hall of fame leaders share the lessons, mistakes, and trends shaping the future of firm growth.
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gear up for growth 
with jean caragher
for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
in a special episode of gear up for growth, four hall of fame members from the association for accounting marketing (aam) reunite to reflect on how accounting marketing evolves—and to deliver advice for today’s growth leaders.
host jean caragher, president of capstone marketing, is joined by brian falony, retired accounting marketing executive; allan koltin, ceo of koltin consulting group and facilitator; mitchell reno, principal and director of client experience at rehmann; and michelle river, ceo of fore, llc.
gear up for growth spotlights the best strategies for smart and efficient growth in today’s competitive landscape. more gear up for growth every friday here | more jean caragher here | get her best-selling handbook, the 90-day marketing plan for cpa firms, here | more 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 videos and podcasts here
together, they look back at how the profession has transformed over 35 years—and look ahead to what firms must do to survive and thrive in a radically different marketplace.
the conversation opens with reflections on the early days of accounting marketing, when firm growth largely depended on partner relationships and marketing was often misunderstood. falony recalls launching marketing strategies before the internet even existed, while caragher shares her early efforts to win buy-in from skeptical partners who viewed marketing with suspicion.
reno emphasizes the crucial role of aligning strategy with firm culture, warning that “culture eats strategy every time.” he stresses that even the best ideas fail if introduced without understanding the firm’s internal dynamics. river underscores the power of specialization, explaining that firms with clearly defined niches attract clients more easily and face less competition. koltin notes how each panelist evolved from early marketing roles into influential leaders shaping firm-wide strategies.
the panelists also share candid stories of early missteps that shaped their careers. falony admits he underestimated how much a leadership change could alter marketing priorities, a mistake that ultimately led to his departure from a firm. reno reflects that he spent too much time early on trying to prove his expertise rather than listening deeply to clients, a skill he now considers fundamental to successful growth strategies.
river shares that in her early career, she failed to appreciate how deeply culture impacts the success of marketing initiatives. she learned over time that without cultural buy-in, even the best campaigns cannot succeed. caragher adds that one of her early regrets is not setting clearer boundaries and expectations in her marketing roles, which would have allowed her to focus more effectively on strategic contributions rather than administrative tasks. despite the different details of their experiences, all agree that reflection and learning from mistakes are essential for growth.
turning to the future, the panelists discuss five major forces reshaping the profession: trends, technology, talent, transformation, and trouble.
caragher addresses how client loyalty, once a bedrock of accounting firm success, continues to decline. where 73% of clients used to stay loyal to the same firm, today, that number hovers around 53%, and it is projected to fall even further. firms can no longer rely on good service alone; they must actively demonstrate ongoing value to retain their clients.
technology also plays a pivotal role. caragher marvels at the profession’s transformation from the days of handwritten lead sheets to today’s world of crm systems, marketing automation, and ai-driven analytics. she emphasizes that firms must embrace data-driven personalization if they want to build lasting client relationships in the future.
on the topic of talent, reno warns that firms must prepare their people to adapt quickly to emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence. he stresses that the next generation of leaders must be trained to view ai as a tool that enhances client service and firm operations, not as a threat.
discussing transformation, falony points to the growing influence of private equity in the accounting profession. he predicts that as corporate structures take hold, marketing will play an increasingly central role in driving business strategy, much like in the corporate world he experienced earlier in his career.
finally, river addresses the trouble she sees on the horizon: accountants’ longstanding tendency to undervalue themselves. she argues that firms must help their professionals better understand and articulate the true transformational value they provide to clients rather than continuing to frame their work in terms of hours and billable time. without this shift, firms risk losing relevance and loyalty in a market that demands more.
in addition to discussing professional challenges and successes, the panelists take time to recognize the mentors and communities that have shaped their careers. many point to the aam as a critical catalyst for their success, describing it as a source of education and a powerful network that provides inspiration, guidance, and lifelong friendships. throughout the conversation, the panelists emphasize that no matter how technology evolves, human connection and mentorship remain essential to professional success.
7 key takeaways
- specialization drives growth, firms with deep niches build loyalty and achieve faster growth.
- culture must come first. great ideas fail if they clash with a firm’s culture.
- client loyalty can’t be assumed. firms must proactively demonstrate value to retain clients.
- marketing leads strategy. marketers are moving from support roles into key strategic leadership positions.
- technology is a differentiator. firms that embrace ai and data-driven marketing gain a competitive edge.
- private equity will reshape firms. corporate governance models are coming—and marketing’s role will grow stronger.
- mentorship and networking are essential. building relationships through communities like aam is crucial for long-term career success.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
jean: hello, and thank you for joining in to “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 usual host. but today, we have a special episode for you. with the 35th anniversary of the association for accounting marketing’s annual summit this year, we thought it would be fun to get a group of aam hall of fame members together to take a look back and a look forward on how accounting marketing’s evolution is shaping firm growth. i’d like to introduce my fellow panelists, brian falony, retired accounting marketing executive, mitch reno, principal and director of client experience at rehmann, michelle river, ceo of fore llc, and our guest facilitator, allan koltin of koltin consulting. allan, take it away.
allan: jean, thank you so much. and oh my god, what an honor. i’m not going to even guess the number of years of marketing and growth expertise on this call, but i will say it’s over 100 and under 200, just to play it safe. this is so exciting. and, group, thanks. i know you all have busy lives and busy schedules. and this to me is sort of the give back, the give back to the greater marketing community. it’s a chance to reflect. it’s a chance to stop the clock and to really think at the highest levels about everything you accomplished and maybe some things you didn’t accomplish. so, let’s kick it off. and the first question that i’d like you to address is the following. what advice would you give to anyone that is in the world of growth, in the world of sales, in the world of marketing, in the world of strategy within an accounting and/or advisory firm? what are the two or three lessons learned that we could hear and be that much better because of it? sound okay? we could go with iq, we could go with looks, we could go with years of experience.
jean: but don’t do that.
allan: i’m just going to go in alphabetical order thing. so, brian, that would point to you. take it away and then just pass the baton.
brian: well, gosh, thanks, allan. looking back on everything that happened in my career, i would say the one bit of advice that i would have is to always watch out for the unexpected and look for the opportunities in the unexpected. and i’ll give you two examples. when i started in accounting marketing, the internet didn’t exist. and when it first came out, we didn’t know what we were going to do with it. but look what’s happened with the internet since then and all the opportunities that are there. the second example, and then i’ll turn it over to my colleagues, is the recent pandemic. and we had the disease hit and then people started working from home. and then people discovered, “gosh, if i can work from home, i can work remotely. so, i don’t need to be tied by geography.” so, look for the unexpected.
allan: excellent. would love and maybe we’ll get time later to make a bold prediction and talk about that unexpected. but, boy, of those two, you nailed it. i think i knew all of you in my former life when we had a company. i think you were all clients, pdi, pdi global. we were the market leader with print marketing materials. and we used to talk about land rights. i would get into negotiations with you, brian, and i know jean and the territory you wanted. and it was all about bricks and mortar. that just doesn’t exist anymore. it’s a crazy time. yeah, yeah, for sure. michelle, take it away.
michelle: sure. i think that whether you’re a cpa consultant or marketing professional, regardless of which of those the listener is, i would say, pick your specialty and own it. as a marketer, my personal specialty was positioning. and that kind of grew into pricing, positioning and pricing, or married, they’re hand in hand. and as a cpa or consultant in a firm, the people who just surpass, far and away, their colleagues in passion, in ease of ability to grow their own practices, grow their combined practices, and all of that, is their specialization. and it’s not just a service specialization. that can certainly be one type of specialty, but it could be a niche within a niche.
so, allan, your newsletters were niche-oriented, smart, smart, smart. and we were talking about specializing three decades ago. and there are firms that still fight it, kicking and screaming. when i say niche within a niche, my former firm when i was in-house was in the ag space, food and ag. and we had so many niches within niches. we had beef within food and ag. and then we had dairy…or i’m sorry, we had cattle, but we had dairy, and we had beef cattle. and we had corn. we had feed corn, and we had what i called people corn. people made fun of me. they call it sweet corn. but you have so many niches within a niche. and the more you specialize in that, the easier your life is because growth is so easy. your clients fall into your lap. as a marketer, there’s a variety of things. it’s proposals or crm or internet that that specialty didn’t even exist back when we all started and built our firm’s first websites.
allan: michelle, you bring up a great point on specialization. i knew all of you when you were kids, if i can say that. and i think of the role that you started in, eyes wide open, and the role that you exited, and maybe more importantly, the legacy you all left behind for your firm, your loyal followers, all of that. and, michelle, you’re going to outlive me. so, there’s a higher chance you’ll be at my funeral than me at yours. but if i were at yours, i would go up to the tombstone. and you know what i would write next to your name? created more value for more accountants than anyone in the history of public accounting. you started in marketing, right?
michelle: thank you.
allan: and you exited as the god or goddess of value.
michelle: thank you. i’m so humbled.
allan: yeah. well, it is. so, good stuff. thank you. let’s go over to mitch. mitch, what about you?
mitch: all right. good advice. you know what? i think the advice i would have to offer that i think applies to both the practitioner as well as the marketing function is to really understand culture before you try to implement new strategy. the old cliche of, you know, culture will eat strategy every time is so true. and when i’ve talked to my peers throughout my career, so often, so many great ideas were simply not the right fit for the culture and couldn’t be deployed successfully. and so, understanding that as a managing partner or a leader of a marketing function i think really is important to make smarter decisions on which paths to take.
allan: mitch, you were one of the first ones to break one of the glass ceilings and it was to be a part of the real c-suite. a lot of us had that title of director of marketing, and in later years, chief marketing officer. but you saw it being something more than that. did that just come natural? was it something you fought for? how did you go from just director of marketing to chief marketing officer?
mitch: i was fortunate in a few different ways. i think timing was right in what the needs of the organization at rehmann were. and i think also i had a great ceo who really believed in me. and when he saw the potential that the role could be more than what he understood it to be, he embraced that. and so, i don’t know that i had to fight for that as much as i had to fight and be focused and passionate around the mission, vision, and values of the organization and show how marketing really is building a brand from the inside out and helping the organization take its uniqueness and specialty into the marketplace. and so, very quickly, i found myself involved in the business strategy and business planning alongside the responsibilities of marketing.
allan: love it. love it. thank you. and, jean, oh my god, i almost want to say we’ve logged in four decades together, but, yeah, i guess maybe.
jean: yeah, you’ve got a few more ahead of me. i remember the first conference, allan, you were speaking. it had to be 1986 for the american marketing association.
allan: yeah. yeah.
jean: i think that’s the first time we met. of course, you already knew the firm and you knew bob and the rest of them. so, let me add a little history here. so, i started at my first firm at the end of 1985 as their first marketing professional. and i spent my first six months… i know this is a firm, i believe it had like 24 partners, which was probably like 14 partners, too many. and i spent my first six months trying to convince those partners who didn’t want to have anything to do with marketing why it would be so great for us to collaborate together. and then i finally realized, “you’ve got to turn this around and know your audience. leave those people alone. work with the people who get it, who are interested in participating.” and again, that’s for marketers and practitioners. i would also say you need to be resilient and know how to pitch ideas to your partner group for campaigns or a particular strategy or whatever it is that you’re trying to implement to move the firm forward. and remember that sometimes it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission, that there are times that you just need to use your abilities and your confidence to move initiatives forward and then accept what happens as a result of that.
allan: yeah, spot on and sage advice. brian, let me bounce back to you just because as mitch was talking about navigating and as jean is sort of adding to that, i remember watching you as a very young green marketing director. and i saw at an early age in you the ability to get people to go where they didn’t want to go. what’s the definition of management? it’s getting people to a place they can’t get on their own. what was it about your style that they embraced? as everyone has been talking about, sometimes you can’t lead too far ahead of the troops. what was your secret sauce?
brian: i think part of it came from the fact that while you say i was a green marketing director, i actually had probably about 17 years of marketing experience before i got into accounting marketing. i spent those years in the office furniture business in a very corporate structure. and one of the things i learned about when i was in that corporate structure is if you are going to move a project forward or move an initiative forward, you’ve got to help everybody that is involved with it to understand what it is going to do for them, how they’re going to benefit from it. and so, when i got into accounting marketing, it was very important for me to make sure that the people that i was asking to be involved in a project or to help with it in some way understood how it was going to, a, benefit the firm, but even more benefit themselves.
allan: got it. and i apologize. i did know that, but you always look so young that i just thought you were starting a business right out of school.
brian: i actually think i have a couple of years on you, allan.
allan: and you fooled us all. so, let’s flip this around and just be as open as you can. when you think back, we call it lessons learned. fool me once, fool me twice, but by the third time, i should be able to figure it out. what was the biggest…? i don’t want to call it failure, but it could be failure, it could be blunder. what was something if you look back, you’d say, “i would never have made that mistake. if i knew what i knew now, i would have done this differently”? this is how we get better. we learn. you always talk to people at conferences and sometimes you ask people, “how’s it going?” and it’s always great. and then the next thing you know, they’re not at the firm anymore. well, it must not have been going so great. but, yeah, what was the school of hard knocks? maybe is where we’re going with that. michelle, you want to kick us off?
michelle: that’s tough. i do not have a prepared thought for this, but i’m going to play off of what…because i wasn’t thinking about a lesson learned the hard way personally. i’m going to go off of what brian said. my biggest, i would call it fail, but it’s not, it was a lesson learned. i’m a positive person, so i’m going to apply it that way. was not taking enough into consideration culture, or that was mitch, i’m sorry. no, it was both of you really, but you both spoke to it. it’s not taking enough into consideration the culture and the ability to really bring to life the initiative, or the program, or the campaign idea, or whatever it was that i had because the players weren’t interested in playing. and little did i know when i was back, you know, i was in my 20s when i started in a firm, and they had so much confidence in me, probably more than i had in myself back then. but, you know, i didn’t realize the outside impact outside of my marketing department, impact of compensation and how that system worked.
and, you know, having a good intuition about individual humans is really important. kind of getting like, “hey, this person’s strength is their ability to have personal relationships with a client. this person’s strength is the gift of gab. this person’s strength is prepared presentations, not off the cuff. this other person’s strength is writing, but don’t put me in front of another human.” so, really just kind of both culture, both as a firm and what the organization is set up to be successful doing, getting that all aligned with what my initiative was did not exist in probably my first 10 years as a marketer in different places, a cpa firm, a law firm, and back in cpa space. but i think intuitively i figured out how critical that was.
and still to this day, when i help firms in the area of adopting a new revenue model, it’s actually become the very first thing that i explore is tell me about your culture. and, you know, you probably do this in the m&a space, allan, and i know you do, jean, in your branding work. but when i come in, if culture isn’t aligned for what they say they want to do, that’s something that we need to work toward first. and that might take a couple of years of groundwork before we could proceed with any particular initiative. i used to also make the mistake of thinking if the culture wasn’t aligned for what i wanted to do at that time or what i wanted the firm to do, that it could never happen. and that was a mistake, too, because it absolutely can. but it starts with seed planting, maybe seed planting for two or three years before you can get people ripe and ready to accept what you’re asking them to do, which is where brian’s persuasion comes in.
allan: love, love that. you know, the pearl of wisdom i took from it is you broke things down to little pieces. you figured out what people were capable of doing and not doing. i remember in my early days of marketing, the managing partner sitting me down and saying, “why are you spending time with these three people?” and i said, “because they need help.” he said, “not in this lifetime.” and i said, “what do you mean?” he said, “your job is to take very good and make them excellent, to take good and make them very good. but there’s a group here, we just need them in production. don’t waste all your time because the return on investment will never be there.” so, i like how you read the tea leaves and figure out where to spend your time. mitch, pick it up. yeah. what about you?
mitch: i think my big bonehead move when i was early in my career was probably thinking i had too many of the right answers. and had i been better at listening to clients early in my career…and i’m much better at it today, and probably have good, meaningful interviews with 50 to 100 clients a year. so, the power of the client’s voice, not just from surveys and other collected information, but the power as a marketer to understand the client, speak the client’s language back to the firm and back to the leadership of the firm, well, if i would have had that earlier in my career, i would have been so much better at what i did and probably been able to make even a larger impact.
allan: isn’t it a little when you’re starting out, you’re trying to prove yourself, so invariably, you’ll do a lot more talking because you’re trying to convince whoever you’re talking to that you got game, that you know your stuff. and then one day, the light bulb goes off and it says, “it’s human behavior. you got to do a better job of listening and asking great questions.” and that creates your pathway. as mitch said to me once, it was learn to listen so you can listen to learn. sounds simple, but so apropos. thank you. jean, what about you?
jean: this is a hard question, allan. but what popped into my head was the years i spent at bdo. and when i wished i had set clear boundaries or expectations about the role of a marketing director, because i can recall now how many hours i wasted with the admin copying and cutting and pasting proposals or having partners submit reports that are months old and meaningless at the time that they submitted it, that i could have had a stronger voice in how that could have been implemented better.
allan: love that. yeah, yeah. and you had an illustrious career in that you worked with firms of all sizes. six million to 600 million and in between. yeah. at the end of the day, did firm size matter or not that much to achieving your goals?
jean: well, in my case, i don’t think it mattered. i mean, at the time, israeloff trattner, a firm that does not exist anymore, was the big dog on long island. and i had a managing partner who was willing to do just about anything related to marketing or business development, which was great for a marketing director because he was just all about winning and being at the top. so, when i spent time at bdo, it wasn’t that different because i was responsible in an office. i didn’t play a national role. now, after a couple of years, i did play a regional role. you know, whatever the size firm, you find that they have the same challenges, they have the same concerns, the same doubts. so, no, the size of the firm did not matter to me.
allan: thank you. brian, i’m going to swing over to you, and maybe a question we’ll have for the group. i’m finding this so fascinating because the journey you all started with, there were major things that happened. and i think you said this early on is the unexpected happening, but so many of you talk about client satisfaction, exceeding expectations. i’m going to bet if i go to all of your original job descriptions, client satisfaction was not even in the job description.
jean: what job description? what job description are you talking about?
allan: yeah, yeah. so, maybe we’ll get a little time there. but, brian, what about you? what lessons learned?
brian: i think that the biggest lesson learned i had was when i didn’t follow my own advice that i was giving to everybody before. and mid-career, i was working for a fairly large accounting firm here in atlanta, and had been there for about eight years and had built a pretty good marketing plan. and we were clicking along, going just great. and the managing partner who i got along with really well retired, stepped down, and we got a new managing partner. and i didn’t think long enough about, “gosh, this might change the way the firm is going. i might need to change what i’m doing to accommodate the new managing partner.” and after a couple of years, i hadn’t taken the time to understand where he wanted to go. and we got to a point where it just wasn’t salvageable, and we decided to part ways. so, it goes back to understanding what you need to be doing and where the firm wants to go and culture and all of that. so, i learned a lot from that.
allan: yeah, brian, we all so appreciate your sharing that. and i think we all have our story or version of that. all of us, when we go to the aam conferences or wherever, we get approached by younger, aspiring marketing directors, coordinators, leaders. and invariably, some of them will talk about their dissatisfaction at the firm they’re at. and the tough love i know we all give to them is like, “look, you got to fight for what you believe in.” but there may come a day where the culture doesn’t want to go that way. and it doesn’t mean you were right or wrong. it doesn’t mean they were right or wrong. it’s just not a fit. so, you can spend x number of months or years going forward trying to fix something, or maybe the best advice is to say, “not enough time in this lifetime, move on to the next one.” they have to be fits at all levels.
michelle: allan?
allan: yeah, michelle, please.
michelle: there’s so many good firms out there. and every firm is so different. i’m firm believer of that. i mean, yes, fight for a little while. but when the writing’s on the wall, vote with your feet. if you have aspirations, there’s a firm that is just looking for you and your energy and your ideas. and it’s a matter of the right firm and the right marketing professional. and magic can happen. and i would say that to any practitioner, too. there was a firm in illinois in the chicago market that i used to work with. and they had all male partners. and a female just could not break into that partner group. and they had great women working there. and this was years ago, but it was a vote-with-your-feet situation. it doesn’t mean it was a bad set of people. it doesn’t mean that none of the women were good enough and none of the male partners blocking the way were intentionally doing it. a lot of partners can’t see the talent in their younger people. it’s like we look at our kids and think they’re never going to be organized and committed to a career because we saw them be lazy for a moment in high school, and we may not see their full potential. but don’t let it discourage. i’d hate to see good talent, whether it’s a practitioner, sorry, marketers or professionals, too, a practitioner or a marketing professional leave accounting altogether rather than find a beautiful fit with a different firm.
allan: fantastic. and any of you jump in at any time. there’s no pride of authorship here. please, mitch.
mitch: i would add on the entire talent side, when i look back in my career, i wish i could go back and focus more when it comes to training on business development skills, and marketing skills, and sales skills. i spent so much time helping the firm train the old guard and the principal level. had i spent more time helping the firm train the next generation of leaders, again, i think i would have had much better results with my energies.
jean: okay. so, i would like to add something to that, to what mitch just said. i recorded another episode for “gear up for growth” this week. so, that’ll be coming out soon. and one of the points here was how client loyalty is decreasing at rapid rates. that it used to be about 70, if i’m getting this right, about 73% of clients would go back to hire the same firm because of the work they did and the relationship they had. and now, that’s down, i want to say, to about 53%. and looking forward into the near future, that percentage is 37% that clients are much more likely now to choose another firm for various reasons. so, cpas can’t rely on that recurring business just because they’re doing a good job for their clients. so, that’s a challenge for the partners and also for the marketers because, you know, what role are the marketers going to play now in this situation where it needs to be about more than doing a good job, and partners being willing to have their client satisfaction level measured and being accountable for that. so, that’s, i believe, part of the future that we’re looking at is that those same clients are not always going to be there just because you’re a nice person and do a good job.
allan: i think the younger they are, the less it’s about bricks and mortar. they’ll think nothing of having their advisor in another country, another time zone. there’s no old-school, “well, you need to be down the block because they may want to have breakfast with you next week.” it doesn’t matter. doesn’t matter. so, i want to put all of you on the spot a little, and it’s a little bit of paying homage. let me give you a little time here while i introduce it to reflect. i want you to think of the one or two mentors, coaches that you had in your illustrious professional career. and it’s okay to give homage, to name them. but what i’d like you to attach to it is why. why were they so impacting about you and/or what was it they saw in you that…? one of you said this, “maybe you didn’t see yourself.” i think, michelle, may have been you that someone believed you could do something, but maybe you didn’t. and they pushed you. they accelerated you to a whole nother level.
i’ll give you a little more think time. i had two. one was howard schnoll. it was my first career in accounting. and six months in, he pulled me in his office and he said, “you’re the worst accountant i’ve ever seen. we can’t get enough malpractice insurance to cover your acts. you’re fired.” he said, “but i want to hire you back on monday.” and i said, “for what?” he said, “i don’t know. i need the weekend to figure it out.” and ultimately, that was a role in marketing and sales and business development when nobody even knew what that was. my other mentor was irwin friedman at the chicago firm i spent many years. and he pulled me out of the fray, if you will, and said, “you’re going to be the assistant to the managing partner, and you’re going to learn how to run an accounting firm.” and little did i know that was my mba to doing what i do for the past three decades of advising accounting firms. so, i’ll leave it open. who wants to jump in first? brian, you had your hand up. go ahead.
brian: i had two. the first one was the managing partner of the first firm that i worked with, ron cohen at crowe chizek. and ron was one of the ones that hired me. and the best piece of advice he ever gave me was, “if you think you have a good idea and i shoot it down, keep trying. you just have to convince me.” and i did on a couple of occasions, and i learned a lot from him. the second one was a gentleman i met at the aam conference, a gentleman by the name of bruce marcus, who we all know. and bruce used to talk to me every aam conference that i went to. bruce and i would sit down and talk, and he would ask me how it was going. and he would give me pointers. he knew what my background was coming from corporate marketing into accounting marketing. and he had enough knowledge about the difference between the two that he could give me some directions on how to move from a very hierarchical structure to one that is more loose, where every partner thinks they’re your boss. and he just kept pointing me in the right direction every time i saw him at an aam conference.
allan: fantastic. some great ones you named. yeah, i don’t know what it is when you mentioned ron cohen at crowe. it was the first field trip we ever took. it was the early ’80s, and they already had industry specialization. our profession didn’t even know what those words meant. we probably thought it was an oxymoron. they just didn’t go together. yeah. thank you. who’s up next?
mitch: i’m happy to go. this is pretty easy for me. for the majority of my career at rehmann, i had two bosses, two ceos, steve kelly and randy rupp. and early on in my career, steve kelly said, “i think you’re a business person more than you’re a marketer. and i want that to be your strength. and i want you to lean into that and not worry about all the marketing stuff as much as being able to speak the language of our business, understand how it’s run, how it can grow.” and he really supported me in that and would talk to me about making decisions for the business as if i were his equal, which i was in no way close to his equal. but he did that and empowered me to think in a much broader, grander way about the work that i did as it applied to the marketing and sales and client experience and all those areas that i was enjoying focusing on with the organization. and then the other thing that was so powerful that he and randy taught me was that this is a people business. and we deal with a lot of numbers, we deal with business law application, and all of that type of stuff. but at the end of the day, it really is about people working with people. and that’s how we can move any organization forward.
allan: fabulous. thank you. thank you.
jean: absolutely true.
allan: jean?
jean: all right, i’ll go next. okay. so, this isn’t sucking up to the facilitator, but i would consider early on, allan, that you were a mentor for me because lord knows, we bought all the pdi products and the conferences pdi used to have in chicago. and i remember calling you when i was considering leaving israeloff trattner and moving to atlanta. and because sometimes my brain is crazy, i said, “hold on a second.” and i got up, and i came back, and you said to me, “did you just close the door?” and i said, “yes.” i’m like, “imagine i can’t have anybody hear me that i’m considering leaving.” but i think, you know, back in the day, we spent a bit of time together and just, yeah, you were very helpful to me. i would also say that rick telberg has been a mentor to me. he is one of the smartest people that i know. i mean, he could take a topic and look at it from 12 different perspectives and be knowledgeable about all of them. and he challenges me to think, you know, perhaps with a different viewpoint of what’s possible. and i’ve really appreciated his, you know, wisdom and collaboration over the years.
allan: well, thank you. i will. and i think i thought of you as a mentor as well. so, maybe it was a mutual love affair we had. yeah, business love affair. thank you.
jean: yeah, that’s right. let’s make that clear.
allan: let’s swing it over to michelle. [crosstalk 00:37:04]
michelle: okay, we’ll change that subject really quick. there are so many, i mean, just people that i wouldn’t be here at all doing what i’m doing if it weren’t for them. bruce marcus, i would have mentioned, but since he’s been covered, i’m gonna switch that over. there was about a year, i think it was 2004, 2003, something like that, where someone i had considered a legend in accounting marketing, but was already kind of had stepped aside. couple of you will, for sure, recognize his name, but alan boris called me out of the blue. he was already kind of being reclusive from the industry. you know, david maister was huge influence and wonderful, but i knew alan boris more. he called me out of the blue and wanted to collaborate with me because i had been posting some things on my blog that just clicked with him, and he gave me some really neat guidance. he referred me into deloitte for an engagement that i was nowhere near qualified to do. and sadly, this is tragic. it was in cayman islands that i had to travel to for this engagement. so, it was really brutal.
but that confidence boost and his endorsement and encouragement at that kind of one of those earlier years of consulting, i was only a consultant for maybe five years before that, just changed a lot of things for me. and he helped me really see that i could help firms in a different way than i was helping them. i was being more or less an outside or outsource marketing director. and he helped me see that i could easily slide into where my passion was, which was strategic. so, he was really influential.
i’m going to also say ric payne, who was part of results accountants’ systems bootcamp, the australian guys that used to come up here and do a multi-day program. ric payne has been just a wonderful mentor to me even over the last few years. he’s down back in australia now, but fantastic. and then not in a mentor role so much, but somebody who really kicked my butt a few years back was gail crossley. and that was around 2010 when…she is the one who told me i really should accept the wiley publisher offer to write a book on social media. i was not that interested in social media, but she’s like, “do it.” and she was right. her guidance and her coaching and her counsel were just fantastic. so, i have to appreciate those folks. and one last one, i’m going to say tracy crevar warren in aam has always been this incredible role model of diplomacy and kindness and graciousness. and i have always looked up to her leadership. she was the president of aam one of the last few years i was on the board. and her leadership style was just so beautiful, and i treasure her.
mitch: i think that’s important that you shared that, michelle, from the standpoint, really aam as an association, really acted as mentor, and leader, and coach, and networker. and for all of us, that’s probably how we all met and came to know one another. i can’t say for sure that without the support of aam that all of us would have necessarily been here.
michelle: i wouldn’t. brian, i’m so sick of hearing this. you introduced me to aam in, like, ’93 or something. if it weren’t for you, again, i wouldn’t be here.
brian: and again, if it had not been for aam, i don’t think i would have had the career in accounting marketing that i had. i learned so much from everybody that i met at the aam conferences, and the friendships i have built out of that will last a lifetime.
allan: you know, what’s fascinating is when people go to the aam conference and sometimes they’ll ask them, “how was it?” and they’ll invariably talk about the speakers and the content. and if it was great, they’ll say it. if it was average, they’ll say so. but i am amazed because the real value in going to that conference is networking and talking to people and asking questions and saying, “hey, i’m thinking of this. what do you think? or how did you handle that?” it’s like going to grad school. it’s fantastic.
michelle: allan, would you agree aam is different than other conferences?
allan: completely different. you’re saying compared to other conferences in the accounting space?
michelle: yep.
allan: yes. i would say the one that i notice a lot of similarity to is probably the one on the big stage, the aicpa msg meeting, the 75 largest, or even the aicpa g400. i mean, i think those are evolving now where they’re going there, and they’re looking up who’s on the list, and they’re setting up breakfast and lunch and dinner meetings and specific things that they want to talk to each other about. you all did that. i mean, that’s what made the aam conferences so special. so, with the time we have left, i’m going to give you five t’s, and i’m going to let you pick which one you’d like. and they go something like this. i want you to think about trends, trends looking into the future that if you were in the marketing of an accounting firm today, that would either keep you up at night or would maybe be an accelerator and say, “you know what? let’s go seize that opportunity.”
technology. i mean, technology has changed everything. i think of the old, old, old-school of how we used to create leads and figure out prospect and parolist. i mean, it’s almost embarrassing to how data analytics and seo and things happen today. talent. if you were reflecting on talent, the talent of marketing people, anything that comes to mind. the transformation, the great transformation of being an accounting and tax firm, you know, moving from that trusted advisor to being the most valuable advisor for your clients. and maybe the fifth one, just to put a little spin in it, maybe the fifth t, i’d call it trouble. trouble because we’re coming off the best five years in the history of public accounting. and there’s a sentiment out there that we can just keep doing what we’re doing like we’ve always been doing. so, trends, technology, talent, transformation, trouble. anybody take a t and tell me what you’re thinking.
jean: okay. i’ll go first.
michelle: oh, you got it.
jean: oh, no, no, i’m going first to make sure i get the one i want. okay. so, interestingly, i’m going to take technology. so, i’m going to relate this back again, give a little history. and i’m going to bring this to summit. so, back in the day in the late ’80s, before computers, we had little pads of paper for partners. it was a little form for partners to write down new business prospects that they had. and this pad of paper was literally, like, 4 inches by 5 inches so that they could fit in a suit jacket. and then the partners would fill that out and supposedly give it to their marketing coordinator to start keeping track of. and the marketing report was typewritten. it wasn’t an anvil in a rock, you know, we did have typewriters. and we would create these reports.
and when you look at the time that has passed, the technology that is at our disposal, the data that we can collect, the reports that we can share that define the types of clients that firms should be going after based on specialization or niching, being able to truly track the wins and losses, collecting data about those prospects, being able to personalize and reach out on a personal customized level to build that relationship because accounting will always be a relationship business, it’s almost like it’s two worlds colliding. it has just advanced over these decades that i may not have done such a great job explaining, but we’ve come from literally a pen and a piece of paper to fantastic technology to track all of this data.
allan: fantastic. thank you. who’s up next, michelle? is that you?
michelle: yeah, i’d love to. so, i’m going to touch on three of your t’s, which is trend, transformation, and trouble. since day one in my first public accounting firm, i observed that cpas consistently underestimate their own worth. they undervalue themselves. they don’t see the value or the impact they bring to clients. i mean, just i think overall, it’s a humble group. and some that do see it don’t know how to talk about it. so, my belief is that they need others to help them see themselves and their work differently, and to help draw them out of the mistaken belief that they sell time. they are the fifth generation, god love them, of cpas taught that. they’re taught they sell time, but time was never their product. transformation is their product. they transform a client from point a to point b, and it might be a very small bridge that they help them cross, or it could be massive and life-changing for the client. and they just don’t know how to talk about it because they keep talking about ours.
marketers are awesome at helping. they are the perfectly poised professional, say that, i obliterated there, to help cpas because marketers, one of the p’s of marketing is positioning, and it’s how to position what the cpa firm is doing that helps them add value because they…shifting their revenue model, the marketers helping a firm shift its revenue model from time to a fixed price because time is not sustainable, it’s decreasing rapidly with technology that jean’s implementing. it’s not out of the marketers lane at all to do this. one of the four p’s marketing that all of us on this call know is pricing. marketers get out there, help your cpas see what value they’re bringing. even if it’s not to change your pricing model, by and far, it is to help them with regaining passion for their work, seeing themselves differently, and realizing what a difference they make. you know, it’s much needed. we’re in trouble if we don’t do it. and a lot of people say that one of the top issues in accounting is relevance. relevance is going to come down to what have you done for me lately for a client? jean, you talked about loyalty scores dropping. if we can’t learn to articulate our relevance to our clients, we’re going to be in really big trouble.
allan: fantastic. you know, we’ll swing it over to brian and mitch, and we’ll wrap up. but, you know, your comment about relevance and sustainability and really, i think for all of you, one thing i’ve noticed with each of you is you’re students of the game. you ask that age-old question every january 1st of why will i be worth more to my firm this year coming up than the year before? and what skills in your balance sheet are you working on? your technical knowledge, your networking, your relationships, all those things. you all excelled at those kind of things. brian or mitch, who wants to go first and who wants to go last? take it away, brian.
brian: all right. i’m going to talk a little bit about transformation, and it’s something i’ve seen recently with the entry of private equity into the accounting space and something that i’ve been seeing in a couple firms, and i think i’ll see it more, is private equity is bringing some of the corporate structure to accounting firms that, you know, didn’t used to exist in partnerships. and i’ll go back to my experience back in the office, furniture business. marketing really drove that business. we determined what products they were going to have, we determined what price it was going to be, we determined how it was going to be distributed. we took care of client service, which is now client expectations and client satisfaction. and as private equity brings more of that corporate structure to accounting firms, i think you’re going to see marketing really taking a stronger position in driving the whole growth and direction of these firms. so, that to me is one of the things i’m really keeping an eye on. i kind of wish i wasn’t retired because i think it’s going to be an incredible next 10 years for marketing people within accounting firms.
allan: brian, you watched some of the next ceos of some of the biggest firms in america. their prior role was going to be chief growth officer. and this tells you how growth has made its way all to the top. yeah. yeah. mitch, take us home.
mitch: all right. well, i think my comments probably relate to all five t’s and probably tie into a hint of what you spoke to and that a lot of firms think, “hey, the last five years have been great. things are going to keep going as they are.” i think we see the baby boomers have about five to seven more years before they are going to be transitioning out. and i think that is going to have a monumental impact on the firms because i think it’s slowing down our ability to transform as quickly as we need to. technologically, artificial intelligence is going to create a pace of change within all areas of our organizations that it’s going to be tremendously difficult for organizations to keep up if they don’t choose to lean forward and get in front of ai and make ai work for them, their people, and their clients.
when i think about marketers and growth leaders at organizations, artificial intelligence is going to allow us to respond to the market, to the client in such an incredibly fast, nimble way. if we can train our workforce, our partners, and our associates to leverage it effectively, i think those firms that do that will experience tremendous growth and tremendous success. but it is going to be a journey to getting to that gen z population in their 20s right now who won’t know any other way than how the world of technology and artificial intelligence sort of run everything. but there will be some growing pains with what technology can do and where it can take us to get to that actual leadership and workforce that can embrace it as much as they need to.
allan: wow. way to close things out. that is awesome. i’m going to send it back to jean. i just want to thank the four of you. you have been four amazing pillars in our profession, and you have transformed the lives of so many people that you’ve worked with, with four, mentored so many, and really left your mark on making this a better, stronger, and growth-oriented profession. so, thank you. jean, i’m going to swing it back to you.
thank you for tuning into “gear up for growth.” i’ll see you next time.