Anything but Typical: Build a Firm that Outlasts You, with Adam Boatsman
As we rejoin John Randolph’s conversation with Adam Boatsman on Episode 96 of CPA Life, we learn that Adam didn’t set out to sell BGW. He just wanted to be able to take a two-week ski vacation, realizing he’d built a firm too dependent on him to allow it. That single, honest admission cracks open a wider conversation about what it actually takes to build something that survives its founder. Adam traces the real story behind BGW’s private equity partnership with Ascend, born less from financial pressure than from a succession plan that surprised him. He talks candidly about diminishing returns past 60-hour weeks, the myth that people quit jobs they hate rather than places that exhaust them, and the uncomfortable math AI is forcing onto every compliance-driven firm. Beneath the tactics sits a simpler thesis: firms don’t scale because owners work harder, they scale because owners learn to let go, invest in people, and trade suits of armor for something closer to being human.
Important Links:
About the Guest:
Adam Boatsman is an owner and Relationship Leader at BGW, where he helps business owners move beyond once-a-year, check-the-box accounting relationships. He works with owners who are tired of surprise tax bills, missed bank deadlines, and accounting firms that feel more adversarial than helpful, bringing a proactive, value-driven approach instead. Adam and his team focus on real, ongoing partnership: uncovering tax-saving strategies, maximizing owner fringe benefits, and helping business owners build long-term value — whether that means growing the business or preparing for a future sale. Through free guides and resources on tax deductions, business growth, and succession planning, Adam shares insights many accountants never bring up.
Transcript:
Thanks for tuning in to CPA Life, where today we conclude John Randolph’s conversation with Adam Boatsman of BGW. They discussed taking BGW through a private equity partnership, preparing the firm for AI’s growing role in the profession, and building a business that isn’t dependent on its owner. Welcome to CPA Life.
The more that we can be relatable, and what I mean by that is like, not that somebody can say, hey, I am relatable, like somebody can talk to me, it’s more like, yeah, man, I’ve totally felt that way too. Like here are the things that make me feel that way. Just own the fact that like, I don’t need to show up in a suit of armor every day. Exhibiting a level of perfection. It’s okay for me to exhibit a level of humanness, but as long as I’m not holding up somebody to a standard that I would be unwilling to meet myself.
Yep. I think that we’ve got to have the compassion, empathy, to meet people where they are, but care enough about them to not leave them where they are.
That’s right. In other words, like, we’re not going to shoot our wounded, but at the same time, like, hey, let’s not leave them on the battlefield either.
Absolutely.
It’s like sitting there, suffering, calling out to mommy, like, let’s go in there and hold their hand.
Which kind of, talking about the battlefield, kind of segues into a thought I had, and a question I had for you. Again, in one of your posts recently, you talked about walking into April 15th and feeling a rhythm instead of feeling chaos. I think most accounting professionals would consider that very unusual, “Not your ordinary accounting firm?” How have you created an environment where pressure doesn’t automatically become panic, and then kind of second part to that, in your opinion, what does a healthy busy season look like?
So it’s funny that “not panicking” has really been built into our DNA from day one, and it’s primarily because my partner and I wanted to play golf on April 15th. We just thought that would be cool. Like, what if we had like a 9:00 AM tee time?
On April 15th?
Year one, what if we had an April 15th tee time? So when we hired other people that were more like midnight post office people, we’re like, are you insane? We’re taking April 15th off. So we’ve always been pushing towards, how do we have less and less chaos? And I think that really comes down to what we try to instill in our people is, we’ve got a lot of work to do, but be really disciplined about the planning and the follow up of it. And frankly, a client shouldn’t be surprised by a tax liability, or the fact that they’re getting extended, so the more that we can be ahead of the curve on that, the better off we’re going to be. At the same time, we also tell clients, we’ll have a commitment. If you get your stuff to us by this date, I will promise you it will get done. Meaning, I’m not going to tell you, “Sorry, we ran out of time and ran out of capacity. If you have it to me in the lead time that I need it by, I’m going to figure out a way to get it done internally,” and we always do. But by instilling that, what doesn’t ever happen is like, oh my God, John’s going to fire us if we don’t get this tax return done. It’s like, well then freaking fire John. That’s not really something that we allow to happen here.
But at the flip side, if you call me, and, ’cause I’d love to say we’re perfect, we’re not, so if you call me and you say, “Dude, where’s my tax return? I really thought it was going to go out, or where’s my financial statement?” The first thing I’m going to look at is, well, when did we get it? And if we got it within that window, then I’m going to apologize and say, “Yeah, you’re right, we screwed up, we’re going to get it done.” And in that case, it’s like, “Sorry team, John has every right to be pissed off and angry right now. We need to do our part to correct the problem and make it right.” And what I’ve found is like the more that we focused on those habits, the more we find that people that haven’t started their career at BGW, every year they always say, “this was better than last year,” instead of worse, because they just feel like it’s way more manageable.
But at the same time, in terms of the workload, there’s all sorts of studies that talk about like when you start having diminishing returns, and I think we feel like anything above 55, 60 hours, you’re just starting to hit the point of diminishing returns. So if you can be healthy from that perspective, maybe you’ll ramp up for a week if you had to for whatever reason, but that shouldn’t be sustainable. When you hear people working 80 hour weeks for weeks on end, it’s like, well, of course they’re getting freaking burned out. Who wouldn’t at that point, right?
And at that point, does it really matter what the person does, whether they’re a ditch digger, a truck driver, an accountant, a doctor. When you’re working at that level, it is just going to drain you. It’s going to suck the life out of you.
That’s right. And I think the last piece of that, in terms of the other thing that makes it really important, John, is that I don’t believe that people leave the business because they hate the work, I think they leave the business because they hate the stress associated with the workload at differing times. So if you can solve for that problem, I guarantee you could double your employee retention.
Yeah. I’ve said for years that the conversation that we have with candidates is a pretty consistent, repetitive conversation: Right at 83% of the conversations that we have with candidates in public accounting today, if they’re open to making a job change, 83% of those conversations in the first ten minutes are, “Get me out of here, I don’t want to be in public accounting, I hate what I do.” When we dig into that conversation—and as a recruiting firm that only works with public accounting firms, we’re not another recruiting firm that places controllers and accounting managers and financial analysts, we don’t have the ability to say, hey, not a problem, I got 40 jobs outside of public accounting, tell me what you want to do. Everything sitting on our desk is public accounting. So we dig into that question and want to know why do you say that, why do you feel that way, and then ultimately get to the point of, “Hey, you’ve been there three years, four years, five years, eight years, you haven’t hated every day. Tell me what still gives you energy rolling out of bed in the morning when you look at your calendar and go, hey, these are the two or three things I get to do today, or I get to do this week. What are those things that get you excited?” Stereotypically, what they hate is not what they do, it’s the things that you talked about, that ultimately boil down to where I do it.
Yeah, that’s exactly right.
The things they love are the things that they do. We’ll usually ask candidates, hey, if I could show you an organization that takes away 98, 99%, I won’t say a hundred, but 98 to 99% of the things that you hate, ’cause it sounds like you don’t hate what you do, you hate where you do it, and I could put you in front of an organization that replaces those things you hate with more of the things that just make you thrive, would you at least be open to listening? And half of that 83% says, “Yes, I’m open.”
Isn’t that awesome?
Yeah! Because I think it’s a revelation that it’s, “You are right, I don’t hate what I do, in fact, I love what I do, but I’m so bogged down in the lack of process or the lack of structure, the chaos of where I do it, I can never see the forest for the trees.”
That’s right, that’s right.
And I think that if you guys continue to build something like that, it’s going to continue to show in the growth that you guys have had.
That is absolutely our fingers crossed, buddy.
Again, one of the topics that you tend to talk a lot about is businesses that are not dependent on the owner. That is something that we see constantly when we talk to firms: they are still dependent upon ownership leadership, the one or two partners that they may have, we’re a 22 person firm, and if I’m not here, no one’s going to be able to sign off on returns, no one’s going to be able to handle high level review. One of the posts that you wrote recently asked a very compelling question: “Could you stop selling for 90 days?” Where did that idea come from, and what was the impetus for that thought process?
It’s got two components, but most of the stuff that I write about a lot of times comes from, I probably should consider eating my own dog food at some point in time.
I think that’s all of us though!
Yeah! The idea kind of circulated a couple years back in my own life with, I wanted to take a two week vacation, and I’m like, that just seems unfathomable, that I could take a two week vacation. I wanted to go skiing in tax season. That seems unfathomable, not like to the mountain for a day, I’m talking like go to Colorado for a week, week and a half, during tax season. And so it really started from that standpoint, meaning I just wanted that in my own life, so in order to do that in my own life, it means that you have to invest in, I got to have people that I can count on, and that doesn’t happen like magically overnight, like, well, you probably have found it: the magic tree of employees who come fully trained, batteries installed and know exactly what to do, that you can pull from on demand, exactly when you… well, anyway, that’s fantasy land, it doesn’t exist. So you’ve got to invest in the folks.
But it’s funny because it always seems like a cost. But at the same time, the knock on effect is, hey, when you do that, I bet a steak dinner anywhere in the country that you will end up doubling the size of your business. That’s because of the knock on effect of like, you’ll have more time to do something that you didn’t have time to do before, by enabling your team with either the client service aspects or enabling your team to learn how to actually sell something. It’s amazing how that scale starts to percolate. And that’s just, again, that’s not just accounting firms, that’s really any business, and you sort of bump up against the reality of like, no person can be effective if they have more than 10 to 12 direct reports. And if you’ve got more than 10 to 12 direct reports, full-time management and leadership needs to be your job. And if you can’t answer yes to that question, you’ve got work to do.
I’ve said this before on the podcast, I had a mentor in my life years ago, and the way that he put it was, average people spend time to make money, above average people spend money to make time.
Yeah, that’s a great one. Yep, that’s exactly right.
You know, when you think about it, it’s what you’re talking about, you can’t look at that as an expense, because it’s going to free up the time and if you sat down, and in your business it’s a little easier to do than a lot of other businesses, but as a leader, sit down and figure out, okay, what if you’re not an hourly billing firm, what would my hourly rate be? Or if I am an hourly billing firm, what is my hourly rate? And if I just saved 18 hours this week by hiring somebody, effectively what did I just make for our firm?
Oh, that’s exactly right.
And I think that, you know, like you just touched on, one of the things I was going to ask you is, how do you know that you’ve become the bottleneck? And like you just said, if you find yourself with a staff of 8, 10, 12 people and you’re doing everything that needs to be done, other than leadership, other than focusing on retention, other than focusing on building culture, it’s a challenge to see what the next step’s going to be, ’cause you’re so bogged down.
Yeah, that’s right. And I think some people can listen to this and they’ll throw the Elon Musk, “you’ve got to keep your hands dirty” quote, and I actually agree to that, but I can accomplish that by going to like 15 client meetings a year in a ride along. That doesn’t mean that I need to carry a $5 million book of business, to still know what it’s like to be out there. I can accomplish the same function of being relevant, staying relevant, understanding what the organization needs without actually having to be in the weeds of everything, you know?
Yep. It was kind of a blinding flash, the obvious, what we’re talking about, how you get bogged down in those weeds. We worked with a firm a couple of years ago and we spent time in their office, they had a group of people that were 10 plus years with the firm, and then they had a ton of turnover and then a lot of people with less than three years in the firm. When we sat and talked with those people that have been there 10 years and asked them, “What’s kept you here? Why are you here?” every single one of them pointed to the owner, every single one of them, well, they were employee number two, employee number three, employee number seven, employee number eight. It’s now a firm of 30, 35 people. Majority of them have been there less than three years. When we start talking to those people, they have no earthly idea who that guy is sitting in the corner office, because he’s so busy with work. And after a couple of days we sit down with the owner and said, look, and then we found out that he still has a book of business, but he doesn’t bill half those clients, they’re just friends of his he takes care of.
Ah, that’s the worst.
And sat down with him and said, look, the highest value that you have right now is literally just walking out on the floor and sitting down with your people and saying, “How are you doing?” That’s the biggest value you have, ’cause apparently that’s what you did with the eight to 10 people that have been here for eight to 10 years. That’s why they’re here, they love you. And you may just think that you’re just the same old guy, but you’re the CEO of the firm, and when the CEO of the firm sits down in their chair or says, “Hey, can I go to lunch with you, and just find out how you’re doing?” that has weight, that carries a lot. And I think that the need to get that return out the door sometimes trumps the fact that I just need to sit down with these people, I just need to talk to them.
Yeah. It kind of comes down to like, it’s one of those things where I know that I should eat the chicken breast, the broccoli and the rice, but the plate of nachos looks really good, so I’ll just eat the nachos tonight, and then I can always eat the chicken, the broccoli, and the rice tomorrow, and then like five weeks later I’ve gained 40 pounds.
And six weeks later, you’ve got the marathon you’ve got to run.
Yeah! Well, that’s the whole thing, it’s like, well, but the employee’s not going anywhere, so if I don’t go to lunch with them today, there’s plenty of time to, in other words, like, well maybe I’ll get around to mentoring my kids, well, next thing you know, they’re out of the house.
Yeah, exactly. So for listeners who are firm owners today, what’s one thing that they can do this week if they’re an owner that’s still in the weeds—and obviously there are owners that still need to be in the weeds based on where their firm is today—but if they’re at that junction of, what do I do, where do I go, what’s one thing they can do this week, next week, to begin removing themselves as the center of every decision?
It’s a good question—this will be a little bit of a long-winded answer, so I’ll apologize about that in advance. So first off, the AI tools, whether it’s Claude or ChatGPT or whatever may be your flavor, are fabulous brainstorming partners. So one of the things that I would start with doing is saying, if you’re familiar with the Eisenhower Matrix, there’s the important but not urgent, important and urgent, not important / not urgent, not important / urgent, describe who you are and what you do, and ask it to populate an example Eisenhower Matrix for you, and then just evaluate like, I wonder where I actually am, If I were to analyze my day. You want to go brownie points, have it analyze your emails and your time history and your calendar against that matrix, so you’ve got like a real fact check brainstorming to it. I’ve done this myself, I mean, we’re not talking like hours, this is like a 15 minute exercise to at least ground you in reality. And then from there, just start moving out of the matrix.
But a lot of the times it’s like, well geez, I don’t even know how to do that. I’m more of a tax person, so this is going to be more of a tax bent with this discussion point. You’ve got to start thinking through like, but if I were never going to look at a tax return ever again, what would I need to know, to still feel comfortable. And for me that’s that we did a tax plan, we told the person the expected result, and part of our procedures are double check against this expected result, otherwise the tax return doesn’t go out the door. You need to come ask some people for what happened, or if it is going to go out the door, you better be able to trace exactly what changed between the plan that we created and what actually happened with the year end results. If I know that, I know that we did a good job, I don’t actually need to look at the details or sign the return anymore.
Yeah, great way to look at it.
That gives me the comfort of like, okay, I don’t have to be in the review of the tax returns anymore. I’ve got a good control mechanism in place, which basically is ensuring that the client is not surprised with an unintended consequence, and at the same time, I also know that since we did a tax plan, that we gave the client the best possible outcome that we knew how to do. So in other words, my job now is just to say, well, who didn’t get a tax plan and why not, and what are we going to do about that to fix that?
Yep. And I think that when you do that, you put things in perspective for yourself, and also give some clear indication of what it is the team needs to do to carry the ball forward that you used to carry.
Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Let’s touch on a couple of topics real quick that I think are on everybody’s mind in public accounting today, the first being private equity. When private equity first started becoming more active in the accounting profession, what was your initial reaction?
“Not on my watch,” you know? Well, it was two things: it was first off, not on my watch, and then also kind of that healthy degree of skepticism of like, well, what’s the end game? Are we all going to become public companies at one point? It just seemed a little bit whatever, you know? I think there was another part of me that was like, well, of course you had to take private equity, you didn’t think through your own succession plan.
But obviously that changed.
Yep.
At what point did you guys begin seriously exploring that possibility? Because from the outside looking in, you were running a very successful firm, you had a respected brand, a strong culture, a growing firm. What changed and why?
It’s actually funny, it was my succession plan that changed. And what I mean by that is that when we first started the firm, way back when, we took some good ideas from a firm that my partner had worked at up in Michigan, UHY—national firm these days, but back then it was a regional firm. So I’d known Steve McCarthy, their CEO, for a long time, and we jokingly said, hey Steve, one day we’re going to sell to you, when we finally decide to get out of the business. So he was in Charlotte and he said, “Hey man, I know that you’re not interested, but if you ever are, give me a call.” I said to Steve, “You are right Steve, I’m not interested, but at the same time I have a fiduciary responsibility,” which normally is like, so I’ll go ahead and see what you have to offer. My version of that was, “I’ll ask my succession plan if they’re interested at all,” because if they’re actually interested, and this is a team of 30 somethings, right, if they’re actually interested, who am I to stop the process? So I talked to a couple of them and they said, “Actually, yeah, it is something that we’ve kind of thought about, ’cause we wondered what it would be like to be part of something bigger.” I’m like, well that was sort of an unexpected answer. So then I called another one of my partners and said, “Hey Gary, can you believe that they actually said this, what do you think?” He’s like, “Oh hell no, but I heard about these other guys, let’s give them a call instead,” which is how we found Ascend.
Okay. I was going to ask you, how did you evaluate whether Ascend was the right partner?
It really came down to the first thing that they did is, David Wurtzbacher, the CEO, in the very first meeting with us, he saw that I had a binder. We run the Entrepreneurial Operating System at BGW out of the book Traction, and he saw that I have my EOS binder from our implementers, like EOS, tell me more about that, and I’m like, interesting, the language, sir. So like, come to find out, they have every firm implement their own version of EOS. I’m like, okay, this is interesting. And when they started talking about what they wanted to do, which was allow firms to remain autonomous, but at the same time provide the resources to truly transform the profession from what it is today, I’m like, well, those are all the same ideas that we have: either we were doing them or it’s like we thought that that’s a great idea and it’s on the roadmap.
So we just found that there was like a lot of mind share that came along with these guys versus having a financial buyer. In other words it felt like they were throwing some real thought and care for where the industry was heading, and it was very aligned with what we were thinking. We kind of looked at it as like, this is an opportunity for us to really help transform the profession at scale, which is something that we were never going to be able to do on our own. Like if we could share what we’re doing with the other 49 platform firms, that’s awesome. We would never be able to do that on our own. So that became super attractive to us, the more that we got into the details of working together.
How did you communicate the decision to your people, and what was their reaction?
So we had looped in, so my evaluation team was around six people in the first place, so there’s already like a little critical mass of people that I thought would be representative of how the firm would think as a whole. The second thing that we did, as in any deal, you get cash, you get an earn out, then you get some rollover equity. Well with our rollover equity, we made a list of all the people that we thought probably would’ve been a partner at BGW at some point in the next 10 years, and we granted them rollover equity, right out of the gate.
Oh wow.
So overnight, we went from seven owners to 30 in doing that. So that was like the next group, it’s like, “Hey, by the way, I want to let you know this is happening, and at the same time I want to let you know that doesn’t shut a door, it opens the door,” but that wasn’t like some esoteric BS, it was like, “And by the way, here’s the equity that we’re granting you as part of the process, like you’re now an owner just like I am, we got the same skin in the game today,” I mean, one of the guys had only been with us for four months.
Oh my goodness!
But it’s like, we’d made a commitment to him that if he was willing to take a chance on us, he would eventually be a partner, so it’s like, look, we’re going to honor our commitment for this guy.
Yep. Now that you’ve been through the process, what’s been better than expected?
I think actually the thing that I would say is better than expected is that at the private equity level, they truly care about people, that’s important. I think the second thing that I really didn’t realize that I was missing a whole lot, but I really enjoy is that, I never joined BDO’s peer group or whoever’s peer group, because my peer group was Vistage, I was trying to learn from other industries, not the CPA profession, but man, the network of our other peer firms, it was the first time ever that I walked into a room and normally you meet a group of CEOs and you’re like, “I like you, I like you, you’re an idiot, you’re an idiot, you got an ego the size of Texas, blah, blah, blah,” it’s like, maybe I like 25% of the room. This is the first time that I ever walked in the room and I literally generally liked every single person. I mean, so much so that I told our CEO, and the guy that picks all the acquisitions, I’m like, “That actually was a shocking experience that I thought I would never have.” And that’s trickled down. In every other firm that’s in the network, I haven’t met anybody that I thought, you’re a fricking… everybody gently is pretty awesome and somebody that I would want to hang out with, which again is like, I did not expect that. Like, they did a good job picking for cultural fit.
That was a nice bow on the gift after it was all said and done, that’s nice. Touch on AI just a little bit, what do you think firm leaders are missing when they think about AI in the marketplace today, especially in accounting?
We’re really, really, really, really focused on that as a platform, and then BGW specifically, we’ve been charged with creating a “firm within a firm,” like, hey, let’s pretend that if we were starting a company all over again and we could do an AI native platform, what would that actually look like? And that’s been a really interesting process to think, if I had to start over from ground zero, what would I actually do? And it still kind of comes back to the same thing that I think that people are talking about but aren’t really doing a lot of work around, which is, if you take as a given, 85% of what we do from a compliance standpoint can be done by a computer in pretty high quality, in other words, I’m going to buy into the will the robot take my job results, then what will the client still be willing to pay me for that they perceive as valuable, and how do I start moving my organization directionally there? The punchline isn’t, well, they’re going to pay me to double check the AI results—anybody’s going to be able to do that, right? So it really comes down to like, you got to go David Meister, like you’re going back old school again, you got to get out from behind the computer screen, actually give a crap about whether your clients are successful or not, and offer them up advice that will help them be successful. And I think when we’re all honest with ourselves, when it kind of comes down to the pillow talk, that’s kind of scary because I may not actually know how to do that, and even if I know how to do that, I know that maybe only three other people in my organization know how to do it. And I’ve got to figure out how to get, at scale, 50, 60 people to do it. At Ascend, we’ve got to figure out how to get thousands of people to do it. So there’s a part of me that’s like, geez, I’m 52, couldn’t this be somebody else’s problem?
But I think that’s it. I think that not taking the problem of what are we going to do with ourselves seriously enough to start repositioning yourselves to truly live up to the “trusted advisor” mantle. And again, if I just use this in context, we just had our all company meeting a couple hours ago, and I told the team that the way things are developed at this point, in busy season 2027, most all of our tax work will be AI, about 50% of our attest work will be AI, about 75% of our bookkeeping work’s going to be, so, this isn’t playing around anymore, it’s here, so it’s time to gear up and embrace change. And I don’t think, going back to the start of the conversation about investing in people and training and stuff like that, it’s like that is a massive change management exercise that I just feel like we’re not taking seriously.
Would you say that’s one of the things that does excite you most about the future of the business?
It does and it doesn’t. It excites me, and at the same time it’s scary, if I was going to be honest. If you think about it, clients have a perception of what we’re capable of today, and I want to do like that plus 5,000 other things on top of it. That’s easy to convince a new client because they didn’t know any better, but when I’m looking at a legacy client base, and I’ve never talked to them about their sales strategy before, but now I want to, and I know I probably should have, but I didn’t have time, now I’m going to, it’s like, “Well, what do you know about that, Boatsman? Why are you talking to me about that?” So it’s also scary, ’cause you sort of think like, I know the AI will work, but what if me being a trusted advisor doesn’t work?
Yeah, it’s going to shine a spotlight, and it’s going to separate—I’ve had this mindset for several months now—I think it’s going to separate the people that know how to keep the human touch in their business and do it exceptionally well. The person that wants to sit in a room and not interact and just deal with whether it’s numbers, or in our case resumes, or whatever it may be, that person’s going to have a real tough time commanding a place in the marketplace the way that they do today, 12, 24, 36 months from now.
Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. I’ve got to ask an attorney friend of mine about this, but there’s been some studies about like, what does that mean? There’s going to be a lot less accountants? And there’s studies that show like, even though there’s AI, there’s actually more lawyers, not less. What I haven’t asked yet is, but are they doing things that are different than what they did before that are more client facing than they might have had before? My suspicion would be probably yes. So it could be that there actually are more people, not less, it’s just I know that we’re going to be doing different things.
I think it comes down to a situation where people are going to be able to look at, if I can offloading, and I guess it kind of goes back to the investment like we were talking about in your people, and not looking at it as a cost, I think when people are going to be able to look at things and say, hey, if I can invest in this technology, decrease the workload in these menial tasks, manual labor kind of things, and start to offer more higher value, higher ticket advisory consulting strategy pieces of our business, what new client doors does that open, what new opportunities does that bring to our table, what are the things that we’re not doing today that we possibly could start doing tomorrow? But I think it’s going to take somebody with a finite level mindset to look at that and challenge themself and say, what could tomorrow bring?
Yep, that’s right.
Couple of quick questions, just kind of a lightning round, quick thoughts, in your opinion: Most overrated business advice.
Man, God, I don’t know, what’s the next question? I can’t, that’s a funny one, I’d actually have to think about that one!
One belief you have about running a firm that a lot of other partners would disagree with, or firm owners?
You need to have full-time management. In other words, you can’t effectively train people and manage people and at the same time have heavy production responsibilities.
I agree with you. What do you think is an important trait of a future leader?
I think it’s got to come down to empathy, not like fake empathy, like real empathy and relatability.
What would you say is something that you’re trying to personally improve on right now?
With AI and having more free time, and trying to live in the upper quadrant of the Eisenhower Matrix, the unintended thing that you don’t plan for is it actually creates decision fatigue. You wake up in the morning, you actually don’t have something to do, and you need to create it. So I’m trying to figure out how to get more structure around my day around things that don’t require structure.
That’s a tough thing. That is a really tough thing, especially when that structure isn’t there and how do you put it in. And I feel for you, ’cause I struggle with that and it’s something that I’ve been working on as well. Good luck!
Yeah, it’s a real deal. It’s like it’s black t-shirt and black jeans, I need to be making less decisions to have more. And when it comes to like, what am I going to do with my day, it’s just tough.
Yeah! Last question, when you’re 70 years old, what does success look like for you?
Man, I know that this place is in good hands, I left the place and I left the profession way better than I found it, and we made this transition into the next era of client service and employee engagement.
That’s awesome. Adam, I’ve enjoyed talking to you in general, but I think what I’ve most enjoyed was the preparation process for this conversation, because realizing that while you’re leading a successful CPA firm, most of the lessons that you’ve talked about, that we’ve discussed today, really have nothing to do with accounting—I shouldn’t say don’t have anything to do with accounting—they have more to do with just life in general: leadership, culture, building an organization that, as you just talked about, what does it look like, success 14 years from now, 15 years from now, from you, it’s an organization that outlasts the people who started it. I think those are lessons, whether someone runs a CPA firm, plumbing company, a car wash, a manufacturing business, a church, that I think we all can lean into.
If there are firm owners, public accounting firm owners, advisory firm owners, or anybody that is kicking around some of the same challenges that you guys have faced, or somebody that just wants to pick your brain on some of the things that we’ve talked about, or if there’s talented people in the accounting profession that are thinking, man, that’s the kind of firm that I want to be a part of, what is the best way for folks to reach you or learn more about your firm?
Oh, easily, on our website is my email, and then also you can look me up on LinkedIn and just make a connection on LinkedIn. Man, I’d be happy to help out anybody that wants to help.
I’ll make sure that we put all that contact information in the show notes as well. I absolutely want to thank you for spending some time with us today.
John, it’s been my pleasure, I appreciate it.
You’re more than welcome. And for those listeners, if you’d like to learn more about Adam and BGW, we’re definitely going to include the links down below that you could find him. And if you like what you heard today and want to make sure that you aren’t missing out on any of the upcoming conversations that we have queued up with leaders like Adam who are building really a new breed of people-centric firms in the marketplace, hit the subscribe button on the platform of your choice. Make sure that you’re in the loop for future episodes of the CPA Life Podcast. Until next time.
We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting app, leave a five star rating and visit our website for links and show notes at CPALifePodcast.com. We’ll see you next time on CPA Life!