Going Beyond the Numbers with Seth Fineberg

Seth Fineberg spent more than 20 years as an accounting journalist before founding Accountants Forward and consulting with professionals looking to improve their firm and career prospects. He and host John Randolph engage in part one of a dynamic conversation on Episode 48 of CPA Life, centered around going beyond raw numbers and looking at the reality of the landscape in public accounting. Emphasizing the need for cultural change and the importance of work-life balance, Seth highlights the profession’s shift towards more holistic development, including mental health and leadership, a shift which John states had to happen given the unique environment younger generations have grown up in. Seth makes conferences a focal point, Bridging the Gap in particular, which is where he presented research that he and former guest Randy Crabtree had put together around burnout and job satisfaction in the profession. Stressing the human element, he effectively underscores the reasons the accounting industry needed to change.

Transcript:

Hey everybody, thanks for joining me today for another episode of the CPA Life Podcast, the podcast that shines a bright light on leaders and industry insiders who are doing all they can to bring some much needed change and disruption to the public accounting industry. And today we’re going to get to spend some time with someone who has had a seat looking into the window of the accounting profession for well over two decades as a journalist and editor and a content strategist. Today, we’re going to hang out a little bit and talk with Seth Feinberg, who is currently the founder of Accountants Forward, which is a firm focused on consulting with vendors, service providers and organizations on how they can better connect with and serve the accounting profession. Seth, welcome to the show.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you. Thanks for having me, John. I really appreciate you and for, you know, taking the time to, have me share my thoughts for the day.

I’m looking forward to it because we have a little bit of a commonality in our background and a couple of different things. One, we both have a love and a passion for music. The other thing, and we’ll try not to digress and talk about that and turn it into a music podcast versus an accounting podcast.

Which we easily could!

Absolutely. The other thing, though, is you are in the accounting profession as a service provider at the end of the day, advisor, consultant, coming at it from a journalist perspective, and we may have talked about this in the past, we may not have, but I got a degree in journalism and wrote for a little while, then stumbled into the accounting recruiting profession and have made a career out of that now, and every now and then, lean back on the journalism and marketing degree that I paid for with some good hard earned money that I never thought I’d use, but probably use now more today in the world of content creation than I ever thought I would.

Totally. Yeah. I mean, I’ve enjoyed some perspective, which I think is what you need in any professional career. You definitely need the folks who can look at it from a much larger lens than you’re able to. When you’re in it, you’re in it, you know your world and you know, maybe you are doing well. A lot more accounts are doing today, which is consuming a lot of content, which is great. And they’re starting to talk to their colleagues more and joining community groups and really feeling like more connected to the larger world of accounting.

And that’s what I’ve been able to enjoy as a journalist and editor for over 20 years, just in accounting, 30 plus in business journalism overall, but accounting is something, you know, much like with your career, something I kind of stumbled into. It was a job, you know, I got hired at an accounting publication from a job ad that I answered and I had already been in business to business for a while, and I think they liked that. And they’re like, yeah, kid, like you’ll get the understanding. I wasn’t really a kid at the time, but you know, like, yeah, you’ll get it. And I’ve always sort of had that from other editors, people that I’ve worked for, it was just that openness to go, yeah, you know, you’ll get this. You cultivate your sources, you go to industry events, you talk to a lot of people, you get in on as many interviews as you can, make conversations, you can, as many networking opportunities, you can, and you pick up on things.

And even today I do a lot of listening. I’m open with conversations that I have. A lot of my calendar is filled with folks who want to talk to me, pick my brain and just kind of share. I think it’s a very safe space with me. Like I don’t go blabbing this or that, and I just listen, I learn. And of course now, you know, we’re kind of in, you know, deep into conference season. It’s a great time of year. It’s really two, I like to say, it’s spring-summer, and then fall-early winter. You pick and choose. And I think it’s become vital for the profession to be there.

Well, I think it’s something that has grown over the last few years. I think that there have always been conferences, but there’s been so much focus in those conferences on the technical pieces. of accounting.

Yeah, there still is.

Yes, there still is and there still needs to be, and obviously there are conferences that are more technically focused than others. But I think that more and more conferences in the times that we’re in today Are starting to focus a little bit more on, I don’t want to say non technical issues, but more soft skill issues. They’re focusing on leadership. They’re focusing on employee development. They’re focusing on—

—And also just the business of being an accountant, like what you do and how you evolve from there and the tools that you use for the job and everything in between. Marketing, recruiting, hiring, just general growth strategies. Really looking at your business as a business. And all the things in between that you need to do to sustain yourself. And then some, like the one that we’re about to go to, look even deeper at the human being that is the accountant, the accounting professional, and how do you make that person better? And then also, you know, the skills and the real life, you know, sort of things that go with it and all the, you’re dealing with all the day to day, week to week, you know, things that do come up with clients, with your own staff. With the tech that you use, everything, how do you deal with it?

Well, I think that, you know, you touched on something that I think is really much more of an issue when you look at it through the lens today, then a decade, just even a decade ago. And that is, you know, on the overall mental health of you as a leader in this business, there was a place in time that as leaders, if anybody would have ever talked about the necessity to focus on their own mental health or their own well being, they would have been laughed at. It wasn’t something that anybody really thought anything about.

Yeah, or they thought maybe even lesser of you because of that.

Yes. But in the world that we live in today, we’ve started to realize that, hey, as a leader, you’ve got to be in an impactful role, and the only way you can do that for a sustainable period of time is you have got to take care of yourself. You’ve got to be able to, you know, I’ve always told my staff and I’ve always told my kids growing up, in everything that we do in life, when we give out of the overflow of our hearts.

Totally.

If we’re not doing anything to fill that back up, eventually, it’s empty. We have nothing to give. And I think that in the world that we live in today, there are so many conferences or pieces of conference that focus on that, and I know that, you know, you mentioned just briefly Bridging the Gap, and this episode will air when that’s long past, a few weeks down the road, but I know that is a big focus with Bridging the Gap in several of the sessions that are there.

Oh, yeah.

Tell me why that has become more of a bullseye, if you will, on the radar to focus on, in your opinion.

So, it’s twofold. One is, I think the pandemic really kind of threw a major spotlight on the mental health aspect of this particular career. It’s not that you go into accounting lightly or ever did, you would just always assume that this is, you know, look, it’s professional service, but you’re dealing with other people constantly, you know, unless you’re like in the back office of a company or something like that.

Right.

If you’re a professional accountant, public accountant, and you are working in tax, you’re a bookkeeper, CPA, it was already assumed that you’re going to work a lot of hours yor a lot of the year, not just January, April, and you’re going to have to deal with things going wrong. Part of your job. And you’re going to have to try to solve for it, or at the very least, you know, explain why these things are going on. And it’s tough. There’s very little margin for error.

Now, compound what happened during the pandemic where, you know, you were used to working a certain way and also, you know, PS the fact that like a lot of it hit in the middle of tax season. And then it just didn’t seem to end, the work. There always was just sort of this end. There was always just this, you know, you kind of, a lot of accountants are like what a lot of people don’t know is they’re by and large, they either own or work at a pretty small operation for maybe a few hundred clients. You know, depending on your business structure. And you’ve got to deal with that volume of work, that volume of work increases exponentially during certain times of the year. But at some point there is more of a lull of sorts, at least dies down a bit more. You have a chance to kind of get on top of things because there is a cyclical nature.

Now, imagine that circle is broken. And you’re just on it. There isn’t an end. There isn’t a foreseeable end to it. This really got to a lot of people. And if you look at the numbers now, you’re starting to see, and even before the pandemic, it was starting to kind of trickle away, but it really kind of kicked it in to higher gear, that there are less accountants to do the job. You know this, I know this. And there’s a big sort of question amongst the profession and the profession leaders and industry organizations to say how do we stem the flow, and how do we get back to doing the good work?

Cause make no mistake, the work of an accountant and in accounting is good work. You are literally a support system for people’s financial wellbeing and their own. And if you run a business, their own dreams too. And even if you’re working with families, it’s your financial sort of future. It’s the future health of that family, just as it’s the future and current health of that business. You need an accountant to kind of shepherd you along. And so all of these things are kind of converging over the last several years at once. And so conferences like Bridging, which really there isn’t any that are exactly like it, I might be a little biased with that, but, you know, cause I’ve helped, you know, put it together the last two years with Randy Crabtree and the Tri-Merit team and several other great minds in the room. You know, we recognized the need to focus on the human being behind the account. And then, you know, some of the other technical and not as technical, you know, skills and just real, you know, real life things that are going to, you know, kind of right your ship and literally bridge that gap to the next and pass it on to the next, not only the next generation, but just, you know, the gap that you experienced between clients, the gap that you experienced even with your own staff, with the tech that you work at, all of it, you in the work, you in your life.

For so many years, it’s been called people have to have a better work life balance, better work life balance. That narrative has to break and change because you’re not putting life first in that scenario. And this is, again, something getting back to the pandemic. I think in any line of work, you know, why do you think there was this, you know, the mass exodus in a lot of careers, people were literally stopping work to be like, what am I doing? What am I really doing and why am I doing it? And it threw a lot of things on its side. And then underneath it all, do I have to go into an office? Do I have to go out and see clients all the time in person? Do I have to work the hours that I do? Do I have to work in the way that I do? Everything in between really got upended. So you need guidance and you need to hear from your colleagues. You need to be among your people.

Well, I think that, you know, what you just said also—

I told you! I warned you I could go!

That’s okay! I think there’s something you said is pretty critical. You need to be among your people. There is value in understanding I’m not in this boat alone.

Yeah.

Huge value. My wife and I do marriage coaching and marriage mentoring, and one of the things that we try to get every couple to understand when we start working with them is, for the most part, not everything, but for the most part, 90 to 95 percent of what you’re dealing with in your marriage right now today, guess what? We have dealt with it also. And I think that knowing that you’re not alone in those tough times, whether it’s a marriage or your career or running a business, the fact that other people, either one are in the midst of that right now, or they were in the midst of it and oh, guess what? They survived it, and here’s how they survived it, I think being, as you said, amongst your people, there is some significant value in what I refer to as that breaking the bread time.

Yeah, for sure.

It builds those bonds of connectivity that, that we all need that connective tissue. And I’m sure that’s something at the conferences that you’ve either been to or like with Bridging the Gap, have been a part of putting together that you see when like minded people get into a room.

You do, and the better conferences out there too, you realize, and I was starting to write about this, you know, even years ago, like why people go to live events to begin with. It’s an expense of time. It’s an expense of money and even to put them on, too. It’s a major investment. Well, I was at a platform called AccountingWeb and we kind of evolved from being sort of the straight up, you know, thing that you read, put out stories, covered news, to more of a platform for thought leadership to happen, because we knew how, you know, accountants like to engage with, you know, things that mean something to them, things that are practical and useful and not just more fluff, not just more, you know, not that, you know, the news out there, you know, wasn’t useful, but things that are going to tell them how and why, and maybe even what, to a degree.

And so we, you know, we decided to put on a live event, we didn’t do it lightly because we knew all the pieces and all the things that go into it. So you don’t, on either end, go into live conferences without a real purpose and understanding what that purpose is. And the purpose isn’t just a place to provide, you know, platforms for people to just talk at you where you could earn CPE and all that. Sure, that’s part of it, but then you’re missing the big picture. And the big picture is the connections that you make, the networking, the commute, the feeling of the sense of community. And then if you’re listening to someone speak, you have to feel like they’re speaking to you, not at you and that you’re going to come away with something.

And that’s why, you know, people are going to invest their time and their money in being, you know, places like that. Otherwise, you know, you know, the last several years, there’s plenty of platforms out there where you can just get your CPE. You don’t have to see another human being the entire year. You can just be at your desk and, you know, go on to something like Earmark, listen to podcasts, get CPE, go to CPE Today, CPA Academy, watch as many webinars as you want to get your hours. You can even attend some of these conferences virtually. And that’s fine if that works for you. But I just think that the value of what you’re going to get being in the same room with another accounting human and some of them that you can maybe learn from or even teach, share. You know, like you do with your wife, you’re like, we’ve been through this stuff. We’ve heard enough stories ourselves. We can help.

Yeah. The ability to press the flesh is priceless. It really is. I want to ask you a question. I want to get your thoughts on something. We were talking a little bit ago about the impact of COVID on this profession. And I was talking to a client the other day who was a little bit jaded in his mindset of, you know, the generational differences in work ethic between his age—I’ll throw myself in that—my age, and younger professionals, you know, in that right out of college to 30, 35 year old age range.

And he said the same thing that I know I’ve heard a hundred times from hiring managers and firm owners, you’ve probably heard the same thing, you know, they don’t have the same work ethic. They don’t want to work as hard. They don’t want to, they don’t, they don’t, they don’t.

Yeah.

And something came over me and I want to get your thoughts on this. I said to him, you know, I don’t know if it’s that they don’t want to do those things and I don’t know if it’s that they don’t want to work that hard. I think that part of what’s driving the mindset of those professionals today is that it took me Till I was 45 or 50 to finally really understand what balance looked like, what priorities should be. Same. Same. And I think that part of that is we grew up generationally where the people that we stood around and watched get put in the ground if you will, die, were our parents’ parents, our grandparents, our older aunts and uncles, our older neighbors. The 60, 70, 80-year-old guy that we got to know, you know, at a diner down the road or at church if you went there, whatever it may be.

We now have a generation or two of people in the workforce that lived through Covid, that saw their friends at 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, their brothers, their sisters, their moms and dads, Pass away to a virus that we still don’t have an answer to completely. And I think that drastically changed their mental mindset because they understood you’re not promised tomorrow. Where I grew up for 45 years and you did too, as you kind of said, we thought we were invincible. We thought, you know, we had the world by the tail and it was going to last forever.

Jungle gyms, man, where are they now?

Yeah! Metal slides.

Metal slides, which was part of the jungle gym. By the way, it was all metal.

Yeah! But we got a generation or two of professionals in the workforce today where they just went through a period of time where it was impressed upon their lives really quickly, you’re not promised tomorrow. You better have your priorities straight. I think that they understand what I didn’t understand until I was 45 or 50, and God bless them that they understand it now. They don’t have to and they shouldn’t have to sacrifice their life at the altar of their job to build a career.

Yeah. Dude, look, we’re of the same generation. I would go so far as to say, I think every generation still just had that. Like the older generation is always going to say the younger generation, you don’t know. You don’t know how hard it is. And I did everything so that you could have a better life. You know, my grandparents were Jewish immigrants and I remember my grandfather, he relished in the fact that he had three jobs to support his six kids.

Wow. Yeah.

Because that’s what you did. He said, I didn’t finish my career as a lawyer. I’ve entered a university, two classes I had to take, I would have been a lawyer. But I couldn’t do it, you know. He loved holding court with his giant cigar and his thick as hell accent, you know, and telling us how it used to be. And how are we any better if we continue to just point the finger and say, oh, they don’t work. They don’t know. And, but that’s the other thing too. And I’m glad you pointed that out, is that to really embrace that we are not promised tomorrow, and what that means, and really looking at the fact that there is more to life than working hard at something. How about working smarter at something?

I think this kind of dovetails a little bit. And I don’t want to give it all away, but some of the data at the Bridging the Gap conference, which hopefully, and you know, folks who are listening to this have already attended. And then afterwards, you know, we’re going to be revealing some top line results to some survey work that Randy Crabtree and I are engaged in, along with the help of his buddy Hank Berkowitz. He approached me some weeks back with this idea of saying, you know what, I think we should really have a survey, right? There’s all these surveys and survey work that’s coming around saying, you know, there’s pipeline issues and the accounting profession and, you know, what, you know, what do we do about it? And there’s all these numbers. There was the, you know, the Cornerstone Group.

So, you know, there’s people that have done like all of this research into what’s going on now in the profession and burnout is not a new thing, but I think the degree that it appears to be hitting the profession because the numbers don’t lie, the numbers show that there are less accountants to do the job. Now I know the pandemic caused a lot of folks to leave a lot of professions, but the fact that, you know, we don’t have this support system, this financial and compliance regulatory, you know, whatever, basic level and it’s more advanced level, like, you know, these are accountants are coaches. They’re advisors in their own right. They’re helping to see the financial futures and help ensure the positive financial futures of all their clients. They’re there for you. And the fact that there’s less of them there is concerning.

So Randy and I wanted to get to the bottom of, are people leaving because of burnout, or are there other factors at play? There’s been a certain sort of accepted, it is how it is, in this profession that we know of, and I’m sure it’s that way in a lot of other professional service areas. So one of our key findings, I’ll reveal it, was about the fact that people actually are willing to work the hours that they do at the busiest times in particular, if they enjoy the work. Not because they feel they have to, they’re feeling that they’re not enjoying the work, even less hours, they’re not particularly jazzed. So that throws into the spotlight, if more data continues to support this, then we have a bit of our “aha” moment to say, why can’t you enjoy more of what you do?

We’re still of the belief that you don’t have to work the hours that you do. I mean, the accounting profession was, you know, the hours were there because of the volume. It was all tied to how you had to work. I needed—it was math, like accountants do. They already figured out from early on, I need X amount of clients per year to make Y, and in order to serve that amount of clients for what I’m charging them, I have to have a certain amount, I have to work a certain amount of hours. That scenario, that wheel, that hamster wheel is finally, there’s a lot of evidence that’s being broken, thankfully, but there’s a lot more work to be done. Accounting doesn’t need to tell a better story. It needs a better story to tell.

Thanks for joining us for part one of John Randolph’s conversation with a longtime accounting journalist, Seth Fineberg. Part two will air September 11th. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting app and learn more about the show at CPALifePodcast.com. We’ll see you next time on CPA Life.

Important Links:

Accountants Forward

Seth Fineberg on LinkedIn

About the Guest: