Ep: 81 Top experts answer: "Are business owners any closer to receiving proactive advice from accountants?"
The Accounting Answers Podcast, hosted by Rob Brown, asks critical questions of the experts, leaders and influencers who shape the decision-making of accountants, CPAs and finance professionals. Today we ask:
Are business owners any closer to receiving proactive advice from accountants?
You'll hear insightful and passionate answers from these 5 experts and influencers:
Tad Stephens | Founder of CPEthink.com, CPE providers to the accounting world
Tamera Loerzel | Passionate coach and facilitator advocating for change and NextGen leaders
Tom Barry | MP @ GHJ: father, entrepreneur, partner, coach and business advisor.
Tom Wheelwright | Best Selling Author, Entrepreneur & Worldwide Authority on Tax
Tony Stevenson | Reformed Accountant, Cloud Specialist & Accounting Tech Specialist at FreeAgent
Tune into more on this daily show for short, sharp episodes that keep you informed of what's happening in the accounting world and the whole ecosystem of consultants, organizations, vendors and advisors who serve them.
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How do you stay informed about what's happening in the accounting world? Not so much the news and the day-to-day but the trends, the patterns, the drivers of change. What if you had an advisory board of experts help you gauge what the world is thinking about vital trends and patterns in the accounting world, about what's working and what isn't. You could put some prompts into chat GPT and get an idea, but what if you could go to the real people themselves who are on the front line working with and in accounting firms. I'm talking about real people, real opinions, real insights. I'm Rob Brown and for this brand new accounting answers podcast I've interviewed 111 people in the know from tons of different countries, roles, viewpoints, all to keep you ahead of what the world is thinking in accounting finance and tech. And I've asked them all the same five questions about change, talent, people, tech and the future of accounting. That's over 500 brilliant passionate and articulate perceptions, insights, viewpoints from professionals with a say in this game. And in this show, coming at every working day for the next few weeks, you're going to hear every single answer. Each episode will focus on one of the five questions and give you answers from five of our experts. So let's deep dive into today's episode. All this week we're asking our accounting experts and influencers with a business owner so any closer to receiving proactive advice from accountants. As compliance becomes more automated, less valued, more commoditized, a more consultative approach is emerging, something more than me reporting historical record keeping. Some call it CAS or client advisory services. There are many forms. Let's hear what our experts think. Next, we welcome to the microphone. Tad Stevens, founder of CPEthink.com. CPE providers to the accounting world where his commitment to quality education helps professionals stay at the forefront of the accounting field. Yes, but it's kind of like climbing a tree trying to get to the moon. You can always get a little closer, but you're never going to make it. So again, in a way, yes, they are because they are. GAs are often more advisory services, more cash low management, more retirement preparation, acquisition management, things like that. I think that is the way the industry should go and will go because just competition is going to force it that way. So yes, they're going to get closer. Will they ever get there? We'll see. What I think is holding the profession and individual accountants back from providing the complete spectrum, say, of services to business owners is the fact that they are trained. I mean, I have a master's in accounting, so I've been through it. I haven't sat for the exam, but I know the discipline, understand it. I've worked with those guys, those gals for 30 years. And that's not the way they're trained. They're not trained to provide service to people. They are trained to be accurate, to be factual, and to be correct. That's it. And you try to turn and I mean, and they drill it into you. And that's that is a lot harder work. I think that people realize and it makes the person doing that really focused on that. And there's no personal interaction there. There's no human connection there. So when they have to go out and provide these, these solutions, this service to a business owner, they're having to do something that they were basically trained not to do. And that's a hard thing to overcome. And I think this is just my opinion, but I think that's why you see so few service oriented CPAs. They're very good at what they do. And that's what we want them to do. I mean, we don't want them to miscalculate how much money we have. I mean, that's how much tax we owe. That's not something we want them to do, but we want them to do something that they're not trained to do. And so I think it's, and I've seen this in the chiropractic field, they have training for marketing sales such like that in their degree plan. Accountants should add stuff like that. They should add a personal interaction, sales and marketing, psychology, sociology. They should add human interaction training in the CPA field. And until they do that, and until that's reinforced, I think we're going to be stuck where we are, where they're just not going to be very good at that. Let's hear the perspective now of Tamara Loisell, passionate coach and facilitator advocating change for next-gen leaders focusing on developing leadership and strategic skills within the accounting profession for growth and innovation. Yes, I would say in many places. I don't think all firms are there yet or all accountants are there yet. But I think many, many firms have made strides. They were actually being proactive and providing advice with tax planning and some of the other services they were providing. But I also think that many firms have made it a philosophical core value to be proactive and offer that advice. They're also maybe even requiring it. I've seen firms require proactivity advisory services built in to their pricing and packaging models so that it's required along with the traditional compliance services. And that makes it really easy for clients just to have that relationship with their accountants to be able to have that information, meet regularly, talk about things that are coming up because it's just now how these CPA firms are working. We welcome to the microphone now, Tom Barry, managing partner at GHJ, father entrepreneur, partner coach, business advisor who combines his diverse roles to lead his family clients towards achieving their full potential. I don't think so. I actually think that they are further away than they've ever been for a number of different reasons. Number one is that when we look at the way that we as a society interact with one another through, I just think about how I interact with even my team, but our clients, whether it's through Zoom meetings, whether it's through even texting I use quite a bit, WhatsApp, instant messaging, all these different ways of communication are very effective. They're very quick and impactful. However, they miss part of that relationship development. And I think as the less close we are maybe socially or interpersonally with our client base, there ends up being a gap between how close we are to those clients and what they actually need. I spoke to our firm in December as we talked about the importance of connecting with ourselves and with our clients. And I think since COVID in 2021, if you take the picture of a balloon, right, it's losing air. And when the balloon is losing air, you don't really notice it. Maybe it's still floating. It's still floating, but it's a little softer and then all of a sudden one day it kind of drops to the ground. I have concerns that the current dynamic of how we are working with our clients, that that is a balloon losing air and that it's going to fall to the ground. And I think the impact of that and our relationships with our clients is that it will be less sticky. And so I think it's going to require that client experience to evolve to something different. We can absolutely interact and engage with our clients digitally wherever they are in the world. But that human component needs to be, and we still need to figure that out. I don't think that's been figured out as a profession yet. I'm thrilled to have with us today the evergreen pioneer of accounting tall wheel ride best selling author entrepreneur worldwide authority on tax known for his ability to simplify complex tax concepts and strategies for building wealth and saving tax. I actually think they are getting proactive advice. I'm just not sure it's always coming from accountants because what's going on is is that because accountants don't give the proactive advice, they're getting the advice from other places. They're getting their tax advice from financial planners. They're getting their business advice from of all people insurance agents. They're getting they're getting advice from all sorts of places because you have YouTube and all these other technologies where it's easy to find information no longer do they have to rely on their accountant for this when their accountant doesn't return their call or doesn't reach out to them. So I think that they are, I think the business owners are receiving more proactive advice. I'm just not sure it's coming from the accounting world. So the the the CPA, the the chart accountant, we have an advantage. We have more education. We have a broader base of knowledge and experience and we're independent. So we we have a much better base from which to give the advice. We just need to do it. And so so I think one of the positives that's coming out is the way we're starting to see more and more subscription based services and subscription based services tend to lead towards more proactive advice. And the reason for that is that if if if if if you're going to charge me every time I call you, that is a disincentive for me to call you. And it's a disincentive, frankly, for me to actually set up a meeting with you or for for me to say, I'm okay with the meeting with you. Whereas if we have, you know, more of subscription, more of a co-share service like my CPA firm, we only we only do co-share services. It's all included. It's an all inclusive, you know, we're we're the all inclusive vacation, right? But it's that it's business for business owners. And the advantage is I've actually had clients say, well, now that we're doing this, I want it. I want to have more phone calls with you. I'm going, right, that's the whole idea of it. It's time to listen to Tony Stevenson, reformed accountant, cloud specialist and accounting tech specialist at free agent, where he applies as accounting expertise to help funds leverage cloud technologies for growth and efficiency. Well, it depends. I mean, if you go and look at all accountants websites, they're all proactive on this. And they're all just, they're all just not your average boring accountant. So yeah, I assume so. I think I'll definitely be the case. I always think that it tends back to the individual, right? So there are a lot more resources out there than there probably were 10 or 20 years ago that allow you to be good at this stuff. I always use the analogy of a carpenter or somebody that works with wood, right? So if you take somebody who's hammered nails into pallets for 20 years and you suddenly ask them to go and carve out a beautiful piece of bespoke furniture that's going to sit in the corner of a stately home, they're probably not going to be able to do that, right? Those two people both work with wood, but one is skilled in doing something fast and really well. And the other person is skilled in doing something that probably takes longer and requires a completely different skill set. So I think that people wise, if we can bring more people into the industry who do have that natural skill set of just being able to talk around numbers and give advice, that's the key to it. I don't think that the conversion of the existing industry into being proactive business advisors is the right way to go. So it will take a generational shift. I think we are a bit further down that track, but not more, not a huge amount more than would have just happened, naturally. So there you have five great answers to the question, are business owners any closer to receiving proactive advice from accountants? Every work in day of the week, Monday through Friday, we give you the insights of five top influencers in the accounting world on this critical area for proactive advice from accountants. That's 25 valuable perspectives, viewpoints and best thinking every week. And with each fresh week comes a fresh question with more thoughts. From the best accounting influencers and leaders we can find. Thanks for listening to the Accounting Answers podcast and sharing this brand you show with your friends. If you want to join the conversation, you can plug into our community of influencers at accountinginfluencers.com and check out our virtual speed networking events. These happen every few months for the North America region and the UK Europe region. Great opportunities to raise your profile, build valuable connections and share your thoughts with influential peers. Until next time, this is your host Rob Brown saying stay informed, stay relevant and stay connected. [MUSIC PLAYING]
