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Framing Your Narrative: Building the Best Firm You Can with John Randolph
In Part 2 of this special CPA Life episode, John Randolph returns as the guest to talk to producer Justin Grant about many of the key concepts in talent acquisition and advisory that CPA firms simply don’t know that they don’t know. John explains this as the basis behind his Talent + Advisory model, which integrates value-based pricing, strategic discussions, managing a firm’s talent brand, online reputation management, the importance of relationships in accounting, and more. Above all, it is clear that just like an accounting client needs a partner in a firm that works with them on a recurring basis, so does an accounting firm need a partner that works with them to get to the root of their staffing needs and goals.
Transcript:
When you start doing those things from the heart, not because it’s just the right thing to do, but it’s because who you are—people know the difference. People absolutely know the difference. You want to start talking about impacting a culture, that’s what Randy [Crabtree] does. That’s what John [Garrett] teaches people to do. Those are the things that people can do to impact their firms. And those are the things that we absolutely love to help people uncover in our Talent + Advisory Model.
Yes. It’s interesting too—just bringing all that together—you hit on everything there at the end, talking about getting people in the profession to realize there are other options, whether they’re coming into it, whether they’ve been in it for a little while, and they’re just looking for their exit. You’ve got some statistics on your website—you’ve mentioned them before too on the show. In a survey that had been conducted, nearly 85% of the accountants that took that survey, they responded that they wouldn’t want to take another job at a CPA firm. The biggest reason for that among that 85% was work-life balance, and the 2nd biggest one was being too focused on billing, keeping track of hours, all that stuff, versus doing what they came into accounting wanting to do.
Yep.
Serving their clients. So you have had many guests on the show who’ve got their own version of how do we get away from the billable hours model? Value billing. You’ve seen, not just for accounting, but also on the recruiting side, the potential that switching to that kind of a value-based model has. Could you talk about your Talent + Advisory Model you’ve just mentioned, and how not only are you doing the recruiting version of getting away from billable hours, but that information problem: getting people to understand there are firms out there that are going to be places they want to work, they’re going to enjoy working, they’re going to feel so much better work-life balance. They’re going to feel a kind of an inspiration to come into their place of work instead of dreading it every single day. How did you transform that over onto the recruiting side?
Well, from the accounting side of the business, it baffles me—and I’m sure there are people that can speak to this much more intelligently than I can—but it’s baffled me. If you if you stick a hundred people in a room and you said to those hundred people, hey, what would you say the top three frustrations are for you in the industry? Pick any industry. I don’t care what what it is.
Mmm hmm.
Well, if there’s a consensus among those hundred people that this—whatever this is—this is a frustration, wouldn’t logically, the answer be, well, if this is a problem in our industry, whatever that problem is and whatever the industry is, if 75, 85, 95 percent of the people say this is a problem, whether those people are in leadership or those people are in service delivery, doesn’t matter—whether they’re a concrete manufacturing company, make widgets, if 75 to 90% of them say this thing is a problem for us, you would think as an industry, somebody would say, we need to figure this out. Because it’s not working anymore.
But in accounting, you know?
But in accounting!
If you’re a big firm, double down on it!
You stick a hundred people in a room, whether it’s a staff auditor or a tax partner. A CFO advisory partner or a director, doesn’t matter. And you ask them, top three frustrations for you in this business? I guarantee you that 75% of those people are north, one of those problems is going to be, consistently, one of those problems is going to be timesheets.
And yet, consensus is 80, 85, maybe even as high as 90% of firms, especially on the bigger side out there, continue to do things that way.
Absolutely. Leadership is frustrated because “it’s a part of my job that I just don’t want to have to deal with it. I got to get John to people because they’re not working enough. They’re not billing enough hours. Their utilization rate is where it needs to be.” From a service delivery perspective, they’re frustrated because, you know, I’ve got to fill this stupid timesheet out, and I’ve got to be so much, you know, have so much utilization or realization number, and the story that I’ve I’ve told a million times, I think, but I think it really, really shines a bright light on the problem, and how it’s a problem, but we just sweep it under the rug, and let’s don’t really deal with it: There was a young guy I talked to, a three year audit guy out of BKD. Last year or two years ago, going into the fall tax season, they’re told by the end of August that they’ve already got to be at 65 billable hours—65 billable, which means you’re having to work 70 to 75.
Yep. Easy.
To get to 65 billable. And so I asked him, are you doing that? And I loved his answer. “My timesheet says I am!”
Yep!
So you know, I’ve just always worked from the mindset that I don’t care how long it takes you to do the job. Just get it done.
Get it done and get it done well, and that will make the client happy.
Get it done, get it done well, satisfy the customer, make sure that they have the answer that they’re wanting. And let’s just take care of them. I don’t care if it takes you two hours. I don’t care if it takes you 22 hours.
Now, there’s some that may argue that, hey. We don’t really know how to price this unless we understand the time commitment from it. And there’s answers to that. There’s absolutely answers to that. Track time, figure out what works, what doesn’t. You know, if based on what a client tells you, you’re thinking that this is probably a 20 hour project, and it ends up being a 40 hour project, there’s issues that you can deal with from a pricing standpoint, from a scope standpoint that you can build that into your pricing.
Absolutely.
But I just think that there’s so much more people friendly ways to manage that process. And the value to the customer as an end user now, flip the direction here for just a minute—from an end user perspective, as a person that works with a CPA firm that now charges me a subscription price model structure, versus what I was paying for before, which was, hey, we got your tax return done. You owe us X amount of money. You owe the IRS Y amount of money.
Yeah.
Now what I have is a lot of what our clients have. I’ve got a firm that takes care of all of our bookkeeping, So I have a monthly discussion with an accounting manager, a quarterly discussion with a tax person that’s on that call, but I got a tax person that’s available to me with any conversation that I want to have. There’s no surprises. And am I paying more for that than I was paying for just a tax return? Yes. But is my life easier? Yes. Do I love the fact that I don’t have to Google every question about taxes that I have now because I don’t want to call my accountant, because I was afraid that when I called him you know, the meter was going to start by getting in a cab in New York.
Yep!
You know, yeah! I love that. Absolutely love that I can do all of those things now. So from a user standpoint, I’m in heaven. I love that. From an accounting firm perspective, the value in this also is the ability to know that every single month, let’s just take a nice round easy number. If I want to do a million dollars this year, but I know that in monthly recurring revenue, every single month, I’ve got $380,000 in recurring revenue for the year. So, you know, break that down to whatever I’ve got $30,000…
Roughly 30, yeah.
Whatever that number is, I’ve got X amount in recurring revenue. Well, now I know where I’ve got to fill the gap in with transaction related stuff, or things that I can do that are project related for clients. And I have an idea of of how I can run my business. I know this amount of money can pay my bills. Let me hire the people I need to hire to deliver the service I want to deliver, and it takes a little bit of pressure off of me. There was some of that mindset that led into taking our business from a stereotypical transaction-oriented mindset to a more partnership-, relationship-minded situation.
Yeah.
And that, Justin, I think that’s probably one thing that I left out as I’m sitting here talking about this, and I’ve had a lot of conversations, not only on the podcast, but with clients in our recruiting business about this, we talk about relationship in this business. And when I say this business, I’m talking public accounting or professional services. We talk about “relationship.” Well, if you are doing the tax work for that firm, Company ABC, well, you know that you’re talking to him a handful of times from January to April. But once you do the tax return, What else are you talking to them about?
Yeah. There’s eight more months.
Exactly. There may be things go on throughout the year that are, again, transaction-related to get that person to call you. There may be things that come up during the year that get you to call that person, i.e., an IRS notice that comes in. But all of that, you could say relationship all day long, but you’re lying to yourself. It’s transaction related.
It’s a transaction. Right.
That’s all it is. Now we may have a relationship. We like each other. You’re my accountant. I call you when I have to file my taxes, or I’m going to do a big purchase, but Again, it’s all transactional. When you move things to a subscription or value-based pricing model, it takes it to a whole other level. It becomes a partnership. You’re more ingrained and entrenched and embedded with that customer about the decisions they’re making, and you get to have a strategic discussion with them consistently about where are you today, where are we trying to be tomorrow? How can we put things together to get there? And it’s not just numbers. It’s people, processes, equipment. It’s so many other things that come into play, and all of that mindset, the more that we talk to our clients about that, the more that we talk to our clients about all of those things that they’re trying to do, they just resonated with me as a firm leader in a professional service related business.
So many times the answer to that transaction-related revenue in the recruiting industry is, well, let’s start a temp side to our business, because in the temporary staffing side of the business, we have monthly recurring revenue. We have someone working a 6 week, 8 week, 12 week, 6 month project, whatever the case may be. Well, at the end of the day, that’s still a transactional relationship. “I need someone that can help me through tax season. Can you find someone?”
Absolutely. Right.
Well, that’s a three month transaction. And I’ll be honest with you. I just don’t really enjoy the contract temp side of the business. It’s a necessary part of this business.
Of course.
We do a little bit of it, but it’s not something that I’m passionate about. It’s not something that I enjoy. I wanted to figure out, how could we do the same thing that our clients are talking about wanting to do, and that we’re talking to our clients about what they’re wanting to do. And that is, how can we become more embedded with our customers to help them become more strategic in their business?
You know, our clients sell to their customers all day long: “Hey. I’m an accountant. You run a landscaping company. You know what you know how to do really well? You know how to run a landscaping company really well. You go take care of your landscaping company. You go drive business, create revenue, create solutions for your customers, that’s what you do best. You know what you don’t do well? You don’t manage your money well, and that’s okay, because that’s not who you are. Let us do that for you. Let us take that headache off your desk. You go run that business. We’re going to help you manage the money, and we’re going to do it strategically and tactically.”
And not only are they taking it off their desk, instead of the clients having to be the ones that are reacting to things, this is a proactive, partnership, planning process.
Absolutely.
Yeah. And why wouldn’t that work in the recruiting space?
Yeah! That is exactly the mindset of why we started our Talent + Advisory business model, and why we’ve had some success with it in the short time we’ve been doing it, is because we’re able to say with our customers—and, again, our customers are not Big Four, Top 100 CPA firms that have a talent acquisition team of, you know, 3, 5, 8, 10, 15 people.
And giant vaults, Scrooge McDuck, you know, of money, they can just throw at any problem that they have.
Absolutely. Our average client is 10 to 50 employees. That’s our average client.
Right.
We’ve got some clients that are larger, we’ve got a handful of clients that are smaller, but that’s kind of our average customer. So our average customer does not have an internal HR person. At best, they have an admin assistant who does some advertising for them when they have an opening come up. If they’re thinking—I don’t want to say they’re not thinking about their talent strategically—if they’re thinking about their talent strategically, It’s during their planning process for next year, and they’re looking at their business and they’re saying, here’s where we are, here’s where we want to be; to get there, we’re probably going to need to add two people. When do we think we’re going to need to add those people? We’ll probably need to add them sometime in Q1 and maybe another person in Q2. Okay. Let’s go! We’re off.
And is that analogy to their client, not the exact same thing with them reacting to money things that happen to them throughout the year, and them trying to plan them?
Absolutely. We have that discussion with our clients. Here’s where you are. Here’s where you want to be. Let’s talk about what that means from a people standpoint and a capacity perspective—let’s tie those two things together. Let’s figure out how we can do that. Oh, and by the way, you’re also a 40-person firm. So here’s the good news, here’s the bad news: Good news is you’re a 40-person firm. 2 years ago, you were a 25-person firm. Great news, great job, awesome growth.
Here’s the bad news: Average industry turnover is somewhere between 20 and 30%. Your turnover over the last five years is about 15%. So with 40 people—you want to hire two this year—but with forty people, you’re probably going to lose four to five. So you really need to hire five to six people this year. Not two.
Yeah.
So how are you going to do that? Let me tell you how most of our clients do it. They work all day, 8 to 5, dealing with their customers, doing what they do best: solving their customer’s problems, bringing value to their customers. And then at 9 o’clock tonight, while they’re sitting watching the most recent episode of The Bachelor, with their kids running all around wanting to know, Dad, how come you’re working so much? Mom, how come you’re working so much? I thought that you left that firm you worked for before, so that you could run your own firm and have more time in your life. Why are you doing this? That’s when you’re reading the 150 resumes of tire changers from Firestone that now want to be an accountant. That’s when you’re doing it.
So, again, our conversation with our clients is, hey, you know what you do well? You solve financial problems for your customers extremely well. You solve strategic and tactical problems for your customers absolutely amazingly well. Okay? You know what you don’t do well? You don’t manage your talent brand real well. Let us do that for you.
Right.
And when I say talent brand, Justin, I’m not talking just talent acquisition—going out and finding people. I’m talking about that—talent acquisition—but I’m talking about talent retention. What are we doing to keep your people? What are the things that we’re seeing in the industry that people are doing well? How does that relate to your firm? How can we sit here and put some of those things in place so that we can start to begin to get things a little stickier, if there’s such a word, with people in your firm so that—
—How can we get that 15% down to 10%, 5%, 2% turnover?
Exactly. Exactly. And that’s not rocket science, but it comes down to having the time to do the research to figure those things out. Because when you’re sitting in Boise, Idaho running a firm trying to figure out how to do these things, the world that you know is Boise, Idaho, okay? The world you don’t know is there’s a guy in Chicago by the name of Randy Crabtree who’s run a business who’s lost two people, I think, in the last 10, 15 years?
That’s right.
Now the guy in Boise doesn’t know Randy from the man in the moon—but I do. And I can say, hey, client in Boise, I want to introduce you to somebody because there’s some things he’s doing over here, and here’s what are some of the things that he’s doing. But Randy said he’s willing to spend 15 minutes, an hour, hour and a half, whatever it is, Randy’s willing to spend some time with you to talk to you about your firm and what he’s done and how those things may be able to dovetail. We have the ability to put people together or bring some of that knowledge to bear ourselves, through our experience with Randy Crabtree in conversations we’ve had. And I’m just using Randy as an example.
Good example.
But we see this consistently throughout the conversations that we have with firms. So, we’re not only going to work on talent acquisition—the two people you need to hire—we’re going to work on talent retention. The five people you’re potentially going to lose, what if we can get that down to two this year? What if we can get it down to zero this year?
How about that?
Then the last thing that we’re going to work on, is we’re going to work on talent branding, because what I tell people all day long: your story is going to get told in the marketplace whether you like it or not. You can choose who’s telling that story.
Yeah. That’s this information problem we alluded to earlier.
Exactly. And right now who’s telling their story is the pissed off employee that left two years ago that left a review on Google.
And Glassdoor.
Yeah. Or hopped on Reddit or hopped on Going Concern, and threw some crazy information out there about your firm. That’s who’s telling your story.
Yeah.
Because let me tell you who doesn’t tell your story: When you own a restaurant, the five hundred people that ate at your restaurant over the last three months that loved what you did—they didn’t tell your story. If they told your story, they told it to some friends over the water cooler at work: Hey, I ate at a great restaurant. That’s what they did, okay? You know who’s telling your story about your restaurant? The five customers that are pissed off at the quality of service because somebody was sick. They’re mad because their steak didn’t come out the right temperature, they’re pissed off because their coffee wasn’t made right. Those five customers, that’s who’s telling your story.
Well, your talent brand is the exact same way. Those three employees that you’ve lost over the last five years that did not have a good experience—they’re the ones telling your story. So what we’re going to do when we partner with a firm like this is we’re going to sit down, we’re going to talk to you about your story. And there’s so many firm leaders that just do what they do because it’s who they are. They don’t think it’s special. But there’s some really cool stories out there.
Yeah, there are. And that humility across the profession, it’s rampant that it’s just, “Ah, it’s just what I do. It’s no big deal.” But it often is!
We’ve got a client that we’re working with in our Talent Plus Advisory Service that when we started talking about this, you know, “first of all, yeah, we’re a hybrid work model, we really don’t like fully remote.” Okay. So we dig into that. We talk a little bit about that. Then we start talking about, you know, let’s find out some of your stories because the second part of this equation with your story as a firm and your story as a leader, all of those things that you say that’s great, But I’ve got a skeptic’s view of things, and I talk to candidates about this all the time whenever they’re going into interviews, and they get the question about, you know, hey, how do I talk about my strengths and weaknesses that comes up? What I tell candidates is, look, in the world that we live in today, if you say it about yourself, You’re either bragging or you’re lying.
Right?
But if somebody else says it about you, it’s got to be true. It’s got to be. That’s just the world we live in today. If somebody says it about you on social media, it is rock solid golden. Doesn’t matter how inflamed it is or how much of a lie it is. It’s true—somebody said it about you. That’s just the world that we live in.
So I always tell candidates and interviews, look, when someone asks about strengths, don’t say, well, I’m good at this. Or let me tell you what I do really well. What I tell them to say is something like, you know, it’s interesting you brought that up about what my strengths are because just two months ago, I had my year end review. And through my year end review process, one of the things that my boss said that he really enjoys about working with me is X, Y, Z. Now you said it, but you didn’t say it about yourself. Your boss said it.
Right.
We take that same philosophy to our clients when we’re talking about their story. We get the nuts and bolts of some of their story, but then the second part of it is, hey, let’s talk to your people. Let’s sit down, let’s talk to your people about why are they here? What keeps them here? What attracted them here? What do they love about your firm? What are some cool things that they’ve seen transpire within the firm that’s either directly affected them or other people around them? And the stories that come out of that—third party validation—these people start to talk about the things that you’ve done, the firm has done, their teammates have done, things like that.
So back to this client that we’re working with: “We don’t have fully remote people. We’re a hybrid firm. You know, we don’t really have any cool stories. We’re just kinda people doing what we do.” Okay, well, let’s talk about who some of the key players are in your firm. So we’re going through some of the people. We get to this one person. We’ve got this one person, and her title technically is tax senior, but she’s really a manager. Okay. Tell me a little bit more about that. Why is her title senior, but she’s really a manager?
And my assumption is is she not a CPA? “Oh, no, no. She’s a CPA. She’s got 13 years experience. She’s a CPA She worked for two Big Four firms before and we hired her four years ago.” But she’s a senior, not a manager. Why? “Well, it was her decision.” Okay. Tell me more. “Well, she worked here in the office for us for two years. And then about two years ago, her husband got transferred to Utah, and she was resigning because we’re a hybrid firm, and when she came in to resign, we talked about it. We decided, man, we can’t lose her. So she works a 100% remote for us And the other thing that she told us when she moved is that she really wanted to focus on being more present for her kids and her family, and she didn’t want to have to deal with clients. She just didn’t. So she didn’t want to be a manager anymore, so she took a step back to a senior, but she handles 100% of all of our review work. She does all our review work. She doesn’t deal with a single client because she doesn’t want to, but she takes the review work headache off the desk of our manager so our manager can deal with all the clients.”
Okay. Wait a minute. You told me you’re not a remote firm, but you got a remote employee.
Yeah. 100%.
You told me about somebody who basically carved out their path in your firm because you didn’t want to lose them.
Yeah! And you accommodated them!
Yeah. And so let’s go back to this whole story thing. You don’t think that’s special? “Well, no. I mean, that’s just kinda what we do and what we did.”
And it’s a decent thing to do. That’s another big point, I think.
Yes. So it’s stories like that that come out. There’s a firm that we’re working with, again, in our advisory business. We’re sitting there, we’re talking to the owner a few weeks back. Because one of the things that we do regardless of where the firm is, we’re going to spend two to three days on-site interviewing your people. Sit and talk and understand who you are, what do you do? How do you do it? We want to get to know your people, the key people in your firm. So we’re talking to the owner, and a couple of their leadership team, and they’re pretty humble about, you know, who they are, what they’ve done over the last 30 years of trying to make some changes and migrate, do some things differently.
“Don’t really do anything special, we just care for our people” kinda thing. Well, I start talking to this one person that’s been with him for 17 years. That’s one person out of 35 employees that’s been with them for 17 years, okay? 35 employees, 22% of the staff has been there over 10 years.
Wow.
So they’re apparently doing something right.
Most definitely. Yeah.
So as I start talking to people, I ask them, tell me why you’ve been here so long? What’s kept you here? And the simple answer is “him”—talking about the owner. Him. “He’s an amazing guy. Can’t imagine work for anybody else. Lovely.” I heard that over and over and over and over again. But they’ve had 40% turnover over the last three years for people that are under five years experience. Okay. So follow-up question: Tell me why you think people are leaving. “They don’t know him.”
There you go.
“If they knew him, they’d stay because he is an amazing guy.” Okay, so tell me what’s so amazing about this guy. So I hear some cool stories—but I hear some amazing stories. 13 amazing stories about this managing partner. One of them, just one: Girl moves here from Mexico 17 years ago, Works for him part time, has two years experience working for a a CPA firm in Mexico, undergrad, master’s degree in Mexico. No experience in the states. He hires her part time to do data entry. Tax season ends. She’s looking for a job. He calls her in his office and says, “You can’t leave. Do not want you to leave. Stay. I’ll make you a full time offer. Whatever you need, I’ll pay, you stay.”
So she stays. So that’s the first year. Second year with the firm, her first full tax season as a full time employee, her mom comes up from Mexico to babysit her kid—she had a three year old son—babysit her three year old son all through tax season. Does it of her own free will. Doesn’t ask mom. Her husband works. And mom comes up so that, you know, they don’t have to take kid day care and juggle with all the day care issues. She’s always going to be at the house watching her son. Great. It’s an easy answer.
Txa season ends, April 16th, they have a happy hour everybody is celebrating. We got through tax season. We survived. We lived. The owner is handing out bonus checks on April 16th to the employees. “You’ve done a great job. Awesome. Thank you.” Happy hour’s ending, the owner walks up to this girl, hands her an envelope. $1,000 cash, ten hundred dollar bills. She looks at it and says, “What’s this for? And he says, “Well, let me tell you what it’s not for. It’s not for you. I already gave you your bonus. It’s in that check. I need you to give that $1,000 to your mom.”
Oh, man.
“I need you to tell your mom how much I appreciate her coming up here to take care of your son, so that you could take care of our customers.” That’s one of thirteen stories that I heard like that about this guy. There’s a reason why 20+% of their staff have been there over 10 years because they saw that guy before they grew to 35 employees, two and a half, three million dollars in revenue, and he is covered up with taking care of customers. Being able to sit down with that guy—forget talent acquisition, forget talent branding. To be able to sit down with that guy and say, hey, let me tell you where your best ROI is right now when it comes to your people. You need to start spending 10 to 15 hours a week with your people. And not talking to them about tax stuff, not training them on technical stuff. You need to go back to being the guy that you were 20 years ago. You need to go sit in their side chair, you need to walk into their office, and you need to take them to lunch and say, hey. How’s your daughter doing? You said she had a softball game last week. How’d it go?
Right.
Hey. How’s your son doing? You said that he was taking a test to get into some school? Did that work out? How’s your wife’s job going? She was frustrated last week. She had a couple of interviews—did those pan out? You need to get back engaged, because that’s who you are at the core, and you’ve just gotten so busy with work that you’ve forgotten that. And if you start doing that again, I promise you, your turnover is going to decrease, your retention is going to increase, your firm is going to be happy, your people are going to deliver better, and deliver more.
Sky’s the limit.
Absolutely.
That’s awesome, John. Talk about a comprehensive answer, first of all. And just being able to put together a program that can capture the essence of those sorts of things, because for all the talk of how accounting is a boring profession for the boring people—it’s a relationship profession. And this squishy stuff that people make up within it, that’s the stuff that’s interesting, and it’s the stuff that keeps people around. And being able to distill that down and capture a way to influence it, that’s not easy, and partnering with someone who knows and has the expertise for how to do that, that’s just massive.
You know, I try to get people to understand, and I’ve I’ve had this mindset internally with my organizations for years. I call it hanging around time, breaking bread time. There’s so much connective tissue, another way I put it. There’s so much connective tissue that comes out of being able to do that with your people.
Yeah.
Having us come in from an outside, advisory perspective, and sit with your people and say, hey, she cares about you guys so much that we’re working with you guys over the next six months, year, year and a half, whatever it is, to get a better understanding and better picture of what do we do well when it comes to people? What do we not do well? What could we do better? Simple SWOT analysis—what are our strengths, what are our weaknesses, what are our opportunities, and what are the threats? Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we want to get there? Investing that time with somebody outside of the firm to come in and do that, break bread with your people, have some hanging around time, and convey to them the commitment that an owner that a leader that a managing partner has that they typically don’t see, is powerful.
Yeah. Sure is. And that perspective that you couldn’t get internally—you just couldn’t.
No.
That adds a lot to it too.
So those really were a couple of favorite moments you’ve personally had in your “work mode”—applying the Talent + Advisory model to help your clients. How about any similarly impactful moments or “nuggets of gold” as you put it, that you’d like to share from the first season of CPA Life?
I think probably just continuing on with that thought process, Justin, that every single leader that we talk to and every single advisor to the industry leaders that we talk to—I think, again, I look for common themes. I look for congruency. I think that the common theme in every single one of those people that we talk to is you’ve got to be genuine in the way that you lead. You can’t fake it. You can’t act it out. You can’t pretend to care about your people. You can’t pretend to say that, you know, you want to build a culture or an environment or a firm that is people first, and then not align that.
Yeah. Not follow through. Right.
No. No. You just can’t. Again, I think I’ve alluded to this a couple of times and in the podcast in the past and and it’s and as a conversation, we have probably weekly with firms that reach out to us about partnering with them, you know, it’s kind of a consistent conversation we have, “We’re struggling. We’re at capacity. Our people are overworked. We’re pulling our hair out. We need help. We’re short staffed,” on and on and on. 20, 30 minutes into the conversation. I ask one very simple question: So since you’re overworked, you’re understaffed, you’re at capacity, your people are pulling their hair out, since all that’s going on, how much business have you guys had to walk away from in the last 12 to 18 months? Today, 86% of the firms that we talk to, the answer is none.
Zero.
None. “We don’t walk away from business. We don’t say no.” 86% of those conversations we have, we don’t work with those firms, because you can talk about saying all the right things all day long: “We care about our people. We want to create a people-centric culture. We don’t want you to kill yourself.” You could say all those things, but your actions don’t line up. There’s no congruency.
It’s the almighty dollar still deciding for you.
Yep. And I go back to Tim Petrey’s comment, “When is enough enough? When it starts to affect the lives of the people that work for us.”
Yes. Exactly.
So that’s probably one of the biggest things that has been a consistent comment from every single person that we’ve talked to: You got to be genuine. You’ve got to care. You got to line up your actions with your words as a leader. And if you don’t do that, you’re not going to see the change, you’re not going to see the traction of people, you’re not going to see the retention of people that you want to see, your talent brand’s not going to change in the marketplace.
There it is. Well, John, this has been quite a fun ride. I hope it has for you too—it certainly has for me.
Absolutely.
Good. And I think, as I said earlier, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I may as well ask you the same question you always ask guests: If anyone would like to talk to you about all the things you’ve got going on at Benaiah, all the thoughts you have about how to improve a firm, change the way that they do things for the benefit of their employees, get them out of that altar of their jobs sacrificing your life kind of mindset, what would be the easiest way for them to get ahold of you?
So first of all, if someone wants to connect with me on LinkedIn, you can find me on LinkedIn, it’s John E. Randolph. I’m pretty consistent on LinkedIn—posting, commenting, engaging, with people on LinkedIn, a lot. Someone is in the marketplace, thinking about being in the marketplace for a job, wants to know what their options are, we have a lot of just discovery conversations with people every single day. If you’re a firm leader wanting to kinda get a better handle on what’s going on in the marketplace, I’d love to talk to you as well. Connect with me on LinkedIn, or my email address, which is jr@benaiahcg.com.
That’s perfect. And, really, thanks again—appreciate it for having you, you know, let us turn the tables and in instead of you being the one to guide the conversation, instead, this time, the listeners got to hear you talk about a little bit of that CPA Life. So thanks again, John.
Thank you, Justin.
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.
Important Links:
About the Guest:
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?