the disruptors: if we don’t change, we’ll be irrelevant, says rob brown.
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with liz farr
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it’s a changing world, and if we don’t change with it, we will cease to be relevant, u.k.-based accounting podcaster rob brown tells 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间’ liz farr.
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a host of the accounting influencers podcast, brown says what got us here won’t get us there in the fight to be relevant in our practices, with our clients and in our careers. brown’s podcasting partner is martin bissett, a 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 contributor and world-renowned growth advisor to accounting firms.
the last two years demonstrated that accountants can make big changes very quickly. but those changes won’t be enough to assure our continued relevance as advisors and employers.
younger business owners are using their accountants in different ways and expect more advisory services. younger employees also have different expectations from their employers.
firms that don’t address the needs of clients and employees will have a hard time attracting either.
more take-aways from rob brown:
- accountants have the problem of sameness: 95% of uk accounting firm websites have the same shade of blue, the same branding, the same messages, the same values, the same proposition, the same claims, the same promises, the same style, and even the same navigation. sameness sucks. what are accounting firms doing to differentiate themselves to clients and employees they want to attract?
- what career path are you selling to the people who come in at the bottom of the funnel? the new generations aren’t interested in a career for life. what are some aspirational goals that might appeal to them?
- what are you doing to develop your people beyond the technical cpe/cpd requirements? to be competitive and innovative in today’s environment, they need to develop technologically, socially, resilience, selling skills, and commercial acumen. invest in your people with mentoring and coaching.
- tell stories about what your firm has been able to do for clients and staff that are proof of your supremacy and your brilliance. capture their imagination and create compelling reasons for talent to join your firm. become the employer of choice. be willing to be the advisor and financial visionary for your clients.
- technology is making it easier for business owners to bypass the accountant and do the bookkeeping and the compliance work themselves. younger clients want different things from their accountants: more insights into what the numbers mean and advice on what they should do, as well as the ability to use accounting technology.
- sitting and watching netflix is not an option when there are so many skills that need to be acquired and developed.
- doing nothing is not an option. change is hard and messy. we can’t go back to the world where we didn’t need to learn new skills and new technologies and didn’t need to know how to do video calls.
- it’s an employee’s market. you don’t have to settle. go find firms that want to make a difference. be a mini-disruptor in your own practice.
about rob brown
rob brown is a renowned mc, facilitator and chair of virtual and in-person panels, conferences and events globally for the accounting/fintech profession. he is a host of the popular accounting influencers podcast which interviews top accounting/fintech leaders and influencers about what makes good accountants great.
rob is also co-founder of the accounting influencers roundtable (air), a think tank and door-opening club for specialists and vendors who serve the accounting and fintech profession. he is the bestselling author of build your reputation (wiley) and his tedx talk ‘the personal brand of you’ has been viewed 300k times on youtube.
rob’s coaching company, the business development academy, trains busy accountants to be confident, effective work winners. he speaks internationally on career capital, trust, likeability, reputation, referrals, collaboration and sales.
he is a committed christian, has a black belt in kickboxing, plays chess, loves orange chocolate, is allergic to grapefruit and plays four musical instruments to a decent standard.
transcript
liz farr: welcome to accounting disruptor conversation. i’m your host, liz farr from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. my guest today is rob brown and for those who don’t know you, rob, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
rob brown: thank you, liz, and lovely to be on the show. i hail from nottingham in the uk, the home of robin hood, and with a gentleman called martin bissett, who i understand has also been a guest on your show. we run a brand called accounting influencers. i’m a former high school math teacher and my ted talk called the personal brand of you talks about how i moved from being a math teacher into other things.
right now accounting influencers, two main arms. the first is a roundtable, and that comprises influencers, thought leaders, gurus, coaches, consultants, trainers, vendors that work in the accounting and fintech space. they all sell to and through accountants and that’s a door opening club with north american european influencers that are all trying to push the profession forward as a force for the greater good. that’s air, we call it, the accounting influencers roundtable, and martin and i run that together.
we also run the accounting influencers podcast, where a little bit like you we interview people that move the dial in the accounting profession and the fintech software industry that supports it. it’s a radio style show that goes out every day with some news on what’s happening in the profession, a here’s what works section. the audience is accounting practitioners globally telling them what really works in the trenches if you like. then interviews with leaders, talking about what makes the good accountants and the good firms great.
whilst i’m not an accountant, this is the world that i move in and we have database of around 1,500 accounting influencers throughout the world. some of whom are just a lot of hot air, liz, and a lot of social media hype, but some of them really know what they’re talking about and they are a force for good and a drive for disruption in what has been a very established profession. [chuckles]
liz: well, thanks, rob. i’m really glad to you here. i’m glad to be adding an international voice to this podcast series. well, let’s get started because we’ve got a lot to talk about. now, in the us, accounting talent has been very scarce for several years and with covid everything got much worse. what are your ideas for how to make things better and what have you seen firms do successfully?
rob: it’s such a great question, martin and i have covered this on our podcast recently and the black hole in the talent is absolutely very, very acute. i saw an article by forbes recently that said that the labor shortage in the north american region particularly is the worst it’s been since time began, and you have to wonder two things. it’s not just a labor shortage, a talent shortage in accounting, but it is very acute in accounting and finance. you have to wonder what is the accounting profession doing to attract the new breed, the new generation?
we know that the oldest millennials now are around 40 so they’re becoming the older people in a firm. the baby boomers are selling up and moving on and the gray hairs are easing them out. the gen zeds are coming through now. are you aware of what the next generation is after the gen zeds? that’s the alpha generation. they’re the alpha generation. gen zeds are born around the year 2000. the eldest of which will be 21. now they’re the workforce of the future, but the alpha generation, the ones that are born from the year 2000 onwards. they’re in school right now, they’re not in employed positions, but what is attracting them about the accounting profession and the fintech industry?
that’s where we get to the heart of this. then it falls to the accounting firms themselves to say, “okay, if there is talent out there, and you need that talent in your firm to hit your growth targets and to be the brand that you want, how do you bring them into your firm?” i certainly do have a few thoughts on that, how to become an employer brand of choice so that when graduates and would-be accounting professionals have a choice, why would they choose your firm above and beyond any other firm. indeed above and beyond any other profession, like working in industry, for instance rather than would in private practice. lots we can go on in there. would you like me to dive in with a few thoughts, liz?
liz: yes, please.
rob: an influencer here in the uk does websites for accounting firms and he did some research recently where he looked at 100 accounting firm websites. you won’t be surprised to hear that 95% of them use the same shades of blue, the same branding, the same messages, the same values, the same proposition, the same claims, the same promises, the same style, the same navigation on the website. this is part of the problem, isn’t it, that everybody looks and sounds the same and we have this problem of sameness?
gary hamel said, “sameness sucks.” it really does, because what are accounting firms doing to differentiate themselves, not just to the clients they want to attract but to the employees they want to attract?
let’s assume we’ve got enough people in accounting and we probably haven’t to replace these baby boomers that are retiring. how do you get them into your firm? one of the things firms need to do is get the right tech. if you know the gen zeds and the younger people, that they’re not attracted by first and second-generation technology and old-style monitors, you’re nodding your head there so you understand this one, don’t you? get the top tech to attract the top people. if you haven’t got the top tech, they’ll just walk away because these have the very latest phones, the very latest gadgets, the very latest laptops, the fastest wi-fi access to the quickest and best apps. tech is really important.
the second thing is a career path. now i’m a former high school math teacher, as i said, and mathematics and teaching generally is one of those professions for life, it’s a job for life, but who comes into a job right now, wanting to work somewhere for 40 years and then take a pension? this new breed coming through, they want something more than a job for life.
well, security’s less important to them, isn’t it, liz? they want excitement. they want engagement. they want opportunities. they want to make an impact. they want to make a difference. they want interesting work with interesting people and interesting clients and juicy problems. they don’t want to be chained to a desk for 10 to 15 years. they don’t want the promise of becoming an equity partner if they stick around long enough. what career path are you selling to the people that come in the bottom of the funnel by way of showing them some aspirational goals and what could happen and what is available to them. that’s something firms could do a lot better.
the other thing firms don’t do particularly well is developing people, and we may talk later about the key skills of a modern-day accountant. now only one of those is technical skills and from what i’m seeing, accounting for firms focus too much on the technical side of what we might call cpe/cpd we call it in uk, that continued professional development. keeping your skills up to date technically so that you’re compliant, but there are so many other skills that accountants need to be competent and successful and innovative in today’s firms.
what are you doing to develop your people? technically, technologically, socially, with mental resilience, with career opportunities, with selling skills, with commercial acumen and showing them that you’re investing in them. the old pushback on that. i’m sure you’ve heard this many times is, “well, if we develop our people too much and give them great training, they might move on and leave us.”
the counter to that is “well, if you don’t train them, they might stay, [laughs] and if they stay, what are you left with? well, a very educated workforce, but an unskilled workforce that is ill-equipped to deal with the ever-increasing demands of today’s business client.” we’d say develop your people in the right way with mentoring and coaching in the right training, in the right areas. the other thing i’d add to this is telling some a story.
now i work with a few accounting firms to create video interviews for them because there’s certain scenarios that come up in an accounting firm that they need to be telling stories about. as muhammad ali said, you remember the boxer? he said, “it ain’t bragging if you’ve done it.” rather than the accounting firm saying, “we’re a great employer. we really look after our people. we provide great service for our clients. we have a full-service suite of advisory and compliance.” no. everybody’s saying that, so instead tell it with a story that is proof of your supremacy, proof of your brilliance.
i do these interviews for accounting firms, with some of their clients on why you came join this particular firm, why you hired this firm, why you left your old firm and it comes out in a story that’s personal. why you stayed with a firm. why you refer that firm, why you like them, why you stay with them but also look at the talent side of this. i create videos for accounting firms by interviewing their staff and asking them, “you’ve been with this family year why did you join? what did you like about them? what is it about their proposition? what story did they tell you to get you to sign on the dotted line and commit a few years to them?
when that comes out in a story, from the perspective of the employee, the staff member, the talented person that creates a really compelling reason for other people like them to join the firm. what story are you telling?
we touched the earlier on the career path you lay out for them, but how are you making a difference in the world? what sectors are you working with? what impacts are you having on your clients? what is your big plan and your grand vision that can capture the imagination of a young graduate? our 2, 3, 5-year accountants that’s a little bit stuck in their current firm, but they want something more exciting, something more engaging and you and i has spoken before about how there are so many opportunities for the accountant to do more. let’s tell that in a story that captures the imagination of the talent out there, that makes them think, “this is a firm i could really get on board with.”
the final thing slightly aligns with everything i’ve said is the environment you put them into. now we appreciate in these challenging times, liz, it’s difficult, isn’t it? to have that working environment that we used to have, where you’d meet people in the corridors and go to the cafeteria or the kitchen, and you’d have a chat and you could knock on someone’s door. with covid, we have this hybrid environment but there are still ways to set up your working environment that creates relationships and collaboration and connection and family and all of the things that edify one’s soul and make you feel like you are part of something.
there are things i throw out there that, and none of those will be rocket science to you, liz. you have a lot of these disruptive conversations, but goodness me, is it hard getting them into the thick heads of the leaders of accounting firms these days, that just seem to live one foot in the past and one foot in the present and no real urgency around the succession planning and the hiring policies to attract the right talent which will drive their growth. i’m on my soapbox a little bit there, but there would be some of the things i would advocate for accounting firms to really become that employer of choice.
liz: well, i love your ideas about storytelling because storytelling is a writer. i learned that stories are really what help people retain information and learn, and it captures their imagination so that they see they can become something bigger than what they are now. there are just too few firms that really leverage what they have done for others in their marketing. it’s really sad.
accountants make such a difference. what do they do to advertise the difference that they’re making? there may be a couple of testimonials on their website. if the accountant is individually smart, he or she may have a couple of linkedin recommendations, but there is little substance. my accountant was great. my accountant really made a difference. my accountant looked after me. my cpa helped me in my business, but it’s all very vague.
these videos that i create with firms, i interviewed the clients and we talked to them about the before, the during, and the after. what was life like before you engaged this accounting firm or you worked with this cpa? “well, i was doing this and we were struggling with this and this was an issue and we had this goal to do this.” what precipitated the change? what made you come to the realization that your current advisors were not enough to take you where you wanted to go? “well, we asked them to do this and they said we can’t do it that way or our technology won’t allow us.” you create this pain situation that forces somebody to move.
then you talk about the present. you chose this accountant. what was the onboarding like? what was the first few weeks like? what promises did they make you? how did they get fulfilled? what was the service like in the early stages? did they continue with that? what does the experience look like of working with this firm? how do you work with them? how do they talk to you? how proactive are they? you get that client experience in the now, and then finally you look at the future.
well, to what degree do you see you sticking in with this accounting firm? how are they going with you on the journey? well, we’ve got big plans to do this and i want to do this and they’re standing by me on this and we’re building this wealth package and this exit package, and we are putting this together and i want to open up that other office in the middle east.
we want another factory here and all of these future based stories where the accountant is not the auditor or the compliance engineer or the auditor taker, well is they are the advisor and the peer of the buyer and the almost, and the director in the business, the unofficial financial officer and visionary person they’re just part of the team. bringing out those stories, coming from the mouth of the client that is personality-led, firms don’t have enough of that, and that’s a sideline that i have as well as the accounting influencers, which is a fascinating area to work that really sets firms apart, both with the clients that they want to attract and the talent that they want to attract.
liz: well, those are all great ideas. excuse me, [clears throat] until recently the business model for accounting firms had really not changed much for decades. we would charge by time, but we are lately beginning to see a few firms move away from the billable hour and they’re developing new organizational structures. they’re getting rid of the same org chart where you just move up or you move out. what are some of the changes that you’re seeing in the firms that you work with?
rob: well, the short answer is not enough to change, not enough adaptation to the world that we’re living in, not enough thought to the business model of the future. we could be really contentious and disruptive healers and say that the business model of accounting practices is broken, but it isn’t. we know that it isn’t because they’re not changing it. it’s a very elegant business model with monthly recurring fees and a service that business owners need to keep them out of jail. in my view, and i agree with ed kless, we had ed kless on our show. you may know ed, a colleague of ron baker at very stage, and he quoted andy grove of intel that said the biggest threat to disruption is not new technology, but new business models.
whilst the technology is driving some disruption and some change, it’s the business models themselves. this idea of serving your time, stick around, you’ll be rewarded ultimately. put some money into the firm and you’ll get more money out and equity and everything else. we align that to the billable hour and the way firms are run, as well as the business model that they operate on. i’m sure you want to delve into the billable hour a little bit, but it’s broken in that it has served us thus far but the client– let me give you an example of what i mean when i talk about clients.
now, the average business owner here in the uk a few years ago was 45 years old. the average business owner here in the uk now is 32. what do those business owners require of their accounting advisors? they certainly don’t want to be billed by the hour. they certainly don’t want to be throwing money into the coffers of the accounting firm so that the senior partners can take a payoff and disappear to the sunset. there’s got to be more to it than not for the client and there’s be more to it than that for the up-and-coming accountant in that particular practice.
the business model is broken. in the compliance model, we know that there’s the evaporation of compliance fees and downward pressure on the bread and butter activities that accounting firm has traditionally done. they’re so much less valued, and people don’t want to pay anything more than they have to. we’ve got the movers and shakers coming into the game.
look at jeff bezos’s pilot initiative that he’s put money behind that says you don’t need an accountant. we’ll take it off your hands for $20 a month. look at the plays by the accounting and software vendors, the fintech vendors, trying to marginalize the accountant because they hold the data with the clients of accountants, the business owners, and saying, you don’t need an accountant.
we’ll do this for you. just use our software and gone are the days when the accountant was the only one that knew how to use the accountant software because the vendors now make it so easy that the business owner can use the software and bypass the accountant. you’re left with a real challenge with compliance and that staple diet of accounting practices, which leads you to then say, well, what’s next? we know it’s the advisory services, the cast, whatever the complete advisory solutions. however, you want to call that, it’s what’s beyond not just beyond compliance, but what’s beyond reporting.
what’s beyond the data. what are the stories behind the numbers? beyond that, what are you doing to advise clients on acting on the data, and make key business decisions that make a difference? that’s the advisory side of it, which accountants let’s face it. they do struggle with, they don’t think like a business owner or an entrepreneur. they don’t have that commercial acumen by and large.
the business model does need to change. it’s glacial in its change in that it’s extremely slow, but it does need to change, and the change is being driven from the vendors. it’s because of the threat of the vendors bypassing and marginalizing the accounting members. it’s been driven by the clients themselves that want more and different things from their advisors, particularly in the challenging times of covid. there has never been more of a demand for the advice of an accounting professional than now. accountants shouldn’t have a problem in the advisory side of things but they don’t know how to position it less, they don’t know how to price it and they often don’t know how to deliver it.
liz: no, none of that.
rob: [laughs] until they swear all of that circle all then we’re still going to have this very marginal incremental change where you do get some firms out there that are really pushing it and are pretty much all advisory. some firms that are still doing checkbooks and spreadsheets and old-time legacy software. the clients are quite happy with that because that’s the world that they remain in. as the age of the business owner comes down there are more businesses starting up every day.
you talk to a kid in school right now, and when you ask them what they want to be when they grow up, they don’t say train driver, an astronaut, a nurse, and teacher, and the kind of things that you and i would say when we were growing up. they’ll say i want to be into gaming. i want to make mobile apps. i want to be into big data. i want to do the jobs that didn’t exist a few years ago. i want to be into e-commerce. i want to run a business from my bedroom and make a million. i want to work with cannabis. what accountant is in a position to answer that kind of vision? too sadly very few of them, but that’s the world we’re moving into.
liz: yes i think that accounting firms will have to change just to keep up with what will be needed in the future. when i think of my grandkids i certainly not imagine any of them wanting to become lawyers, or teachers, or nurses, or accountants, or anything that their parents or grandparents are doing, but they’re going to want to do something quite different. i really do believe that as accountants grow older as we move into the next generation of accountants and the profession will change, and the change will come suddenly and slowly in all at once and gradually it’ll be all of those.
rob: here’s a thought for you, liz, here. the pace of change right now is the slowest it will ever be.
liz: yes
rob: that’s a frightening thought, isn’t it? that if you think of slower days coming where you’ll have the chance to do this, and catch up on that, and go back to that, and revisit that in more depth, no, a slower day is not coming. the pace of change is only going to get faster. you said there are accounting firms many are struggling to keep up. to me, it’s a fight for relevance. accountants and cpas are becoming less relevant or in danger of becoming less relevant if they don’t keep adapting.
adaptability should be a key strategy for progressive accounting firms. seeing what’s coming up on the horizon and getting ahead of that. asking what are we doing to create value for companies and the people we serve five years from now? not right now, but it’s having that forward focus rather than being in the now or traditionally the [unintelligible 00:23:54] level that accountants is that they live in the past. they report on the past, they have a historical look in the mirror perspective the rear mirror.
if changes only are going to get faster, what are accounting firms doing now to stay relevant and stay ahead of the game? there is much work to be done. if we can shake them up a little bit more we may get some of that change in. to be fair let’s not denigrate accountants here. they have proved themselves very adept at changing throughout covid. some of them have adapted and shown much agility in pushing through changes that perhaps would’ve taken them a year or two, but they’ve got done in two or three months. like moving to remote working. they can do it. it’s whether there is the impetus for them to do it.
liz: now we’ve talked a little bit about the skills that accountants need. we’ve talked about the need to become technically and not the technical skills of accounting but the technological acumen and the technological ability. besides that, what do you think the most important skills that accountants should develop to be successful?
rob: well that’s a great question. let’s expand on what we’ve covered so far. for me the technical skills are ground zero. to be a competent cpa or accountant you need to be strong technically. you need to know about tax. you need to know about double-entry bookkeeping. that’s a given, that gets you in the game but it doesn’t get you on the podium if you like. it doesn’t elevate you as an accountant of choice.
beyond that, the technological skills for sure and what do we mean by that? we’re not trying to turn accountants into geeks and nerds, but they need to be able to do more than being able to turn a computer on and off don’t they? they need to be aware of apps and tech stacks and software’s for different sectors and industries, different ways of doing things so that’s the technological skills.
beyond that people skills we’ve talked about accountants and they’ve had a bad ride in the past for having poor people skills because they’re such technologically super smart people. they’ve perhaps felt that they don’t need the people skills because they’re approach is “i’m the expert.” almost a doctor or a surgeon. “i don’t need a good bedside manner because i’m the best at what i do. i know all the stuff that you don’t, mr. business owner. it doesn’t really matter how i speak to you or how i relate to you. i’ll just tell you what needs to be reported on and tell you what you need to do.”
these days business owners are much more discerning and they will move on if they’re spoken to like that. people skills and that’s externally and internally. how do you bring out the best in your team? how do you develop your people internally? as a leader in that firm, the more of a voice you have in the firm the more responsibility you have to build relationships and consensus and influence within that firm as a force for good.
if you can’t communicate your ideas not only will you wither on the vine at the top, but you won’t make your way to the top by gaining the voice that you need because your ideas will just fall flat. you can’t communicate. you can’t present. you can’t talk to people and that’s not just face to face now, is it liz? this is the remote world we’re in. you need those remote skills, those remote communication skills. the phone, the video, it sucks the energy out of you so you need to do what we’re doing and be a little bit more animated in the way we’re communicating. we’ve got technical skills, technological skills, people skills.
the fourth one for me is commercial skills. we’ve touched on this commercial acumen, business know-how, business awareness, thinking like an entrepreneur, thinking like a business owner, because accountants work in a practice, they don’t really work in a business. they’re not necessarily commercially focused. the good news is commercial acumen, whatever you call it, is coachable. you can learn it. you need to read more, you need to get out there more, you need to tell and hear more stories, you need to ask more questions and be more curious, but you need that to be able to stay relevant and relate to today’s and tomorrow’s business owner.
there’s two more skills i feel are really important for the modern-day accountant. the first is selling skills. now the risk of accountant shrinking away saying i didn’t come into this profession to sell, there is an element of wanting to bring in new business to the firm. that’s kudos. isn’t it? that shows your worth in a firm. it justifies your place on the board as it were, bringing in new business, but i’m also talking about leadership here.
selling an idea, selling a proposition, selling a concept, selling an argument, selling an excuse, selling something. it requires persuasion skills, influencing skills, communicating skills. it requires a certain way of putting yourself over in your ideas and presenting. selling with conviction, with passion, with authority, with fairness, with authenticity.
accountants, we’re not talking about sleazy salespeople here but they have a duty of care to their clients and their staff to give them the right options and steer them down the right road and help them make good wise decisions often to help people make very tough commercial decisions in very emotional stressful circumstances. which is where accountants are almost being asked to be not just trusted financial and professional advisors, but counselors, therapists, psychiatrists, and a shoulder to cry on, and a trusted friend in these challenging times. that requires selling and communication.
the other thing just to finish on this liz is and i’ve only really developed this in the last couple of years. this last skill is mental resilience. call it a skill, call it an attribute, but you talk to many cpas these days like i do and they are fatigued, they are weary, they are troubled, they are under pressure. they are struggling to come to terms with covid, to come to terms with increased client expectations, to come to terms with overwhelm, to come to terms with covid and remote working and all of these things.
i’ve heard of cpa firms that are now hiring, not just first aid professionals, but mental health first aiders, who are first on the scene when somebody has a breakdown or flips out or has a panic attack, or doesn’t know how to deal with this situation. not just the first aid that they will do cpr, but somebody that will talk you down off a ledge when you’re about to jump. this is the world that we’re in right now and this young generation coming through that are glued to the screens, struggling with communicating and relating in face-to-face situations, goodness, it’s a new world.
they’re some of the skills i feel the modern-day accountant needs and all of them are coachable. you can develop mental toughness, can’t you? you can develop commercial awareness. you’ve got to have an appetite to do it and a vehicle to do it. you’ve got to be following the right people, get in the right education, have that learning ethic that you want to be better today than you were yesterday. that’s got to be intrinsically motivated. that’s not going to happen if someone’s cracking the whip saying, “liz farr, you better develop your commercial acumen or else.” you got to want to do it, otherwise, you won’t.
i run some accountability programs with accountants that recognize that they have discretionary time when they’re not billing hours, that they have a choice of what to do with. some of it can be business development, some of it can be personal development, some of it can be just relaxing and playing golf or spending time with the family or spending time to develop your own mental well-being. but, doing nothing and watching netflix is not really an option, when there are so many skills that need acquiring and developing.
liz: that’s absolutely correct that accountants need so much to learn. there’s so many other things that they could be learning that they aren’t. what do you think accountants should stop doing immediately?
rob: [laughs] charging by the hour. it’s difficult, isn’t it? when we throw that one out there? because if they’re working for a big practice and the prices are set, and the process for putting in pitches, and proposals and all of that, so it’s difficult. if you’re in a smaller firm, you have some scope to do that but certainly that ties an accountant down so they should review their pricing and stop working to the billable hour. what else should accountants stop doing?
they should stop second-guessing themselves. there’s a big thing on impostor syndrome. have you heard liz, this phrasing, impostor syndrome?
liz: oh, yes.
rob: okay. accountants in not charging what they’re worth, come back to this, “am i worth it?” question, and because they don’t see themselves as really making a difference in the eyes of the clients, they don’t see themselves as being really, really valuable as an adviser to that client. there’s a lot of confidence and doing things that drain your confidence, like being chained to a desk and working through the manual side of things and crunching numbers and doing spreadsheets and all of that stuff that can be done with a push of a button these days.
i’d say stop doing that. stop working for bosses that are not agreeable and open and agile and pushing you forward and making you better. move on. push back. i’d say stop doing that. stop just churning the hours. stop just showing up. start to believe in yourself a little bit more. stop the negativity and stop thinking that if you stick around for 5 or 10 years, you’ll become something because accountants have– accountants are like superheroes, aren’t they, at the moment? they’re that emergency service that are standing in the gap between the government and the regulations and covid and the business owners that are trying to keep the economy going.
accountants have a really important role. the more and quicker they step up to that and stop seeing themselves as just providing a basic service, goodness, they should stop doing that. they should stop watching netflix as much as they do. they should stop being on their phone as much as they do. they should start getting out a little bit more, having some more conversations. they should stop waiting for the world to come to them and be a little bit more curious about what is going on and listen, i’m preaching to myself as well.
we’re all guilty of this, looking down and not looking up. it’s a change world, and if we don’t change with it, we will cease to become relevant. we are fighting for relevance. we are fighting for influence. if we’re going to make a difference in our careers, and in our practices and with our clients, then that old phrase, “what got you here won’t get you there.” we need new skills. brian tracy said it really well. he said, “don’t pray for less problems, pray for more skills.”
liz: that’s a perfect way to put it. we all know that there are so many things that we need to do. there are things that we need to change but accountants are reluctant to do that. they’re very complacent in what they’re doing. now, what do you think is keeping accountants from making these changes that you are proposing?
rob: part of it must be the culture of the firm which doesn’t allow them to easily adapt and make changes or learn new things or try new ideas or take a risk or make a mistake, so we can put that down to culture and leadership. part of it is down to complacency. while i’ve got a good job, why rock the boat? why try and do something different? i’ve got a paycheck coming in. i could stay here for a few more years if i wanted to. that inertia if you like, part of it is a lack of vision and because they don’t see what’s possible, they don’t dream a little bigger than they are.
accountants are surrounded by accountants. you grow up in that world where taking big steps is not the way we do things around here. trying new things is not the way we do things around here. they’re blocks. some of them are personal, some of them are mental, some of them are cultural, but if we’ve learned nothing else from our conversation today liz, doing nothing is not an option. waiting for change to happen is such a reactive way of doing things. the change is going to be upon you before you know how to adapt to it.
yes, change is hard. change is difficult. change is complex. change is messy. it’s hard being good, isn’t it? it’s hard being different. it’s hard being a modern-day professional. let me be yesterday’s professional, where it was easy, and i just had to show up to work. i just had to know the things i know. i didn’t have to know anything different and i didn’t have to learn any new technology. i didn’t need to learn how to do video calls and i didn’t need to learn how to sell it. it was easier back then. let’s go back to those days. well, that is the one-way ticket to extinction, isn’t it?
liz: yes.
rob: there are many blocks but all of them are surmountable. anyone can overcome any of those. if you’re in a culture or an environment where you cannot, where there’s too much against you, then move on. it’s an employee’s market. accounting practices are crying out for good people that want more than they’ve got, that want to make a difference. go work for one of those.
that’s our call to arms isn’t it, liz? to the cpas and practitioners listening, is you don’t have to settle. if the accounting firm you’re working for says, “we can get you to partner in 10 years.” say, “well, what work do i need to do to get there in five? or what do i need to get there in seven years but do it on a four day a week? i don’t know. i’m throwing things out there but shake the boat up a little bit. be that dissenting voice. not as a rebuttal or someone that’s trying to hijack things, but just that be a mini disrupter in your own accounting practice. you’re all about disruption liz with this whole show.
liz: yes. it can even be simple things like, “well, i don’t want to make partner, what else could i do? is there some kind of a role or job title that you can give me that would let me do the things that i am best at and do less of what i’m not so good at.”
rob: that’s a brilliant way of putting it. as a former teacher, you’ll be aware- that– the challenge i had was with the further of you going teaching, the more you get away from the children. as the headteacher of a school doesn’t teach any lessons. they just walk around the corridors, looking important. they stay in their office, signing off financial reports and doing only the things that headteachers do and dealing with the really bad children, but they don’t teach. i was frustrated that the more my career progressed in teaching, the more i was taken away from what i really wanted to do which is be with the children.
you’re right, the epitome of an accounting career is a partner and managing partner but is it your right to ask if that’s really the zenith. is that really the top of the mountain? can i do what i love doing and get rewarded for it in a different way? that’s a really great point you’re bringing up.
liz: the firm where i spent 11 years had no avenue for me to do any of the things that i was good at. they were not interested in taking advantage of having somebody in the firm who knew about marketing and writing and who could rewrite the website and do blog posts and do a newsletter. they had no interest in that. another firm approached me about being–
rob: hang on a moment. you were there for 11 years. when did you realize that the skills you had, the gifts you had were not truly valued in the firm? was that halfway through or when?
liz: that was probably about 10 years in. probably before that, i knew that i had to make a change. i just didn’t know what i was going to do. in my very last performance review, i broke all the rules and told them exactly what i thought about the work that i was doing and told them that i hated my job, but that i was staying around because i liked working with these people. i didn’t particularly like the way that the firm was being run.
rob: how did that go down?
liz: well, to my astonishment, the people that i talked to at this performance review really liked me. they all fully supported me, but their hands were tied in what they could do. i knew at that point that i needed to find an exit and they were willing to support me in that quest, as long as i was willing to also do my job as a cpa. i was fortunate in that.
rob: you were mentioning another firm that you were at?
liz: another firm approached me about being half marketer and half tax manager. from what i knew about this firm, i knew that that was really, really just a dream of theirs, that it would really become 80 hours a week being a tax manager and then 10 hours a week on top of that, trying to do some marketing. i knew that that was just not going to work for me. i turned that down. now back to our conversation. i’ve got one last question for you and i want you to put your hands on your crystal ball and think about what will be the next big thing in accounting. the client accounting services is big now. what will be the next big thing?
rob: it’s a tough question because a few years ago you could predict with some certainty, what might be coming up. the trajectory of technology was predictable. the path of the way business was going was predictable. this was pre-covid. people could make two, three, and five years strategic plans, but now best practice is out of the window because what was best practice 12 months ago is no longer best practice and you can make a 90-day plan and just about get it handled on the future. even then you can’t guarantee that things won’t change.
when you say what’s coming up, i certainly know what emerging technologies are coming up. we did a podcast with randy johnson just recently, and you’ll know, randy he’s really got his finger on the pulse of the emerging technologies in the accounting world. what is coming up for the accounting profession generally? well, i’m going to stop short of saying it’s in crisis, but it is in a fight for relevancy as the edges are becoming blurred with how an accountant is used by a business owner.
as a quick example, i had a story we featured in on our new section on our accounting influences podcast recently about a business owner that had hired an accountant who wasn’t a qualified accountant, but he was xero certified. the financial firm didn’t employ any accountants, but they employed people that were certified in intuit and xero and particular softwares. they hired that firm to do their accounting. what is coming up? well, the increased irrelevancy of the accounting professional if they don’t get a handle on advisory. if they continue to play in the compliance pool, they will be overran that jeff bezoses and the vendors.
i see that becoming more and more of an issue. i see profitability as coming up as a higher on the agenda for accounting firms in that with the downward pressure of compliance fees, how are we retaining our margins? how are we staying profitable? how are we getting returns on all the things that we’re doing? that will change. obviously talent. we can’t escape talent succession. there’s a lot of consolidation happening in the fintech world that supports accountants and the cpa firms themselves. with the buying and selling, the aging employer-employee base of accounting firms.
the average accounting partner is around 53, 54, 55 years old. now that’s coming down and the firms that can boast of an average partner age of 45 and below are doing really, really well. i see an aging profession that is struggling to bring that age down. what happens to the people at the end? i’ve read recently that there are more accountants dying and leaving the profession than there are coming in. now i don’t know if that’s true, but if it’s true, what does it mean? yes, we can do more jobs that the accountant used to do with automation and technology, but we’re struggling to bring new blood into the profession with new ideas.
that’s not going to go away. that’s going to become more acute over the next few years. talent and technology, they’re your two big blobs on the horizon, the two big issues, the two big challenges, leadership succession, you could wrap a lot of things around those. in as far as the next big thing goes, accounting practices are so slow adopting new technologies and new ways of working. i don’t think there’s going to be any big things. we’ve been talking about pricing for 20, 30 years. liz haven’t we?
liz: yes.
rob: we’ve been talking about accounting terms need to market themselves better and tell better stories for 20, 30 years. we’ve been talking about getting your recruitment and retention right for 20, 30 years. next big thing, i don’t think it’s probably going to be more of the same, but with more urgent messages to do what we’ve been telling you for all this time, and maybe a few will get it and a few will change and they’ll become the vanguards.
liz: well, i think that’s a perfect note to wrap up on i think that you are right that if without relevance, the accounting profession as we know it will go extinct. we really have got to find ways to retain our relevance and find new roles and find new ways to serve our clients in the world.
rob: is there anything you’d add to that list, liz, of things that you see as coming up as big things over the next few years?
liz: no, i think you’ve covered it quite well.
rob: accountants, and this is not a very nice analogy, but let’s put it this way. accountancy is like cockroaches. they will always find a way to survive which is good in a way we will hopefully never do without accountants. they’re such an amazing profession. i’m part qualified as an accountant. i’m not a complete cpa by any means, but they do such a fine job, but they could just do it so much better and believe in themselves more and really occupy more ground and really make a stand. i don’t know if it’s important enough to them either as a professional or as individuals, but i don’t really see the regulatory bodies and the professional associations taking a lead in that and sticking up for the accounting professional.
who knows where we’ll be in 5, 10 years. obviously, there’ll still be compliance and we’ll still need accountants, but will we need them less? will we go to vendors and technology? will all the ai and the new emerging technologies come in and take over? who knows? i don’t think they’ll ever be extinct, we might have a world with less of them, but certainly, there are more businesses than ever before. i heard recently that there were 17 million new businesses started in the last 12 months and that’s just in europe and north america, 17 million new businesses.
liz: wow.
rob: all of them should need an accountant, some kind of bookkeeper. they need to be in the fight. they need to be in the game. they need to be in the conversation and to do that, they need to be upgrading their skills. staying curious, asking questions, staying relevant. let’s finish it there.
liz: that’s a perfect way to wrap up, rob. i want to thank you so much for being on this accounting disruptor conversation. now, if people want to reach out to you, where is the best place to find you?
rob: linkedin is great. they can search rob brown on linkedin. find out more about the accounting influencers’ brand, the roundtable, and the podcast. if firms are listening and want to talk about these video interviews or me sharing some of these interviews on their panels and conferences, then it’s great, it’s a good way to start a conversation. it’s the social media channel for accountants, isn’t it really, linkedin?
you could say facebook or instagram or twitter, but i’m not really a fan of those, i’m on them, but linkedin, any practitioner who’s worth the salt should be on linkedin. it’s not the ideal platform, but it’s the defacto one, so let’s start with that, and accountinginfluencers.com for a little bit more of what we do with that brand with martin bissett and myself.
liz: thank you so much and it was great talking to you today, rob.
rob: it’s been a pleasure, liz. we have put the world to rights. we’ve set the accounting profession back on two feet. it hopefully will be really healthy because they’ll all listen to us and they’ll all do exactly what we’ve told them to do and everything will be fine and we’ll live happily ever after.
liz: of course, they will.