you know this. they’re very independent, and a lot of times, they weren’t really well prepared for their position because baby boomers didn’t like to share a lot. so, now, they’re looking at those agreements for the first time. they’re saying, “what the heck is this? how did we get here? does this make any sense?” so, we get a lot of calls to review what buy-in looks like, what buy-out looks like, what becoming a partner looks like, and what governance inside a firm generally should look like. and they seem to be a bit more broad in their approach to governance than kind of the old pyramid. 

jean: right, right. so, what skills or qualities do you see in these younger professionals that set them up to become future leaders of their firms? 

bill: yeah. well, again, it depends on which generation you’re talking about. millennials came to the table and said, “hey, you guys are working too hard. we don’t want to work that way. we’d rather work a lot smarter.” and, you know, the whole work-life balance, if you want to use the word balance, i use integration because there is no balance. and so, they’re just approaching it a little bit differently. they’re approaching it more of a lifestyle change. you said it well, you know, baby boomers were expected. you know, it was hours in the seat, and that was your path to success. well, i think people are trying to figure out a better mousetrap than just hours in the seat. you know, what do the hours look like? how can we be productive? how do we build that team underneath us to support us? and like i said, they seem to be more broad in their thinking in terms of what a team is as opposed to being more siloed. 

jean: interesting. what happens if a firm doesn’t have that future leader or leaders? are they just destined to be acquired? you know, what options are available? 

bill: well, it’s interesting that right now, you know, obviously with private equity in the market just stirring stuff up, we have a lot of firms, a lot of our firms and firms around the country kind of making this declaration of independence, “i’m going to stay independent.” and so, i go in and i challenge it, “what do you mean by independent? what does that mean to you? what is the best part for you about being independent?” and when they really break it down, you know, is it you choosing the clients that you want to work with every single day? and they’ll say “yes.” and i say, “well, you don’t do that. you take everybody. you refuse to let anyone go.” so, that’s not really independent. is it working only the hours you want to work and creating time for yourself? and they say, “yes, yes, that’s it. that’s what independence means to me.” “well, you’re not doing that. you just told me you’re not doing that. you’re working too many hours.” 

so, i think the declaration of independence is more, i don’t want to be working for someone else. that’s what independence means for them. and maybe that’s, i don’t want to be held accountable, or i don’t want to be part of a bigger system. i was in that system once. so, yeah, we work really hard. if firms want to stay independent, we will go in and we will help them stay independent. and usually, that comes down to all the basics, jean. you know, it’s leadership training. it’s having the proper messaging and voicing. it’s picking the right clients and staying disciplined in that area. training, training, training. and then we work with them on their governance. what should it look like? who should be making decisions? what’s your strategy to staying independent? you should have a strategy rather than just making a declaration. 

jean: yeah, you’ll have to tune into a future episode. it’s recorded, but it hasn’t gone live, yet. i spoke with two managing partners who made those declarations for their firms. so, it was a great conversation. so, hopefully, lots of folks will tune into that. 

bill: i don’t have a problem with people doing that, but i always advise them, “hey, you have to be aware of everything going on in the profession, not just the lane that you have picked for yourself. because you might be doing a disservice to the firm by being firmly rooted in the fact that you want to stay independent. maybe at some point, that will change for you. so, that’s fine. it’s great. it’s a great strategy if you want to remain independent. but now, you have to do all the things that will keep you that way. and that means operating a loop. you can’t operate the same way and declare independence. you have to make those changes in your strategy and in how your firm operates in order to compete against firms that are not independent. 

jean: right, right. so, now, you touched upon private equity. and, of course, we’re all talking about that these days and reading a lot and hearing a lot about it. how do you see the pe affecting firm succession? is it the thought of, “gosh, we’ll take on some pe investments so we’ve got cash to do more stuff,” or maybe, “this is my way out?” is it is pe complicating manner matters or maybe making it easier? 

bill: well, i think pe is taking the profession to places it’s never been before. so, i think just like any other question related to pe, it’s too soon to tell. we really don’t know. they’re certainly going to shake up the way firms operate. again, they’ll make all of those decisions that usually independent firms struggle with. and that, you know, who does the work? who are we hiring? what type of work are we taking on? they’re going to look at leverage. they’re going to look at all of the things that a typical partnership, cpa, closely-held or closely owned, they struggle with all of those decisions because they’re a partnership and they want to keep everybody happy. pe won’t struggle with those decisions. 

so, they will change the landscape of the profession. they will change how firms operate because that’s what they do. they’re more corporately driven and they’re not afraid to make those types of decisions. now, whether or not in the end, that will be good for the profession as a whole, we hope it will be. when i was chair, you know, we went out and we talked to the pe leaders and we said, you know, “you’ve got to protect the brand. the brand is why you’re paying these premium prices for these firms. it’s the brand. so, we want you to protect the brand and help us in that regard.” and again, it’s too early to see how invested they will be in that. but they’re obviously paying a premium for the cpa. brand. and what do they intend to do with it? 

ai will make a huge difference, of course, but it should. it’ll get rid of those lower-end services that we’ve been dropping off forever, jean, i’m certain. i started in the manual world of manual general ledgers. and if technology were going to put us out of business, it would have done it 30 years ago. so… 

jean: exactly. no, i remember when i started my accounting marketing career, that was at the end of 1985. and i remember watching those cpas take a file off a shelf, work on the file, have the file reviewed, put it back on the shelf, take another file, and then they’d have to send it out to get it processed, and all of the steps. and how different the work is done now, it’s another world, really. 

bill: yeah. but i think it’s elevated the profession tremendously. that’s what technology has allowed us to do. i would say, i mean, i started in 1979. and i believe at that point in time, and barry and i have had a lot of conversations about this, we were more of a trade than we were of a profession. we were like, you know, upper level record keepers. i was trained by bookkeepers in this profession because that’s what we did. 

jean: interesting. 

bill: we did payrolls and sales taxes, you know, at the small firms level. and back in the ’70s, all these giant firms were all local firms back then. they were all doing the same type of work. so, today, you look at professional accounting and professional accounting firms, very, very sophisticated. and we’ve turned from that trade into this, you know, highly sophisticated profession. so, if technology allowed us to do that, maybe technology will carry us even further. exciting times. 

jean: oh, it absolutely is. what i’m hearing a lot now, and i know any merger is going to have some fallout, but i’m hearing that these pe-backed firms are losing clients and losing opportunities with prospects because the prospects are asking, “are you taking pe money?” because that’s influencing their decision of who they work with. and team members leaving pe-backed firms because they don’t… everybody says, “oh, the culture is going to be exactly the same.” we know that it’s not going to be the same. we’ve already talked about the fact that, you know, the pe-backed firms, they are going to be run in a more corporate way, which is very different from a partnership and how decisions are made and, you know, just the whole vibe in a firm. is there a connection there also related to succession and the differences that exist between a pe-backed firm and those that aren’t? 

bill: yeah, sure. i mean, you know, pe led to a lot of succession. a lot of firms had succession issues and, you know, pe maybe solved some of those issues for them, although i don’t think that was the total driving force. but one of the early questions was, with pe and the way everything is organized and everything is owned is, how do you, you know, incent the next generation to come up? what does ownership look like? i mean, we can’t worry about succession unless we have owners, right? so, what is that going to look like for them? will there be an incentive for them to take ownership of a firm if the firm is pe-backed? but then, again, it’s too early to tell. 

and you’re right, there’s always fallout, always. and those people who kind of declare independence point to, “oh, look, we had a big client just leave them. and so, obviously, pe doesn’t work.” well, that’s not the case, obviously. excuse me, a lot of the clients that may be shed, our clients should have been shed, right, by those firms. and again, they’re making those kinds of corporate decisions that we struggle with as local practitioners. you know, you know the demographics. most firms are small firms and they struggle with that. they just don’t want to eliminate anybody once they’re in the family. so, they’ll think differently about it. 

and, yes, there’ll be a lot of movement of staff because it’s not what they signed up for. and i think maybe clients are a little bit worried about who will they work with long term. they understood, you know, people like me, i had clients for my entire career, third generations, right? clients like that trust and they like that stability. well, what’s going to happen if you keep gobbling up firms, and what’s what will it look like? 

jean: tell us a bit about the work you’re doing related to trusted advisor. that’s a term that’s been around, you know, quite a while now, right? 

bill: quite a long time. 

jean: i don’t know exactly how long, but a long time. what does that involve and how does that relate to leadership and what cpas can bring to the table when they’re working with clients? we’ve touched upon how technology is going to make the work different or faster. tell us about the work you’re doing with the trusted advisor and how that impacts the leaders or team members in a firm. 

bill: yeah, sure. you know, we have been talking about trusted advisors since the beginning of time, right? i’ve been in the middle of this for 30-plus years, you know, help develop programs, was a trusted advisor teacher out on the road. and, you know, as we reflect back on it now, and i just had a conversation with lisa simpson about this, i don’t think it worked well. it really didn’t, because what we were trying to do was make everyone a trusted advisor. and you just can’t do that. and it became frustrating because people who come to our class were really excited about it. they go back to the firm and the firm wouldn’t know how to support them. because they would say, “you still have to get the job out. i understand you want to do all this nice stuff with the client and move in that direction, but you still have to get the job out.” very task oriented. 

so, just like just like cpa.com cas did with cas, you know, elevating from cas 1 and just breathe life into cas. cas been around forever. as a bookkeeper, it’s been around for a very long time. but elevating cas from cas 1 to cas 2, and really having a system within the firm to take advantage of trusted advisor as opposed to doing it the other way. you had to develop it very much in a system. so, bill reeb is working very closely with the major firms group on how to think differently about trusted advisor as opposed to, you know, instead of bringing 50 people into a class, which we’re happy to do, and train them on trusted advisor skills and maybe have two that come out of the class truly, you know, with the ability to do it and move forward, we need to create better systems within firms to make sure that we’re putting the leverage in place for our clients. 

so, right now, it’s depending upon who the partner is. if i was the partner on a job, you can bet that it was highly leveraged, with trusted advisor services, and everything the firm had to offer was put in front of that client. my other partners, not as much. they were they were more task driven. so, we had one client being totally leveraged and the other not because we made it dependent upon the individual partner. so, now, we have to develop a system in-house. and what does that look like? do we have a position that is really kind of that sweeper, that leverage maker across the whole firm? do we have a team that does nothing but that? 

so, bill is working with the major firm group on that. and they’ve been doing that for years. and i’m actually working with cpa.com on doing sort of the same thing in in tax. how do we elevate and continue to leverage tax through the life cycle of a client? and so, we’re taking a more systems approach than we are into individualized training approach. although, training is at the heart of it, as you know. we have to continue to train people to do that. but without a more systemized approach, it’s always been like ping pong. you just never know. some people have great success and other people won’t. and, you know, we’re not fully taking advantage of the leverage that we have with our clients. 

jean: right, right. exactly. i mean, the firm is not going to benefit as much as they could if it is kind of on a person-to-person basis. so, how important is the technology aspects of cas? 

bill: oh, it’s hugely important today. it’s hugely important. because, you know, my vision is, if you think about how we bring clients into a firm, if they come in the tax door, all we ever talk to them about is tax. if they come in the attest door, that becomes the primary, you know, speech with the client, is all about the attest. and, you know, tax is the gateway. every single person has to go through the tax gateway. but what i do, jean, is i kind of relate it to medicine. if you think about how medicine works, by the time you’ve seen the doctor, you’ve been through the entire building. they’ve taken your financial information, your personal information. they’ve given you a cursory checkup. they’ve drawn blood. they’ve done a whole bunch of steps before you get there. so, they know everything about you before the doctor engages with you. they have a complete profile. 

so, my thought is, if the gateway for clients was through cas and not through tax and attest, we could gather much more information about the client at the start rather than saying, “all right, this is the task. let’s learn everything about the task, but really not learn anything about the client. we just need to get the tax, the task done.” whereas if you enter it through a cas gateway, cas is very wide, and they can they can develop that body of knowledge about that client, and then use that throughout the firm. so, by the time he gets to tax, we know everything about that client. we know where they operate, what they do for a living, who their competitors are, all of that information that can be gathered. we just have to get it in the right door. 

jean: right, right. and i would think that a firm that did offer cas services… or maybe i’m saying that wrong, because like you say, everybody does, and everybody calls it the same thing, right? and the ability to be more advisory contributes to the longevity of a firm because you have that client loyalty. your people are doing more interesting things in helping a client with different services. so that i’m trying to tie the bow to where we started, that contributes to a firm’s succession plan because of the way it’s operated, the client base it built and the skills that their people were taught. makes sense? 

bill: it absolutely does because you’re taking one point of contact and making many points of contact within the firm. and some firms do this very, very well. i don’t want you to… you know, we didn’t get this successful by not knowing this. but how do we replicate it inside of firms when so much of our work is compliance based? seventy, seventy-five percent of what we do is compliance based, both on a test and on tax. so, how do we find room for that other 25% or 30% percent so that it doesn’t just happen, it happens with purpose? and to your point, it puts a whole team there because how do we tie it back to succession? that was the original question. how do you…? and these are all things that lead to a very successful succession. whereas, you know, in the past, if i brought it in, you know, i hunted it, i killed it, i brought it in, i serviced it, and it’s mine. 

so, when i do planning retreats, i kind of go a little crazy when people talk about their book of business, “it’s my book of business.” it is not your book of business. it belongs to the firm. it’s not yours. thank you for bringing the client to the firm. but if all you’re doing with that client is holding them captive for your services, then you’re not maximizing the client potential. you have to release the client to the firm, which makes succession that much easier. you introduce many more people into the account, the clients are comfortable with knowing, “hey, i just don’t have one person that knows me. other people know me.” 

jean: right. absolutely. to smaller firms, let’s say, firms with less than 100 people, do they have an advantage to this whole discussion around the succession and advisory and cas? since they could maybe move quicker than bigger firms, but then they also have fewer resources. so, what’s the opportunity for the smaller firms? 

bill: that hits it on the head too, yes. yeah, the advantage of being small is that i can be nimble and i can, you know, react very, very quickly. but the disadvantage is, i don’t have the resources maybe necessary to provide that much leverage. how do i get those resources? do i work with other firms? do i work with other companies? because if i don’t have the resource, i typically don’t want to sell it. that’s why firms tend to grow in that way so they can offer these additional channels of services, and hopefully, have their partners cross sell and take advantage of that leverage. 

so, yeah, the answer is yes and no. they do have an advantage because it’s a little easier for them to make decisions. they’re a little bit more nimble. they can go and they can try to pursue something. but the disadvantage is, to your point, they don’t have the resources that a larger firm might have. and they also sometimes really don’t think it out the way they should. you know, we see firms all the time that get into a specialized service because a partner likes it. you know, “hey, i like doing business valuations. let’s form a business valuation department.” and it ends up being an island of one. that that partner is out there and he’s got no help, no staff, no training. and when that partner goes, so does all that work, it disappears. so, it’s going to be interesting. 

jean: yes. okay, i’ve got a couple more questions. 

bill: yeah, go ahead. 

jean: so, a lot of these firms, again, don’t have a formal succession plan. why do you think that is? and what’s the danger of waiting too long to do it? 

bill: well, obviously, the danger is all along the way, you’re not training people the way they should be trained, okay, if you’re not giving up that responsibility along the way. and of course, it’s risk of clients. now, i’ll be honest, i was very, very good at this. you know, if i was going to go out and teach it, i really should be good myself. and covid helped me because i retired, like, during covid and when i was chair. and there was no expectations of clients meeting with you. so, literally, i sort of left out the back door and no one knew i was gone because no one came to the building anymore. but i really set the stage for succession on every one of my accounts. i was minimally involved. i was only doing trusted advisor work. and so, all of my accounts were in a state of succession before i left. 

that being said, we still had client loss because, excuse me, at the end of the day, i had clients call me up and say, “bill, i’m going to move because that person’s great, but they’re just not you.” so, you know, it’s so personal. that relationship is so personal. you know, most of my clients stayed because they were very comfortable with the people that i had put on the account and had worked on that for years. so, i would say, if you’re not starting, at least, five years in advance, you’re already too late. but the beginning point is really thinking about what you’re doing every day with that client, and how do you transfer that knowledge? and do it earlier rather than later. 

and a lot of people are just afraid, they’re afraid of what’s going to happen at the end. what’s my purpose going to be? so, we do a lot of counseling in that area just to help people get past it. i mean, it’s inevitable, so you should be planning for it. and as a firm, you should have a really good policy wrapped around this where you talk about it. and i have to say, my firm did a great job here because we knew everybody’s intended retirement date. you had to declare it every single year. didn’t mean it was cast in stone. but we wanted to know what people’s thought process was. we wanted to know what retirement was for them. now, some of my partners still went back. they went back and they participated in the firm. they didn’t have any client responsibilities, but they showed up all the time. that’s great. that’s what they wanted to do. myself, i didn’t do that. so, you know, when they asked me, i said, “well, call me if you need me, but you shouldn’t need me.” and guess what? no one calls. it’s great. it’s great, yeah. 

jean: i can understand, though, of just needing to find that next step or, you know, where you’re going to focus your life, or what you’re going to do after you’ve done something for so long. you know, so that time frame is really important because i don’t know of anybody that’s just going to decide that right away. like, you really do have to think about it. 

bill: yeah. well, that’s a podcast for another day, jean. let’s talk about that all you want, all right? 

jean: we could just… 

bill: you know, how to be successful in that. and it’s a big part of succession and where we see partners sometimes fight it because they don’t have anything on the other side. and they’re really concerned about that. so, how do we keep them relevant inside the firm? what do we have them doing? so, we want them to mentor. we want them to train. we want them to be, you know, pillars of the community, be active in the community. what we don’t want them to do is be an accountant anymore. we want to take advantage of, you know, those non-technical skills that got them to where they are and really the fun part about what they do. so, there’s also a big part about succession that you have to deal with the individual partner’s personality. you can’t put everyone in the same box. we could put all the processes in the world in place and all the penalties. and, you know, if you don’t do this, then this will happen, and we’re going to take away from you. none of that matters unless we prepared the person for what comes next. 

jean: you know, believe it or not, you have answered a question that i was going to ask you without my even asking it. 

bill: there you go. 

jean: because i wanted to touch upon, you know, advice you might have to the partners who really are having trouble letting go of those clients. and you just gave some really good advice about helping to figure out how they do want to spend their time, whether that’s being involved in the firm or not, and the fact that each person is different and how they would handle that. 

bill: there are a lot of great people out there that help people do this. you know, you can bring in counselors or people who are life coaches and things of that nature that will try to get them to think a little bit differently. but here’s the dirty, little secret, jean, is that our clients really love us. they really do. that’s why they stay with us for so long. they want us to enjoy our lives. they really want to see us retire. most of my clients were like, “bill, this is awesome. you’ve been guiding me for all these years. we just hope you have a wonderful life. and the only reason they call is if i’m in town and they want to play golf or go out for dinner.” but they’re really excited for you. they want you to succeed. and the flip side is they don’t want to see you aging in place in the workforce, because then they might start to wonder, you know, what happens if something happens to you, right? things might happen. 

jean: right. yeah, yeah. you’re right, this could be a whole nother podcast episode… 

bill: it’s really that. we’ll talk about it. 

jean: …about all the psychology and everything behind succession. okay, so my last question is a bonus question. 

bill: sure. 

jean: so, i understand that you’re an avid golfer. 

bill: i am. 

jean: what is your number one golf course you’d like to play that you haven’t played, yet? 

bill: oh, boy, i have been so incredibly fortunate in my life to play some of the greatest golf courses in the world. i just came back from a trip in scotland and managed to cross a bunch off my list. i think ireland would be next, to play some of the courses in ireland. but in this country, i’ve been blessed to be able to play some of the best golf courses in the world in places like shinnecock and pebble beach and all those places you watch on tv. and that’s really the most fun, is if you play a course that you can later watch on tv and say, “oh, i was right there, and i hit a ball. i scored one out of bounds.” 

jean: yeah, i hit my ball in the woods, right? or it’s like, “yeah.” 

bill: right there. right there. that’s what it is. so, that’s a lot of fun. 

jean: that’s right. “so, you’re one of those people who were standing out of bounds? “that’s right. that’s where i hit my ball.” 

bill: yeah. and actually, one of the greatest experiences i’ve ever had in the game happened at the old course of st. andrews about a month ago when we were out there, i was out there with barry and some friends. and on the road hole, the classic road hole, i hit it over the green on the second shot. and there’s all kinds of people just walking their dogs. and i was on a little strip of grass and it was very small. it looks big on tv, but it’s very small. and this gentleman came up to me and said, “lad, what are you going to do with this one? are you going to chip it into the bank or are you going to throw it up high?” and i said, “i think i’m going to throw it up high and see if i can make an up and down.” and there were probably 50 people around watching the shot. and i put it on the green and everybody’s clapping. and i walked up and i made the putt. so, i made up and down from over the road hole with a whole bunch of people watching. really, it was a great golf experience. because, you know, golf is for the people there, not for the privileged. and it was great. it was really, really great. 

jean: yeah. what a great story. oh, my goodness. well, i’ve been speaking with bill pirolli, executive vice president of firm services at succession institute, llc. bill, it was great catching up with you today. 

posted on october 31, 2025