John Randolph “sits on the other side of the studio” on this special two-part Season 3 kickoff episode of CPA Life. With hosting duties accounted for by producer Justin Grant of ProfessionalProductions.net, John delves into the challenges firms will face in 2025 and beyond, such as losing key talent, increased competition and specialization in the profession, and the need for technological adaptation. Highlighting the importance of embracing remote work and modern recruitment strategies to attract and retain top talent, John also explores the potential and mindset of new entrants into the profession, marking an optimistic view of the future—at least, for those firms willing to do what it takes!
Benaiah Consulting Group was founded at a time when John was “facing his own lions.” After spending 15 years with two large national staffing firms, the decision was made to step out and take the lessons and skills that had been learned and developed from working with several great teachers, mentors, trainers, and leaders and focus on helping other firms achieve some of their own great success.
That first step – whether it’s one time or every day – can be extremely intimidating. Our passion and prayer each day is to have the strength and courage that a man like Benaiah had and work with you, counsel with you, advise you and show you how to chase after your lions!
Sure, there are easier industries to serve. There are larger firms that need services like Benaiah’s on a more consistent basis. A conversation about a job at Google would be an easier conversation than one about John Smith, CPA, a 10-person, locally-owned firm that flies under the radar. But what fun would that be? Everyone knows about Google! People beat the proverbial door down to work at Google. And regardless of who goes to work at Google, Google will continue to be successful and, well – Google – long after that person has resigned.
Very few may know about John Smith, CPA. And the short- and long-term success of John Smith, CPA just may hinge on that next hire! Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that underdog story?
Hello everyone and welcome to a new year with the CPA Life Podcast. I’m Justin Grant, the producer of CPA Life and founder of ProfessionalProductions.net. I’ll once again be taking over hosting duties as John shares his thoughts on the state of the profession and the fears, frustrations, and desires that he sees as most relevant—and most vital—for firms going into this middle year of the decade of the 2020s. So, without further ado, the founder of Benaiah Consulting Group: John Randolph. Thanks for being here.
You know, it’s interesting when you say “the middle of this decade,” that just threw me for a loop because I’ve never thought about it that way, but you are right. Just think, we’re 25 years, and some people may get this, some of our audience may not. We’re 25 years away from Y2K.
Oh, yes.
When the whole world was going to cease to exist, computers were going to stop working, and we were all just going to figure out how to do things manually the next day.
You know, that’s a great way of putting it, because if it were not for a great deal of intervention on the technological side leading up to Y2K, we very well may have been doing it all by hand after that, but a penny of prevention led to a pound of cure in that instance, and maybe we can talk about that in context of this episode. What do you think?
I think it could be a pretty decent segue into some of the things that we’re seeing and just kind of the overall marketplace and demands we’re seeing from clients, and some things that people can do if they’re considering making a move in the marketplace to make themselves a little bit more attractive to potential firms that they’re interviewing with, and some things that firms can do also to make themselves a little bit more appealing when they’re talking to candidates in the marketplace today.
Perfect. And before we do that, I just want to say I do really enjoy these episodes, and I’m glad we’ve gotten a chance to do another one, and we are kicking off what is really the third season of CPA Life now.
Yes.
So on that note, before we kind of dive into the meat of all of that, I did want to ask you—putting you on the spot—to look back a little bit on the first two seasons of the show and share some of your thoughts on that, as well as thinking about when you launched this, just about two years ago, are you about where you expected you’d be? Or have we completely gone off the rails, hopefully in a good way, with where we’ve gone with it?
You know, I think that we’re about where I hoped we would be. In fact, I’ll tell you, there’s always a part when you start looking at different ways to, quote unquote, “market” what it is that you do, and position yourself as a somewhat voice of authority in the marketplace. Obviously, podcasting is one of the platforms that you look at. And as a business person, there’s a part of you that also always comes back and looks at, okay, what’s the ROI, whether it’s hard dollars that you’re putting into it, or time you’re putting into it? And I’ll be honest with you, Justin, I stopped looking at that and worrying about that probably at the beginning of last year, going into season two, knowing that if we continue to stay on this path, if we continue to focus on bringing value, if we continue to have the engaging and interesting conversations with some of the firm leaders and some of the industry experts that we’ve been blessed to talk to, all of those things would ultimately fall in line, all of those things would ultimately come together, and they have.
Great!
It’s not anything that we’ve done with intent of, okay, we’ve got to go out and we’ve got to, you know, be able to drive this kind of revenue or bring this type of customer in. It’s just been a desire really to focus on let’s bring value to the marketplace, let’s do what we set out to do in the beginning, which is let people know that there are some amazing opportunities in this industry with some pretty interesting firms that fly so far under the radar, nobody really knows about them. And it’s not, they fly under the radar because they choose to—they fly under the radar because there’s so much noise in the industry from bigger firms with deeper pockets that can throw money and people at a problem. The rest of the firms that are below, you know, those top 300, 400 firms that provide an amazing service and a phenomenal culture, like so many of the people that we’ve had on the podcast, people just don’t know who they are.
The fun thing for me on the recruiting side of the business is there’s times where I’ll engage with candidates that have reached out to us because they were referred to us or they saw something on our website that looked like an opportunity they wanted to talk to us about, and through the course of that conversation, I’ll be talking to them and we’ll get to a point ultimately of, you know, have you had any interviews? Are you in the loop with anybody? Where do you stand in the middle of your search? And it’s nice at times to hear, “I’m in the middle of a conversation with Firm X,” and Firm X is someone we’ve had on the podcast, or Firm X is somebody that we’ve worked with in the past. And the ability to say, okay, pump the brakes, you’re talking to an amazing firm. I have nothing on my desk that is better than what you’re looking at right now, so unless there’s something going on that you’re not telling me about, they haven’t made you an offer, they passed on you, they’re looking at six other people, whatever the case may be, unless there’s something that you haven’t told me, do everything you can to get in the door with that firm because they’re a great organization.
So, being able to look at it from that side of the equation and make sure that people are landing in places that, you know, again, I had a conversation the other day with somebody about a firm that we’ve had on the podcast. They knew nothing about them. They answered a position they had posted on the leader’s LinkedIn profile. They had one conversation, they had done some research, but other than that, they knew nothing about them. So the ability to talk to that person, go pull up a link to the podcast with that firm owner on there, send that to them and say, “Look, listen to this because this is going to give you a really good picture of who these guys are, and it’s 30 to 45 minutes of peeling the onion back and understanding what their vision, their values, their mission is, and why you want to be a part of that organization.” So it’s been fun to be able to have some of those conversations.
That’s great. Just seeing that kind of practical impact on the work you do anyway, in addition to all the other things you mentioned, that’s really cool to hear, so thanks for sharing that, John.
Yep, absolutely. And this happened a few weeks ago, following up with a message to a firm owner to say, “Hey, I talked to somebody today that you guys are in the middle of having a conversation with, and she is a great candidate, so I don’t know where she stands in y’all’s loop, but you need to do everything you can to put something together because she’s actively looking, she’s actively interviewing, and if you’re interested, you need to move quickly.” So again, being able to help bring some of those relationships together is extremely gratifying to be able to do that.
Good stuff. That’s really good stuff. And that really does kind of dovetail nicely into the meat of our chat today, because even without explicitly mentioning it, there was a theme around how we’re able to do what we’re able to do with CPA Life. This theme was touched upon in an exchange that I actually had the pleasure of producing recently, on the 2025 kickoff episode of The Upstream Leader Podcast. Jeremy Clopton was hosting, who, of course, by the way, is also a former guest and friend of this podcast, and an all-around great guy, along with Heath Alloway, who is also the other host.
Absolutely.
So, Jeremy was talking to Daniel Hood, the Editor-in-Chief of Accounting Today, of course.
Yep.
And Dan’s big, overarching theme that he had as far as predictions for the upcoming year—and beyond—was something that can be kind of a bit of a cliché, and that’s change. But he was very specific about what he meant. He didn’t just mean change in and of itself. What he meant was the pace of change and the advancement in technology was not only going to be higher than it’s ever been this year, but it was never going to slow down, it was only ever going to be increasing. The pace of change of technology in the last 10 years or so, maybe 15, that makes something like CPA Life a reality—we are using technology right now to communicate across approximately 5,000 miles, as if we’re in the same room as each other, and to make all of you listeners believe that we are in the same room, sound like we’re in the same room, that we’re having a conversation.
So it’s everywhere, and it’s not something you can ignore, there’s no hiding from it, and that is what Dan was focusing on: There’s nothing in the accounting profession that you’re going to be able to do and say, “Oh, well, I’ve got my green ledger book here. I don’t need to worry because I’m insulated from this wildly quick pace of change in the accounting profession.” You’re not. And if you don’t keep caught up, his point was, you’re going to pay a price for it. There’s no bones about it. So given that, talk a little bit about what you think about what he had to say. Especially tie it into, if you can, your own experiences, because you often talk about on the podcast, things you run into in the recruiting space that have really good analogs to the accounting profession generally, and oftentimes they’re technology-related, and for much the same kind of reason, I’m sure, Dan was talking about.
I think that you’re touching on something that is really a big issue in not just the accounting space, but I think that the business climate, the business world altogether, and if change is something that scares you, if change is something that causes you a little bit of angst and trepidation at night, you’re gonna have to do something that gets you past that because change is the one constant. You know, anybody that’s in business has talked about that, heard that said to them, had a mentor in their life somewhere along the way say that to them. And it’s never been more true than it is today—the only difference is the pace of that change, like you’re talking about that Dan was talking about, the pace of that change is breakneck.
And it’s easy to get comfortable. There’s nothing wrong with feeling comfortable.
Yes.
And there’s nothing wrong with feeling anxiety and having to deal with change, but like you’re saying, you’ve got to do something about it.
Absolutely. I think the firms that are able to embrace that and move forward with that and do what needs to be done to understand that status quo is not going to work anymore. I used to work for a mentor years ago and one of his sayings was, “Good enough never is.” And we live in a world right now where good enough is not going to be good enough, because someone is always going to be pushing the envelope, and it’s going to be changing at rapid speed. And I think firm leaders and employees that can embrace that and get their hands around that are going to be set up to win so much more effectively and efficiently through the process.
I’ll give you a perfect example. We started working with a client last year. We talked probably in the mid to latter part of October—it was after the 15th. They reached out to us, we had never worked with them, we’d engaged with them on LinkedIn, they were a fan of the podcast, we had talked a couple of times, but nothing really in detail. And she reached out to me. I had reached out to her probably a year prior, talking about working together, wasn’t any opportunity there. She reached out, they’d been looking to fill a tax leadership role on their own, had not had luck. We started talking about it, it was a hybrid role, and we discussed the challenges of what she was looking for, the geography she was in. She wasn’t in a major metropolitan area, so she wasn’t sitting in Dallas, Texas, Houston, Texas, St. Louis, Missouri. She was in a rural community about an hour outside of two larger cities in Florida.
This is sounding like your wheelhouse, to be perfectly honest.
Yeah! And so through the course of that conversation, we talked a little bit about the prospect of remote, but it wasn’t something she was ready to jump on. She had originally been referred to me by a couple of firm leaders that I’ve worked with for a while, and we talked about the fact that look, reach out to them and talk to them because they have a piece of their business that is remote. Talk to them about the success they’ve had and what they’ve done to ensure that success. We went six weeks and could not find a candidate that was willing to be in the office two to four days a week and make a drive of a minimum of one hour because she wasn’t in a major metropolitan area, as I said.
The minute she switched and said, “Hey, let’s take a look at some remote people,” and again, it goes back to that change and the pace of change. The minute she said that, we were able to put two people in front of her, one of whom we made an offer to, and had that person start the first Monday after Christmas, so she started right after Christmas, and was able to start doing some training and some CPE and get on board and start, begin to hit the ground running this month with them. But had we still been looking for somebody that was in the local marketplace because she didn’t want to change, we’d still be trying to find that person today.
So regardless of whether that change is technology-driven, that change is mindset-driven, there are shifts occurring in the industry. There are shifts occurring in this space that people are going to have to get their heads around and understand, the sooner I can figure out a way to make something work, I’m going to have to do that. And I know that I keep bringing up the issue of geography and remote and that kind of thing, but that’s one of those things, here’s the way that I look at remote work today: Five years ago, in the midst of COVID, you could push back and say, “Hey, this remote thing, I’m not sure about it. It’s a lot of work. The technology isn’t there,” even though it was a matter of getting it into your house, so to speak. We’re now five years later. That ship has sailed, and there are plenty of firms that have proven not only can it be done, it could be done exceptionally well.
And exclusively!
Yeah. You look at a firm like Brandon Hall’s firm. They have built an amazing firm on a remote platform. Great retention, great employee awareness, amazing culture, it can be done, and that is not the exception, okay? It would be akin to rolling the clock back 30, 40 years ago, and you still have manual files sitting in your office saying, “I don’t know if I want to put these on computer because I’m not sure how it’s going to work. Being able to touch it, feel it, I like that, this is better for me.” Well, if you fast forward to 2025 and you’re still having that mentality, if you talk to one of your friends that was doing that as a firm leader, you would say you’re out of your gourd. People have proven technology is going to make our lives easier. Embrace it. Figure out how to work with it. We’re five years into this whole remote thing and firms and firm leaders that have put a stake in the ground that say “We are an in-office operation and we don’t care how good you are, you got to be in the office two, three, four, five days a week,” you are cutting off your nose to spite your face from amazing talent that would be a great fit for your firm and could make a difference.
Well, and you just gave a great example. We’ve seen so much growth since COVID, in accounting. Like it seems like it’s just not going to stop and you know, that can lend itself to complacency. Like things are so good, why should I change? However, you just illustrated, well, the reason why is, you’re going to end up in a situation like that. You can’t find somebody that will work for you. It doesn’t matter how much business you can get in, if you don’t have the people to do the work. If you’re not using technology to entice people to come work for you as one major element of being able to do that, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. All of this growth that we’re seeing, it’s gonna be everybody else growing, not you, and that’s just really what should underscore everybody’s thinking about it, I feel like.
You know, Justin, I had a conversation today with another firm for the first time. Ironically, they were referred to me by the firm I was just talking about that we placed a manager with. They have not grown in three years, and the reason they haven’t grown in three years is because they’ve stayed where they are because they’ve not been able to add staff. Business opportunities are there, but they haven’t been able to add staff. The challenge is, much like the other firm I was just talking about, they’re located in a smaller community, about a 45-minute commute from two larger communities. So they’re not really a suburb, there are 45-minute to an hour commutes from two larger metropolitan areas. And the firm owner made a comment that I think is a mindset that is going to have to shift, i.e. change, that we’re sitting here talking about. We were talking about compensation, and she said, because again, they’re ideally looking for somebody in their local marketplace that can be in the office three to four days a week.
Okay.
We were talking about compensation and she said, “I want people to take into account that we live in a smaller community and our cost of living is not as high as someplace else.” And I said, pre-COVID, 2019 and earlier, that’s a valid argument. But the problem is whether you like it or not, that firm that’s out of New York, or Dallas, or Chicago, or L.A., or Miami, or Nashville, or Charlotte, that’s recruiting in your backyard…
Yeah, they’re hunting in these woods.
Exactly. They are looking for people in your neck of the woods. And I didn’t get into this conversation with her, but one of the things that we track as a firm is who are the top—really not top, but the bottom—20 paying marketplaces in the country for accountants. So we are consistently looking at what markets are paying the least amount of money for comparable talent across the board. And when we start going out to recruit, guess where we go to recruit?
Makes sense.
We go to Des Moines, Iowa, El Paso, Texas, Oklahoma City. We go to small to mid-size rural communities where we can find a tax manager with 10 years experience and a CPA making $78 to 85,000, and we can offer that person $115 to 120,000. That’s gonna change their life overnight, and they’re absolutely worth it. They just happen to be sitting in El Paso, Texas, making that money.
Right.
But they can work for a firm out of Dallas. They can work for a firm out of Baltimore. They can work for a firm out of Seattle, Chicago, and make better market-driven compensation. For the most part, that compensation may be at the bottom range of what our client would pay, but it’s still within the range of reality, you know. I don’t think it’s fair for, you know, anyone in the equation to take somebody at that level, you know, that’s making $85, $90,000 and pay them $150,000 if that’s the top end of the salary range for our client. But at the end of the day, if we can take that person and put that person at $115, $120, $125,000 with opportunity to grow, everybody wins in that transaction.
Exactly.
Everybody. So firms that are in smaller rural communities in North Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio, wherever they may be, they’re going to need to understand. You may want to take into account your cost of living, but other people aren’t, because they are being recruited by firms out of New York, out of San Francisco, out of L.A., out of Dallas, out of Chicago, and the money that’s being offered to them is the money that they probably should be making anyway.
So, just in that alone, you started to highlight this theme of our show, these frustrations and fears—and legitimate ones—that firm owners you’ve talked to have shared. So in this case, “I can’t attract the kind of talent I need to grow. I’m afraid what’s happening is bigger firms with deeper pockets or with more technology than me are taking these guys. I just can’t compete. What do I need to do?” Let’s look at some of those and also hopefully you agree with me that in a lot of these instances, I think the ways to deal with these problems are easier or well, if not easier, they’re simpler maybe than firm owners think they are.
Yep.
So why don’t you share some more of those common fears and frustrations?
Let’s touch on, you know, there’s probably eight to nine of them, but let’s touch on four of them that we hear pretty consistently.
Yeah, alright.
They kind of dovetail a little bit together. Number one, losing key talent. These are their biggest fears, losing key talent. Again, a perfect example, we’re recording this on Monday the 13th of January. I’ve gotten two emails today from firm owners: “Hey, I need help. I had a resignation today.” It’s a valid fear. It’s a valid fear. So, losing key talent to either larger firms or industry.
Another concern that we’re constantly seeing is increased competition in the space, whether it’s from other firms, corporate accounting side of things, or non-traditional type businesses that are stepping into the accounting space, we’re seeing a lot more CAS-focused, bookkeeping, accounting, client accounting, CFO advisory firms popping up in the space. So that’s a pretty consistent concern that we’re hearing.
There’s people that are concerned about the decline of the quality of talent in the space, or a decline in the work ethic of the talent in the space. There’s either a decline in the talent level or a decline in the work ethic, or a little bit of both that people are concerned about.
Right.
And then, the last thing of all, which is the concern that everybody kind of pulls their hair out with, and that is the overall talent shortage. Those are the things that we’re seeing consistently from firm owners when we talk to them. And as you said, I don’t think that solutions are rocket science solutions. I think there are some pretty simplistic things that people can be doing. It’s just a matter of how do you incorporate that into your day, if you’re a firm owner or a firm leader, do you do those things in house, or do you outsource those things to, you know, somebody like us in a recruiting relationship, a Talent + Advisory relationship? So just, it just depends on how you go about doing it, but there’s some simple solutions through that process.
Well, and I like that you phrase it that way, because I was just thinking about what we just said: It’s totally natural to feel resistant to change, to not want to change, to feel comfortable in what you’re already doing. And it’s also natural to look at the pain of making a change, even though you can probably rationally say, “Oh, this is going to save me so much time and money long term, but I just don’t want to do it right now because it’s not going to be great setting this up.” So it’s true: If you can outsource it, you’re solving a big part of that kind of psychological block to making the needed change, to not end up like that example you gave of the firm that has business opportunities, but it can’t take them because it can’t get people on board. Outsource taking care of that problem.
Yep.
But let’s talk about the third one you listed to start, which was the decline of the quality of talent and/or the decline of work ethic, because I have heard this, and I produce a lot of podcasts, and I have heard a lot of disagreement with that general sentiment. I have seen a lot of optimism as far as the new people coming into the profession, that they’re of—especially, actually kind of dovetailing number two, considering how non-traditional accounting overall is getting—that these multifaceted, interdisciplinary type of folks coming into accounting, it’s actually an exciting time for the talent that’s coming into the space. What do you think about that?
I could not agree more wholeheartedly with you. I think that there are some pretty wicked smart people that are coming into this space. They’re logical, they’re intelligent, they have a good work ethic. It’s just, they have a really good idea, and I think a little better handle, on what they want to do in their career than the previous generation or two before them.
And possibly where their boundaries are as well?
Yeah, absolutely. They know what they will do, they know what they won’t do, they know what they want to do, they know what they don’t want to do. Now, that does not mean that they are always right, okay?
Sure!
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that they’re right, but if you’re willing to engage and talk and discuss rationally with somebody about why the thoughts that they’re having or the path that they’re considering may not be accurate. Again, I’ll go back to what I said a minute ago: They’re wicked smart people, they’re intelligent, they’re competent, they’re probably more willing to engage in conversation than you and I ever were at 24, 25, 26. You know, they’re at least willing to have some conversations about what does my ideal role, my ideal job look like?
A generation or two ago and farther back, Justin, there’s people went into public accounting with the intent of, “I’m going to go into public accounting. I’m going to get my two, three, four years experience. I’m going to sell my soul to the devil, so to speak. I’m going to work ridiculous hours and then I’m leaving. And I’m going to go work for Exxon, I’m going to be, you know, an accountant at Exxon until I retire, then I’m going to get my pension.” Well, a lot has changed through just the overall business climate that you’re not going to work at Exxon until you retire.
No.
You’re not going to stay at one job when you leave public accounting. You’re not going to go to this firm after spending three, four or five years at PwC. You’re not going to leave that firm and go to work for one company, and spend the next 25 to 30 years there and retire as the CFO. That’s stereotypically not going to happen in the world that we live in today. So the kids—and I say kids—I’m talking about young adults, mid-twenties to late twenties, they recognize that. They’re looking for an opportunity to set themselves up to win, and I think what we have to do as employers is understand, what does that definition of win look like?
Thanks for joining us for part one of CPA Life’s season three kickoff with John Randolph discussing the fears, frustrations, and desires of firms in the accounting space. Part two will air next Wednesday, January 22nd. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it or any of the exciting episodes we have planned for you in 2025. And visit CPALifePodcast.com for show notes and more. We’ll see you next time on CPA Life.