Fellow CPA’s: Expanding Opportunity and Realizing Client Potential

Dear Fellow CPAs: With chaos around us all these days, are you finding it challenging to address and move forward on many of your clients’ more senior management needs?

Having worked with the CA CPA Foundation to create and teach courses for CPAs in the 2008 to 2010 recession to help clients navigate those challenges, many clients never could address the succession and transition programs necessary to create a better future for all stakeholders.  COVID-19 pandemic is no different.  Many senior management and operational effectiveness challenges have not and are not being addressed as there is so much triage work day-to-day.

• Succession planning for client business and owners
• Crisis management challenges and growth
• Partner/Shareholder agreement updates and ownership disputes
• Mergers/Acquisitions: planning for and transitioning a merger into another operation or merging another into the client
• Cash management programs and corporate finance stability
• Strategic growth programs and long-term planning
• Organizational stability: Advisory Boards, Director positions

I could bet you have at least 2 to 3 important business clients that have needed attention on these, and other projects for some time.  I can imagine that time and resources have not been available for you to put your hands around them as effectively as you would like.

You are not alone in this as everyone’s world is upside down in some major way.  For CPAs, the amount of attention to the COVID-19 challenges has increased workloads, disturbed operational effectiveness, and created an informational nightmare as to what governmental regulations and procedures are correct.

We are here to help you and your clients collaboratively to succeed in these important and most often serious areas.  It is also an opportunity to help you serve clients in a way you have never been able to.  Coming to their aid, with our assistance, will increase your value propositions with them, increase your ability to help other clients as well and create additional services that you may have never offered before.

We know from decades of work with CPAs and their clients that client needs for assistance, in particular the business side, is 5 to 15 times the current annual firm billings to the client. There is so much natural true work—work you never need to sell, but only need to identify and work with clients to help them embrace the next steps that they need to make.  We used to teach a course for the CA CPA Foundation called: “Getting and Staying Close to Clients” that addressed how best to be of greater service.

So, if we are anywhere near right about the client before COVID-19, what has happened to client needs today. I would imagine you would agree that it has grown substantially.  As COVID continues, we need to help clients address their future by assisting in revamping and expanding opportunities for growth and maximizing potential by collaborating with us using both strategic and a “boots on the ground” approach that helps assure that ideas and opportunities turn into successful tangible results now not just a consideration for the future.

Why us, why me?:

• CPA (Inactive) and CMC
• Have consulted with over a 150 to 200 firms
• Built or re-built 100 businesses, many we ran day to day—crisis management, corporate finance and growth
• 10 years in Public Accounting, small-medium sized firms
• Senior Manager of Consulting for second tier national firm
• Senior Manager of Consulting for National Consulting firm owned by CPA firms
• Partner of Merchant Banking firm building and rebuilding businesses with a corporate finance core services base
• Designed or redesigned systems and operational capabilities and IT effectiveness for over 70 systems
• Founder and President of Boutique Business Re-engineering firm with a niche in helping CPA firms and Banks with their clients/customers needs
• 17 courses for CA CPA Education Foundation
• Served on over 45 Conferences for the CA CPA Foundation
• Former CA CPA Foundation Trustee, Former Board member CA CPA Society Board and CA CPA Society Los Angeles Board
• Former Chair of Consulting for the Los Chapter of CA CPA Society and former State Chair of MCS (Consulting)
• Currently Los Angeles Chapter of CA CPA Society’s MAP Committee Chair and On Council for the CA CPA Society Board and serve on the State MAP Committee
• Published over 20 articles in CA CPA magazine on various topics from Succession to Mergers to Consulting to Crisis Management and beyond
• 10 courses for UCLA Extension from computer design and operation to communication and social skills to sales and marketing

As we have for over 30 years in these areas, we are here to help CPA firms help clients when additional resources, expertise and time are required.  We are here to help both the Firm and the client.  Let’s start cultivating a process that will help you and your clients succeed.